From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct 15 04:05:36 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:05:36 +0200
Subject: initialization of lists in classes
References: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910150904020.2553-100000@ural2>
Message-ID: <001a01bf16e4$10deba90$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Balint Aradi <ab007 at hszk.bme.hu> wrote:
>  I would like to ask something about initialization of lists in
> classes. Given the Python code
> 
> class test:
>     list = []
>     float = 3.2
> 
>     def __init__(self):
>         print 'list, float (#1):', self.list, self.float
>         self.list.append(1,2)
>         self.float = self.float + 2.0
>         print 'list, float (#2):', self.list, self.float

list is a shared class variable, not an instance variable.

until you know exactly how class variables behave,
make sure you initialize all your instance variables
in the constructor instead:

class test:
 
     def __init__(self):
         self.list = []
         self.float = 3.2
         print 'list, float (#1):', self.list, self.float
         self.list.append(1,2)
         self.float = self.float + 2.0
         print 'list, float (#2):', self.list, self.float

iirc, the FAQ has more info on class variables
and other issues related to shared mutable
variables.

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Mon Oct 18 11:21:55 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 04:21:55 +1300
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com> <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de> <38043F91.F3F36D5A@compaq.com> <006601bf1582$a22f3dc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <x7r9ixzrky.fsf@lindm.dm> <dozier-1510990101130001@pm4-s21.dial-up.abs.net>
Message-ID: <380B3B13.1ACD64B4@compaq.com>

Bill Dozier wrote:
> 
> The Mac port is done by Jim Ingham, who does not work for Scriptics. It is
> not officially supported

All right, so Mac Tkinter goes into my trash can.

Now, does anyone know of an existing Python GUI 
toolkit that really does work across Mac/Unix/Windows?

Greg



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 31 13:15:18 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:15:18 +0100
Subject: eff-bot Python book ... revisited
References: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <19991029081909.B106968704@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <00fd01bf23cb$e4b6ed30$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The eMatter pages indicate that you get a Word [uggh] or PDF file as a
> download after contacting the server.

for now, you get a PDF file, which can only
be viewed/printed from a Windows box.

support for other platforms should be available
soon (see the fatbrain site for more info).

> Couldn't this be pulled across to the pre-
> ferred OS?

yes, but that takes a little creativity, as Scott
mentioned.  (and is only allowed for personal
use, of course).

> Or is this really an electronic-only book (proprietary
> format or viewing server).  Hope not.

for now, it works best if you treat it as an
electronically distributed paper book.  in
other words, download and print. (a script
archive, errata, and cover art will be posted
within a few days).

...

<flame note="not directed to randall,
and shouldn't be read by anyone made
of flammable material">

and before even more people start whining
about me "betraying Python in itself, and
especially its Unix roots," note that 1) this
book wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for
the eMatter initiative, 2) I only wrote the
book, not the distribution software, and
3) Python was originally written on a Mac.

in other words, future eff-bot guides will
be available on Macs only!

thanks.  I feel better now ;-)

</flame>

...

</F>

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




From mark at chem.uwa.edu.au  Thu Oct 21 10:24:48 1999
From: mark at chem.uwa.edu.au (Mark C Favas)
Date: 21 Oct 99 14:24:48 GMT
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com> <14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <mark.940515888@declan>

Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov> writes:

>M.-A. Lemburg writes:
> > Is it possible to examine a Python interpreter and check whether
> > it was compiled against libc5 or glibc2 (libc6) on Linux/*BSD/etc. ?
> > 
> > I'm currently using this hack, but would appreciate a more
> > elegant and portable solution:

> > def system_nm(progfile):

>I would use "ldd" instead of "nm".  It's another hack, not much more
>elegant, but a little more portable.  In particular it doesn't require 
>that python was compiled -g.

The problem is that nm is far more generally available than ldd... so ldd 
in fcat is less portable.... (I've not seen a *nix (or Tru64!) that doesn't
have nm, but very few that have ldd - I thought it was a Sunism...)

>I'm not sure how much the ldd output varies on different unices
>(haven't tried this on BSD), but I think it should be pretty easy to
>find a portable way search for the libc.so.* line in the output and
>figure out the libc version.

>This will fail if libc is linked statically, as far as I know this is
>rarely done.  It's still less of a restriction than requiring python
>to be built with debugging info.

>It's still not exactly elegant but possibly a little more portable than 
>what you were doing.




--
Email  - mark at chem.uwa.edu.au      ,-_|\                           Mark C Favas
Phone  - +61 9 380 3482           /     \               Department of Chemistry
Fax    - +61 9 380 1005      ---> *_,-._/   The University of Western Australia
                                       v                               Nedlands
Loc    - 31.97 S, 115.81 E                               Western Australia 6009



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Mon Oct  4 21:37:02 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 01:37:02 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rocheste
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

Here's a follow up.

Finished TimeServer code, with "Clients" for port 37 (NTP), and for 
Port 13 (Datetime).

Please note these clients are *NOT* finished, because I don't see 
anyway to set the
date & time inside of PYTHON.  Anyone that can point out a way to 
change the computers
clock via python, I'll appreciate it.

Also, as far as I can tell, the code is AOK, and returns the same 
values as RFC 868 via
telneting & using the client37.py code.  But I've had little luck with
verifying this via
NT time client daemon.  

Can anyone assist in trying this server out with *KNOWN* TCP NTP 
clients?  

Client13 was written to take advantage of a daemon running under 
Windows NT on
port 13, which broadcasts like this:

		Mon Oct  4 21:27:45 1999 (In plain text.)

Which is nice, but annoying because for some *STRANGE* reason I can't 
get 
time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X') to work.

Everytime I try STRPTIME, I get a attribute error.  Can anyone point 
out what 
I'm goofing up?  

BTW-> Anyone have suggestions for making the server a little bit 
"friendlier" either
	code / execution wise?

----- Server ----
#
#	Python Time Server, based off of RFC 868.
#
#	Thanks to (no particular order, nor is this complete):
#
#		Jeff		[jam .at. quark.emich.edu]
#		Paul Foley 	[(setq reply-to  (concatenate 'string "Paul Foley "
#				  "<mycroft" '(#\@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))]
#
#	And other folks in comp.language.python for their assistance with 
this code.
#
#	This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate any 
changes to be
#	emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#
import time
import struct

#
#       Leapyear (year): Returns 0 if not leapyear, 1 if leapyear
#
def leapyear(year):
        temp = ((year % 4 == 0) and (year % 100 <>0)) or (year % 400 
== 0)
        return temp


#
#       calc_leap_years(year):  Returns the # of years between 1900 & 
year
#                               that are leapyears. (i.e. 5, etc)
#
def calc_leap_years (year):
        temp = 0
        if year > 1900:
                for count in range(1900, year):
                        if leapyear(count):
                                temp = temp + 1
        return temp

def timeserver_calculation():

        secs_per_day    = 24.0*60*60    # 86400
        secs_per_year   = 365.0 * secs_per_day
        leapyear        = 1896          # (1880, 1884, 1888, 1892, 
1896, 1904, 1908)

        timetuple       = time.gmtime(time.time())

        total           = secs_per_year *  (timetuple[0]-1900)
        total           = total + (calc_leap_years(timetuple[0]) * 
secs_per_day)
        total           = total + (timetuple[7] - 1) * secs_per_day
        total           = total + timetuple[5] + timetuple[4]*60.0 + 
timetuple[3]*3600.0
        print total
        return total

import sys

from socket import *

def server(host="", port=37, backlog=5):
        sock = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
        sock.bind (host, port)
        sock.listen (backlog)
        print "listening on port %s (%s, %s)" % (port, `host`, 
backlog)
        while 1:
                connection = (conn, addr) = sock.accept()
                print 'connected by %s \nat %s' % connection
                ft = timeserver_calculation()
                lt = long(ft)
                conn.send ( struct.pack("!L", lt))
                conn.close()

if __name__ == "__main__":
        server('', 37, 1)

---------- Client37 -------------------
#
#	Python Time Server client, based off of RFC 868.
#
#	Thanks to the folks in comp.language.python for their assistance 
with this code.
#
#	This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate any 
changes to be
#	emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#
import time
import struct
import sys
from telnetlib import Telnet

print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 37) # Connect to MS Win NT date / 
time
datetime   = tn_session.read_all()
tn_session.close()
print "Server Returned: ",datetime
dt = struct.unpack ("!L", datetime)
print "Unpacked structure value : ", dt
#timevalue  = time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X')
#timevalue  = time.strptime (datetime)
#print timevalue, '   - ', time.asctime(timevalue)
print

------------ Client13.py -----------
#
#	Python Time Server client, based off of RFC 868.
#
#	Thanks to the folks in comp.language.python for their assistance 
with this code.
#
#	This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate any 
changes to be
#	emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#

import time
import sys
from telnetlib import Telnet

print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 13) # Connect to MS Win NT date / 
time
datetime   = tn_session.read_all()
tn_session.close()
print "Server returned: ",datetime
#timevalue  = time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X')
#timevalue  = time.strptime (datetime)
#print timevalue, '   - ', time.asctime(timevalue)
print 

--------------------------------------
================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Thu Oct 14 00:25:51 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 00:25:51 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BE36049@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
Message-ID: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim>

[comparing Robin Boerdijk's xstruct C extension module
     http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html
 with Just van Rossum's sstruct Python module
     http://starship.python.net/crew/just/code/sstruct.py
]

[Robin Boerdijk]
> I have done a comparison on how fast sstruct is compared to xstruct
> using the Xsdp example that comes with xstruct. The test scripts are
> at the end of this post. They both do 10000 iterations of creating
> and packing an XsdpMessage. On my computer, the sstruct script takes
> 2.4 seconds, the xstruct script takes 0.33 seconds.

The ratio on my machine is about the same as you got.  You should qualify
this with an indication of what it's measuring, though!  The inner loops
are:

[for xstruct]
for i in xrange(0, 10000):
    msg = XsdpMessage()
    msg.correl_id = 0x01020304
    msg.message_type = 1
    msg.data = "Hello, World !"

[for sstruct]
for i in xrange(0, 10000):
    msg = copy.copy(default_msg)
    msg['correl_id'] = 0x01020304
    msg['message_type'] = 1
    msg['data'] = "Hello, World !"
    sstruct.pack(XsdpMessageFormat, msg)

That may (or may not -- beats me) be typical of apps that access each struct
member once and are then done with the struct.  In an app that accesses (or
modifies) struct members multiple times, Just's approach is much faster;
e.g., xstruct takes 3+ times longer (on my machine) than sstruct if the
inner loops are changed to:

[for xstruct]
for i in xrange(0, 10000):
    msg = XsdpMessage()
    for j in xrange(100):
        msg.correl_id = 0x01020304
        msg.message_type = 1
        msg.data = "Hello, World !"

[for sstruct]
for i in xrange(0, 10000):
    msg = copy.copy(default_msg)
    for j in xrange(100):
        msg['correl_id'] = 0x01020304
        msg['message_type'] = 1
        msg['data'] = "Hello, World !"
    sstruct.pack(XsdpMessageFormat, msg)

That may (or may not -- beats me <wink>) be typical of apps that access each
struct member many times.

My guess (with nothing to back it up) is that xstruct would be faster in
more apps than sstruct.  People making their own guesses must realize there
are tradeoffs here, though:  almost nothing is a pure win, and this is no
exception -- which one runs faster depends on what you're doing.

[about the docs]
> ...
> So far, I have only documented up to the point that I thought that people
> who need to interact intimately with C structs from Python (and have been
> struggling with struct.pack and struct.unpack to do that) would get
> enthousiastic about this new module.

Curiously enough, I hardly ever muck with C structs.  I too would like to
hear from people who do!  I only jumped in here because I thought you had
written a very interesting module, and your announcement was followed by
days of silence.  You may not like the approach I've taken here, but it has
gotten the module some much-needed publicity <wink>.

[about the buffer interface]
>> It's not ready for prime time (e.g., it's easy to crash the interpreter
>> with the little that's already there, staying within pure Python).

> Can you give me an example ?

Yes, but I won't.  You can create your own by thinking about the
implementation:  a buffer object contains a pointer to a base object and a
separate pointer to a chunk of untyped memory.  If the base object happens
to stop using that memory, there's no way for the buffer object to know
that.  And if that memory happens to get reused by some other object for
something else (or even unmapped by the OS), anything at all can happen --
it's a hole so big even Perl could fit into it <wink>.  Your new objects are
safe because they hold on to their buffer memory until they die (and so long
as a buffer object refers to them, they can't die).  Some object types
aren't so nicely behaved.

any-more-hints-and-even-guido-could-create-an-example<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Oct 17 15:52:38 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 20:52:38 +0100
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:

[snip tantalizing class/types ideas]
> 	The basic optimisations are functional, that is,
> things like making string concatenations go faster in cases like:
> 
> 	x  = x + "hello"
> 
> Here, the deduction starts with the literal "hello"
> which
> is known to be a string, and, since + accepts a string
> RHS only when the LHS is also a string or an int,
> and the int case is eliminated since the type of the LHS
> of the assignment is also the type of X, and both
> operators called + with string RHS return a string,
> then x must be a string.

Hold it there a second; you are proposing that knowing that x has a
certain type in the expression

x = x + "hello"

has an impact on inference? That's a BIG sea change from
CPython. Haven't you ever done this:

option = raw_input("enter a parameter> ")
try:
    option = int(option)
except:
    print "get a Clue"

OK, contrived example. But the same name can refer to variables of
different types at different times, so I don't think you can use that
for inference.

Regards,
Michael

PS: Given the bizarre reluctance of my university to give me any work,
can I ask if the source to viperi (at least) will be perusable anytime
soon?



From dnagata at creo.com  Sun Oct 31 20:59:28 1999
From: dnagata at creo.com (Dale Nagata)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 17:59:28 -0800
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk>
Message-ID: <381CF400.6106@creo.com>

Ian Clarke wrote:
> * No way to automatically convert between long integer and small
> integer.

C:\>python
Python 1.5.1 (#0, Oct 14 1998, 20:14:21) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> int(1L)
1
>>> long(1)
1L


--
Dale Nagata         |  tel : +1 604.451.2700 ext. 2254 (UTC-0800)
Software Developer  |  fax : +1 604.437.9891 
Creo Products Inc.  |  pgr : +1 604.691.8279
Burnaby BC Canada   |  http://www.creo.com/



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Thu Oct 21 17:35:21 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 22:35:21 +0100
Subject: Apply a function to each list member?
References: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6F9@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <m3n1tc9z3a.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Gaetan Corneau <Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> Is there a way to do this (see "ListApply" below) with standard Python
> stuff?
> 
> def f(s):
>     from string import upper
>     from types import StringType
>     if type(s) == StringType:
>         return upper(s) 
>     else:
>         return s
> 
> 
> def ListApply(f, l):
>     for i in  range(0, len(l)):
>         l[i] = f(l[i])
> 
> 
> l = ["aaa", "bbb", "ccc", 1, 2, 3, "xxx", "yyy", "zzz"]
> print l
> 
> ListApply(f, l)
> print l

um... map?

l=map(f,l)

f *could* be defined as a lambda, but it'd be unspeakably hairy,
something like

f=lambda s,u=string.upper,t=types.StringType: \
             (type(s) is t and (u(s),) or (s,))[0]

but I'm going to presume you're not that silly.

Your ListApply might be a little more space efficient as it works in
place, but not much, because you allocate a list of length len(l)
anyway in the range().

HTH,
Michael

PS: Yes, all that hair *is* needed; consider f(0) or f("") before you
simplify...



From rturpin at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 19 18:50:43 1999
From: rturpin at my-deja.com (rturpin at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:50:43 GMT
Subject: "Calling" PHP pages from Python (and vice versa)
Message-ID: <7uisju$2eg$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

This may be more a question about Apache than about Python.  Given a
Python CGI script, is there anyway for it to "redirect" the http request
to a PHP page, without incurring the net latency of an actual redirect.
This seems like it ought to be easy, but unlike pure HTML, the script
cannot just copy the page to standard out, since the actual HTML is
generated by the PHP processor.  A redirect would work, but it seems
silly to go back to the browser for this.

(What about the other way around?  Is there an efficient way for a PHP
page to invoke a Python script through mod-py?  Of course, that's a PHP
question ..)

Thanks!

Russell


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct  5 17:54:06 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:54:06 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
		<7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
		<7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> <7tdoc8$hno$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37FA737E.AA989793@callware.com>

Hi All--

Preston Landers wrote:
> 
> In article <7tdie6$cq1 at dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>,
>   aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:
> 
> > I haven't really looked at your code, but I needed to mention that
> > 'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.
> 
> Isn't that what touch does?
> 

No.  If the file exists, it simply updates access and modification
times, unless you give it other arguments.  Causing a file to become
zero bytes long is the job of 'cat /dev/null > zerofile' (at least from
the shell).  If no file exists, it creates a zero-length file.

<yes-we-have-no-binaries>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sat Oct 30 19:28:01 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 00:28:01 +0100
Subject: Optimization
References: <381B479B.6C73707E@c2i.net>
Message-ID: <m3k8o477jy.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Geir Bjarte Terum <gterum at c2i.net> writes:

> Will statements like this be optimized away using the -o program switch?
> 
> if __debug__:
>   <statements>  # Dead code in optimized version.

Yes.

> Is there any way to define similar *variables* for other purposes?

Don't think so.

> If not, as a workaround, will the following work?
> 
> __myflag__ = __debug__  # Set to 1 if always to be supported.
> 
> if __myflag__:
>   <statements>  # Dead code in non-flagged version.

Doubt it. There's no real way to enforce constants in Python.

One solution is to write

if 0: # __myflag__

because `if 0:' does allow code elimination, and then use search and
replace if the value needs changing. Not a perfect solution, but it
could work.

HTH,
Michael



From toby at puckish.demon.co.uk  Sat Oct 16 16:57:34 1999
From: toby at puckish.demon.co.uk (Toby Kelsey)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:57:34 +0100
Subject: multi-level break
Message-ID: <4HkSiAA+aOC4EwuD@puckish.demon.co.uk>

At the moment I am setting and checking flag variables to emulate
this, which I find tedious and ugly.  Am I missing a better idiom?

As much as I dislike feeping creatures, it would be nice to see
"break <num>" in version 2.0.  IMHO obvious, simple and useful.

Cheers,
Toby
-- 
Toby Kelsey



From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Tue Oct 26 10:24:31 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:24:31 -0400
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFEB@rimail03>

Tried the platform.py but only get win32 on NT 4.0 service pack 5.   
ver in the shell returns:  Windows NT Version 4.0



> -----Original Message-----
> From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal at lemburg.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 5:45 AM
> To: Python List @ Python.org
> Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
> 
> 
> Last week I started to write a small module for more convenient and
> portable access to information about the platform on which Python
> is running.
> 
> Many people have helped and provided lots of information
> about the various Python compatible platforms out there... thanks
> everybody :-)
> 
> Some things where I need some more help are:
> ? support for Linux distributions other than redhat, suse, 
> debian, mandrake
> ? better support for WindowsCE (Jeff Bauer is working on this one)
> ? support for MacOS (not the X Server version; JvR is working on it)
> ? support for Amiga, MS DOS and maybe VMS
> ? a way to find out the true system names and versions on
>   MacOS X Server and Solaris (they both use different names
>   at the OS level, e.g. SunOS 5.5 instead of Solaris 2.5)
> 
> New features:
> ? system alias support, e.g. SunOS can be reported as
>   Solaris
> 
> Here is the latest version of that module:
> 
        http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/


-- 
http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Tue Oct  5 12:31:36 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:31:36 +0200
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7td7s2$45ok$1@uvaix7e1.comp.UVic.CA>
Message-ID: <37FA27E8.66F62DAA@darwin.in-berlin.de>

John Aycock wrote:
> 
> Here's some references to get you started:
> 
> W. Miller & E. W. Myers.  A File Comparison Program.  _Software 
> -- Practice and Experience_ 15(11), November 1985, pp. 1025-1040.

My previous posting about the (very experimental) alignment
module is actually based on a more recent pairwise alignment
alorithm of Gene Myers et al., too (1988).

Regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman

................................................................
"An average of more than 15 % of adults in 12 industrialized 
countries are functionally illiterate; in Ireland, the United 
Kingdom and the United States, the rates are over 20 %."

  (The State of the World's Children 1999,
   UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/sowc99)



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Sat Oct  2 17:36:09 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 21:36:09 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7t5ts9$6gk$847@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct  5 04:02:12 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 08:02:12 GMT
Subject: Anyone have success w/STRPTIME???
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-R7GdiTzGgOlL@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

Can anyone point me in the right direction, re: STRPTIME?

To my knowledge the strptime function(s) are correct below,
yet under both OS/2 & Win NT, I am getting a attribute error.

I'm assuming it's my fault, but according to the Docs I think
I've got it setup AOK (TMHK).

		- Benjamin

import time
import sys
from telnetlib import Telnet

print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 13) # Connect to MS Win NT date / 
time
datetime   = tn_session.read_all()
tn_session.close()
print "Server returned: ",datetime
#timevalue = time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X')
timestr    = time.strptime (datetime)
print timevalue, '   - ', time.asctime(timevalue)
print

Connecting to :  128.173.14.71
Server returned:  Tue Oct  5 03:59:56 1999

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "D:\OS2\PYTHON\WORKING\TIMESERVER\CLIENT13.PY", line 20, in ?
    timestr    = time.strptime (datetime)
AttributeError: strptime

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From c.hintze at gmx.net  Sun Oct 31 04:46:15 1999
From: c.hintze at gmx.net (Clemens Hintze)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 09:46:15 GMT
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk> <7vd1oa$itk$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <381A1D8A.6493E814@starmedia.net>
Message-ID: <m3k8o3n9qw.fsf@qiao.localnet>

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Csillag <andrew at starmedia.net> writes:

    Andrew> Martijn Faassen wrote:

[...]

    Andrew> In my experience, unless ruby's extension interfaces is
    Andrew> like tcl's which while simple, isn't terribly powerful,

Ahem... I have written extensions in both Python *and* Ruby. Would you 
please enlight me, why do you think Ruby interface isn't powerful
compared with Python's one? I had the opposite impression. :-/

    Andrew> Python's is simple enough (I've been known for doing
    Andrew> simple extension modules in about 3 minutes -- no
    Andrew> SWIG). But even complicated ones with SWIG aren't hard.
    Andrew> Actually, even without SWIG it isn't really hard, just
    Andrew> boring since most of it is boilerplate.

All that is also true for Ruby! And you have forgot to compare garbage
collection issues which have to be addressed both in Python and
Ruby. While Python use a refcount scheme, where you have to address
that issue yourself, Ruby use true garbage collection (mark and sweep
scheme), so that you have not to deal with it at all.

Under some circumstances, you have to provide up to two function in your 
Ruby extension. One function that mark Ruby objects, stored in your
extension, alive (if there are some), one that free the memory of your
own occupied memory (normally 'free' is enough). I wish Python would
be so easy here!

    >> > * Function objects are accepted as arguments, but iterators
    >> are more > elegant.
    >> 
    >> You can implement iterators in Python, though?  Better core
    >> level iterator support would be nice for Python 2.0, though
    >> (for instance for loops could use them).

    Andrew> I argue that simplicity is better than elegance most of
    Andrew> the time, thus function objects over iterators.  Besides
    Andrew> who wants to make an iterator when you just want to pass a

That doesn't score very well, IMHO. My question to your question would
be: who likes to write an own function for something that is only used
one time and therefor better be stick into an block. Perhaps there is
a misunderstanding for iterators. The word was a little bit misleading
used in the Ruby documentation, IMHO. But now they have correct the
usage.

    Andrew> function you already have?  Reminds me of how you pass
    Andrew> methods around in Java (make an instance of (usually) an
    Andrew> inner class that inherits from some interface that just
    Andrew> calls the outer class's method)... Grr...

It reminds me, more of the way how Smalltalk pass methods! Ruby is
(except syntax) more like Smalltalk, than like Java!

[...]

    Andrew> From what I saw, it looks like they tried to mix python
    Andrew> and perl by sticking the python down the camel's throat

What?!? Do you really saw it? Can it be that you have only had a
glance to the syntax, and therefore decided it's like Perl => crap!

    Andrew> and got camel puke.  You have whitespace for indentation,

Okay! Now I am convinced that you never have really looked at Ruby too
close. Perhaps only a small blink on it! Ruby *does*not* use
whitespaces (unfortunately, cause I like them :-)!

Ruby has in common with Python its consistent behavior, its simplicity
and its easy extension writing. It shares with Perl the speed and much
of the syntax; but not the context dependend behavior, that makes it
so diffcult for beginners to learn Perl.

There is e.g. a syntax for creating regexps, but these are objects
then, like in Python. And it also has many many things in common with
Smalltalk (Ruby is totally OOL). Even a '1' is an instance of class
Fixnum *unlike* Python & Perl!

    Andrew> but all the regexy crap and extraneous ?'s and $'s that
    Andrew> make it ugly.

I don't think, that the regexp stuff is crab! If you want, you can
also use the Python way:

	regex = Regexp.new("^(S+)")    # Or use: regex = /^(\S+)/
	regex =~ "hello world"         # Or use "hello world" =~ regex

Perl is (whether we like it or not) the most used language for
sysadmin and web purposes till today. So there are many programs and
modules already available. To ease the port of them, was one of the
issues, why matz has decided to introduce these ugly variables. I
don't like them, but I can live with them. Hey, there are also things
I don't like in Python, but they doesn't necessarily make the language
worse for me.

    Andrew> -lets-make-a-language-named-perl-so-we-can-cast-it-to-swine-ly
    Andrew> yours, Drew

-be-not-so-biased-towards-one-language-
-there-is-no-only-one-
-all-is-a-matter-of-taste-ly yours Clemens.

[...]



From samschul at pacbell.net  Mon Oct 11 15:55:32 1999
From: samschul at pacbell.net (Sam Schulenburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:55:32 GMT
Subject: lazy function calling?
References: <380202B7.ADF0E803@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <7ttfbb$cb2$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <380202B7.ADF0E803 at GermanLloyd.org>,
  Berthold Hoellmann <hoel at GermanLloyd.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I think I can remember a Python extension module, posted or announced
> here a while ago, where it was possible to make functions callable
lazy.
> This means I could call a function spam just writing spam instead of
> spam(). Was I just dreaming or is it real. And if it's real, where
can I
> get it :-)?
>
> Thanks
>
> Berthold
> --
> email: hoel at GermanLloyd.org
>    )
>   (
> C[_]  These opinions might be mine, but never those of my employer.
>
The previous reply referenced an out of date url, use the following:
http://starship.python.net:9673/crew/da/Code/parenless


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Mon Oct  4 21:40:34 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 01:40:34 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <37F9BC2B.F9FF1AC2@hk.rfa.org>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-NTdCzUdVVzcd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:51:55, Bill Eldridge <bill at hk.rfa.org> wrote:


> >>> time.localtime(3155550800.0)
> (1901, 12, 14, 4, 22, 28, 5, 348, 0)
> >>> time.localtime(315555080.0)
> (1980, 1, 1, 14, 11, 20, 1, 1, 0)
> 
> 1970-1976 was about 190 million seconds, so 1976-1980 should
> be less than double (380 million seconds), not 3.2 billion seconds.

Eh?

Bill, I've been staring at this problem on and off for days.  I 
certainly
could have made a typo in the comment(s), but either way I worked
around it with a manual calculation....

I'm welcome to simplifications.... (See code posted about 2 minutes 
ago)

		- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
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From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Wed Oct  6 09:54:12 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 15:54:12 +0200
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <000401bf0ed3$0cd77b80$4da2143f@tim> <y0jyadh345q.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <etdzoxx9y50.fsf@w20-575-109.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <y0jpuys388r.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Alex <alex at somewhere.round.here> writes:

> > Why? Why not pad with None? I think it would be worse if
> > len(seq2)>len(seq1) - because you couldn't pad the keys with Nones...
> 
> But don't you then run the risk of having more than one None?  In that 
> case, don't you lose some of the values as their keys collide?

That's what I said in the second sentence (assuming that seq1 is the
sequence of keys.)

> 
> Alex.

--

  Magnus
  Lie                                     Please forward all spam to
  Hetland                                                uce at ftc.gov



From jfarrell at mincom.com  Wed Oct  6 19:58:40 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:58:40 +1000
Subject: regular expression example generator
Message-ID: <37FBE230.6A4113C5@mincom.com>

I have a faint recollection of hearing somewhere that someone for some
language had written some software which took a regular expression and
generated for you the types of things that would match it. For example,

'(a(b)?)?c' would give you 'c', 'abc', 'ac'

(ab)* would give you '', 'ab', 'abab'

IMHO this would be useful for debugging REs when they get complicated.
Has anyone heard of such a thing for Python? Thanks,

John



From jonathan at meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Oct 30 05:12:55 1999
From: jonathan at meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk (Jonathan)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 10:12:55 +0100
Subject: Learning to program
References: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFF1@rimail03>
Message-ID: <7ved06$nav$1@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>

Betancourt, Josef <Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM> wrote in message
news:7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFF1 at rimail03...
> The best book I've seen is "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell.  Its more
of
> a reference book and of course doesn't mention Python, but most of its
> contents are general enough to be useful in a Python context.
>

I'd agree that McConnel's book is very good, but it assumes rather a lot and
is very thick - it's really a book that teaches people how to program
better, rather than how to program. What's really needed is an equivalent of
Lalonde's Discovering Smalltalk - something not too long, that explains what
a program is, talks about the classic data structures etc.

Jonathan





From matti at tx.technion.ac.il  Tue Oct 19 07:03:51 1999
From: matti at tx.technion.ac.il (Matti Picus)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 13:03:51 +0200
Subject: Matlab -> Python
Message-ID: <380C5017.9852E40@tx.technion.ac.il>

Anyone translating matlab syntax to python? Any tutorials on the common
pitfalls or how to get started




From clarkeia at logica.com  Tue Oct  5 11:22:33 1999
From: clarkeia at logica.com (Ian Clarke)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:22:33 +0100
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <37FA17B9.980C2204@logica.com>

> Just
> > like in our DNA, there are large pieces of software containing unused
> > code. Nobody noticed it was no longer needed, so nobody bothered to take
> > it out.

One of my lecturers at university suggested that the unused DNA code was
actually /* commenting */.

;-)

Ian.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct  8 15:57:36 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 15:57:36 -0400
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
Message-ID: <1272710597-42056950@hypernet.com>

A new beta (03) of the Win32 Installer package is available on 
starship:

http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/beta03.html

This release incorporates Thomas Heller's changes: 
executables now act much more like frozen apps in that 
almost all(*) of the Python modules and scripts are run / 
imported directly from the exe.

(*)exceptions.pyc is the sole exception.

In fact, almost the whole package has been rewritten. Among 
the enhancements:
 - full support for packages & subpackages
 - ability to tell the installer to search odd places for your 
modules
 - a framework for incorporating extensions with odd packaging 
/ installation requirements
 - better status reporting
 - more debugging aids
 - many more configurations and options available.

Read all about it at 
http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/beta03.html.

The prior beta (02) is now promoted to release.

Background:
 The Win32 Installer is a sort of compilerless Freeze - a way 
of distributing Python apps with all the required support built 
in. It also understands binary resources (.dlls and .pyds) and 
can package up arbitrary files that your app might require.

Python-style license.

Contact: gmcm at hypernet.com

<P><A 
HREF="http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html">
Win32 Installer release 02 / beta 03</A> A compiler-less way 
of distributing Python apps on Windows. (8-Oct-99)


- Gordon



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 14:43:46 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:43:46 +0200
Subject: select() interruption by signal
References: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <009901bf1418$8fdefef0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Robert Longstaff <spooky at dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> However I've found that this alarm signal, although being caught 
> successfully by the handler, also interrupts the select() causing the app 
> to bomb out:
> 
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "./myapp.py", line 169, in ?
>     inList, outList, specialList = select.select(select_mask, [], [])
> select.error: (4, 'Interrupted system call')
> 
> Is this just a timing thing? Is the select() 'catching' the signal at the 
> same time as the handler or is the signal 'hanging around' longer than it 
> should?
> 
> Is there an option to get the select() to ignore signals or should I trap 
> the exception (and throw it away)? I can't find any more information in the 
> Python manual or man select. I'm using v1.5.1 on Linux.

fwiw, the single unix specification says:

    [EINTR]
    
    The select() function was interrupted before any of the
    selected events occurred and before the timeout interval
    expired. If SA_RESTART has been set for the interrupting
    signal, it is implementation-dependent whether select()
    restarts or returns with [EINTR].

and so does POSIX, I think.

I suppose this means that trapping the exception
is the right thing to do...

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Mon Oct 11 05:07:21 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:07:21 +1300
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> Greg Ewing recently worked up a patch that implements "read only" lexical
> closures, that avoids the cycles in many (most, or almost all, for most, or
> almost all <wink>, common programming styles) cases, albeit with some other
> costs (see DejaNews).

I'd just like to point out that my closures are only "read only"
because I have deferred making a syntactic decision about how to declare
variables as "nonlocal" for assignment purposes; there's no inherent
reason why my closures couldn't be read-write.

Also, to clarify Tim's rather waffly characterisation of when my
closures do or don't cause cycles, it's quite simple: they never
cause cycles unless you write code which makes them do so. This
is no worse than the situation with regard to cycles everywhere
else in the language.

Caveat-generator-cycloramum,
Greg



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 02:39:26 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 06:39:26 GMT
Subject: Tkinter: Scrollable buttons
References: <7te79t$rja$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <00b201bf1090$dc9cecb0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

sragsdale at my-deja.com wrote:
> I've got a big panel full of buttons and such, and I need to add a
> scroll bar so that I can move up and down the list.  The following code
> will construct something that _looks_ good, but the scrollbar won't
> actually do anything.  Any idea what's wrong?

set the canvas scrollregion.  the following example
shows you one way to do this (it's setting things up
so the canvas will track changes to the frame. if the
frame is static, you can set the scrollregion once).

</F>

#
# scrolled frame
#
# fredrik lundh, april 1998
#
# fredrik at pythonware.com
# http://www.pythonware.com
#

from Tkinter import *

class ScrolledFrame(Frame):

    def __init__(self, master, **kw):
        apply(Frame.__init__, (self, master), kw)

        # create the widgets
        scrollbar = Scrollbar(self, orient=VERTICAL)

        self.canvas = Canvas(
            self,
            bd=0, highlightthickness=0,
            yscrollcommand=scrollbar.set,
            bg="red"
            )

        scrollbar.config(command=self.canvas.yview)

        scrollbar.pack(fill=Y, side=RIGHT)
        self.canvas.pack(expand=1, fill=BOTH, side=LEFT, )

        # reset the view
        # (always do this if you don't use scrollbars)
        self.canvas.xview("moveto", 0)
        self.canvas.yview("moveto", 0)

        # create the inner frame
        self.inner = Frame(self.canvas, bg="blue")

        # track changes to its size
        self.inner.bind('<Configure>', self.__configure)
 
        # place the frame inside the canvas (this also
        # runs the __configure method)
        self.canvas.create_window(0, 0, window=self.inner, anchor=NW)

    def __configure(self, event):

        # update the scrollbars to match the size of the inner frame
        size = self.inner.winfo_reqwidth(), self.inner.winfo_reqheight()
        self.canvas.config(scrollregion="0 0 %s %s" % size)

# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# test stuff

root = Tk()

f = ScrolledFrame(
    root,
    bd=2, relief=SUNKEN,
    highlightthickness=2
    )
f.pack(expand=1, fill=BOTH)

t = Text(
    f.inner,
    bg="gold",
    height=100, width=40,
    bd=0, highlightthickness=0
    )
t.pack(expand=1, fill=BOTH)

for i in range(100):
    t.insert(END, "line %d\n" % (i+1))

root.mainloop()




From wware-nospam at world.std.com  Sun Oct 17 14:56:52 1999
From: wware-nospam at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 18:56:52 GMT
Subject: A question
References: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi>
Message-ID: <FJrGMt.LIB@world.std.com>

Kristian Nylund (krnylund at io.yok.utu.fi) wrote:
: Could someone tell me an easy way to do  
: something like "for i in `ls *.txt`..." 
: in python?

Other folks have mentioned glob.glob(), which will work fine for
things like "*.txt". If you want something more flexible, for
instance all the *.c and *.h files that mention printf,
you'd want to iterate on the output of something like

	find . -name '*.[ch]' -exec grep -l printf {} \;

and if you wanted to do something like that in Python, you'd want
to know about commands.getoutput(). Specifically, you'd want to
write something like this:

	import commands

	for file in commands.getoutput(
		"find . -name '*.[ch]' -exec grep -l printf {} \;"):
	    process(file)

So commands.getoutput() is good to know about if you need a little
more flexibility than glob.glob().

-- 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Resistance is futile. Capacitance is efficacious.
Will Ware	email:    wware @ world.std.com



From python at infosys.com.ar  Wed Oct 20 22:26:03 1999
From: python at infosys.com.ar (PythonMaster)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 23:26:03 -0300 (ART)
Subject: Using CGI with POST
In-Reply-To: <380E67CE.E57D8795@progmatics.com.au>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9910202324180.6264-100000@kuarajy.infosys.com.ar>

Hi!

	Could you give more information.

	There should be no difference between the POST and GET methods.

	What's the HTML for the FORM element? Are you 'posting' other
elements than the one called name?

/B

On Thu, 21 Oct 1999, David Hobley wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I just knocked up a simple cgi script. It works fine if I
> use the GET method on the form. However, if I try and POST
> it, the script just hangs until it times out.
> 
> Is there any special magic to make this work?
> 
> The script does:
> 
> form = cgi.FieldStorage()
>      form_ok = 0
>      if form.has_key("name"):
>          if form["name"].value != "":
>              form_ok = 1
> ...
> 
> but it hangs on the call to cgi.FieldStorage()
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> david                                 davidh at progmatics.com.au
> 
> Progmatics Pty Ltd - Architects of IT and Internet Solutions
> 
> Level 8, 191 Clarence Street              Phone +61 2 9262 4933
> Sydney NSW Australia                      Fax   +61 2 9262 4045
> http://www.progmatics.com.au/
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 16:03:38 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:03:38 +0200
Subject: Who maintains Tkinter?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910111331540.24886-100000@moogle.tcct.nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <015301bf1423$b89f1ef0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

SysProg - Nathan Paul Simons <enigma at nmt.edu> wrote:
> A few months ago, i attempted to get some answers to a question
> about a bug with tkinter.  i received no reply.  Therefore, i would like
> to know who maintains tkinter so that i could contact them directly.

on the other hand, this is already fixed in the
code repository:

        ...
        forget = grid_forget
        def grid_remove(self):
                self.tk.call('grid', 'remove', self._w)
        ...

for more info on how you can access the
repository, see:
http://www.python.org/download/cvs.html

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From otso at hybrid.fi  Fri Oct 22 03:53:30 1999
From: otso at hybrid.fi (Otso Makinen)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 07:53:30 GMT
Subject: urgent problems with win32 debug build
Message-ID: <7up55q$66i$1@tron.sci.fi>

I'm using python as a scripting language wrapped on top of c++ library using
the SWIG tool. When using the debug build of the python libraries importing
of the .dll modules fails with the following error message:

ImportError: no module named xxxx

There's no similiar problem with the .py modules and the .dll modules work
ok with the release build of the python libraries. I'm using MSVC++ 6.0,
pcbuild of python 1.5.2 and SWIG 1.1p5. And yes, I have tried building the
both debug/release versions of the wrapper module .dlls.

To point out the urgency of this, I'm promising a bottle of finest Finlandia
Vodka to be mailed to the first one giving a solution.

--
Otso Makinen



From pereira at research.att.com  Fri Oct 22 23:34:27 1999
From: pereira at research.att.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 03:34:27 GMT
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
References: <000001bf1c51$78160160$352d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <221019992334277627%pereira@research.att.com>

In article <000001bf1c51$78160160$352d153f at tim>, Tim Peters
<tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> > In the recorded audio stream should be recognized as many words as
> > possible - speaker independent and in German! (I can hear you shudder)
> 
> Speaker-independent is hard.  From a recording is hard.  If people aren't
> speaking into a high-quality microphone, it's very hard.  If it's not
> intentional speech (i.e., if people don't know they're talking to a
> computer -- they're just chatting), it's very hard.  The good news is that
> German is easy (compared to the rest of this).
> 
> > In unclear cases - there will probably be lots of them - the closest
> > interpretations would be OK.
> 
> I doubt you can do this yourself and get acceptable results with any
> available SR software.  It's an extremely difficult problem.  Taking
> software designed for close-talking microphone, speaker-dependent, "dictate
> into word" applications, and trying to apply it to a radically harder task,
> is like hoping (say) Perl can be used to get real work done <wink>.  The
> closest Dragon Systems gets is described at:
> 
>     http://www.dragonsys.com/products/audiomining/index.html
> 
> Note that there's no product mentioned there -- Dragon has appropriate
> technology, and that's what the page talks about.  This is so bleeding edge
> there are no pre-packaged applications for sale.  Dragon would be happy to
> build one for you, though, in return for an insignificant percentage of
> Germany's gross national product <wink>.
According to a recently-conducted NIST evaluation, current experimental
large-vocabulary recognizers achieve 70-80% word accuracy on
unrestricted American radio and TV news broadcasts. That includes
studio news announcer speech (often much more accurate on that), phone
call-ins, field recordings (often poor, with varied noise in the
background), interviews and round-table discussions. This level of
accuracy is sufficient for searching news stories by content: with
appropriate methods to compensate for recognition errors, search from
automatic transcriptions is almost as effective as from manual
transcriptions (for those interested, see the paper by Singhal and
Pereira in the proceedings of ACM SIGIR 99). Recognition runtime for
these results varies between almost real time and three times slower
depending on hardware, recognizer and desired accuracy. As far as I
know, none of these recognizers is available as a product, although
some may be close. In my experience, the critical element is not the
actual recognizer code -- although that matters quite a bit for speed,
memory usage and flexibility in using different kinds of speech models
-- but rather the choice of speech and language modeling techniques for
the particular task, selection of training data, and actual model
creation recipe.

The situation becomes noticeably worse for spontaneous speech over
uncontrolled channels. However, even then it is often possible to do
topic classification of spoken utterances with fairly high accuracy for
a relatively small set of topics by training appropriate classifiers.
The point is that for some tasks it's not necessary to recognize each
word, but just what the speaker is talking about, which can be
identified from several cues in the utterance. The kind of audio
data-mining applications that Dragon Systems has announced and Tim
mentions above rely on this, I believe.

-- F



From zessin at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 29 07:53:25 1999
From: zessin at my-deja.com (Uwe Zessin)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:53:25 GMT
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJOENFCDAA.kputland@wisen.com> <38188904.BFD13231@lemburg.com> <3819705B.6078E0C9@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <7vc1rk$ip2$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <3819705B.6078E0C9 at lemburg.com>,
  "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
> FYI, I've uploaded a new version with experimental Java and win32
> support which you may want to test (version 0.5.0):
>
>         http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py
>
> To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.
>
> Things that are still missing:
> ? support for MacOS
> ? support for Amiga, OS/2, MS-DOS and VMS
                                        ***

I decided to wait some time to allow the more popular ports to
'shake out' and then try to understand the module.

Being a non-Unix person it is not always apparent to me what
value is supposed to be returned from the different functions.

It also looks like I need to do some enhancements in the OpenVMS
port - e.g. it's currently missing uname() support.

--
Uwe Zessin


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From EarlGoodyer at news.vex.net  Fri Oct 29 11:03:07 1999
From: EarlGoodyer at news.vex.net (Earl Goodyer)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 15:03:07 GMT
Subject: Python for game programming
References: <7vca5f$oug$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7vccvb$ip9$1@hub.org>

On Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:15:16 GMT, Sindh <skodela at my-deja.com> wrote:
>Does anyone know if there is a crossplatform library for game
>programming with python.

Probably not you were looking for (you don't mention what kind of game),
but there are a few things listed here that might be of interest (a couple
of MUD/MOO systems, and the aging pyRPG project to make a 3D RPG engine):

http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/apyllo.py/238168060

>A man needs to sleep for 36 hours a day atleast.

Ah, so that's my problem. I had always suspected something like this.
...




From k_mcdermott at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 21 11:46:27 1999
From: k_mcdermott at my-deja.com (k_mcdermott at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:46:27 GMT
Subject: PyFloat_Check - help!
Message-ID: <7uncgi$6or$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi,

I have a piece of code like this:

if (!PyFloat_Check(poRate)) {
		PyErr_SetString(DataError, "Rate must be a float");
		return NULL;
	}
else
    	Rate = PyFloat_AsDouble(poRate);

Where poRate is a PyArg_ParseTuple extracted PyObject.

The question I have is:

The type checking is too strict (who says Python isn't type checked?)

I would prefer the above code to translate Integer objects, where this
makes sense. i.e. the rate above could be either 1 or 10 to represent 1%
or 10%, but I have to explicitly put in a 1.0 or 10.0 to make it a
float.

I know this is possible, but how...

Kevin


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From hniksic at srce.hr  Tue Oct 12 14:07:45 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 20:07:45 +0200
Subject: P vs P speed (was RE: Newbie question: files..)
References: <000001bf1434$82178e60$f1a2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <87puykiham.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

> Python's long ints; Perl's Math::BigInt.  I first saw Python when
> working for a company trying to design a 64-bit supercomputer, using
> software on 32-bit workstations.  I had been using Perl, very
> painfully and slowly, and the very first Python alpha already ran
> circles around Perl (I'm talking factors of 10 - 100 here) for these
> tasks.  I kept Perl for text-crunching, but dropped it for
> everything else.
[...]
> More, this is *typical* in my experience.  All the convolution in
> Perl's internals costs time to execute, and Python's much cleaner
> implementation translates to faster runtime.  Python gets a bad rap
> here because of one thing: Guido doesn't put "extraordinary effort"
> into optimizing *anything* (it's a personality flaw <wink>), while
> Larry et alia did put extraordinary effort into optimizing some
> common things (mostly related to text-crunching).  Outside of its
> areas of special competence, Perl is not fast.

I don't really care about the speed where it doesn't matter.  I guess
my problem was that the only usage where speed really did make a
difference was about text-crunching, because textual input files tend
to get large (e.g. large log files, or Debian package files, or
whatever.)

> On my home platform (P5-166, 32Mb RAM, Win95), it takes about 20
> seconds in Perl and about 14 in Python.  Which, applying the usual
> benchmarking chicanery, means "Python is 43% faster than Perl".

FWIW, here it takes 16.5 seconds of CPU time, while Perl takes 12.8.
Does that make Perl 37% faster?  :-)

Benchmarks truly suck.



From darcy at vex.net  Sat Oct 30 10:40:16 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 14:40:16 GMT
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line (oops)
References: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com> <87so2ttegm.fsf@slip166-72-251-9.ma.us.prserv.net> <slrn81lf9o.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>
Message-ID: <7vf00g$2n7$1@hub.org>

Eric Smith <eric at fruitcom.com> wrote:
> Greg --
> gerglery at usa.net (greg andruk) posted in comp.lang.python on 30 
> Oct 1999 04:55:37 -0400:
>  > Anyway, Python's not especially amenable to one-liners.  Instead, it
>  > has a really spiffy interactive mode you can leave running in a window
>  > or spare console session that works like you probably wish `perl -d'
>  > worked:
> Yeah, it is a nice "shell" interface for testing, however one liners are
> useful:
> 1. I use their history arrows to access them from the unix shell
> 2. You can use the unix fc for editing long ones
> 3. You can paste them into your scripts.
> 4. They are easy to go back to and edit etc.

All of which apply to the Python shell with readline installed.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From Bill at nospam.com  Sat Oct 16 23:06:07 1999
From: Bill at nospam.com (Bill Rodgers)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:06:07 -0600
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
Message-ID: <zWaO3.2925$lv2.105561@news.uswest.net>

I would like to check for the existance of a file before I attempt an open
and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way to do this.  I would like
to tell the user that the file he specified doesn't exist.  Is there a way
to do this or do I need to catch the exception and deal with it that way?
Thanks,
--
Bill Rodgers
Enterprise Management Consultant
Specialty: BMC/Patrol
brodg1 at ix.netcom.com





From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Mon Oct  4 03:12:29 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:12:29 +1000
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>; from Benjamin Schollnick on Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 02:44:43AM +0000
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <19991004171229.A678@Ridcully.home>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 02:44:43AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
[...snip...]
> 	I'm using Pythons time module, (specifically) time.time() to
> generate the time information.  Even though time is specified to : 
> "return the time
> as a floating point number expressed in seconds since the epoch, in 
> UTC", it doesn't
> "match up" with the RFC results even when the 1900 vs 1970 date is 
> taken into effect.
> 
> 	The RFC states that "The time is the number of seconds since 00:00 @ 
> 1900 Jan 1.
> 
> 	From my experimentation is GMTIME:
> 
> python GMTIME calcs				RFC 868
> (Base 1970, Jan 1)		          (Base Jan 1, 1900)
> Jan 1, 1970	- 18,000.0			2,208,988,800
> Jan 1, 1976	- 189,320,400.0			2,398,291,200
> Jan 1, 1980	- 3,155,550,800.0		2,524,421,600

I assume there is a typo here, since the correct value for Jan 1, 1980
should be 2,524,521,600 seconds as far as I can work out (100 000
seconds more than the number written).

> I don't see how python's Jan 1, 1980 calcuation can exceed the RFC's 
> calculation, unless the
> calculation is returning *NON-LINEAR* results, which doesn't make 
> sense if it's the # of secs since
> Jan xxxx.

I agree. I can't understand your Python numbers at all. There is a
problem with your calculation routine (see below), but it shouldnt'
give these non-linear results. I don't have access to Python on any
sort of Windows box, so I can't verify the results you got there, but
certainly nothing like that is happening under Linux for me.

> 
> Also, I can't duplicate the RFC 868 values if I manually perform the 
> calculations.
> 
> My "big question", is simple:
> 
> 	Can anyone suggest a way to convert from pythons time.time() to the 
> RFC date(s)?
[... lots'o stuff deleted ...]

> import time
> #
> #       Constants
> #
> #secs_in_year    = 31536000      # 365*24*60*60
> secs_in_year    = 365.1666666666667 * 24*60*60
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^
Huh?? Firstly, since 0.166666... = 1/6, this is saying that leap years occur
every six years. On my side of the world at least, we try to have them
every four years or so. :-)

Secondly, even if you replace this number with 365.25 (I know it's not
precisely correct, but it's near enough for my purposes here), it will
onyl give the right answer one year out of four. This is because
although the time it takes the Earth to do a lap around the Sun is
more or less 365.25 days (minus a little bit), the Julian calendar
operates on the principle that each year is exactly 365 days, except
for every fourth year, which is 366 days (except for every 100th year
which is 365 days, except for every 400th year which is 366 days).

So to do the correct computations, you need to set secs_in_year to
365*24*3600 and add on the amount 24*3600 for every leap year that
has occurred from 1900 until the present day (or from 1968 until the
present year, if you are using the Jan 1, 1970 epoch --- I choose
1968, rather than 1970 so that a simple integer division will give
the correct answer).

To conclude, here is a corrected version of the manual calculation
code. I have, in passing, fixed one other error, which is that to work
out the number of seconds from the beginning of the year until the
current day, you should use (Julian Day - 1), not just Julian Day.
This code assumes a 1/1/1970 epoch - just add the appropriate big
number is you want to work from 1/1/1900. :-)

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick


import time

#
# Set test_time to some number of seconds after the epoch
#
# For example, I use 1 Jan 1980
test_time = 315532800.0

secs_per_day = 24.0 * 60 * 60
secs_per_year = 365.0 * secs_per_day

# timetuple is 9 elements:
#  (yr, mnth, day, hr, min, sec,
#   D.of.week, Julian day, daylight.savings)
timetuple = time.gmtime(test_time)

print timetuple

# Work out basic number of seconds untils 1 Jan.
total = secs_per_year * (timetuple[0] - 1970)

# Correct for leap years. The division computes the number of leap
# years that have occurred after 1968 and *before* this year
# (hence the timetuple[0]-1 bit)
total = total + (timetuple[0] - 1 - 1968)/4 * secs_per_day

# Add up to current day (the -1 is because 1 Jan has julian day=1
# and we don't want to add anything in that case).
total = total + (timetuple[7] - 1) * secs_per_day

# Add number of seconds for current time
total = total + timetuple[5] + timetuple[4]*60.0 + timetuple[3]*3600.0

# The number of seconds is now be contained in total 
# (and should, of course, be the same as test_time)

print test_time
print total



From poe at kodak.com  Fri Oct  8 13:49:55 1999
From: poe at kodak.com (Warren Poe)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 13:49:55 -0400
Subject: Python and IDL interface
Message-ID: <37FE2EC3.253632DD@kodak.com>

Where can I find documentation on writing Corba/IDL inferface in
python?  Has anyone done this before?  Thanks in advance






From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 24 12:07:57 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 16:07:57 GMT
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241351350.29582-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <slrn816bip.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:52:13 +0000 (GMT), Oleg Broytmann
<phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:
>On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
>> >> it would probably be quite easy to write something that emulates
>> >> cgi's transparently. perhaps httpdapy would become more popular
>> >> if something like this was included with it...
>> >
>> >   I don't think so.
>> 
>> it would not be easy or it would not become more popular? :)
>
>   It wouldn't be much more popular, IMHO.

a lot of people seem to like mod_perl, and i think many its users like
it precisely because of its speed. and the only way to speed is keeping
the same interpreter around.

maybe there is some other reason for the unpopularity of httpdapy
than cgi-incompatibility, as suprisingly few people seem to use
it. (or perhaps all its users are just very very quiet :) )

of course there is always zope, but it's like a sledgehammer for lots
of stuff, and pretty complex.

   -- erno

-- 
"The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux
customers who need high speed connectivity to drive their
e-business," added Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM
Personal Systems Group. 



From olme at ebox.tninet.se  Sun Oct  3 05:18:46 1999
From: olme at ebox.tninet.se (Anders olme)
Date: 03 Oct 1999 11:18:46 +0200
Subject: newbie question int to string conversion
References: <m3emfegwg3.fsf@localhost.localdomain>  <7t4n7n$kdj$1@hub.org> <14325.63797.550594.431553@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <m3hfk8245l.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

Well actually my strings are comming from a directory listning. I'm trying to 
implement a autoupgrader for our CAD system at work (tired to ask if a new
version has arrived). And the direcotyr contains ordinary names and 
directories with names like 310,3112 and so on. So it will be 50% numbers and the rest will be strings.
-- 
-- 
//Anders Olme
//
//E-mail: olme at ebox.tninet.se



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 24 10:54:58 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:54:58 -0400
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <01E317D42527FC5F.A35D548EBCB64C7C.7C5E6B812D216D74@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <1271346348-3126980@hypernet.com>

[Cameron summarizes my comments on introspection]

> Thanks.  Our current status is therefore that all
> known demands for introspection-goop either
> 1.  can be satisfied by __*__ references,
>     which we all recognize as slightly out-
>     side normal operations, or
> 2.  are the result of a misdesign for which
>     we can exhibit a superior alternative,
>     often involving disciplined polymorphism
>     or an interface from an explicit class
>     definition.
> This feels slightly alien to me, but I can get over
> it.  I think it's particularly valuable to write up
> explanations of the form, "If you find yourself
> wanting to XX, take it as a hint to study your design
> in search of a YY, which will yield a better design."

You have summarized just a tad more strongly than I would 
have. I certainly leave open the possibility that today's outre 
techniques become tomorrow's accepted ones.

OTOH, I'm one of the few people who occaisionally writes 
metaclasses (publicly, at least), which is an area where 
introspection merges with rape-and-pillage. Now metaclasses 
were invented (by the infamous Don Beaudry) based on 
certain abstract ideas about object models. But I have 
concluded that the only known usage for metaclasses is 
playing __getattr__ tricks, which can be played (a bit more 
crudely) without all the theoretical trappings that come with 
metaclasses. 

I am thus inclined to try to see behind the arguments about 
introspection to find out what people are actually trying to do.

I'll-pay-for-caller-ID-when-it's-free-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com  Thu Oct 21 14:54:18 1999
From: jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com (John W. Stevens)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:54:18 -0600
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim> <slrn80kkc1.1r1o.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net> <380BFAF1.116FB21E@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <380F615A.36A98BB5@basho.fc.hp.com>

Martin Pool wrote:
> 
>   while 1:
>     x = f.readline()
>     if not x: break
>     print x
> 
> is the same.  So it's really just a matter of whether we want a larger,
> more specific syntax, or a smaller syntax that relies a little more on
> people using idioms.

Which is why, if we were discussing a new language, I would suggest
creating
ONLY the

loop:
    <statements>
    break <condition>
    <statements>
    continue <condition>
    <statements>

construct (the condition on both the break and continue is optional). 
No while.
No for.  No do.  Just loop.  After all, it makes a weird kind of sense:
loop
is the super class of while and for, right? ;->

But we're talking about Python, so the best bet would probably be to
just drop this discussion . . . except it is kinda fun!

John S.

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

If I spoke for HP --- there probably wouldn't BE an HP!

John Stevens
john_stevens at fc.hp.com



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Sat Oct 30 07:13:02 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 11:13:02 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7vejru$ccj$4@nslave2.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://www.homestead.com/madq/files/index.htm




From skip at mojam.com  Sat Oct  2 00:27:48 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 23:27:48 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
In-Reply-To: <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca>
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com>
	<19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <14325.35268.320583.702360@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Neil> On Sat, Oct 02, 1999 at 02:12:28AM +0000, Dan wrote:
    >> Has anyone attempted to pass file descriptors from one process to
    >> another under using Python on Linux?  I want to build a little web
    >> server that accepts connections and hands them off to child processes
    >> exactly like Apache does.

    Neil> I don't know too much about how apache works but fork works just
    Neil> fine with Python:

Unfortunately, that's not what Apache does.  Apache pre-forks a bunch of
children.  The parent then (through some clever magic supported on a number
of Unix variants which I don't understand) passes the open file descriptor
to an already forked process.  You can set a limit on the number of requests
a child will handle before exiting.  Set it high enough and (practically
speaking) you won't notice any fork overhead.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From mirko at picard.inka.de  Sat Oct  2 22:20:33 1999
From: mirko at picard.inka.de (Mirko Zeibig)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 04:20:33 +0200
Subject: ping script
References: <7t699k$3p1m$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vdfbh.pn1.mirko@picard.inka.de>

On Sat, 2 Oct 1999 08:40:13 -0400, Sean <sean.cason at prodigy.net> wrote:
> I am a newbie to python. Any ideas on how to create a script to ping a class
> c block and maybe resolve the names to DNS.
Hello Sean,
at least the DNS-resolving is easily done by socket.gethostbyaddr.

Regards
Mirko
-- 
mailto:   mirko.zeibig at gmx.de
privat:   http://sites.inka.de/picard
commerce: http://www.webideal.de
qmail, ldap, serialfax, rh-isdn: http://www.webideal.de/#downloads



From andy at robanal.demon.co.uk  Sat Oct  2 12:09:22 1999
From: andy at robanal.demon.co.uk (Andy Robinson)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 16:09:22 GMT
Subject: More Python books coming...
References: <5lpuz483p4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <37f92dce.33670976@news.demon.co.uk>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:

>Python Programming on Win 32
>	Mark Hammond, Andy Robinson. Published by O'Reilly. Expected
>	September 1999.
Sorry to disappoint you  - as an author it pains me even more - but
O'Reilly's web site now says December. 

It just better be out by January 24th!

Andy Robinson




From poinot at onera.fr  Fri Oct 15 09:53:24 1999
From: poinot at onera.fr (Marc POINOT)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:53:24 +0200
Subject: Import problem with threads
Message-ID: <380731D3.FAE4B45C@onera.fr>

I have some problem with my installtion on SGI.
We are trying to make a multi-platform installation (n32, 64, and some
cross compilers)
with threads.
Two problems:

[ONE] (one could also say [1], or first)

During the make install process, the compileall.py phase fails. The
previous installation
was without threads, and the compileall.py uses the NEW python with
threads. The message was
something like
I force the compilation with the OLD python without threads. It passes,
but...

[TWO] (see remark above, but changing [1] with [2] and first by second,
but NOT one by two)
Now, trying to import some modules, I have:

elsa at SGI > python
Python 1.5.2 (#20, Oct 14 1999, 11:07:33)  [GCC 2.95.1 19990816
(release)] on irix646
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import gzip
Fatal Python error: unlock_import: not holding the import lock
Abort(coredump)
elsa at SGI >

Any idea, something missing at install time, mess in shell variables,
compile option unadequate, other?


Marcvs [alias Trying now to feed Python with live rabbits]





From blackers at netscape.net  Mon Oct 11 00:19:04 1999
From: blackers at netscape.net (Brian Blackwell)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:19:04 +1000
Subject: Suppressing console on Windows?
Message-ID: <7trona$v8$1@corolla.OntheNet.com.au>

My apologies if this is a FAQ, but is there a way to prevent the text
console appearing when running a Tkinter-based Python script on Windows?

Thanks in advance
Brian Blackwell





From garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid  Fri Oct 15 03:21:46 1999
From: garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid (Radovan Garabik)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 07:21:46 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim> <873dveynjm.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr> <38063FB7.F3BB88AC@anisci.com>
Message-ID: <939975615.652258@cdwork.cvt.stuba.sk>

Joel Davis <joeld at anisci.com> wrote:
 : I totally agree.

 : I use while 1:  (and for(;;) in c) all the time. It seems like a really
 : good construct, however I always feel a little uneasy, like it is
 : abusing the language or something.. 

 : I wish there was some kind of "officially sanctioned" version of this,
 : that implied (or even enforced) that the loop was meant to be exited
 : with a break, somthing like 

 : loop:
 :    ...
 :    if (): 
 :       break
 :    ...
 :    if (): 
 :       break

I use this in my programs:

forever = 1
...
while forever:
    ....

just my 2 cents...
-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph.uniba.sk           |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Sat Oct 30 04:35:41 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 18:35:41 +1000
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line
In-Reply-To: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>; from Eric Smith on Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 08:13:46AM +0000
References: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>
Message-ID: <19991030183541.A1419@Ridcully.home>

On Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 08:13:46AM +0000, Eric Smith wrote:
> I am am a perl programmer looking at Python and would like to know whether
> it is possible on the command line to test algorithms like I do in perl
> thusly:
> 
> perl -e '$r="de";if ($r eq "whatever" or "de") {print "a match\n"}

Yessir! It's the -c option and it has to be the last
option on the command line.

python --help gives you a list of all the command line options.

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick



From thomas at xs4all.nl  Fri Oct 22 10:05:10 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 16:05:10 +0200
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
In-Reply-To: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <19991022160509.B9043@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Oct 22, 1999 at 01:28:12PM +0000, rainer2207 at my-deja.com wrote:

> I was wondering how I could pass a variable using the hidden field. That
> is I'd like to do something like this:

> test = "Hello"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"

> but this returns the string test rather than "Hello". Is there anyway
> I can get it to pass "Hello"? Am I right in leaving out the double
> quotes for the value part? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

You can do it three ways:

>>> print '<input type="HIDDEN" name="username"  value="', test, '">'


(Note that i mixed single and double quotes to avoid the escaping of the
originally used quotes... makes for better reading, imho.)

But this inserts a space between the quotes and the value of 'test',

>>> print '<input type="HIDDEN" name="username"  value="' + test + '">'

This doesn't insert a space, but might not work correctly if 'test' is not a
string (but, for instance, an object doing something entirely different on
'+'.)

print '<input type="HIDDEN" name="username"  value="%s">'%test

This uses C's 'printf'-style string creation... the '%s' is replaced by the
(string-)value of 'test'. If 'test' isn't a string, it's converted into one
(or an error is raised, if it refuses.)

Note that the ""%... string creation thing can be tricky when you want to
include more things. You need to make the argument to % a tuple, like this:

print '<input type="HIDDEN" name="%s" value="%s"'%(test1, test2)

Please do see the tutorial for more info about print tricks (and about all
other neat tricks in python, of course ;)

http://www.python.org/doc/tut/-ly y'rs,
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Fri Oct 22 10:28:10 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:28:10 -0400
Subject: NT related question (not really Python related)
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF702@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Adrian,


>> Instead of redirecting to a file, why not use os.popen():

Because:
1) I didn't know about popen (sooo many functions, so littletime ;)
2) In a few cases (but not or my kill example), I need the file anyway.

>> Have you tried os.popen() on these machines?

No, but I will if the problem shows up again :)

Thanks!
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"






From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Oct 13 16:37:53 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 20:37:53 GMT
Subject: P vs P speed (was RE: Newbie question: files..)
References: <000001bf1434$82178e60$f1a2143f@tim> <87puykiham.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <0FC86360625C0456.AD930DC5F94AE35B.17E6CB0756DD4198@lp.airnews.net>

In article <87puykiham.fsf at pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>,
Hrvoje Niksic  <hniksic at srce.hr> wrote:
>"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
			.
			.
			.
>> On my home platform (P5-166, 32Mb RAM, Win95), it takes about 20
>> seconds in Perl and about 14 in Python.  Which, applying the usual
>> benchmarking chicanery, means "Python is 43% faster than Perl".
>
>FWIW, here it takes 16.5 seconds of CPU time, while Perl takes 12.8.
>Does that make Perl 37% faster?  :-)
>
>Benchmarks truly suck.

I think benchmarks are truly wonderful.  They
fill me with wonder.

I've seen enough cases where *identical* source
produces dramatically different results on
apparently randomly chosen machines that I'm
ready to begin investigating material causes
(holding in reserve the speculation that the
boxes know the preferences of their owners).  Is
there some plausible mechanism for supposing
that Tim's tired old silicon (I can write that;
I've still got machines from last decade that I
prefer to the thought of spending any cash) is
relatively more efficient on Python processes,
presumably because its DLLs and such are in bet-
ter places?
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From parkw at better.net  Sat Oct 23 15:18:26 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:18:26 -0400
Subject: SF Bay: Python Training?
In-Reply-To: <7usi9n$2cc$1@nntp1.atl.mindspring.net>
References: <7usi9n$2cc$1@nntp1.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <19991023151826.A11892@better.net>

On Sat, Oct 23, 1999 at 02:55:51PM +0000, Aahz Maruch wrote:
> We just hired a new webmaster who has never done any programming.  Does
> anyone know of any Python training taking place over the next month or
> two in the SF Bay Area?  (Yes, I know about the other options; I'm
> hoping to possibly piggy-back on some other company's training session.)
> --
>                       --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Let me get this straight... your company hired a programmer who never
programmed and, presumably, can't type!  Were you pressed to comply with
some quota or what?

Yours truly,
William



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 28 04:03:35 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:03:35 +1300
Subject: Questions about nested for's vs map
References: <38111CA1.D6896911@dicksonstreet.com> <3816BE60.87DC32E7@compaq.com> <381653CE.A463DF1D@dicksonstreet.com>
Message-ID: <38180357.87221827@compaq.com>

Felix Thibault wrote:
> 
> Is it generally considered better not to generate code? (I don't have any
> computer science background, and I'm trying to learn on my own, so I'm a
> little paranoid about learning to program the wrong way.)

Usually it's both more efficient and easier for others
to understand if you can write a procedure which does
something directly, rather than generating code which
is then compiled and executed to do it.

It was fashionable for a while to use techniques like
this in languages such as Lisp, where the boundary
between code and data was very thin. But nowadays it's
generally considered bad style to use it unless there
is really no alternative. In the vast majority of cases, 
there is an alternative, and finding it will make
your code run faster and look nicer.

>                     def makedict(*keys):
>                         depth=len(keys)
>                         keyz = tuple(map(repr, keys))
>                         dict = eval( ('{ %s:'*depth+'None'+'}'*depth) % keyz)
>                         return dict

Recursion is your friend in cases like that. Whenever
you find yourself wanting to build some sort of
hierarchical structure whose depth you don't know
in advance, think recursion!

Greg



From jima at aspectdv.com  Thu Oct 14 15:54:14 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:54:14 -0700
Subject: JPython?
In-Reply-To: <gIpN3.399$Mt5.12355@news2.jacksonville.net>
References: <199910132322.QAA11710@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <199910141949.MAA18769@hermes.aspectdv.com>

Hi Hank,

I have been using the following methodology
and it works pretty well.

I start with JBuilder3 from Inprise/Borland.

I use its visual developer tool to "draw" a
user interface.  JBuilder3 is pretty decent
because it supports Java2 and Swing
and lets you drag & drop the Swing
widgets, specify the bean properties in
forms, and even use forms to set up
the advanced awt layout managers like
gridBagLayout -- which I use a lot to
make dialogs and user-input forms that
resize intelligently on the screen.
JBuilder3 will generate and compile the 
corresponding Java/Swing code.  It
does a nice job of just generating the
basic code without putting in special
comments and extra tagging junk.
You can make JFrames, JPanels,
JPanels with JTrees and JTables 
inside of JScrollPanes, etc.
Basically anything you need.

Once I have a "visually drawn" and
"auto-generated" user-interface
layout class, I then switch to JPython.

I write a JPython class that is sort of
a "View / Controller".  In the JPython
class I make an instance of the JBuilder3-
generated "layout" class.  I then do all
of the event handling and application
logic inside the JPthon "View / Controller"
class, manipulating the Swing elements
in the JBuilder3-generated instance as
needed.

With this methodology, all of the 
"programming" is done using JPthon
and yet the static user interface elements
are "drawn" with a visual tool (JBuilder3).

As I said, it has been working great for
me.

Jim


At 02:56 PM 10/14/99 -0400, Hank Fay wrote:
>Jim,
>
>    is there a visual application development environment, using the Java
>API, that will work with JPython?
>
>    tia,
>
>Hank
>
>--
>http://www.prosysplus.com
>Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> wrote in message
>news:199910132322.QAA11710 at hermes.aspectdv.com...
>> As a very active JPython user, here is my take on it.
>>
>> Yes, you can think of JPython as a mechanism
>> that lets you run "Python" in a Web browser that supports
>> Java.  You can also look at it as a mechanism for
>> adding scripting capability to Java applications.
>>
>> But I think of it in a somewhat different way.
>> JPython is a second implementation of Python
>> that uses the Java VM instead of the Python
>> runtime.  Why is this useful?  Because of the
>> following tradeoffs.  In JPython you don't have
>> access to Python C-based extension modules.
>> Bad, obviously.  But you do have access to
>> the basic core language structures and to
>> any Python modules implemented completely
>> in Python.  Neutral -- obviously you have this
>> in standard Python as well.  But, the real kicker
>> is this: with JPython you DO have complete
>> access to ALL Java APIs.   Without having to
>> do any work at all. No wrappers, no JNI, no CORBA
>> no anything.   Instant availability.  All in the
>> same JVM.
>>
>> I am in a situation where I need to develop
>> huge applications and for various business
>> and other reasons I am absolutely committed
>> to using Java APIs (Swing for the UI, etc.).
>>
>> Without JPython, Java is the only real choice
>> for programming the applications
>> since doing wrappers to make all Java APIs
>> available in Python is just not practical.
>>
>> With JPython, though, I can develop all of my
>> applications using the Python language
>> (as opposed to the C-Python implementation)
>> and still make use of all the Java APIs.
>>
>> Personally, I believe the Java APIs are
>> gaining enormous momentum for applications
>> programming.  I think the ability to program
>> in a high-level, dynamic language like Python
>> while having seamless access to all of the Java
>> APIs is a killer combination.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>>
>> At 03:00 PM 10/13/99 -0500, Dan Star wrote:
>> >Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a just-in-time
>> >compiler that translates python code to java byte-code so that the
>> >python code can run in a WEB browser that supports java?  If so, I would
>> >assume this places many restricitions on the Python language elements
>> >you can use.  Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its
>> >own language set?
>> >
>> >--Dan
>> >
>> >--
>> >http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>> >
>>
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From j.vanderkoijk at ind.tno.nl  Wed Oct 27 04:28:48 1999
From: j.vanderkoijk at ind.tno.nl (John van der Koijk)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 10:28:48 +0200
Subject: units and uncertainty in python
References: <86hfje42xv.fsf@lori.home.nl>
Message-ID: <87zox5nr5r.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>

I've never written a followup directly to myself...

"JvdK" == John van der Koijk <vdkoijk at wirehub.nl> writes:

    JvdK> I'd also like to keep track of units.  Is this problem solved i.e.,
    JvdK> are there modules avalable which implement uncertain numbers with
    JvdK> units?

Well, Konrad Hinsen has made public the module
Scientific.Physics.PhysicalQuantities 
which seems to handle units at least. It has

Constructor:
     * PhysicalQuantity(value, unit), where value is a number of
       arbitrary type and unit is a string containing the unit name.
     * PhysicalQuantity(string), where string contains both the value and
       the unit. This form is provided to make interactive use more
       convenient.

I might try to fit that in with an ensemble-uncertainty class.

Regards,
-- 
John van der Koijk.
--
TNO Institute of Industrial Technology

PO Box 5073, 2600 GB, Delft, The Netherlands
Phone +31 15 2608833, Fax +31 15 2608846 



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 18 03:26:29 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 03:26:29 -0400
Subject: Developing and testing modules live
In-Reply-To: <871zatfdbg.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <000001bf193a$18e01740$842d153f@tim>

[Nolan Darilek]
> When I develop modules, I prefer testing them immediately after I
> write each specific function. One solution I've tried is to run an
> instance of the Python interpreter in a shell buffer alongside my
> editting in another. When I import the module, test some
> functionality and modify the source file, I've discovered that del'ing
> and re-importing the module doesn't include the changes.
> ...

That's right -- del'ing the module merely removes a local name for the
loaded module object, which latter remains intact (it's still living in the
sys.modules dict).  The builtin reload() function does what you want (see
the Library Reference Manual).

Notes:

+ If you're writing nested packages, it can get harder.

+ Use one of the Python IDEs instead of a shell.  Anything from the Emacs
python-mode to the Tk-based IDLE will make this easier (e.g., IDLE's
"import" menu entry does an import or a reload, depending on whether the
module has already been loaded; pymode has similar gimmicks in the Python
process buffer).

+ See doctest.py in python.org's FTP contrib area for a painless way to save
those interactive testing sessions as forever-after auto-verified examples.

life-is-beautiful-ly y'rs  - tim





From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 12 22:24:32 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 22:24:32 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <3802F1F7.C6BD5BE2@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <5lu2nw576n.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

(I'm falling into the middle again.  But this is interesting.  I hope
I haven't misunderstood Greg's description.)

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:
> Under my scheme, that piece of code in itself does not create
> a cycle. This is because a nested def does not immediately create
> a closure; instead it creates a special "local function object"
> which simply wraps the function. A closure is created "on
> demand" whenever a local function object is fetched out of a
> local variable. This is analogous to the way a bound method
> object is created whenever a function is fetched out of a
> class during an attribute lookup.

Hm.  I don't find it analogous, and while I agree that it's a clever
hack to avoid cycles, I don't like it much.  Here's my reason:

I dislike defining object types with "magic" properties that are
effectuated whenever they are loaded.  The magic may easily be
triggered at the wrong moment -- e.g. the debugger may be looking at
your stack frame, and depending on whether it copies the object it
pulls out of your stack frame into a local variable before looking at
it or not, it will see either a function or the magic object.  (It
doesn't have to be the debugger -- it could be any code looking at
locals()).

This is different from the method lookup -- that is only done in a
very specific context (when during attribute lookup on an instance the
object is found in the class).

Note that this is also one of the reasons why I'm feeling uneasy with
the stackless Python patch set (another reason is that it can't be
done in JPython so it can't be made a part of the language standard):
as far as I recall, it uses a magic object which when returned signals 
the interpreter to execute some callback that the called function
wanted to be executed (this is necessary for apply() I believe).

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



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 15:55:47 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:55:47 +0200
Subject: Tkinter Question
References: <31658864B59ECF11AA700001FA444D61016B783A@SPFLDNT.lrsinc.LRS.COM>
Message-ID: <015c01bf167e$1d58c330$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Burke, Jason <JBurke at lrs.com> wrote:
> I've been pouring over the tutorials for using Tkinter, but I
> can't seem to find an answer to what I think should be a
> simple question. 

http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/entry.htm
=> methods => "get -- Get the current contents of the entry field."

or in other words:

e = Entry(...)
print "current value =>", e.get()

or you can use a StringVar.  for radiobuttons and checkbuttons,
using a Tkinter variable (StringVar or IntVar) is the best way.  see
code samples on:
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/checkbutton.htm
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/radiobutton.htm

btw, a new version of the tkinter introduction is in the works. watch
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/tkintrobook.htm
for details.

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 31 07:54:37 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 07:54:37 -0500
Subject: Changing cursors...
In-Reply-To: <7vgqh7$a5v6q$1@titan.xtra.co.nz>
Message-ID: <1270748767-19272684@hypernet.com>

Xtian Muirhead writes:
> 
> I've been having a play with Tkinter, and I've ported across a
> program that I wrote while learning VB, but I've had one problem.
> There's one step that has a chunk of processing which takes a few
> seconds to complete. In the old program, I changed the cursor to
> an hourglass at the start, and reset when the program finished.
> Trying to do the same in the new version doesn't seem to work:

[snip]

No Tk expert, but as I recall, this is a general problem with Tk. 
Even murkier: I think Tk schedules the cursor-change which 
means, of course, that it doesn't happen until too late. (Java's 
AWT had/has? the same problem but even worse - it would 
get confused and leave the cursor in the wrong state).

The work-around that I saw wasn't, to my mind, worth the 
effort, and I decided to be satisfied with the button remaining 
depressed. But perhaps the eff-bot has a more elegant 
solution.



- Gordon



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Fri Oct  8 03:47:19 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 20:47:19 +1300
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <37FDA187.8899378F@compaq.com>

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> often these junk regions
> look very much like genes that are active, but mutated somewhat.

God tried out a variation on the procedure, and
then commented it out!

Greg



From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Sat Oct  9 17:59:29 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 21:59:29 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

On Fri, 08 Oct 1999 20:29:30 GMT, Preston Landers 
<prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>I'm not really asking about the implementation but the language
>itself; any interesting changes ahead?

Yes, Python 2.0 will be Perfect(tm). :) Other than that, only Guido 
knows for sure. 

Some of the more common requests are:

o Elimination of the class/C-type dichotomy. C extension types (like
  dictionaries and lists) should be real Python classes. 

o Lexical scoping, a la Scheme. 

o Optional type anotations, in order to enable more compile-time type
  checking, and to (possibly) allow faster native Python code. (I'm
  dubious about the latter working, though.)

o A better-designed iteration protocol.

There are some other features that are less frequently requested but
may happen simply because there are people actually willing to sit
down and implement them. (These might even make 1.6, for all I know.)

o List comprehension syntax, a la Haskell. In fact, Greg Ewing has 
  already implemented this as a patch.

o First-class continuations, a la Scheme. This might make it in
  just to permit coroutines and exceptions with restarts. Look at
  Christian Tismer's Stackless Python for the current state.

>And just because I like to start flame wars, I'll go ahead and add my
>own feature to the wishlist:  nested scopes / namespaces.  Is this a
>pipe dream, or just too hard to implement given the internal structure
>of Python (which I'm not really familiar with.)  Maybe I'm just going
>about it all wrong, but it seems like much of my code would be cleaner
>given arbitrarily nested scopes.  I've discussed this with people
>before on c.l.python but never really got an explanation that made
>sense (to me) for the way it is now.

The basic reason that Python does not currently support lexical
scoping is because Python uses a reference-counting garbage-collection
scheme, which can't eliminate cyclic trash, and lexical closures tend
to create a lot of it.

Since the reference-counting scheme is woven fairly deeply into
Python, this is why lexically nested namespaces won't be seen in any
Python 1.x, and why people keep pushing garbage-collection is a
priority for Python 2.0. 

If you are desperate for it now, you should look at Neil Schemenauer's
patch to get the Python interpreter to use the Boehm garbage collector,
and add in Greg Ewing's lexical scoping patch. That should get you 75% 
of what you want. (The remaining 25% requires some syntactic changes to
Python, in order to allow nested local namespaces to shadow properly.
Talk to John Max Skaller about Viper to see what his sense of the 
problem and what the potential solutions are.)


Neel



From ratman at nmt.edu  Mon Oct 18 15:11:11 1999
From: ratman at nmt.edu (Jason Trowbridge)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:11:11 -0600
Subject: newbieq: IDLE 0.4 question
References: <7ugfd8$c9q$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380B70CF.C6BEA1FC@nmt.edu>

>From what I understand, Python caches the modules once they're imported
once.  If another module/scope imports that same module, it is given a
shallow copy of the loaded module (much faster & less memory than
loading a completely different copy).

Anyway, to reload the module, you need to call reload():
import mymodule
reload(mymodule)

sep wrote:
> 
> Hi, how do I tell the Python Shell to reload a module after I edit it?
> I do a save in the editor then import module in the shell and the old
> one is still in memory. del module seems to delete it but then import
> module and the old one is there. I know I'm missing something here. I'm
> on NT.
> 
> thanks,
> --
> Sepehr (Sep) Kiani
> ************************************
> skiani at alum.mit.edu
> http://pergatory.mit.edu/skiani
> 
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.



From python-list at teleo.net  Fri Oct 29 14:19:56 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:19:56 -0700
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
In-Reply-To: <B43F505E.226C%petrilli@digicool.com>
References: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr> <B43F505E.226C%petrilli@digicool.com>
Message-ID: <99102911314704.01843@quadra.teleo.net>

[Christopher Petrilli, on Fri, 29 Oct 1999]:

:: > This was forwarded to me. Anyone interested in coming face 2 face
:: > with Tom and Brent? :-) Don't ask me why I don't go, I'm far from
:: > being a Python expert (I'm trying, though).
:: 
:: I think Tim Peters is the correct foil to Tom Christiansen :-0

Of course the entity we call "TIm Peters" is the perfect foil for the
Homo Sapien called "Tom Christiansen." The problem enters with the
"face 2 face" part.

It's becoming increasingly evident that "Tim Peters" is something on
the order of an emergent intelligence which arose spontaneously from
the primordial soup of the Python list. In its current state of
development, "Tim" doesn't appear to have evolved an Avatar mode of
operation (in the Snow Crash sense). So how could "he" appear in
Seattle?

Unless his employer is willing to cooperate. Perhaps he could make an
appearance as that Windows paperclip thingy. :)



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Tue Oct 26 06:12:44 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 11:12:44 +0100
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Some things where I need some more help are:
> [snip]

And Windows NT by the looks of it. All I get from the program is:
"win32"

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From vascog at uol.com.br  Sun Oct 24 07:44:39 1999
From: vascog at uol.com.br (Joao Neto)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 09:44:39 -0200
Subject: [Q] keeping *args and using it later
Message-ID: <7uur88$pm0$1@fu-berlin.de>

Hi!

If I use a method to receive another method and its arguments, something
like:

def keepCall( method, *args )
   newTuple = (method, args)
   myQueue.append( newTuple)

How can I call that method later? Just typing

   nextTuple = myQueue[0]
   myQueue.remove(nextTuple)

   nextTuple[0](nextTuple[1])

doesn't seem to work...

Thanks in advance!

Joao





From phd at sun.med.ru  Sun Oct 17 08:36:24 1999
From: phd at sun.med.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 16:36:24 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
In-Reply-To: <00a401bf189b$c80d3710$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.20.9910171633480.2777-100000@sun>

On Sun, 17 Oct 1999, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> Oleg Broytmann <phd at sun.med.ru> wrote:
> > On 17 Oct 1999, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> > > def rwpopen(input, command, args=[]):
> >                               ^^^^^^^
> >    There was well-know problem with passing mutable object as a default.
> > Not sure if it was fixed in recent versions of Python...
> 
> well, that's only a problem if you modify the object
> inside the function...

   Sooner or later you forget about it and modify args and what? :) No, I
better will avoid this completely until Python fixes it.

> (and no, it hasn't been fixed.  I doubt it can be
> fixed without breaking stuff).

   Mmm??? Are there a line of code that *relies* on that misfeature?

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Oct 15 16:28:59 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 22:28:59 +0200
Subject: Im new Help
References: <376-38066AB5-93@storefull-255.iap.bryant.webtv.net>
Message-ID: <p6q3dvc5px0.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

DASH14 at webtv.net (Charmeleon) writes:

> I just downloaded python and got the book by o'relliy. the only thing i
> know how do to do is is make a button does anyone know where I can
> download games written in python so I can see the sorce.

There are not many games available were you can source code for;
please search on www.python.org for "game", or any other appropriate
keys.

One game I found was

http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/simple/letters.py.html

Hope this helps,
Martin



From MSteed at altiris.com  Fri Oct 15 11:49:12 1999
From: MSteed at altiris.com (Mike Steed)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:49:12 -0600
Subject: Nested if's
Message-ID: <65118AEEFF5AD3118E8300508B124877073C2F@webmail.altiris.com>

> From: geojempty at aol.com [mailto:geojempty at aol.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 15, 1999 9:21 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Nested if's
> 
> 
> I'm brand new to Python, though I chose it for my CGI 
> programming because of
> it's similarity to the language I use at my day-job: the Progress 4GL
> 
> Enough for intros.  I'm having a problem nesting if 
> statements.  I'm defining a
> function, and my syntax checks fine, until I try the following:
> 
> if digit > 0:
>   if digit = 5:
>     variable = variable + whatever

As it stands, the 2nd line will raise a SyntaxError.  It's doing an
assignment, not a comparison.  It's an error because assignment is not an
expression in Python.  Instead try:

  if digit == 5:

--
M.



From glyn at ninz.not.org.nz  Fri Oct 22 23:14:35 1999
From: glyn at ninz.not.org.nz (Glyn Webster)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 03:14:35 GMT
Subject: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
Message-ID: <7ur95o$bk8$1@news.wave.co.nz>

I've defined a function inside a function. I pass all
the variables it needs into it through its argument
list, which usually works. But what happens this time
is that I get a "NameError: fill_code_list" where the
function first calls itself recusively.

Am I doing something wrong?
(Other than pretending Python is Scheme?)

def display_codes(node):
    """ Pretty-prints the weight and codes for all
        items in the Huffman tree hanging from `node'.
    """
    def fill_code_list(list, node, code):
        if len(node.items) == 1:
            item = node.items[0]
            list.append((item, node.weight, code))
        else:
            fill_code_list(list, node.lower, code + "0")  #SPLAT
            fill_code_list(list, node.higher, code + "1")
    list = []
    fill_code_list(list, node, "")
    list.sort(lambda a,b: -cmp(a[1], b[1])) #By descending weight.
    for (item, weight, code) in list:
        print "  %-6s %4i  %s" % (`item`, weight, code)

--
(Remove the negation from my address to reply by email.)
"ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe."



From neilh at hare.net.au  Tue Oct 12 11:08:03 1999
From: neilh at hare.net.au (neilh at hare.net.au)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:08:03 GMT
Subject: Disk access going mental with Pythonwin?
References: <000901bf1488$6a664be0$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <7tvis8$s7c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

> Ummm - sheepishly, I admit that would be Pythonwin.  Pythonwin has a
> feature that automatically detects if the file you are editing has
> been modified externally.  This check is done in idle time, and each
> time you move the
> mouse (then stop moving it), Pythonwin enters its idle state.
>
> I really should add a config option to control this, but currently it
> is always turned on...

   You could have the test done only at application activation time as
that is normally the only time a changed file will appear. Or maybe
have a choice of (no | activation | idle) detection.

   The next version of SciTE will have a load on activate option.

   Neil


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From g_will at cyberus.ca  Fri Oct  8 07:54:14 1999
From: g_will at cyberus.ca (Gordon Williams)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 11:54:14 GMT
Subject: Make Stand Alone W32 Installer Crash with tk
Message-ID: <01bf1183$a1637120$0e41c3d1@Cyberus.cyberus.ca>

Hi All,

I have been trying to get Gordon McMillan's and Thomas Heller's win32
installer to work properly to make a stand alone .exe which uses tk.  I
have tried Installer_b_02a and _b_02b as well as the non-beta version. 
They all have the same problem with the tk and tlc libraries not being
found.  This happens 19 times out of 20, but for some reason it does work
sometimes.  As a newbie trying to hack something together for my first
time, I cant figure out what the problem is.  I have tried adding extra
paths to just about everything, putting the installer in different
directories relative to the Python directory, runing it under command line
python and pythonWin, ... etc.

The main script is very simple, a hello world kind of thing, where a couple
of buttons and a canvas oval are put on the screen.  Only Tkinter is
imported.

During making the stand alone with builder.py the following occurs:  
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py",
line 237, in RunScript
    exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Installer_b_03b\install\create\Builder.py",
line 496, in ?
    main(opts, args)
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Installer_b_03b\install\create\Builder.py",
line 479, in main
    target.build()
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Installer_b_03b\install\create\Builder.py",
line 302, in build
    lTOC = self.buildTOC()
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Installer_b_03b\install\create\Builder.py",
line 267, in buildTOC
    self.buildTCLTKsupport(lTOC)
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Installer_b_03b\install\create\Builder.py",
line 105, in buildTCLTKsupport
    tcllib = os.environ['TCL_LIBRARY']
  File "E:\Program Files\Python\Lib\os.py", line 247, in __getitem__
    return self.data[string.upper(key)]
KeyError: TCL_LIBRARY

The Builder.log shows:
<snip>
 binary dependencies of hello.py
[('win32api.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\win32\\win32api.pyd'),
 ('_tkinter.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\_tkinter.pyd')]
[('_tkinter.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\_tkinter.pyd'),
 ('win32api.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\win32\\win32api.pyd'),
 ('zlib.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\zlib.pyd')]
analyzing _tkinter.pyd
 found KERNEL32.dll
 found tcl80.dll
 lib not found: tcl80.dll dependency of  found tk80.dll
 lib not found: tk80.dll dependency of  found python15.dll
 lib not found: python15.dll dependency of  found MSVCRT.dll
analyzing win32api.pyd
 found KERNEL32.dll
 found USER32.dll
 found ADVAPI32.dll
 found SHELL32.dll
 found OLEAUT32.dll
 found PyWinTypes15.dll
 lib not found: PyWinTypes15.dll dependency of  found python15.dll
 lib not found: python15.dll dependency of  found MSVCRT.dll
analyzing zlib.pyd
 found python15.dll
 lib not found: python15.dll dependency of  found MSVCRT.dll
 found KERNEL32.dll
 merged/expanded binary dependencies
[('_tkinter.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\_tkinter.pyd'),
 ('win32api.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\win32\\win32api.pyd'),
 ('zlib.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\zlib.pyd')]
 lTOC after excludes
[('_tkinter.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\_tkinter.pyd'),
 ('win32api.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\win32\\win32api.pyd'),
 ('zlib.pyd', 'E:\\Program Files\\Python\\DLLs\\zlib.pyd')]

Cannot find TCL/TK libs from either the dll's location
or the TCL_LIBRARY & TK_LIBRARY environment variables
Shutting down


My hello.cfg file is:
[MYSINGLEFILE]
name= hello.exe
type= SINGLEFILE
destdir= ./build_hello
bindepends=hello.py
includeTK= 1
zlib= MYZLIB
script= hello.py

[MYZLIB]
name= hello.pyz
dependencies= hello.py
excludes= dospath, posixpath, macpath
includes=


Sorry for adding so much code.  Any ideas on what I need to do?  Has anyone
used it with tk and got it to work? 

Thanks,

Gordon Williams



From Kirill.Budkevich  Mon Oct 25 04:49:31 1999
From: Kirill.Budkevich (Kirill.Budkevich)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:49:31 +0200
Subject: Programming for Web
Message-ID: <E11feps-000Aa3-00@msk1.mail.ru>

Programming for Web.

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programming.
It is possible for us to create in short period a modern web-site, to 
redo an old site using new technologies, to build in Your site an 
internet shop and etc.
We have highly qualified web programmers (PERL, CGI(SSI,SSL), 
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Our specialists speak Your language.
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In case our offer is interesting to You, do not hesitate to contact 
us.
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E-mail: budkevich at mail.ru



From arcege at shore.net  Wed Oct 13 18:10:56 1999
From: arcege at shore.net (Michael P. Reilly)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:10:56 GMT
Subject: Cisco config?
References: <7u2rhe$j3s@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Qr7N3.86$nf1.14912@news.shore.net>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote:
: I've found Gconfig, but my searching hasn't turned up anything for
: automated configuration of a Cisco router (a la "expect").  Any
: pointers?

What about using Expect or ExpectPy?

  -Arcege




From bill at hk.rfa.org  Mon Oct  4 04:34:13 1999
From: bill at hk.rfa.org (Bill Eldridge)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 16:34:13 +0800
Subject: HELP again! Changing timezone in Python
Message-ID: <37F86685.98B1CE65@hk.rfa.org>

Still trying to figure out how to make a machine
in Hong Kong do all its Python time calculations as if
it were located in Washington.

This means I need to take a date like 1999-10-23-0200
and decide if it's EST or EDT, but I can't use my local
system time, since that's China time, where DST doesn't
exist.

Ideas? (yes, I can write a quick script on a Washington
machine to figure out time switchovers for the next 50 years,
but that's a bit ugly, so I'd rather get the info from
a Python module or by parsing the timezone files.

Thanks,
Bill
--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at hk.rfa.org



From mikle at amv.tsk.ru  Mon Oct 11 05:30:09 1999
From: mikle at amv.tsk.ru (Mikhail Astafiev)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:30:09 +0700
Subject: Pythoning of C++ objects
In-Reply-To: <7trn39$e86$0@216.39.151.169>
References: <7trn39$e86$0@216.39.151.169>
Message-ID: <11687.991011@amv.tsk.ru>

Hi Donn,

you wrote:

> When I set out to do this for the BeOS C++ API, I borrowed heavily
> from James Ahlstrom's Wpy interface to MFC, as described in
> http://www.python.org/workshops/1995-12/papers/ahlstrom1.html

> Now as I understand it, this is sort of the inverse of what CXX
> does, so whether it's light or heavy, if it's at all suited to
> what you're doing, then you should ignore my advice.

Thank you! It's looks very interesting. It helped me to make some
things clearer.

Regards, Mikhail.





From wtanksle at hawking.armored.net  Sat Oct 23 10:27:26 1999
From: wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 14:27:26 GMT
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <199910191923.MAA00522@hermes.aspectdv.com> <UG7P3.16444$D33.48625@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <slrn814a7u.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999 00:05:08 GMT, Jason Stokes wrote:
>On Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:27:59 -0700, Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> wrote:
>>At 07:03 PM 10/19/99 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>>>steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:

>>>hey, what makes you think len(obj) is less object-
>>>oriented than obj.len() ?  it's just syntax, you know.

>>But it IS less consistent syntax with not much advantage
>>("del" is a different story).  So it would be very nice if
>>I could write aList.len() if I prefer that to len(aList).

>Experienced pythoners might correct me, but I believe Python's object model
>is younger than its basic design.

Not true.  Python was designed to be OO from the start.

>Plus, Python has to balance the
>consideration that many people do not wish to program in the object-oriented
>manner.

This is true, but has little to do with this.  The probelm was that in the
original implementation they didn't bother implementing messages in
several of the basic types.

>Personally I prefer a completely consistent committment to object
>orientation, like, say, Smalltalk, but horses for courses and all that.

Not really relevant.  You could complain about the inconsistent syntax,
but in fact that serves a purpose as well.

>Jason Stokes: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Tue Oct 19 16:07:54 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 06:07:54 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <380CCF9A.3BD80F74@maxtal.com.au>

Michael Hudson wrote:
> 
> skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:

> Hold it there a second; you are proposing that knowing that x has a
> certain type in the expression
> 
> x = x + "hello"
> 
> has an impact on inference? 

	Yes. Rather, the type of x is _deduced_ from the fact that
operator + must be string concatenation in this context, since the
second
argument is a string, and thus x must be a string.

>That's a BIG sea change from CPython. Haven't you ever done this:
> 
> option = raw_input("enter a parameter> ")
> try:
>     option = int(option)
> except:
>     print "get a Clue"
> 
> OK, contrived example. 

	This is a good example! Viper will handle it!
It will know that 'option' is _either_ a string or an int.
[It _has_ to]

	In other words, the type inference system WILL
work with ordinary Python, allowing a variable to
take values of multiple types. There will even be a special
handling for the most often used case:

	try: option = some_function(args)
	except: option = None

that is, 'option is either a string or None'.

> But the same name can refer to variables of
> different types at different times, so I don't think you can use that
> for inference.

	Sure you can. However, the inference algorithm
is not the same as for a statically typed language.
 
> PS: Given the bizarre reluctance of my university to give me any work,
> can I ask if the source to viperi (at least) will be perusable anytime
> soon?

	Don't know. Due to the bizarre reluctance of _anyone_ to give
me any work, I need to make some money somehow. I would like to do this
serving the computing community. I want Viper to be 
free software (eventually), but I have to eat.

	So the answer is: probably, I will release it for
free evaluation (but not commercial use). But I'm not sure
how to best approach this problem. Any ideas?

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Tue Oct 19 16:01:28 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:01:28 GMT
Subject: fastest string building?
References: <7uieee$nsa$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn80pjgr.6uv.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>

Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
>Can someone look at my profiling script and see if I made any obvious
>errors?  Is behavior of strings already well-known?

I think you under-estimated the difficulty of benchmarking. :)

The speed of each method depends on the situation.  Method 1 is
really bad if you continuously add characters on the end of a
long string:

    spam = ''
    for i in range(10000):
        spam = spam + 'a'

This creates and destroys a string object each time around the
loop.  In this case, method 2 or [c]StringIO is much better:

    spam = []
    for i in range(10000):
        spam.append('a')
    spam = string.join(spam, '')

I believe this is the primary use of the string.join idiom.  I
would never write:

    spam = string.join([a, b, c])

but rather:

    spam = '%s%s%s%s' % (a, b, c)

or even:

    spam = a + b + c

if I am lazy and the strings are not expected to be huge.


    Neil



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Thu Oct 28 06:35:25 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 10:35:25 GMT
Subject: Using python to run scripts
References: <7v75hc$1eik$1@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <610D1AB3CD1FF885.0E74774F2EBDCC32.8274B3096A6770B6@lp.airnews.net>

In article <7v75hc$1eik$1 at rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>,
Arinte <shouldbe at message.com> wrote:
>I want to use python in my app to run test scripts.  I am trying to learn it
>right now.  But, what I wanted to know is when I get ready to distribute the
>app (if ever =-(), does the user have to have all of python installed or is
>it just a dll or something.  This is strictly for windows on the App side
>anyway.
			.
			.
			.
It is possible--convenient, even--to wrap up all of your application
in a single file, so that your users do NOT have to install Python.
See <URL:http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html> for
details.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From sparlin at openpro.org  Sun Oct 10 12:13:21 1999
From: sparlin at openpro.org (Sonny Parlin)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 12:13:21 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com> <m3puynwdcj.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <004301bf1326$a3dd0840$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <m3iu4f2nz2.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> age, different execution models, different
> approach to typing, etc, etc.
> 
> as for reading text files, it's a well-known
> fact that Perl is sometimes *faster* than C:
> 
>     http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=505288860
> 

WOW, now that's interesting! I never would have guessed something like
that. Are you saying that perl code such as:

while(<FD>) {
  print "$_\n";
}

could be faster than low level C code such as:

while ((c = read (fd, buf, BUF_SIZE)) > 0)
	write (1, buf, c);

Not sure about that, or do you mean using C file pointers (i.e. stdio, as
opposed to lower level methods (i.e. unistd/fcntl which is what my C
example shows above))? I just tried those two pieces of code measuring time
with /bin/time and the C version was consistently faster than the perl
version... But I could see where using C file pointers and higher level
functions such as fgets would be slower than Perl, especially if Perl code
is implemented using the lower level methods underneath...

Please keep in mind that I'm pretty ignorant to how Perl (or python for
that matter) is implemented under the hood. And it sounds like you know a
bit more about that, so forgive me if I'm pushing the issue here, I'm just
trying to learn...

> unfortunately, Python's file object is still
> layered on top of C's stdio.  but that may
> of course change some day...
> 

As opposed to unistd or fcntl?

> for more info on other speed issues, skip
> over to http://www.python.org/search/
> and search for "is perl faster than python"
> (and similar phrases) in the newsgroup
> archives.
> 


Thanks for all your advice!

-Sonny
-- 
Sonny Parlin
sparlin at openpro.org
http://www.openpro.org
fingerprint = 45 FE 56 72 C2 04 CD 76  
		09 75 52 7A C6 7C 23 D2



From meh9 at cornell.edu  Thu Oct  7 11:48:21 1999
From: meh9 at cornell.edu (Matthew Hirsch)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 11:48:21 -0400
Subject: List vs. Tuple
Message-ID: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>

Hi All,

Can someone explain to me why if there is only a string in a list/tuple
they behave differently when looped through.  For example,

>>> list=['abcd']
>>> tuple=('abcd')
>>> for x in list:
...     print x
...
abcd
>>> for x in tuple:
...     print x
...
a
b
c
d
>>>

Shouldn't the second loop also print 'abcd'?

Thanks for your help,
Matt




From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Sun Oct  3 20:59:39 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 00:59:39 GMT
Subject: A Python color syntax file for VIM
References: <slrn7vcmuh.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <slrn7vfv03.v1c.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>

Alan Daniels <daniels at mindspring.com> wrote:
...
>I've always noticed that the default syntax highlighting for
>Python is sort of Spartan, in that it colors strings and
>keywords, and thats about it.

This is intentional.

>This is just a test of better syntax highlighting...

To adapt a quote on threads:

    Syntax highlighting is like salt.  I like salt, you like
    salt, we all like salt, but we eat more pasta than salt.

IMHO, your version highlights too much stuff.

I just noticed that the latest version of Vim does not include my
latest syntax file for Python.  I have included some of your
changes and submitted a new version to Bram.  Hopefully he will
include it in the next version of Vim.  If you can't wait you can
get it here:

    http://adler.dynodns.net/~neil/vim/syntax/python.vim

One of the major changes in this version is that function and
class names are highlighted.  This is consistent with emacs and
IDLE.

There is also support for highlighting numbers but it is disabled
by default.  I feel this hurts readability rather than helping
it.  Why are numbers in code so special that we have to make them
a different color?  Lots of other syntax files do this so I guess
some people must like it.

I don't want to ram my beliefs down everbody's throat though.
Users of python.vim, please vote:

    a) more highlighting
    b) less highlighting
    c) its perfect, don't mess with it

If I get enought votes I will post a summary.  I guess emacs (and
IDLE) users can vote too as they highlight similar to Vim.


    Neil




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Fri Oct 15 09:38:25 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 02:38:25 +1300
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <38072E51.D212ACBB@compaq.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> a buffer object contains a pointer to a base object and a
> separate pointer to a chunk of untyped memory.  If the base object happens
> to stop using that memory, there's no way for the buffer object to know
> that.

That sounds like a description of one way to mis-implement the
buffer interface of an object, rather than a flaw in the buffer
interface concept itself.

Are there any existing objects which have this problem? If so,
they should be fixed.

Greg



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 28 15:01:03 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:01:03 -0400
Subject: Destroying files
In-Reply-To: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net>
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net>
Message-ID: <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov>

 |Is there a utility out there for finding and destroying deleted files from
 |my hard drive?

I'm not sure if this is a genuine question or flame bait.  Could you
clarify your request?  What platform?  What tools do you use to delete?

On a hunch, is this MSWindoze?  And are the "deleted" files you speak of in
that "wastebasket" thing?  If so, realize that you can turn the wastebasket
off (i.e. really delete files when you say to delete them).

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Oct 27 10:05:06 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:05:06 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com> <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>
Message-ID: <38170692.D6D438C3@lemburg.com>

Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> > [...] BTW, is there any way (other than using the registry) to find
> > out the patch level of WinNT, e.g. something like "Windows NT 4.0 with
> > SP4" ? Since this information seems vital on WinNT I think it should
> > be included in the version string.
> 
> You can use the command
> "winmsd /s /f"
> to generate a report containing more than you ever wanted to know about NT.
> Flags: /s - summary report (about 13kB here),
>        or /a - complete system report (about 40kB)
>        /f - system report will be sent to file,
>        or /p - system report will be sent to printer
> 
> The first few lines are:
>   Microsoft Diagnostics Report For \\THOMASNOTEBOOK
>   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>   OS Version Report
>   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Microsoft (R) Windows NT (TM) Workstation
>   Version 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 4) x86 Uniprocessor Free
>   Registered Owner: Thomas Heller, ION-TOF GmbH
>   Product Number: <...deleted...>
> 
> Problems I see:
> a - the report is written to the file <computername>.txt in the current
> directory
>     (hostname.exe will return this name)
> b - the report is written in the language corresponding to the NT version
> c - you may want to start winmsd with the command line
>     "start /wait winmsd /s /f"
>     so that the command returns when winmsd is finished.
> d - winmsd displays a progress box (which you may not want to see?)
> e - I'm not sure if winmsd is included in every version of NT,
>     I could only check several NT4.0 boxes here.

Sounds interesting, but if it's not installed per default I guess
it won't help much.

Perhaps there are still other ways to find out the build and
service pack information...

BTW, what does 'ver /r' output on WinNT ? On Win95 it does provide
some more information than the plain 'ver'.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    65 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Fri Oct 29 18:48:13 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 11:48:13 +1300
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-ID: <c75aep1n5qq.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:

> Hi!
> How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try
> 
> startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
> os.system(startexe)
> 
> but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
> gets the final file written correctly.
> os.popen() seems to make my system unusable 'cos it slurps the generated 
> file und these pictures are HUGE. Any hints are welcome.
> Linux 2.2.11 python 1.5.2
> Ciao
> 	Gregor

Not a Python solution, but the `convert' program from `imagemagick' is
really good at this sort of conversion (ps -> image) and can do all of
the above line in a single step IIRC, so you don't need the pipes.

It's not really an answer, but it might solve your problem.

The home page for imagemagick is:

http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html

--
Tim Evans




From ngps at madcap.dyn.ml.org  Thu Oct 14 09:03:03 1999
From: ngps at madcap.dyn.ml.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 14 Oct 99 13:03:03 GMT
Subject: HTTP or/and HTTPS server in Python!
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013192705.16210D-100000@butler.artech.se>
Message-ID: <3805d487.0@news.cyberway.com.sg>

According to tommy  <tommy at artech.se>:
> I wounder if someone have wrote a HTTP or even a HTTPS server in Python?

HTTP - *HTTPServer in the standard library, Medusa

HTTPS - <ahem> M2Crypto at http://www.post1.com/home/ngps/m2


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com>




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct 12 19:13:15 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:13:15 GMT
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991006021336.B28582@quark.emich.edu> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <99100608480103.00964@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-w8GUxGmIFRSm@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:42:57, Patrick Phalen <python-list at teleo.net> 
wrote:

> :: It's annoying, but I can work around it for said platforms.  *nix, and
> :: everything else are out of luck, since I don't know how to set their 
> :: clock,
> :: but........ That's what modifying the source if for.
> 
> Perhaps I missed something at the beginning of this thread... Why don't
> you just set up ntp server/client on one *nix box and ntp clients on
> the others?

Because we are using Windows NT servers.... Not my choice, but
I have to work with what is given to me.

		- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From x at x.x  Wed Oct 27 21:03:10 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:03:10 -0400
Subject: 'Dynamic' class instances
References: <381629BC.3E47158E@x.x> <38171fe8.14091745@news1.mysolution.com>
Message-ID: <3817A0CE.7322D7BC@x.x>

Ken Power wrote:
> 
> Hmmm. Thank you for the input. I really appreciate it. If you would
> please, in a simple example, how would you, "use a  dictionary for the
> purpose rather than manipulating any namespaces."?
> 
> The part about namespaces I understand (should the new instance be
> global in nature, or localized to a module), using dictionaries in
> your implied sense, I do not understand, please expound.

I can only speculate about what you need to do here, but taking
from your original example:


class spam:
   pass

test = raw_input("class name: ")
test = spam()


What I assume you're trying to do is take whatever that user enters
here, create a variable with that name, and put a new instance of
the spam class in it. So:

class name: happy

would result in a variable named happy that contains a new instance
of spam. But consider what would happen if they entered:

class name: sys

or even

class name: spam

Python wouldn't issue an error in this case; it would simply
happily overwrite the variables sys and spam with an instance
of spam. The latter case could effectively delete the spam
class, replacing it with one of its instances!

A dictionary would be better suited:

d = {}
test = raw_input("class name: ")
d[test] = spam()

Now if they type "happy", you have a variable that you can
access via d["happy"]. If they type "sys", you can use
d["sys"], etc, and there's no chance of the user interfering
with the execution of your module.

Suppose you wanted to do the opposite thing: have the user
enter the name of class which is to be instantiated. So:

class name: Pickler

would create an instance of the class Pickler. A dictionary
would also help here:

d = {"Pickler": Pickler, "Unpickler": Unpickler}
test = raw_input("class name: ")
instance = d[test]()

By listing out the dictionary items by hand, you can
strictly control what the user may and may not access at
your prompt.



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Tue Oct 19 03:50:00 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 07:50:00 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Bug tracking tool in Python
In-Reply-To: <14347.37558.707672.802591@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910190749080.29184-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
> think the Zope folks have an issue tracker written in Python, but I
> haven't played with it.

   It is called Collector, but it is based on their commercial product
ZTable, so sources are not available.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From gary at pgrad.cs.su.oz.au  Thu Oct 28 09:57:12 1999
From: gary at pgrad.cs.su.oz.au (Gary Capell)
Date: 28 Oct 99 13:57:12 GMT
Subject: Learning to program
References: <7v82o9$c31$1@news4.svr.pol.co.uk>
Message-ID: <gary.941119032@cs.su.oz.au>

"Jonathan" <jonathan at meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> Python seems one of the most
>suitable languages to start with. 

Agreed, but see below.

> I think the Lutz et al book is good at
>explaining the language to a newcomer, but I'd also like to find an
>accessible book that explains program design, clarity, debugging, data
>structures, etc in a Python friendly way. Suggestions? ("Programming Pearls"
>and "The Practice of Programming" are just too much book for my friend's
>needs and experience right now.)

Tricky. I don't know of books as good as "PP" or "the P of P" for beginners.
SICP doesn't count as I don't think most folks could teach themselves from
it. Maybe someone needs to write something like "The Little Schemer", but
for Python?







From DASH14 at webtv.net  Thu Oct 14 19:43:49 1999
From: DASH14 at webtv.net (Charmeleon)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:43:49 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Im new Help
Message-ID: <376-38066AB5-93@storefull-255.iap.bryant.webtv.net>

I just downloaded python and got the book by o'relliy. the only thing i
know how do to do is is make a button does anyone know where I can
download games written in python so I can see the sorce.

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From jlp at apti.com  Fri Oct  8 15:27:00 1999
From: jlp at apti.com (James L. Preston)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 19:27:00 GMT
Subject: fatal relocation error when import shared libs on SOlaris 2.6
Message-ID: <37FE4584.17E9B221@apti.com>

I have a new SPARCStation running Solaris 2.6, and I have been
installing the latest versions
of all my favorites (especially Python).
I have gcc-2.95.1, and have installed Python-1.5.2 successfully.

My problem is with extension modules, i.e. PIL and Numeric. If I import
_imaging
or multiarray, for example, I get a message like:
ImportError: ld.so.1: python: fatal: relocation error: file
./multiarraymodule.so: symbol PySequence_Length: referenced symbol not
found

Basically, it appears that the shared  object module (multiarray.so, for
example) is calling functions
from libpython, or somewhere else, but they don't get found.
I am using gnu ld and the configuration scripts for the modules generate
the
link command "ld -G" for generating the .so files.

Should I generate a libpython.so in /usr/local/lib? Or is there some
other problem?

thanks for your help.

jlp





From bsb at north.de  Mon Oct 25 13:03:24 1999
From: bsb at north.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 19:03:24 +0200
Subject: Python/Tkinter _and_ COM on win32 platform?
Message-ID: <87aep7id9f.fsf@baal.winnegan.north.de>

Hello,

sorry to bother you with this one, at present I can't search the
archives.

I have a program written in Python 1.5.2 using sgmllib and the
PmwScrolledText widget to most of it's strength which a friend wants
to incorporate in her Delphi program on Win95.

As expected, porting my program to the win32 platform reduced to
ruling out some minor problems with mixed case filenames. 
Thanks to whoever built the py152 installer.

My problem is, I have no clue on COM programming. As far as I
understand, my Python program has to register as a COM server
providing methods to be called from Delphi.

In the standard libs I found no mention of COM while pythonwin doesn't
support Tkinter.

Maybe /F-bot can point me in the right direction ;-)

I hope there is a way without writing an extension module, that might
become a major problem without a C compiler for the win32 platform.

Thanks
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at north.de - http://www.north.de/~bsb/



From darcy at vex.net  Fri Oct  8 08:48:11 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 8 Oct 1999 12:48:11 GMT
Subject: PyGreSQL difficulties
References: <37FDCD98.EF1D5917@seanet.com>
Message-ID: <7tkp6b$1p72$1@hub.org>

Jim Driese <jdriese at seanet.com> wrote:
> I'm new to Python and am trying to get the PyGreSQL module to work.  I
> am running FreeBSD 3.3-STABLE and installed the Python-1.5.2 package and
> PyGreSQL-2.4 port.  When I ran basics.py interactively (import basics),
> I received the following message:

Just so you know, the whole demo area has not received as much attention
as it should so don't be too surprised if there are some rough edges
here and there.

> cnx = basics.DB(...)

> and received the following error message:

> SyntaxError: invalid syntax

> What am I supposed to enter for "..." and what do I need to do to get
> the sample program to run?

You need to replace the elipsis with whatever args you need to connect to
a database.  See the README for details on the connect() call which takes
the same arguments as the DB class.  The init function in DB just calls
connect with the args given.  For example, if you are opening a database
on the local machine with the name matching your login name then you can
just use the following.

cnx = basics.DB()

More commonly you would name the database here.

cnx = basics.DB('mytest')

and finally, here is a more complicated example.

cnx = basics.DB('mytest', 'db.otherdomain.com', user = 'guest', passwd = 'abc')

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From phil at geog.ubc.ca  Sun Oct 10 10:51:47 1999
From: phil at geog.ubc.ca (Phil Austin)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 07:51:47 -0700
Subject: Pythoning of C++ objects
References: <10715.991010@amv.tsk.ru>
Message-ID: <m3vh8f5kvw.fsf@brant.geog.ubc.ca>

Mikhail Astafiev <mikle at amv.tsk.ru> writes:

> Hi folks,
> 
> There is a C++ data processing class library. I have to write Python
> extension allowing to manipulate C++ objects and call their methods
> from Python. I don't want to use CXX - I want to write something more
> lightweight.
> 

Take a look at Gordon McMillan's C++ classes:

http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/scxx.html

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Austin  (paustin at eos.ubc.ca)
Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences,  Tel: (604) 822-2663
University of British Columbia, B.C.     Fax: (604) 822-6150



From rob at hooft.net  Wed Oct  6 02:43:59 1999
From: rob at hooft.net (Rob W. W. Hooft)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 08:43:59 +0200
Subject: converting between PIL and NumPY
References: <37F9FFA9.657BDDF6@udel.edu>
Message-ID: <m3d7ut0z0w.fsf@devel.no.rwd.dinet>

>>>>> "CB" == Charles Boncelet <boncelet at udel.edu> writes:

 CB> Could someone send me some quick info on converting between a PIL
 CB> object and a NumPy array?

Some time ago, I posted an example for visualization of 2D NumPy arrays
(integer or floating point) using PIL on my starship page as "dis.py".

  http://starship.python.net/crew/hooft/

Regards,

-- 
=====   rob at hooft.net          http://www.xs4all.nl/~hooft/rob/  =====
=====   R&D, Nonius BV, Delft  http://www.nonius.nl/             =====
===== PGPid 0xFA19277D ========================== Use Linux! =========



From the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au  Thu Oct  7 08:01:17 1999
From: the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au (the_wrights)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 22:01:17 +1000
Subject: Nice comments about python at www.perl.com
Message-ID: <KR%K3.9695$lE.35715@ozemail.com.au>

There are some nice comments made about python over at www.perl.com
http://www.perl.com/pub/1999/09/trips/tripreport.html
This is a report on the ORA Open Source conference

Just goes to show how nice the perl guys really are. (And I find them so, in
fact)

No, I haven't cross posted to c.l.p.m.!!!

Cheers

chris





From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 31 19:19:00 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 1 Nov 1999 00:19:00 GMT
Subject: Destroying files
References: <1270962155-6437791@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn81pmvn.1md.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:38:09 -0400, Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com>
wrote:

>> Yes, I'm on Windows 95. No, deleting files does not remove them
>> from your hard drive; They can be recovered by computer forensics
>> experts or by nosey hacks. I'm putting my PC up for sale, and the
>> thought is troubling.
>
>How about opening a file, writing '\000'*1024 (and flushing) 
>until it runs out of disk space, and then deleting it? A wizard 
>might be able to get filenames out of the FAT, but I don't think 
>there's be any data left.
>

writing zeros over the data does not make it unrecoverable.
there are numerous companies that specialise in this kind
of recovery.

you can find lots of discussion about this with dejanews. see
for example http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=375423857 or
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=457401725 .

to make it short, the only sure way to prevent data
recovery is to melt the disk and this is what people that
are serious about the matter usually do...

now, the python file objects seem to be missing a melt() method...
perhaps this can be added for python 2.0? or perhaps a more suitable
name would be self_destruct(), so it would not be tied to any single
method.


  -- erno



From claudius at catlover.com  Sat Oct 30 22:54:59 1999
From: claudius at catlover.com (claudius at catlover.com)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 02:54:59 GMT
Subject: hasattr(obj, attr) overloading?
Message-ID: <7cOS3.4888$Ec1.78104@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>

Is there a way to overload the hasattr method (by default it calls __getattr__
and checks for an exception.  However, my __getattr__ can be a heavy hit that
I'd rather avoid for hasattr calls.)

If not, perhaps a feature for the next minor revision?



From dminor at actcom.co.il  Thu Oct 28 11:12:51 1999
From: dminor at actcom.co.il (root)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:12:51 +0200
Subject: linux install problem
Message-ID: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>

I'm running Mandrake RH 6.1.  I can't find the Modules/Setup file all
the docs tell me to use to configure tkinter.  (my pen-ultimite goal is
to run grail)  I rpm installed python 1.5.2 hoping this would solve
things, no luck.  What can I do, or where can I find installation docs
that address this problem???

David Minor
dminor at actcom.co.il





From duncan at rcp.co.uk  Tue Oct  5 12:18:04 1999
From: duncan at rcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 16:18:04 GMT
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
References: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <8E56B031Cduncanrcpcouk@news.rmplc.co.uk>

mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu (Michael Haggerty) wrote in 
<xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf at cyclone.harvard.edu>:

>Sometimes I would like to write functions with arguments that are
>REQUIRED to be passed as keyword arguments rather than positional
>arguments.  For example, for the following function I might want the
>second parameter to be passed as a keyword parameter:
>
>    f(1, 2) # Exception
>    f(1, variation=2) # OK
>

This is a kludge, but you can avoid accidental positional arguments if you 
stick in a tuple argument:
>>> def f(x, (donotuse,)=(None,), variation=57):
...     print "x=%s variation=%s" % (x, variation)
...
>>> f(1)
x=1 variation=57
>>> f(1,2)
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in f
TypeError: unpack non-sequence
>>> f(1, variation=2)
x=1 variation=2

This doesn't stop malicious use of positional arguments but it will fix the 
case you were asking about.

Wish list #1: A non-kludge way of doing this.
Wish list #2: A way to specify a default argument that cannot be changed 
when called.




From hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Thu Oct 21 04:52:11 1999
From: hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 10:52:11 +0200
Subject: Linux / Numerical Python compilation problems
References: <m3904xgonl.fsf@intergate.bc.ca>
Message-ID: <87vh81w0xw.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

Gerald Gutierrez <gutier at intergate.bc.ca> writes:
You need to have the yorick package, do not know, if there is a 
rpm-package for this. Yorick can also be fetched from llnl site. 
It's normally easy to install from src as it only needs x11.

The error with arrayobject.h is probably that the include directory 
looks for */include/python1.5/Numeric. Or copy arrayobject.h directly
into the source directory of the Graphics package.

HTH,

__Janko

> Hi all.
> 
> I'm trying to compile Numerical Python from LLNL on my Linux-Mandrake
> 6.1 / Intel machine.
> 
> I can compile the Numeric module just fine, however when I try to
> compile the Graphics module so I can use the plotting facilities, I
> get compile errors about missing header files such as arrayobject.h,
> hlevel.h and dispas.h.
> 
> It turns out that some of these header files are from the Numeric
> module (e.g. arrayobject.h). The Numeric module is already installed
> properly but it seems the Graphics module makefile is not include the
> actual "numeric" directory where the header files are. I've included
> the step of the make process where the error occurs below.
> 
> Other header files like hlevel.h don't exist anywhere on my computer.
> 
> I know NumPy can be compiled on a Linux box; I've seen RPMs for
> it. How do I solve these compile problems?
> 
> 
> Thanks for any help anyone can give.
> 
> Please forward replies to gutier at intergate.bc.ca.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> gcc -fpic -I/usr/local/lib/yorick/1.4/h -g -O2
> -I/z/bin/../opt/python-1.5.2/include/python1.5
> -I/z/bin/../opt/python-1.5.2/include/python1.5 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c
> ./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c
> 
> ./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:75: arrayobject.h: No such file or directory
> ./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:76: hlevel.h: No such file or directory
> ./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:78: dispas.h: No such file or directory
> ./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:88: warning: `PyFPE_END_PROTECT' redefined
> /z/bin/../opt/python-1.5.2/include/python1.5/pyfpe.h:169: warning:
> this is the location of the previous definition
> make: *** [gistCmodule.o] Error 1
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
  Institut fuer Meereskunde             phone: 49-431-597 3989
  Dept. Theoretical Oceanography        fax  : 49-431-565876
  Duesternbrooker Weg 20                email: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de
  24105 Kiel, Germany



From cgw at fnal.gov  Thu Oct  7 11:57:54 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 17:57:54 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: List vs. Tuple
In-Reply-To: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>
References: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <14332.49922.193896.867738@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Matthew Hirsch writes:

 > Can someone explain to me why if there is only a string in a list/tuple
 > they behave differently when looped through.  For example,
 > 
 > >>> list=['abcd']
 > >>> tuple=('abcd')

Despite the name, "tuple" is not a tuple.  It's a string.  Parentheses 
are (unfortunately, IMO) overloaded, being both tuple-delimiters and
the standard grouping operator,  e.g. x=(1+3)*5

If you want to make a one-tuple, you need to use the following
slightly strange-looking construction:

  tuple = ('abcd',)




From cors at recercai.com  Wed Oct 13 15:44:40 1999
From: cors at recercai.com (Carlos Ors)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:44:40 +0200
Subject: Executing a jpython script in another process
Message-ID: <38048d23.0@sahara.cablecat.com>

I'm working with Jpython 1.1 beta 3
I'm interested in executing a jpython script in a new process so that a
System.exit(0) didn't close the main aplication.

I have a instance of PythonInterpreter named theInterp.
I do:
       PythonInterpreter theInterp= new PythonInterpreter()

      theInterp.exec("<my script code>")

I want to call the exec method making a new process and that the main
process
get the results of the execution.










From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Oct 13 23:32:28 1999
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 20:32:28 -0700
Subject: Looping redux. was: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <slrn80ab5q.27c.thantos@brimstone.mecha>
Message-ID: <38054ECC.C0505DA6@Lugoj.Com>

Alexander Williams wrote:
> Python is designed to minimize the syntactic sugar poured in the
> gas-tank of your coding; "do ... while" truly is only a syntactic
> abstraction for an initialized while loop
[...]
> Its not that
> much more typing, the test is very clearly marked at the top of the
> structure, and we have the benefit of a single, consistant means of
> presenting the loop rather than thirteen varying ones.

Every control structure is mere syntactical sugar for the elegantly simple
"if <cond> goto <label>" and "goto <label>" control statements. And in a
heartbeat I could get by with the use of the bare "if" form by doing "if
true goto <label>" where needed.

Therefore, I propose the following:

thefuture: if version == python2 goto thefuture

So there.



From donn at oz.net  Wed Oct 20 23:27:38 1999
From: donn at oz.net (Donn Cave)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 03:27:38 GMT
Subject: Any DNS Modules?
References: <7ul8vb$fne$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <7uifuv$g1d$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <5l1zar59v4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7um17a$ahu$0@216.39.151.169>

Quoth amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Amit Patel):
|  Guido van Rossum  <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
|| The DNS package is listed on the Python website (follow the Modules
|| link in the top bar).  Does nobody use that?  Searching python.org
|| for DNS would also have brought this up.
|| 
|
| I've looked at it but I never figured out how to use it.  :-( If I
| knew the DNS protocol (things like "MF", "WKS", "MX", "AXFR", ...) I
| would probably be able to figure out what the DNS package does, but I
| don't really know much about DNS -- all I want to do is turn hostnames
| into IP addresses and IP addresses into hostnames.  All this stuff
| about transfer functions and classes and types and building records is
| just too much for me.  (I currently use socket.* functions for that
| but I wanted something asynchronous.. so that's why I looked at the
| DNS package.)

Asynchronous, hm.  Well, is it OK to fork?  Try this, maybe ---

	Donn Cave, donn at oz.net
------------------------------
import pickle
import posix
import socket
import sys
import traceback

class Async:
	def __init__(self):
		pass
	def startquery(self, param, func):
		self.status = None
		self.rfd, self.wfd = posix.pipe()
		self.pid = posix.fork()
		if self.pid:
			posix.close(self.wfd)
		else:
			posix.close(self.rfd)
			self.perform(func, param)
	def checkquery(self):
		if self.status is None:
			p, s = posix.waitpid(self.pid, posix.WNOHANG)
			if p == self.pid:
				self.status = (s >> 8) & 0x7f
				if self.status == 0:
					s = posix.read(self.rfd, 8192)
					self.status, self.data = pickle.loads(s)
			else:
				return 0
		return 1
	def perform(self, func, param):
		try:
			data = apply(func, param)
			status = 0
		except:
			t, v, b = sys.exc_info()
			data = (t, v, traceback.format_exception(t, v, b))
			status = -1
		s = pickle.dumps((status, data))
		posix.write(self.wfd, s)
		sys.exit(0)
		posix._exit(101)

import time
a = Async()
a.startquery((sys.argv[1],), socket.gethostbyaddr)
while 1:
	x = a.checkquery()
	print x, repr(a.status)
	if x:
		break
	time.sleep(1.0)
if a.status < 0:
	et, ev, tb = a.data
	for ln in tb:
		sys.stderr.write(ln)
	raise et, ev
else:
	print repr(a.data)



From scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx  Thu Oct  7 15:33:29 1999
From: scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 19:33:29 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn7vpt2b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl>

Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
> Actually viruses in Tierra evolve that do exactly that. At least, they
> call the main copying subroutine of the host's sequence. Tierra is 
> mentioned earlier in this thread. My own non-released Tierra-like
> system, Cielo, does not evolve such viruses, however; probably because
> I didn't code a 'call' and 'ret' opcode. I do see weird code reuse
> and bizarre assembler language trickery; I need to study these critters
> that evolved in this program I wrote to figure out why the heck they
> do whatever they do. Evolved doubly nested loops (with exit conditions, of
> course!) from scratch. Little or no junk 'DNA' appears, because 
> construction materials are a scarce resource. If it's not, lots of junk
> does appear and I tend to get mass extinctions due to overcrowding and
> gluttony. :)

Wat IS dit? Klinkt ongelooflijk interessant. Heb je daar URLs over? :-)

-- 
Remco Gerlich,  scarblac at pino.selwerd.cx
  Murphy's Rules, "Cutting mistakes":
   In a thirty minute Runequest battle (Chaosium) involving 6000 armored,
   experienced warriors using Great Axes, more than 150 men will
   decapitate themselves and another 600 will chop off their own arms or
   legs.



From geojempty at aol.com  Fri Oct 15 11:20:51 1999
From: geojempty at aol.com (GeoJempty)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 15:20:51 GMT
Subject: Nested if's
Message-ID: <19991015112051.22237.00000571@ng-fr1.aol.com>

I'm brand new to Python, though I chose it for my CGI programming because of
it's similarity to the language I use at my day-job: the Progress 4GL

Enough for intros.  I'm having a problem nesting if statements.  I'm defining a
function, and my syntax checks fine, until I try the following:

if digit > 0:
  if digit = 5:
    variable = variable + whatever

In the context of a CGI program this causes an Internal server error,
"premature end of script headers".  I encountered this before when I forgot the
colon after my if statement, but I don't understand it here -- the only
processing I intend to do if digit > 0 are further conditional tests.

Thanks in advance for your help.  If that just means that you will point me to
the appropriate place in the online documentation, that will be appreciated (I
own both Learning and Programming Python)



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Wed Oct  6 01:17:24 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 05:17:24 GMT
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vkr0c.15r.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
References: <slrn7vkr0c.15r.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <199910060516.GAA03225@axil.hvision.nl>

On 5 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:03:01 GMT, Hans Nowak wrote:
> >On 5 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:
> 
> >> I just downloaded the DOS version of Python from Hans Nowak's page.
> >> Probalm is, there don't seem to be any docs or modules included -- it's
> >> just the .exe file.  Where do I get the .py modules which are supposed
> >> to go with it, and where do I install them?
> 
> >Looks like a link is missing on my page. Try
> >http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/python-1.5-lib.arj
> 
> Great.  I'll do that right away, if I can find an .arj extractor.
> Speaking of which, is there any particular reason why you used .zip for
> the executable and .arj for the (required) libraries?

That's more for hysterical raisins; I wrote a script which packs a 
directory and all its subdirectories in an arj file; I did not manage 
to do so for zip files (back then, that is :).

> Okay, this will clearly take some more work.  It seems that the arj
> program doesn't support long file names, but the arj archive includes
> them.  (How'd you manage that?)

Oh it does, if you have the right version. Here's one:

http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/Arj.exe

I believe this link *is* on my site somewhere. :-)

> >> Also, has someone compiled numPy for DOS?
> 
> >I tried to, but for some reason it didn't go well. Python-DX does a few
> >NumPy modules included; nothing spectacular though.
> 
> Actually, 'array' is a great addition, and I'll be using it.  I can
> simulate all of the others and just let them run overnight :).
> 
> Thanks a lot, Hans.

I don't really maintain the DOS version anymore, but I'll still try 
to help and answer questions if I can.

--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Python Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/
The Purple Kookaburra Forum: http://www.delphi.com/kookaburra/



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct  4 21:43:40 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 21:43:40 -0400
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
In-Reply-To: <37F8F904.C4261EC8@callware.com>
Message-ID: <000401bf0ed3$0cd77b80$4da2143f@tim>

[Ivan Van Laningham]
> This makes me wonder--why is there no canonical "dict()" built in
> function?

Let's start a rumor:  because Guido doesn't like dicts, and is trying to
remove them from the language <wink>.

> We have "long()", "list()" and so on, but nothing like them
> for dictionaries.  They all know what to do when fed improper input.
>
> Probably, everyone is going to tell me it's too complex an issue, and
> this is of course true to a degree.  Nonetheless, there ought to be a
> straightforward enough way to construct a dictionary from a list, at the
> very least, that it could be built in.

Not me!  It's an easy issue.  It should work on sequences, like so:

dict(seq)
    acts like
def dict(seq):
    i = 0
    d = {}
    while 1:
        try:
            key = seq[i]
        except IndexError:
            break
        try:
            value = seq[i+1]
        except IndexError:
            raise ValueError("dict(seq): seq must have even length")
        d[key] = value
        i = i+2
    return d

dict(seq1, seq2)
    acts like
def(seq1, seq2):
    i = 0
    d = {}
    while 1:
        try:
            key = seq1[i]
        except IndexError:
            break
        try:
            value = seq2[i]
        except IndexError:
            raise ValueError("dict(seq1, seq2): seq2 must be at least "
                             "as long as seq1")
        d[key] = value
        i = i+1
    return d

The bad news is that, despite that these are the correct <wink> definitions,
they have little in common with the suggestions anyone else in sympathy with
this gave.

For example, the original poster wanted None-padding if seq1 and seq2 are of
different lengths, while Greg wanted to raise an exception in that case.
The one above raises an error only if the second sequence is too short (you
can't always ask a sequence for its length in advance, and generating more
from seq2 after seq1 ends-- just to make sure it doesn't have more
elements --is potentially destructive to little good end).

The first version also takes a flat list rather than a list of 2-tuples.
That means it's not an inverse of dict.items(), but I don't care -- anyone
who has slung Perl knows that making a dict from a flat list is 10x more
useful 100x more often (as in the common Perl idiom of making a hash from
the result of a string split).

Implicit in these definitions is also that, in the case of duplicate keys,
"the rightmost one wins".  People *could* reasonably want to raise an error
in that case, or let some other key win, or make a list of all the values
each key maps to.

If no two people can agree on what the functions should do, I'm afraid
that's a good reason not to bless any of them.

otoh-it's-also-a-good-reason-for-guido-to-pick-one-and-say-"live-with-
    it"-to-everyone-else<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From fdrake at acm.org  Tue Oct 19 11:50:57 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:50:57 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
In-Reply-To: <m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net>
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
	<m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net>
Message-ID: <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Les Schaffer writes:
 > ahhh, okay. hadnt thought about that one. i usually dont write stuff
 > that needs that kinda thing. on the other hand, what would be wrong
 > with coding -v3 (verbose level 3)? seems easier to me somehow...

Les,
  There's certainly nothing wrong with that, except that simply -v for 
verbose becomes impossible.  Using yet another option seems like
overkill from a UI perspective (too many options to explain).

 > wanted to hear what they were. still, i personally will veer towards
 > the getargs or similar py modules for my own stuff....

  Sounds quite reasonable to me!


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From achrist at easystreet.com  Fri Oct 15 12:14:36 1999
From: achrist at easystreet.com (Al Christians)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:14:36 -0700
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp> <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> <7u5da5$pp2$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <7u5l55$boh$1@nntp4.atl.mindspring.net> <38067944.D6558D95@bruer.org>
Message-ID: <380752EC.3C105EAC@easystreet.com>

If you are doing this enough to take efficiency seriously, go to
deja.com and look at the thread we had on 

	"string.join() vs % and + operators"

about six months ago.  There were some examples posted by the experts,
along with some timings, etc.  Basically the same subject as this
thread.


Al

Jim Bruer wrote:
> 
> Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> > In article <7u5da5$pp2$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> > Donn Cave  <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> > >Quoth Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com>:
> > >| Aahz Maruch:
> > >[re how to insert comma delimiters]
> > >
> > >|> delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
> > >|>
> > >|> That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
> > >|> you'll come across better ways.
> > >|
> > >| Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has (already finished
> > >| Learning python, and I'm waiting for Programming TkInter with Python now),
> > >| but I don't know a better way than this?
> > >
> > >He may have gauged better than I the original poster's zeal for
> > >discovering things on his own, but I was surprised no one mentioned
> > >string.join'ing a list of fields in one step.  It's what I consider
> > >the normal approach to this common task.  Easier on the eyes, probably
> > >faster if there are more than a couple of fields.
> >
> > Oh, I agree -- but the original poster didn't say anything about a list
> > of fields....
> > --
> 
> Thank you all for your suggestions. I'm impressed with Python and now this
> friendly, helpful group.
> I will ultimately use my program to delimit files of up to 1.0 million records,
> each line composed of 1560 characters to be delimited into 230 fields.



From thantos at chancel.org  Thu Oct 21 18:18:48 1999
From: thantos at chancel.org (Alexander Williams)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 22:18:48 GMT
Subject: Language detection module?
References: <380F1AE7.3466A879@darwin.in-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <slrn80v4cb.49r.thantos@chancel.org>

On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:53:43 +0200, Dinu C. Gherman
<gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de> wrote:

>is there anything already like a function that I can pass an
>arbitrary string and it will tell me wether it is written in
>English, French, German, etc.? 

The method you use below is part of what I call the 'fast, dumb and
happy' method of algorithms.  :)  (No shame there, I use it all the
time.)  It takes careful crafting, but its algorithmically simple.  If
you want something a bit more robust ...

Take a 2 - 6 character sliding window, then snip the file into bits.
Don't worry about capitalization or punctuation, take the document
raw.  Extract these Ngrams and create a sort of vector of them, each
Ngram valued with its occurances.  Repeat for a large corpus of
documents in different languages.  Now, begin clustering the documents
based on the nearness of other documents in Ngrammatic space.  You'll
find all the documents of a given language tend to hang together (not
the least reason for which is that they tend to use the same phrases
other languages don't).  As a side effect, you'll likely cluster
documents about similar subjects together, but don't mind that right
now.  :)

-- 
Alexander Williams (thantos at gw.total-web.net)
"In the end ... Oblivion Always Wins."



From fisherar at colorado.edu  Mon Oct  4 17:05:34 1999
From: fisherar at colorado.edu (Drew Fisher)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 15:05:34 -0600
Subject: ping script
References: <7t699k$3p1m$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>
Message-ID: <37F9169E.F909F20A@colorado.edu>

Sean wrote:
> 
> I am a newbie to python. Any ideas on how to create a script to ping a class
> c block and maybe resolve the names to DNS.
> 
>                     Thanks

What if you were to try this?  I'm kinda new to Python myself, so please
excuse any errors :)
import os
import socket

BASEIP = '100.100.100.'
for i in range (255):
	FULLIP = BASEIP + str(i)
	if (os.system ('ping ' + FULLIP) == 0):
		socket.gethostbyaddr (FULLIP)



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Oct 25 07:19:19 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 13:19:19 +0200
Subject: Python on Minix
References: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023175216.1863B-100000@general4.asu.edu>
Message-ID: <p6qk8obk7rc.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

sri at asu.edu writes:

> i just tried 'CC=cc AR=... ./configure' and i still
> get error messages such as 'here file: not found' and
> 'grep: bad regular expression' and 'regex: nexted +?-
> regular expression'. so maybe the grep and sed on
> minix2.0.0 are at fault.

'here file' refers to a (standard) shell feature of inline files;
these are constructs like

cat > conftest.$ac_ext <<EOF
...
EOF

inside configure. It looks like your shell does not properly support
these essentially features. Combined with the problems you see with
grep and sed, it seems you cannot readily run configure on Minix.

It is possible to compile Python without running configure, although
it requires a lot of manual work. Basically, you need to fill-out all
*.in files manually. These files are

config.h
Makefile
Objects/Makefile
Parser/Makefile
Python/Makefile
Modules/Makefile.pre
Modules/Setup.thread

Copy the corresponding .in file to the generated file, then replace
all things autoconf would have replaced. In config.h, #define all
features that you think Minix supports. In the Makefiles, replace all
@XXX@ constructs.

It looks like configure used to run on Minix at some time in the past;
perhaps recent autoconf versions have broken that support. So if you
can get an old copy of autoconf, perhaps you succeed in re-generating
configure from configure.in (but then, configure.in claims it needs at
least autoconf 2.0).

> the compelling reasons is that i have only minix installed on
> my laptop, and even minix makes it kinda slow!

There are, potentially, two alternatives: If you install a minimal
Linux version, or even better and old Linux version (say, with an 1.2
kernel), I'd guess it won't behave worse than Minix.

In addition, it is possible that older Python releases build on Minix
out-of-the-box. It is probably hard to find out which Python release
last worked on Minix.

Regards,
Martin




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 13 09:55:38 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:55:38 +0200
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com> <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de> <38043F91.F3F36D5A@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <006601bf1582$a22f3dc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> wrote:
> Is the problem in Tk itself, or in Tkinter?
> Is anyone trying to fix it, or is nobody
> interested in supporting Tk on the Mac?

afaik, Scriptics doesn't support Tk on Mac at
this time.  (maybe the Tclers can verify this?)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From viktor at dtek.chalmers.se  Wed Oct 20 05:34:02 1999
From: viktor at dtek.chalmers.se (Viktor Fougstedt)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 09:34:02 GMT
Subject: Scrolling Regions within a Frame.
References: <0Z5P3.17659$Bf6.222555@pm02news>
Message-ID: <7uk2aa$a21$1@nyheter.chalmers.se>

"Dave Rose" <dave.rose at wcom.com> writes:

>I am trying to create a scroll bar for a frame that contains many frames
>that contain many buttons.  I have not found any way to encapsulate the
>frames to make them scroll.

[Offtopic! (discusses user interface design) ]

Just a small piece of advice - if what you are creating is a user
interface (like a dialog), which your description indicates it might
be, having a scrollbar inside the dialog is probably not a good
idea. Scrolled dialogs are among the least good ways to design a user
interface around.

If it is a dialog you're creating, try to think of another way of
organizing the information. Have a look at
http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm for other examples of what not to
do. :-) They have a section of positive comments as well. Well worth a
read for anyone creating user interfaces.

Just my $.02

/Viktor...


-- 
--|     Viktor Fougstedt, system administrator at dtek.chalmers.se     |--
--|                http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~viktor/                |--
--| ...soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. /Tom Lehrer |--



From slunk at animail.net  Thu Oct  7 00:42:33 1999
From: slunk at animail.net (Cm)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 04:42:33 GMT
Subject: Python Beginner Question!!!
Message-ID: <rvo96j9b8c18@corp.supernews.com>

I have never had any experience programming period, but I am really anxious to 
learn.  I bought the book, O'Reilly's "Programming Python", and began to read 
it, but I had no clue what was going on.  Does anybody have a suggestion for a 
book about beginning programming for someone who knows nothing about it.  I 
need any help I can get.

Thank You,
Collin



From godzilla at netmeg.net  Mon Oct 11 09:43:00 1999
From: godzilla at netmeg.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:43:00 GMT
Subject: how to declare array of class instances
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991011173819.25251A-100000@giasbma>
Message-ID: <m2yadaj8r6.fsf@netmeg.net>

> however, all instances of trial as arr[0-n] seem to have the same
> values of local variables in the class.  i.e arr[0].tmp==arr[n].tmp

?????

#!/usr/bin/python

class trial:
    tmp=0
    def func(self,x):
	self.tmp=x
	    

arr=[]
for i in range(0,5):
    inst=trial()   #instance of trial class
    arr.append(inst)
    arr[i].func(i)

for i in range(0,5):
    print 'arr[%d].tmp = %d'%(i,arr[i].tmp)




(gustav)~/: python arrayClass.py
arr[0].tmp = 0
arr[1].tmp = 1
arr[2].tmp = 2
arr[3].tmp = 3
arr[4].tmp = 4



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 18 09:41:39 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:41:39 +0100
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
In-Reply-To: <zWaO3.2925$lv2.105561@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <002701bf196e$81144730$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> I would like to check for the existance of a file before I attempt an open
> and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way to do this.  I would like
> to tell the user that the file he specified doesn't exist.  Is there a way
> to do this or do I need to catch the exception and deal with it that way?

What's wrong with:

try:
	f=open("afile", "r")
except IOError, val:
	print "Could not read file: " + val[1]

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct 14 19:10:17 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 23:10:17 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <1272252635-69603208@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <7u5nsp$poc$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
> If Python were Puritan, you wouldn't have for loops. Any loop 
> can be coded as
[snip]
> The fact that "for" exists and "while" takes a condition (and 
> both take an "else" clause) is symptomatic of the 
> insidious Dutch tendency to permissiveness.

Which is why those Mayflower people left the Netherlands for North
America way back when. Too permissive. :) 

it's-okay-to-call-us-insidious-ly yours,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 19 15:22:30 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 19:22:30 GMT
Subject: fastest string building?
References: <7uieee$nsa$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7uigdm$2jd$1@nntp5.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <7uieee$nsa$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
Preston Landers  <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> I was recently wondering what the fastest way to work with strings
>was.  For instance, let's say I have a string, and I want to add some
>things to the end, or possibly insert them in the middle.  If I were to
>repeat that thousands or hundreds of thousands of times, what would be
>the most efficient syntax to do it?
>
>To my knowledge, there are basically three ways to do it.
>
>1: s = part1 + part2 + part3 + ... partn
>
>2: s = string.join([part1, part2, partn], "")
>
>3: s = "%s%s%s%s" % (part1, part2, part3, part4)
>
>Am I missing anything?

cStringIO

>Just now, however, I decided to do a more indepth test with the Python
>profiler.  The results were surprising: method #1 above was fastest,
>followed closely by #3, and #2 lagged way back.  So, according to this
>test, s = part1 + part2 + partn seems to be the fastest way to build a
>string out of parts.

That's probably true.  The tricky part is that "%" gives you a lot of
flexibility and simplicity for building strings, so it's almost always
better if you have a moderately complex string to build.

Problem is this: most of the time when speed becomes an issue, you're
building strings in loops.  Once a loop is involved, the copying
overhead of "s=s+part" becomes non-trivial.  At that point, either
string.join() or cStringIO become the best solution.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From cgw at fnal.gov  Tue Oct  5 05:06:04 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 09:06:04 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Michael Vanier writes:

 > With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
 > person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
 > marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs for
 > a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)

Do you know anything about so-called "Junk DNA"?  To me, Guido's quote
seems like a perfectly apt analogy for what one of my former
co-workers liked to call "surgical code adhesions".  It's not like
he's dropping some pointless reference to some pie-in-the-sky
technology like DNA-based computing.  It's simply an analogy drawn
from outside the world of computer science, which shows that somehow,
in addition to writing and maintaining Python and other software, and
answering numerous silly and not-so-silly questions on this newsgroup,
he manages to stay well-informed about a wide variety of subjects.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 09:06:54 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:06:54 +0200
Subject: sys.exit() doesn't exit
References: <19991019145321.A46095201@vislab.epa.gov> <5l7lkj5af1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <19991020084220.A46195476@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <005301bf1afb$fc3a35d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  |Alternatively, the C code could call PyErr_Print(), which will call
>  |exit() when it sees SystemExit.
> 
> Thanks.  That was the advice I needed.
> 
> The wrapped C code doesn't know about Python so propagating exceptions
> through it really isn't practical.  I guess the best I can do is propagate
> them across it.
> 
> Fortunately, in this particular C wrapper, there are only two C entry
> points inside which a Python callback might be invoked, so I can use
> static-wrapper-variable-hackery to record when exceptions occur, and return
> NULL in the appropriate spots to the controlling Python.  It's not pretty,
> but it works.
> 
> With Python using return values to signal exceptions, I guess this is this
> is the best I can do.

hint: use PyErr_Occurred() to figure out
if an error occurred down below...

    ...
    
    PyErr_Clear(); /* to be on the safe side */

    mylibrarydosomething(...)
    
    if (PyErr_Occurred())
        return NULL; /* flag the python exception */

    return Py_BuildValue(...)

</F>

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




From glen at ranma.interq.or.jp  Mon Oct  4 05:50:31 1999
From: glen at ranma.interq.or.jp (Glen Malley)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 18:50:31 +0900
Subject: ctsybase?
Message-ID: <37f87867@news.interq.or.jp>

Has anyone here used the ctsybase module before?
The author's email listed on the webpage no longer
works, and there is pretty much no documentation.

It's so far the only module I've been able to get
working, and I'd like to use it....but I have no idea
about some aspects of the module.




From nathan at islanddata.com  Fri Oct 15 20:33:55 1999
From: nathan at islanddata.com (Nathan Clegg)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:33:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: re question
In-Reply-To: <slrn80evol.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991015173355.nathan@islanddata.com>

On 15-Oct-99 Cliff Crawford wrote:
> Pada Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:26:50 -0700, Max M. Stalnaker bilang:
>>>> str=r"blah blah blah %%%important stuff to be extracted%%%more
>>>> useless junk"
>>>> import re
>>>> group=re.search(r"%%%(.+)%%%", str)
>>>> group.groups()
> ('important stuff to be extracted',)


This MUST be a minimalistic search for this to work, or the search will
eat up everything between the *first* instance of %%% and the *last*,
ignoring all in-between.


----------------------------------
Nathan Clegg
 nathan at islanddata.com





From gubitz at netcologne.de  Thu Oct 14 16:45:25 1999
From: gubitz at netcologne.de (gubitz at netcologne.de)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:45:25 +0200
Subject: Basics
References: <939924569.767039@neptune.uniserve.ca>
Message-ID: <5df5u7.m63.ln@garfield.suelz>

Fergus Hayman <shayman at uniserve.com> wrote:
> Hi  Not sure how to declare a string

>     print " Hello , what is your name"
>     name = raw_input()
>     Eric
>     print " Hello" , name
>     if name = =Eric:                # This line is wrong , not sure of
      if name == "Eric":	
> string assignment ?
>             print " Your a bloke"
>     else:
>             print " Are you kidding"

>  Thanks






From hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Sat Oct  2 05:16:35 1999
From: hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 02 Oct 1999 11:16:35 +0200
Subject: (newbie) Array of dictionaries
References: <krH1N9kfUJRE66saKRbldgciktYP@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <87k8p686mk.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

Perhaps I do not understand right, or you have a syntax problem in
your tests.

>>> a=[]
>>> a.append({'key1':'hello','key2':' world'})
>>> a.append({'key1':'another ','key2':'world'})
>>> a[0]['key1']
'hello'
>>> a[1]['key1']
'another '
>>> 

So this looks equivilant to 'dict[n][<key>]', but is this what you
want?

HTH

__Janko
-- 
  Institut fuer Meereskunde             phone: 49-431-597 3989
  Dept. Theoretical Oceanography        fax  : 49-431-565876
  Duesternbrooker Weg 20                email: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de
  24105 Kiel, Germany



From fdrake at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct 28 14:09:01 1999
From: fdrake at cnri.reston.va.us (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:09:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: linux install problem
In-Reply-To: <19991028114850.A11323@better.net>
References: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>
	<19991028114850.A11323@better.net>
Message-ID: <14360.37181.906077.809584@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

David Minor wrote:
 > I'm running Mandrake RH 6.1.  I can't find the Modules/Setup file all
 > the docs tell me to use to configure tkinter.  (my pen-ultimite goal is
 > to run grail)  I rpm installed python 1.5.2 hoping this would solve

William Park writes:
 > If I remember, 'Setup' is copied from 'Setup.in'.  I think it's in the
 > README or INSTALL somewhere.  When I ran Grail some time ago on 486SX
 > with 16Meg RAM, but gave up because it was too slow.

  Grail is dog slow compared to other browsers, but that's a different 
problem from what David is seeing.
  David:  You need to make sure that Tkinter is installed.  Mandrake
packages it as "tkinter-..." if I recall correctly; you should be able 
to locate it on the mandrake CD-ROM or an ftp site, and install it
using "rpm -Uvh" (or something similar).


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at cnri.reston.va.us>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Wed Oct 27 05:16:43 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 19:16:43 +1000
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <001401bf2058$ff152550$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>; from Adrian Eyre on Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 09:55:19AM +0100
References: <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <001401bf2058$ff152550$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <19991027191643.A509@Ridcully.home>

On Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 09:55:19AM +0100, Adrian Eyre wrote:
> BTW: You can add in detection for Minix as well. I should be able
> to test this.
> 
> The canonical way is to check for the presence of the file:
> 
> /usr/include/minix/config.h

When Marc originally proposed this module, I thought of doing the Linux
detect this way, but after a bit of thinking one realises that it won't be
generic enough. Imagine that you create a production Linux box that is only
meant to run scripts and pre-compiled programs. Since you wouldn't have (or
be allowed to) compile programs, there is no reason for the header files to
exist on that machine. I'm not sure how real-world this type of situation
is, but I nearly have it in practice on my laptop at the moment (I've
stripped out absolutely everything I don't need to do my work while
travelling about the city).

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From jima at aspectdv.com  Mon Oct 25 18:11:44 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:11:44 -0700
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
In-Reply-To: <5laepf5ajd.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
 <199910191923.MAA00522@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <199910252206.PAA00866@hermes.aspectdv.com>

At 05:02 PM 10/19/99 -0400, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> writes:
>
>> At 07:03 PM 10/19/99 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>> >hey, what makes you think len(obj) is less object-
>> >oriented than obj.len() ?  it's just syntax, you know.
>> 
>> But it IS less consistent syntax with not much advantage
>> ("del" is a different story).  So it would be very nice if
>> I could write aList.len() if I prefer that to len(aList).
>
>I think of len() and other builtin functions as a special operators,
>like + or ~ or not.  Using len(x) tells the reader more than using
>x.len() -- len(x) is guaranteed to return an int and enforces that x
>is a sequence; x.len() on the other hand cannot make such a guarantee:
>
>class MyObject:
>   def len(self): return "Spanish Inquisition"

Good points, certainly.  I guess my two-cents worth would be
this: I think that over the next few years there will be many
converts to Python coming from the Java camp.  Such converts
will expect to find functionality by seeing what methods are
associated with an object/class of interest.  I think it would be good
to err on the side of supporting a method over a function unless
there is a very compelling reason for the contrary.  I think this
goes beyond the concern of making it as easy as possible
to convert Java programmers to Python.  I think the same thing
applies to CP4E.  I don't know of any formal studies to support
this but it seems to me that it should be easier to learn a
programming language if one could as much as is reasonable
discover new functionality piece by piece through some simple
pattern such as "find an object/class of interest and look at
its methods to get a feel for its capabilities."   Happily, much
of Python fits this mold already.  For me, the more the better --
although I wouldn't want to trade myList[index] for 
myList.getItem(index).   ;-)

Jim



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



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Tue Oct  5 07:45:01 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 07:45:01 -0400
Subject: system resource modules? (Win32, Irix)
In-Reply-To: <37E919EB.C4E4E037@digitalanvil.com>
References: <37E919EB.C4E4E037@digitalanvil.com>
Message-ID: <19991005074501.A1327597@vislab.epa.gov>

Sean Dunn:
 |Are there any pre-coded system resource modules for Win32 and/or Irix?
 |I have looked everywhere, and have started coding my own - but I want to
 |avoid RTW...
 |
 |Basically, I need max physical memory, free physical memory, total
 |virtual, free virtual... so far.
 |And any other goodies that are cross-platform.

     Don't know whether there are any in the python library, but in the
absense of any, look at ulimit (on UNIX/IRIX anyway):

>>> import os
>>> print os.popen('ulimit -m').read()
524288
>>> print os.popen('ulimit -f').read()
unlimited

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com




From tjs at longford.cs.monash.edu.au  Tue Oct 12 23:59:42 1999
From: tjs at longford.cs.monash.edu.au (Toby J Sargeant)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:59:42 +1000
Subject: problem with python 1.5.2 compiled with -DPy_DEBUG
Message-ID: <19991013135942.A4258@longford.cs.monash.edu.au>

Am I just doing something stupid?

I untarred the python 1.5.2 sources, and:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/contrib/python-debug --with-threads
make OPT='-DPy_DEBUG -ggdb3'

[toby at ephedra Python-1.5.2]$ ./python Lib/test/test_re.py
Adding parser accelerators ...
Done.
Running tests on re.search and re.match
Running tests on re.sub
Running tests on symbolic references
Running tests on re.subn
Running tests on re.split
Running tests on re.findall
Running tests on re.match
Running tests on re.escape
Pickling a RegexObject instance
Running re_tests test suite
Fatal Python error: UNREF invalid object
Aborted (core dumped)

This happens with or without --with-threads

Stack trace follows:

#3  0x8072c43 in Py_FatalError (msg=0x80a027b "UNREF invalid object")
    at pythonrun.c:1036
#4  0x80524f1 in _Py_ForgetReference (op=0x8125a88) at object.c:658
#5  0x8052534 in _Py_Dealloc (op=0x8125a88) at object.c:680
#6  0x805d729 in eval_code2 (co=0x8139260, globals=0x8135728, locals=0x0, 
    args=0x80f0398, argcount=1, kws=0x80f039c, kwcount=0, defs=0x80da4e4, 
    defcount=1, owner=0x0) at ceval.c:1656
#7  0x805d505 in eval_code2 (co=0x8109150, globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8, args=0x0, argcount=0, kws=0x0, kwcount=0, defs=0x0, 
    defcount=0, owner=0x0) at ceval.c:1612
#8  0x805965e in PyEval_EvalCode (co=0x8109150, globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at ceval.c:324
#9  0x8072836 in run_node (n=0x80e5f88, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py", globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at pythonrun.c:887
#10 0x80727e5 in run_err_node (n=0x80e5f88, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py", globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at pythonrun.c:872
#11 0x80727af in PyRun_File (fp=0x80c4b08, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py", start=257, globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at pythonrun.c:860
#12 0x8071cfa in PyRun_SimpleFile (fp=0x80c4b08, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py") at pythonrun.c:570
#13 0x807189f in PyRun_AnyFile (fp=0x80c4b08, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py") at pythonrun.c:451
#14 0x804fb9c in Py_Main (argc=2, argv=0xbffffca4) at main.c:287
#15 0x804f5f0 in main (argc=2, argv=0xbffffca4) at python.c:12




From darrell at dorb.com  Tue Oct 26 12:37:51 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:37:51 -0400
Subject: An article on Python in practice
References: <19991026133227.A601@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <02b301bf1fd0$730be040$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

Had to build gvim with python support for NT
If there's interest I can post it somewhere.

--Darrell
----- Original Message -----
From: Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolmt at smart.net.au>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 11:32 PM
Subject: An article on Python in practice


> Just saw this article over at LinuxPlanet:
> http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/1132/1/
>
> A good example of somebody using Python to solve a practical "real world"
> problem and written in a style accesible to all.
>
> Short precis for those with slow connections: Somebody using Python to
> extract information from a large database on another web site in order to
> put a restricted set of this information on his own website. Also includes
> a little example of using Python as a scripting language in vim.
>
> Probably worth having around as an advocacy sort of article (good to show
> to people to convince them that Python is useful). I *do* realise I'm
> preaching to the choir here, but just in case ... :-)
>
> BTW, don't be put of by the "LinuxPlanet" bit --- it's not a Linux
> specific article.
>
> Cheers,
> Malcolm Tredinnick
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 09:38:24 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 13:38:24 GMT
Subject: Dupes
References: <002e01bf10c7$7a1b77a0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <00c301bf10c9$3afa0d00$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Adrian Eyre <a.eyre at optichrome.com> wrote:
> Now that the mailing list has been moved, I'm getting dupes of every
> message. Is everyone expected to unsubscribe from the old list?
> Shouldn't this have been done automatically?

http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=533686707

    "some folks who were on the CWI lists may
    see a few duplicates for the next few hours
    -- sorry about that!"

</F>




From guy at mail.com  Thu Oct 28 15:16:09 1999
From: guy at mail.com (guy at mail.com)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 19:16:09 GMT
Subject: You must read this! It's your chance.
Message-ID: <75M25889.Y9CCF24J@mail.com>

Hey there,

First you go here:

http://www.gotoworld.com/getpaid/default.asp?rid=1026073826

download the browser, read the instructions and get paid just
for browsing. You will see a little windows with ads changing
at the top of the browser, but that's all to it. Start
browsing now and it'll help you cover your Internet 
service provider expenses and make a few extra bucks.

Thanks for your time,

MM




From jbauer at rubic.com  Thu Oct 21 04:22:42 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 03:22:42 -0500
Subject: win32: cygwin modules?
References: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <380ECD52.547732B7@rubic.com>

Jody M. Klymak wrote:
> For some peverse reason I have decided to get my feet
> wet with python

Stop!  Go back.  It's too late for me!  Save yourself.

I used to write reams of obfuscated C code, daring anyone 
to decipher it.

Nowadays I'm lucky to get by with more than a few 
dozen lines of Python code, in a nicely readable format 
that anyone -- shudder, even non-programmers -- can 
understand.  Lately <gasp> I've even taken to writing 
docstrings.  The contagion is insidious.

-Jeff



From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Fri Oct  1 22:30:34 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 20:30:34 -0600
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
In-Reply-To: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com>
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca>

On Sat, Oct 02, 1999 at 02:12:28AM +0000, Dan wrote:
> Has anyone attempted to pass file descriptors from one process to
> another under using Python on Linux?  I want to build a little web
> server that accepts connections and hands them off to child processes
> exactly like Apache does.

I don't know too much about how apache works but fork works just
fine with Python:

>>> import os
>>> f = open('foo', 'w')
>>> if os.fork() == 0:
...     print 'child', f.fileno()
... else:
...     print 'parent', f.fileno()
... 
parent 3
child 3




From sthaiyar at imap2.asu.edu  Sat Oct 23 19:10:55 1999
From: sthaiyar at imap2.asu.edu (sthaiyar at imap2.asu.edu)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 16:10:55 -0700
Subject: Python on Minix
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023160237.7138A-100000@general3.asu.edu>

hi all,
	i am trying to install python1.5.2
on minix. however, when i run './configure',
i get lots of:

checking (some file) ...here file: not found
grep: bad regular expression

I am assuming here that these messages arent
supposed to show up. BTW, i am running Minix
of a 486 IBM Thinkpad.
I read the README file and saw for Minix
when using ack, "CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=: ./configure",
so i typed './configure CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=:'  (is this right???)
and got the same results as above. i even tried
'make' a "make: dont know how to make @srcdir@/configure".
any pointers???

sriram thaiyar




From brucehoult at pobox.com  Fri Oct 29 08:06:48 1999
From: brucehoult at pobox.com (Bruce Hoult)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 01:06:48 +1300
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <brucehoult-3010990106480001@bruce.bgh>

In article <381A421D.D8C8E22F at bigfoot.com>, Louis Madon
<madonl at bigfoot.com> wrote:

> [I'm cross-posting this to comp.lang.dylan as I think the Dylaners' may
> be able to cast more light on this and/or correct any short-comings in
> my thinking] 
> 
> 
> In the beginning Greg Ewing wrote:
> 
> > Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
> > and there are methods defined for the combinations
> > foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
> > 
> > Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
> > which method should get called?
> 
> 
> Several people said its "ambiguous".

Interesting case.

Certainly it's ambiguous.

I note that the ambiguity can arise *only* if some module that (directly
or indirectly) calls foo() also (directly or indirectly) depends on both
AA and BB.

For example, you suggested that maybe something in module X calls
something in module Y, passing it a BB.  Module Y creates an AA (which X
doesn't know about) and calls foo(AA, BB).  oops.  The only place that
this problem can be detected at compile-time is in module X, and then only
if the compiler knows that module Y imports both AA and foo EVEN IF IT
DOESN'T RE-EXPORT THEM.  This seems like a big ask.

I'm wondering what the semantics of the exact situation are.  Will the
right result occur if foo(A, BB) or foo(AA, B) is called for arguments of
type (AA, BB)?  If not then perhaps foo() is trying to do too much and
should be split up?  In particular, perhaps there should instead be a
bar(A) and baz(B) and just a single, generic, version of foo(A, B) that
calls bar(A) and baz(B) as part of its operation.  In which case the
implementator of AA should make a bar(AA) and the implementatior of BB
should make a baz(BB). And then all is sweetness and light :-)

-- Bruce



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Wed Oct 13 04:15:13 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:15:13 +1300
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com> <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de>
Message-ID: <38043F91.F3F36D5A@compaq.com>

Wolfgang Keller wrote:
> 
> Tk appears to be hopelessly broken on the Mac.

Is the problem in Tk itself, or in Tkinter?
Is anyone trying to fix it, or is nobody
interested in supporting Tk on the Mac?

I was hoping that Tkinter would allow me
to write Python programs portable across
Mac, Unix and Windows. But it seems that 
this is not to be. 

Greg



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  1 09:08:43 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 13:08:43 GMT
Subject: My own pyhton in CGI...
In-Reply-To: <y0jiu56euwo.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
References: <y0jiu56euwo.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <000b01bf0c0e$1677f920$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> So - I installed my own in my home directory (which works just fine)
> but when I try to write something like
>
>   #!/my/home/directory/foo/bar/python
>
> it doesn't work.

The only reasons I can think of are:
1. httpd doesn't have permission to read/execute the script
1. httpd doesn't have permission to read/execute
/my/home/directory/foo/bar/python
2. httpd performs a chroot before running cgi scripts

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From rmeegan at murl.com  Tue Oct 19 15:03:44 1999
From: rmeegan at murl.com (Robert Meegan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 14:03:44 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
In-Reply-To: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910191352400.537-100000@robert.polytopic.com>

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999 steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:

> 
> i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed, why are things like
> len() not member functions of list/tuples ?
> 

>From the FAQ (http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html):

6.5. Why does Python use methods for some functionality (e.g.
list.index()) but functions for other (e.g. len(list))?

Functions are used for those operations that are generic for a group of
types and which should work even for objects that don't have methods at
all (e.g. numbers, strings, tuples). Also, implementing len(), max(),
min() as a built-in function is actually less code than implementing them
as methods for each type. One can quibble about individual cases but it's
really too late to change such things fundamentally now.

> ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
> those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
> operator seems peculiar.
> 

Also from the FAQ:

4.17  My class defines __del__ but it is not called when I delete the
object.

(severely truncated)

The del statement does not necessarily call __del__ -- it simply
decrements the object's reference count, and if this reaches zero
__del__ is called. 

If your data structures contain circular links (e.g. a tree where each
child has a parent pointer and each parent has a list of children) the
reference counts will never go back to zero. You'll have to define an
explicit close() method which removes those pointers. Please don't ever
call __del__ directly -- __del__ should call close() and close() should
make sure that it can be called more than once for the same object. 

> Are these historical artefacts, or is the language designed liek tis
> for a reason ? 

Yes and yes. 

> I have mostly really liked what I've seen of Python so
> far, but niggles like these are really annoying me!

After you spend more time with Python you'll be able to ignore issues like
these, freeing time to be annoyed with issues of garbage collection,
closure, and how many lambdas can dance on the head of a pin.

--- Robert



Robert Meegan

Murl.com - 
Because it's not just your data, it's your life.




From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Oct 17 16:20:39 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 21:20:39 +0100
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
Message-ID: <m37lklivs8.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Something I noticed but never got around to moaning about around the
time of the transition from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 was that now hitting Ctrl-C
at the interpreter prompt tends to dump me out to the shell.

I'm fairly sure that's not what {used to,should} happen. I was
expecting bash-like behaviour, i.e. abortion of the current command
entry.

Can anyone confirm this, or am I just talking nonsense again?

Regards,
Michael



From djc at itga.com.au  Thu Oct 28 18:14:24 1999
From: djc at itga.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 08:14:24 +1000
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <87d7tzi14v.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>

> actually a much quicker test is:
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> >>>

heresy:~% python
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Sep 13 1999, 09:12:57)  [GCC 2.95.1 19990816 (release)] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
>>> a
[3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> 

- Dave



From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Fri Oct  8 05:04:02 1999
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 11:04:02 +0200
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> 	<14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> 	<FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com> 	<001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <m3g0zmp6kd.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov> writes:

> I realize that this posting is in jest, but I can't help replying to
> it anyhow, to make the observation that if the DNA sequences in
> question are never translated into proteins, then there is simply no
> pressure of natural selection acting either for or against the
> propagation of these sequences; that is, since they represent neither

But you are making the assumption that DNA pieces which are not
expressed as proteins are useless, which is far from evident. DNA is
hardware and software at the same time; it not only represents code,
but also the memory itself. Little is known at the moment about
conditions for mechanical/chemical stability of DNA, for example. The
junk DNA might act as some kind of scaffolding which is essential.
And even the specific sequence could be important because different
base sequences have slightly different structures.

Now what was the relation to Python?  Ah yes, pythons also have DNA ;-)
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.55.69
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



From duncan at rcp.co.uk  Fri Oct  1 09:40:00 1999
From: duncan at rcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 13:40:00 GMT
Subject: References vs copies w/ *x
References: <despamme.bstankie-0110990212010001@pub56k-29-72.dialup.umn.edu> <tl1J3.1900$r8.63155@news.direcpc.com>
Message-ID: <8E529564Cduncanrcpcouk@news.rmplc.co.uk>

emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille) wrote in 
<tl1J3.1900$r8.63155 at news.direcpc.com>:

>>>> a = [1,2,3]
>>>> b = [[]]*3
>>>> b = map(lambda x:a[:],b)
>>>> b[1][1] = 'c'
>>>> b
>[[1, 2, 3], [1, 'c', 3], [1, 2, 3]]
>
>

How about a slightly simpler variant:
>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = map(list, [a]*3)
>>> b[1][1] = 'c'
>>> b
[[1, 2, 3], [1, 'c', 3], [1, 2, 3]]

or you can import copy and use copy.copy in the map, but using list avoids 
the import.




From davidopp at megsinet.net  Thu Oct  7 00:02:26 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 00:02:26 -0400
Subject: [Fwd: Seeking Computer Programming Story Comments]
Message-ID: <37FC1B51.20219CB9@megsinet.net>

I think this may be a good Public Relations and Publicity opportunity
here.  Guido are you reading this?  It seems to fit nicely with your
CP4E project.

Sincerely,

David Oppenheimer
-------------- next part --------------
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Subject: Seeking Computer Programming Story Comments
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 02:30:42 GMT
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From rainer2207 at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 09:20:35 1999
From: rainer2207 at my-deja.com (rainer2207 at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:20:35 GMT
Subject: Opening url's
Message-ID: <7upob0$rp8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Can anyone tell me how I can open a page given a URL? There seems to be
very little documentation on urllib abd I haven't seen any examples. I
have a CGI script which calls another CGI script. I would like this
CGI script to call the CGI script it came from. Can anyone help? Thanks.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From viktor at dtek.chalmers.se  Sat Oct  2 14:15:28 1999
From: viktor at dtek.chalmers.se (Viktor Fougstedt)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 18:15:28 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com> <7t5ffa$1h6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se>
Message-ID: <7t5i40$1pn$1@nyheter.chalmers.se>

viktor at dtek.chalmers.se (Viktor Fougstedt) writes:

>I do not know if you can use the fcntl.ioctl() call in Python to do
>the same thing, but my guess is it should work (if you are on a
>machine whose UNIX dialect supports the I_SENDFD/I_RECVFD ioctls, that
>is. Check your local ioctl() manpage). A quick glance at the Python
>interpreter's source-code seems to indicate that this _should_ work,
>but I'm not certain.

>If I get the time tonight, I'll give it a shot and see if I can make
>it work.


Following up on my own post, of course I couldn't stop myself from
trying at once. It seems to work, which impresses me of Pythons
transparency towards the underlying OS.

Example code below, seems to work fine on Solaris. Not sure which
other UNIX dialects support I_SENDFD/I_RECVFD ioctl()s, but it should
work on them as well. 


/Viktor...

======================================================================
#!/usr/pd/bin/python
#

#
# Example of passing an open filedescriptor with Python. Will only work
# on UNIX dialects that support the I_SENDFD and I_RECVFD ioctl() calls.
#

# STROPTS was created using Tools/scripts/h2py from Python's sourcecode
# distribution.

import STROPTS, fcntl, os, sys, struct

#
# Create a pipe for sending the fd.
#

(pRead, pWrite) = os.pipe()


#
# fork() off!
#

pid = os.fork()

if pid != 0:
    # We're in the parent.

    # Open a file for passing along to child. Use own source code,
    # which is guaranteed to exist. :)
    
    fileObj = open('./fdpass.py', 'r')

    # ioctl() will only pass raw filedescriptors. Find fd of fileObj.
    fd = fileObj.fileno()

    # Send to the child using ioctl().
    retval = fcntl.ioctl(pWrite, STROPTS.I_SENDFD, fd)

    # Should probably check retval rather than just printing it. :)
    print "Parent ioctl() returned %d" % retval

    # Wait for child to terminate, then exit.
    os.waitpid(pid, 0)
    sys.exit(0)

else:
    # We're in the child.
    
    # Create a string representing the strrecvfd structure that ioctl()
    # will return.
    str = struct.pack('iii', 0, 0, 0)

    # Receive filedescriptor. Will block until descriptor is sent.
    ret = fcntl.ioctl(pRead, STROPTS.I_RECVFD, str)
    
    # Unpack the strrecvfd-structure that ioctl() should return.
    # fd is the filedescriptor, uid/gid the user/group id of the
    # sending stream.
    (fd, uid, gid) = struct.unpack('iii', ret)

    # Reopen the filedescriptor as a Python File-object.
    fileObj = os.fdopen(fd, 'r')

    # Example usage: Read file, print the first line.
    lines = fileObj.readlines()
    print lines[0],
    sys.exit(0)


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


    
-- 
--|     Viktor Fougstedt, system administrator at dtek.chalmers.se     |--
--|                http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~viktor/                |--
--| ...soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. /Tom Lehrer |--



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Oct 27 11:33:31 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:33:31 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com> <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38170692.D6D438C3@lemburg.com> <00f301bf2086$b4c43fd0$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>
Message-ID: <38171B4B.7CF798AF@lemburg.com>

Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> I searched the MSDN again,
> it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
> and installed by default.

Sound even better ;-) (It doesn't seem to exist on Win95, so I'll
only use it for WinNT.)

What command string would I have to pass to os.popen to get the output
(I only need the first few lines) without any windows popping up ?

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    65 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Oct 13 23:34:21 1999
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 20:34:21 -0700
Subject: Looping redux. was: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <slrn80ab5q.27c.thantos@brimstone.mecha>
Message-ID: <38054F3D.DE5CB600@Lugoj.Com>

Alexander Williams wrote:
> Python is designed to minimize the syntactic sugar poured in the
> gas-tank of your coding; "do ... while" truly is only a syntactic
> abstraction for an initialized while loop
[...]
> Its not that
> much more typing, the test is very clearly marked at the top of the
> structure, and we have the benefit of a single, consistant means of
> presenting the loop rather than thirteen varying ones.

Every control structure is mere syntactical sugar for the elegantly simple
"if <cond> goto <label>" and "goto <label>" control statements. And in a
heartbeat I could get by with the use of the bare "if" form by doing "if
true goto <label>" where needed.

Therefore, I propose the following:

thefuture: if version == python2 goto thefuture

So there.




From andrew at starmedia.net  Fri Oct  8 09:37:31 1999
From: andrew at starmedia.net (Andrew Csillag)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 09:37:31 -0400
Subject: XP STDOUT & STDERR Redirection
References: <37FD65D1.A707C180@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <37FDF39B.66558FB5@starmedia.net>

Brandon Ehle wrote:
> 
> Can someone come up with a good way that I can catch Python's STDOUT and
> STDERR from a C/C++ program?

You have a couple of choices, but the easiest one is probably to create
cStringIO objects from C/C++ land and assign them to sys.stdout and
sys.stderr and call the getvalue() method on them when the python script
part finishes.  If you need the output as you go along (not wait till
the script exits), you can instead create python objects (perhaps in
C/C++) that have write methods and assign them to sys.stdout/stderr and
the methods output the stuff to the engine's console.
-- 
import string,sys;t=string;f=t.index;j=t.join;print(lambda
s:j(map(lambda
x,s=s:x[:f(x,':')+2]+j(map(lambda y:'%02X'%ord(y),x[f(x,':')+2:]),'
'),map
(lambda i,s=s:("%04X:
"%i)+s[i:i+16],range(0,len(s),16))),'\n'))(open(sys.
argv[1]).read())



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 15:42:33 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:42:33 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <00c701bf0f69$c62f8910$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
> Anyone know of a function equilivent in concept to a 'recursive
> touch?'
> 
> Where if I say:
> 
> touch foo/bar/baz.txt
> 
> If the directories foo and bar don't exist, create them, then create
> baz.txt inside of bar.

how about:

import os, time

def touch(file):
    now = time.time()
    try:
        # assume it's there
        os.utime(file, (now, now))
    except os.error:
        # if it isn't, try creating the directory,
        # a file with that name
        os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(file))
        open(file, "w").close()
        os.utime(file, (now, now))

touch("foo/bar/baz.txt")

</F>




From mehta at mama.indstate.edu  Thu Oct 21 21:37:33 1999
From: mehta at mama.indstate.edu (mehta at mama.indstate.edu)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 01:37:33 GMT
Subject: re help
References: <7un7nr$2tt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <380F2C6B.25E15957@mmrd.com>
Message-ID: <7uof4u$es$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

hello,

I am trying regular expression.  I want to match a java fuction like
public static void main (

see I want to avoid keywords in above declaration for scope, modifier,
returntype and name.  I am not sure how to make a regular expression
like

!keyword | [a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*
meaning no keyword or some return type

In article <380F2C6B.25E15957 at mmrd.com>,
  loril at mmrd.com wrote:
>
> --------------852473141D72DB77B0E853C6
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> not exactly sure what you are asking but I would do something like:
>
> someList = ["one", "two", "three"]
>
> if not x in someList:
>     # DO YOUR STUFF
> else:
>     print "ERROR: %s is in list"%x
>
> mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote:
>
> > how can I specify not to match strings like
> >  donot match "one" | "two" | "three"
> >
> >   (one|two|three) could match any string as one or two or three
> > but I want them not to matched at that position.
> >
> > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > Before you buy.
> >
> > --
> > http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
> --------------852473141D72DB77B0E853C6
> Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
> <html>
> not exactly sure what you are asking but I would do something like:
> <p>someList = ["one", "two", "three"]
> <p>if not x in someList:
> <br><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; # DO YOUR STUFF</tt>
> <br><tt>else:</tt>
> <br><tt>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; print "ERROR: %s is in list"%x</tt>
> <br><tt></tt>&nbsp;
> <br><tt></tt>&nbsp;
> <p>mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote:
> <blockquote TYPE=CITE>how can I specify not to match strings like
> <br>&nbsp;donot match "one" | "two" | "three"
> <p>&nbsp; (one|two|three) could match any string as one or two or
three
> <br>but I want them not to matched at that position.
> <p>Sent via Deja.com <a
href="http://www.deja.com/">http://www.deja.com/</a>
> <br>Before you buy.
> <p>--
> <br><a href="http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-
list">http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-
list</a></blockquote>
> </html>
>
> --------------852473141D72DB77B0E853C6--
>
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct  4 11:36:10 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 11:36:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: python mailing list
References: <000801c02c30$c13e1ea0$62c21e26@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <14328.51562.199910.890961@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "CC" == Carol Cameron <lyn at handtech.com> writes:

    CC> Can i please be put on the mailing list?

You can do it yourself!  Please visit

    http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

and follow the directions from there.

-Barry



From kelley at bioreason.com  Thu Oct 28 18:47:31 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:47:31 -0600
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com> <3818CC4D.3B3658D7@appliedbiometrics.com>
Message-ID: <3818D282.1C506BB8@bioreason.com>

Christian Tismer wrote:

> Brian Kelley wrote:
> >
> > actually a much quicker test is:
> >
> > Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> > Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> > >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> > >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> > >>> a
> > [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> > >>>
>
> Please have a look into the documentation about sorting and
> the cmp function. Actually, you need a three valued compare.
>
> Using
>
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))
>
> should convince you :-)
>

I'm convinced.  As I mentioned, I don't know where I picked up the idiom
of:
a.sort(lambda x,y: x<y) and
a.sort(lambda x,y:y>x)

but I can assure you that now it has become:

a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(y, x) ) and
a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y) )

or better yet forming the appropriate tupes and using a normal sort.

>
> ciao - chris
>
> --
> Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
> Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
> Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
> 10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
> PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
>      we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home

--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Fri Oct 29 11:15:48 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:15:48 -0400
Subject: Produce .pyc without execution
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF739@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Hello,

Is there a way to compile a module without executing it? Just check syntax
and produce the .pyc file?

Thanks,
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"




From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 08:47:49 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 22:47:49 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
Message-ID: <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au>

Neel Krishnaswami wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:16:15 +1000, skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >In the third stage, type inference will attempt to ascribe types to
> >the variables, and use some fixed ad hoc speedups to improve
> >interpreter speed even further.
> 
> How do you plan to mix type inference and extension-type/Python-class
> unification?

	Already done. Here is what happens: every object has a type.
The type in Python is an object of type TypeType. This restriction
does not apply in Viper. The type of an object can be ANY object.
The second thing to know is: when 'ordinary' 

	object.value 

lookup fails in Viper, lookup continues for a method in the type object
of the object. For the standard Python types, including integers,
the type object I'm using is a class. So you can write:

	(1).abs()

right now in Viper, because the type of (1) is PyIntType,
for which Types.IntType is a synonym, and PyIntType
is a class object with a method 'abs'. That is,
the integer type is a class IMPLEMENTED IN PYTHON.
[The native function which computes the result
is not, it has to be compiled into the interpreter.]

The class PyIntType is defined, along with the other
types, in a special file py_types.py.

Please note that this is DIFFERENT to saying that
all objects have class type. This is a BAD idea.
I have implemented the exact opposite: in Viper,
all objects have a type object, which can be any object.
In particular, ONLY class instances have classes,
but ALL objects have a type, including classes
and including instances. The type of a class instance is

	PyInstanceType

and is NOT the class of the instance.

To put all this another way, I have extended the EXISTING
python type system to add a new kind of lookup rule,
and relaxed the restrictions on the Type object,
I have NOT unified the type object with the Class.
I have NOT changed the fact that integers are NOT instances
of classes.

What has this to do with type inference? Easy: the only
types I have to deal with are the builtin ones like integers
and class instances, there are no extension types in Viper.

We don't need them, since the 'type' of all objects is
just another object.

The only way extension types are visible to the interpreter
is if the type is a builtin kind, in which case it is necessary
to modify the inference engine .. and the rest of the interpreter.

For example, there is a File type in Viper. But the client
never sees it, because it is wrapped TWICE with classes!
The first wrapper maps the native file manipulation functions,
and sees the File type. The second wrapper provides the
Python compatible interface.

> As I understand it, type inference in OO languages is generally only a
> win if you can do enough to infer the actual runtime type of the
> object. IOW, it's not enough to know that the object is an instance of
> some subclass of the class Number, but that it's a direct instance of
> the class Integer.  Then you can avoid paying the cost of polymorphic
> dispatch, and can take advantage of knowing the actual method called
> to do additional optimizations (like inlining).

	Yes. In particular, the kinds of things that are worth
optimising are things like:

	x = x + 1

where x is not aliased: this can be replaced by

	x += 1

and avoid an allocation.
 
> But if Python's primitive types are made into real Python classes,
> then any type can be potentially be subclassed, which makes inferring
> the runtime type a much harder prospect.

	Indeed. Luckily, subtyping the basic python types
is entirely useless, for every single python type except
'file'. That is because python types are in fact naturally
algebraic NOT object oriented, again, with the exception
of 'file', which is sensibly an object.

	[Another exception is, exceptions, but they're
already class based]
 
> AFAICT, you need to either add something like Java's "final" keyword,
> do whole-program analysis (does eval defeat this?), or do dynamic
> compilation like Self. Or are there some cool new tricks you can steal
> for Viper from the OCaml compiler..?

	The basic optimisations are functional, that is,
things like making string concatenations go faster in cases like:

	x  = x + "hello"

Here, the deduction starts with the literal "hello"
which
is known to be a string, and, since + accepts a string
RHS only when the LHS is also a string or an int,
and the int case is eliminated since the type of the LHS
of the assignment is also the type of X, and both
operators called + with string RHS return a string,
then x must be a string.

	Now, if strings can be class instances,
we must account for that case too, so there will need
to be a run time test, to check if the x is
a basic string, or some derived type.

	Luckily, because I do whole program analysis,
i know all the classes, including those that
have a + method (__add__). It may be difficult
to decide if the x above is one of those type,
rather than string.

	But somewhere, the programmer had to construct
the x, and it is possible to trace it back to see what
type it is. Sometimes, the result will be it could
be one of several types:

	if t ==0:
		x = "a string"
	elif t == 1:
		x = ClientType("who knows")
	else:
		x = None

but evern here, the set of possible type is enumerable.

	So .. you are right, if all types were
classes and could be subclassed, then determining
which method to call would be harder. However, with
my current system, the extra lookup into the type
object is done, and that type object is itself
compiled, since it is written in Python.
So the dispatch should proceed at reasonable
speed, especially if name binding is already done.

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 12:21:29 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 17:21:29 +0100
Subject: Beginner's question : Embedding Python - problem with PyRun_SimpleString
In-Reply-To: <7tl22s$kn7$1@news.nctech.fr>
Message-ID: <000b01bf11a9$2d3386c0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> #include <python.h>
> Py_Initialize();
> status = PyRun_SimpleString( myCmdLine);
> I tried this with : myCmdLine = "a = 5" ;
> and got a status equal to -1 !!!

Looking at the source code, this means that an exception
occurred and got printed to stderr. If you're running
under Win32, this information will be lost, unless you
redirect stderr to something else.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From mcfletch at vrtelecom.com  Thu Oct 28 02:47:26 1999
From: mcfletch at vrtelecom.com (Mike Fletcher)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 02:47:26 -0400
Subject: from (some module) import *
In-Reply-To: <38172D03.2CF4CAE5@cfdrc.com>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIEENBCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/built-in-funcs.html#built-in-funcs

See __import__ at the top of the page.  Is available in all "normal"
situations.

Hope that helps, (incidentally, for some reason my first email to you
bounced, hope this gets through),
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Ed
Sent: October 27, 1999 12:49 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: from (some module) import *
...
I want to prompt for a module name, then import it.  How do I make the
module name in the "from" or "import" operators a variable?  I was
trying
...




From srenner at lycosmail.com  Sat Oct 30 22:40:30 1999
From: srenner at lycosmail.com (srenner at lycosmail.com)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 02:40:30 GMT
Subject: ANN: Unspeakably obscure Just Intonation module, ratio.py
References: <jtemecv4a2.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <7vga6u$fop$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <jtemecv4a2.fsf at wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>,
>         For people who are into just intonation -- or even know what
> it is -- I have written a module to make dealing with JI ratios a
> little easier, including methods to handle varous sorts of
> katapyknosis as well as the creation of JI chords.  There are also
> some functions not part the Ratio class which make dealing with scales
> and interval lists more fun.

People are thirsting for just intonation. You might say that we are
partched. Thank you.

sr


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From andy at robanal.demon.co.uk  Sat Oct  2 13:35:29 1999
From: andy at robanal.demon.co.uk (Andy Robinson)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 17:35:29 GMT
Subject: Installation problem (or not...)
References: <XFMail.990929163920.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <37fd3c4c.37380039@news.demon.co.uk>

Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>If these are stupid questions, could someone please answer them anyway.
>
>I have been using python at work for quite a while (under unix), but I 
>have never tried to install it - until yesterday. I decided to install
>python on my Pentium II machine at home (Win95). I downloaded version
>1.5.2 and related stuff from python.org, from the "Download Python for 
>Windows 95/98 and NT" page. So far so good. 
>
>Later, when I installed it I got an error message complaining that some
>DLL file assumed WinNT and not Win95. The same thing happened for the 
>win32all installation. This made me worried. As I have understood things,
>the installation is supposed to work in all NT/95/98 environments. I
>have not tried any tests yet, but I don't think I would trust my 
>installation under these circumstances - even if all tests went well.
>
>Q1: Should I be worried?
>Q2: If so: What should I do?
AFAIR it is ctld3d or one of its kin.  Don't worry, the installer will
work and it will not affect your Python installation, but the 3d-look
progress bar just looks a bit screwy as it runs.  This is beyond Mark
Hammond's reasonable control - I suggest leaving it to WISE (who make
the installer) and Microsoft to slug it out as to who broke what.

Regards,

Andy




From bfkurd at CYBERDUDE.COM  Thu Oct 28 03:23:57 1999
From: bfkurd at CYBERDUDE.COM (bfkurd at CYBERDUDE.COM)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 07:23:57 GMT
Subject: MAKE HUNDREDS JUST SURFING THE NET
Message-ID: <7v8tmd$37j$5186@iceman.tac.net>

MAKE HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS A MONTH JUST SURFING THE WEB. OR THOUSANDS BY REFFERING.
JOIN AT :
http://www.gotoworld.com/getpaid/register/default.asp?rid=1032128546




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Oct  5 20:42:25 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 20:42:25 -0400
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: Bill Anderson's message of "Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:39:12 +0000"
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu> <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com>
Message-ID: <oqd7ut5ngu.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Bill Anderson <banderson at boi.hp.com> ?crit:

> it is worth making the comment that ipchains is gone in 2.3.x, and
> hence 2.4.

Are you serious?  If this is true, it is worth telling indeed, before we
invest too much Python work in that direction.  Could you tell me/us more?
What is happening exactly?  If you happen to know, _why_ is it happening?

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Fri Oct  8 10:37:54 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 14:37:54 GMT
Subject: Beginner asks question about Python on Linux
References: <7tkge6$asd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tkvk0$lg5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello Stephen,

you might try something like this:

import commands
import string

status, output = commands.getstatusoutput("ps aux|grep someProcess")

if status:
    print "Sorry, grep could not find anything."
else:
    lines_list = string.split(output, "\n")
    pids_list = []
    for line in lines_list:
        pids_list.append(string.split(line)[1])

Hope this helps,

---Preston


In article <7tkge6$asd$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  stephen.allison at cenes.co.uk wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I have a, probably fairly trivial, question about using Python on
Linux
> (and probably Unix too).  I'm quite new to both, so apologies if it's
a
> really stupid question.
>
> I'm writing some scripts to do some general administation tasks, and
> need to get the output of a shell command into Python easily.  For
> example I have a bit of code like this:
>
> os.system("ps aux|grep someProcess > pids.temp")
>
> I then proceed to open the pids.temp file, read the lines and then go
> on to do stuff with the processes (readline, splitfields, look through
> the list for the PIDs, execute further system commands (usually
> 'kill')), and then delete the pids.temp file.  What I want to know is
> if there is a way of getting the output of the grep straight into
> Python, so I won't have to use a temporary file.  I have since learned
> about killing all processes of a given name, so it's a bit academic,
> but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it's possible to do
> this, using either Python cleverness or some shell commands I'm not
> aware of.
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> Steve
>
> --
> Steve Allison
> Doesn't read deja news mail
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Tue Oct  5 07:06:40 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 12:06:40 +0100
Subject: Three decades of Python!
References: <011901bf0f15$1790f910$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <+pT+tEAAvd+3Ewhs@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <011901bf0f15$1790f910$f29b12c2 at secret.pythonware.com>,
Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes
>btw, I hope nobody has missed this:
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1999/10/99/monty_python/newsid_4
>63000/463024.stm
>
></F>
>
here in the UK we're about to undergo it :)
-- 
Robin Becker



From boncelet at udel.edu  Tue Oct  5 09:39:53 1999
From: boncelet at udel.edu (Charles Boncelet)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 13:39:53 +0000
Subject: converting between PIL and NumPY
Message-ID: <37F9FFA9.657BDDF6@udel.edu>

Could someone send me some quick info on converting between a PIL object
and a NumPy array?  (I seem to recall this being discussed in August,
but I can't find it in deja.com.  Are there any better places to look? I
really hate deja.com.)

I want to do some image filtering with my own routines.  Has anyone
written a wrapper routine that slides a moving window over an image and
provides these values to a python list (or numpy array) for a user
defined routine to process?  If not, I may roll my own.

