Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Oct 8)
Erik Max Francis
max at alcyone.com
Tue Oct 8 17:57:43 EDT 2002
Thanks to Terry Hancock for his help preparing this week's "Python-URL!".
QOTW: "This crucial point -- that language preferences and preferences
about libraries and environments ARE quite normally decoupled -- is
often lost on Java fans, who seem to think of a language and a huge set
of libraries and environments as somehow welded. Most fortunately, they
aren't. People who prefer the Python language, in particular, can freely
and independently choose to use the set of libraries and environments
designed for Java (thanks to Jython), or those that Classic Python
supports (i.e., with some wrapping work, just about anything available
for/in C or C++, plus Python specials such as Numeric and the like)."
Alex Martelli
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2Ezm9.170516%24ub2.3854436%40news1.tin.it
"Why use an algorithm when you've got a gigahertz CPU and a list
comprehension?" Marco Mariani
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1033675266.10568.python-list%40python.org
"[S]ame software, different verbosity settings (this one goes to eleven)."
-- the effbot on the martellibot
Articles
Carl Banks gives a tiny glimpse of tensors, a generalization of
matrices, and how they relate to scalars and Numeric:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ana3o6%241u8%241%40solaris.cc.vt.edu
Mark McEahern reminds us that testing for None-ness is best done
via the is operator rather than ==, due to the possibility of
overridden __eq__ methods:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1033401218.30030.python-list%40python.org
Alex Martelli talks about the content and co-editing of the
excellent _Python Cookbook_ (O'Reilly, 2002):
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=XIDm9.203419%24pX1.7296390%40news2.tin.it
Christopher A. Craig posts a notice about a reference
implementation for PEP 239 of how builtin Python rationals might
look:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1033596730.13955.python-list%40python.org
Roy Smith points out that using binary pickles is an easy way to
boost performance:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=roy-FD4DA7.07325930092002%40reader1.panix.com
Martin v. Löwis gives fair warning about Tk's partial use of UTF-8
encoding:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=j4y99fcui3.fsf%40informatik.hu-berlin.de
Alex Martelli outlines the usage and pitfalls of using the compile
builtin:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bSbn9.3037%24Fz.82406%40news1.tin.it
Martin v. Löwis advises someone on using a factory function when
they want a constructor to return None, rather than throw, upon
failure:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=m31y76exns.fsf%40mira.informatik.hu-berlin.de
Threads
A case study in the performance analysis of the seemingly
straightforward issue of deleting the first element of a list,,
with highlights by Alex Martelli on the complexity vs. performance
for making Python strings mutable:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3d9cc939%241%40news.sentex.net
Merging lists makes brains hurt. Examples to keep newbies busy:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-October/125389.html
A long, fragmented thread hammers out the gory details of decimal
arithmetic, "banker's" arithmetic, floating point, and fixed
point. Impress your boss -- have your computer do math the right
way, the human way, the way that's easy on ten fingers.
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=wzr8f6t1sh.fsf%40cs.uu.nl
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.1033837810.3061.python-list%40python.org
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=102gna.2ra.ln%40ix.netcom.com
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-October/125123.html
PEP239 (Rational Numbers) Reference Implementation and new issues
Long and interesting discussion of how rational numbers (fractions
to those of us who eschew obfuscation) might look in Python.
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-October/125455.html
Can Python be used to debug other languages? As Cameron Laird
observes, people have very different ideas of what "debug" means.
Thus, they answer this question in completely contradictory, but
perfectly valid ways.
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-October/125091.html
Chris Myers posts a Mensa puzzle involving interpreting the digits
involved in a multiplication problem, resulting in a variety of
brute-force solutions in Python:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=d1f767c3.0210040915.3e695631%40posting.google.com
Brief exploration of extraction of text from HTML.
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-October/125505.html
Software
Komodo 2.0 appears.
http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/Communications/Releases/Press1032914489.html
The first 3.x beta of PySNMP, an SNMP framework implemented purely
in Python:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pysnmp/
Barry A. Warsaw releases the standalone 2.4 version of the
email package, identical to the CVS tree for Python 2.3:
http://sf.net/projects/mimelib
It isn't really a screensaver, but then who really needs
a screensaver anymore? It's art, not engineering, blast it!
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-October/125252.html
http://home.hccnet.nl/a.vredegoor/screensaver/readme.html
François Pinard releases version 0.2 of Recodec, a clone of Free
recode which converts strings or files between character sets:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard/recodec/
Klaus G. Müller announces SimPy, the first discrete event
simulation package for Python:
http://simpy.sourceforge.net/
Netfarm Mail Archiver is a Python- and Zope-based mail filter
which processes all incoming and outgoing emails and extracts
fields:
http://oss.netfarm.it/archiver.php
Python DNS Cache is (you guess it) a DNS cache module written in
Python:
http://www.rbgrn.net/projects/
Bannerfish is a simple banner advertising system using Python and
Twisted:
http://itamarst.org/software/bannerfish/
Miscellaneous
A rundown of what's new in the upcoming Python 2.3 release:
http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/whatsnew/whatsnew23.html
Python-related quotations, from A.M. Kuchling:
http://www.amk.ca/quotations/python-quotes/
How vague can you get? But Benjamin's question "what should I program?"
raises a number of interesting project inspirations and links.
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-September/123654.html
========================================================================
Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:
Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
center of Pythonia
http://www.python.org
Notice especially the master FAQ
http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html
PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
daily python url
http://www.pythonware.com/daily
Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html
While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
their results.
comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software. Be
sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce
Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by
Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of summarizing action on the
python-dev mailing list once every other week.
http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
http://www.amk.ca/python/dev
The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/
Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
mailing lists
http://www.python.org/sigs/
The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
as an independent nexus of activity
http://www.python.org/psf/
Cetus does much of the same
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html
Python FAQTS
http://python.faqts.com/
The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
SourceForge reincarnation.
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html
The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
editor at pythonjournal.com and editor at pythonjournal.cognizor.com
welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.
*Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
http://www.pyzine.com
Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
what AI can generate
http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python
Tenth International Python Conference
http://www.python10.org
Archive probing tricks of the trade:
http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*
Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
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http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
or
http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python
Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
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