Ideas for a project? (a MSc project, sort of)

[Grant Griffin]

eloy wrote:
> 
> Dear friends,
> 
>         I have entered the world of Python about two months ago. I really
> fell in love with the language inmediately (don't tell my girlfriend).
> 
>         I teach at the University of Córdoba (Spain) and would like to
> guide one of my students in a project related to Python. In Spain, after
> three years (the equivalent of a MsC, I believe) our students must
> develop a project to obtain the diplomma. The estimated duration is
> around 4-6 months, sometimes part-time, sometimes full-time.

Darn.  Python's productivity is going to work against that <wink>.  I
started doing a web search engine, and after two weeks, spare-time, it's
nearly done.  (Of course, I still need to write the documentation, so I
guess I'm only half done.)

> 
>         So, as I am new to the Python community, I would like to ask
> if there is any idea about projects that could fit that description. Of
> course the results would be available to everybody.

Here's one I thought of earlier today.  Python 1.5.2 was the standard
for a long time, until somewhat recently (I forget exactly when.) 
Newever versions (1.6, 2.0, 2.1) have added several useful features, my
personal favorites of which are "augmented assignment" (the "+="
operator and friends) and string methods (which were previously handled
by the "string" module.)  I wrote my search engine using these features,
but, as I thought about it, I realized that it would be nice to change
these things to the old-fashioned way, to be compatible with 1.5.2
(which is still widely used--for example, on my web site.)

The features I mention can be automatically "translated" to/from 1.5.2
fairly easily using regular expressions.  (For example, by itself the
augmented assignment thing could probably be put together in an hour or
so.)  One could carry this a step further by creating some kind of
generalized translation engine.  Of course, translating certain other
features would be harder (e.g. list comprehensions).  But that's the
sort of thing that makes for 4-6 month project (if you get really
carried away <wink>.)

Something like this would be not just an interesting project (for MsC
types, at least <wink>), it would also be useful to the community.  Note
that, ideally, the translations could be done in _both_ directions: the
newer constructs, if available, are more efficient in some cases, so one
would like to translate both old code into New Python and new code into
Old Python.

please-scratch-my-itch-for-me-ly y'rs,

=g2
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
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