	Charlie Boncelet

----
Charles Boncelet (boncelet at udel.edu)



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Fri Oct 22 08:01:27 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:01:27 +0200
Subject: Newbie question: files..
In-Reply-To: <7ulc06$pmk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <000601bf12db$2759d640$072d153f@tim> <7ulc06$pmk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <19991022140127.A6271@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Wesley C. wrote:
> > > The code I have is here:
> > >
> > > #!/usr/bin/python
> > >
> > > file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
> > > for line in file.readlines(): # read file
> > >     s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
> > >     print s #print string
> > > file.close()

Not good, sometimes the last line doesn't end in a newline.

regards,
Gerrit Holl.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct  3 20:04:51 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 20:04:51 -0400
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
In-Reply-To: <14324.55883.614652.812873@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <000001bf0dfc$1553db00$bfa2143f@tim>

[Skip Montanaro, continues to defend the indefensible <wink>]
> Yes, I should have given example re's (parental guidance suggested):
>
> First, the real thing:
>
>     r"(?P<m>\s*(?P<date>\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?"
>      "(?P<venue>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<city>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<state>[A-Za-z\s]+),"
>      "(?P<time>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<info>.*))(?P<u>.*)"
>
> Then, prefix 1:
>
>     r"(?P<m>\s*(?P<date>\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?"
>      "(?P<venue>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<city>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<state>[A-Za-z\s]+))"
>      "(?P<u>.*)"
> [and so on]

My "slot" advice still applies:  you don't want the longest partial match if
the whole thing fails to click, you want to apply these subexpressions one
at a time!  Then you can tell the user exactly which part failed to meet the
requirements, in language they understand.  Like so:

    m = re.match(r"\s*(\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?", input)
    if not m:
        raise LameoUser("Enter a reasonable date, moron", input)
    date = m.group(1)
    input = input[m.end():]

    m = re.match(r"\s*([^,]+),", input)
    if not m:
        raise LameoUser("Enter a reasonable venue, moron", input)
    venue = m.group(1)
    input = input[m.end():]

    etc

This is still mechanical enough to push into a table-driven approach.

Get the longest partial match instead, and you have no idea which part of
the *regexp* it finally failed in, so can't do more than point at the
character following and say "umm, my software got confused right here, for
some reason -- maybe you can guess why if you stare at it long enough".

> ...
> I'd like to get rid of regular expressions altogether, but I don't have
> a better general pattern matcher at present and fewer resources to
> develop anything.  Consequently, I adapt what I have at hand.

I wouldn't get rid of regexps -- they're powerful lexical classifiers.  The
sin with regexps is hoping against both reason and evidence that "one big
one" can do the whole job, when the job is anything more demanding than
breaking out fields of input known a priori to match.  If the input may have
errors, or the regexp may be buggy (try to write one that isn't <wink>), use
them as building blocks in a more rational approach:  get as far as you can
with little ones, and gripe when that fails.

> ...
> That's because your pattern didn't match even the shortest pattern.  I had
> to stop somewhere.  I suppose I could have added a few more re's.

Chain N small ones, one per "field", and reasonable error reporting comes
for free.

> With Douglas's "return the matching prefix" suggestion I could have done
> it all with one regular expression.

I don't think you'd be happy with the quality of error msg you can produce
from that, because you can't relate the matching prefix in any way to "the
fields" the user knows about -- at least not without rematching the failing
input to shorter and shorter regexps again, to find out which part of the
*regexp* got confused.  The next suggestion will be to return not only the
matching prefix, but as many groups as "would have been" filled in had that
been the whole match.  Then it gets more complicated.

Douglas may have a real use for this (I didn't understand his problem
description), but I think this looks like "a solution" to you only because
you haven't tried it.

"syntax-error-in-column-63"-avoiding-ly y'rs  - tim





From geiser at dial.eunet.ch  Sun Oct 17 07:15:33 1999
From: geiser at dial.eunet.ch (Charles Geiser)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 11:15:33 GMT
Subject: Newbie Q: A good introduction to python...
References: <7uc2cp$2vr$1@bw107zhb.bluewin.ch>
Message-ID: <3809AE5E.88A9D49C@dial.eunet.ch>

Hello Markus,

I good startingpoint for me was the book
"Learning Python" by Mark Lutz and David Ascher, O'Reilly, ISBN
1-56592-464-9
It's also worth to have a look on JPython which opens the scope for
Python to 
Java and Swing, see www.jpython.org.

Charles Geiser
Hoehtalstrasse 13
CH-5408 Ennetbaden 
geiser at dial.eunet.ch

Markus Meng wrote:
> 
> Hey and hello Python Community,
> 
> I just wonder where I can get a good - almost objective -
> introduction for python. Actually we do ALL of our programming
> in Tcl/Tk and C/C++ on Win and Unix platforms. However
> I would like to see if it is not better to switch from Tcl/Tk to
> python. We need full fledged graphical GUI's...
> 
> This is not a flame please, it's just a question. We really did nice things
> with Tcl/Tk, but ....
> 
> Thank's
> 
> marcus
> 
> --
> ********************************************************************
> ** Meng Engineering        Telefon    056 222 44 10               **
> ** Markus Meng             Natel      079 230 93 86               **
> ** Bruggerstr. 21          Telefax    056 222 44 10               **
> ** CH-5400 Baden           Email      meng.engineering at bluewin.ch **
> ********************************************************************



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Mon Oct 18 08:22:47 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 13:22:47 +0100
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
References: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
> [Michael Hudson]
> > Something I noticed but never got around to moaning about around the
> > time of the transition from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 was that now hitting Ctrl-C
> > at the interpreter prompt tends to dump me out to the shell.
> 
> "Tends"?  I hope you can make a bolder claim than that <wink>.

OK: It's readline's fault.

If I execute:

[mwh21 at atrus src]$ python -c "raw_input()"

then type f, f, control-c, control-c (that wierdness I'm used to) I
get:

ffTraceback (innermost last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
KeyboardInterrupt

However, if I try 

[mwh21 at atrus src]$ python -c "import readline; raw_input()"

and hit f, f, and then just one control-c, I get just:

ff

and then I'm back to the bash prompt.
 
> If Ctrl-C does kill the interpreter, it's a platform-specific bug.  Start
> your exciting search by trying:
> 
> >>> import signal
> >>> signal.default_int_handler()
> 
> Hoping for something like:
> 
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> KeyboardInterrupt
> >>>
> 
> and still in the interpreter shell.

No, that all works. The execution is never getting to the handler. I
can do this:

>>> import signal
>>> def f():
...  print "hello"
...
>>> signal.signal(signal.SIGINT,f)
<built-in function default_int_handler>
>>> ^C - and back we go to bash

I get the same behaviour if I use `kill' from another xterm, so it
looks as if the signal's getting deleivered correctly.

possibly relavent info:

python 1.5.2 (both from redhat 6.1 & a fairly recent cvs)
readline-2.2.1-5 (according rpm -q readline)

running under gdb yields different behaviour (oh good!) - hitting
control-C drops you into __libc_read where the stack looks a bit like
this:

#0  0x40113db4 in __libc_read () from /lib/libc.so.6
#1  0x40052a7c in __DTOR_END__ () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#2  0x4002f422 in rl_getc () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
#3  0x4002f3e2 in rl_read_key () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
#4  0x40021aa5 in readline_internal_char () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
#5  0x40021b7b in readline_internal_charloop () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
#6  0x40021baa in readline_internal () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
#7  0x40021888 in readline () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
#8  0x8085d85 in call_readline (prompt=0x811be9c ">>> ") at ./readline.c:288
#9  0x8052689 in PyOS_Readline (prompt=0x811be9c ">>> ") at myreadline.c:148
#10 0x805184b in tok_nextc (tok=0x8140e70) at tokenizer.c:216
...

single stepping a few times through source-absent libc files leaves me
back at the Python interpreter's prompt.

Is that enough information to help anyone explain what's going on?
Anyone experience/not experience the phenomenon (I got one negative
via email).

> always-knew-the-bytecodehacks-would-kill-you<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

Oh shut up <meta-double-wink-with-knobs-on/>.

not-quite-prepared-to-build-my-own-libc-and-readline-just-yet-ly y'rs
Michael



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 06:58:00 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 11:58:00 +0100
Subject: Beginner asks question about Python on Linux
In-Reply-To: <7tkge6$asd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000501bf117b$fc6dd810$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> os.system("ps aux|grep someProcess > pids.temp")

Try:
f = os.popen("ps aux|grep " + someProcessStr)
l = f.readlines()
f.close()

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From hoel at GermanLloyd.org  Wed Oct  6 03:45:58 1999
From: hoel at GermanLloyd.org (Berthold Hoellmann)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 09:45:58 +0200
Subject: compile.py does not work on WinNT system
References: <000a01bf0fba$ff75b0e0$cf2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <37FAFE36.CE742C8D@GermanLloyd.org>

Tim Peters wrote:

> Which version of Python are you running?  3-argument getattr is new in
> 1.5.2.

I remembered this shortly after I posted my query, that's why I
cancelled it. Upgrading is not that easy when python is installed by
your system administrator on a central server, and they are so busy. 

OK, I made a private installation of python 1.5.2 and ran setup.py
again, but new problems appeared. The "#[VC50]" syntax does not work for
me. Writing

#[VC50]cpp_options.append('/U DOUBLE')

in my Setup.in gives me

>c:\programme\python\python compile.py
Attempting to start MSDev...
Building workspace (.dsw) file for workspace
  Found python15.lib in c:\programme\python\libs
  Found Python include directory in c:\programme\python\include
Creating project (.dsp) file for StiffOnPlate
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "compile.py", line 927, in ?
    ws = Workspace(msdev)
  File "compile.py", line 864, in __init__
    project = Project(self, self.msdev, line, extra_stuff)
  File "compile.py", line 684, in __init__
    exec extra_stuff+'\n\n\n' in self.__dict__
  File "<string>", line 2, in ?
NameError: cpp_options

What happened here. Is the compile.py docstring not valid anymore?

Cheers

Berthold
-- 
email: hoel at GermanLloyd.org
   )
  (
C[_]  These opinions might be mine, but never those of my employer.



From tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com  Fri Oct 29 13:43:17 1999
From: tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 17:43:17 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <1271356405-2522084@hypernet.com> <slrn816um9.dea.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <3814B60E.A6D90CDE@maxtal.com.au> <7vae8b$jt7$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <D0200658550E3075.4D98E32C3F542CC9.1DBCF99E42E2ABAE@lp.airnews.net>

In article <7vae8b$jt7$1 at nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
Amit Patel <amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU> wrote:

>Taken separately, each module is great.  It defines the new type's
>interaction with the built in numeric types.
>
>But together, who defines what it means to do complex+rational?  There
>are gaps in the dispatch table.  If gaps lead to coercions, who
>decides if complex can be coerced to rational or if rational can be
>coerced to complex?
>
>With multiple dispatch it seems like you can't combine independently
>written modules without writing some "glue".  The person using the
>modules may not be qualified to make those decisions.  :-(

You can't remove the responsibility for resolving this problem from the
only player who has enough information to solve it, merely by claiming
that player "may not be qualified."  Caveat mixor has to apply, period.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tres Seaver           tseaver at palladion.com       713-523-6582
Palladion Software    http://www.palladion.com



From cgw at fnal.gov  Thu Oct 21 04:23:12 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:23:12 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: win32: cygwin modules?
In-Reply-To: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu>
References: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <14350.52592.909170.303195@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Jody M. Klymak writes:
 > 
 > For some peverse reason I have decided to get my feet wet with python
 > by getting Piers Lauder's facemail package to work on NT.  After a
 > little fiddling some of it works, but I really want to get those
 > pretty X-Faces in there.  This requires building compface.c and
 > compfacemodule.c as Python modules.  
 > 
 > Has anyone built modules from c-source using cygwin (20.1 if it
 > matters) that work with python?  
 > 

I don't have access to an NT machine at the moment, but I'm 99% sure
that the XEmacs team has compface support working on NT, in both the
cygwin and "native" environments.   Check out the www.xemacs.org and
you'll probably be able to dig up something you can look at for ideas.




From skip at mojam.com  Fri Oct 29 10:45:11 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:45:11 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Shelve problem in 1.5.2
In-Reply-To: <3819754A.267CFD27@earth.ox.ac.uk>
References: <3819754A.267CFD27@earth.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <14361.45815.432764.118229@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Nick> I have just upgraded from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 on a Linux/RedHat(now
    Nick> 6.1) system and my shelve module is behaving strangely. It fails
    Nick> to open old files and if I open and close a new file it is happy
    Nick> but as soon as I try to open the newly created file it fails
    Nick> also...

Nick,

Try the attached version of whichdb.py to see if it cures your ills.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...

--[[application/octet-stream
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="whichdb.py"][quoted-printable]]
"""Guess which db package to use to open a db file."""

import struct

def whichdb(filename):
    """Guess which db package to use to open a db file.

    Return values:

    - None if the database file can't be read;
    - empty string if the file can be read but can't be recognized
    - the module name (e.g. "dbm" or "gdbm") if recognized.

    Importing the given module may still fail, and opening the
    database using that module may still fail.
    """

    # Check for dbm first -- this has a .pag and a .dir file
    try:
        f =3D open(filename + ".pag", "rb")
        f.close()
        f =3D open(filename + ".dir", "rb")
        f.close()
        return "dbm"
    except IOError:
        pass

    # See if the file exists, return None if not
    try:
        f =3D open(filename, "rb")
    except IOError:
        return None

    # Read the start of the file -- the magic number
    s16 =3D f.read(16)
    f.close()
    s =3D s16[0:4]

    # Return "" if not at least 4 bytes
    if len(s) !=3D 4:
        return ""

    # Convert to 4-byte int in native byte order -- return "" if impossib=
le
    try:
        (magic,) =3D struct.unpack("=3Dl", s)
    except struct.error:
        return ""

    # Check for GNU dbm
    if magic =3D=3D 0x13579ace:
        return "gdbm"

    # Check for BSD hash
    if magic in (0x00061561, 0x61150600):
        return "dbhash"

    # BSD hash v2 has a 12-byte NULL pad in front of the file type
    try:
	(magic,) =3D struct.unpack("=3Dl", s16[-4:])
    except struct.error:
        return ""

    # Check for BSD hash
    if magic in (0x00061561, 0x61150600):
        return "dbhash"

    # Unknown
    return ""



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct 19 20:45:27 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:45:27 -0400
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
In-Reply-To: <5lg0z75b60.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <000301bf1a94$678c6780$252d153f@tim>

[Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu>]
> I am building an interactive Intel Assembly interpreter using Python. I
> am now needing to add the part where my binary code is taken, loaded
> into memory and executed. I've heard the only way of doing this is to
> use C.

[Guido]
> I question what you've been told.  Python has perfectly fine built-in
> tools for reading binary data from a file, e.g. the struct module and
> the "rb" open mode.  Where is the need for using an extension?

Jeff's phrasing is a bit strained, but if you read it again I think you'll
find that he wants to take a blob of synthesized Intel machine code and
execute it directly:  stuff the bytes into memory, and *jump* to them.  Of
course there's no (portable) way to do that from C, either.

Perhaps Python2 should add a

    goto list_of_bytes

cmd <wink>?

or-maybe-list_of_bytes.goto()-ly y'rs  - tim





From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Fri Oct  8 03:45:54 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 20:45:54 +1300
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <37FDA132.61E1B9F9@compaq.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I don't know that the difference would be in the non-coding DNA, though.

Seems plausible enough to me. Most of the basic building
materials, metabolic processes, etc. are much the same from
one species to another. It's the "control structures", however
implemented, that are going to decide what shape the organism
grows into. If the control structures turn out to reside in
the non-transcripted DNA, it may well be true that most of the
differences between species are in there.

Greg



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Sun Oct 24 07:49:11 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 11:49:11 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
In-Reply-To: <slrn815r30.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241145450.28901-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
> > What if you and I would get a server whoose
> >sysadmin wouldn't not allow to use these modules? My CGIs will run just fine
> >under standard python interpreter, what about httpdapy CGIs?
> 
> httpdapy and PyApache both require you to load a 3rd-party apache
> module so to use either of them, you need the cooperation of
> the sysadmin.

   But in abscense of both modules I can run my CGIs without modification.
And you cannoy run you CGIs - they require httpdapy.

> it would probably be quite easy to write something that emulates
> cgi's transparently. perhaps httpdapy would become more popular
> if something like this was included with it...

   I don't think so. If you want to compare with mod_perl - there are two
advatntages of mod_python - it is speed (not memory - mod_perl is still
memory hog) and ability to dive into apache's internals. Both httpdapy and
PyApache should be extended to process apache internal requests.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From edwardm_painewebber at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 19 10:25:00 1999
From: edwardm_painewebber at my-deja.com (edwardm_painewebber at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 14:25:00 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <7uhuvd$bvh$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737 at news>,
  muniff at yahoo.com (Ahmad Munif) wrote:
>
> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table
widget,notebook
> widget, etc).
> PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.
>
> i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to
build
> my database application ?
>


Take a look at wxPython (Gtk under unix and Win32 under Windows). Go to
freshmeat.net and search for wxPython...I can't remeber the link


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Mon Oct 25 10:05:24 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:05:24 -0400
Subject: Need to monitor a file change/deletion
In-Reply-To: <3813ED50.5DC462F5@sbc.edu>
References: <3813ED50.5DC462F5@sbc.edu>
Message-ID: <19991025100524.A106417977@vislab.epa.gov>

Aaron Mahler:
 |
 |  I need to find a decent, low-impact way to monitor a file and see if
 |it has changed.

I'm not familiar with an OS-independent way to do this.  

If you're on SGI IRIX, check out fam(1M).  FAMMonitorFile() and
FAMMonitorDirectory() sound like what you need.  FAMNextEvent() blocks
until an event occurs.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From wesc at rocketmail.com  Tue Oct 19 19:57:54 1999
From: wesc at rocketmail.com (Wesley C.)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 23:57:54 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim> <slrn80kkc1.1r1o.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net> <380BFAF1.116FB21E@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <7uj0hs$4vd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <380BFAF1.116FB21E at mincom.com>,
  Martin Pool <martinp at mincom.com> wrote:
> Cliff Crawford wrote:
> > I always liked BEGIN...WHILE...REPEAT in Forth.  I guess the Python
version
> > would look like:
> >
> >   begin:
> >     x=f.readline()
> >   while x:
> >     print x
> >
> > The point being, you check the condition in the middle of the loop,
instead
> > of at the beginning or the end.
>
> At least the structure of
>
>   while 1:
>     x = f.readline()
>     if not x: break
>     print x
>
> is the same.  So it's really just a matter of whether we want a
larger,
> more specific syntax, or a smaller syntax that relies a little more on
> people using idioms.
>
> Martin


yep, and if you read between the lines, you'll note that:

    while 1:
        :
        if blah-blah:  break

... is just a structure that makes up for the lack of a
do-while loop.  although "while 1:" doesn't look that
proper, it's a default way to entering a loop. Python's
for-loop is really a for-each rather than a pure looping
mechanism.

-wesley

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A computer never does what you want... only what you tell it."

Wesley C. <wesc at rocketmail.com>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From joarmc at linux2.johnmckown.net  Sat Oct 23 16:41:36 1999
From: joarmc at linux2.johnmckown.net (John McKown)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 20:41:36 +0000
Subject: Embedding C into Python
References: <381239E4.9BC83935@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn8147bv.uk2.joarmc@linux2.johnmckown.net>

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 16:42:45 -0600, Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu> wrote:

>/tmp/ccype0NL.o: In function `blah_add':
>/tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x24): undefined reference to `PyArg_ParseTuple'
>/tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x4f): undefined reference to `Py_BuildValue'
>/tmp/ccype0NL.o: In function `initblah':
>/tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x7b): undefined reference to `Py_InitModule4'
>collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Sounds to me like you forgot to include the Python libraries in the gcc
command. 

gcc blahblah.c -L /usr/lib/python1.5/config -l python1.5

Note that the /usr/lib/python1.5/config may be different on your system.
Look for something like "libpython*.a"

Hope this helps get you going,
John



From aahz at netcom.com  Thu Oct  7 12:00:54 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 16:00:54 GMT
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
References: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no> <7tdgdk$mmr@dfw-ixnews19.ix.netcom.com> <37FAF2D8.8F43623A@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <7tig3m$tn@dfw-ixnews19.ix.netcom.com>

In article <37FAF2D8.8F43623A at bibsyst.no>,
Thomas Weholt  <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
>Aahz Maruch wrote:
>> In article <37F9BADF.8B3C4221 at bibsyst.no>,
>> Thomas Weholt  <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
>>>
>>>I got a program were the user will search a database based on keywords.
>> 
>> I'd recommend using a real database for this.  Suggestions include MySQL
>> and the Python-based gadfly.
>
>How, in your opinion, does Berkley DB, using shelve/pickle-methods,
>storing simple objects ( this got a little complicated, I mean the
>available modules with the standard Python-distro.) , compare to MySQL
>or any other DBMS when looking at speed, size and easy of operation? 

I don't know.  What I do know is that your original post used the magic
word "intersection".  To me, that implies that a flat-file database
approach is the wrong one.  I believe MySQL and Gadfly can run on top of
DBM; what you get out of that is a reliable abstraction for performing
set operations.  For less overhead, you might consider using kjBuckets
and its set operations directly.

In any event, I don't think you're talking about a multi-user
transactional environment; on modern hardware, pretty much any DB
implementation ought to work for you.  If you're *really* worried, try
downloading Oracle.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Sat Oct 23 08:19:37 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 12:19:37 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-WCrVfFWPxQki@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910231215260.9916-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> >    cookie["anketa_id"] = str(1024)
> 
> Why setup the cookie equaling a string w/length of 1024??

   Yiu've already got it isn't string of 1024 chars length - it is string
"1024" :) More details follow.
   If I put integer 1024 into cookie, Cookie.py will note it and pickle the
cookie (have you read the docs on module "pickle"?) Later Cookie.py can
unpickle the cookie back. It is very useful for python-only CGIs, but I
wrote the test for perl CGI, so I didn't want pickled cookie. So I just
converted the int to string myself and debugged that perl CGI.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From barmar at bbnplanet.com  Fri Oct 29 17:58:11 1999
From: barmar at bbnplanet.com (Barry Margolin)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 21:58:11 GMT
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0  preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <3819EA9D.6A46E845@mail.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <TLoS3.49$PK1.1445@burlma1-snr2>

In article <3819EA9D.6A46E845 at mail.earthlink.net>,
Charles Hixson  <charleshixsn at mail.earthlink.net> wrote:
>Louis Madon wrote:
>
>> """ snip """
>> In the beginning Greg Ewing wrote:
>>
>> > Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
>> > and there are methods defined for the combinations
>> > foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
>> >
>> > Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
>> > which method should get called?
>>
>> Several people said its "ambiguous".
>
>It's ambiguous unless you define what should happen.  To my mind the
>apporpriate call would be to foo (A,B), but any one of them would be a valid
>interpretation in the absence of language definitions.  Depending on search
>order, it would seem most Pythonish to call the foo (AA, B) method, since
>that would probably be the first one found along the left hand branch of the
>search path, and it does fit.

I think CLOS would also call that one by default.  It allows argument
priority order to be declared in the generic function declaration, so you
could make it select either foo(AA, b) or foo(A, BB).  Left-to-right is the
default.

One of the reasons why I think this hasn't been too much of a problem is
CLOS's :before and :after method types.  When composing classes, it's often
more common to add these secondary method types rather than to override the
primary method.  So you'll have a primary foo(A, B), and secondary foo(AA,
B) and foo(A, BB) methods that add their own functionality to the primary
method.  All of them will be called automatically.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.



From arnold at dstc.edu.au  Wed Oct 27 23:54:14 1999
From: arnold at dstc.edu.au (David Arnold)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:54:14 +1000
Subject: doesn't like / as a divide symbol 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:42:35 GMT."
             <7v8gnb$2d0$1@nnrp1.deja.com> 
Message-ID: <199910280354.NAA16772@piglet.dstc.edu.au>

-->"battery841" == battery841  <battery841 at usa.net> writes:

  battery841> I don't get what's wrong with that.  I believe that all
  battery841> my arrays are okay.  Any ideas?

try printing the type of both operands before attempting the divide.
i'm guessing one of them isn't a number.

  print type(SATURATION_ARRAY[count]), type(MEASURED_ARRAY[count])

inside the loop should do the trick.



d



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 14:56:44 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 18:56:44 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
> wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley) writes:

>> I thought that had been determined a while ago -- it's the explanation I'm
>> familiar with, in my non-specialist position.  In fact, one source I saw
>> (I have no recollection at all where) claimed that most of our coding DNA
>> is similar to most other species, and only the noncoding DNA is really
>> different.
>> 
>> Seems kinda far-fetched, but there you have it.

> The idea that most DNA is the same seems plausible to me -- like a
> "subroutine library".  It could explain how certain variations
> (e.g. different skin coloring patterns) can show up through
> "mutations" very quickly if the environment changes.

> It would also explain in part what viruses (the biological kind!) do:
> they make calls into the subroutine library!

Actually viruses in Tierra evolve that do exactly that. At least, they
call the main copying subroutine of the host's sequence. Tierra is 
mentioned earlier in this thread. My own non-released Tierra-like
system, Cielo, does not evolve such viruses, however; probably because
I didn't code a 'call' and 'ret' opcode. I do see weird code reuse
and bizarre assembler language trickery; I need to study these critters
that evolved in this program I wrote to figure out why the heck they
do whatever they do. Evolved doubly nested loops (with exit conditions, of
course!) from scratch. Little or no junk 'DNA' appears, because 
construction materials are a scarce resource. If it's not, lots of junk
does appear and I tend to get mass extinctions due to overcrowding and
gluttony. :)

> Of course there's also the matter that a large fraction of the genetic 
> code encodes the basic cell metabolism (which is extremely complicated 
> and totally essential to everything else) rather than outward
> appearance and specializations like fang size or tail length.

> I don't know that the difference would be in the non-coding DNA, though.

I don't think so, as the cell metabolism is still ran by proteins,
which DNA codes for. It's been found that DNA and especially RNA
can have quite significant enzymatic effects, however (like proteins). It's
though that this was important in early pre-protein evolution. It's 
conceivable some non coding DNA still has this effect, though since it's
not transcribed to RNA (which would be the real enzyme) this is unlikely..

Okay, looking this all up a bit:

There are introns, which can apparently can be spliced or even be self
splicing, so these can be there due to self replication on the genetic
level. Such a viral intron could replicate quite a bit until the cell
started to suffer from it significantly, though there's a limit of course.
This limit is far smaller for bacteria which rely on replication speed, so
that there is strong pressure against such introns there, and you see
far less of them as a result.

The big mystery is the stuff that doesn't seem to be translated into RNA
at all and thus doesn't seem to code for any protein (or has enzymatic
RNA). One theory I heard about is the following; often these junk regions
look very much like genes that are active, but mutated somewhat. They may
become accidentally activated through mutation. Thus this junk DNA could
form an evolutionary reservoir for interesting genes. It's unclear how 
such a setup could evolve, though, I think.

Anyway, way off topic. I probably got it all wrong anyway. :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Oct  5 06:37:08 1999
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 03:37:08 -0700
Subject: print longs
References: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com> <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com> <37F98517.DD12EF2F@ans.com.au>
Message-ID: <5GkK3.21$y51.4731@news.direcpc.com>

Did I miss something?

>>> print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
987654321987654321L
>>> print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in ?
    print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
OverflowError: long int too long to convert
>>>

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com
-------------------


Clement <clement at ans.com.au> wrote in message
news:37F98517.DD12EF2F at ans.com.au...
> Try '%d'
>
> Greg Ewing wrote:
> >
> > Nathan Clegg wrote:
> > >
> > > Do I have to convert
> > > to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?
> >
> > Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this
> > is a pain as well, but Guido doesn't seem to be
> > among them, so we're stuck with this for the time
> > being.
> >
> > Greg
>
> --
>
> Regards
>
> Clement





From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sun Oct 17 01:27:57 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 05:27:57 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <034B63F9AAC95C51.FB79447631F01604.4EA9A7AA2DD45387@lp.airnews.net>

In article <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f at tim>,
Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>[Tim]
>> Those are never necessary, although it's amazing how often
>> people fall into believing they are.  The usual Python idiom ...
>
>[Cameron Laird]
>> It amazes me less than you.
>
>Are you picking a fight again <wink>?
Just reporting, as usual.  If I were to pick
a fight, 'twould probably be over the styl-
istic nihilism (or is it solipsism?  I always
have trouble with those field identifications)
you express nearby.  'You really believe
coding is so Expressionist?
>
>> Surely you remember the pedagogic fashion--is it still in bloom?--of
>> preferring "single-exit" control structures.
>
>It's alive and well, at least in Eiffel.  No "early exit" loops there!  If
>there's only one exit, the conjunction of the sole exit condition and the
>loop invariant must establish the loop postcondition, and that makes the
>proof framework as simple as possible.  That's a Great Good, so far as it
>goes.  Which is, alas, approximately nowhere:  the day serious reasoning
>about programs becomes widespread is the day most programmers abandon their
>craft to resume drug trafficking <wink>.
In fact, I'd argue this one, too.

Roughly, I've always assumed that, given
sufficient motivation and time, I could
work up a program-proving model which en-
compasses multiple-exit constructs, and
in fact demonstrates their relative de-
sirability when compared to the
multiple-artificial-boolean alternative.
I recognize that I must label this belief
purely speculative.  Has the academic
community truly not pushed this frontier
yet?  *That* surprises me.
			.
			.
			.
>Well, they will lose points, and they should.  But they also gain points for
>not ending up with a single exit condition choked with six artificial
>Boolean vrbls -- trading control complexity for data complexity may fool the
>automated complexity-checker, but the code is still a mess.  Let's see ...
>there are 856 gotos in Python's source code -- Guido must agree <wink>.
!  Fascinating.  You know what a sucker I am
for anything like measurement.
>(Odd!  Before counting, I would have sworn there were only a handful ...
>hmm, over 216 in almodule.c alone ... it's a *very* lumpy distribution.)
			.
			.
			.
>of anything changing here in Python1 is zero.  The only thing that ever got
>close to having a fighting chance (largely thanks to introducing no new
>keywords) was the "and while" statement; and that committed hypergeneralized
>suicide when it got expanded to the truly eccentric "and if" stmt.  This is
>why Guido so rarely has to squash a suggestion <0.5 wink>.
>
>leave-'em-alone-and-they-inflate-themselves-to-absurdity-ly y'rs  - tim
Is *that* what happens to parents?  Should the
stakeholders always toss out the original founders
and bring in seasoned operations people after grad-
uation from startup-hood (presumably around age
three, when they're making their own friends)?
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Thu Oct 14 12:20:38 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 16:20:38 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <7u4vsm$d3$1@essle.valdyas.org>

Ahmad Munif <muniff at yahoo.com> wrote:

> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table widget,notebook 
> widget, etc).
> PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.

> i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build 
> my database application ?

Start with the tutorial for Qt I've made - for the rest you can 
straightforwardly translate anything writting in C++ into Python.
It's quite easy, really. Example programs are becoming available,
too. The Qt documentation is very good. Besided there's a mailing
list now, so that if you have any problems, your answers will quite
probably be answered quickly.

Hey, if I can twig PyKDE/PyQt, and I'm a lowly VB/Oracle developer
by trade, then so can you!

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From sessile at in-gen.net  Tue Oct 26 14:24:50 1999
From: sessile at in-gen.net (sessile at in-gen.net)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:24:50 -0400
Subject: How to stop zlib from killing python
Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.19991026142450.007f0640@mail.in-gen.net>

SunOS 5.5.1
zlib-1.1.3
python-1.5.2
gcc-2.7.1

Made zlib shared library using gcc.  'make test' indicated
success.  I then installed zlib into my home directory
using 'make install --prefix=$HOME'.  This gave me
/home/me/include and /home/me/lib.

Made python using gcc and did not install (running directly
from ~/Python-1.5.2 directory... worked for other tests).

I had successfully been adding optional shared modules one
at a time until I reached zlib.  I uncommented the zlib
line in Python-1.5.2/Modules/Setup and modified it to find
my freshly installed version of zlib:

zlib zlibmodule.c -I/home/me/include -L/home/me/lib -lz

Python's 'make' completes without error.  However, when I
execute the newly generated python, I get:

% python
ld.so.1: python: fatal: libz.so.1.1.3: open failed: No such file or directory
Killed

Why can't python find the library at runtime? (yes, my
C programming experience is minimal)

Thanks.
--
E-Mail:  sessile at in-gen.net
  "I don't want the world... I just want your half."
                   -- TMBG (Anna Ng)



From darrell at dorb.com  Sat Oct 16 23:36:41 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 23:36:41 -0400
Subject: re question
References: <000001bf1829$95a7ef80$172d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <048f01bf1850$d400dd60$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

If you want to kill some real time try this:

import re
s='aaxx'*9999
re.findall('aa.*?bb', s)

My users can input such a pattern and find them self's stuck. Been playing
with ways to detect this and avoid the worst case runtime. Maybe something
about it in the "Mastering Regular Expression" book  ?

Attached a half baked swag at a solution. Split the pattern on '.*?' then
search from the end of the pattern to the front. And simulate the .*?

Something like this:
import myRe
s='aaxx'*9999
myRe.findallOptimize('aa.*?bb', 0, s)

I'd be happy with setting a time out and error callback on re.

--Darrell
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Name: myRe.py
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/19991016/a685bc78/attachment.ksh>

From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct  2 18:46:58 1999
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 10:46:58 +1200
Subject: IDLE doesn't work on my Mac :-(
Message-ID: <37F68B61.FF35BDCA@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Is IDLE supposed to work on a Mac?

I recently installed the Mac binary distribution of
Python 1.5.2 under System 8.0, and experienced the following 
problems:

1) At first I could not import Tkinter. I had to manually
add $(PYTHON):Lib:lib-tk to the library search path using
EditPythonPrefs. Shouldn't this should be done automatically
by the installer?

2) After that, "import Tkinter" works and is functional
at a basic level, but IDLE still will not run:

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "Macintosh HD:Programming:Python 1.5.2c1:Tools:idle:idle.py",
line 3, in ?
    PyShell.main()
  File "Macintosh HD:Programming:Python 1.5.2c1:Tools:idle:PyShell.py",
line 612, in main
    fixwordbreaks(root)
  File "Macintosh HD:Programming:Python
1.5.2c1:Tools:idle:EditorWindow.py", line 606, in fixwordbreaks
    tk.call('tcl_wordBreakAfter', 'a b', 0) # make sure word.tcl is loaded
TclError: invalid command name "tcl_wordBreakAfter"

I dug around in the innards and found that _tkinter.ppc.slb
contains a bunch of TEXT resources with tcl code in them,
among which there is the source for tcl_wordBreakAfter. But
it is not being loaded.

I tried putting in things like tk.call('source', 'word.tcl')
but only got "not found" errors.

>From the comment on that line, it sounds as though the function
is supposed to get autoloaded somehow, but that is not happening.

Anyone have any idea what's wrong and how to fix it?

Thanks, 
Greg Ewing
greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz



From rsmol at bart.nl  Mon Oct 25 11:28:41 1999
From: rsmol at bart.nl (Richard Smol)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:28:41 +0100
Subject: Implementing COM-interfaces in Python
Message-ID: <38147729.87E945A2@bart.nl>

Hi there,

How do you implement custom COM-interfaces in Python? I read in the
tutorial that you need to supply a list of strings in the variable
_com_interfaces_ ... but is that sufficient for interfaces you declared
yourself?

Thanks in advance!

Greetz,

RS






From hmail at gte.net  Sun Oct  3 13:39:06 1999
From: hmail at gte.net (Mike Hoegeman)
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 17:39:06 GMT
Subject: Directory select dialog box?
References: <Arcturax-0210992302520001@ppp41.pm2.midd-oh.siscom.net> <mark.938950413@declan>
Message-ID: <37F7961B.1DD86E74@gte.net>

Mark C Favas wrote:
> 
> Arcturax at no_spam.siscom.net (Arcturax) writes:
> 
> >I have a question
> >regarding bringing up a dialog box that will allow selection of just a
> >directory, not a file.


here is a url for you. i have not tried it myself.

http://www.multimania.com/droche/tkgetdir/index.html

-mike



From da at ski.org  Sun Oct 17 21:20:14 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 01:20:14 GMT
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Oct 17)
Message-ID: <9DFB644840E81975.2845296CD30CDE21.070AC73140C73547@lp.airnews.net>

This week's selection consists mostly of down-and-dirty Python tricks from
Python experts, from buffers to pipes to the usual regexp magic:

  There are a few enthusiastic comments about why JPython is a killer
  combination, in response to a query by Dan Star:
    http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=536378821

  Hrvoje Niksic puts forth a simple function which allows reading from
  and writing to a Unix process while avoiding deadlocks:
    http://www.egroups.com/group/python-list/69418.html

  Robin Boerdijk gives insightful comments on the buffer interface in
  his argument for having used a C extension in his xstruct module:
    http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=536789633
    http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-October/019510.html

  Marc-Andre Lemburg tells how to execute .pyc files in a given
  enviroment:
   http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-October/019581.html

  Greg Andruk and Moshe Zadka both implement record separators for
  file objects:
    http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=536905656
    http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-October/019572.html

  Tim Peters reviews reasons for realizing robust regexps:
    http://www.egroups.com/group/python-list/69416.html


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

      Python.org's Python Language Website is the center of Pythonia
          http://www.python.org

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

      Python Consortium emerges as an independent nexus of activity
          http://www.python.org/consortium

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

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

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

    Archive probing trick of the trade:
        http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=threaded&showsort=date&maxhits=100&groups=comp.lang.python


Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=~g%20comp.lang.python%20Python-URL%21


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
  http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/

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


-- The Python-URL! Team--

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

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From weage at mtu.edu  Sat Oct 30 18:16:00 1999
From: weage at mtu.edu (Joshua P. Weage)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 22:16:00 GMT
Subject: tk events & verifying entrys
Message-ID: <7vfqn0$mrf$1@campus3.mtu.edu>

	Here is what I'm trying to do.  I have a frame with
Entry widgets, and a menu bar.  I want to verify the values
in the Entries before doing anything on the menu.  I've
tried using FocusOut on the frame, but the menu pops up
before the Entries are verified.  Is there a standard way
to do this?  I'm working in the root window, and I want
the changed values available immediately to the program.

Josh




From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 18 14:19:08 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:19:08 +0200
Subject: Read one key press.
In-Reply-To: <002a01bf1989$f68d42d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
References: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp> <002a01bf1989$f68d42d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <19991018201908.B29979@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Adrian Eyre schreef:
> > key = raw_input("press a key: ")
> > if key == 'a':
> >     print "you pressed 'a'"
> > elif key == '^['
> >     print "you pressed escape"
> 
> This is a platform dependent issue.
> 
> For Win32, you can use:
> 
> import msvcrt
> key = msvcrt.getch()
> 
> For unix, it's probably easiest to use the curses module:
> 
> import curses
> win = curses.initscr()
> key = win.getch()
> I think then you're stuck with curses for all IO though.
> Not sure about this one.

Hmm. I think curses is the module I need, but I can't find documentation and
the module is written in c so I can't read that. If I run your example, I get
Traceback (innermost last):it:~/oefen/python$ python modcurse.py
                             File "modcurse.py", line 6, in ?
                                                                 key = curses.getch()
     AttributeError: getch
                          20:17:46:17/516:gerrit at gerrit:~/oefen/python$
and my terminal is totally wrong (if I press enter I don't get a newline, etc.)

The important part of dir(curses):
...
KEY_SUNDO', 'KEY_SUSPEND', 'KEY_UNDO', 'KEY_UP', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__version__', 'beep', 'cbreak', 'doupdate', 'echo', 'endwin', 'error', 'flash', 'flushinp', 'initscr', 'intrflush', 'isendwin', 'keyname', 'meta', 'newwin', 'nl', 'nocbreak', 'noecho', 'nonl', 'noraw', 'raw', 'ungetch', 'version']

Ah, there is some little documentation in the source.

I found it, it must be: win.getch()

Thanks!

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Sun Oct 17 20:59:34 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 00:59:34 GMT
Subject: TimeServer & Clients updated
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-T6ZJNySHv0v3@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

Here's the current code base for v1.0a of TimeServer & Timeclients.

Here's a few notes:

	1) The code is primarily (currently) aimed at Python on a Win NT
		platform.  After all, this was spec'd to be used at work, which
		is a Win NT environment.

		* Any cross platform suggestions, improvements are more
			than welcome.

	2) Any suggestions on additional error checking, sanity checks, etc
		are more than welcome.

	3) Any suggestions for general improvements or anything else, is
		certainly welcome.

	4) If anyone wants to archive this code, feel free, but please leave
		my comments/headers/acknowledgement intact.
		This also applies to Python releases, if this happens to
		get attached to the code tree, I won't shed any tears... |-)

	5) I'm also trying to come up with a "plugin" Scheme, since I plan to
		make other "servers", but I'm coming up dry on ideas.  Anyone
		want to "spare a idea" or two?

Acknowledgements:

	Everyone that has contributed directly or indirectly in helping keep
	my head attached straightly.

Improvement/Change history:

	* First release official release

====================================================
	Port 37, Timeserver code:
====================================================
#
#       Python Time Server, based off of RFC 868.
#
#       Thanks to (no particular order, nor is this complete):
#
#               Jeff            [jam .at. quark.emich.edu]
#               Paul Foley      [(setq reply-to  (concatenate 'string 
"Paul Foley "
#                                 "<mycroft" '(#\@) 
"actrix.gen.nz>"))]
#
#       And other folks in comp.language.python for their assistance 
with this code.
#
#       This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate 
any changes to be
#       emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#
# Changes:
#
#	v1.0a (10/15/99)
#		- Added Logging (see logfilename)
#		- Rewrote Time Generation routine to use time.time()
#		- Increased # of default threads
#

import time
from socket import *
import struct
import sys

#
#       Constants
#
epoch           = 2208988800L           # Difference between 1900 & 
1970 per RFC868
logfilename     = 'TIMESERVER.LOG'      # Name of the log file
numb_threads    = 10


def timeserver_calculation():
	total = epoch + time.time()
	return total


def server(host="", port=37, backlog=5):
	sock = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
	sock.bind (host, port)
	sock.listen (backlog)
	print "listening on port %s (%s, %s)" % (port, `host`, backlog)
	while 1:
		connection = (conn, addr) = sock.accept()
		ft = timeserver_calculation()
		lt = long(ft)
		
		timetuple = time.localtime(time.time())
		logentry = time.strftime('%x %X', timetuple) + ' client ' + 
str(addr[0]) + ' connected for timeStamp ('+str(lt)+')'
		
		print logentry
		logfile = open(logfilename, 'a')
		logfile.write (logentry+'\n')
		logfile.close

		

		conn.send ( struct.pack("!L", lt))
		conn.close()

if __name__ == "__main__":
	server('', 37, numb_threads)


====================================================
	Client 37
====================================================

#       Python Time Server client, based off of RFC 868.
#
#       Thanks to the folks in comp.language.python for their 
assistance with this code.
#
#       This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate 
any changes to be
#       emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#

import  os
import  struct
import  sys
from    telnetlib       import Telnet
import  time

#
#       Use Telnet library to connect to server on port 37
#
print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 37)    # Connect to NTP date / time 
server
datetime   = tn_session.read_all()      # Read the Integer
tn_session.close()                      # Close the Telnet session

dt = struct.unpack ("!L", datetime)     # Unpack the data from the 
server

#
#       "Dump the Data to Screen for Debug"
#
print "Server Returned: ",datetime," |       Unpacked structure value 
: ", dt

#
#       Epoch is the diff. between Epochs between Python & RFC 868
#
epoch = 2208988800L
dt = (dt[0]) - epoch             # Remove "Tuple" status & Convert it 
to a python time value

#
#       Print out "English" Version of time/date
#
timetuple = time.localtime(dt)
print "Time - ", time.asctime(timetuple)

#
#
#
if sys.platform == "win32":
        import win32api
        #print (timetuple[0], timetuple[1], timetuple[6], 
timetuple[2], timetuple[3], timetuple[4], timetuple[5], 0)
        #win32api.SetSystemTime (timetuple[0], timetuple[1], 
timetuple[6], timetuple[2], timetuple[3], timetuple[4], timetuple[5], 
0)
        os.system ('date '+ time.strftime('%x', timetuple) )
        os.system ('time '+ time.strftime('%X', timetuple) )
====================================================

====================================================
	Client 13
====================================================
#
#       Python Time Server client, based off of RFC 868.
#
#       Thanks to the folks in comp.language.python for their 
assistance with this code.
#
#       This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate 
any changes to be
#       emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#

import time
import sys
from telnetlib import Telnet

print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 13) # Connect to MS Win NT date / 
time
datetime   = tn_session.read_all()
tn_session.close()
print "Server returned: ",datetime
#timevalue = time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X')
#timestr    = time.strptime (datetime)
#print timevalue, '   - ', time.asctime(timevalue)
print

====================================================
          (Remove "NoSpam" to Email me)
====================================================
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From jlj at cfdrc.com  Tue Oct 19 11:48:09 1999
From: jlj at cfdrc.com (Lyle Johnson)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:48:09 GMT
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
References: <zWaO3.2925$lv2.105561@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <380c92a7.412580789@192.77.87.74>

os.path.exists(filename)

On Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:06:07 -0600, "Bill Rodgers" <Bill at nospam.com>
wrote:

>I would like to check for the existance of a file before I attempt an open
>and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way to do this.  I would like
>to tell the user that the file he specified doesn't exist.  Is there a way
>to do this or do I need to catch the exception and deal with it that way?
>Thanks,
>--
>Bill Rodgers
>Enterprise Management Consultant
>Specialty: BMC/Patrol
>brodg1 at ix.netcom.com
>
>




From harryt at gte.net  Fri Oct  8 19:21:11 1999
From: harryt at gte.net (Harry Tanovich)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 23:21:11 GMT
Subject: More PyGreSQL questions
Message-ID: <37FE7E42.81445455@gte.net>

I just skimmed over the source AND I'm pretty unfamiliar with
postgresql, but how hard would it be to re-do PyGreSQL so that:

a) query results aren't strings but binary values that map directly to
python types
b) cursors are used to fetch just as many rows as you want from the
database

i.e. like on page 136 of the postgresql programmers' guide:

res = PQexec(conn, "DECLARE mycursor BINARY cursor for select * from
test1");
...
res = PQexec(conn, "FETCH ALL in mycursor");

And what about binary inserts?




From zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de  Fri Oct 29 07:35:03 1999
From: zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Gregor Zych)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 13:35:03 +0200
Subject: pipes and commands
Message-ID: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>

Hi!
How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try

startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
os.system(startexe)

but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
gets the final file written correctly.
os.popen() seems to make my system unusable 'cos it slurps the generated 
file und these pictures are HUGE. Any hints are welcome.
Linux 2.2.11 python 1.5.2
Ciao
	Gregor



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 09:14:32 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 13:14:32 GMT
Subject: PC Speaker Sound
References: <hhWI3.5$kM2.277@Jupiter.bridgewater.edu>
Message-ID: <007701bf10c5$e5c2bdd0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

David Rushby <drushby at email.com> wrote:
> I know this is an offbeat question, but how does one go about generating PC
> speaker tones from Python?

afaik, there's nothing in the standard distribution
for this (however, 1.5.2 added wave-playing support;
see the winsound module for more info).

but if you have a compiler and a little time to spare,
you can grab the latest and greatest version of the
winsound sources:

    http://www.python.org/download/cvs.html

(or grab the current tarball from:
http://starship.python.net/crew/da/pythondists/

</F>




From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Fri Oct 29 19:19:38 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 09:19:38 +1000
Subject: PythonWin Debugger
In-Reply-To: <000a01bf21e8$0b25d020$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <004401bf2264$135b7ca0$0501a8c0@bobcat>

> Why is it that I can run the PythonWin debugger under
> straight Python fine,
> but if I run it in an embedded app, or from IDLE, I get:
>
>     win32ui.GetMainFrame().HookCommand(HandleToolCommand, idPos)
> win32ui: The frame does not exist
>
> Is there any way around this?

Hmmm.  The debugger should run from all embedded apps, except Tkinter
ones (and therefore except IDLE).  This particular problem would
appear to be a bug.  I have another debugger bug I need to track down,
and hopefully I can also solve this.

Unfortunately, Tkinter and any other GUI system dont seem to like
living together.  Eg, I have managed to use the debugger to debug a
Python COM object when hosted in VB (which is quite a cool demo :-)
but have never managed to get Tkinter apps working with it.  I would
really like to, but the little I know about Tk makes it seem somewhat
difficult.  A Tk expert willing to help me could solve this.

OTOH, the best stragegy for this is probably remote debugging - use a
seperate process to perform the debugging.  This would also solve a
few of the hairy "blocking" problems I need to deal with.  However,
this doesnt appear trivial either :-(

Mark.




From skip at mojam.com  Wed Oct  6 20:14:14 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 19:14:14 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: regular expression example generator
In-Reply-To: <37FBE230.6A4113C5@mincom.com>
References: <37FBE230.6A4113C5@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <14331.58838.569529.582982@dolphin.mojam.com>

    John> I have a faint recollection of hearing somewhere that someone for
    John> some language had written some software which took a regular
    John> expression and generated for you the types of things that would
    John> match it.

I've never heard of such a beast, though I suppose if something like this
existed it would be more likely to live in the Perl half of the universe.
That's okay, since the re module's re syntax is (or should be) a proper
subset of Perl's.  I'd ask over there.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Fri Oct 22 11:06:30 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:06:30 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Snippet request: Connecting to databases
In-Reply-To: <381074BC.63A2B8DB@hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221454210.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999, Hans Nowak wrote:
> The request is kinda easy... I'm looking for snippets to connect to
> databases. Any OS goes, idem for database (SQL Server, Access, Oracle,
> ...). A simple demonstration of how to connect and how to read a record
> or so, would do, although additional information (about requirements and
> such; which modules are needed, etc) is always welcome.

Gadfly - pure Python SQL engine; could work on any platform as Python could.

----- create database -----
#! /usr/local/bin/python

import os, gadfly
os.mkdir("gf_test")

connection = gadfly.gadfly()
connection.startup("ph", "gf_test")

cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("create table ph (nm varchar, ph varchar)")
cursor.execute("insert into ph(nm, ph) values ('arw', '3367')")
cursor.execute("select * from ph")
for x in cursor.fetchall(): 
    print x
connection.commit()
connection.close()
----- /create database -----


----- use database -----
#! /usr/local/bin/python

import gadfly
connection = gadfly.gadfly("ph", "gf_test")

cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("select * from ph")
for x in cursor.fetchall(): 
    print x
connection.close()
----- /use database -----

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From dworkin at ccs.neu.edu  Wed Oct 27 15:30:42 1999
From: dworkin at ccs.neu.edu (Justin Sheehy)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 15:30:42 -0400
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <871zauoltg.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <vnd1zagd2jh.fsf@betelgeuse.ccs.neu.edu>

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic at srce.hr> writes:

> In all kinds of circumstances it would be very useful to call an
> external filter to process some data, and read the results back in.
> What I needed was something like popen(), only working for both
> reading and writing. 

In what way was the popen2 standard module insufficient?

I use popen2.popen2() and popen2.popen3() fairly frequently, and am
trying to see what your code would buy you that you can't do with
those functions.

-Justin

 



From jonathan.watts at gd-es.com  Wed Oct  6 22:05:17 1999
From: jonathan.watts at gd-es.com (Jon Watts)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 02:05:17 GMT
Subject: minimal python for embedded system
Message-ID: <37FBFFDD.9FBC8118@gd-es.com>

Hi all,

I'm looking to embed python in a real-time system and am trying to
figure out the minimal components needed to run the process, do basic
I/O stuff and access modules in C.

Sorry for the lame description but I'm new to Python too so it doesn't
help with this task. We're just trying to take advantage of the Python
language and object oriented nature.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, I'm sure I'll be on
here a lot.

J. Watts




From johnm at magnet.com  Fri Oct  1 13:51:57 1999
From: johnm at magnet.com (John Mitchell)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 17:51:57 GMT
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
In-Reply-To: <14324.55883.614652.812873@dolphin.mojam.com>
References: <14324.55883.614652.812873@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.05.9910011305400.28817-100000@lemur.magnet.com>

On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> Yes, I should have given example re's (parental guidance suggested):
> 
> First, the real thing:
> 
>     r"(?P<m>\s*(?P<date>\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?"
>      "(?P<venue>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<city>[^,]+),"
>      "(?P<state>[A-Za-z\s]+),"


Regex's, to coin a phrase, suck.  I'd suggest breaking out your REs a
little more, and to add comments or examples to each segment. Also learn
the non-greedy match syntax, which is *VERY* useful.

-----
import re

x=re.compile(
    r""
    # Name              Body                    whitespace or delimiter 
    "(?P<m>"                                    "\s*"
    "(?P<date>"         "\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+"     "),\s*" # ex: "10/1/1999"
    "(?P<venue>"        ".+"                    "),\s*" # Knitting Factory
    "(?P<city>"         ".+"                    "),\s*" # New York
    "(?P<state>"        "[A-Za-z\s]+"           ")" # NY
    ")"
    )

arg = x.match('10/1/1999, Knitting Factory, New York, NY')
print arg.group('state')
-----


Note the "venue" and "city" no longer mention the trailing comma -- the RE
is cleaner and more flexible.  Also added optional whitespace after each
segment.

hope dis helps!


- j





From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct  5 22:56:24 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 02:56:24 GMT
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

While looking through the Docs, I don't see any method to set the
local computers clock via python?

Did I miss something, or is that actually "missing" from python??

		- Benjamin

================================
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From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Fri Oct 29 13:50:23 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:50:23 +0200
Subject: Newbie:python equiv of c structures
References: <7vb7ue$avt$0@199.201.191.2>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0C37D4B7@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

tom mcdavid <tmcdavid at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7vb7ue$avt$0 at 199.201.191.2...
> Hi,
>     I am learning Python from a background of mostly FORTRAN and some
> c.  I know how use structures in c, what is the analogue in Python?
> I've got Lutz' book, but it doesn't speak to my
> old-dog-learning-new-tricks background.
> Thanks,
> Tom McDavid

I think what you are looking for is a way to group data attributes. You can
do this with classes or even dictionaries.

For example:

class person:

    def __init__(self):

        self.name = ""
        self.address = ""
        self.age = ""

me = person()
me.name = "John"
me.age = 25

print me.name, ":", me.age

etc.

Robin.





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 09:01:31 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 13:01:31 GMT
Subject: Is the server down or what?
References: <37FC84F9.F1C51C28@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <003801bf10c4$1638f850$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
> I`m not getting any goddamn articles in this newsgroup today.

to check if articles are missing from
your local server, try checking the
archives at:

    http://www.deja.com (search for ~g comp.lang.python)
    http://www.egroups.com/group/python-list/

etc (but keep in mind that they are
usually lagging by few hours or so).

> Are people asleep or is the server down or what?

dunno.  maybe we have other things to do
than to post goddamn articles?

</F>

    "Unfortunately, those people who have
    nothing better to do than post on the
    Internet all day long are rarely the ones
    who have the most insights."
        -- Jacob Nielsen (www.useit.com)




From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Tue Oct  5 17:10:09 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 23:10:09 +0200
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <000401bf0ed3$0cd77b80$4da2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <y0jyadh345q.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

>             raise ValueError("dict(seq1, seq2): seq2 must be at least "
>                              "as long as seq1")

Why? Why not pad with None? I think it would be worse if
len(seq2)>len(seq1) - because you couldn't pad the keys with Nones...

--

  Magnus
  Lie                                     Please forward all spam to
  Hetland                                                uce at ftc.gov



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Fri Oct 29 02:31:05 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 02:31:05 -0400
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
In-Reply-To: <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <000101bf21d7$2daf1f40$af2d153f@tim>

[Brian Kelley, finding a phantom bug, and then embracing a
 phantom solution <wink>]

> actually a much quicker test is:
>
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> >>>

OK, everyone has beat you soundly about the head and shoulders for not using
a 3-outcome sort function -- and they were right to do so.  I should really
keep quiet at this point, but I can't resist:

>>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: -(x<y))
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: -(y<x))
>>> a
[5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
>>>

Those strange-looking comparison functions only return one of -1 or 0, yet
reliably get the job done despite that x>y didn't do a thing for you.
Here's an even stranger one:

>>> a
[5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x<y and -42 or 42)
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>>

I will reveal the truth, but nobody is allowed to exploit it <0.9 wink>:
the sort in 1.5.2 has nothing in common with the sort in 1.5.1.  Most of the
rewrite aimed at speed and safety (in 1.5.1 and before it was possible to
crash Python by modifying the list *during* the sort), but part was in
anticipation of the long-awaited "rich comparison" changes expected in 1.6:
of each comparison outcome, the 1.5.2 list.sort() asks only "is it less than
0?".  It never asks whether it's equal to 0, or whether it's greater than 0.
So a two-outcome function *can* work fine, provided it correctly delivers
the one distinction list.sort() is now looking for.

BTW, this is so that a user class in 1.6 can get a decent sort even if
__lt__ is the only comparison function it defines.  Full-blown cmp isn't
needed to sort, so the algorithm was rewritten not to require full-blown
cmp.  In 1.5.2, though, you can't yet exploit that except via horrid
trickery like the above.

first-person-to-use-it-in-a-program-gets-shot-ly y'rs  - tim





From mcfletch at vrtelecom.com  Thu Oct 14 06:52:19 1999
From: mcfletch at vrtelecom.com (Mike Fletcher)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 06:52:19 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <l03102801b42b3f63d2d1@[193.78.237.148]>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIOELOCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>

I too have many cases where I would like to use C-structure-like data
packing functions.  1/2 of the cases are related to the reading of binary
3-D file formats, where the definition of the file is a structure of
structures linearised to disk using count,data formats.

File := header, pointset, connectionset, normalset, skinset
pointset := count,point*count
point := float x, floaty, floatz

The other 1/2 of the cases is in the creation of multi-user virtual reality
wire protocols, where you want to be able to create similar highly
structured data types (i.e. you might have 20 different structures in
various relationships) and dump/load them across the wire.  Of course, here
you would also like various data-reduction features (e.g. unicode style
"continuation" encodings of integers and strings, bitfields etc.), but
that's just me being greedy :) .

Cheers,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Just van Rossum
Sent: October 14, 1999 4:22 AM
To: Tim Peters; python-list at python.org
Subject: RE: Improved struct module


At 12:25 AM -0400 10/14/99, Tim Peters wrote:
...
>Curiously enough, I hardly ever muck with C structs.  I too would like to
>hear from people who do!
...




From robin at alldunn.com  Sun Oct 24 01:07:36 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 22:07:36 -0700
Subject: [PSA MEMBERS] Interpreter lock
References: <004b01bf1d85$7f4caad0$fa01a8c0@easystreet.com>  <199910231921.PAA02120@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <00d301bf1ddd$b2117650$fa01a8c0@easystreet.com>

> > Is there a way to find out from the API if a given thread (via its
> > PyThreadState structure) has the interpreter lock already?
>
> No; Python's internal lock data structures don't record the owning
> thread.
>

Bummer.  I did fiure out another way around my troubles though so it didn't
turn out too bad.

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!





From phd at sun.med.ru  Sun Oct 17 08:14:27 1999
From: phd at sun.med.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 16:14:27 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
In-Reply-To: <871zauoltg.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL2.3.96.SK.991017161248.2633F-100000@sun>

Hi!

On 17 Oct 1999, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> def rwpopen(input, command, args=[]):
                              ^^^^^^^
   There was well-know problem with passing mutable object as a default.
Not sure if it was fixed in recent versions of Python...

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From tjreedy at udel.edu  Mon Oct  4 18:09:01 1999
From: tjreedy at udel.edu (Terry Reedy)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 22:09:01 GMT
Subject: Anyone read me?
References: <E11YCAN-0000bx-00@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Message-ID: <7tb8ht$550$1@news.udel.edu>

Recieved (on newsgroup).  TJR

In article <E11YCAN-0000bx-00 at rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>, 
Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de says...
>
>Hi,
>
>I seem to have problems with python-list... I'm getting everything that is
>written, but I myself can't post. If anybody reads this, could you just drop
>me a one-liner, so that I can track where I went wrong?
>
>TIA,
>                --Bj?rn




From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 29 11:37:55 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:37:55 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Produce .pyc without execution
In-Reply-To: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF739@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
References: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF739@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <14361.48979.112733.51569@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Gaetan Corneau writes:
 > Is there a way to compile a module without executing it? Just check syntax
 > and produce the .pyc file?

  Look at the py_compile.py module in the standard library; this gives 
an example of how to do this.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From fatjim at home.com  Mon Oct 25 05:32:28 1999
From: fatjim at home.com (Jim Meier)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:32:28 GMT
Subject: Piddle and Graphite?
Message-ID: <940844436.170387213@news>

Howdy folks!

A while ago, I was using a pair of packages called Piddle and Graphite to do
some nice dynamic graphing for a website. I've abandoned that project, but have
a new one I'd like to use these modules for again. 

Unfortunaly, Big Brother has erased their existence.

Piddle was a high-level page-description type of drawing API, with plugins for
PIL, .ps and .pdf output, and others. It was an excellent API, I don't think it
would have been abandoned?

Graphite was created by a member of the Python Starship (sorry, I don't
remember names). It was the most perfect design for an object-oriented graphing
package that I've ever seen. It was so well designed (in my opinion) that I
learned most of what I know about proper OOP from it.

What fate have these two modules suffered? Change of name? Or something more
sinister?

-Jim Meier



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Wed Oct  6 21:34:53 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 21:34:53 -0400
Subject: regular expression example generator
In-Reply-To: Skip Montanaro's message of "Wed, 6 Oct 1999 19:14:14 -0500 (CDT)"
References: <37FBE230.6A4113C5@mincom.com> <14331.58838.569529.582982@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <vrk8p09cn6.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

Skip Montanaro <skip at mojam.com> writes:

>     John> I have a faint recollection of hearing somewhere that someone for
>     John> some language had written some software which took a regular
>     John> expression and generated for you the types of things that would
>     John> match it.

> I've never heard of such a beast, though I suppose if something like this
> existed it would be more likely to live in the Perl half of the universe.
> That's okay, since the re module's re syntax is (or should be) a proper
> subset of Perl's.  I'd ask over there.

Olivier Lecarme (around Nice by now?) once wrote, long ago, a compiler
compiler using recursive descent, meant to be executed in Pascal, but
accepting generic grammars, of course.  If I remember well, he had a
tool to generate sources guaranteed to exercise all the grammar rules.
Those tools might not be what you want, but if you are really starving
for ideas, we can try to find Olivier and you could ask. :-) I read him,
sometimes, on the TM/SEMI mailing lists.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Oct 24 13:42:36 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 18:42:36 +0100
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
References: <oq904sc08y.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <m3904s1wqb.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?= <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Hi, people.  I'm reasonably trying to follow Guido's style guide, somewhat
> helped in doing so by the nice Emacs Python mode.
> 
> The only thing that really rebukes me is the interdiction to use capitals in
> comments to mark non-terminals (or variables), as it does not get accompanied
> by a better suggestion, or at least, none yielding as much clarity.
> 
> The 4 columns indentation rule is quite acceptable on average, expect when
> I have things like, say:
> 
>     for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
>         if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
>             and function_name not in transparent_functions):
>             name = os.path.basename(file_name)
>             if name not in transparent_files:
>                 return name, line_number
> 
> The pseudo-alignment of the `and' with `name' is rather ugly to my eyes.
> It would be alleviated a bit by using `\' on the preceding line instead
> of `(', but the style guide suggests that we favour '(', which looks
> like a good thing.  Do some of you share my little irritation, here?

Yes.

