Python -Vs- Ruby: A regexp match to the death!

[Robert Kern]

On 2010-08-09 06:42 , Stefan Schwarzer wrote:
> Hi Steven,
>
> On 2010-08-09 10:21, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> And that it's quite finicky about blank lines between methods and inside
>> functions. Makes it hard to paste code directly into the interpreter.
>>
>> And that pasting doesn't strip out any leading prompts. It needs a good
>> doctest mode.
>
> ipython [1] should help here:
>
>    IPython 0.10 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
>    ?         ->  Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
>    %quickref ->  Quick reference.
>    help      ->  Python's own help system.
>    object?   ->  Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.
>    In [1]: %paste?
>    Type:           Magic function
>    Base Class:<type 'instancemethod'>
>    String Form:<bound method InteractiveShell.magic_paste of<IPython.iplib.InteractiveShell object at 0xb740096c>>
>    Namespace:      IPython internal
>    File:           /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/IPython/Magic.py
>    Definition:     %paste(self, parameter_s='')
>    Docstring:
>        Allows you to paste&  execute a pre-formatted code block from clipboard.
>
>        The text is pulled directly from the clipboard without user
>        intervention.
>
>        The block is dedented prior to execution to enable execution of method
>        definitions. '>' and '+' characters at the beginning of a line are
>        ignored, to allow pasting directly from e-mails, diff files and
>        doctests (the '...' continuation prompt is also stripped).  The
>        executed block is also assigned to variable named 'pasted_block' for
>        later editing with '%edit pasted_block'.
>
>        You can also pass a variable name as an argument, e.g. '%paste foo'.
>        This assigns the pasted block to variable 'foo' as string, without
>        dedenting or executing it (preceding>>>  and + is still stripped)
>
>        '%paste -r' re-executes the block previously entered by cpaste.
>
>        IPython statements (magics, shell escapes) are not supported (yet).
>
>        See also
>        --------
>        cpaste: manually paste code into terminal until you mark its end.
>
> Unfortunatey, when I enter
>
>    In [2]: %paste
>
> at the prompt it gives me (before I pasted anything)
>
>    In [2]: %paste
>    ------------------------------------------------------------
>       File "<string>", line 1
>         http://pypi.python.org/pypi/ipython/0.10
>             ^
>    SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Yes, that's because you had that URL in your clipboard, not Python code. What 
were you expecting to happen?

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco