codeplot

[Dinu C. Gherman]

Codeplot

This is something like a toy example for Piddle that you might
use as well to visually fingerprint Python code in a weird way,
a bit like in the "Matrix", perhaps. ;-)


Introduction (from codeplot's doc string):

This module takes a Python source code file and creates
a two-dimensional plot out of it. The plot generated is
a symmetrical one, much like a 2D matrix where a dot at
(i,j) indicates that lines i and j in the input file are
the same.

Sounds silly? Maybe, yes. After all, this is a one day
fun 'project' while reading a book on, you guessed it,
patterns. But I guess you'll be surprised of what you can
see in these silly plots.

Peaks result by definition from identical lines (in red).
Very often this will be the case due to empty lines,
therefore these lines are marked distinctly (grey). Other
interesting things come from lines that are similar, but
not identical. In the current implementation, "similar"
means lines that are identical modulo an arbitrary inden-
tation (marked in blue). So this is a little bit only of
a bias towards Python as a language, but in fact you can
run codeplot on any kind of ASCII file (that is made of
individual lines, separated by newlines).

The plots are generated using the new PIDDLE interface
(during development codeplot created PDF files) in the
version 1.0.3. Some words of praise for PIDDLE: it's
cool! Without it codeplot would never have happened.

What's the future of this thing?! I don't know! I'll do
a bit more here and there, maybe create a proper EPS
file instead of PDF (such that it can be included some-
where else more easily). There's likely still something
to improve to handle indentation by tabs properly as
well. It could be faster, perhaps, but it's inherently
O(n^2), so don't use it on a 200 KB C file (yes - they
DO exist, sigh...). Using Numeric might be an idea, not
sure... If you think you can do something to improve it
let me know. If you use it in some interesting way, let
me know, too.


Installation:

Put codeplot.py somewhere in your Python path. Also make sure
you have Piddle already installed. You can find Piddle here:
http://www.strout.net/python/piddle/


Files:

README.txt  - This file.
codeplot.py - The Python codeplot module.
samples.zip - Some sample PDF files.

The samples were more or less randomly selected from the following
packages: pythondoc, idle, pdfgen, piddle, consdiag, Zope, the Python
Interpreter (a C file) and codeplot itself (the filenames should
suffice to get an idea of where they awere taken from). The original
python files are not included, though (except codeplot.py). Several
differences can be observed, but these are to be explained elsewhere.


Contact:

Author:   Dinu C. Gherman, gherman@europemail.com.nospam
Web-Site: http://starship.python.net/crew/gherman/playground/codeplot/


Copyright:

Do with it whatever you want, but don't sue me! If you make money
with codeplot, pay me half of it as royalities! ;-)


1999-07-28 (codeplot 0.1)


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<P><A HREF="http://starship.python.net/crew/gherman/playground/codeplot/">codeplot
0.1</A> - visually fingerprint Python code in a weird way...  (28-Jul-99)

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