> Would someone have developed some elegant and easy compromise?  I hardly
> see one, but who knows, people sometimes have unexpectedly good ideas! :-)

It hadn't occurred to me before, but one `solution' would be to chuck
another space between `if' and `(', like so:

def r():
    if  (long_condition
         and other_condition):
        return ineteresting_stuff

Not especially natural, but it might just work...

HTH,
Michael



From info at visualvision.it  Fri Oct 22 20:24:28 1999
From: info at visualvision.it (Visual Vision)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 02:24:28 +0200
Subject: ANN: make your app's manual or your app's site quickly!
Message-ID: <3811003C.F235D3A9@visualvision.it>

Small, powerful and easy: there is a new software for the hypertext
world, iPer (win 95-98-NT).
Web pages, e-books, application manuals, WinHelps, CDs without effort,
with a single tool.
Facts, not words: if you are interested, you can get free trials at:
http://visualvision.it/ipere/ (you can also buy on-line)
Be productive in 5 minutes, choose iPer!

VV Staff
--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Visual Vision, hypertext with ease!
 http://visualvision.it/e/      82, V.le Riviera
                                Pietra Ligure ITALY
[ASP member]                    fax +39-019-625520
---------------------------------------------------------------



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 15 08:17:08 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:17:08 +0100
Subject: PythonWin : Feature request
Message-ID: <003201bf1707$33730890$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

Any chance of adding a feature to PythonWin to re-initialise the
interpreter? When changes are made to modules, it's a pain to
have to reload() them, and it doesn't always work.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From tino at wildenhain.de  Sat Oct 30 04:28:01 1999
From: tino at wildenhain.de (Tino Wildenhain)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 10:28:01 +0200
Subject: rstrip
References: <381A7208.D53BB0E0@wjk.mv.com>
Message-ID: <381AAC11.A3E6AA6B@wildenhain.de>

Hello,

William King wrote:
> 
> Just managed to download and install Python on my PC and was
> trying a few things to start out learning the language... so I guess
> that makes me a NEWBIE....  Anyhow:
> 
> #made a string with leading tabs
> 
>  x  =  "        Test"
> 
try the following:

x = " 		Test		"
string.lstrip(x)
'Test\011\011'
string.rstrip(x)
'\011\011Test'
string.strip(x)
'Test'

now guess why :)

> #used rstrip(x) to eliminate leading tabs (whitespace)
must be a typo. rstrip is of course for the trailing whitespaces

> import string
> string.rstrip(x)
> 
> #resulted in
> 
> \011\011Test
> 
> #lstrip will take away tabs (whitespace) and strip will do same
> #but it appears that rstrip does not on Windows 95
> #is this a bug? or do I have to do something to redefine whitespace?

Best regards

Tino Wildenhain



From Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de  Wed Oct  6 09:12:39 1999
From: Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de (Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:12:39 GMT
Subject: ObjC / GNUstep?
Message-ID: <E11Yqs5-0001l2-00@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>

Hi,

after turning away from all that stuff for a while, the recent developments
on the GNUstep front (esp. the emergence of V0.6 "Dawn") have made me
interested in ObjC/GNUstep again. I've browsed through the ObjC-SIG's mailing 
list archives, and it looks like PyObjC 0.55 is the current version. I have
a couple of problems with it, though:

	o there is no Demo directory (as announced in the README)
	o I haven't managed to get anything AppKit-related running; the
	  program segfaults when creating a NSWindow.

Can anyone provide me with more information? The combination OpenStep /
Python seems a natural one, and I'd really like to use it...

TIA,
		--Bj?rn

PS Thanks to all those folks who replied to my "Do you read me?" post...
still doesn't work, though. I regularly send mail from a laptop hooked up to
an IP-Masquerading dialup server that dials into my university's PPP server;
works fine for any mail, but doesn't reach python-list. Strange. This is
typed directly on the university's box in elm; that works for some reason.
If anyone could shine some light on that, I'd be EXTREMELY thankful, as I
just don't get it.
-- 
--------------------------------/\--One OS to rule them all---Windows NT-----
Bjoern Giesler                 /  \  One OS to find them           
<un4e at rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>    / <> \  One OS to bring them all    
-----------------------------/______\--And in the Darkness bind them---------
    Thank you for your time, worship the Antichrist, and have a nice day.



From scott at chronis.pobox.com  Sun Oct 10 17:46:23 1999
From: scott at chronis.pobox.com (scott)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 21:46:23 GMT
Subject: Problems with strptime
References: <38009386.ACC2FD6D@inka.de>
Message-ID: <slrn802285.24h.scott@chronis.pobox.com>

On systems that have strptime as part of their C library (like SUSE), python
just uses that.  I suspect that the problem is with the systems's strptime()
function, not python.

One thing that may cause breakage is the fact that all of your examples 
start with 3 '0's in a row.  You should try coding the same thing in C
and then see if that breaks.  If it does, you should report the problem to
the maintainers of glibc, or try to fix it yourself.

1009 11:51 bort:~% python
Python 1.5.2 (#8, May 28 1999, 21:09:50)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import time
>>> time.strptime("000311212045Z", '%y%m%d%H%M%SZ')
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: format mismatch
>>> time.strptime("010311212045Z", '%y%m%d%H%M%SZ')
(2010, 3, 11, 21, 20, 45, 6, 1, 0)
>>> time.strptime("100311212045Z", '%y%m%d%H%M%SZ')
(2010, 3, 11, 21, 20, 45, 6, 1, 0)
>>>
1010 17:34 bort:~% uname -a
Linux bort 2.0.36 #6 Fri Dec 18 12:18:39 EST 1998 i686 unknown
1010 17:35 bort:~%

yup, glibc is broke.  I bet glibc uses atoi() which skips leading zeros
as if they aren't there in the first place. on the other hand:

1010 17:36 chronis:icg-work/icgmh% python
Python 1.5.2 (#2, Sep 22 1999, 15:46:56)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on freebsd3
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import time
>>> time.strptime("000311212045Z", '%y%m%d%H%M%SZ')
(2000, 3, 11, 21, 20, 45, 6, 1, 0)
>>> time.strptime("010311212045Z", '%y%m%d%H%M%SZ')
(2001, 3, 11, 21, 20, 45, 6, 1, 0)
>>> time.strptime("100311212045Z", '%y%m%d%H%M%SZ')
(2010, 3, 11, 21, 20, 45, 6, 1, 0)
>>>
010 17:37 chronis:icg-work/icgmh% uname -a # output broken up to fit lines
FreeBSD chronis.pobox.com 3.3-STABLE FreeBSD 3.3-STABLE #0: 
Mon Sep 20 09:58:31 EDT 1999
root at chronis.pobox.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/MYBSD  i386
1010 17:37 chronis:icg-work/icgmh%

But that's only 'cause I fixed strptime in FreeBSD's C library. Still waiting 
for them to integrate the patch, though.

strptime-seems-broke-everywhere'ly yers

cott

On systems with strptime as part of the C libraryi

On Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:24:22 +0200, Michael Strder
<michael.stroeder at inka.de> wrote:

>HI!
>
>I'm using time.strptime to parse several time-stamp strings like
>time.strptime('451014100704Z','%y%m%d%H%M%SZ') with year without
>century. This does not work in every case. Here's a list of time-strings
>which failed. I cannot see a reason or a pattern why this fails.
>
>***strptime failed 000311212045Z
>***strptime failed 000323170912Z
>***strptime failed 000325110134Z
>***strptime failed 000212090033Z
>***strptime failed 000311213753Z
>***strptime failed 000311212045Z
>***strptime failed 000323170912Z
>***strptime failed 000325110134Z
>***strptime failed 000311213753Z
>
>My system is: S.u.S.E.-Linux 6.2 based on glibc-2.1 with pre-installed
>Python 1.5.2.
>
>Ciao, Michael.



From zippy at cs.brandeis.edu  Fri Oct 22 11:52:47 1999
From: zippy at cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:52:47 -0700
Subject: sparse matrix representation?
Message-ID: <221019990852479530%zippy@cs.brandeis.edu>

I want to work with 50k x 50k matrices with mostly zeroes, so a hash
would be the efficient way to represent this.

Does the Python numerical library handle large sparse matrices as
hashes?

If not, is there a Python library that does?

--Pat



From fred at ontosys.com  Fri Oct 22 16:08:11 1999
From: fred at ontosys.com (Fred Yankowski)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 20:08:11 GMT
Subject: os.path.isdir() on Windows dislikes final backslash on pathnames
Message-ID: <7uqg7b$hf5$1@eve.enteract.com>

Using Python 1.5.2 on Windows NT 4.0, I find that
os.path.isdir('c:\\progra~1') returns 1 but 
os.path.isdir('c:\\progra~1\\') returns 0.

Is that a bug?

On a Unix machine running Python 1.5.1
os.path.isdir('/tmp') returns 1, and
os.path.isdir('/tmp/') returns 1 too, and even
os.path.isdir('/tmp/////') returns 1 (as I would expect).

--
Fred Yankowski







From meowing at banet.net  Sat Oct 30 06:14:52 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 06:14:52 -0400 (EWT)
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line (oops)
In-Reply-To: <slrn81lf9o.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910300558270.6890-100000@slip-32-101-160-150.ma.us.prserv.net>

On 30 Oct 1999, Eric Smith wrote:

> Yeah, it is a nice "shell" interface for testing, however one liners are
> useful:
> 1. I use their history arrows to access them from the unix shell

Yup, but the interactive Python thingy has that too if you've got the
readline support compiled in.

> 2. You can use the unix fc for editing long ones

Okay, but orking inside either emacs or idle will get you the same
functionality.

> 3. You can paste them into your scripts.

SAame as for #2.

> 4. They are easy to go back to and edit etc.

Okay, mostly it sounds like you're wanting to use the tools that work well
with Perl the same way in Python.  You're going to be unhappy trying to
get there from here.  It could well be that Perl is more the language for
you than Python is; coming from the other end, the brackets and stuff that
make Perl work the way you like are among the reasons I like to use Python
when I can.

> This would certainly be high on my Python wish list (once I started
> wishing).  Especially if one was learning from fresh and had a very short
> attention span :(

The problem with making `python -c' go is that the position of things on
lines is important.  Taking the oriinal example, this will kind of get
what you want:

 meowing:~$ python -c "r='de'; print r == 'whatever' or r == 'de'"
 1

But phrasing it in the original way you presented it takes some oddness.
A straight translation will fail:

 meowing:~$ python -c "r='de'; if r == 'whatever' or r == 'de'): print 'match'"
   File "<string>", line 1
     r='de'; if r == 'whatever' or r == 'de': print 'match'
             ^
 SyntaxError: invalid syntax

OTOH, lots of shells tend to be smart enough to allow two-liners, but this
kind of thing gives me the screaming willies:

 meowing:~$ python -c "r='de'
 if r == 'whatever' or r == 'de': print 'match'"
 match

>  > >>> r in ('whatever', 'de')
>  > 1
> kewl
>  > >>> # and just for the heck of it...
>  > ... r == 'whatever' or 'de'
>  > 'de'
> For me this _always_ prints the token after the `or'.

Oh yeah?

>>> r = 'whatever'
>>> r == 'whatever' or 'de'
1

So there =)  This can be nifty to build an if-like thing into an
assignment.  Works in Perl too, BTW.




From iam at not.you  Wed Oct 27 11:56:46 1999
From: iam at not.you (Ken Power)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:56:46 GMT
Subject: 'Dynamic' class instances
References: <381629BC.3E47158E@x.x>
Message-ID: <38171fe8.14091745@news1.mysolution.com>

Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:22:52 -0400, in comp.lang.python, Eric Jacobs
<x at x.x> managed to squeak:

>skaller wrote:
>
>> if you follow my strange thinking, what I am attempting is assign a
>> class instance, not to test, but to the variable defined(??) by test.
>> If apple was given at the class name: prompt, I would then have a
>> class instance named apple, not test.
>                                  ^^^^
>
>It seems the original poster was wondering how to create a variable
>in the namespace when the name of that variable was not known at
>compile time. That then would be:
>
>        exec test + " = spam()"
>
>Although exec is a pretty nasty way to do that. If I wanted it in
>the global namespace, I would do:
>
>        globals()[test] = spam()
>
>locals() does not work in an analogous manner; you'd have to use
>exec to create a variable in the local namespace.
>
>But more than anything, I'd recommend using a dictionary for the
>purpose rather than manipulating any namespaces.

Hmmm. Thank you for the input. I really appreciate it. If you would
please, in a simple example, how would you, "use a  dictionary for the
purpose rather than manipulating any namespaces."?

The part about namespaces I understand (should the new instance be
global in nature, or localized to a module), using dictionaries in
your implied sense, I do not understand, please expound.

Ken
--------------------------------
Ken Power
uncle_wiggly at bigfoot dot com
get that?
--------------------------------



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 15 06:19:22 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:19:22 +0200
Subject: Im new Help
References: <376-38066AB5-93@storefull-255.iap.bryant.webtv.net>
Message-ID: <3806FFAA.F34B237C@lemburg.com>

Charmeleon wrote:
> 
> I just downloaded python and got the book by o'relliy. the only thing i
> know how do to do is is make a button does anyone know where I can
> download games written in python so I can see the sorce.

PySol is a game written in Python. It comes with source code.
Search www.python.org for the URL.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    77 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From bawolk at ucdavis.edu  Wed Oct  6 01:03:28 1999
From: bawolk at ucdavis.edu (Bruce Wolk)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 22:03:28 -0700
Subject: How do loose the /012
References: <7tdm4k$gmd$1@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <37FAD820.A8641EB9@ucdavis.edu>

How about using

string.replace(s,'\n','')

That should remove all returns from the string.  string.strip() only
removes whitespace from the ends.

Bruce

Steve Hunter wrote:
> 
> This code is suppose to take an ascii file made up of sentences and create a
> file in the form of..by example..
> 1 sentence one.
> 2 sentence two
> etc...
> 
> the code is  below and the input/output below that.....appreciate the fix
> that makes
> this work.
> 
> Steve at HOSYS.com
> 
> import string
> 
> file = open('c:\\tmp\\ascii.txt')
> text = file.read()
> sentences = string.split(text,'.')
> 
> newList = []
> cnt = 0
> 
> for s in sentences:
>  cnt = cnt + 1
>  ss = (str(cnt) + ' ' + string.strip(s) + '.' + '\n' )
>  newList.append(ss)
> 
> myfile = open('c:\\tmp\\parsed.txt', 'w')
> myfile.writelines(newList)
> myfile.close()
> file.close()
> 
> input look like:
> AAAA
> AA
> A.
> 
> BBBBBB
> B.
> 
> C.
> 
> DDDD
> DD.
> 
> output looks like
> 1 AAAA
> AA
> A.
> 2 BBBBBB
> B.
> 3 C.
> 4 DDDD
> DD.
> 5 .
> 
> output should look like
> 1 AAAAAAA.
> 2 BBBBBBB.
> 3 C.
> 4 DDDDDD.



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct  7 10:32:33 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 03:32:33 +1300
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
References: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <37FCAF01.99B03CA3@compaq.com>

Michael Haggerty wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sometimes I would like to write functions with arguments that are
> REQUIRED to be passed as keyword arguments

Let's approach this in a more general way. First,
introduce dictionary unpacking:

   (foo, bar, baz) = dict

is equivalent to

   foo = dict['foo']; bar = dict['bar']; baz = dict['baz']

Then we can write

   def wack(a, b, **d):
      (x, y, z) = d

Next, if we allow dictionary unpacking in the parameter
list, we get:

   def wack(a, b, **(x, y, z)):
      ...

Greg



From sean.cason at prodigy.net  Mon Oct  4 06:05:22 1999
From: sean.cason at prodigy.net (Sean)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 06:05:22 -0400
Subject: ping script
References: <7t699k$3p1m$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>
Message-ID: <7tb8v7$49pm$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>

Thanks to all that replied to me. It really helped me out. I got alot to
learn.
Sean <sean.cason at prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:7t699k$3p1m$1 at newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com...
> I am a newbie to python. Any ideas on how to create a script to ping a
class
> c block and maybe resolve the names to DNS.
>
>                     Thanks
>
>





From bill at hk.rfa.org  Wed Oct  6 07:31:49 1999
From: bill at hk.rfa.org (Bill Eldridge)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:31:49 +0800
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <37F9BC2B.F9FF1AC2@hk.rfa.org> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-NTdCzUdVVzcd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <37FB3325.AFBF0FD@hk.rfa.org>

Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:51:55, Bill Eldridge <bill at hk.rfa.org> wrote:
> 
> > >>> time.localtime(3155550800.0)
> > (1901, 12, 14, 4, 22, 28, 5, 348, 0)
> > >>> time.localtime(315555080.0)
> > (1980, 1, 1, 14, 11, 20, 1, 1, 0)
> >
> > 1970-1976 was about 190 million seconds, so 1976-1980 should
> > be less than double (380 million seconds), not 3.2 billion seconds.
> 
> Eh?
> 
> Bill, I've been staring at this problem on and off for days.  I
> certainly
> could have made a typo in the comment(s), but either way I worked
> around it with a manual calculation....

> python GMTIME calcs                                                     RFC 868
> (Base 1970, Jan 1)                                                        (Base Jan 1, 1900)
> Jan 1, 1970     -              18,000.0                                         2,208,988,800
> Jan 1, 1976     -    189,320,400.0                                              2,398,291,200
> Jan 1, 1980     - 3,155,550,800.0                                       2,524,421,600
> 
> I don't see how python's Jan 1, 1980 calcuation can exceed the RFC's
> calculation,

Your time of 3,155,550,800 is 10 times the actual number of seconds
from 1970 to 1980, which is 315,555,080.0, which seems to be why
you were distrusting Python.  315,555,080 is LESS than the RFC
2524421600.


I also get 2,209,161,600 from Jan 1, 1900 to 1970 instead
of 2,208,988,800; and 315532800 seconds for Unix GMT Jan 1, 1980 instead
of 3155550800; and 2524694400.0 instead of 2,524,421,600 for RFC's 1980.

(note that time.mktime returns local time, while time.time returns UTC)
--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at hk.rfa.org



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct  5 05:59:15 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 09:59:15 GMT
Subject: Anyone have success w/STRPTIME???
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-R7GdiTzGgOlL@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <008f01bf0f0f$a209f1b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-GDXmZdeHXsHW@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:54:34, "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> 
wrote:

> Benjamin Schollnick <junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> > Can anyone point me in the right direction, re: STRPTIME?
> > 
> > To my knowledge the strptime function(s) are correct below,
> > yet under both OS/2 & Win NT, I am getting a attribute error.
> 
> http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-time.html
> says:
> 
>     strptime (string[, format])
> 
>     Parse a string representing a time according to
>     a format. /.../ This function may not be defined
>     on all platforms.
> 
> dir(time) will show you if it's defined on your
> platform (it's not available on Windows)

Great... That explains windows... But why doesn't it work
under Os/2?

>>> import time
>>> dir(time)
['__doc__', '__name__', 'accept2dyear', 'altzone', 'asctime', 'clock',
'ctime',
'daylight', 'gmtime', 'localtime', 'mktime', 'sleep', 'strftime', 
'strptime', 't
ime', 'timezone', 'tzname']				 ^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'll double check under Windows NT, but I believe you are right
in regards to not being available there.

		- Benjamin
================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From dozier at abs.net  Fri Oct 15 01:01:13 1999
From: dozier at abs.net (Bill Dozier)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 01:01:13 -0400
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com> <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de> <38043F91.F3F36D5A@compaq.com> <006601bf1582$a22f3dc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <x7r9ixzrky.fsf@lindm.dm>
Message-ID: <dozier-1510990101130001@pm4-s21.dial-up.abs.net>

In article <x7r9ixzrky.fsf at lindm.dm>, Dieter Maurer <dieter at handshake.de> wrote:

>"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes on Wed, 13 Oct 1999
15:55:38 +0200:
>> afaik, Scriptics doesn't support Tk on Mac at
>> this time.  (maybe the Tclers can verify this?)
>A few day ago, I saw the announcement of Tcl/Tk 8.2.1 for the Mac
>in "comp.lang.tcl".

The Mac port is done by Jim Ingham, who does not work for Scriptics. It is
not officially supported, although apparently Scriptics does provide some
logistical help.



From tmcdavid at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 00:31:10 1999
From: tmcdavid at yahoo.com (tom mcdavid)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 04:31:10 GMT
Subject: Newbie:python equiv of c structures
Message-ID: <7vb7ue$avt$0@199.201.191.2>

Hi,
    I am learning Python from a background of mostly FORTRAN and some
c.  I know how use structures in c, what is the analogue in Python?
I've got Lutz' book, but it doesn't speak to my
old-dog-learning-new-tricks background.
Thanks,
Tom McDavid




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 18 03:22:58 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 09:22:58 +0200
Subject: A question
References: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi> <FJrGMt.LIB@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <00a601bf1939$fab21bb0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Will Ware <wware-nospam at world.std.com> wrote:
> Other folks have mentioned glob.glob(), which will work fine for
> things like "*.txt". If you want something more flexible, for
> instance all the *.c and *.h files that mention printf,
> you'd want to iterate on the output of something like
> 
> find . -name '*.[ch]' -exec grep -l printf {} \;

footnote:

import find

for file in find.find("*.[ch]", "."):
    print file

solves half of that problem.  string.find can be used
to handle the rest, in a portable way.

</F>

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




From skip at mojam.com  Tue Oct  5 01:05:56 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 00:05:56 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Why TERRIBLE performance of regular expressions in re module ?
In-Reply-To: <7tbrmi$5do$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7tbrmi$5do$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <14329.34612.57613.95391@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Russell> While debugging a CGI script, I came across the following
    Russell> strange behavior: a regular expression that seems to require
    Russell> exponential time to recognize a string.  For the first twenty
    Russell> some-odd characters, it performed fine.  I added another
    Russell> character, and the time became .. well, noticeable.  Another
    Russell> character, and recognition required 30+ seconds.  Another,
    Russell> 1:15.  Another, 2:2x.  Another, just under 5 minutes.  Another,
    Russell> 9 minutes, plus.

Can you post the pattern and the input string(s) you used?  You might want
to search the c.l.py archives for "backtracking".

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From squeezekey at aol.com  Sun Oct 10 15:09:56 1999
From: squeezekey at aol.com (SqueezeKey)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 19:09:56 GMT
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
References: <1272541430-52232301@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <19991010150956.11709.00000658@ng-fz1.aol.com>

Just downloaded the new package and it installed perfectly.  Kudos to Gordon
for his quick turnaround on this problem.





From smata1de at gmx.de  Mon Oct 18 12:31:14 1999
From: smata1de at gmx.de (Stephane)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 18:31:14 +0200
Subject: Bug tracking tool in Python
Message-ID: <380B4B52.61D0A979@gmx.de>

Hi,

does there exist a bug tracking tool/database written in
Python which is free. The only tool I know is bugzilla.
What about the bug lists at python.org?


Thanks

  Stephane



From ferni at loxinfo.co.th  Fri Oct 15 14:01:54 1999
From: ferni at loxinfo.co.th (Jon Fernquest)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 01:01:54 +0700
Subject: Prolog Glue Language
Message-ID: <008501bf1737$5f9e1920$0e2292cb@akha>

Magnus L. Hetland wrote:
> Anyone else who want to try? If nothing else, we could make a very
> *small* prolog... It might still be useful for a lot of things.

I took a look at GNU Prolog and  pl2wam.c seems create wam instructions
that are in turn translated into further instructions for a specific
platform.
Writing this second part for every specific platform, Windows and the Mac
for my purposes being the most important, at least for me wouldn't be
feasible.
It seems to me that someone must have written a portable WAM interpreter in
C
or C++. ...or maybe there's something in the GNU Prolog code I'm missing.
Better have another look.

Cheers,

Jon Fernquest
bayinnaung at hotmail.com



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From spamfranke at bigfoot.de  Fri Oct 22 17:10:01 1999
From: spamfranke at bigfoot.de (Stefan Franke)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 21:10:01 GMT
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
References: <000001bf1c51$78160160$352d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <3810bf00.16850204@news.btx.dtag.de>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 01:51:21 -0400, "Tim Peters"
<tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:

>What is "a room installation"?
>
Hmm, propably a messy homegrown German translation. Should mean a
situation at a public exhibition. 

Our intention is to create a kind of interaction by listening to
people with arranging microphones and processing the audio stream
using several methods among which are pitch detection, speech
recognition and recording/transformation/playback of sampled phrases.

The manyfold results are then used to influence sound playback and
generated computer graphics.

>Speaker-independent is hard.  From a recording is hard.  If people aren't
>speaking into a high-quality microphone, it's very hard.  If it's not
>intentional speech (i.e., if people don't know they're talking to a
>computer -- they're just chatting), it's very hard.  The good news is that
>German is easy (compared to the rest of this).
Now that's *really* some good news <wink>.

[further encouragement snipped]

>If you want to play with SR on MS systems to "get
>a feel for it", visit the little-known:
>
>    http://www.microsoft.com/IIT/
>
>You can download a free SR engine and development kit (note that this is for
>hard-core Windows developers; there's nothing of use to end users there).

Thanks for the link. I already had it from a previous post of yours.
I'm writing this while waiting for the 40MB download. Are you able to
tell something about its recognition quality?

As you may anticipate from the above, it's not necessary for my
purposes to recognize contiguous text. Some isolated keyphrases would
be more than sufficient, even - say - special kinds of systematic
errors or misinterpretations. My expectations are not as high as my
initial posting may lead to suggest.

[error]-[error]-[pause]-[error]-[error]-[error]-[error]-ly yr's
Stefan




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:03:07 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:03:07 -0400
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <87r9j9v1wz.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <000701bf0fb8$143e75a0$cf2d153f@tim>

[Hrvoje Niksic, about sqrt(-1)]
> ...
> Seriously, how will somebody who has never heard (sic!) of complex
> numbers care if some mathematical functions yield complex results?

sqrt is common in business (elementary statistics) calculations (you don't
think they put a sqrt key on $2 calculators because they need to get rid of
extra keycaps <wink>?).  The typical user will be as baffled and helpless in
the face of a page full of complex numbers as the typical IEEE-754 user is
in the face of a page full of NaNs.  The point is to catch likely errors
ASAP; at least the 754 user can enable the invalid operation exception
(provided a local platform expert can be found to tell them how!).

sqrt-is-special-because-it's-ordinary-ly y'rs  - tim





From arnold at dstc.edu.au  Sat Oct 30 05:57:34 1999
From: arnold at dstc.edu.au (David Arnold)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 19:57:34 +1000
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line (oops) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "30 Oct 1999 09:41:16 GMT."
             <slrn81lf9o.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com> 
Message-ID: <199910300957.TAA09048@piglet.dstc.edu.au>

-->"Eric" == Eric Smith <eric at fruitcom.com> writes:

  Eric> Yeah, it is a nice "shell" interface for testing, however one
  Eric> liners are useful: I use their history arrows to access them
  Eric> from the unix shell You can use the unix fc for editing long
  Eric> ones You can paste them into your scripts. They are easy to go
  Eric> back to and edit etc.

i tend to run the interpreter (which has readline, etc) from an xterm,
and ^Z it when i need the shell, then fg brings it back.  cut & paste
works fine, although the two histories are a little clumsy.

i don't find python's -c option very useful for testing.

  >>> r == 'whatever' or 'de'
  'de'

  Eric> For me this _always_ prints the token after the `or'.

unless the value bound to r is a string "whatever", in which case the
equality test will succeed, and the expression will return the value
of true, 1.



d



From pereira at research.att.com  Fri Oct 22 23:44:26 1999
From: pereira at research.att.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 03:44:26 GMT
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
References: <000001bf1c51$78160160$352d153f@tim> <3810bf00.16850204@news.btx.dtag.de>
Message-ID: <221019992344263737%pereira@research.att.com>

In article <3810bf00.16850204 at news.btx.dtag.de>, Stefan Franke
<spamfranke at bigfoot.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 01:51:21 -0400, "Tim Peters"
> <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> 
> >What is "a room installation"?
> >
> Hmm, propably a messy homegrown German translation. Should mean a
> situation at a public exhibition. 
> 
> Our intention is to create a kind of interaction by listening to
> people with arranging microphones and processing the audio stream
> using several methods among which are pitch detection, speech
> recognition and recording/transformation/playback of sampled phrases.
This kind of environment is just about the worst possible for current
speech recognition technology. The problems include variation in
speaker position relative to microphones, multipath effects, noise,
background speech, variation in room acoustic properties as people move
about, just to mention a few problems.
> As you may anticipate from the above, it's not necessary for my
> purposes to recognize contiguous text. Some isolated keyphrases would
> be more than sufficient, even - say - special kinds of systematic
> errors or misinterpretations. My expectations are not as high as my
> initial posting may lead to suggest.
As far as I know, the best way to recognize anything in continuous
speech is to try to recognize everything, since the poor speech models
for each unit (phone, word) need all the help they can get in
constraining the places where they may match, and the best help we can
give them are the candidate matches of other models around them.

-- F



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 12 22:31:54 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 22:31:54 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au> <14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au> <14339.41837.609410.864634@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <5lr9j056ud.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Regarding the use of 'global' in combination with nested scopes:
I have always been in favor or *not* providing a way to assign to
variables at the intermediate levels.  That is, you can *use*
variables from intermediate levels, but you can't *set* them.  The
'global' statement will set the variable at the module-global level.

Motivation: I agree that it is useful to reference variables in the
surrounding scope.  But if you start modifying them, you're abusing
the nested scope mechanism to hold mutable state; it's much clearer
to define a class for this purpose.

In particular, I think that allowing

	def f():
		sum = 0
		def accumulate(x):
			global sum
			sum = sum+x
		...code using accumulate()...
		return sum

tends to create obfuscated code.

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



From mal at lemburg.com  Sun Oct 10 08:41:18 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:41:18 +0200
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rocheste <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991005215226.A724@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <3800896E.7BB25D8@lemburg.com>

Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 01:37:02AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> [ ... snip ...]
> > Client13 was written to take advantage of a daemon running under
> > Windows NT on
> > port 13, which broadcasts like this:
> >
> >               Mon Oct  4 21:27:45 1999 (In plain text.)
> >
> > Which is nice, but annoying because for some *STRANGE* reason I can't
> > get
> > time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X') to work.
> >
> > Everytime I try STRPTIME, I get a attribute error.  Can anyone point
> > out what
> > I'm goofing up?
> 
> I think you want the format string to be '%a %b %d %X %Y'. That is,
> some of the commas are not necessary and %A and %B expect the *full*
> day and month names, whereas %a and %b handle the abbreviated
> versions. Secondly, your example had the time and year the wrong way
> around.
> 
> >
> > BTW-> Anyone have suggestions for making the server a little bit
> > "friendlier" either
> >       code / execution wise?
> 
> Yes. :-)
> 
> [refer to original post for server code]
> 
> Since we can probably assume that this server will be used to serve
> times between 1900 and 2099 (you were intending to rewrite it sometime
> in the next 100 years, weren't you?), the leap calculation can be
> simplified.
> 
> 1900 is not a leap year and 2000 is a leap year, you can probably just
> lose the leapyear() function and rewirte calc_leap_years as
> 
> def calc_leap_years(year):
>         if (year > 1900):
>                 return ((year - 1900) - 1)/4
>         else:
>                 return 0
> 
> Of course, you can reduce it to a single line if you make the
> assumption that the year will always be greater than 1900. And it
> probably isn't wonderful programming practice to return 0 if say
> year==1897 anyway (raise an exception?), but that is another issue.
> This should be a fair bit faster than looping through the years.

Just a suggestion that will probably make writing such a server
easier: use mxDateTime for the job. It does string parsing (you
don't even have to worry about the format used -- it tries
several common formats before it gives up) and also handles
things like leap years, ticks (seconds since the epoch) and
conversion to many different time standards.

mxDateTime is available via my Python Pages.

The docs also have a link to the Calendar FAQ which has lots of
useful information about calendars, date and time:

	http://www.pip.dknet.dk/~pip10160/calendar.html

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    82 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From dirkl at home.com  Thu Oct 21 02:21:10 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 23:21:10 -0700
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
In-Reply-To: <c8rP3.7757$7G2.44299@news1.online.no>
Message-ID: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECCEMMFFAA.dirkl@home.com>

Fantastic! I'm starting a Python ASP HOW-TO. I'll add this sample code if
you don't mind. Any other relevant tidbits would be helpful as well. I'd
like to walk through the entire ASP object model and show sample code on
everything (I working from the some docs at
www.chilisoft.com/caspdoc/ch05.html.

Anybody else that's interested in contributing, shoot my anything you would
like to see in such a reference. I'm also interested in things like relative
performance numbers, productivity numbers, portability with various ASP
engines on various platforms, etc.

Send me an email directly if you'd like to help with contributions or
editing/technical review.

Thanks again, Nikolai...


-----Original Message-----
From: Nikolai Kirsebom [mailto:nikolai at micon.no]
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 3:17 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)


I don't know if I fully understand your question, but I've written a
'generic python class' which processes the Request and puts/retreives
objects in a database (all processed on ASP pages).

I use the QueryString member-method of the Request object together with
string split:

Something like:

rq = string.split(Request.QueryString(), "&")
...
for par in rq:
   token, val = string.split(par,"=")
   self.__dict__[token] = val
db = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Connection")
db.Open(self.Dsn)
rs = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Recordset")
s = "select * from %s where Id=%d" % (self.Table, self.Attr["Id"])
rs.Open(s, db, adOpenDynamic, adLockOptimistic, adCmdText)
for a in self.Attr.keys():
   rs.Fields(a).Value = self.Attr(a)
rs.Update()
rs.Close()
db.Close()
...

The method 'Attr' of course just tries to fetch the value from object's
dictionary.


Note that you probably have to make use of the urllib module on the string.

Hope this helps.

Nikolai


Dirk Leas wrote in message ...
>Thanks for the response..
>
>I tried the first approach  and got the following is the response: "This
>object does not support enumeration". In the second approach, "r" comes
back
>as None. I tested both with IIS and PWS.
>
>Where can I go to dig deeper into this?
>
>Thx,
>D
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Hammond [mailto:mhammond at skippinet.com.au]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 8:51 AM
>To: 'LS, Python'
>Subject: RE: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
>
>
>Im not in a position to test this, but one of either:
>
>for r in Request:
>  print r
>
>i=1
>while 1:
>  try:
>    r = Request.Item(i)
>  except pythoncom.com_error:
>    break
>
>should work...
>
>Mark.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: python-list-admin at python.org
>[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Dirk Leas
>Sent: Saturday, 16 October 1999 1:38
>To: LS, Python
>Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
>
>
>I've installed PythonWin and am trying to do some python scripting w/n
>ASP. If you know the form field by name, something like "name =
>str(Request("name"))" works great. How do you access Request fields if
>you don't know their name -- say you wanted to write a generic dump
>script that would dump all the field names and values? Seems like
>there would be a way to coerce the COM Request into some type of
>python sequence. Anybody know the "secret racoon handshake"?
>
>Thanks
>D
>
>
>
>
>






From tbryan at python.net  Tue Oct 19 21:06:49 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:06:49 -0400
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
		<018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
		<al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
		<m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <380D15A9.8A1580D4@python.net>

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." wrote:

[...summarizing his response to complaints about Python's getopt...]

>   (No, I'm not saying a better approach isn't desirable or warranted,
> just trying to point out one of the issues.)

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I really like DPyGetOpt
from www.python.org's ftp site (under Contrib/System, I think).  
Those reading this thread may be interested to know that I recently 
pestered the Guido to see whether some expanded option processing 
would be included in Python's standard library before Python 2, if ever.
(Getting into Python's standard lib was part of DPyGetOpt's original
goal.)

Guido responded:
"""
There are plenty of 3rd party option processors already out there, so
why would you want to write another one?  getopt has short and long
options.  What more do you want?  Beyond what getopt offers, it's hard 
to choose a feature set that satisfies every need, and in the sake of
keeping Python simple (the KISS principle) I don't think it's worth
adding another one to the core library.
"""

After a rambling reply trying to justify my request, I was forced to 
concede that 
"""
After thinking about it more, I suppose that my preferences are just
that...*my* preferences.  I was actually hoping that the current getopt
could be *replaced* by a new one with some *extra* optional features
that
the current getopt doesn't provide, but perhaps those of us who don't
use
Python's getopt wouldn't be able to agree on an extended feature set
that
we all liked. :)
"""

For example, I prefer -long to --long options.  I also liked 
DPyGetOpt's arguments with optional parameters, and now I've 
heard why I might want to rethink that position from both Guido
and Fred.

Anyway, I think that I agree with Guido.  The current getopt in Python 
is minimal but complete.  If I need more, I don't mind using third party
modules since they're all small enough to package with an app, and I
like
the Python library in part because it doesn't try to provide everything
that any single person has requested.

Just my import math;math.log(math.pow(math.e,2)) cents.
---Tom



From tbryan at python.net  Tue Oct 19 21:22:56 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:22:56 -0400
Subject: any new projects and ideas
References: <7ujidc$l3p$1@news.vsnl.net.in>
Message-ID: <380D1970.D47BC17B@python.net>

ruchir wrote:

>     im new to linux and also python, i took the tutorial 
> but im looking for some ideas to use python for. If anyone 
> has some interesting ideas, pls let me know

I have some, but I won't tell you.  

No, really.  I'm serious...that's the point.  I don't use 
Python at work, but I enjoy it so much that I often program 
little projects in Python in my free time.  When you're 
programming in your free time, you really want to be doing 
something that interests *you*.  That's why I won't tell you.
Everything I find interesting, I want to implement myself 
when I have enough time.

I'm not sure what interests you.  If you're new to programming
in any language, you might want to start with something simple
with very clear goals.  You could parse /etc/group and spit 
out requested fields based on command line switches, learning
about Python's file objects and the string and getopt modules.
You could write a little calculator app or a check balancing 
routine.  There are a lot of things.  Just think of something 
that interests you.  Then take a tiny piece, and implement that
piece.  Once you get it working, you have something to build on.
Expand the program, adding features as you learn.  At some point, 
you'll probably realize previous design errors and rewrite some
or all of the first part you implemented.  Before you know it, 
you'll be programming.

If you've already done that sort of project in other languages, 
then browse the contributed Python modules at http://www.python.org
You could also look at the member pages at http://starship.python.org
You could take something that interests you (games, numerical analysis, 
etc.) and play with packages others have written.  Look at the source, 
modify it, extend it, see if the original author has some "wanted" 
features that he doesn't have time to implement.  Download PySol and
implement a new card game in the framework, make a new Python MegaWidget 
for PMW, etc.

---Tom



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 21 04:41:10 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:41:10 +0200
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
Message-ID: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com>

Is it possible to examine a Python interpreter and check whether
it was compiled against libc5 or glibc2 (libc6) on Linux/*BSD/etc. ?

I'm currently using this hack, but would appreciate a more
elegant and portable solution:

def system_nm(progfile):

    try:
	f = os.popen('nm %s' % progfile)
    except os.error:
	return ''
    return f.read()

# Check for libc vs. glibc
nm_python = system_nm(sys.executable)
if string.find(nm_python,'libc_init') >= 0:
    libversion = 'libc'
elif string.find(nm_python,'GLIBC_') >= 0:
    pos = 0
    libversion = 'glibc'
    while 1:
	pos = string.find(nm_python,'GLIBC_',pos+1)
	if pos < 0:
	   break
	vstring = 'glibc' + nm_python[pos+6:pos+10]
	if vstring > libversion:
	    libversion = vstring
else:
    libversion = ''

Note that the above only works if the interpreter was compiled
with debugging information (e.g. with -g on Linux).

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    71 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From thantos at brimstone.mecha  Sat Oct  9 19:25:08 1999
From: thantos at brimstone.mecha (Alexander Williams)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 23:25:08 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>  <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>  <slrn7vvjai.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vvjn6.tue.thantos@brimstone.mecha>

On 9 Oct 1999 22:35:29 GMT, Neel Krishnaswami <neelk at brick.cswv.com> wrote:
>IMO it's not quite as elegant as the Scheme version, but the difference
>is small enough to be a matter of taste.

I could accept this solution (though I'd rather spell 'nonlocal' as
'=:' as Dylan does, as it certainly makes sense in context).

-- 
Alexander Williams (thantos at gw.total-web.net)
"In the end ... Oblivion Always Wins."



From banderson at boi.hp.com  Fri Oct 15 12:52:56 1999
From: banderson at boi.hp.com (Bill Anderson)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:52:56 +0000
Subject: zope: system variables?
References: <7u0b42$g0c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <38075BE8.21A1FAB4@boi.hp.com>

hj_ka at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry, I am not sure whether I posted the message
> correctly, I apologize if this message appears twice.
> 
> I am starting to play with Zope. And I see some
> pre-defined variables like
> 
> standard_html_header
> BASE2
> URL1
> title
> standard_html_footer
> 
> etc. Where can I find documentation for all the
> pre-defined variables?
> 
http://www.zope.com/Documentation is a good starting place.
:-)
-- 
Bill Anderson 					Linux/Unix Administrator, Security Analyst
ESBU (ARC)					banderson at boi.hp.com
My opinions are just that; _my_ opinions.



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 09:48:19 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:48:19 +1000
Subject: Python compilers?
References: <87aeq86am8.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org> <7sodtb$oau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7ts4l9$d41$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3809D3A3.F7DC42FE@maxtal.com.au>

hardwork at freemail.c3.hu wrote:

> > Swallows was an earlier vaporware project that I came up with. The
> > idea behind Swallow is to implement a compiler for a limited subset of
> > Python (along with nonintrusive type annotations). This could be used
> > to create Python based fast extension modules.
> 
> > Currently I lack the time to do a lot about it, though. Maybe later, but
> > currently it is complete vaporware! No website. :)
> 
> And neither is Viper. :(
> 
> I keep hoping to try out the Viperi but I can't find no website for it.
> 
> If anyone here has more info I'd appreciate some pointers.

	Sure: I'm the author. There is no website.
Viper isn't ready for the 'big time' yet. It isn't even ready
for the 'small time' yet :-)

	When you see disussion of Viper, it will be me
saying what it does, without giving you a copy to play with.
Sorry. I do need assistance in the design before any copies
are released. The key thing to note is that the development
suggests writing 'pure' python code, and living with
the current inefficiency, may be worthwhile; Viper doesn't
support C extensions (since it uses a different architecture,
just as JPython does). If you can't wait for an optimisation,
try to make sure there is a pure python version of the
code you are hand writing in C.

	For example, Viper does the 'string' module
just fine, even though there is no 'strop', which is
the C optimised version. Thank you Guido for 
continuing to support Python versions of modules
and functions, even when optimised ones are provided!

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From x at x.x  Thu Oct 28 21:49:15 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:49:15 -0400
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <3818FD1B.8FB0BF70@x.x>

Brian Kelley wrote:
> 
> actually a much quicker test is:
> 
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> >>>

Strange how it works on 1.5.1!! It shouldn't; what you really
mean is:

Python 1.5.2 (#0, Oct 28 1999, 20:40:08)  [GCC cygnus-2.7.2-970404] on windows
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x-y)
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The sort function is like __cmp__: it's used to detect all
of <, =, and >. That said, the current sorting algorithm
only tests for <. So a.sort(lambda x,y: -(x<y)) would
work as well. But, best play it by the specifications.



From Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org  Wed Oct 13 00:17:30 1999
From: Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org (Scott.David.Daniels)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 21:17:30 -0700
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
References: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <380407DA.E6B2D1DD@Acm.Org>

What about the fairly obvious:
      def fun(...positional..., none=None, ...keyworded...):
         if None != none: raise ArgError, "Args to fun must be keyword
args"
         # ...

It is not beautiful but it is short, clear and succinct

Michael Haggerty wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sometimes I would like to write functions with arguments that are
> REQUIRED to be passed as keyword arguments rather than positional
> arguments.  For example, for the following function I might want the
> second parameter to be passed as a keyword parameter:



From Michael.Charlton at nationwideisp.net  Sat Oct  9 16:07:47 1999
From: Michael.Charlton at nationwideisp.net (Michael Charlton)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 21:07:47 +0100
Subject: OO Details
References: <37FF842F.BA011E3D@home.com>
Message-ID: <7to7ic$anj$1@cedar.nationwideisp.net>

Dirk Leas <dirkl at home.com> wrote in message
news:37FF842F.BA011E3D at home.com...
> I was looking through the language reference (www.python.org) and was
> unable to find details about how the OO features work. Specifically, I'm
> wondering how ambiguous methods are resolved in multiple inheritance and
> stuff like that.
>
> Where are some good detail references? I thumbed through the Learning
> and Programming O'Reilly books and they didn't seem to cover that level
> of detail (though I didn't exhaustively read them).
>
> TIA,
> D
>


Say we have the following

    class A:

        def  spam(self):
                pass

    class B:

        def spam(self):
                pass


    class C(A,B):

        def eggs(self):
                pass



   then class C will inherit A's definition of the spam method. Python has a
very simple
   algorithm for resolving ambiguous methods in inherited classes, which can
be
    summarised as follows

        depth first, left to right

    so C inherits all (acessable) methods from A then B etc

    I think this is explained in the python tutorial and "Quick Python" by
Ken McDonald.

    Hope this is clear, if not drop us a line

                        Regards

                                Michael Charlton






From tjreedy at udel.edu  Sat Oct 23 10:12:18 1999
From: tjreedy at udel.edu (Terry Reedy)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 14:12:18 GMT
Subject: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
References: <7ur95o$bk8$1@news.wave.co.nz>
Message-ID: <7usfo2$mip$1@news.udel.edu>

In article <7ur95o$bk8$1 at news.wave.co.nz>, glyn at ninz.not.org.nz says...
>
>I've defined a function inside a function. I pass all
>the variables it needs into it through its argument
>list, which usually works. But what happens this time
>is that I get a "NameError: fill_code_list" where the
>function first calls itself recusively.
>
>Am I doing something wrong?
>(Other than pretending Python is Scheme?)

No.  The easiest thing to do is move the definition of fill_code_list() 
out of the body of display_codes() (perhaps with a leading underscore). 
 The only thing nesting a function definition does is to put the name 
binding into the function namespace (where the nested function cannot 
find it).  Or you can try to find a posting of mine from a couple of 
years ago on nested recursive functions.

Terry J. Reedy
 




From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 26 17:14:10 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:14:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: How to stop zlib from killing python
In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.19991026142450.007f0640@mail.in-gen.net>
References: <3.0.6.32.19991026142450.007f0640@mail.in-gen.net>
Message-ID: <14358.6562.720032.193923@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "S" == sessile  <sessile at in-gen.net> writes:

  S> zlib zlibmodule.c -I/home/me/include -L/home/me/lib -lz

  S> Python's 'make' completes without error.  However, when I execute
  S> the newly generated python, I get:

  S> % python ld.so.1: python: fatal: libz.so.1.1.3: open failed: No
  S> such file or directory Killed

  S> Why can't python find the library at runtime? (yes, my C
  S> programming experience is minimal)

When you are building Python, I presume you are not building with
extensions as shared libraries, i.e. the *shared* line in your Setup
file is not commented out.  (This is a perfectly sensible thing to
do.)

The problem is that the zlib extension requires the libz.so shared
library, but when you run Python it can't be found.  There are two
solutions: 

1. Add the directory that contains libz.so (presumably /home/me/lib)
to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.  In bash:
# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/me/lib

2. Change your setup line from
   zlib zlibmodule.c -I/home/me/include -L/home/me/lib -lz
to
   zlib zlibmodule.c -I/home/me/include /home/me/lib/libz.a

The latter will include a copy of libz.a in your binary instead of
just a reference to your shared library.

Jeremy





From x at x.x  Sat Oct  2 22:52:38 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 22:52:38 -0400
Subject: Numeric, how to do in place full-array modification?
References: <7t5s4u$mat@mail.psy.uva.nl>
Message-ID: <37F6C4F6.2551B13D@x.x>

Ionel Simionescu wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I want to do the following:
> 
> for t in range( T ):
>    net = dot( C, x )
>    x   = A*net*(1-net)
> 
> Because these arrays might turn to be large, I want to pre-alloate <net> and
> write both <net> and <x> in place rather than creating new arrays.
> 
> Intuitively, I would write it like:
> 
> net = zeros(shape, typecode)
> for t in range( T ):
>     net[:] = dot( C, x)
>     x[:]   = A*net*(1-net)
> 
> But, I recall that, when on the right hand side, a[:] is used precisely to
> create a new sequence. Therefore, I'm unclear about the semantics of this
> form.

Your intuition is correct. a[:] indicates a slice of a sequence. On the
right
side, it will create a subsequence (in this case it will create the
whole
sequence, because no indices were supplied.) On the left side, it
indicates
which subsequence of a we're going to be assigning to (in this case, the
whole sequence.) So, yes, this is legal python and it does have the
intended
effect of modifying the array in place.

Incidentally, you don't need to preinitialize the lists to anything
special:
net = [] will work just fine.

But I question why you would want to do it this way at all. Using the
slice
operator on the left hand side is not going to avoid creating new
arrays.
The function dot() and the * operator in your example create new arrays
anyway and return them in both cases. Might as well just put that newly
returned array in your variable and let python deallocate the old one,
rather than spend time moving each element back.

I just checked with the profiler and some simple functions and the
second
way was about 20-50% slower.

The only time you'd really need to use the a[:] = ... form is if you
want
to "mute" a mutable type (is that the right verb?)

>> a = [1,2,3]
>> b = a
>> a[:] = [6,7,8]

and you want "b" to change also.

Also, the a[x:y] = ... form will be more efficient if you need to change
a
small part of the sequence.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 19 04:07:32 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:07:32 +0200
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
Message-ID: <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Les Schaffer <godzilla at netmeg.net> wrote:
> just started using the getopt module. i was surprised to see it
> returns the options in list format rather than perl's (better)
> dictionary format.

maybe that's because the order of the options may some-
times be important, and python dictionaries are unordered.

how does Perl handle that?

(or maybe it's just the C heritage that shows through.
guess you're expected to loop over the options, just
as in C, and in that case, getopt.py has already made
the opt = opt.items() for you...)

</F>

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




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sat Oct 16 23:39:40 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 23:39:40 -0400
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
In-Reply-To: <879052ekma.fsf@slip-32-101-160-199.ma.us.prserv.net>
References: "Bill Rodgers"'s message of "Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:06:07 -0600"
Message-ID: <1271991668-7727673@hypernet.com>

greg andruk wrote:
> In nnmh:python, Bill Rodgers <Bill at nospam.com> wrote:
> 
> > I would like to check for the existance of a file before I
> > attempt an open and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a
> > way to do this.
> 
> os.stat() will do the job.

>>> os.stat('kablooie')
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'kablooie'
>>> 

- Gordon



From jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au  Sat Oct 23 15:22:19 1999
From: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason Stokes)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 19:22:19 GMT
Subject: SF Bay: Python Training?
References: <7usi9n$2cc$1@nntp1.atl.mindspring.net> <19991023151826.A11892@better.net>
Message-ID: <LVnQ3.9492$P3.10309@ozemail.com.au>

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:18:26 -0400, William Park <parkw at better.net> wrote:

>On Sat, Oct 23, 1999 at 02:55:51PM +0000, Aahz Maruch wrote:
>> We just hired a new webmaster who has never done any programming.  Does
>> anyone know of any Python training taking place over the next month or
>> two in the SF Bay Area?  (Yes, I know about the other options; I'm
>> hoping to possibly piggy-back on some other company's training session.)
>> --
>>                       --- Aahz (@netcom.com)
>
>Let me get this straight... your company hired a programmer who never
>programmed and, presumably, can't type!  Were you pressed to comply with
>some quota or what?

A webmaster does not always have the skills of a programmer.  "Webmaster" is
a vague position; people doing webmaster have talents ranging all over the
spectrum, from web *authoring* to system administration, to scripting, to
programming.

-- 
Jason Stokes: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au

"HTTP Error 204: No content? That applies to 99% of the web!"



From senn at maya.com  Thu Oct 14 09:18:49 1999
From: senn at maya.com (Jeff Senn)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 09:18:49 -0400
Subject: Minimum Python requirements? (was: Python for PDAs?)
In-Reply-To: Robb Shecter's message of "Tue, 12 Oct 1999 21:31:45 +0200"
References: <FJ8uG6.M1n@world.std.com> <37FCF7B6.9C94C964@rubic.com> <38038CA1.E44A7BB1@darmstadt.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <wkln96hyh2.fsf@SNIPE.maya.com>

Robb Shecter <shecter at darmstadt.gmd.de> writes:
> I've got a question along these lines.  I've been thinking about
> taking an old laptop and making it into a "Python-PDA".  I figure I'd
> put a bare linux load on it, a text editor, python, and nothing else. 
> I'd write my own XML-based PDA software that uses the character mode.
> 
> Any clue as to how much hard drive space I'd need?  I'd probably want
> to install an extra python package or two, like the xml parser.
> 
> Also, how much RAM would I need to run a bare Linux (I'm guessing 2.5
> MB) plus a running python process (???MB).
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> (PS: Anybody else thinking about doing something like this?)

Well.. yes.  I'm actually doing a research project involving embedded
systems and scripted execution of small bits of (very modular) code.
I've toying with building a "Python OS" (well, more of the meaning of
the "OS" in DOS than in "Unix is an OS").

I have actually done this.  A micro-kernel with a nearly full Python
(all the default C modules including REs, Cpickle etc...) plus a TCP
stack and all of the bits of a C RTL you need for Python make a kernel
(on a x86 system) that is about 1M (after you trim out the symbols).

I haven't yet played with dynamic loading, very extensive file system
support, or pthreads yet...

[As for an editor -- I suppose one could write one given the curses
package --- ala Emacs only .py instead of .el as it were :-) --
copious free time being what it is... :-)]

As for runtime (heap) space -- I haven't done much testing -- I
suppose you could get away with very little (<1M of heap) if you are
willing to trim features/modules from Python.

Anyway...take a look here: http://www.abo.fi/~iporres/python/ 
for ideas on how to trim Python's size.

Look here: http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
for components to build your own kernel/OS

I suppose one might also want to look at some of the "tiny Linux"
projects going on...e.g. Linux Router (...is that what it's called?)

If anyone else is working on this sort of stuff ... speak up, I'd like
to hear ideas....

-- 
-Jas
-----------------------------------------------------------  / / |  / \ / /|
Jeff Senn          412-488-2900 voice    MAYA Design Group  /|/| |-/ o | /-| 
Chief Technologist 412-488-2940 fax   2100 Wharton Street  / | | |/    |/  |
Head of R&D        senn at maya.com    Pittsburgh, PA 15203   Taming Complexity
                                                          http://www.maya.com/




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Oct 20 13:53:38 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 13:53:38 -0400
Subject: DCOM servers in Python... how?
In-Reply-To: <380DEF98.F09757A8@bart.nl>
Message-ID: <1271681231-26401861@hypernet.com>

Richard Smol writes:
> 
> For a research project here I want to be able to prototype
> DCOM-servers quickly. For this I am of course thinking of Python!
> 
> Now I don't know that much about DCOM. I have been roaming
> through the Pythonwin COM documentation and wonder if it all also
> holds true for DCOM. The only DCOM example program I saw was for
> a client though. What is the easiest way to implement a DCOM
> server then?

As I understand it, (and since a complete understanding of 
COM is virtually impossible, take it with a grain of salt), a 
DCOM server is just a COM (standalone, not in-process) 
server. The secret is all in how the remote machine finds it, 
which is either in the code or the registry on the client 
machine.

I suppose one might hope that there are security issues 
involved, but probably not. (Sigh. One of the Melissa variants 
apparently uses UNC pathnames to go screw up all the other 
machines it can find on your network, but leaves yours alone.)

- Gordon



From amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU  Wed Oct 20 16:33:47 1999
From: amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Amit Patel)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 20:33:47 GMT
Subject: Any DNS Modules?
References: <7uifuv$g1d$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <5l1zar59v4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7ul8vb$fne$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>

 Guido van Rossum  <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
| 
| The DNS package is listed on the Python website (follow the Modules
| link in the top bar).  Does nobody use that?  Searching python.org
| for DNS would also have brought this up.
| 

I've looked at it but I never figured out how to use it.  :-( If I
knew the DNS protocol (things like "MF", "WKS", "MX", "AXFR", ...) I
would probably be able to figure out what the DNS package does, but I
don't really know much about DNS -- all I want to do is turn hostnames
into IP addresses and IP addresses into hostnames.  All this stuff
about transfer functions and classes and types and building records is
just too much for me.  (I currently use socket.* functions for that
but I wanted something asynchronous.. so that's why I looked at the
DNS package.)

    - Amit



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Oct 13 18:04:15 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 22:04:15 GMT
Subject: Integers and Floats
References: <19991011180728.A14620@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <4CD75230F3733128.264A45110D0B6576.EA89F58ABF0FA79D@lp.airnews.net>

In article <19991011180728.A14620 at optiplex.palga.uucp>,
Gerrit Holl  <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I know there is a difference between integers and floats, but I think the
>following is a little strange:
>
>18:07:48:3/499:gerrit at gerrit:~$ python
>Python 1.5.2 (#1, Aug  8 1999, 01:35:00)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs- on linux2
>Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>>> 131 / 4
>32
>>>> 4 * 32
>128
>>>> 131 / 4 * 4
>128
			.
			.
		[various hypotheticals]
			.
Does the result of
>>> 131. / 4 * 4
make you feel any better?
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Thu Oct 28 19:15:20 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:15:20 +0100
Subject: libffi
Message-ID: <VAzEDBAIkNG4Ew7m@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

There's an interesting new development in tcl land with R Critchlow's
Ffidl extension which makes libffi available in tcl. This is like Sam
Rushing's calldll extension, but for various unices. Has anyone thought
of doing this for Python. I know G v R deprecates this kind of thing,
but as the author of the dllcaller for tcl I know that the win32
community has a big interest in these scriptable interfaces; it's an
easy way to get at various api's without a lot of effort.
-- 
Robin Becker



From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Wed Oct  6 18:21:14 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 00:21:14 +0200
Subject: Disk access going mental with Pythonwin?
Message-ID: <37FBCB5A.D461E873@darwin.in-berlin.de>

Hi,

while editing a file sitting on a floppy disk using Pythonwin 
I just noticed that there is a disk access each time I move 
the mouse pointer (!) over any part of the Pythonwin window!

Sounds unbelievable, but it's true! Ok, I know I'm running a
crap operating system when I use Pythonwin (Windoze95, will do
the same tomorrow on NT), but is it really THAT MUCH CRAP??? 
Or is it Pythonwin itself? Hard to believe... At least I have
not observed that ever before with other programs.

Regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman

................................................................
"An average of more than 15 % of adults in 12 industrialized 
countries are functionally illiterate; in Ireland, the United 
Kingdom and the United States, the rates are over 20 %."

  (The State of the World's Children 1999,
   UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/sowc99)



From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Tue Oct  5 20:46:40 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:46:40 -0600
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca>

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 02:04:45PM -0700, Michael Vanier wrote:
> GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.

It is easy for people to take statements like this in the wrong
way.  It is interesting how much we take pop culture references
for granted.  As someone who works in a culturally diverse
environment, I have seen this type of confusion often.

For people who don't know, and Michael correct me if I'm wrong,
this signature refers to a line from the classic movie "The Blues
Brothers".  It is not meant to be taken literally.


    Neil



From amahler at sbc.edu  Mon Oct 25 01:40:32 1999
From: amahler at sbc.edu (Aaron Mahler)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 01:40:32 -0400
Subject: Need to monitor a file change/deletion
Message-ID: <3813ED50.5DC462F5@sbc.edu>

 Hello!

  I was wondering if I might elicit some recommendations on how to
achieve what seems like a simple task, but has so far stumped me...

  I need to find a decent, low-impact way to monitor a file and see if
it has changed. Basically, I need a blocking routine (no timeouts needed
at this stage) that will keep an eye on a specific regular file and
unblock when the file has been replaced. In this case, the file is
arriving via FTP, I'm reading it in, closing it, and then waiting for it
to be replaced with a newly FTP'd file by the same name (replacing it,
in other words). 

  In a nutshell, this script is monitoring JPEGS coming in via FTP on a
varying schedule and pushing them out via CGI/nph to a varying number of
attached clients... I want the newly arrived image to go out ASAP, but
want to also avoid sending the same image out over and over (a set
timeframe) if it's taking extra-long for the new image to arrive. Since
the image feed is FTP from a remote host, I've not figured a way to use
some select()-capable sort of locks and sockets mechanism like I would
if the entire process were local.

  I don't want to go into any kind of CPU-intensive loop checking the
timestamp, etc. I could just choose a short timeframe (seconds) for
rechecking to keep from creating a tight loop, but I'd much rather have
the process sleep and be reawakened by some sort of signal. 

  select() looks nice and basically fits the bill in terms of
functionality - but apparently doesn't work with regular files if I'm
not mistaken...

  Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! :)

Thanks!
 - Aaron Mahler


-- 
PGP Public Key - http://sparhawk.sbc.edu/amahler.pgp
VAPS Entry - http://www.vaps.org/members/va/amahler at sbc.edu.html
--



From tjreedy at udel.edu  Sat Oct 23 10:14:18 1999
From: tjreedy at udel.edu (Terry Reedy)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 14:14:18 GMT
Subject: serial port access question
References: <38123003.478687745@news.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <7usfrq$mip$2@news.udel.edu>

In article <38123003.478687745 at news.usenetserver.com>, 
mdlatham at mail1.scottsboro.org says...
>
>i've got a handheld scanner that stores up to 500 records at a time.
>I'd like to set up a python application to store values that it gets
>from a serial port, reads into an array, then massage the data for
>passing on to oracle. I understand everything but the serial port
>access with python. Any help greatly appreciated.

This was the subject of a recent thread.  Check the newsgroup or 
maillist archives via www.python.org.  Or search the site.

Terry J. Reedy





From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Tue Oct 12 04:31:51 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 21:31:51 +1300
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
		<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3802F1F7.C6BD5BE2@compaq.com>

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> I think this description is at least as waffly as Tim's :-).

On reflection, you're quite right -- some knowledge of how my
patch works is needed in order to inerpret it properly, so
some elaboration is in order.

> def make_adder(num):
>     def adder(x):
>             global num
>             return x + num
>     return adder
> 
> In this case, adder maintains a reference to make_adder's
> environment, and that environment maintains a reference to adder,
> because adder was defined there.  So we have a cycle...

Under my scheme, that piece of code in itself does not create
a cycle. This is because a nested def does not immediately create
a closure; instead it creates a special "local function object"
which simply wraps the function. A closure is created "on
demand" whenever a local function object is fetched out of a
local variable. This is analogous to the way a bound method
object is created whenever a function is fetched out of a
class during an attribute lookup.

Whether a cycle gets created or not depends on what you do with
the closure once you've got it. Many common uses will not
create any cycles, e.g.

  def add_to_each(items, x):
    def adder(y):
      return x+y
    return map(adder, items)

or any other use which only involves passing closures "inwards".

There are other common uses that will indeed create cycles.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't do those things -- only
that you need to be aware of the cycles you're creating and
take steps to break them later. Just like you have to do with
any other cyclic data structure in Python.

Many of these uses would have created cycles anyway if done
using one of the alternatives to closures. For example,
consider an object with an attached UI widget which makes
a callback to a method of the object:

  class Furble:

    def __init__(self, ...):
      ...
      self.button = Button(..., 
        command=lambda self=self: self.wibble(42))

This creates a cycle, because the instance has a reference
to the button whose callback has a default argument referring to
the instance. This isn't a problem in practice because usually
you will destroy() the instance's attached widgets when
you're finished with it.

Since we're doomed to have a cycle anyway, we might as
well use a lexical closure and do away with the
ugly default argument hack:

      self.button = Button(..., 
        command=lambda: self.wibble(42))

Hope that makes things less waffly,
Greg



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct 16 22:08:39 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 15:08:39 +1300
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <871zauoltg.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <c75emeu3fiw.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Looks good.  Could this also be done using threads?

Possiblity:

create two threads, one for reading and the other for writing.  Then
you can pass strings to the writing thread and get back the buffered
result from the reading thread.  This allows interactive communication 
without the danger of deadlocks.

Has this been done before or should I give it a go?

--
Tim Evans



From robin at alldunn.com  Fri Oct 15 00:32:31 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:32:31 -0700
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news> <3805EDAE.888C6CEA@python.net> <slrn80bvdd.84a.zeitlin@seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr>
Message-ID: <68yN3.299$mH5.15532393@news.randori.com>

> >I've also heard good things about wxWindows (sp?).  I'm sure someone
> >will pop up with a URL.
>
>  www.wxwindows.org :-) (and the link to wxPython from there).
>

Specifically, http://alldunn.com/wxPython/


--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!






From josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu  Wed Oct 13 22:37:54 1999
From: josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Joshua Marcus)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 02:37:54 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <7u3ae3$fns@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu>

Okay, I'm terribly embarassed.  My example was hasty and poorly chosen.
I blame the heat of the moment.

In my initial example, I wanted to assume that one wanted to run the 'process'
function at least once-- which is why the initial line couldn't be 
"line = fp.readline()".

But -- the "for line in fp.readlines():" is fine for many situations.  
Let's move away from this example.

There are, in fact, other situations in which one actually wants a
"do...while" loop & one is forced to either repeat code or make a meaningless
initial assignment.  Sometimes one actually wants to run a block of code 
before the initial test.  I'm sure other folks use 'do...while's often enough
in other languages (say C) and I'd be surprised if they find the 'do...while'
loops confusing to read.

Because there are many situations in which one might be making an assignment
directly before a while loop, I haven't found an easy idiom for a 'do...while'
loop in python without a clearly marked meaningless assignment (hence the 
initial 'foo' assignment).

"Syntactic sugar" isn't a slur; while we don't theoretically need "syntactic 
sugar", the sweet-stuff makes code easier to read.  I'm only trying to agitate
for the the third of the three C loops here, not trying to open up the 
floodgates in the face of puritanism.

--j





From bryan.mary at cyberus.ca  Thu Oct 28 21:08:48 1999
From: bryan.mary at cyberus.ca (Bryan Morris & Mary Gauvreau)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:08:48 -0400
Subject: Newbie Alert: Discrete Event Simulator
Message-ID: <s1hsmdspr0861@corp.supernews.com>

Hi:

After lurking on this newsgroup for quite a few months... I think I need
some help.

Backgrounder:
I've been doing some quick 'n dirty scripts with Python mostly just to learn
it.  I was looking
for that 'big' project to really sink my teeth into this language.   Anyway,
a couple of weeks
ago someone posted to the newsgroup a question if anyone had written a
Discrete
Event Simulator (DES) module in Python.  Since I've done a couple of DES
(both event driven and
logical process) in C++ I thought that this would be an ideal "real" first
project.  (I thought about
just extending my C++ DES libraries, but decided to try a pure-Python
approach as a learning exercise).

Brief Design Discussion:

I decided to use an event-driven model instead of using the threads module
(again, as a learning
exercise).  So I have a Scheduler object that handles the scheduling for all
Event objects passed to it.
Each Event object has a simulation time that it must be scheduled at and a
recipient Event_Handler
object.  The Scheduler's event list is simply a list sorted in increasing
simulation time. The Scheduler grabs
the next Event object off the list, sets the global simulation time to that
event's time then calls the Event_Handler
object's Process_Event function.

Another object of note is what I call an Object_Manager.  It holds a
dictionary with every Event_Handler and
the key is the Event_Handler's unique name.  This is used when scheduling
events.  So in a simulation with
two Event_Handlers named "Ping" and "Pong", the "Ping" event handler needs
to send a message to "Pong"
with:
    # Create an event with event_data, and send it to "Pong"
    # NOTE: Here myEvent holds the event_data and the instance of the
Event_Handler called "Pong".
    myEvent = Event( event_data, Object_Manager.Get_Event_Handler("Pong"))
    # Schedule the event to be sent in the next cycle.
    Scheduler.schedule_in( myEvent, nextSimulationCycle )

When an Event_Handler is created it's __init__ function passes it's name and
it's "self" to the Object_Manager
e.g.,
def __init__(self):
    """ blah """
    Object_Manager.Register(name, self)

If you're still with me... here's the
Problem:
The simulation seems to run fine, except after the Scheduler handles a few
events I get a Traceback
error saying the Scheduler can't find the proper Event_Handler instance.

What I've tried:
When I step through the debugger and the Object_Manager stores the name and
object instance address
(e.g., "Pong instance at AAAA").  The first event to be scheduled for "Pong"
tries to get the associated
object instance from the Object_Manager but instead it gets back something
else (e.g.,
"Pong instance at BBBB").  Which causes the traceback when I call this
instance's Process_Event function.

My questions:
a) When I Register an object instance and store it in the dictionary, am I
guaranteed that that object instance
will not move?  He says with only a "dangerous" (i.e., little) understanding
of what the garbage collection does.
As you can imagine, this is kind of critical to my design as it stands.
b) If not, any other ideas?
c) Have I been vague enough, or do you need more info?

I don't really want to send the code for open view until at least I bang my
head against the wall a few more times...

lurking-newbie-that-is-finally-using-Python-thanks-you-much'ly
Bryan







From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 07:47:57 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:47:57 -0400
Subject: Destroying files
In-Reply-To: <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net> <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov> <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <19991029074757.A106968704@vislab.epa.gov>

Jon Cosby:
 |Randall Hopper:
 |
 |>  |Is there a utility out there for finding and destroying deleted files
 |>  |from my hard drive?
 |>
 |> I'm not sure if this is a genuine question or flame bait.  Could you
 |> clarify your request?  What platform?  What tools do you use to delete?
 |>
 |> On a hunch, is this MSWindoze?  And are the "deleted" files you speak
 |> of in that "wastebasket" thing?  If so, realize that you can turn the
 |> wastebasket off (i.e. really delete files when you say to delete them).
 |
 |Yes, I'm on Windows 95. No, deleting files does not remove them from your
 |hard drive; They can be recovered by computer forensics experts or by nosey
 |hacks. I'm putting my PC up for sale, and the thought is troubling.

Now I understand your request.  You don't just want to make sure the OS
really deletes your files, you want to zero-out all disk space not
allocated to files.

This has nothing to do with Python, so I'll be brief.  Most defrag utils
will let you zero-fill unused clusters of your disk.  Keep in mind they may
not clean up deleted file directory entries in the directory clusters, and
won't clean up unused keys/personal info/etc. in Windoze INI
files/registries, etc.  Safest bet is a reformat of your hard drive.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 14 05:17:20 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:17:20 +0200
Subject: reverse function of id()
References: <7u1n9o$rqf$1@feed.teaser.fr>
Message-ID: <38059FA0.F13E428F@lemburg.com>

Olivier Deckmyn wrote:
> 
> Hi !
> 
> Is there a way to get the Python Object whose id is X...
> 
> ex :
> 
> myObject=MyClass()
> myId=id(myObject)
> myObject=None # See note
> ....
> <far away>
> ....
> myObject=FindObjectFromId(myID)
> ....
> 
> (Note : Please don't care about the ref count problems in my example, I know
> that here myObject is released immediatly)

The next version of mxTools will have a function for doing this:

sys.makeref(id) 
         Provided that id is a valid address of a Python object
         (id(object) returns this address), this function returns
         a new reference to it. Only objects that are "alive" can be
         referenced this way, ones with zero reference count cause
         an exception to be raised. 

         You can use this function to reaccess objects lost during
         garbage collection. 

         USE WITH CARE: this is an expert-only function since it
         can cause instant core dumps and many other strange
         things -- even ruin your system if you don't know what
         you're doing ! 

         SECURITY WARNING: This function can provide you
         with access to objects that are otherwise not visible, e.g.
         in restricted mode, and thus be a potential security hole. 

I hope that's enough warnings about what this beast can accomplish ;-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    78 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Oct 20 08:52:28 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:52:28 -0400
Subject: Signal Handler ignored on Windows NT
In-Reply-To: <380D041D.A31357D6@parc.xerox.com>
Message-ID: <1271699299-25314929@hypernet.com>

Ken Pier writes:

> We are using signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler) to set a
> signal handler for ControlC interrupts.  This works on UNIX
> (Solaris2.6) and on NT if our program is interrupted during
> time.sleep().  However, if it is interrupted during a select
> call, the handler is called on UNIX but not on NT.
> 
> Particulars: python1.5.2 on Sun Solaris2.6 and the compiled
> version out of py152.exe on NT 4.0, Service Pack 5.
> 
> Advice?

If you read the MSVC docs on signals, you'll find that you 
have very little hope of getting ^C to act as it does on Unix. 
Windows actually starts a thread to listen for ^C, and ends 
your process for you. Supposedly there's a way of interfering 
in this, but I've never gotten it to work.

- Gordon



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct  4 16:27:26 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 22:27:26 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
In-Reply-To: <19991004153416.B28556@xs4all.nl>
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl> <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl> <19991004145855.A29393@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991004153416.B28556@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <19991004222726.A1937@optiplex.palga.uucp>

[non Linux server]

> The webserver'd be some dual-p2/p3 running BSDI 4.0.1. the mailinglist would
> be run by our (XS4ALL) mailinglist-servers, currently one machine but
> planned to grow behind the scenes. The performance wouldn't be a problem, in
> any case.

[Linux server]

> > The server runs Linux + Apache + Zmailer (MTA)
> > + Majordomo + MySQL + python 1.5.2...

Hmm, I prefer the second, but that might be also because Linux is the
only OS I know (ok, W95 :-( ) and I've already an account on it and I
just prefer the software...

Note that the hardware isn't great, but I've never had any problems (and
if we get hardware specific problems (speed) Rik van Riel can just
remove seti at home ;-))

Shall I ask him?

groeten,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	    Alles over spelletjes onder Linux in het Nederlands.
www.nl.linux.org      De Nederlandse Linux homepage met veel Nederlandse HOWTOS.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		     Leer vreemde woorden en definities.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger Ik ben een "Asperger", lees er hier meer over.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit       Mijn homepage, met informatie over mij en foto's.



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Mon Oct 18 08:03:52 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 12:03:52 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Creating a File
In-Reply-To: <01bf195f$5dc8ee20$b242c3d1@Cyberus.cyberus.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910181203060.21651-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Gordon Williams wrote:
> I have been looking through the docs for an answer to this simple question.
>  How do I create a new file??

   Using builtin function "open".

file = open('file.txt', 'w')

   Read docs on builtin functions.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct 19 13:16:57 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:16:57 -0600
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu>
Message-ID: <380CA789.FF65E65A@callware.com>

Hi All--

Michael Zawrotny wrote:
> 
> One way out of that trap (at least with the other p-lang's package
> for options is to allow an optional integer argument whose
> default is one for the -v flag.
> 

Or, use the newly added 'autoincrement' type arguments in getargs 1.3. 
Available at

	http://www.pauahtun.org/ftp.html

Near the bottom of the page.

I promise not to have any more versions for at least a week.

<unless-you-make-me>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 08:58:29 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:58:29 -0400
Subject: Doing network traffic in the 'background' from Tkinter app??
In-Reply-To: <kspuxy62ub.fsf@telelogic.se>
References: <kspuxy62ub.fsf@telelogic.se>
Message-ID: <19991029085829.A106971705@vislab.epa.gov>

Andrew Markebo:
 |I have a Tkinter application that I would like to be able to download
 |data from the internet.. possibly from more than one socket at a
 |time..
 |
 |How do yo do this??
 |
 |I have been experimenting with a module that on call checks the active
 |connectons (with select) and downloads data if there are any, and if
 |it is done calls a callback..
 |
 |The check-function is called from Tkinter's after_idle.. but the
 |application freezes.. 

I can't tell exactly what you're doing from your description, but check
out Tk's fileevent callback:

http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[S0=90474f0918d34ab,ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=493995795.1
http://Starbase.NeoSoft.COM/~claird/comp.lang.tcl/tcl-examples.html#fileevent
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[S0=90474f0918d34ab,ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=473442359

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us  Thu Oct 21 11:06:55 1999
From: kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us (Jeffrey Kunce)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:06:55 -0500
Subject: Using xmlrpcserver
Message-ID: <s80ee5b2.003@mail.conservation.state.mo.us>

>but I can't figure out how to extend the call method in xmlrpcserver
>to call real methods. For example, I have a python method:

Try making a subclass of xmlrpcserver, and reimpliment call() there.
Here is some example code for your server (not tested):

###################################

XML_RPC_PORT=8000
import SocketServer, xmlrpcserver

def hello(firstName, LastName):
    return "Hello",firstName,lastName

class MyRequestHandler(xmlrpcserver.RequestHandler):

    def call(self, method, params):
        if method=='hello':
            return hello(params[0],params[1])
        elif method=='goodbye':
            return 'so long!'
        else:
            return "I don't know that method"

if (__name__ == '__main__'):
	server = SocketServer.TCPServer(('', XML_RPC_PORT), TestRequestHandler)
	print 'Testing local XML-RPC server'
	print 'Serving XML-RPC on port',XML_RPC_PORT
	server.serve_forever()

###################################

That's how I've been doing it. 
F-bot will probably provide a more authoritative answer. :-)
 
 --Jeff






From ALIAOZ at XXX.NET  Fri Oct 22 00:39:01 1999
From: ALIAOZ at XXX.NET (ALIAOZ at XXX.NET)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 04:39:01 GMT
Subject: WEB DESIGN ONLY NEED USD$120  8550
Message-ID: <7uopp5$rge$7540@news.cz.js.cn>

At first,I declare I am a CHINESE and my ENGLISH is poor.I try my best
to write this lettle well and hope u can understand me.

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u want sell more and more product?
If you want,I think I can help u design a nice-looking site.
Of course,you pay my money.only usd$120/all pages.You know this price is
very very cheap.But,I don't offer java and cgi program.I don't make your
order pages.
Because this maybe relate to your business secret.
I am in China,so I can give you the very very low price.
You can visit this site to see my works.
http://midione.soim.net
or http://grwy.sqinfo.ha.cn/gamemap
Consider it.I wait u e-mail.
Good luck.
                                                             Aliao[aliaoz at email.com.cn]


bcrbtykyxw




From gottfried_leibniz at my-deja.com  Sat Oct  2 15:24:37 1999
From: gottfried_leibniz at my-deja.com (gottfried_leibniz at my-deja.com)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 19:24:37 GMT
Subject: (Semi-newbie) Thread locks in module code
Message-ID: <7t5m5d$4jr$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I'm thinking about adding Python scripting to an interactive systems
management application, and I'd like to take advantage of Python's
extensive library of OS API interfaces. (The first implementation I'm
looking at is for Win32, and this question mainly applies to the Win32
extension modules.)

The biggest problem I am facing with this is the fact that our current
application makes extensive use of worker threads to simultaneously
access multiple machines over the network. This avoids blocking the UI
when the target of a call is unreachable or broken, and it reduces
latency in general. I'd like to run Python scripts on these worker
threads.

As I understand it, all Python code runs in one global lock, and this
lock must be explicitly released in C code with the
Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS macro. Looking through the source of a few of
the included Win32 extension modules, I see that this macro is used
only in a subset of all of the OS API calls to make them "yieldable".

My question is: in general, are these macros missing due to omission,
or are they not used because of some problem they would cause? There
are several calls in the Win32 extension libraries to which I'd like to
modify by adding the unlock macros (taking care, of course, not to call
Python APIs in the unlocked sections). Is this inadvisable?

-Thanks


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From bsb at north.de  Tue Oct 26 01:57:08 1999
From: bsb at north.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 26 Oct 1999 07:57:08 +0200
Subject: Python/Tkinter _and_ COM on win32 platform?
In-Reply-To: "Mark Hammond"'s message of "Tue, 26 Oct 1999 08:56:01 +1000"
References: <000801bf1f3c$1c4dc1e0$0501a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <87iu3ufyvf.fsf@baal.winnegan.north.de>

[Please also Cc to Maike at zurbel.north.de when responding, she isn't on the list.]

"Mark Hammond" <mhammond at skippinet.com.au> writes:

Thanks for responding, before going into details let me give you some
background: it's back into the days of win32s I did some C++
programming for Windoze using Borland's compiler 'cause MS implemented
a quite strange interpretation of the ARM (and hungarian-notation-
basic-ly-driving-me-nuts :-)

> Pythonwin doesnt support Tkinter (or more correctly, Tkinter doesnt
> support Pythonwin :-) but that is not relevant to COM - they are quite
> seperate.

Look at it the way you like best, Tkinter has the elder rights, if
that matters :-)

[...]

> Hence my comment that Tkinter doesnt support Pythonwin, rather than
> the other way around.

Have to take this as granted from _the_ Pythonwin authority.

> The second problem is that to embed a GUI COM object in Delphi or VB,
> you need to conform to the "ActiveX Control" specifications.  Python
> does not yet support this part of COM - it very nearly does - the
> problem is that ActiveX controls are very complicated, and I havent
> had time (nor the inclination, truth be told) to get a sample Python
> ActiveX control together.

Although embedding the GUI into Delphi is desirable, it's not an
absolute must; for example a loose coupling running the Python GUI as
a seperate task communicating via a pipe (dunno if win32 has pipes)
or a socket with the Delphi program might meet requirements.

If this doesn't work, I'll have to port most of Tk's text widget
functionality to Pythonwin.

Even though sources are available, w/o a machine powerful enough to
run VMware, I'm reluctant of switching to Windows as my development
platform :-( 


[...]

> As I mention above about Tkinter and a non-standard event loop, I
> think there are other technical reasons why you will have problems.
> IIRC, some of the free C++ compilers available are starting to get
> good results, so MSVC may not be required these days...

Maybe it's time to give cygwin a try.

  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at north.de - http://www.north.de/~bsb/



From Steve at HOSYS.com  Tue Oct  5 16:11:51 1999
From: Steve at HOSYS.com (Steve Hunter)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 16:11:51 -0400
Subject: How do loose the /012
Message-ID: <7tdm4k$gmd$1@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>

This code is suppose to take an ascii file made up of sentences and create a
file in the form of..by example..
1 sentence one.
2 sentence two
etc...

the code is  below and the input/output below that.....appreciate the fix
that makes
this work.

Steve at HOSYS.com


import string

file = open('c:\\tmp\\ascii.txt')
text = file.read()
sentences = string.split(text,'.')

newList = []
cnt = 0

for s in sentences:
 cnt = cnt + 1
 ss = (str(cnt) + ' ' + string.strip(s) + '.' + '\n' )
 newList.append(ss)

myfile = open('c:\\tmp\\parsed.txt', 'w')
myfile.writelines(newList)
myfile.close()
file.close()

input look like:
AAAA
AA
A.

BBBBBB
B.

C.

DDDD
DD.

output looks like
1 AAAA
AA
A.
2 BBBBBB
B.
3 C.
4 DDDD
DD.
5 .

output should look like
1 AAAAAAA.
2 BBBBBBB.
3 C.
4 DDDDDD.







From cdaniel at Level3.net  Mon Oct 11 14:39:46 1999
From: cdaniel at Level3.net (Cliff Daniel)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:39:46 -0400
Subject: select() interruption by signal
In-Reply-To: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <19991011143946.A8399@shell2.name>

Specify a timeout value in select() of 1 second.  Every time 
through the loop check the time and determine if it's time
to do some chores outside of select().  Something like:

while 1:
    ### Call select with a timeout of 1 second
    ### Select will return in 1 second if nothing on read/exception set
    (r,w,e) = select.select(fd_list, [], fd_list, 1) 

    Now = time.time()
    if Now > LastChore:
	DoChores()
	LastChore = time.time() + 2

    for fd in r:
	# Do other stuff

Regards,
Cliff


Robert Longstaff <spooky at dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> In my app I have a select() call inside a continuous loop waiting for 
> asynchronous data input from various connected sources. As this call blocks 
> and I need to perform other mini tasks I have an alarm call that fires 
> every 2s that is reset inside its handler.
> 
> However I've found that this alarm signal, although being caught 
> successfully by the handler, also interrupts the select() causing the app 
> to bomb out:
> 
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "./myapp.py", line 169, in ?
>     inList, outList, specialList = select.select(select_mask, [], [])
> select.error: (4, 'Interrupted system call')
> 
> Is this just a timing thing? Is the select() 'catching' the signal at the 
> same time as the handler or is the signal 'hanging around' longer than it 
> should?
> 
> Is there an option to get the select() to ignore signals or should I trap 
> the exception (and throw it away)? I can't find any more information in the 
> Python manual or man select. I'm using v1.5.1 on Linux.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Robert.
> 
> P.S. I thought I'd ask this as a more 'general' question before including 
> any source.
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From meowing at banet.net  Wed Oct  6 21:57:33 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 21:57:33 -0400
Subject: binary file reading in python
References: <37FBFC5B.FE883E51@austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <87905gszjm.fsf@banet.net>

Daniel Weber <DWEBER1 at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> I've been mulling over a project to edit/view/search binary recipe files
> for a production tool multi-platform (OS/2, VMS, NT, linux) and was
> condidering using python.  However, the recipe files themselves are
> stored in binary format which I would have to read in and parse.  I"ve
> gone through my python books but have found no reference to reading in
> binary files or any functions to deal with fixed size binary data types
> like unsigned short, int and so on.  I know that I could write C code to
> interface to python but that would mitigate the advantage of writing it
> in python at all.  Are these type of read possible?

No problem.  See the docs for the built-in open() function in the
library reference; the 'b' flag will make sure you don't get CRLF
mangling, just like in C's fopen().

Then to get the data in, use the file object's read() method, which
works pretty much like its C counterpart; and Python's struct module
to convert the C data types into something Python can comfortably use.



From mehta at mama.indstate.edu  Thu Oct 21 10:25:11 1999
From: mehta at mama.indstate.edu (mehta at mama.indstate.edu)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:25:11 GMT
Subject: re help
Message-ID: <7un7nr$2tt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

how can I specify not to match strings like
 donot match "one" | "two" | "three"

  (one|two|three) could match any string as one or two or three
but I want them not to matched at that position.



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From alex at somewhere.round.here  Tue Oct  5 19:34:27 1999
From: alex at somewhere.round.here (Alex)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 19:34:27 -0400
Subject: How do loose the /012
References: <7tdm4k$gmd$1@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <etd1zb9bcvw.fsf@w20-575-109.mit.edu>

If you only want a return after each full stop, and not other sentence
ending punctuation, perhaps this would do the trick:

>>> text='''
AAAA
AA
A.

BBBBBB
B.

C.

DDDD
DD.
'''
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... >>> 
>>> import re
>>> text=re.sub('\n','',text)
>>> text=re.sub('\.','.\n',text)
>>> print text
AAAAAAA.
BBBBBBB.
C.
DDDDDD.

Alex.



From fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org  Sat Oct  9 05:18:43 1999
From: fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org (Florian Weimer)
Date: 09 Oct 1999 11:18:43 +0200
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
Message-ID: <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>

Bernhard Herzog <herzog at online.de> writes:

> Using ~ instead would probably help with that. It's only a unary
> operator and not defined for strings either. You'd just have to scan the
> sources for a ~ immediately followed by a string literal. 

What about a t'translated string literal', like r'raw string'?



From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Thu Oct 14 14:47:43 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:47:43 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB2650@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

> Curiously enough, I hardly ever muck with C structs.  I too would like to
> hear from people who do!  I only jumped in here because I thought you had
> written a very interesting module, and your announcement was followed by
> days of silence.  You may not like the approach I've taken here, but it
has
> gotten the module some much-needed publicity <wink>.

Thanks for that Tim. I must admit that I am also one of those lazy bastards
that uses his newsreader's "find any messages by Tim Peters"-function to
locate interesting threads. Anyway, I will stop pushing the xstruct module
and leave it as it is (will improve the docs). I have one concern left
though: Just like I overlooked Just's sstruct module, people will overlook
this module (and start implementing something similar themselves, like I
did). If we can't get modules like this into the core Python distribution,
could there be links from the Python documentation to point to these
'improved' modules ?

> [about the buffer interface]

I do want to come back on the buffer interface though. I think I have no
alternative for using it. How else can I encapsulate a C API function that
expects a pre-allocated buffer as a parameter.

For example, how could I encapsulate the following C function:

    int GetMessageFromQueue(void* buffer, int bufsize);

where buffer is an application supplied buffer of size bufsize. The function
will return the part of the buffer actually filled. The only one who knows
what a reasonable size of the buffer is is the application programmer (who
is programming in Python).

Robin.





From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Wed Oct 20 14:28:21 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 18:28:21 GMT
Subject: any new projects and ideas
References: <7ujidc$l3p$1@news.vsnl.net.in> <8E658059Ahateme212hotmailcomr@10.132.8.46>
Message-ID: <7ul1k5$2ak$1@essle.valdyas.org>

John Hater <hateme212 at hotmail.com.removeit> wrote:
> ruchirt at mailcity.com (ruchir) wrote in <7ujidc$l3p$1 at news.vsnl.net.in>:

>>hi,
>>    im new to linux and also python, i took the tutorial but im looking
>>    for 
>>some ideas to
>>use python for. If anyone has some interesting ideas, pls let me know
>>                                                                        
>>                                  

> I need an X window News reader using gtk+. I am thinking of use
> python to do it (cuz python already provides most services a news agent
> needs: nntp, mail, uudecode, mime, list...). python binding for gtk+ is
> also ready to use. Of course python can bring powerful script ability to
> the news agent. If you want it, you can have my idea. If not, I will do
> it myself later on.

Funnily enough, I've also toyed with same idea - only I was going
to make it a KDE newsreader, since the current crop is not really
any good. The first large application I made in Visual Basic was
a newsreader, too, and I still miss the hand-tailored interface
it gave me... But for the moment I'm too busy trying to come up
with a design for an interlinear text widget...

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 14 16:07:19 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:07:19 -0400
Subject: delimiting text file??
In-Reply-To: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>
References: <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <1272191610-925845@hypernet.com>

Gerrit Holl wrote:
> Aahz Maruch:
...
> > delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
> > 
> > That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about
> > Python, you'll come across better ways.
> 
> Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has
> (already finished Learning python, and I'm waiting for
> Programming TkInter with Python now), but I don't know a better
> way than this?

For inserting a character now and then this is fine. But if 
you're doing a lot of it to one string, then string.split / 
string.join will be both more elegant and more efficient.

- Gordon



From darcy at vex.net  Sat Oct  2 06:36:40 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 10:36:40 GMT
Subject: newbie question int to string conversion
References: <m3emfegwg3.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <7t4n7n$kdj$1@hub.org>

Anders olme <olme at ebox.tninet.se> wrote:
> I'm tryinig to convert a list of strings to integer. 
> The problem is that not all elements are numbers some of them contains letters 
> Is there any easy way to determine is a strings contains illegal charaters?
> Now I only get exceptions and I think a exceptionshandler is a bit overkill
> for my needs.

Does exception handling carry a lot of overhead?  I routinly do things
like this.

    try: return string.atoi(v)
    except:
        try: return string.atof(v)
        except: return string.strip(v)

Of course, this is in a CGI where network lag hides a multitude of sins.  :-)

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From sekter at mail.matav.hu  Sat Oct 23 04:21:36 1999
From: sekter at mail.matav.hu (sekter)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:21:36 +0200
Subject: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
Message-ID: <005201bf1d2f$a18f3a50$029f38c3@geometria.hu>

Glyn Webster <glyn at ninz.not.org.nz> wrote in message
news:7ur95o$bk8$1 at news.wave.co.nz...
> I've defined a function inside a function. I pass all
> the variables it needs into it through its argument
> list, which usually works. But what happens this time
> is that I get a "NameError: fill_code_list" where the
> function first calls itself recusively.
>
> Am I doing something wrong?
> (Other than pretending Python is Scheme?)

Well, Python has only three namespaces: local., global, builtin. In this
case the local means the namespace of your recursive function and the global
is your module's namespace, but your recursive func is defined in the
namesapce of the container function. Moving your recursive func to the modul
level should solve this..
Arpad Kiss





From drmental at my-deja.com  Wed Oct  6 13:18:11 1999
From: drmental at my-deja.com (drmental at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 17:18:11 GMT
Subject: Help! Adding methods to Zope
References: <7rmfmo$5u0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tg083$3be$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7rmfmo$5u0$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  sjoshi at ingr.com wrote:
> Hello
>    I'm trying to use the simple example in the Zope doc where it talks
> about using the feedback.py script. I have saved the script to cgi-bin
> directory and I'm trying to add the method in it as an external method
> through the manage screen in Zope. However I keep getting an error
> saying Error Value: The file name, E:\cgi-bin\feedback, should be a
> simple file name.
>
>    Can someone please point out what I'm missing
>
> thanks
> Sunit

External methods in zope has to be in the Extensions Directory in the
root zope folder (ex. /opt/zope/Extensions).  If the directory is not
already created just create it and then place the externalmethod.py file
there and when importing it into zope do not include the .py.

Hope that helps you out a bit.

Mats Nordgren
mats at launchnet.com
icq: 14659299
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aahz at netcom.com  Sun Oct 31 15:51:41 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 20:51:41 GMT
Subject: Optimization
References: <381B479B.6C73707E@c2i.net>
Message-ID: <7via4t$qak$1@nntp5.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <381B479B.6C73707E at c2i.net>,
Geir Bjarte Terum  <gterum at c2i.net> wrote:
>
>Will statements like this be optimized away using the -o program switch?
>
>if __debug__:
>  <statements>  # Dead code in optimized version.
>
>Is there any way to define similar *variables* for other purposes?

I'd suggest something like:

if MyDebugFlag :
    assert DebugFunction()

The if doesn't get optimized, but everything else does, particularly if
DebugFunction is in a module that only gets imported if MyDebugFlag is
set.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Fri Oct  8 10:11:08 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 16:11:08 +0200
Subject: Help with Grail please?
In-Reply-To: <37FD4130.646581CF@mincom.com>
References: <37FD4130.646581CF@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <19991008161107.A10039@optiplex.palga.uucp>

John Farrell:
> Is there anyone out there who can help me get Grail working please?
> My hypothesis is that it's choking on our firewall.

Can't, I can run it behind a firewall.

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From donn at oz.net  Sun Oct 10 23:55:21 1999
From: donn at oz.net (Donn Cave)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 03:55:21 GMT
Subject: Pythoning of C++ objects
References: <10715.991010@amv.tsk.ru>
Message-ID: <7trn39$e86$0@216.39.151.169>

Quoth Mikhail Astafiev <mikle at amv.tsk.ru>:

| There is a C++ data processing class library. I have to write Python
| extension allowing to manipulate C++ objects and call their methods
| from Python. I don't want to use CXX - I want to write something more
| lightweight.
|
| Could anybody point/send some example/documentation/comments on
| porting C++ classes to Python?

When I set out to do this for the BeOS C++ API, I borrowed heavily
from James Ahlstrom's Wpy interface to MFC, as described in
http://www.python.org/workshops/1995-12/papers/ahlstrom1.html

Now as I understand it, this is sort of the inverse of what CXX
does, so whether it's light or heavy, if it's at all suited to
what you're doing, then you should ignore my advice.

	Donn Cave, donn at oz.net



From da at ski.org  Mon Oct 11 03:21:27 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 07:21:27 GMT
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Oct 11)
Message-ID: <2CE3CF0733E3CBDD.EEF4A8C566924A7C.C3982A7B4E916A52@lp.airnews.net>

If you're fascinated by junk DNA, introns and extrons, gene regulation
and expression, you might have missed a few key events in Pythonland:

   Skip Montanaro waxes commaful on the subject of typing sequences
   in: 
      http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=533956812

   Robin Boerdijk puts forth a struct-builder module which should
   make it easy to build interfaces to Win32 API calls:
      http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html

   Jean-Claude Wippler updates the Python-URL server so that it
   archives Deja.com postings for posterity:
      http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html 

   Gordon McMillan's installer reaches a new beta stage:
      http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html

   Robin Dunn announces the latest version of wxPython (2.1.4), which
   has support for the Object Graphics Library among others new
   improvements:
      http://alldunn.com/wxPython/

   'xr' from Hungary proposes yet another garbage collector for Python:
      http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=533386412

   It's time to renew your Python Software Association membership.
   Details and renewal forms are at:
     http://www.python.org/psa/

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

      Python.org's Python Language Website is the center of Pythonia
          http://www.python.org

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

      Python Consortium emerges as an independent nexus of activity
          http://www.python.org/consortium

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

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

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

    Archive probing trick of the trade:
        http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=threaded&showsort=date&maxhits=100&groups=comp.lang.python


Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=~g%20comp.lang.python%20Python-URL%21


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
  http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/

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


-- The Python-URL! Team--

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

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 28 10:05:20 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:05:20 +0200
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <000e01bf20e6$d7041880$c8a2143f@tim> <3817EA8D.6AC04CFE@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <005401bf214d$78f53f00$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:
> Since python doesn't provide encapsulation, (it is object
> based, not object oriented)

what's the color of the sky on your planet?

</F>




From tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com  Fri Oct 29 14:09:03 1999
From: tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 18:09:03 GMT
Subject: Newbie Alert: Discrete Event Simulator
References: <1270961677-6466507@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <6BE31B0A181E3FEE.76893AC6745E31C5.8888962612A6F849@lp.airnews.net>

In article <1270961677-6466507 at hypernet.com>,
Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>Bryan Morris wrote:
>
>[big snip]
>> If you're still with me... here's the
>> Problem:
>> The simulation seems to run fine, except after the Scheduler
>> handles a few events I get a Traceback error saying the Scheduler
>> can't find the proper Event_Handler instance.
>> 
>> What I've tried:
>> When I step through the debugger and the Object_Manager stores
>> the name and object instance address (e.g., "Pong instance at
>> AAAA").  The first event to be scheduled for "Pong" tries to get
>> the associated object instance from the Object_Manager but
>> instead it gets back something else (e.g., "Pong instance at
>> BBBB").  Which causes the traceback when I call this instance's
>> Process_Event function.
>> 
>> My questions:
>> a) When I Register an object instance and store it in the
>> dictionary, am I guaranteed that that object instance will not
>> move?  
>
>Yes.
>
>> He says with only a "dangerous" (i.e., little)
>> understanding of what the garbage collection does. As you can
>> imagine, this is kind of critical to my design as it stands. b)
>> If not, any other ideas? c) Have I been vague enough, or do you
>> need more info?
>
>You have been more than sufficiently vague. You are 
>undoubtedly stepping on yourself somehow ;-).

<scratching head> One way to step on yourself is to be overly eager
to resolve issues (think "static typing").  As an experiment, try
having the events store only the _name_ of their handler, and let
the Scheduler do the lookup.

This lets you get clever and switch out the handlers for future events
(not necessarily desirable, but I can think of reasons why I might).

> 
>> I don't really want to send the code for open view until at least
>> I bang my head against the wall a few more times...
>
>We're nice, here. Nobody's rooting for the wall.
>
>at-least-not-publicly-ly y'rs

When-all-you-have-is-a-head-everything-looks-like-a-nail'ly

Tres.
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tres Seaver           tseaver at palladion.com       713-523-6582
Palladion Software    http://www.palladion.com



From stalnaker at acm.org  Fri Oct 15 17:26:50 1999
From: stalnaker at acm.org (Max M. Stalnaker)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:26:50 -0700
Subject: re question
Message-ID: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>

I have the following code:

 def subset(self):
  group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
  self.data=group.groups(0)[0]

Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
single %.  The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags is
just the way I tried and had sometime success.

Maybe there is a better way to do this.  Or someone could perhaps suggest re
code that would do it.  Thank you.

My current idea is to construct a single character sentinel out of something
greater than chr(128) and use that.  This will probably work in this
application, but I feel like I am missing something.

--
Max M. Stalnaker  mailto:stalnaker at acm.org  http://www.astarcc.com





From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 29 10:14:06 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:14:06 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
In-Reply-To: <M96S3.633$Iv2.19792068@news.randori.com>
References: <3818CDDE.CF68E8BD@nortelnetworks.com>
	<M96S3.633$Iv2.19792068@news.randori.com>
Message-ID: <14361.43950.112342.992163@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Robin Dunn writes:
 > It's at http://starship.python.net/quick-ref1_52.html

  There's a link to it from http://www.python.org/doc/Hints.html, but
that doesn't seem to show up using the search page.  Strange.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From bill at hk.rfa.org  Tue Oct  5 04:51:55 1999
From: bill at hk.rfa.org (Bill Eldridge)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:51:55 +0800
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <37F9BC2B.F9FF1AC2@hk.rfa.org>

Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> 

>         From my experimentation is GMTIME:
> 
> python GMTIME calcs                                                     RFC 868
> (Base 1970, Jan 1)                                                        (Base Jan 1, 1900)
> Jan 1, 1970     -              18,000.0                                         2,208,988,800
> Jan 1, 1976     -    189,320,400.0                                              2,398,291,200
> Jan 1, 1980     - 3,155,550,800.0                                       2,524,421,600
> 
> I don't see how python's Jan 1, 1980 calcuation can exceed the RFC's
> calculation,


It can't.  Your Jan 1, 1980 time has an extra 0:

>>> time.localtime(3155550800.0)
(1901, 12, 14, 4, 22, 28, 5, 348, 0)
>>> time.localtime(315555080.0)
(1980, 1, 1, 14, 11, 20, 1, 1, 0)

1970-1976 was about 190 million seconds, so 1976-1980 should
be less than double (380 million seconds), not 3.2 billion seconds.
--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at rfa.org



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sat Oct  9 08:53:11 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 14:53:11 +0200
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
Message-ID: <001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org> wrote:
> > Using ~ instead would probably help with that. It's only a unary
> > operator and not defined for strings either. You'd just have to scan the
> > sources for a ~ immediately followed by a string literal. 
> 
> What about a t'translated string literal', like r'raw string'?

is it really that hard to write, say,
T('translated string literal') ?

</F>




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 14:21:48 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:21:48 +0200
Subject: Example using the select module
References: <38021BC3.11FB6FE7@hnc.com>
Message-ID: <004501bf1415$802d62b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

James Turney <jtt at hnc.com> wrote:
> Does anybody have and example using the select module with sockets.

very schematic (read on to find out why):

s = socket.socket(...)

# switch to non-blocking mode (only
# needed if you want to to non-block-
# ing connects; see below).
s.setblocking(0)

...bind, connect, listen, whatever...

r, w, e = select.select([s], [s], [s], timeout)

if r:
    # after a "listen", indicates that
    # "accept" will succeed
   
    # or data is available -- "recv"
    # will succeed

    # or connection is closed/reset/
    # terminated (recv will return an
    # empty string)

if w:

    # after a non-blocking "connect",
    # indicates that connection succeeded

    # or data can be written ("send"
    # will succeed)

if e:

    # after a non-blocking "connect",
    # indicates that connection failed

but your time is probably better spent by looking
at the asyncore framework, which keeps track of
all this for you:
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-asyncore.html

(if you still want an example, reading the asyncore
sources if of course your best bet)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
(yes, it covers sockets, select, and asyncore too!)




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 18 12:58:12 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:58:12 +0100
Subject: Read one key press.
In-Reply-To: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <002a01bf1989$f68d42d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> key = raw_input("press a key: ")
> if key == 'a':
>     print "you pressed 'a'"
> elif key == '^['
>     print "you pressed escape"

This is a platform dependent issue.

For Win32, you can use:

import msvcrt
key = msvcrt.getch()

For unix, it's probably easiest to use the curses module:

import curses
win = curses.initscr()
key = win.getch()

I think then you're stuck with curses for all IO though.
Not sure about this one.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From Martin.Dick at Infotech.monash.edu.au  Thu Oct 28 23:59:48 1999
From: Martin.Dick at Infotech.monash.edu.au (Martin Dick)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:59:48 +1000
Subject: TOOLS Pacific '99 - November 22-25, Melbourne Australia
Message-ID: <38191BB4.99DABC0B@Infotech.monash.edu.au>

TOOLS PACIFIC , part of the international TOOLS conference series, 
is the Australian software event of the year, bringing together the 
best international experts and practitioners for four days of in-depth 
discussions of objects, component-based development and other innovative 
software technologies. 

TOOLS PACIFIC 1999 is the most exciting ever, with a unique range of 
keynote and tutorial speakers including: 

   James Coplien of Patterns and C++ fame. 
   James Plamondon from Microsoft research on new Microsoft
   technologies. 
   Jean-Raymond Abrial on mission-critical applications of formal
   methods to safety-critical systems. 
   Steve Vinoski on CORBA. 
   Ian Joyner on O-O languages 
   James McKim, Richard Mitchell and Bertrand Meyer on Analysis, Design
   and Management by Contract. 
   Julian Edwards - Object Oriented Pty Ltd. 
   Brian Henderson-Sellers on UML and Open. 
   Mark Hammond - Python/COM. 
   Jan Newmarch on JINI. 
   David Holmes - Concurrent Java

TOOLS Pacific '99 will also be previewing a major new technology from a 
key global software company.

An extensive academic program will also be presented at the conference.
Proceedings published worldwide by the IEEE Computer Society.

For further details on the conference and registration, go to
 
        http://www.sd.monash.edu.au/tools/



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 17 08:33:12 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:33:12 +0200
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <Pine.SOL2.3.96.SK.991017161248.2633F-100000@sun>
Message-ID: <00a401bf189b$c80d3710$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Oleg Broytmann <phd at sun.med.ru> wrote:
> On 17 Oct 1999, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> > def rwpopen(input, command, args=[]):
>                               ^^^^^^^
>    There was well-know problem with passing mutable object as a default.
> Not sure if it was fixed in recent versions of Python...

well, that's only a problem if you modify the object
inside the function...

(and no, it hasn't been fixed.  I doubt it can be
fixed without breaking stuff).

...

but to make the code a bit more flexible, I'd change
the execvp call to:

os.execvp(command, (command,) + tuple(args))

or, if you prefer:

os.execvp(command, [command] + list(args))

(this allows the caller to use *any* kind of sequence,
not just a list).

</F>

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




From copilot at esimple.com  Thu Oct  7 03:02:30 1999
From: copilot at esimple.com (informer)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 07:02:30 GMT
Subject: Do you use your laptop in the car?
Message-ID: <36440.1271715278@news-server.twcny.rr.com>

If you use your laptop PC in the car, than the laptop Copilot could be of use to you.

Log onto 

www.laptopcopilot.com 

for complete details and a video of the laptopCopilot in action.

The laptopCopilot holds your PC securly for easy use form within any parked vehicle. 

$49.95 includes ground s&h to 50 US states, in stock for immediate shipment.

A GREAT tool for on-the-road salespersons...




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct 10 00:51:45 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:51:45 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
In-Reply-To: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <000601bf12db$2759d640$072d153f@tim>

[Sonny Parlin]
> I have a file of 1000 lines that I'm simply trying to read in and display
> using python. The code I have is here:
>
> #!/usr/bin/python
>
> file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
> for line in file.readlines(): # read file
>     s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
>     print s #print string
> file.close()
>
> I think I have some unnecessary steps in that program, because here is the
> Perl equivalent:
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl
>
> open(FD, "testfile.txt");
> while(<FD>) {
>     print $_;
> }
> close(FD);
>
> The Perl example is smaller and runs a few milliseconds faster, so could
> someone please point out the deficiencies in my python script?

Your Perl is much too wordy <wink>:

open(F,"testfile.txt");print <F>;

Others will respond with trivial simplifications to the Python code too, but
who cares?  Nobody wins a Fabulous Prize for saving a keystroke.

gotta-save-3-just-to-qualify-ly y'rs  - tim





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 09:05:05 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 13:05:05 GMT
Subject: minimal python for embedded system
References: <37FBFFDD.9FBC8118@gd-es.com>
Message-ID: <004b01bf10c4$94ea7110$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Jon Watts <jonathan.watts at gd-es.com> wrote:
> I'm looking to embed python in a real-time system and am trying to
> figure out the minimal components needed to run the process, do basic
> I/O stuff and access modules in C.
> 
> Sorry for the lame description but I'm new to Python too so it doesn't
> help with this task. We're just trying to take advantage of the Python
> language and object oriented nature.
> 
> Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

here's one:
http://www.abo.fi/~iporres/python/

</F>




From damien_morton at my-deja.com  Sat Oct 16 00:04:24 1999
From: damien_morton at my-deja.com (damien_morton at my-deja.com)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 04:04:24 GMT
Subject: mxODBC windows and cursors
References: <7u8nsf$icq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7u8tg4$lu1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hmm, yet another case of 'engage search engine before opening mouth'

I seem to have solved the problem.

By default the MS ODBC driver operates with client side cursors, which
dont support multiple cursors per connection. The following
ODBC options are the defaults which imply client-side cursors:

SQL_CONCURRENCY = SQL_CONCUR_READ_ONLY
SQL_CURSOR_TYPE = SQL_CURSOR_FORWARD_ONLY
SQL_ROWSET_SIZE = 1

Change any or all of these options to something else, and the driver
switches over to using server-side cursors, of which many are allowed
per connection.

See this MSKB article for more info:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q140/8/96.asp



In article <7u8nsf$icq$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  damien_morton at my-deja.com wrote:
> 	I have been using the mxODBC library in a win32 environment,
> and Ive struck a small problem. Perhaps someone can help. Here is a
> snippet of code:
>
> import ODBC.Windows
> import time, random
>
> ODBC = ODBC.Windows
> SQL = ODBC.SQL
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     db = ODBC.Connect('Test','sa','')
>     db.setconnectoption(SQL.ACCESS_MODE, SQL.MODE_READ_ONLY)
>     c = db.cursor()
>     c.execute("select * from usermail where email_host='AOL.COM'")
>     d = db.cursor()
>     d.execute("select * from usermail where email_host='HOTMAIL.COM'")
>     print c.fetchone()
>     print d.fetchone()
>
> The result of executing this code is listed below:
> >>> OperationalError: ('S1000', 0, '[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server
Driver]
> Connection is busy with results for another hstmt', 3205)
>
> This seems to indicate to me that I can have only one active cursor
per
> connection. Is this necessarily true? Is there some way around this
> limitation, or will I need to maintain a connection for each cursor?
> (my tests indicate that each connection is about 600K, whereas each
> cursor is about 3K)
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From skip at mojam.com  Sun Oct 10 02:24:35 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 01:24:35 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
In-Reply-To: <y0jr9j4cxt5.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com>
	<007f01bf0f61$ac3768a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<37FE12C4.FD169F72@strs.co.uk>
	<y0jr9j4cxt5.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <14336.12579.704701.628794@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Magnus> Well - I still don't like the non-standard welcome() and
    Magnus> banish()...  And it doesn't cover all of the functionality of
    Magnus> the re module...  Perhaps a revised version could be made.

It predates re by a bit, so it's not at all surprising that it's not
supported.  Ping doesn't hang around here much these days.  If you managed
to make the port, I doubt he'd mind.  As for the rationale behind welcome()
and banish(), see:

    http://x33.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=181453806

blame-from-module-import-*-once-again-ly y'rs,

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From damien_morton at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 15 22:28:40 1999
From: damien_morton at my-deja.com (damien_morton at my-deja.com)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 02:28:40 GMT
Subject: mxODBC windows and cursors
Message-ID: <7u8nsf$icq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

	I have been using the mxODBC library in a win32 environment,
and Ive struck a small problem. Perhaps someone can help. Here is a
snippet of code:

import ODBC.Windows
import time, random

ODBC = ODBC.Windows
SQL = ODBC.SQL

if __name__ == '__main__':
    db = ODBC.Connect('Test','sa','')
    db.setconnectoption(SQL.ACCESS_MODE, SQL.MODE_READ_ONLY)
    c = db.cursor()
    c.execute("select * from usermail where email_host='AOL.COM'")
    d = db.cursor()
    d.execute("select * from usermail where email_host='HOTMAIL.COM'")
    print c.fetchone()
    print d.fetchone()


The result of executing this code is listed below:
>>> OperationalError: ('S1000', 0, '[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]
Connection is busy with results for another hstmt', 3205)


This seems to indicate to me that I can have only one active cursor per
connection. Is this necessarily true? Is there some way around this
limitation, or will I need to maintain a connection for each cursor?
(my tests indicate that each connection is about 600K, whereas each
cursor is about 3K)



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 10:47:11 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:47:11 GMT
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
References: <380e3730.35917151@news.btx.dtag.de>
Message-ID: <7uptde$vpv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


> I'm looking for the appropriate SR software to build a part of a room
> installation. The task differs somewhat from the usual "dictate into
> word" applications:

  Is this for a home automation system?

  As far as I can tell... the interface to the SR engine is the least of
your worries.  SR is not widely used... not because it is hard to
program, but because it is unreliable.  The "continuous" SR engines work
partially based on phonemes and partially on sematic contexuality.
Therefore, taking in a stream of utterances and trying to pick a few
words off is impossible.  The chances of recognizing the right word only
comes close to useable if the words to the left or right of that word
are within the right context.  So if you think that you can just feed in
a audio stream and let the engine pick it up- that is not really what SR
can do at this point... Regardless of what IBM or Dragon tells you.  But
it is getting better!!!!

  -Josh Zeidner


>
> In the recorded audio stream should be recognized as many words as
> possible - speaker independent and in German! (I can hear you shudder)
>
> In unclear cases - there will probably be lots of them - the closest
> interpretations would be OK.
>
> Therefore completeness and correctness don't have the highest priority
> in this case.
>
> The application is supposed to run on a Win 9x machine. Direct
> accessibility from Python would be super, otherwise possible via
> COM/SAPI from M$, admittedly I don't know anything about its
> capableness.
>
> I read the postings about NatLink in c.l.p, but in absence of a demo
> version of NatSpeak I cannot tell anything about its suitability, so I
> would be pleased to hear some opinions of this group's numerous SR
> experts!
>
> Regards,
> Stefan
>
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From g_will at cyberus.ca  Fri Oct  8 23:41:55 1999
From: g_will at cyberus.ca (Gordon Williams)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 03:41:55 GMT
Subject: Make Stand Alone W32 Installer Crash with tk
References: <1272737292-40451070@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <01bf1207$f4669da0$2b41c3d1@Cyberus.cyberus.ca>

Gordon,

Thanks very much for pointing me in the right direction.  It required an
addition to my path of:
C:\Windows\System for Python15.ddl and
E:\Program Files\Tcl\bin for tk80.dll and tcl80.dll.

(Python and Tk work well together when I run them normally.  I didnt know
that I had a non-standard installation)

That and 6 or 7 hours more work got me to the point where everything is
working and installing into the right directories etc. Its GREAT!

What I didnt understand earlier was what was found and not found in:
> >  found tcl80.dll
> >  lib not found: tcl80.dll dependency of  found tk80.dll
> >  lib not found: tk80.dll dependency of  found python15.dll
> >  lib not found: python15.dll dependency of  found MSVCRT.dll

If I knew more Im sure it would be obvious, but I dont so it wasnt.  Maybe
a small wording change would help.

BTW I see that you have just released a new beta.  Good going!  I hope to
look at it soon.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Gordon

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote in article
<1272737292-40451070 at hypernet.com>...
> Gordon Williams wrote,
> > 
> > I have been trying to get Gordon McMillan's and Thomas Heller's
> > win32 installer to work properly to make a stand alone .exe which
> > uses tk. 
> 
,<snip> 
> 
> That says that these dlls are not on your PATH. I'm afraid I 
> don't emulate the entire search path for dlls; it's different 
> between NT & Win9x. To make matters worse, it appears that 
> one of the Win9xen has a case-preserving environment, and 
> some of the variables needed to determine where your system 
> directory is have changed names between versions.
> 
> The first step is to find the dlls, which means adding their 
> directory to your PATH.
> 




From adsharma at home.com.nospam  Wed Oct 20 00:09:48 1999
From: adsharma at home.com.nospam (Arun Sharma)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 04:09:48 GMT
Subject: Python startup performance ?
Message-ID: <slrn80qg4c.j1b.adsharma@c62443-a.frmt1.sfba.home.com>

Not a big deal - but would be helpful when executing a large number
of python scripts over and over again.

	-Arun

$ time -p perl -e 'print "hello world\n"'
hello world
real 0.01
user 0.01
sys 0.00
$ time -p python -c 'print "hello world\n"'
hello world
 
real 0.93
user 0.05
sys 0.05     



From darcy at vex.net  Wed Oct 20 16:09:24 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 20:09:24 GMT
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim> <3dzoxd7vkj.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7ul7hk$u8b$2@hub.org>

Andrew M. Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
> I've always wondered why he considered 37 helpful.

Yah, I would have thought 56 myself.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From mark at chem.uwa.edu.au  Sun Oct  3 20:35:01 1999
From: mark at chem.uwa.edu.au (Mark C Favas)
Date: 4 Oct 99 00:35:01 GMT
Subject: Tkinter Radiobutton Menu: how to select programmatically (newbie)
References: <7t8rdv$e7h$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <mark.938997301@declan>

"Charles Medcoff" <cmedcoff at sprynet.com> writes:

>How does one programmatically select the active entry a radio button menu?
>For example in a drawing application with a tool menu with entries for
>"Selector", "Line", "Rectangle", etc I want to automatically change the
>active drawing task to "Selector" and I need to have the radiobutton menu
>reflect this.

You need to set a variable to be a Tkinter StringVar(), and use the 
variable=variable_name construct when building your radiobutton widget. You
can then set the value by doing variable_name.set('Selector') to select the
required button. A few lines of code follow to give you a flavour.
/F's www.pythonware.com site has excellent reference material for Tkinter. 

import Tkinter; Tk = Tkinter
<snip>
radvar = Tk.StringVar()
<snip>
for text, value in radiobuttons:
   wid = Tk.Radiobutton(parent, text=text, variable=radvar, value=value)
<snip>
radvar.set(val) # val is one of the "value"s in the above loop

Mark
--
Email  - mark at chem.uwa.edu.au      ,-_|\                           Mark C Favas
Phone  - +61 9 380 3482           /     \               Department of Chemistry
Fax    - +61 9 380 1005      ---> *_,-._/   The University of Western Australia
                                       v                               Nedlands
Loc    - 31.97 S, 115.81 E                               Western Australia 6009



From strangiato at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 31 16:55:30 1999
From: strangiato at my-deja.com (strangiato at my-deja.com)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 21:55:30 GMT
Subject: Newbie Question
Message-ID: <7vidsi$qm8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am completely new to the language.

I heard that Yahoo uses it?  Is this true?  Is it a good language for
developing Web Pages?  Is it a "best of breed"?

Thanks :)


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tbryan at python.net  Thu Oct 28 18:37:16 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 18:37:16 -0400
Subject: linux install problem
References: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>
		<19991028114850.A11323@better.net> <14360.37181.906077.809584@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3818D01C.E1C40299@python.net>

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." wrote:
> 
> David Minor wrote:
>  > I'm running Mandrake RH 6.1.  I can't find the Modules/Setup file all
>  > the docs tell me to use to configure tkinter.  (my pen-ultimite goal is
>  > to run grail)  I rpm installed python 1.5.2 hoping this would solve
>
>   David:  You need to make sure that Tkinter is installed.  Mandrake
> packages it as "tkinter-..." if I recall correctly; you should be able
> to locate it on the mandrake CD-ROM or an ftp site, and install it
> using "rpm -Uvh" (or something similar).

Just for the sake of correctness of archives, I thought that I'd mention
that installing a tkinter RPM works (if it does) because the Python you 
installed from RPM was already configured to use Tkinter.  If it
weren't,
then you'd need to download the Python source, edit the Modules/Setup
file, 
and rebuild Python.

If you ever need to build your own Python, you need to download the 
source for Python.  When you unpack the tar.gz file, the directory
structure under the directory it creates includes a Modules
subdirectory.
The Setup file in the Modules subdirectory is the one you need to
modify.
Actually, I recommend that you just make a Setup.local file (see the
docs)
so that you'll have all of your modifications to the Python build in one
place, separate from the normal Setup file.

---Tom



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 14:58:05 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 18:58:05 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <7td22n$vs4$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <051019991117179815%jpc@informatics.jax.org> <5ln1tx7es1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7tiqft$lau$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
> I'm constantly amazed at the quality of conversation in this newsgroup.
> I had only a vague notion about junk DNA before I hit upon this thread;
> now I have a better understanding.  Way to go, c.l.py!

Yeah, and they all know Dutch too! I was just marvelling about the same 
thing.

What do you put in that python, anyway?

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From schliep at Octopussy.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE  Fri Oct 29 11:01:12 1999
From: schliep at Octopussy.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE (Alexander Schliep)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 17:01:12 +0200
Subject: Tkinter. Container Frame
References: <3819B780.7DB7B681@abo.fi> <19991029103502.B106965628@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <tq9k8o69pon.fsf@Octopussy.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> writes:
> Sounds like you want something like MDI windows from MS Windows. :-)
> 
> Check the comp.lang.tcl FAQ and archives for references to MDI.  

Or go to http://www2.zyvex.com/OpenChem/index.htm where you find MDI-classes
for Tkinter. 

Yours,
Alexander

-- 
Alexander Schliep                    schliep at zpr.uni-koeln.de



From jblazi at netsurf.de  Mon Oct 25 08:00:36 1999
From: jblazi at netsurf.de (Janos Blazi)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:00:36 +0200
Subject: LOCALE + NT
Message-ID: <anglicanism-7v1gp8/INN-2.2.1/assemble@broadway.news.is-europe.net>

Can ANYBODY tell me how to use a German locale on NT 4.0? After all, NT
shoul offer POSIX support and that shoulb be anough, shouldn't i?

THX.

Janos Blazi
(jblazi at netsurf.de)









From hniksic at srce.hr  Sat Oct 16 22:10:25 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 04:10:25 +0200
Subject: Adding info to Python Buglist
References: <3808C151.1D877904@nmt.edu> <38092227.A4E0B20A@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <87ogdyn3e6.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

Jason Trowbridge <ratman at nmt.edu> writes:

> *The RFC I'm talking about is RFC 1521.

Please note that rfc1521 has been obsoleted by rfc2045 *years* ago.
Base64 encoding is described in section 6.8.

Also, I'm not sure if ignoring invalid pad sequences is a good idea.
rfc2045 explicitly says that characters out of the base64 alphabet are
to be ignored.  However, illegal padding is not mentioned.

I think it makes sense to raise an exception in that case.



From clarkeia at logica.com  Tue Oct  5 10:40:46 1999
From: clarkeia at logica.com (Ian Clarke)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:40:46 +0100
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
Message-ID: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com>

I have never liked regular expressions, they seem to come from the Perl
school of programming (whose motto is "If nobody else `can understand my
code, they can never fire me!").  Of course, it is not actually the
regular expressions themselves that annoy me, it is the language they
are written in.

What if, instead of using '(hello)*' you could use 'multiple("hello")',
and other such long-winded replacements.  Yes, this would prevent people
from writing '(?P<m>\s*\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+,\s+[^,]+)(?P<u>.*' and then
giggling with glee as their co-workers scratch their heads over what the
hell this does, but that is a price I would be willing to pay.

Ian.



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Wed Oct 20 13:57:24 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 19:57:24 +0200
Subject: Speeding up Python
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <7ukvp4$16f@mail.psy.uva.nl>

| > I read that Industrial Light And Magic is using Python, but I don't see
how
| > that is possible.

I find it quite possible.

| > I wonder if I'm missing something.  Any suggestions?

If you need to do math on large series of numbers, the Numeric module
(http://www.cwi.nl/www.python.org/download/Contributed.html#Math)
(ftp://ftp-icf.llnl.gov/pub/python/) will provide the performance you need.
I did not compare with C/C++ code but, in my case, NumPy code runs few times
faster than my correspondednt  MATLAB code.

As a matter of anecdote, my MATLAB code runs as fast as the C++
implementation of a colleague. Admittedly, he did not try hard enough, but
the point is that not the speed itself, as much the good trade-off between
the performance of (Python,Numeric) and the ease of programming. Ease of
programming, in turn, favors tweaking and helps identifying better
solutions. Faster.

If you are bound to the use of quite unusual data structures, which make
difficult vectorization, then you may need to use Python for prototyping
only. However, no widely used math package or language can help you better
in such a case.

ionel












From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct 10 14:01:51 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:01:51 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
In-Reply-To: <m3iu4f2nz2.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <000201bf1349$8833cde0$642d153f@tim>

[Sonny Parlin]
> ...
> Are you saying that perl code such as:
>
> while(<FD>) {
>   print "$_\n";
> }
>
> could be faster than low level C code such as:
>
> while ((c = read (fd, buf, BUF_SIZE)) > 0)
> 	write (1, buf, c);

No, those loops do different things; in particular, the C loop is not "line
at a time" input or output.  The Perl loop is, and can be much faster than
an "equivalent" C loop using the std fgets function, especially on platforms
(e.g Windows) that implement fgets very inefficiently (compared to what's
possible).

The speed of the latter loop is (on most platforms) about the same whether
you spell it in Python or Perl.

See the pointer Fredrik posted to the QIO module.  For all its cleverness in
"simulating" line-at-a-time input, it's still slower than Perl (mostly
thanks to a faster inner loop in Perl's implementation -- QIO scans each
buffer twice, once to find the end-of-line, again to copy the data; Perl
scans only once).

perl-is-fast-because-stdio-is-slow-ly y'rs  - tim





From bgdarnel at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 13:58:43 1999
From: bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 17:58:43 GMT
Subject: Python guide Brain posted
References: <7sp529$ipg$1@ssauraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com> <slrn7v0el3.cu5.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <7td89j$510$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vkf2n.nk8.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>

In article <7td89j$510$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, Preston Landers wrote:
>In article <slrn7v0el3.cu5.bgdarnel at bgdarnel.dhis.org>,
>  bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell) wrote:
>
>> Since it came up here, I think I'll take the opportunity to point out
>my
>> own project, ThoughtStream, which has a similar purpose to the Brain,
>> and will probably have useful Unix and Palm versions far before
>> Natrificial will.  The desktop version is written in Python, using
>> wxWindows for the GUI, so it will work on Windows and Unix.
>
>This sounds fascinating.  Where can I find this?  I'm curious about the
>technical aspects more than the GUI; such as, does it use a SQL backend?

You can find it at the website in my sig (remove the extra space).  It
doesn't use a SQL backend (right now everything is stored in XML and
it's all loaded into memory at once), but I have tried to abstract
everything enough that it could be changed to use a more powerful
backend later.

-Ben

-- 
Ben Darnell              bgdarnel at unity.nc su.edu
http://www4.nc su.edu/~bgdarnel/thoughtstream/




From skip at mojam.com  Mon Oct  4 11:38:18 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 10:38:18 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Linux, Python, and pipes
In-Reply-To: <7taffc$3m1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7taffc$3m1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <14328.51690.187866.453385@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Preston> Anyone know what's up with pipes and Python on Linux?  It seems
    Preston> that when trying to pipe the output of a Python program, the
    Preston> pipe does not start flowing until the Python program exits.
    Preston> For programs with long running times and lots of log/debug
    Preston> output, that means you can't begin to look at the output until
    Preston> the program terminates.

Preston,

Try running your Python script with the -u flag.  That causes Python to open
stdout and stderr unbuffered.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...




From wjk at wjk.mv.com  Sat Oct 30 00:20:25 1999
From: wjk at wjk.mv.com (William King)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 00:20:25 -0400
Subject: rstrip
Message-ID: <381A7208.D53BB0E0@wjk.mv.com>

Just managed to download and install Python on my PC and was
trying a few things to start out learning the language... so I guess
that makes me a NEWBIE....  Anyhow:

#made a string with leading tabs

 x  =  "        Test"

#used rstrip(x) to eliminate leading tabs (whitespace)
import string
string.rstrip(x)

#resulted in

\011\011Test

#lstrip will take away tabs (whitespace) and strip will do same
#but it appears that rstrip does not on Windows 95
#is this a bug? or do I have to do something to redefine whitespace?




From poinot at onera.fr  Fri Oct 29 03:40:54 1999
From: poinot at onera.fr (Marc POINOT)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:40:54 +0200
Subject: gadfly install problem: "from sqlsem import Parse_Context" fails.
References: <7vb0bh$s9u$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <38194F86.AE9CD7C8@onera.fr>

Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com wrote:
> 
> After installing gadfly via
>     (1) downloading individual *.py files from
>             http://www.chordate.com/kwParsing/index.html
>         (there does not seem to be a zipped package??),
> 
>     (2) downloading kwP from the same site, and
> 
>     (3) running "python gfinstall.py"
> 

Do you have sqlsem.py in your PYTHONPATH ?
Maybe you'd better take the whole distribution,
you can find it at the top of the page/url
you write in (1), get kwP.tar.gz

See also:

http://www.egroups.com/group/gadfly-rdbms/info.html

-MP-

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Marc POINOT             Alias: marcvs        Email: poinot at onera.fr
 ONERA -MFE/DSNA/ELSA    Tel: 01.46.73.42.84  Info: elsa-info at onera.fr
 29, Div. Leclerc        Fax: 01.46.73.41.66  Site:     
 92322 Chatillon FRANCE  Project: elsA        Web: http://www.onera.fr



From rainer2207 at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 09:28:12 1999
From: rainer2207 at my-deja.com (rainer2207 at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:28:12 GMT
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
Message-ID: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I have a Python script which displays a form and has a hidden input. The
relevant code part looks something like this:

print "<form method=\"post\" action=\"sendmsg.cgi\">"
print "<textarea name=\"sndmsg\" rows=\"7\" cols=\"73\" nowrap>"
print "</textarea>"
print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value="test">"
print "<br>"
print "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"Talk\">"
print "</form>"

I was wondering how I could pass a variable using the hidden field. That
is I'd like to do something like this:

test = "Hello"
print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"

but this returns the string test rather than "Hello". Is there anyway
I can get it to pass "Hello"? Am I right in leaving out the double
quotes for the value part? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From rjroy at takingcontrol.com  Wed Oct  6 19:00:51 1999
From: rjroy at takingcontrol.com (Robert Roy)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 23:00:51 GMT
Subject: Tkinter: Scrollable buttons
References: <7te79t$rja$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37fbd35d.82467937@news1.on.sympatico.ca>

You might want to try using Pmw . It has a scrolled frame class that
would be good for what you want to do.

http://www.dscpl.com.au/pmw/

On Wed, 06 Oct 1999 01:06:13 GMT, sragsdale at my-deja.com wrote:

>I've got a big panel full of buttons and such, and I need to add a
>scroll bar so that I can move up and down the list.  The following code
>will construct something that _looks_ good, but the scrollbar won't
>actually do anything.  Any idea what's wrong?
>
>#######################################################
>#!/usr/local/bin/python
>
>from Tkinter import *
>
>class App(Frame):
>    def __init__(self,parent):
>        Frame.__init__(self,parent)
>        self.pack(expand=YES,fill=BOTH)
>
>        items = Canvas(self)
>        items.pack(anchor=N, expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
>
>        scroll = Scrollbar(items)
>        scroll.config(command=items.yview, relief=SUNKEN)
>        scroll.pack(side=RIGHT, fill=Y)
>
>        items.config(yscrollcommand=scroll.set, relief=SUNKEN)
>
>        for i in range(1,100):
>            b = Button(items,text=str(i))
>            b.pack()
>
>myapp = App(None)
>myapp.mainloop()
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct  8 10:18:28 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 16:18:28 +0200
Subject: tkInter scoping problem ?
References: <37FDD2E6.7F903938@cellware.de>
Message-ID: <006a01bf1198$c7b062b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

bernard <bh at cellware.de> wrote:
> To display an image on a canvas I tried
> 
> PhotoImage(name=name, file="./" + name + ".gif")
> c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, image=name)
> 
> which works fine.

now that's an interesting way to abuse Tkinter objects :-)

> However when I use this code in the __init__ method of a class
> 
> class TeleTubby:
>    def __init__(self, c, name, x, y):
>       PhotoImage(name=name, file="./" + name + ".gif")
>       c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, image=name)
>       ...
> 
> I get the error 
>       tcl Error: image "tinky" doesn't exist

if you don't hold on to the PhotoImage object, it's
garbage collected by Python before the call to
create_image.

(if you run the same code in the interpreter, the magic
"_" (last result) variable keeps a reference to the image,
for a short while -- when "_" is used for the next result,
the image object is garbage collected, and the image
shown on the canvas is blanked...)

> Then trying
> 
>       self.pic = PhotoImage(file="./" + name + ".gif")
>       c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, self.pic)
>       
> this time I get no error but no image.

try this:

       self.pic = PhotoImage(file="./" + name + ".gif")
       c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, image=self.pic)

</F>




From jsight at mindspring.com  Sat Oct 16 01:51:28 1999
From: jsight at mindspring.com (Jesse D. Sightler)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 22:51:28 -0700
Subject: re question
References: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>
Message-ID: <38081260.CCB9B2D9@mindspring.com>

Could you send a better description of the string being searched? 
Perhaps an example URL as well as what you are looking for?  I have
written quite a bit of code for screen-scraping pages, and think that
there has to be a better way than the approach of switching characters
to "%" symbols.  :-)

Usually, the splitting method is the best, but there are definately
plenty of things to try.  Just a little more info... :)

"Max M. Stalnaker" wrote:
> 
> I have the following code:
> 
>  def subset(self):
>   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
>   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]
> 
> Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
> stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
> single %.  The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags is
> just the way I tried and had sometime success.
> 
> Maybe there is a better way to do this.  Or someone could perhaps suggest re
> code that would do it.  Thank you.
> 
> My current idea is to construct a single character sentinel out of something
> greater than chr(128) and use that.  This will probably work in this
> application, but I feel like I am missing something.
> 
> --
> Max M. Stalnaker  mailto:stalnaker at acm.org  http://www.astarcc.com

-- 
---------------
Jesse D. Sightler



From tommy at artech.se  Wed Oct 13 15:39:39 1999
From: tommy at artech.se (tommy)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:39:39 +0200
Subject: Text/Cursor User Interface with Python
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se>

Hi!

Someone who know any good module for Python to easy write Text/Cursor
Interfaces???

I like it to have support for widget like:

- scrollboxs
- dialog box
- input box
- menu
- lists

Shoule be used to make textbased UI for applications end I dosen't like to
spend time on wroting the UI more like to spend time to write the
applications instand.

Thanks Tommy


Kind regards

//Tommy

NorthSea Consulting 








From no at spam.net  Sun Oct 24 02:11:48 1999
From: no at spam.net (Tom Vrankar)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 06:11:48 GMT
Subject: Q: Shared python extension module calling another shared library?
Message-ID: <EqxQ3.80$iL.19750@news.goodnet.com>

I've finally tried to write a python extension module, just for practice. I 
understand the basics but am really not clear at all about which objects need 
me to call INCREF or DECREF, and which ones are already taken care of. I'll 
have to cruise the website some more to find a complete example.

But my first problem is linking libraries. I'm trying to write an extension 
module as a shared library on HP-UX using gcc that in turn calls another 
shared library that appears to be C++ based -- it even requires its own 
version of the standard C library. In case anyone has any direct experience, 
the library I'm trying to wrap is Mentor Graphics' DFI. I've written in python 
for years, and have written dfi programs for more years. I think that python 
would make a great language to access the dfi to hide all that pointer-and 
linked-lists crap so that users can do their own dfi programs.

My approach was to follow the cookbook as directed in the HTML documentation, 
using Misc/Modules.pre.in and Setup.in. A vanilla extension module worked fine 
(a function to return its arguments; yay!). I then wrote another to wrap the 
dfi. It calls dfi_version() in the shared dfi library -- which just returns a 
pointer to a string -- and added the gcc switches specified in Mentor's 
dfilink script for the default shared library. Although make returns 
successfully, import fails (but it's unhelpfully vague about what it doesn't 
like).

I tried to change the Setup file to include compile switches that statically 
link the dfi library to my shared library module, but that won't even link.

I realize I don't completely understand all the nuances of shared libraries, 
particularly when I've got one calling another. And the dfi library uses a c++ 
library that claims to override some of the standard C functions. Is this a 
complication, or does dynamic linking make sure the proper libraries satisfy 
unresolved globals in different C modules?

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to go about linking this mess 
together? Or how at least to debug whatever problem import has? Any help is 
appreciated.

								twv@

-- 
                         ---------------------------------
                                               Tom Vrankar
                                            twv at ici.net
                                 http://home.ici.net/~twv/
                                         Rhode Island, USA




From sjks at kali.com.cn  Sat Oct  9 12:55:58 1999
From: sjks at kali.com.cn (Shen Jiakan)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:55:58 +0800
Subject: FYI
Message-ID: <7tnv5a$ej6$130@info.sta.net.cn>

To Whom It May Interest:
http://magsite.yeah.net






From steve at acer.spvi.com  Fri Oct 29 11:11:55 1999
From: steve at acer.spvi.com (Steve Spicklemire)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:11:55 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Python director XTra.... 
Message-ID: <199910291511.KAA26339@acer.spvi.com>

Hi Folks,

   Just revamped the Python Xtra for Macromedia Director. Works on the Mac
now (I need to rebuild it for Windows.. but it should work there as well
if there is interest.) I've added a number of new features as well as
much improved traceback support.

for now:

http://opensource.spvi.com

thanks,
-steve



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Wed Oct 20 08:42:20 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:42:20 -0400
Subject: sys.exit() doesn't exit
In-Reply-To: <5l7lkj5af1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <19991019145321.A46095201@vislab.epa.gov> <5l7lkj5af1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <19991020084220.A46195476@vislab.epa.gov>

Guido van Rossum:
 |Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> writes:
 |
 |> I have this situation:
 |> 
 |>     A Python script (makes calls to:)
 |>     |
 |>     - A C library  (which issues callbacks back to:)
 |>       |
 |>       - The Python script (which invokes:)
 |>         |
 |>         - sys.exit()
 |> 
 |> Calling sys.exit() in the Python callback doesn't terminate 
...
 |> If I want to throw an exception in a Python callback like this, is there a
 |> way for it to unwind the stack across the C library and trigger in the
 |> controlling Python stack frames?
 |
 |Most likely the C code isn't properly propagating Python exceptions.
 |Perhaps it is calling PyErr_Clear().  Perhaps it is not checking for
 |errors at all.  If the C code checks for a NULL return from the Python
 |callback and in that case returns NULL itself to the outer Python
 |script, the exception will be properly passed through.
 |
 |Alternatively, the C code could call PyErr_Print(), which will call
 |exit() when it sees SystemExit.

Thanks.  That was the advice I needed.

The wrapped C code doesn't know about Python so propagating exceptions
through it really isn't practical.  I guess the best I can do is propagate
them across it.

Fortunately, in this particular C wrapper, there are only two C entry
points inside which a Python callback might be invoked, so I can use
static-wrapper-variable-hackery to record when exceptions occur, and return
NULL in the appropriate spots to the controlling Python.  It's not pretty,
but it works.

With Python using return values to signal exceptions, I guess this is this
is the best I can do.

Thanks,

Randall

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From thor at localhost.localdomain  Fri Oct 29 12:25:39 1999
From: thor at localhost.localdomain (Manuel Gutierrez Algaba)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 16:25:39 GMT
Subject: WebCrawler ?
Message-ID: <slrn81jpei.5c0.thor@localhost.localdomain>

Anyone knows about any good python application that is able to 
take all the contents of a web site and putting it into a file ?


Thanks






From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 10:19:33 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:19:33 -0400
Subject: Destroying files
In-Reply-To: <0b6201bf220d$e603ef40$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net> <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov> <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com> <19991029074757.A106968704@vislab.epa.gov> <0b6201bf220d$e603ef40$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <19991029101933.A106965628@vislab.epa.gov>

Darrell:
 |>Randall Hopper
 |> Safest bet is a reformat of your hard drive.
 |
 |I think reformatting only destroys the linkage between blocks. The data
 |remains.

Could be that this is the case for safe format (which I never use), but
invoke unconditional format ("format /u") from a DOS floppy and it'll wipe
your disk clean AFAIK.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From u970130 at studbo.hit.no  Tue Oct 19 22:40:29 1999
From: u970130 at studbo.hit.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 02:40:29 GMT
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910201041470.5417-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <380d2b67.3352053@news.eunet.no>

>approach as efficient even for a number of objects. Not every object
>compressed - some small pickles are left as is.

Ok, but how do I tell which object is compressed and which isn`t ??

Thomas



From apocalyptica at hvision.nl  Wed Oct 20 09:04:16 1999
From: apocalyptica at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:04:16 +0200
Subject: [Tkinter] Drag & drop
Message-ID: <199910201305.OAA19676@axil.hvision.nl>

Hello,

Does anyone have a drag & drop example for my snippets page? I am 
aware of the Tkinter demos in the Python distribution, but that's not 
really what I'm looking for. What I would like to see is something 
with, say, two labels, and the possibility to drag one label to the 
other, after which the text of the 'target' label changes. In other 
words, I need a way to determine where an object was dropped on. 
Haven't seen such an example so far, but maybe I just didn't search 
hard enough...

TIA,

--Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/



From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Mon Oct 25 09:56:08 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:56:08 +0200
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <38146178.CD201AA6@appliedbiometrics.com>


Martin Pool wrote:

> It seemed like starting from Stackless Python might be a profitable
> alternative: in that case the interpreter can just be left suspended if
> the OS wants to go and do something else.

Nice to see Stackless being considered for various projects.
I had no time to make it a real distribution, but the current
version 0.4 can be created if you load version 0.3 and replace
files again from
http://www.pns.cc/anonftp/pub/veryfar.zip

This gives you the latest aptches which make the Python evaluator
absolutely continuation-safe,and included is a continuationmodule.c
which is supposed to be build as an extension module.

Preparing-a-final-version-plus-paper-for-SPAM8 - ly y'rs - chris

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
     we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 29 13:44:37 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:44:37 +0200
Subject: os.popen() and (IDLE, PythonWin) ?
References: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJMEAACEAA.kputland@wisen.com>
Message-ID: <3819DD05.FF6656C3@lemburg.com>

[os.popen('ver') fails under IDLE and PythonWin, yet works under "normal"
 Python]

Karl Putland wrote:
> 
> Good call it is breaking under IDLE and Pythonwin.  It works under vanilla
> Python though.
> 
> ****************************Pythonwin************************************
> PythonWin 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> Portions Copyright 1994-1999 Mark Hammond (MHammond at skippinet.com.au)
> >>> import platform
> >>> platform.platform()
> 'win32-4.0-1381-SP4'
> >>>
> 
> ****************************Vanila Python********************************
> Microsoft(R) Windows NT(TM)
> (C) Copyright 1985-1996 Microsoft Corp.
> 
> C:\>python
> Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> import os
> >>> os.popen('ver')
> <open file 'ver', mode 'r' at 7f6f90>
> >>> os.popen('ver').read()
> '\012Windows NT Version 4.0  \012'
> >>> import platform
> >>> platform.platform()
> 'Windows-NT-4.0-1381-SP4'
> >>>

Any idea how to get this working with PythonWin and IDLE ? I know
there are some issues with pipes on Windows, but why should PythonWin
and IDLE fail when vanilla Python works ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    63 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From warpcore at freenetname.co.uk  Thu Oct 28 14:57:20 1999
From: warpcore at freenetname.co.uk (Matthew Russell)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:57:20 +0100
Subject: uploading from webpage...suing python?...yep
Message-ID: <7va6h7$rtb$1@gxsn.com>

hi,
    can anyone help?
    I need a way to give remote users the ability to upload HTML files to
apache.

    doing the HTMl form is easy.....how to open socket and transfer data????

    Please....anybody!!!!

    L.Mat at resonation.co.uk





From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Thu Oct 21 11:49:08 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 16:49:08 +0100
Subject: Q: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr
References: <380F22AA.5EF2D410@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>
Message-ID: <m3so34af4b.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Andreas Rozek <Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De> writes:

> Hello!
> 
> This might be a silly question - but I could not find an answer in the
> Python FaQ - for that reason it might be worth asking:
> 
> is there any possibility to launch an external program (without repla-
> cing the current process - i.e., no os.exec* call alone) and catch the
> stdin, stderr and stdout IO streams (the latter also renders spawn and
> fork together with exec* unusable)?

There's popen2.popen3. That won't work on windows...
 
> A platform-independent solution  would be preferrable - however,  it's
> more important for me to get it for Windows 98!

but win32pipe might...

HTH
Michael



From LCortes at Flash.Net  Sat Oct 30 23:09:43 1999
From: LCortes at Flash.Net (Luis Cortes)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 03:09:43 GMT
Subject: MPEG Handling Classes?
Message-ID: <381BB206.147DF61C@Flash.Net>

Hello,

    Just wanted to know if there are any MPEG handling classes  and
where I might find them.

Please reply to sender,
Thanks,
Luis.




From agold1 at mediaone.net  Sat Oct 30 18:19:24 1999
From: agold1 at mediaone.net (Art Goldhammer)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 18:19:24 -0400
Subject: Tcl82.dll not found
Message-ID: <MbKS3.4152$IT5.272573@ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net>

I've just installed Python 1.5.2 on a Win98 machine that already had Tcl8.2
installed, so I didn't install the Tcl8.0 that came with Python.
Unfortunately, Tkinter doesn't work. I've traced the problem to FixTk.py,
which is looking for Tcl80.dll, which of course it doesn't find, because
Tcl82.dll is the file in the directory where it's looking. Do I really have
to install an older version of Tcl to get Tkinter working? Thanks, Art





From nicolas_ross at hotmail.com  Fri Oct 15 14:38:50 1999
From: nicolas_ross at hotmail.com (nicolas_ross at hotmail.com)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 18:38:50 GMT
Subject: urgent vidoe and film job
Message-ID: <_wKN3.13394$No1.2297@news.globetrotter.net>

Free formation for professionals of video and film
3Di Syntheses (Montreal, CANADA)  offers free seminars of formation on the software of Discreet Logic
Edit * 5.0 and  more. 
Send us by electronic mail, your CV: following our selection you will be included in our bank of freelance,
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Formation gratuite aux professionnels de la vid?o                                       
3Di Syntheses (Montr?al CANADA) offre gratuitement des s?minaires de formation sur le logiciel de
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From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Oct 21 16:33:43 1999
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 16:33:43 -0400
Subject: re help
References: <7un7nr$2tt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3du2nkpi6w.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>

mehta at mama.indstate.edu writes:
> how can I specify not to match strings like
>  donot match "one" | "two" | "three"
>   (one|two|three) could match any string as one or two or three
> but I want them not to matched at that position.

Use a negative lookahead assertion, which looks like (?! ... ).  It
lets the rest of the match continue only if the contents (the ...) do
not match at the current position.

>>> import re
>>> p = re.compile('(?!one|two|three)')
>>> print p.match( 'one')
None
>>> print p.match( 'two')
None
>>> print p.match( 'three')
None
>>> print p.match( 'four')
<re.MatchObject instance at f2f88>

In the last example, the resulting match extends from 0 to 0;
assertions always have zero width.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
So what was I to do? To go backward was base: to go forward an adventure into
splendour and terror. But it was forward I must go.
    -- Robertson Davies, _The Rebel Angels_





From aahz at netcom.com  Wed Oct 13 18:23:17 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 22:23:17 GMT
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org>
Message-ID: <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>

In article <3804F889.30739C22 at bruer.org>, Jim Bruer  <jim at bruer.org> wrote:
>
>I've made it through the first 3 chapters of, Learning Python and
>various online tutorials. With some excitement I'm trying to write my
>FIRST program which will read a text file and comma delimit it, so it
>can be read into a database table. I can read and write the file (line
>by line) ok, but:
>
>How do you insert a delimiter into a string at a given position?
>
>Tried "f.insert(i,x)" then realized this is for mutable sequences.This
>is so stupid I'm embarrassed to ask.

delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]

That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
you'll come across better ways.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From sjoerd at oratrix.nl  Mon Oct 25 07:53:03 1999
From: sjoerd at oratrix.nl (Sjoerd Mullender)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:53:03 +0200
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 24 Oct 1999 15:23:34 -0400.
             <1271330231-4096426@hypernet.com> 
References: <1271330231-4096426@hypernet.com> 
Message-ID: <19991025115304.B6020301CF2@bireme.oratrix.nl>

On Sun, Oct 24 1999 "Gordon McMillan" wrote:

> 
> > >>>>> "JS" == Jason Stokes <jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au> writes:
> > 
> >     JS> Is "TBD" a common abbreviation in source code?  Does it
> >     mean JS> "To Be Done?"
> [Barry] 
> > It is for that warped BAW guy!  Guido uses XXX to mark things
> > that should be addressed later (and you thought the Python Video
> > connection was just coincidence).  I picked up TBD (To Be
> > Decided, or Determined, or Done) from a previous employer, and
> > sometimes use it when I'm feeling more prudish.
> 
> It's that damn Dutch degeneracy. Guido probably eats Grape 
> Nuts for breakfast.

It's actually Amsterdam, not The Netherlands as a whole (although
Amsterdammers sometimes forget that there is more to the country than
just Amsterdam :-).

The Amsterdam coat of arms contains three X's (although they're layed
out vertically, but that doesn't fit easily on a line).

-- Sjoerd Mullender <sjoerd.mullender at oratrix.com>



From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Thu Oct 21 09:53:43 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:53:43 +0200
Subject: Language detection module?
Message-ID: <380F1AE7.3466A879@darwin.in-berlin.de>

Hello,

is there anything already like a function that I can pass an
arbitrary string and it will tell me wether it is written in
English, French, German, etc.? 

I imagine this could be rather simply implemented with some 
dicts containing common prefixes and suffixes (as well as most 
often used words like 'you', 'me', etc.) used in the respective 
natural language. One could then calculate some likelihood for 
the text to be in any of these languages classes and then return
the most likely one, or a list of them. I'm not sure, though,
how accents would be represented in a "portable" way (accross
multiple platforms), maybe in HTML...?

While writing this I started a small experiment to code what
I think about. Below you'll find what came out of it. Is there
anything more sophisticated out there, including a better scor-
ing/weighting method, maybe also for combinations of words, even 
handling accents, perhaps?

Regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
................................................................
Food for Echelon: Delta Force, SEAL, virtual, WASS, WID, Dolch,
secure shell, screws, Black-Ops, O/S, Area51, SABC, basement, 
ISWG, $@, data-haven, NSDD, black-bag, rack, TEMPEST, Goodwin, 
rebels, ID, MD5, IDEA, garbage, market, beef, Stego, ISAF, NARF, 
Manfurov, Kvashnin, Marx, Abdurahmon, snullen, Pseudonyms, MITM, 
Gray Data, VLSI, Leitrim... -- Visit http://www.hacktivism.org


# langdetect.py -- Detect a natural language of a written text.

import string

en, fr, de = 'en', 'fr', 'de'

wordDict = {
    'i':en, 'you':en, 'me':en, 'the':en, 'a':en, 
    'moi':fr, 'je':fr, 'toi':fr, 'vouz':fr, 'sur':fr, 'en':fr,
    'sie':de, 'ich':de, 'um':de, 'an':de, 'ab':de}

prefixDict = {
    'off':en, 'to':en, 'under':en, 'in':en, 'thou':en,
    'mont':fr, 'contr':fr, 'mal':fr,
    'ver':de, 'zu':de, 'los':de, 'gut':de}

suffixDict = {
    'son':en, 'day':en, 'ing':en, 'ly':en, 'ght':en,
    'ique':fr, 'tude':fr, 'ont':fr, 'nal':fr,
    'tung':de, 'heim':de, 'zeug':de}

punct = """.,!?"()[]{}!?$%&/*+#"""
trans = string.maketrans(punct, ' '*len(punct))


def detectLanguage(input):
    inp0 = string.lower(input)
    inp1 = string.translate(inp0, trans)
    inp2 = string.strip(inp1)
    inp3 = string.split(inp2, ' ')

    res = {en:0, fr:0, de:0}
    explain = {en:[], fr:[], de:[]}

    for word in inp3:
        try :
            v = wordDict[word]
            res[v] = res[v] + 1
            explain[v].append(word)
        except KeyError:
            pass

        for p in prefixDict.keys():
            try:
                wp = word[:len(p)]
                if p == wp:
                    prefixDict[wp]
                    res[v] = res[v] + 1
                    explain[v].append(word)
            except KeyError:
                pass

        for s in suffixDict.keys():
            try:
                ws = word[-len(s):]
                if s == ws:
                    suffixDict[ws]
                    res[v] = res[v] + 1
                    explain[v].append(word)
            except KeyError:
                pass

    return res, explain


for phrase in ("I am in a good mood today.", 
        "Je suis en plaine forme.",
        "Ich bin heute gut drauf."):
    result, explain = detectLanguage(phrase)
    print "Input:", phrase
    print "Hypothesis:", result       
    print "Reasons:", explain
    print


# Should print something like this:
#
# Input: I am in a good mood today.
# Hypothesis: {'en': 5, 'fr': 0, 'de': 0}
# Reasons: {'en': ['i', 'in', 'a', 'today', 'today'], 
#           'fr': [], 
#           'de': []}
#
# Input: Je suis en plaine forme.
# Hypothesis: {'en': 0, 'fr': 2, 'de': 0}
# Reasons: {'en': [], 'fr': ['je', 'en'], 'de': []}
#
# Input: Ich bin heute gut drauf.
# Hypothesis: {'en': 0, 'fr': 0, 'de': 2}
# Reasons: {'en': [], 'fr': [], 'de': ['ich', 'gut']}




From dave.rose at wcom.com  Tue Oct 19 18:07:56 1999
From: dave.rose at wcom.com (Dave Rose)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:07:56 GMT
Subject: Scrolling Regions within a Frame.
Message-ID: <0Z5P3.17659$Bf6.222555@pm02news>

I am trying to create a scroll bar for a frame that contains many frames
that contain many buttons.  I have not found any way to encapsulate the
frames to make them scroll.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Dave Rose






From sk at fyemf.fys.ntnu.no  Mon Oct  4 10:34:23 1999
From: sk at fyemf.fys.ntnu.no (Steinar Knutsen)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 14:34:23 -0000
Subject: simple IRC client
References: <qoNLpGAda193EwbZ@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <87g0zs78lh.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>
Message-ID: <7tadtf$goe$1@fyemf.fys.ntnu.no>

In article <87g0zs78lh.fsf at ifm.uni-kiel.de>, Janko Hauser
<hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de> wrote:

> [Talk, IRC, and similar
>
>If you find something else, a short notice would be fine... :-)

I wrote a simple server and client as a personal solution
once I had the same kind of problem myself. It's available at
ftp://starship.python.net/pub/crew/sk/snakkd.tar.gz
-- 
Steinar



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Wed Oct 27 12:11:24 1999
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:11:24 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com> <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38170692.D6D438C3@lemburg.com> <00f301bf2086$b4c43fd0$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38171B4B.7CF798AF@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <006101bf2095$eac0c0e0$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>

> Thomas Heller wrote:
> > 
> > I searched the MSDN again,
> > it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
> > and installed by default.
> 
> Sound even better ;-) (It doesn't seem to exist on Win95, so I'll
> only use it for WinNT.)
> 
> What command string would I have to pass to os.popen to get the output
> (I only need the first few lines) without any windows popping up ?
> 
That's were the problem (mentioned earlier) start. This is windows here,
so do not expect for programs to write to stdout!

As I said before, winmsd writes its output to the file <hostname>.txt.
AFAIK, you cannot pipe the output somewhere else, nor can you change the
name of this file.

The following script demonstrates how to do it:

  import string, os, sys
  hostname = string.strip (os.popen ("hostname && winmsd /s /f").read())
  file = open (hostname + '.txt')
  for i in range (12):
    sys.stdout.write (file.readline())

The output on my system are:
  
    
    
  
  Microsoft Diagnostics Report For \\THOMASNOTEBOOK
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   
  OS Version Report
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Microsoft (R) Windows NT (TM) Workstation
  Version 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 4) x86 Uniprocessor Free
  Registered Owner: Thomas Heller, ION-TOF GmbH

BUT: Be prepared to receive this in other languages!
AND: winmsd displays a progress dialog window like this

+--------------------------+
| Generating WinMSD report |
|    +-------+             |
|    | Cancel|             |
+----+-------+-------------+

which closes automatically after the second or so, when the report
is complete. I did not find a way to suppress this window.
Hope this helps,

Thomas Heller





From darcy at vex.net  Wed Oct  6 09:30:49 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 6 Oct 1999 13:30:49 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991005215226.A724@Ridcully.home> <37FB334F.492B55DC@hk.rfa.org>
Message-ID: <7tfiu9$1u5h$1@hub.org>

Bill Eldridge <bill at hk.rfa.org> wrote:
> Researching this:
> ------------------------------
> Years devisabl by 4 ARE leap years
> Except years devisable by 100 are NOT leap years
> Except years devisable by 400 which ARE leap years
> Except years devisable by 4000 which are NOT leap years!
> ------------------------------

Nope.  There is no such 4000 rule.  It's a myth.  If you believe
otherwise, please provide references.  This is one of those perenial
arguments on Usenet.  I have seen it come up time and again for almost
20 years.

> I thought there was a third rule in addition to %100 & %400 for
> millenia.

No.  However, the 400 rule special cases 2000.  Perhaps that's what
you were thinking of.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct 12 00:35:51 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:35:51 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <7tq220$g1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000801bf146b$43e99160$11a2143f@tim>

[Robin Boerdijk]
> I would like to make a case for replacing the current Python
> struct module with an improved version of it. I think the
> struct module contains very useful functionality, but the
> interface functions (pack and unpack) are inconvenient
> for a number of situations.
>
> To fix the pack/unpack inconvenience, I have written an xstruct
> module that extends the struct module with a new structdef
> function to *define* packed binary data structures (similar to
> C's struct keyword).
>
> [and code & docs are at
>      http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html
> ]

The xstruct interface is nice.  Why is it implemented in C?  That is, it
seems to combine two things:  random improvements to the std struct module's
internals, and a new interface.  The latter is much easier to do and
maintain if written in Python, and would also be sub-classable then.  You
should try to get the "random improvements" into the std struct module
regardless; the new interface would likely have a better chance as 100 new
lines of Python than as 800-900 new lines of C.

guido-gets-so-c-sick-i-tell-you-he-vomits<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From mak at mikroplan.com.pl  Fri Oct  1 06:40:06 1999
From: mak at mikroplan.com.pl (Grzegorz Makarewicz)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 12:40:06 +0200
Subject: updated smtplib with auth support
Message-ID: <000c01bf0bf9$53765750$129e75c3@mikroplan.com.pl>

Hi folk

I'v added new exception SMTPAuthError and two methods: helo_ehlo,auth

small fixes in:
putcmd - extra space and end of line
ehlo - updated regexp for featurs parser

Now we can use relaying for authenticated users only available in
zmailer,postfix,exchange,netscape.
#
#<sample>
import smtplib
def demo():
        host='mikroplan.com.pl'
        fromaddr='<mak at mikroplan.com.pl>'
        toaddrs=['python-list at python.org',]
        server = smtplib.SMTP(host,25)
        server.set_debuglevel(0)
        server.helo_ehlo()
        msg=open(data,'rt').read()
        if server.does_esmtp and server.has_extn('AUTH=LOGIN'):
                server.auth('user','password')
        server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, msg)
        server.quit()

demo()
#</sample>
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From hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Sun Oct 17 14:24:23 1999
From: hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 20:24:23 +0200
Subject: A question
References: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi>
Message-ID: <87aephsv54.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

import glob

for file in glob.glob('*.txt'):
	process(file)

HTH,
__Janko

Kristian Nylund <krnylund at io.yok.utu.fi> writes:

> Hello
> 
> Could someone tell me an easy way to do  
> something like "for i in `ls *.txt`..." 
> in python?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Kristian
> 
> 

-- 
  Institut fuer Meereskunde             phone: 49-431-597 3989
  Dept. Theoretical Oceanography        fax  : 49-431-565876
  Duesternbrooker Weg 20                email: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de
  24105 Kiel, Germany



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Wed Oct 27 09:22:32 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:22:32 +0100
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <19991027191643.A509@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <001801bf207e$538ed160$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> The canonical way is to check for the presence of the file:
>> /usr/include/minix/config.h

> When Marc originally proposed this module, I thought of doing the Linux
> detect this way, but after a bit of thinking one realises that it won't be
> generic enough.

You're probably right. This is the way that GNU configure does it.
I'll have a look to see what uname returns.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From mcfletch at vrtelecom.com  Tue Oct  5 11:34:40 1999
From: mcfletch at vrtelecom.com (Mike Fletcher)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 15:34:40 GMT
Subject: system resource modules? (Win32, Irix)
In-Reply-To: <19991005074501.A1327597@vislab.epa.gov>
References: <19991005074501.A1327597@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIIEKJCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>

See win32pdh module (part of the Win32 extensions) for the Windows NT
equivalents. You would likely need to write your own cross-platform wrapper.

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-request at cwi.nl [mailto:python-list-request at cwi.nl]On
Behalf Of Randall Hopper
Sent: October 5, 1999 7:45 AM
To: python-list at cwi.nl
Subject: Re: system resource modules? (Win32, Irix)


Sean Dunn:
 |Are there any pre-coded system resource modules for Win32 and/or Irix?
 |I have looked everywhere, and have started coding my own - but I want to
 |avoid RTW...
 |
 |Basically, I need max physical memory, free physical memory, total
 |virtual, free virtual... so far.
 |And any other goodies that are cross-platform.
...




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Oct 13 23:10:14 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:10:14 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <1272252635-69603208@hypernet.com>

Joshua Marcus writes:

[do..while]

> "Syntactic sugar" isn't a slur; while we don't theoretically need
> "syntactic sugar", the sweet-stuff makes code easier to read. 
> I'm only trying to agitate for the the third of the three C loops
> here, not trying to open up the floodgates in the face of
> puritanism.

If Python were Puritan, you wouldn't have for loops. Any loop 
can be coded as

while 1:
  <block 1>
  if <condition>
    break
  <block 2>

The fact that "for" exists and "while" takes a condition (and 
both take an "else" clause) is symptomatic of the 
insidious Dutch tendency to permissiveness.

no-one-under-18-should-ever-see-a-"continue"-ly y'rs


- Gordon



From mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI  Tue Oct 12 06:08:58 1999
From: mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI (Markus Stenberg)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 13:08:58 +0300
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000801bf146b$43e99160$11a2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <al8k8osopqd.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
> The xstruct interface is nice.  Why is it implemented in C?  That is, it
> seems to combine two things:  random improvements to the std struct module's
> internals, and a new interface.  The latter is much easier to do and
> maintain if written in Python, and would also be sub-classable then.  You
> should try to get the "random improvements" into the std struct module
> regardless; the new interface would likely have a better chance as 100 new
> lines of Python than as 800-900 new lines of C.

"Speed" springs to my mind; that sounds like something at least I would use
a lot. As a matter of fact, I have my own implementation that is fairly
close to that (cstruct), with main difference being in orientation; mine
accepts C structures (ASCII) as syntax, as opposed to the fairly complex
Python structure xstruct uses for defining the struct.

Only problem is, mine approach is written in Python and seems to be too
slow to be useful for some of the more realtime applications I have (thus,
the reverse problem ;->). Although it is just fairly nasty wrapper around
normal struct module, it performs fairly admirably, except for the CPU
overhead involved. 

If I hadn't to write the C needed, I'd trade the Python code for C code any
day (as a matter of fact, after seeing xstruct I considered writing wrapper
for it instead - trivial task - and using it's C module for my action ;>).

> guido-gets-so-c-sick-i-tell-you-he-vomits<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

-Markus Stenberg

I _wish_ there was a fast Python compiler or something; my fiddling with
Py2C sources (awhile ago) didn't result in very useful speed improvements
without zapping some functionality, but I hope someone'll produce one, one
of these days ;->

-- 
"Schizophrenia, like the Unicorn, is described in various ways by
various people. And its elimination, like the capture of the Unicorn,
appears to require some special conditions, not all of which have yet
been specified. Finally, whether or not those conditions exist, belief
in their existence has had significant consequences."
	- Schizophrenia, Behavioural Aspects (Salzinger, 1972)



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Thu Oct 14 15:34:13 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:34:13 +0200
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>
References: <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <19991014213412.A4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Tim Peters:
> [Joshua Marcus, fighting initial lack-of-feature bloat <wink>]
> > ...
> > There are, in fact, other situations in which one actually wants a
> > "do...while" loop & one is forced to either repeat code or make a
> > meaningless initial assignment.
> 
> Those are never necessary, although it's amazing how often people fall into
> believing they are.  The usual Python idiom for:
> 
>     do {
>         xxx;
>         yyy;
>     } while (condition);
> 
> is simply:
> 
>     while 1:
>         xxx
>         yyy
>         if not condition:
>             break

Huh?
Why don't use the following code:

while condition:
    xxx
    yyy

I don't understand the difference.

> 
> The criminally insane sometimes write the last line instead as:
> 
>         if not condition: break
> 
> but putting it on separate lines (as God intended) is key to making the
> idiom instantly (after you're used to it -- about two days) recognizable for
> what it is.

I'll change my code. As far as I remember, this isn't mentioned in Guido's
style guide; am I right?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 06:43:47 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 12:43:47 +0200
Subject: Tkinter app 'freezes' when I use after_idle
References: <ksu2na636b.fsf@telelogic.se>
Message-ID: <ksln8m5twc.fsf@telelogic.se>

Oops found a small bugg in the proggy, my aproach after(100,
after_idle, funcs) didn't really work.. have to dig into it a little
more..

Have updated the zip-file.

        /andy


  -----------== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
   http://www.newsfeeds.com       The Largest Usenet Servers in the World!
------== Over 73,000 Newsgroups - Including  Dedicated  Binaries Servers ==-----



From bgdarnel at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 21 19:33:22 1999
From: bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 23:33:22 GMT
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au>
Message-ID: <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>

In article <199910212239.IAA31097 at piglet.dstc.edu.au>, David Arnold wrote:
>-->"Marc-Andre" == M -A Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> writes:
>
>  Marc-Andre> On SuSE Linux there's a file /etc/SuSE-release which
>  Marc-Andre> tells me the version etc.
>
>on Debian GNU/Linux the file /etc/debian_version contains the
>distribution version number (ie. 2.1 for my local system).
>
>   > cat /etc/debian_version 
>   2.1
>   > 

If you're running unstable, you get the version name instead of number:
% cat /etc/debian_version
potato
%

-Ben

-- 
Ben Darnell              bgdarnel at unity.nc su.edu
http://www4.nc su.edu/~bgdarnel/thoughtstream/




From aahz at netcom.com  Wed Oct 13 18:21:21 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 22:21:21 GMT
Subject: Cisco config?
References: <7u2rhe$j3s@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com> <Qr7N3.86$nf1.14912@news.shore.net>
Message-ID: <7u30l1$q31@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>

In article <Qr7N3.86$nf1.14912 at news.shore.net>,
Michael P. Reilly <arcege at shore.net> wrote:
>Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote:
>:
>: I've found Gconfig, but my searching hasn't turned up anything for
>: automated configuration of a Cisco router (a la "expect").  Any
>: pointers?
>
>What about using Expect or ExpectPy?

Well, yes, (that's what 'a la "expect"' meant) but we're not exactly
Cisco experts here and I was hoping that someone else might have a bit
of code to share so we don't have to start from scratch.  I'm given to
understand (I'm not the person likely doing the work) that among other
things the prompt changes as the configuration changes....
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From pereira at research.att.com  Thu Oct 14 21:47:17 1999
From: pereira at research.att.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 01:47:17 GMT
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <000101bf1600$98d6faa0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <141019992147170975%pereira@research.att.com>

In article <000101bf1600$98d6faa0$ba2d153f at tim>, Tim Peters
<tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> > The problem is, *it needs a glue language more than the languages that
> > already have a glue language* like C, C++, Java...
> >
> > What to do?
> 
> Wrap your Warren machine C++ engine in a Python extension module, or try to
> get the world interested in a brand new PrologScript language <0.9 wink>.
GNU Prolog <http://pauillac.inria.fr/~diaz/gnu-prolog/> can be called
from C, and is more conservative about memory management (that is, it
doesn't want to own memory), so it shouldn't be too difficult to make
it into a Python extension module. 

-- F



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Oct 27 03:40:07 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:40:07 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com> <14358.6224.856497.573781@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3816AC57.28D9C8B@lemburg.com>

"Barry A. Warsaw" wrote:
> 
> Very neat:
> 
> % jpython /tmp/platform.py
> java1.2.1
> 
> Probably sufficient (certainly appropriate) for the JPython platform,
> since nothing else matters when you're running on Java right? :)

Well, there must be more infos lying around in the JRE :-)

Does the JRE provide some kind of uname interface which I could hook
into a special platform.py function ? It would probably be interesting
to have some information about JVM version and vendor.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    65 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





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From: 50 at freepics.com (50 at freepics.com)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 10:37:17 GMT
Subject: NEW TOP 50 FOR ADULT WEBMASTER JOIN US TODAY   651
Message-ID: <7t4n8t$btg$5299@news.planetinternet.be>

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From olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr  Sun Oct 10 10:10:50 1999
From: olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr (Olivier Deckmyn)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:10:50 +0200
Subject: Decrementing a reference counter...
Message-ID: <7tq6r3$3l6$1@feed.teaser.fr>

Does anyone know how to decrement the reference counter of a python object,
in python ( not in a C module ; I know how to do that)?

ex :

def toto(self, titi):
    self.myTiti=titi
    dec_refcount(titi) # To avoid circular reference


Of course, I wonder about the existence and syntax of a "dec_refcount"
function.
I know it is dangerous ; but it is the case where "I know what I am doing
:)"


Please help !





From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Sun Oct 24 15:43:12 1999
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 20:43:12 +0100
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
References: <oq904sc08y.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <86emeko88f.fsf@g.local>

Fran?ois Pinard wrote:

> The only thing that really rebukes me is the interdiction to use capitals in
> comments to mark non-terminals (or variables), as it does not get accompanied
> by a better suggestion, or at least, none yielding as much clarity.

You mean saying things like

    # Return the sum of AARDVARK and ARMADILLO.
    def f(aardvark, armadillo):
        return aardvark+armadillo

? (Incidentally, this example is another one that shows an
annoying "accidental alignment" as a result of the four-character
rule. That's one reason why I -- showing my depravity, no doubt --
prefer two characters.)

I use a convention derived from Knuth's literate programming
systems, and write

    # Return the sum of |aardvark| and |armadillo|.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
sig under construction



From mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu  Wed Oct  6 20:01:55 1999
From: mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu (Michael Haggerty)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 20:01:55 -0400
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
References: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu> <8E56B031Cduncanrcpcouk@news.rmplc.co.uk> <aDNK3.28$Ae3.64125@news-dal.corridex.com>
Message-ID: <xj07ll0rqbw.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu>

The goal isn't to multiply the number of possible kludges, but rather
to make this possible in a convenient, obvious, maintainable way.

Duncan Booth <duncan at rcp.co.uk> wrote ...
>
> This is a kludge, but you can avoid accidental positional arguments if you
> stick in a tuple argument:
> >>> def f(x, (donotuse,)=(None,), variation=57):

By the way, didn't I hear that tuples-in-parameter-lists are going to
be removed from Python?

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu



From ivanlan at callware.com  Fri Oct 29 14:35:40 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:35:40 -0600
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
References: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr> <B43F505E.226C%petrilli@digicool.com> <99102911314704.01843@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <3819E8FC.78944A58@callware.com>

Hi All--

Patrick Phalen wrote:
> 

[smears, lies, half-truths and statistics about timbot deleted]

> 
> Unless his employer is willing to cooperate. Perhaps he could make an
> appearance as that Windows paperclip thingy. :)
> 

No, no.  We need him here on the list.  We let him out in public as a
paperclip, he will be expunged so fast that you'd think he were a
screwdriver in a cage full of orangutans. ...

<unless-he's-as-good-an-escape-artist-as-the-orangs>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Wed Oct  6 09:45:55 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 09:45:55 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: "Tim Peters"'s message of "Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:40:36 -0400"
References: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <oq7ll0k3fw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> ?crit:

> > When I finally got the joke, I found it _so_ American-centric and _so_
> > displaced, that it was not funny at all.  These people were imposing their
> > non-sense on me, just for the narrow pleasure of laughing between
> > themselves?

> Well, yes -- much like the French Python pun you treated us to when you
> first joined us <wink>.

But there is a nuance.  You read my message, understood it, smiled maybe,
deleted it and just went on.  I did not really impose anything on you.

You would not believe the number of times I did have to type this stupid
`robotussin' program name over the years, having not much clue from time
to time how I should exactly spell it.  The usual English dictionaries
and textbooks I consult would not give a clue.

In an international community of free software developers, we try to use
a reasonable level of English, and it is a real pleasure that people are
impeccable, on the average.  And if it gets difficult, there is no problem
if the difficulty brings with it some bits of culture, literature, movies,
theatre; this is all good, nice, and very welcome.  But when the difficulty
gets reduced to a local-centric commercial trademark for some insignificant
drug, by all the hell tell me, which kind of culture is that...

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From rmeegan at murl.com  Tue Oct 26 10:15:00 1999
From: rmeegan at murl.com (Robert Meegan)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:15:00 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not! (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910260905190.11865-100000@robert.polytopic.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
> 
> Why?  Well, PHP3 has a few things integrated that Python does not and they
> are killers.  Actually just two.
> 
> Authentication, that is the ability to get the user ID and password and
> MySQL database access is just plane impossible, no I can't rely on .htaccess
> files and mod_pyapache does not supply this as does the the PHP3 module --
> so sad.

The company for which I work uses both Python and PHP3 extensively. As the
resident Python programmer, I have to deal with the jealous leers and
excessive drooling of the PHP3 programmers when they see how easy it is to
write real applications for the Web and to connect to our MySQL databases.

The problem lies not with Python, but rather with your ISPs. The solution
is education. You need to show them that with a few small changes to
their installation, they can support you, your customers, and many
additional potential users.

Marc pointed out how the Authentication issue can be quickly dealt with
and I'll testify to the ease of installation of the MySQLdb module, which
compiled and installed right out of the box.

Life is much too short to spend time programming in lousy languages, just
because they came installed on the box.  If that was the only criteria,
we'd all be programming in Visual Basic (and if you'll excuse me now, I
need to wash my hands after typing those dirty words).

Your humble servant,

--- Robert



Robert Meegan

Murl.com - 
Because it's not just your data, it's your life.






From bill.barrington at turner.com  Tue Oct 12 10:55:38 1999
From: bill.barrington at turner.com (bill barrington)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:55:38 -0400
Subject: Creating Python Class Instances From C API
Message-ID: <38034BEA.173F2315@turner.com>

    I would like to create a python class instance using the python/C
API for eventual return back into "python space".  IOW, I want to
accomplish the equivalent of the following python code, but from within
an extension:

instance = Class(<whatever>)

...and then return the newly created instance.

    Anyone know how to do this?

--
Bill Barrington
CNN Interactive - http://cnn.com
bill.barrington at cnn.com
404 827-5572






From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 24 07:26:28 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 11:26:28 GMT
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241036160.28274-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <slrn815r30.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:40:24 +0000 (GMT), Oleg Broytmann
<phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:
>On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
>> hmm, are you using PyApache (instead of vanilla CGI) because
>> of speed?
[..]
>   Not only because of speed, but also because of resources - Apache does
>not need to fork off CGI, and this is big advantage for busy server.

yeah, i guess this is indeed an advantage to a certain extent. but, i
think memory is the most significant resource here, and PyApache
doesn't save much there. it still has to load the same python
interpreter as the cgi program, and cgi's get the same advantage of a
shared text segment of the python interpreter as PyApache.

but cgi's do cost open files and processes ofcourse.

>> httpdapy seems to be very fast, (10-100x faster than CGI or PyApache in
>
>   But it is too incompatible. It requires to write its own modules, where
>PyApache just run standard CGIs.

yes. but it also more flexible than cgi's as it interfaces with the
apache api.

you can also emulate cgi's, httpdapy can build a cgi environment
(httpdapi.RequestHandler.build_cgi_env() & .hook_stdout()) so you can use the
cgi module with it.

> What if you and I would get a server whoose
>sysadmin wouldn't not allow to use these modules? My CGIs will run just fine
>under standard python interpreter, what about httpdapy CGIs?

httpdapy and PyApache both require you to load a 3rd-party apache
module so to use either of them, you need the cooperation of
the sysadmin.

it would probably be quite easy to write something that emulates
cgi's transparently. perhaps httpdapy would become more popular
if something like this was included with it...

  -- erno

-- 
"The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux
customers who need high speed connectivity to drive their
e-business," added Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM
Personal Systems Group. 



From thamelry at vub.ac.be  Fri Oct 22 05:18:30 1999
From: thamelry at vub.ac.be (Georges Destree)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 09:18:30 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <7upa56$nsv$1@mach.vub.ac.be>

Ahmad Munif (muniff at yahoo.com) wrote:

: i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table widget,notebook 
: widget, etc).
: PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.
: i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build 
: my database application ?

FOX is also very nice. Take a look at:


http://www.cfdrc.com/FOX/fox.html
http://www.airnet.net/ljohnson/FXPy/

--
Cheers,

------------------------------------------------
Thomas Hamelryck//Free University Brussels (VUB)
Intitute for Molecular Biology// ULTR Department
Paardestraat 65//1640 Sint-Gensius-Rode//Belgium
------------------------------------------------



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 09:14:00 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:14:00 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
		<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
		<38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>
		<14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
		<38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au>
		<14339.41837.609410.864634@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
		<5lr9j056ud.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
		<38058E9D.9C7FA64F@compaq.com> <14343.19243.257573.974054@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3809CB98.E3D067A7@maxtal.com.au>

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "GE" == Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:
> 
>   GE> I suspect that, if you introduce read-only lexical scoping,
>   GE> you're just going to substitute the stream of "Why is there no
>   GE> #@%$#$% lexical scoping in Python" complaints with "Why the
>   GE> #@%$#$% can't I assign to a non-local variable in Python"...
> 
> I agree whole-heartedly with you here!

	So does Guido, which is why he's (correctly)
resisted adding lexical scoping to Python, since it
doesn't permit rebinding variables out of a function
context (except with a hack, namely the global directive).

	This is a consequence of a design decision
to keep Python simple: no special declaration syntax,
for example. If you had to declare all variables before
use, the problem would go away.

	There is more than one solution to this.
One of them is to follow the usual rule in python:
if you need more than two scopes, the third one
has to be named, like 'self' in class methods.
This can be applied to activation records:

	def f(x):
		def g(y):
			super.x = 1

assigns to f's x by using the special keyword
'super' to refer to the parent. This idea
gets rid of 'global' declarations too:

	def f(x):
		super.glb = x  # set module variable


In fact, right now:

	def f(x):
		f.__module__['glb']  = x

would work, it's just messy. The same applies
to nested functions, which must track their
parents. All we need is a more convenient
syntax for existing functionality and we can
get rid of 'global' declarations, and solve
the syntactic problem for nested functions.

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From sa at bellesystems.com  Thu Oct 28 09:07:21 1999
From: sa at bellesystems.com (Snebjørn Andersen)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:07:21 GMT
Subject: RADIUS protocol code
Message-ID: <38184a78.25752830@news.tele.dk>

Has anyone got Python code for working with the RADIUS protocol
(Remote Authentication Dial-In user Service, RFC 2138) that they would
be willing to share?

Snebj?rn Andersen



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sat Oct  9 22:21:28 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 22:21:28 -0400
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
In-Reply-To: <37ff6cae.10207213@news.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <1272601162-48639446@hypernet.com>

Burt wrote:

> Trying to install Beta 03 (Installer_b_03.exe) causes an illegal
> operation (invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL) on my
> machine running Windows 98.

Sigh. Does anything work on your machine, Burt?

Please download  starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/burt.exe
I know you don't have a compiler, so you won't be able to 
debug it, but it's built with debug and puts out about 100 lines 
of status messages if it runs to completion.

Please set the properties on a console window to hold around 
100 lines, start it with burt.exe -v and send me the results.

(I'd appreciate anyone else using Win98 trying it, too).


- Gordon



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Thu Oct 14 16:14:23 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 20:14:23 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <953918B2ED88ABC2.709107A8A9EC8398.9B8FB1D7D6CEDA3C@lp.airnews.net>

In article <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f at tim>,
Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
>[Joshua Marcus, fighting initial lack-of-feature bloat <wink>]
>> ...
>> There are, in fact, other situations in which one actually wants a
>> "do...while" loop & one is forced to either repeat code or make a
>> meaningless initial assignment.
>
>Those are never necessary, although it's amazing how often people fall into
>believing they are.  The usual Python idiom for:
			.
			.
			.
It amazes me less than you.  Surely you remember
the pedagogic fashion--is it still in bloom?--of
preferring "single-exit" control structures.  I
suspect many of the people stumbling around in
this area bear that burden still; they fear some-
one will "take off points" for every break or
continue.  Also, Mr. Niksic is right to posit that
a "while 1 ..." looks suspicious to newcomers.
			.
			.
			.
>The criminally insane sometimes write the last line instead as:
>
>        if not condition: break
>
>but putting it on separate lines (as God intended) is key to making the
>idiom instantly (after you're used to it -- about two days) recognizable for
>what it is.
"... as G*d* intended ..."
			.
			.
			.
>Has been debated many times.  There's no pleasant way to spell it in Python;
>all blocks have opening keywords, but never closing keywords.
I'm thinking about whether that'll help
a LOT in getting the message through.
			.
			.
			.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From pioneer at wam.umd.edu  Thu Oct 21 03:11:14 1999
From: pioneer at wam.umd.edu (Sarino Suon)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 03:11:14 -0400
Subject: Please help, trying to configure pygtk and pygimp
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910210307490.25465-100000@rac2.wam.umd.edu>

If anyone has successfully done so, won't you help me get past the
installation? Every time I run ./configure (for both pygtk+ and pygimp),
this error comes up:

	"Couldn't find the python config makefile. Maybe you are missing
	the development portion of the python installation"

This cannot be, since I fully compiled and installed Python 1.5.2. Can
someone help me?








From aflinsch at att.com  Fri Oct 29 07:51:22 1999
From: aflinsch at att.com (Alex Flinsch)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:51:22 -0400
Subject: linux install problem
References: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>
Message-ID: <38198A39.D7694E7C@att.com>


root wrote:

> I'm running Mandrake RH 6.1.  I can't find the Modules/Setup file all
> the docs tell me to use to configure tkinter.  (my pen-ultimite goal is
> to run grail)  I rpm installed python 1.5.2 hoping this would solve
> things, no luck.  What can I do, or where can I find installation docs
> that address this problem???
>

I think all you need to do is rpm -Uhv python-1.52*
and rpm  -Uhv tkinter-1.52*

If you are using the Macmillian version of Mandrake 6.1, you may have a
problem as the included version of tkinter was 1.51 rather than 1.52, so
you will need to download tkinter-1.52 from somewhere. I would suggest
http://rufus.w3.org as they seem to have the correct mdk versions of python
and tkinter. (at least that is what I did)








From zakons at eccelerate.com  Mon Oct 11 09:14:54 1999
From: zakons at eccelerate.com (zakons at eccelerate.com)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:14:54 GMT
Subject: how to monitor method calls
Message-ID: <7tsns3$pjj$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am looking to do some introspection on running python programs to
track method calls on objects.

Is there a 'hook' into python to intercept all method calls?
If so, can someone point me to the right way to introspect which class
owns the method, the name of the object, etc.
Any examples out there of this?

Thanks much,
Stuart Zakon


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 31 07:54:37 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 07:54:37 -0500
Subject: raw_input
In-Reply-To: <bakersfield-7vgqhg/INN-2.2.1/beverage@broadway.news.is-europe.net>
Message-ID: <1270748766-19272796@hypernet.com>

Janos Blazi writes:

> When I start the following program from the IDLE under Windows
> NT, only the first raw_input is handled and the program never
> gets to the second raw_input.
> 
> But when I start it from the DOS prompt, everything works
> smothely.
> 
> Why is this so? Can somebody help me?
> 
> #============ program ===========
> t1=raw_input('line1: ')
> t2=raw_input('line2: ')
> print t1,t2
> #===============================

On Windows, GUI programs run under a different subsystem 
from console programs. The GUI subsystem has no concept 
of stdin, stdout or stderr. IDLE's interactive prompt is smart 
enough to fake them, but when running a script, it has no 
place to get input from. PythonWin pops up a little text entry 
dialog in this situation.

Look at it this way - if your user knows how to type, you don't 
need no stinkin' GUI <wink>.



- Gordon



From tratt at dcs.kcl.ac.uk  Fri Oct 29 12:20:53 1999
From: tratt at dcs.kcl.ac.uk (Laurence Tratt)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:20:53 +0100
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
References: <Pine.LNX.3.91.991029082821.15131H-100000@amati.techno.com>
Message-ID: <aa15ac5849.laurie@btinternet.com>

In message <Pine.LNX.3.91.991029082821.15131H-100000 at amati.techno.com>
          Paul <prescod at prescod.net> wrote:

> Does forking make sense for CGIHTTPServer or should it really be using
> threads?

This really depends on what you want to do. If you want to implement
"traditional" CGI scripts (as CGIHHTPServer is set up to do by default),
then forking is arguably the best way to do it under Unix; if you are
fortunate enough to be able to write more advanced CGI-esque functions, then
threading tends to be a more reasonable way of doing things in my
experience.

For a project I was doing a few months ago, I hacked the *HTTPServer
libraries[0] into a forking / threading hybrid, which allowed me to keep
some of the system I was on as standard CGI scripts but use threading for
some performance critical stuff which also needed to access a central data
repository. Once I'd made a few additions to the libraries for things like
http://host/dir -> http://host/dir/ redirection and made it recover from /
accept errors where it needed to, I actually wound up with a surprisingly
useful, resilient web server for quite a specialised task in a short space
of time.


Laurie

[0] Along with a couple of bodges to SocketServer <wink>
-- 
http://eh.org/~laurie/comp/python/



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 11 19:10:10 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:10:10 -0400
Subject: How do I shell-out on Win32 systems with python?
In-Reply-To: <7ttit1$f4n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000301bf143d$c45db7a0$f1a2143f@tim>

[yinger]
> I know that on Unix systems you can use the commands  or the popen
> modules.
>
> What do I have to do to get the output from a command (like 'dir', or a
> batch file) executed on a Win32 system?

It's a crap shoot.  If you're going to do this a lot, buy and install a
"real shell" (like 4NT).  os.popen() sometimes works.  The win32pipe module
(in Mark Hammond's PythonWin extension) works more often.  Commands like
"dir" are especially risky, because they're shell builtins and the Windows
shells are, umm, challenged.  Sometimes it's effective to hide the "real
command" in a .bat file and use os.popen() to run the latter.  For
educational laughs, bring up the Tcl help file and look at

    Tcl Built-In Commands -> exec

Tcl has (literally) thousands of lines of internal code trying to make this
stuff work well under Windows, and they still have pages of warnings about
things that can go wrong.

keep-your-finger-near-the-reboot-button-ly y'rs  - tim





From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct  5 14:35:32 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 18:35:32 GMT
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
References: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <7tdgdk$mmr@dfw-ixnews19.ix.netcom.com>

In article <37F9BADF.8B3C4221 at bibsyst.no>,
Thomas Weholt  <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
>
>I got a program were the user will search a database based on keywords.

I'd recommend using a real database for this.  Suggestions include MySQL
and the Python-based gadfly.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From ruchirt at mailcity.com  Tue Oct 19 14:39:31 1999
From: ruchirt at mailcity.com (ruchir)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 00:09:31 +0530
Subject: any new projects and ideas
Message-ID: <7ujidc$l3p$1@news.vsnl.net.in>

hi,
    im new to linux and also python, i took the tutorial but im looking for
some ideas to
use python for. If anyone has some interesting ideas, pls let me know
                                                                            
                ----ruc





From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Thu Oct 28 10:00:18 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 14:00:18 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7v9kti$dhb$1567@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From andreas at mtg.co.at  Fri Oct  8 05:15:18 1999
From: andreas at mtg.co.at (Andreas Kostyrka)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 11:15:18 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <199910080832.JAA29686@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910081113480.25786-100000@gatekeeper.zwax.mtg.co.at>

On Fri, 8 Oct 1999, Hans Nowak wrote:

> I suppose so; I never liked pkzip much, I preferred other (often more 
> obscure) archivers like rar, ace, and jar. :)
Well, jar, IFAIK, is a renamed pkzip ;)

Andreas
--
Andreas Kostyrka                     | andreas at mtg.co.at
phone: +43/1/7070750                 | phone: +43/676/4091256   
MTG Handelsges.m.b.H.                | fax:   +43/1/7065299
Raiffeisenstr. 16/9                  | 2320 Zwoelfaxing AUSTRIA        





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Oct 25 07:06:22 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 13:06:22 +0200
Subject: Embedding C into Python
References: <381239E4.9BC83935@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <p6qn1t7k8cx.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu> writes:

> /tmp/ccype0NL.o: In function `blah_add':
> /tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x24): undefined reference to `PyArg_ParseTuple'
> /tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x4f): undefined reference to `Py_BuildValue'
> /tmp/ccype0NL.o: In function `initblah':
> /tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x7b): undefined reference to `Py_InitModule4'
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> 
> I'm including Python.h so I don't know why this is happening. Also, when
> this compiles, will this allow me to say 'import blahmodule' like
> I want? Or is there more that has to be done in order to put a C module
> into Python?

If your platform (Linux?) supports shared libraries, then yes: If you
create a shared library from your module, you can import it with
'import bla' (module.so is appended by Python automatically). To
compile it, you must write

  gcc -shared -fPIC -o blahmodule.so blahmodule.c

though: -shared tells gcc you want a shared library, -fPIC tells it
you want 'position-independent code' (mandatory for shared libraries),
and you want the executable not be named 'a.out'.

The symbols you are missing are defined in the Python interpreter
proper (/usr/local/bin/python); when the module is loaded, those
symbols will be there.

Alternatively, you could create a new Python interpreter that has you
module compiled-in; to do so, you need to write a config.c, and link
with libpython1.5.a.

Hope this helps,
Martin




From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Fri Oct 15 10:07:32 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 16:07:32 +0200
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <005b01bf15e5$dfe341d0$0801a8c0@bobcat> <005c01bf15ee$1b131b60$042292cb@akha>
Message-ID: <y0ju2nslntn.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

I tried to understand the WAM some time ago because I wanted to
implement it (or some subset) in Python (i.e. not as a C module)... I
know this has been done in SmallTalk... This might not be interesting
if one wants a really fast implementation, but my motivation was to be
able to include declarative code in my python scripts, as much as the
other way around (gluing), therefore making the use of a c module a
bit tricky...

I never *did* get a grip on the WAM... But I am still interested in
getting this thing to work... (I am also interested in using Python as
glue for prolog, for that matter...)

Anyone else who want to try? If nothing else, we could make a very
*small* prolog... It might still be useful for a lot of things.

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From godzilla at netmeg.net  Mon Oct 18 13:02:49 1999
From: godzilla at netmeg.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:02:49 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
Message-ID: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>

just started using the getopt module. i was surprised to see it
returns the options in list format rather than perl's (better)
dictionary format.

i thought i read on c.l.p many moons ago about someone who had written 
an add-on to getopt to return a dict of options a la perl. but i found 
nothing in deja news for this.

anyone have a pointer to such solution (before i implement it myself), 
i'd do something like this:

def make_dicts_from_opts( opts ):

    options = {}

    for item in opts:
        options[item[0]] = item[1]

    return options


import getopt
...
opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], 'dhu:v')
opts = make_dicts_from_opts(opts)
return opts,args
...

etc etc

les  schaffer



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 09:35:39 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:35:39 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
		<000501bf1414$b17e2940$ee2d153f@tim> <14338.15114.317626.752067@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3809D0AB.ABA9FA6@maxtal.com.au>

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
>   TP> In Greg's scheme (which you may be confusing with John
>   TP> Skaller's), you write that in the more Scheme-like way:
> 
> (Yes.  I'm definitely getting my Skallers and Ewings confused.  Sorry.)

	To clarify then: the scheme Viper uses to 'solve' this
problem is trivial: it is no problem in Viper, because Viper
has a real garbage collector and doesn't do reference counting.
[Because ocaml 2.02 does not support finalisation, __del__
methods cannot be executed. This will be fixed with the next
release of ocaml, which I am told will support finalisers]

	Easily the best way to solve the problem
in CPython is just as in Viper and in JPython.

	Use a real garbage collector.

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From timo at bbn.com  Tue Oct 12 17:07:27 1999
From: timo at bbn.com (Tim O'Malley)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:07:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: select() interruption by signal
In-Reply-To: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <14339.41134.103517.822277@ghost.bbn.com>

hola.

Robert Longstaff writes:
 > In my app I have a select() call inside a continuous loop waiting for
 > asynchronous data input from various connected sources. As this call
 > blocks and I need to perform other mini tasks I have an alarm call
 > that fires every 2s that is reset inside its handler.

I'd advocate using the 4th parameter of select() instead of a signal.
The fourth parameter is a timeout, once that much time has elapsed
select() will return, even if no descriptors are ready.

Typically, I'll write something like:

    while 1:
        delay = time.time() - TimeOfNextTask
        if delay:
	    DoTask()
        else:
            r,w,e = select.select( fds, [], fds, delay )

            for F in r:
                handle_read()
            for F in e:
                handle_write()
        # done
    # done


best-o-luck!

-- 
.....................................................................
.   happy daze            .   Age and treachery will beat           .
.        -tim O           .       youth and skill every time.       .
.....................................................................



From jbauer at rubic.com  Fri Oct 22 13:05:15 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:05:15 -0500
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov> <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com> <381092FA.60E1F749@rubic.com> <3810968B.F30FCE68@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3810994B.F935AC82@rubic.com>

> > All other values return the null string, but it
> > should not be difficult to figure out: release,
> > version, machine, and processor.  If you'll leave
> > a slot open for 'wince' in your next release, I'm
> > sure we can supply the code to compute these values.
> 
> I've just uploaded a new version with 'wince' in the
> supported versions for system_ver(). Could you try it ?

Sorry, CE doesn't support a command line.  I probably
misled you in my request.  We can obtain release,
version, machine, and processor information from
the API.  I'll send code privately.

Thanks for your efforts!

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Fri Oct 22 10:29:17 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 16:29:17 +0200
Subject: Snippet request: Connecting to databases
Message-ID: <381074BC.63A2B8DB@hvision.nl>

Due to the overwhelming response to my previous question, I'll ask
another. ;-)

The request is kinda easy... I'm looking for snippets to connect to
databases. Any OS goes, idem for database (SQL Server, Access, Oracle,
...). A simple demonstration of how to connect and how to read a record
or so, would do, although additional information (about requirements and
such; which modules are needed, etc) is always welcome.

Due to our f.. fine proxy server, I don't have access to lots of sites
anymore, including DejaNews. *frown* So I can't look it up there. I was
hoping some of you are willing to share some code.

TIA,





From mnot at pobox.com  Fri Oct 15 04:06:59 1999
From: mnot at pobox.com (Mark Nottingham)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 18:06:59 +1000
Subject: initialization of lists in classes
References: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910150904020.2553-100000@ural2>
Message-ID: <ZcBN3.1$GE1.275@vic.nntp.telstra.net>

Try:

class test:
    def __init__(self):
        self.list = []
        self.float = 3.2
        print "list, float (#1):', self.list, self.float

and so on...


Balint Aradi <ab007 at hszk.bme.hu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.10.9910150904020.2553-100000 at ural2...
Hi,

  I would like to ask something about initialization of lists in
classes. Given the Python code

class test:
    list = []
    float = 3.2

    def __init__(self):
        print 'list, float (#1):', self.list, self.float
        self.list.append(1,2)
        self.float = self.float + 2.0
        print 'list, float (#2):', self.list, self.float

print 'a:'
a=test()
print 'b:'
b=test()


I get the result

a:
list, float (#1): [] 3.2
list, float (#2): [(1, 2)] 5.2
b:
list, float (#1): [(1, 2)] 3.2
list, float (#2): [(1, 2), (1, 2)] 5.2


 I don't understand the mechanism behind that. Why is b.list initialized
with the value of a.list? (Or why isn't b.float initialized with the value
of a.float?)  I'm quite a newbie in Python, so this was probably a stupid
question, but can anyone explain that to me?

Thanks a lot,


   B?lint


Ps. I'm using: Python 1.5.1 (#1, Dec 17 1998, 20:58:15)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on
linux2




--
http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list






From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Tue Oct  5 17:22:21 1999
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 21:22:21 GMT
Subject: DOS Python
References: <slrn7vkkek.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <199910052101.WAA20613@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn7vkr0c.15r.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:03:01 GMT, Hans Nowak wrote:
>On 5 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:

>> I just downloaded the DOS version of Python from Hans Nowak's page.
>> Probalm is, there don't seem to be any docs or modules included -- it's
>> just the .exe file.  Where do I get the .py modules which are supposed to
>> go with it, and where do I install them?

>Looks like a link is missing on my page. Try
>http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/python-1.5-lib.arj

Great.  I'll do that right away, if I can find an .arj extractor.
Speaking of which, is there any particular reason why you used .zip for
the executable and .arj for the (required) libraries?

Okay, this will clearly take some more work.  It seems that the arj
program doesn't support long file names, but the arj archive includes
them.  (How'd you manage that?)

>> Also, has someone compiled numPy for DOS?

>I tried to, but for some reason it didn't go well. Python-DX does a 
>few NumPy modules included; nothing spectacular though.

Actually, 'array' is a great addition, and I'll be using it.  I can
simulate all of the others and just let them run overnight :).

Thanks a lot, Hans.

>--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From mikael at isy.liu.se  Thu Oct  7 10:16:45 1999
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 16:16:45 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Is the server down or what?
In-Reply-To: <199910071257.NAA00125@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991007161645.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 07-Oct-99 Hans Nowak wrote:
 >  Mailing list users: am I the only one who got them twice? Maybe there 
 >  has been a message about this which I've missed? I only recall one 
 >  about some renewal of python-list; it didn't say anything about this 
 >  extra service though. :)

That's the simplest error-correcting code known, called a repetition 
code. However, since each symbol is sent twice, it is actually only a 
1-error-detecting code. There! Now you have my profession clear.

Back to business:
I get most postings once from the mailing list. The only doublets I 
get is when someone has posted something both to python-list at python.org 
and to comp.lang.python.

And then that madQ, posting the same thing over and over again. :(

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    07-Oct-99
Time:    16:01:47

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 10:33:31 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 15:33:31 +0100
Subject: Help needed for gratuitous kludge
In-Reply-To: <000701bf118c$f2444fc0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <000a01bf119a$17eb8510$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Adrian Eyre
> Sent: 08 October 1999 13:59
> To: Python Mailing List
> Subject: Help needed for gratuitous kludge
> 
> [snip]

Ignore this. I've solved it already.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 29 11:47:45 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:47:45 +0100
Subject: Recovering method names at runtime
In-Reply-To: <kug0yui4lk.fsf@uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <001801bf2224$f1bb8a70$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Is there any way to get a list of the method names of a class at runtime
> (like, for example, the Java reflection API)? I'm intending to write a
> class browser.

Python 1.5.2 (#2, Oct 19 1999, 15:40:00) [C] on sunos5
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> class A:
...  def b(self):pass
... 
>>> A.__dict__
{'b': <function b at e8fa0>, '__module__': '__main__', '__doc__': None}
>>> ^D

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Thu Oct 28 15:03:37 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 19:03:37 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7va6m9$t5$1361@nslave2.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From I.Clarke at strs.co.uk  Wed Oct 13 10:30:19 1999
From: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk (Ian Clarke)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:30:19 +0100
Subject: Off-topic Internet Question
References: <38029546.C0F6FABF@altavista.net>
Message-ID: <3804977B.86446175@strs.co.uk>

Yes, it can be done.  The Python script will need to pretend that it is
a web browser and submit the form information as a "cgi" request to the
web server on which the internet page resides.  It can do this by
opening a TCP socket to the web server.  You should read up on the HTTP
protocol (specifically the section on CGI) (and using sockets in
Python).  You will need to determine whether the web page in question
uses CGI GET or CGI POST.  CGI GET is easier to implement as you just
request a page appending the parameters to the end of the URL.  CGI POST
is a little more involved.

Ian.

> 
> Is it possible a Python script fill a internet page with arbitrary
> values, simulate the send button and get the results ?
> 
> Is it possible with Python ? What Do I need to know to make this ?
> 
> Thanks (a lot) in advance
> 
> Geraldo Lopes de Souza

--
Ian Clarke                        Email: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk
Homepage: http://www.gnu.demon.co.uk/
Also see: http://freenet.on.openprojects.net/
"All we see and all we seem is but a dream within a dream"



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct  5 16:07:10 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 16:07:10 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <7td22n$vs4$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <051019991117179815%jpc@informatics.jax.org>
Message-ID: <5ln1tx7es1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

I'm constantly amazed at the quality of conversation in this newsgroup.
I had only a vague notion about junk DNA before I hit upon this thread;
now I have a better understanding.  Way to go, c.l.py!

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



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 18:36:48 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:36:48 +1000
Subject: My missing posts
Message-ID: <001301bf1502$45ccc9b0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

It appears my incredibly slack ISP (Telstra - Australias biggest telco
for God's sake!) hasnt been propagating my news posts since 23/Sep/99.
I only just noticed when checking DejaNews.

If there are Windows specific questions that have not been addressed
by anyone else, you may like to ask them again (Im now reading it
through the mailing list)

Unfortunately Telstra has a local monopoly on Cable modems, so
changing ISPs would be quite painful...

Mark.




From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 28 15:07:27 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:07:27 -0400
Subject: Using stdin / stdout on Unix
In-Reply-To: <19991028150312.B106850656@vislab.epa.gov>
References: <87zox48i2d.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au> <19991028150312.B106850656@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <19991028150727.A106865003@vislab.epa.gov>

Randall Hopper:
 |Dave Cole:
 | |I have only just started to use progress and am trying to make a
 | |program (on Solaris) accept input from stdin and write to stdout.  The
 | |only I have worked out is the following:
 | |
 | |INPUT THROUGH cat NO-ECHO.
 | |OUTPUT THROUGH cat.
 | |
 | |This seems a bit stupid.  Surely there is a way to do the same thing
 | |without having to bounce everything through cat.
 |
 |Sounds like what you seek is called "expect", originating in Tcl-land
 |(IIRC) but I recall seeing references to expect for Python on this list.
 |Search the list archives or the Python web site for this string and you
 |should turn up hits.

For a simpler, lower-level interface, also look at the popen, popen2, and
popen3 APIs.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct 19 21:47:01 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:47:01 -0400
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
In-Reply-To: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000701bf1a9d$00f4e3e0$252d153f@tim>

[steve_allison at my-deja.com]
> I've been working through the Python tutorial, and a have a few queries
> about the syntax of Python.  Python seems to me to basically be a very
> nicely constructed language, but I have been wondering about a few
> (seeming) syntactic anomalies:
>
> i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed,

As claimed by whom?  Python is a mix of procedural and OO constructs, with a
dash of functional constructs tossed in just to keep the flame level high
<0.9 wink>.  Purists of any stripe will find something to be annoyed about
here.

> ...
> ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
> those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
> operator seems peculiar.

"del" isn't an operator, though, it's a statement, used to "remove things"
in general:  it can remove local name bindings, zap slices out of the middle
of sequences, and purge associations from mapping objects.  list.pop() is
the inverse of list.append(x), BTW, and list.pop(i) the inverse of
list.insert(i, x).  If the use of del bothers you for sequences, you can
always write e.g. "seq[i:j] = []" instead of "del seq[i:j]" -- but your code
will be harder for everyone else (including the future Mr. Allison <wink>)
to follow.

> ...
> have mostly really liked what I've seen of Python so far, but niggles
> like these are really annoying me!

The good news is you'll get over that -- or you won't.

self-resolving-either-way-ly y'rs  - tim





From fatjim at home.com  Mon Oct 25 22:22:39 1999
From: fatjim at home.com (Jim Meier)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:22:39 -0600
Subject: Piddle and Graphite?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910251006320.2713-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <99102520230400.27030@debian>

On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Oleg Broytmann wrote:
>On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Jim Meier wrote:
>> A while ago, I was using a pair of packages called Piddle and Graphite to do
>[skip]
>> What fate have these two modules suffered? Change of name? Or something more
>> sinister?
>
>   Why not just check their homepage: http://www.strout.net/python/
>
Thanks a lot, Oleg!

-Jim Meier



From jbauer at rubic.com  Tue Oct  5 15:39:44 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:39:44 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37FA5400.444F0075@rubic.com>

Preston Landers wrote:
> Note that mine actually uses the unix touch 
> command but it could easily be modified to use
> the more portable python open(file, "w")

Without reviewing the code in detail, I'd 
like to offer one suggestion in favor of OS 
diversity <0.2 wink>:

>     path_elements = string.split(path, "/")[1:]

You might consider using os.sep, rather than 
"/" slash as your path separator.

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Tue Oct 12 16:05:03 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 22:05:03 +0200
Subject: Minimum Python requirements? (was: Python for PDAs?)
In-Reply-To: <38038CA1.E44A7BB1@darmstadt.gmd.de>
References: <FJ8uG6.M1n@world.std.com> <37FCF7B6.9C94C964@rubic.com> <38038CA1.E44A7BB1@darmstadt.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <19991012220503.A31692@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Robb Shecter:
> Hi,
> 
> I've got a question along these lines.  I've been thinking about
> taking an old laptop and making it into a "Python-PDA".  I figure I'd
> put a bare linux load on it, a text editor, python, and nothing else. 
> I'd write my own XML-based PDA software that uses the character mode.
> 
> Any clue as to how much hard drive space I'd need?  I'd probably want
> to install an extra python package or two, like the xml parser.
> 
> Also, how much RAM would I need to run a bare Linux (I'm guessing 2.5
> MB) plus a running python process (???MB).

Linux uses 4 MB RAM, Python uses - well, I guess about 5 MB Ram -, so you'll
need 4+5=9 MB RAM, so I'd take 12 (1*4+1*8) if I was you.

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 18 09:02:26 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:02:26 +0100
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
In-Reply-To: <14343.56532.513673.71358@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <002601bf1969$06d31320$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> I would appreciate a comment at the top of that program that says that
>> it doesn't run on Windows. Perhaps it could even test for os.fork at the
>> beginning and crash if it isn't installed.

> Good idea.  I added a platform-dependence comment to the top of the
> documentation in CVS, but that's not released yet.  I'll make
> adjustments in the source file as well.

I thought the reason that Python had several subdirectories in the Lib
directory was to separate platform-dependent code from generic code.

If this CGIHTTPServer.py relies on a [mis]feature of Unix, should it
not be moved out of the Lib directory, and into a subdirectory
(plat-posix perhaps)?

Better still, is it possible to implement os.fork() under Win32?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From meowing at banet.net  Tue Oct 12 15:26:10 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 15:26:10 -0400
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <008501bf1417$1cf90b70$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <87670c1iul.fsf@slip-32-101-160-56.ma.us.prserv.net>

Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

[rfork()]

> are you sure it's POSIX?

It's a Plan 9 thing, ported to some BSD flavors.

> (all on-line references I could found said that rfork is a *major*
> security hole in BSD unix...)

Or was.  This was a big deal a couple years ago, but it should be
working okay on systems released since 1998.  Still, since it's
definitely not portable it's probably premature to be using it for
other than private code.

The traditional way to get this behavior is with ioctl() and fork();
the POSIX way is to use setsid().



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 10 13:17:34 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 19:17:34 +0200
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com> <m3puynwdcj.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <004301bf1326$a3dd0840$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <m3iu4f2nz2.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <00a901bf1343$589ec540$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Sonny Parlin <sparlin at openpro.org> wrote:
> WOW, now that's interesting! I never would have guessed something like
> that. Are you saying that perl code such as:
> 
> while(<FD>) {
>   print "$_\n";
> }
> 
> could be faster than low level C code such as:
> 
> while ((c = read (fd, buf, BUF_SIZE)) > 0)
> write (1, buf, c);

well, read and write are not really part
of the C library, you know...

> > unfortunately, Python's file object is still
> > layered on top of C's stdio.  but that may
> > of course change some day...
> 
> As opposed to unistd or fcntl?

as opposed to the stdio portions of the
standard C library (anything using the
FILE type, that is).  unistd and friends
are POSIX, not C, and thus not available
on all platforms:

    sample.c(1) : fatal error C1083: Cannot
    open include file: 'unistd.h': No such file
    or directory

oops!

on the other hand, read (or very similar
functions) are available on most platforms,
so it's definitely a good idea to use them
where possible.  but on the other hand,
lots of code relies on the fact that you
can get a FILE* out of a Python file object,
so it's not as easy as it may seem.

but that doesn't stop people from working
on it.  here's one attempt:

http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/meowing/python/index.html

(there are other similar projects out there.
in some environments, read/write isn't the
fastest way to access a file...)

afaik, Perl peeks *inside* the stdio structures,
which means that while they're actually using
stdio, their optimisations doesn't work on all
stdio implementations...

</F>




From ratman at nmt.edu  Mon Oct 18 16:14:59 1999
From: ratman at nmt.edu (Jason Trowbridge)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:14:59 -0600
Subject: mime email creation with attachment
References: <7ufjr0$bpt$1@hercules.tno.nl>
Message-ID: <380B7FC3.1D20C2C4@nmt.edu>

You forgot a header to make it a valid MIME message.  I added a line to
the segment of code below:

> def mailFileToUser(_userName, _fileName):
>        outputfp = StringIO.StringIO()
>        w = MimeWriter.MimeWriter(outputfp)
>        w.addheader("subject", "Strip studie rapport")
--->     w.addheader("Mime-Version", "1.0")
>        w.flushheaders()



From philen at earn.aa.ans.net  Fri Oct 29 10:28:06 1999
From: philen at earn.aa.ans.net (Phillip Lenhardt)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:28:06 GMT
Subject: [OT] Destroying files
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net> <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov> <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com> <19991029083529.C29354@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn81jbnm.p9e.philen@earn.aa.ans.net>

In article <19991029083529.C29354 at xs4all.nl>, Thomas Wouters wrote:
>On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 05:37:34PM -0700, Jon Cosby wrote:
>> Yes, I'm on Windows 95. No, deleting files does not remove them from your
>> hard drive; They can be recovered by computer forensics experts or by nosey
>> hacks. I'm putting my PC up for sale, and the thought is troubling.
>
>If you are really afraid of people reading your files, DO NOT DELETE THEM.
>First, fill them with garbage, random data, by opening them and writing in
>them ( -- no use removing the file and creating a new one, it wont use the
>same disk-sectors)

If you were running OpenBSD, you could ``rm -P <file>''. The handy ``P''
option overwrites regular files before deleting them.  Files are overwrit-
ten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff, then 0x00, and then 0xff
again, before they are deleted.

And the US military actually scrapes the magnetic media layer off their
hard drive platters when they _really_ don't want anyone to be able to
recover the data.



From hardwork at freemail.c3.hu  Mon Oct 11 03:46:52 1999
From: hardwork at freemail.c3.hu (hardwork at freemail.c3.hu)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 07:46:52 GMT
Subject: Python compilers?
References: <87aeq86am8.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org> <7sodtb$oau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <7ts4l9$d41$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7sodtb$oau$1 at newshost.accu.uu.nl>,  (Martijn Faassen) wrote:

> Swallows was an earlier vaporware project that I came up with. The
> idea behind Swallow is to implement a compiler for a limited subset of
> Python (along with nonintrusive type annotations). This could be used
> to create Python based fast extension modules.

> Currently I lack the time to do a lot about it, though. Maybe later, but
> currently it is complete vaporware! No website. :)


And neither is Viper. :(

I keep hoping to try out the Viperi but I can't find no website for it.

If anyone here has more info I'd appreciate some pointers.


Bob
hardwork at freemail.c3.hu


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From jteis at searchtc.com  Thu Oct 21 18:27:42 1999
From: jteis at searchtc.com (Jennifer Teis)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 15:27:42 PDT
Subject: Application Engineers needed w/Python Exp. in Milpitas, CA
References: <mt2.0-30971-938673590@news.informatik.uni-bonn.de>
Message-ID: <7uo40u$br1@journal.concentric.net>

Hello All,

I am looking for Application Engineers who have experience with script
programming (Python and shell scripts). This is at a small but rapidly
growing company in Northern California which offers data networking
products. This position does require some travel in the U.S.

Please feel free to contact Jennifer Teis
(408) 379-9824 ext. 202
or e-mail your resume to
jteis at searchtc.com






From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct  3 03:06:11 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 03:06:11 -0400
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
In-Reply-To: <19990929184328.A833@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <000301bf0d6d$c7909180$a02d153f@tim>

[Douglas Alan]
> ...
> It seems to me that even when a regular expression fails to match a
> string, you might want to know just how far it was able to get before
> getting stuck.
> ...

[Malcolm Tredinnick]
> Isn't there a problem here with which "failing match" you are going
> to report on?

Likely no more or less than there's a problem with which "succeeding match"
to pick given an ambiguous match.

> Do you take the longest failing match

I would.

> (which will probably be horrendously expensive in a complexity
> sense, since you will have to scan the entire candidate string),

Whether the engine is a DFA or NFA, it marches over the string one character
at a time, until the overall match succeeds or fails.  So long as there's a
chance of succeeding, it "moves right a character".  Whenever it moves
right, it leaves behind a partial match.  Keep track of the longest of
those.

> ...
> While I agree it's sort of a useful thing to have sometimes (error
> recovery during parsing - something like detecting possible spelling
> errors),

I don't know that it's useful.  Parsing usually uses regexps to tokenize,
and another scheme entirely to infer higher-level structure.  The latter
scheme points out the offending token if the higher-level structure isn't
matched, and that's clue enough.  If the regexps failed to match a token, I
don't expect it would do any good to say "well, the first M characters of
this stretch of input looked like a number, while the first N looked like an
identifier, and the first O like a string, and the first P like a keyword,
and ..." -- even less good to say "the first N characters looked like one of
a number, identifier, string, keyword, ... but I don't know which".

> it needs to be defined a little better before being implemented.

Ha -- these are regexps, so this is backwards:  the implementation defines
the semantics <0.5 wink>.  Let's look at .match():  A regexp R defines a
regular language L.  Given a regular language L and an integer N >= 0, the
set of N-character prefixes of the strings in L is also a regular language.
Denote that by L(N).  Then if R.match(S) fails, it can return the largest
integer i such that S[:i] is in L(i).

Cute one:  Given regexp

   .*x.*y.*z$

and string

   abcdefg

it follows that the entire string is the "longest failing match", since e.g.
abcdefgxyz would have matched and abcdefg is a prefix of that.

looking-more-useful-by-the-minute<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Fri Oct 22 09:00:54 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:00:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Problem with JPython and jre jdk1.1.8
References: <380FAD56.23B9EF27@hccnet.nl>
	<380F8777.F6CBE459@x.x>
Message-ID: <14352.24582.109660.507900@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "EJ" == Eric Jacobs <x at x.x> writes:

    EJ> For some reason JPython requires at least jre1.2 on Win32.

It seems to work fine for me for the recent Microsoft VMs, which
report that they are 1.1.4 for me.  I think the problem is just with
1.1.8, but I'll try to give the Sun 1.1.8 VM a shot on Windows to see
what's up.

-Barry



From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Fri Oct 22 07:52:15 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 07:52:15 -0400
Subject: Apply a function to each list member?
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6FC@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Thanks Michael (and others who replied privately).

I knew I had seen a function to do this somewhere, but I could not find it.
"map" is not an intuitive name for me (maybe it would if english was my main
language).


>>Your ListApply might be a little more space efficient as it works in
>>place, but not much, because you allocate a list of length len(l)
>>anyway in the range().
I don't know. Efficiency is usually not a concern for me (not when I use
Python).

Thanks,
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 14 21:55:17 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:55:17 +1000
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yUFyOKDyzVXw@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <007801bf16b0$552ef860$0801a8c0@bobcat>

> On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:06:59, "Mark Hammond"
> <mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:
>
> > > 	1) It's "GPF's" (Aka Dr. Watson reports a error has occurred).
> >
> > Damn!  The PyArg_ParseTuple format characters for this function
need
> > to be changed from "iiiiiiii" to "hhhhhhhh".
>
> Sorry you *COMPLETELY* lost me there!
>
> Can you elaborate a little bit more, and/or include a code example?

Sorry - there is a bug in win32apimodule.cpp - the implementation of
SetSystemTime uses the PyArg_ParseTuple C function, and it needs to be
changed.  ie, you need a new win32apimodule.pyd.  My guess is you dont
have Visual C++, so if you are running win32all-127 I can send you a
new one.

Mark.




From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Fri Oct 29 08:33:45 1999
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 14:33:45 +0200
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com> <38146d39.12662187@aplnews> <3814FC7E.6DB64BD@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <m31zaeibx2.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

Martin Pool <martinp at mincom.com> writes:

> For me, it's some kind of combination of a technical stunt and
> frustration that calculator apps are never quite powerful enough.  It'd
> be nice to be able to doodle algorithms into a handheld.

One step up is MathPad, which solves coupled sets of equations.
But that's still far from being able to use algorithms. Perhaps
Pocket C, but for someone used to Python it's difficult to use
such a primitive language. Maybe that's the real motivation for the
repeated questions about Python for the Palm: Python addiction.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.55.69
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



From nhathaway at barnabas.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Oct 12 13:55:30 1999
From: nhathaway at barnabas.freeserve.co.uk (Nigel Hathaway)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:55:30 +0100
Subject: JPython11beta3.class won't download
Message-ID: <7tvsn4$spp$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>

I have IE 5.  When I click the 'accept' button on the web site to download
this file, it downloads only about 4k.  If I try to run it I get a java
class file format error.  If anyone has a complete copy of this version, I
would be grateful if they could e-mail it to me.

Thanks.

Nigel Hathaway [nigel.hathaway at trafficmaster.co.uk]





From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 14 07:37:42 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 07:37:42 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <01d701bf1553$c1e459e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f@tim> <01d701bf1553$c1e459e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <19991014073742.A464002@vislab.epa.gov>

Fredrik Lundh:
 |Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
 |
 |> I think it defines more than 20 C structs, all of which I can define in
 |> Python now and still interact nicely with the Python MQI extension
 |> > module written in C.
 |> 
 |> Haven't heard of this, but don't people use SWIG anymore <0.7 wink>?
 |
 |real programmers don't ;-)

Hehehe.  Very funny :-) 

SWIGing C interfaces IMO beats writing your own per-function/-type Py_*
routines by a mile, in time and maintainability.  It's not perfect, but
it's a big step up.

Randall



From jae at ilk.de  Sun Oct 31 21:29:37 1999
From: jae at ilk.de (Juergen A. Erhard)
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 03:29:37 +0100
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line (oops)
In-Reply-To: <slrn81lf9o.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>
References: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com> <87so2ttegm.fsf@slip166-72-251-9.ma.us.prserv.net> <slrn81lf9o.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>
Message-ID: <01111999.2@sanctum.jae>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi Eric,

>>>>> "Eric" == Eric Smith <eric at fruitcom.com> writes:

    >> Anyway, Python's not especially amenable to one-liners.
    >> Instead, it has a really spiffy interactive mode you can leave
    >> running in a window or spare console session that works like
    >> you probably wish `perl -d' worked:

    Eric> Yeah, it is a nice "shell" interface for testing, however
    Eric> one liners are useful:
    Eric> 1. I use their history arrows to access them from the unix shell
    Eric> 2. You can use the unix fc for editing long ones
    Eric> 3. You can paste them into your scripts.
    Eric> 4. They are easy to go back to and edit etc.

I usually either run a python session in an xterm (bad for multiline), or
do python -c '...' multiline.  In zsh  ;-)

Really, try the zsh... I with readline were as good as zsh's ZLE.
Kick-Ass (really) multiline editing.  And a history that correctly
deals with it.

You can also edit here-documents...

    ~ % python <<EOF
    heredoc> class MyTest:
    heredoc>     def __init__(self):
    heredoc>          print "I'm ready"
    heredoc> 
    heredoc> a = MyTest()
    heredoc> EOF
    I'm ready
    ~ %

Which is much better than -c, because you don't have to worry about
quoting (the snippet above, with the ' inside a ", gets complicated
inside *another* pair of ')

Go back in history, and edit the little snippet... no problem.

Bye, J

PS: Did I mention that zsh is the One True Shell?  ;-)

- -- 
J?rgen A. Erhard      eMail: jae at ilk.de      phone: (GERMANY) 0721 27326
         My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/~Juergen_Erhard
        GIMP - Image Manipulation Program (http://www.gimp.org)
    Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -- raster at redhat.com
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Version: GnuPG v1.0.0 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iEYEARECAAYFAjgc+w4ACgkQN0B+CS56qs3vLQCeOsMe06m1zn7Bp5p5HUjg1QSq
SFcAn1pRwcKfTgezZqhk2t0PEYLxdeZ8
=GfYl
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From Brian at digicool.com  Sat Oct  2 14:34:00 1999
From: Brian at digicool.com (Brian Lloyd)
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 18:34:00 GMT
Subject: Help: PythonCE stdin?
Message-ID: <613145F79272D211914B0020AFF6401914DCC6@gandalf.digicool.com>

>     Anybody know how to get input into Python CE?
> 
>     - stdin is closed.
>     - command line parameters don't seem to work.
> 
>     Has anyone figured this out yet?
> 
>         - Patrick M.

Patrick,

The problem is that (most) versions of CE have _no_ console
support whatsoever - meaning no concept of stdin and win32
specific idea of what a command line is (which is why cmd
line args don't work - technically they are available, but
not in a form that the std Python runtime recognizes).

Hopefully this stuff will come together over time - in the
meantime you should look at Mark Hammond's PythonCE work
(in the windows section of www.python.org). I believe that
he has implemented some basic GUI support - you may be able
to use that for input in the short term.


Brian Lloyd        brian at digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909              
Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com 






From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Wed Oct 27 12:19:28 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:19:28 +0100
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <38171B4B.7CF798AF@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <001b01bf2097$0aaec680$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> > it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0

> What command string would I have to pass to os.popen to get the output
> (I only need the first few lines) without any windows popping up ?

Not possible. It always produces a dialog, and can't write to stdout.
Useful, huh?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI  Thu Oct 21 05:11:08 1999
From: mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI (Markus Stenberg)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 12:11:08 +0300
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
References: <380ED19E.1CA8168A@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <al8iu41m637.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> writes:
> Is there a way to find out the name of the OS distribution a script is
> running on ?

Short answer: No.

> E.g. I'd like a function that returns 'Redhat6.1'/'SuSE6.2' or
> 'Win95'/'Win98'/'WinNT' or 'MacOS8'/'MacOS9' etc.

Longer answer: It is possible to guess, but not trivially [by either
hugging filesystem tightly, or by TCP/IP fingerprinting]. And AFAIK there
isn't such a module available for Python, anyhow.

> -- 
> Marc-Andre Lemburg
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Y2000:                                                    71 days left
> Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
> Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/

-Markus

-- 
`When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".'
	- Linus Torvalds



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct  5 11:30:19 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 11:30:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
	<14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
	<FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>
	<001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <14330.6539.882383.316317@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "FL" == Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

  FL> Will Ware <wware-nospam at world.std.com> wrote:
  >> That is called "junk DNA" because it is never translated to a
  >> protein. There are various conjectures about it.

  FL> a quick web search for "junk DNA" brought up three major
  FL> theories (since they were posted on the web, they have to be
  FL> true.  all of them):

  FL>     1. the great designer only did one design, and the DNA that
  FL> we consider as junk is actually used by extra-terrestrial
  FL> beings.

  FL>     (motorola processors, that is)

Sounds to me like he just forgot a few Py_DECREFs.

Jeremy



From bwinton at tor.dhs.org  Wed Oct  6 11:34:10 1999
From: bwinton at tor.dhs.org (Blake Winton)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 15:34:10 GMT
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
References: <001901bf0ff4$72fc2fb0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vmrii.99s.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:15:16 GMT, Adrian Eyre wrote:
>I'm not sure how well Python copes with this generally, but
>changing my locale so that the thousands sep and decimals sep
>(normally ',' , '.') are reversed ('.' , ',') causes a problem
>in Tkinter, and therfore IDLE.
>
>But, for some reason, only in embedded code, not Python run from
>the commandline. Perhaps by default it ignores locale info.
>
>Traceback (innermost last):
>  File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Tools\idle\idle.py", line 2, in ?
>    import PyShell
>  File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Tools\idle\PyShell.py", line 12, in ?
>    from Tkinter import *
>  File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 19, in ?
>    TkVersion = _string.atof(_tkinter.TK_VERSION)
>ValueError: invalid literal for atof(): 8.0

It almost looks like the problem is that Python is honouring the
seperators.  I would guess that _tkinter doesn't automatically generate
the TK_VERSION string, and is just storing it as the string "8.0".

So the easiest fix would probably be to just set the TkVersion yourself.
The nicest fix would be to find out if you can get at the major and
minor version numbers, and build the number yourself.

I wonder if the version number for Python is hardcoded the same way...

Later,
Blake.

-- 
One Will.  One Dream.  One Truth.  One Destiny.  One Love.
(I really gotta change this sometime soon...)



From w_keller at gmx.de  Tue Oct 12 13:37:04 1999
From: w_keller at gmx.de (Wolfgang Keller)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 19:37:04 +0200
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> wrote:

> My attempts at getting IDLE to work on my Mac
> last night were very depressing.

Use the IDE instead.

Tk appears to be hopelessly broken on the Mac.

Regards,

-- 
Wolfgang Keller               

Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen von Junkmail lesen Sie 
de.admin.net-abuse.mail und fragen sie Ihren Postmaster oder Provider



From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Oct 14 16:09:41 1999
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 20:09:41 GMT
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp> <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <7u5da5$pp2$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com>:
| Aahz Maruch:
[re how to insert comma delimiters]

|> delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
|> 
|> That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
|> you'll come across better ways.
|
| Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has (already finished
| Learning python, and I'm waiting for Programming TkInter with Python now),
| but I don't know a better way than this?

He may have gauged better than I the original poster's zeal for
discovering things on his own, but I was surprised no one mentioned
string.join'ing a list of fields in one step.  It's what I consider
the normal approach to this common task.  Easier on the eyes, probably
faster if there are more than a couple of fields.

  fields = []
  ...
  fields.append(last_field)
  delimitedString = string.join(fields, ',')

Might apply in the poster's situation, hard to say how well.

	Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington
	donn at u.washington.edu



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 04:00:10 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:00:10 +1000
Subject: ANNOUNCE: win32all-127 released
Message-ID: <000701bf1487$cf18e940$0801a8c0@bobcat>

[Apols if this shows up twice - I think my ISP's news server is
refusing to propagate correctly]

Hi all,
    Build 127 of the Python for Windows extensions has been released.
This includes a number of new features and bug-fixes.  The most
visible is a much
improved Pythonwin, which has a far better editor, dockable windows,
features stolen from IDLE among other things.

For all the details on the changes, and the package itself, please
check out http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32

Mark.





From jsight at mindspring.com  Sun Oct 10 02:56:18 1999
From: jsight at mindspring.com (Jesse D. Sightler)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 23:56:18 -0700
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com>

Hi Sonny,

Sonny Parlin wrote:
> 
> Hello, I'm trying to learn python by setting up some pretty easy examples
> of file manipulation...
> 
> I have a file of 1000 lines that I'm simply trying to read in and display
> using python. The code I have is here:
> 
> #!/usr/bin/python
> 
> file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
> for line in file.readlines(): # read file
>     s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
>     print s #print string
> file.close()

Or you could just do 
  print open ('testfile.txt').read()

See, it's a one liner!  :-)  Similarly, you could simply replace the two
lines in the for loop with the one statement:
  print line[:-1]

> I think I have some unnecessary steps in that program, because here is the
> Perl equivalent:
> 
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> 
> open(FD, "testfile.txt");
> while(<FD>) {
>     print $_;
> }
> close(FD);
> 
> The Perl example is smaller and runs a few milliseconds faster, so could
> someone please point out the deficiencies in my python script?

Python is frequently slightly slower than Perl.  However, you should
note that at the very least the Python code is the same number of lines
(or fewer using my version:), and doesn't have the silly unnamed
variables or ludicrous use of file descriptors.  Python still rules. :)

-- 
---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www.biddin.com/delorean



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Oct 11 08:27:49 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:27:49 -0400
Subject: ob_refcnt and Py_BuildValue 
In-Reply-To: <3801b250.51460343@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <1272478382-56024574@hypernet.com>

Dan wrote:
 
> I'm just learning how to write C extension modules in Python and
> I have a question about the reference counts.  Is there any
> reason Py_BuildValue would output an object with a reference
> count other than 1?  I put together a simple test and when
> building an integer object I get a ob_refcnt value of 4. 

Special case for the positive integers less than 100 - they are 
(quasi) static singletons.

- Gordon



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Fri Oct 15 19:03:19 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 23:03:19 GMT
Subject: re question
References: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>
Message-ID: <slrn80eur8.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:26:50 -0700, Max M. Stalnaker bilang:
| I have the following code:
| 
|  def subset(self):
|   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
|   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]
| 
| Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
| stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
| single %.  The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags is
| just the way I tried and had sometime success.
| 
| Maybe there is a better way to do this.  Or someone could perhaps suggest re
| code that would do it.  Thank you.

You could try using re.split:

>>> str=r"blah blah blah %%%important stuff to be extracted%%%more useless junk"
>>> import re
>>> re.split(r"%%%", str)
['blah blah blah ', 'important stuff to be extracted', 'more useless junk']

and use the odd-numbered items of the returned list.


| My current idea is to construct a single character sentinel out of something
| greater than chr(128) and use that.  This will probably work in this
| application, but I feel like I am missing something.

Another option is to use '$'; it's pretty common to see
"$Last modified: 10 Oct 1999 4:23 PM$"
or something similar on a web page.


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From aycock at csc.uvic.ca  Tue Oct  5 12:09:38 1999
From: aycock at csc.uvic.ca (John Aycock)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 16:09:38 GMT
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7td7s2$45ok$1@uvaix7e1.comp.UVic.CA>

harri.pasanen at trema.com wrote:
: I made some effort to track down a python module that could be used as
: unix diff.  Currently I'm in fact popen'ing diff itself, but for I'd
: like to have a self-contained utility.

: Failing a ready solution, can someone perhaps point me to a description
: of the algorithm, so I could implement it myself.

Here's some references to get you started:

W. Miller & E. W. Myers.  A File Comparison Program.  _Software -- Practice
	and Experience_ 15(11), November 1985, pp. 1025-1040.

W. Tichy.  The String-to-String Correction Problem with Block Moves.
	_ACM Transactions on Computer Systems_ 2(4), November 1984,
	pp. 309-321.

P. Heckel.  A technique for Isolating Differences Between Files.
	_Communications of the ACM_ 21(4), April 1978, pp. 264-268.

The diff source or accompanying READMEs may have some more references; the
GNU folks are usually pretty good about that.

John



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 09:53:23 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 13:53:23 GMT
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
References: <002f01bf10c9$88180650$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <00ef01bf10cb$52ecf650$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Adrian Eyre <a.eyre at optichrome.com> wrote:
> So how come it's okay to set the locale in Python. Surely this just calls
> the equivalent function in C.

nope.  or rather, it does more than that.  here's
some psuedocode:

def setlocale(category, locale):
    global grouping, thousands_sep, decimal_point

    c.setlocale(category, locale)

    if category in (LC_NUMERIC, LC_ALL):
        # record changes to LC_NUMERIC
        lc = c.localeconv()
        grouping = lc.grouping
        thousands_sep = lc.thousands_sep
        decimal_point = lc.decimal_point    
        c.setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "C")

or in other words, it changes it all, extracts
the numeric values, and resets the numeric
locale.

the locale module then provides versions of
atof, atoi (and others) that take these values
into account.

</F>




From jfarrell at mincom.com  Thu Oct 28 20:58:29 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:58:29 +1000
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com> <14358.6224.856497.573781@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> <3816AC57.28D9C8B@lemburg.com> <38179509.4746748D@mincom.com> <3818161D.6B946CEE@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3818F135.204D5AC2@mincom.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> John Farrell wrote:
> > I've attached an image of an inspection tool I happened to be running
> > which lists all Java system properties. You can get any value in the
> > right column by calling System.getProperty() with the string parameter
> > in the left column.

> Do I have to import anything special to get the System symbol into
> the current namespace or is System a builtin in JPython ? E.g.
> would
> 
> def java_vendor():
>    return System.getProperty('java.vendor')
> 
> work out of the box on JPython ? (Don't have a working jpython
> installation here at the moment to test this myself.)

---- jv.py ----
from java.lang import System

def java_vendor():
   return System.getProperty('java.vendor')

print java_vendor()
---- output ----
C:\download\python>msjpython jv.py
Sun Microsystems Inc.

System is in java.lang, which is automatically imported into every
Java program. However in JPython you have to explicitly import it 
(which confused me a bit, since I was so used to it just being there).

John



From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Fri Oct 15 11:00:29 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:00:29 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim> <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB2650@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com> <38063919.31D59457@python.net>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEF96EE@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

Thomas A. Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote in message
news:38063919.31D59457 at python.net...
> Robin Boerdijk wrote:
>
> > I have one concern left though: Just like I overlooked
> > Just's sstruct module, people will overlook
> > this module (and start implementing something similar themselves,
> > like I did). If we can't get modules like this into the core Python
> > distribution, could there be links from the Python documentation to
> > point to these 'improved' modules ?
>
> I thought that's what comp.lang.python.announce and
> http://www.python.org/download/Contributed.html
> were for.  I hope people are checking archived c.l.py.a
> messages and the "Modules" page at www.python.org before
> they run off and spend time implementing something new.

And I definitely will from now on. Thanks !

Robin.






From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 17:05:06 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 17:05:06 -0400
Subject: sys.exit() doesn't exit
References: <19991019145321.A46095201@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <5l7lkj5af1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> writes:

> I have this situation:
> 
>     A Python script (makes calls to:)
>     |
>     - A C library  (which issues callbacks back to:)
>       |
>       - The Python script (which invokes:)
>         |
>         - sys.exit()
> 
> Calling sys.exit() in the Python callback doesn't terminate the
> application.  Apparently, the SystemExit exception gets lost crossing the C
> library frames in the stack.  What's really going on though?
> 
> If I want to throw an exception in a Python callback like this, is there a
> way for it to unwind the stack across the C library and trigger in the
> controlling Python stack frames?

Most likely the C code isn't properly propagating Python exceptions.
Perhaps it is calling PyErr_Clear().  Perhaps it is not checking for
errors at all.  If the C code checks for a NULL return from the Python
callback and in that case returns NULL itself to the outer Python
script, the exception will be properly passed through.

Alternatively, the C code could call PyErr_Print(), which will call
exit() when it sees SystemExit.

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



From hei at adtranzsig.de  Mon Oct 11 04:25:51 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:25:51 +0200
Subject: Pythoning of C++ objects
References: <10715.991010@amv.tsk.ru>
Message-ID: <939630426.158101@news.adtranzsig.de>

Mikhail Astafiev schrieb in Nachricht <10715.991010 at amv.tsk.ru>...
>Hi folks,
>
>My problem is as follows:
>
>There is a C++ data processing class library. I have to write Python
>extension allowing to manipulate C++ objects and call their methods
>from Python. I don't want to use CXX - I want to write something more
>lightweight.

www.swig.org

--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net






From jrl at clark.net  Sat Oct 16 16:32:00 1999
From: jrl at clark.net (John Lloyd)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 20:32:00 +0000
Subject: Shelve-problems
References: <3808AFDA.AFC49560@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <3808E0C0.5F261A00@clark.net>

Thomas Weholt wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I try to do something like :
>
> >>>import shelve
> >>>db = shelve.open('2')
> >>> db['1'] = 'test'
>
> And quit python, restart it and this happens when I try to read the data
> back in :
>
> >>> import shelve
> >>> db = shelve.open('2')
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 152, in open
>     return DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag)
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 142, in __init__
>     Shelf.__init__(self, anydbm.open(filename, flag))
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/anydbm.py", line 83, in open
>     raise error, "db type could not be determined"
> anydbm.error: db type could not be determined
> >>>
>
> Why?!
>
> I am using Linux Suse 6.2. Could I ( my Linux distro.) be missing
> something??
>
> Thomas Weholt

The Suse 6.2 distro does not have dbm built in.  Recompile Python but first
edit the Modules/Setup file to allow gdbm to be compiled in as a shared
library.  Shelve will work but I have not been able to build Tkinter
correctly this way.  So I use /usr/bin/python for Tkinter apps and
/usr/local/bin/python for shelve apps.

John Lloyd






From iam at not.you  Thu Oct 28 14:52:55 1999
From: iam at not.you (Ken Power)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 18:52:55 GMT
Subject: 'Dynamic' class instances
References: <381629BC.3E47158E@x.x> <38171fe8.14091745@news1.mysolution.com> <3817A0CE.7322D7BC@x.x>
Message-ID: <38199b67.24946423@news1.mysolution.com>

Wow, that's cool. And it's so simple. Now I need to have some fun with
this. Thank you.
Ken

Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:03:10 -0400, in comp.lang.python, Eric Jacobs
<x at x.x> managed to squeak:

>Ken Power wrote:
>> 
>> Hmmm. Thank you for the input. I really appreciate it. If you would
>> please, in a simple example, how would you, "use a  dictionary for the
>> purpose rather than manipulating any namespaces."?
>> 
>> The part about namespaces I understand (should the new instance be
>> global in nature, or localized to a module), using dictionaries in
>> your implied sense, I do not understand, please expound.
>
>I can only speculate about what you need to do here, but taking
>from your original example:
>
>
>class spam:
>   pass
>
>test = raw_input("class name: ")
>test = spam()
>
>
>What I assume you're trying to do is take whatever that user enters
>here, create a variable with that name, and put a new instance of
>the spam class in it. So:
>
>class name: happy
>
>would result in a variable named happy that contains a new instance
>of spam. But consider what would happen if they entered:
>
>class name: sys
>
>or even
>
>class name: spam
>
>Python wouldn't issue an error in this case; it would simply
>happily overwrite the variables sys and spam with an instance
>of spam. The latter case could effectively delete the spam
>class, replacing it with one of its instances!
>
>A dictionary would be better suited:
>
>d = {}
>test = raw_input("class name: ")
>d[test] = spam()
>
>Now if they type "happy", you have a variable that you can
>access via d["happy"]. If they type "sys", you can use
>d["sys"], etc, and there's no chance of the user interfering
>with the execution of your module.
>
>Suppose you wanted to do the opposite thing: have the user
>enter the name of class which is to be instantiated. So:
>
>class name: Pickler
>
>would create an instance of the class Pickler. A dictionary
>would also help here:
>
>d = {"Pickler": Pickler, "Unpickler": Unpickler}
>test = raw_input("class name: ")
>instance = d[test]()
>
>By listing out the dictionary items by hand, you can
>strictly control what the user may and may not access at
>your prompt.

--------------------------------
Ken Power
uncle_wiggly at bigfoot dot com
get that?
--------------------------------



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 12 17:09:01 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:09:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au>
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
	<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
	<38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>
	<14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <14339.41837.609410.864634@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "MS" == skaller  <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:

  [Earlier, I wrote:]
  >>     def f():
  >>        x = 0
  >>        def g():
  >>           global x
  >>           def h():
  >>             global x
  >>             x = 1
  >> 
  >> At compile time, you should know which scopes have local
  >> variables named x and which have global declarations for x.  If g
  >> does not have a local variable named x, then the global
  >> declaration in h can't sensibly mean the local variable x in g's
  >> scope.
  >> 
  MS> 	Sure it can!! This is standard Python:

  MS> 	def q(): 
  MS>       global x 
  MS>       x = 1

  MS> Here, there is no 'global' variable x, it is in fact created by
  MS> executing q. There is no way to 'know' which scope a nested
  MS> function's 'global' statement refers to without a convention.

The top-level scope is a special case.  At compile-time, you should
also know whether the function is defined at the top-level or is
nested within another function.

  MS> The Python convention is 'module scope, always', which also
  MS> applies to all non-local variables on reading.

I'm suggesting a different convention -- nearest enclosing scope or
top-level if no enclosing scope creates a binding.

  MS> However, there is a new factor here I overlooked: a function can
  MS> gave a local variable that is NOT visible in the function, not
  MS> even in an 'exec': one which is local because it is declared
  MS> global in a function nested in it.

Hadn't thought about that particular wrinkle, but I'd be inclined to
include it in part of the top-level special case.  You could outlaw
the creation of new bindings from enclosed function definitions and
require that a binding be created explicitly -- top-level excluded.
I suppose that isn't terribly Pythonic...

but-neither-is-global-decls-in-every-function-ly yr's,
Jeremy



From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Mon Oct  4 17:59:28 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 15:59:28 -0600
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 20)
In-Reply-To: <361D828D8C4A1DB7.B2014CD75E380143.8300C24EFC157D44@lp.airnews.net>
References: <EC5158419350B090.6626105EB6EC65C9.75E9B9F7F2A580AD@lp.airnews.net> <361D828D8C4A1DB7.B2014CD75E380143.8300C24EFC157D44@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <19991004155928.B18440@acs.ucalgary.ca>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 09:24:13PM +0000, Cameron Laird wrote:
> I apologize for the thousands, if not jillions, in packet
> costs this mistake has cost (do readers still recognize that
> reference?).

rn.  It was the first newreader I ever used.  Kids these days have
it so easy.  Thanks for making me feel like an old-timer.


    Neil



From philh at vision25.demon.co.uk  Tue Oct 12 15:39:20 1999
From: philh at vision25.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 99 19:39:20 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
Message-ID: <939757160snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>

In article <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk at brick.cswv.com>
           neelk at alum.mit.edu "Neel Krishnaswami" writes:
> Yes, Python 2.0 will be Perfect(tm). :) Other than that, only Guido 
> knows for sure. 
> 
> Some of the more common requests are:
> 
> o Elimination of the class/C-type dichotomy. C extension types (like
>   dictionaries and lists) should be real Python classes. 

I'd like this too.

> o Lexical scoping, a la Scheme. 

What is this?

Another feature I would like is multi-line comments. Consider a 
paragraph of commented text under the present system; every time 
you want to add a few new lines to the comment you have to 
manually put in `#'s at the start of each new comment line, which I 
find irritating because it breaks the flow of what I am trying to 
explain.

/*****
Multi-line comments, like the one this paragraph is surrounded in,
are better, becasue there is no comment character at the sart of 
every new line. So I can write more text, adding to my comment,
without this annoyance.
*****/

Some people might argue that it is only a minor annoyance. But I
would reply that well-written, explanative comments are a good
thing, and that anything that encourages them, or makes them
easier to write, is also good.

-- 
Phil Hunt - - - - - - - - -  philh at vision25.demon.co.uk
   - Linux was 8 years old on 17th September! See: -
http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/prog/linuxbirthday.html




From olipt at mayo.edu  Wed Oct  6 23:29:24 1999
From: olipt at mayo.edu (Travis Oliphant)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 22:29:24 -0500
Subject: core dump
In-Reply-To: <37FBE0DF.488A8823@indiana.edu>
References: <37FBE0DF.488A8823@indiana.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910062224560.15136-100000@us2.mayo.edu>

The problem is due to an easy-to-make mistake on your part, but it core
dumps because of a bug in Numeric that has been pointed out and patches
have been submitted to fix it two or three times.

N.array can only have a string has a second argument or it core-dumps.
Your two arguments to array should be placed in a tuple and passed as one
argument.

> 
> def genPsi(mu1,mu2,n):
>     S = genS(mu1,mu2,n)
> 
>     a = N.dot(S[2,:2],LA.inverse(S[:2,:2]))
>     b=N.array(S[0,0],S[1,1])
#### Should be b = N.array((S[0,0],S[1,1]))
> 
>     return (a,b)

With this fix I get

>>> Psi = genPsi(3,3,6)
>>> print Psi
(array([ 3.058 ,  3.1463]), array([ 2.4171,  0.456 ]))

Best,

Travis





From henk_p at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 11 07:33:03 1999
From: henk_p at my-deja.com (henk_p at my-deja.com)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:33:03 GMT
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
Message-ID: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi Y'all,

I want to run the python interpreter as a deamon process. So when
I exit the shell it started from it keeps on running in the background.
I know this is possible under unix by using the nohup command, but
that is not a very nice solution.
I already hacked python's main.c file to recognize a new -b startup
parameter. In this code I do a POSIX rfork(NOWAIT) when the -b parameter
is processed. The parent process returns to the shell, the
child process will continue in the background.
now you can do:

python -b loopd.py

And loopd keeps on running forever, and python returns its PID to the
shell.

It would also be possible to do this in a module, but the POSIX module
does not export the rfork function.
Can somebody tell me why rfork() is not included in the posix module?.






Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From nathan at islanddata.com  Tue Oct  5 11:08:30 1999
From: nathan at islanddata.com (Nathan Clegg)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 08:08:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <000501bf0ed3$0effd9c0$4da2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991005080830.nathan@islanddata.com>

On 05-Oct-99 Tim Peters wrote:
> It can't ever be changed in Python1.  Too much existing e.g.
>     str(long)[:-1]
> and
>     hex(long)[2:-1]
> code would silently break.

But making %ld work the way it "should" wouldn't break anything.  It would
treat ints as %d and longs as str(long)[:-1].  Anyone who chopped the
string explicitly wouldn't be affected.  Surely this would be a simple fix
and make everyone happy.


----------------------------------
Nathan Clegg
 nathan at islanddata.com





From steve_allison at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 20 05:28:01 1999
From: steve_allison at my-deja.com (steve_allison at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:28:01 GMT
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn80plsc.n1t.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
Message-ID: <7uk1uo$rgl$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley) wrote:

> Someone else poionted out that member functions versus unqualified
> function calls are not a valid way to distinguish OO from non-OO.

Yes, I appreciate this, it's really the mixture of the two forms of
syntax that I was querying.  Guido's point ( len() guarentees return
type, enforces sequence-ness ) seems a stronger reason.  Nearly all of
my recent OO coding has been done with Java, a language that came as
such a breath of fresh air after C++ that it has shaped my ideas about
how OO should be done, regardless of it's adherence to the principles
of OO.  As a result I tend to expect lists to behave like vectors, and
expect everything to be done with member functions.  My bad, really.


> 'del' operates on the variable, not the object contained in
> it.  You can del ANY variable, regardless of whether the object it's
> holding implements a __del__ method.

<Penny Drops>  Okay, cheers.


> I hope this helps.  Good luck.

Yes, thanks everyone!

Happy Pythoning.

Steve
--
Steve Allison
Never reads dejanews mail


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From harryc at chomsky.net  Fri Oct 29 17:46:51 1999
From: harryc at chomsky.net (Harry Chomsky)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:46:51 -0700
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990106480001@bruce.bgh> <381A5FE7.1EBECBE2@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990252300001@bruce.bgh> <381ACFEF.38E6B1E3@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <dyoS3.444$sZ2.18702@typhoon-sf.snfc21.pbi.net>

Louis Madon wrote in message <381ACFEF.38E6B1E3 at bigfoot.com>...
>Guaranteed compile time errors on this would certainly be nice.  [BTW, I
>wonder what Cecil does here?  Its statically typed and the compiler does
>whole-program analysis, so perhaps it *can* report this kind of error at
>compile time?].

Yes.  Cecil has both static and dynamic type-checking.  The compiler and
type-checker are two separate beasts that operate independently of one
another, so you can compile and run code even if it doesn't satisfy the
type-checker's rules.  The run-time system does dynamic type-checking when
necessary, and it issues errors in a variety of situations, including
"message ambiguous" (as in the case being discussed in this thread).  The
type-checker's goal is to prove statically that none of those errors will
ever be issued.  It uses whole-program analysis, and it will report an error
in the case being discussed.

(The implementation of the type-checker that you can download is somewhat
limited, and it won't actually report this error.  But the language
designers have described in detail the algorithm that the type-checker
should use.  It just isn't implemented in the current release.)

One of the future goals for Cecil is to allow separate type-checking of
modules.  The designers have some ideas of how to do this; you can read
about them in one of the papers available for download on the site.  But
they've never completely formalized these ideas and they haven't attempted
to implement them yet.  Apparently it is more difficult than they suspected,
and their initial formulation doesn't quite work.  The basic idea is that if
module B introduces new subtypes of a type defined in module A, then module
B must be declared to "extend" module A.  The type-checker will then examine
module A when checking module B.  When modules are linked into a program,
the linker verifies that any two extensions of a module must in turn be
extended by a common module.  E.g., if B and C both extend A, then there
must be another module (say D) that extends both B and C.  B and C may each
type-check successfully, but if together they introduce an ambiguity, the
type-checker will notice that when it checks module D.  I'm probably not
being very clear; see the paper for more details.  I don't know exactly what
troubles they've run into in trying to formalize this.





From savageb at pacbell.net  Fri Oct 22 00:05:19 1999
From: savageb at pacbell.net (savageb)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 21:05:19 -0700
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com><dozier-2110991645470001@pm4-s15.dial-up.abs.net>
Message-ID: <B435308E.589%savageb@pacbell.net>


> From: dozier at abs.net (Bill Dozier)
> Also, be aware that the electronic version is WinBlows only. Fatbrain
> doesn't really make this clear up front (this is not Fredrick's fault).

Thanks for the warning!




From pduffin at mailserver.hursley.ibm.com  Mon Oct 11 07:09:06 1999
From: pduffin at mailserver.hursley.ibm.com (Paul Duffin)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:09:06 +0100
Subject: Burning all GIFs on Python.org?
References: <37FA2C2E.CF326636@darwin.in-berlin.de> <5lhfk57doq.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3801C552.4B1@mailserver.hursley.ibm.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Besides, all our GIFs are legal.
> 

You would say that wouldn't you ;-).

Any bets as to the likelihood that Unisys have a greedybot which 
searches through the net (and the newsgroups) to find any mentions of
GIFs so that they can charge you for it.

-- 
Paul Duffin
DT/6000 Development	Email: pduffin at hursley.ibm.com
IBM UK Laboratories Ltd., Hursley Park nr. Winchester
Internal: 7-246880	International: +44 1962-816880



From kelley at bioreason.com  Thu Oct 28 17:32:14 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:32:14 -0600
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>

actually a much quicker test is:

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
>>> a
[3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
>>>


--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From garabik at center.fmph.uniba.sk.spam  Wed Oct 27 12:12:23 1999
From: garabik at center.fmph.uniba.sk.spam (Radovan Garabik)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 16:12:23 GMT
Subject: How to eliminate consol window in MS Windows
References: <3813a9be.579613@netnews.hinet.net> <3813D482.E71116AD@home.com> <VSoR3.171$Iv2.1507623@news.randori.com>
Message-ID: <7v7897$cem$1@sunnews.cern.ch>

Robin Dunn <robin at alldunn.com> wrote:
 : Edward Muller <edwardam at home.com> wrote in message
 : news:3813D482.E71116AD at home.com...
 :> "?|????????" wrote:
 :>
 :> > I want to use wxPython to develop a GUI application in the
 :> > Windows NT. The problem is when I double click the script
 :> > file, a console window always appear. Can I execute the
 :> > python program without this console window?
 :> >
 :> > ?|????????
 :>
 :> try running it with pythonw, not python....
 :>

 : O change the file extension from .py to .pyw to do it automatically.

does it work when you call the script from another python script
via os.system? it does not for me, the console window is opened anyway
os.system('program.pyw '+arguments)

and what is worse, the program does not run in the background
I'd really like to use 
os.spawnv(os.P_NOWAIT, "program.pyw", ("program.pyw", args))
but it does not work at all... am I missing something?
(I tried with the whole path, still nothing....)
(note: I know next to nothing about programming under MS windows.. I am
trying to do a quick port of my unix script)

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik  http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph . uniba . sk       |
 -----------------------------------------------------------



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Mon Oct 18 21:57:42 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 21:57:42 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
Message-ID: <vrzoxg159l.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

Hi, people.  I got a strangety, here, on this machine running Python 1.5.1.
(This is the machine where the TP repository is kept, I'm not really the
guy installing software on it.)  Here is what I got:

>>> entry = 'parted-0.0.8-pre1/po/parted.pot'
>>> re.match('parted-([.0-9]+[a-z]?|[.0-9]+-b[0-9]+|[.0-9]+-pre[0-9]+)', entry).group(1)
'0.0.8'
>>> re.match('parted-([.0-9]+-b[0-9]+|[.0-9]+-pre[0-9]+|[.0-9]+[a-z]?)', entry).group(1)
'0.0.8-pre1'

As you may see, between parentheses, the second line has A|B|C, while
the third has B|C|A.  Since the results are not equivalent, I presume the
longest match does not apply here, as it was usual for me so far, whenever
regular expressions are concerned.

May I guess this is all implemented with backtracking, with the first
matching alternative shadowing the remaining alternatives?  Isn't that
commiting Python to a behaviour prohibiting later optimisations?  Or is
the exact behaviour just undefined?  What's the story? :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Oct 20 09:15:05 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 13:15:05 GMT
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
References: <000301bf1a94$678c6780$252d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <3312336B355C7BC1.A7C54B4C06C4C12E.9B7F3A35AF83DD76@lp.airnews.net>

In article <000301bf1a94$678c6780$252d153f at tim>,
Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
			.
		[usual incisive
		analysis, capped
		by ...]
			.
			.
>Perhaps Python2 should add a
>
>    goto list_of_bytes
>
>cmd <wink>?
>
>or-maybe-list_of_bytes.goto()-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>
>
>

Well, it certainly would solve the problem of too
much time frittered away explaining Python's con-
trol structures.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From meng.engineering at bluewin.ch  Sun Oct 17 04:43:29 1999
From: meng.engineering at bluewin.ch (Markus Meng)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 10:43:29 +0200
Subject: Newbie Q: A good introduction to python...
Message-ID: <7uc2cp$2vr$1@bw107zhb.bluewin.ch>

Hey and hello Python Community,

I just wonder where I can get a good - almost objective -
introduction for python. Actually we do ALL of our programming
in Tcl/Tk and C/C++ on Win and Unix platforms. However
I would like to see if it is not better to switch from Tcl/Tk to
python. We need full fledged graphical GUI's...

This is not a flame please, it's just a question. We really did nice things
with Tcl/Tk, but ....

Thank's

marcus

--
********************************************************************
** Meng Engineering        Telefon    056 222 44 10               **
** Markus Meng             Natel      079 230 93 86               **
** Bruggerstr. 21          Telefax    056 222 44 10               **
** CH-5400 Baden           Email      meng.engineering at bluewin.ch **
********************************************************************






From meowing at banet.net  Sun Oct 17 01:04:43 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 01:04:43 -0400
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
In-Reply-To: "Gordon McMillan"'s message of "Sat, 16 Oct 1999 23:39:40 -0400"
References: <1271991668-7727673@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <874sfqefx0.fsf@slip-32-101-160-199.ma.us.prserv.net>

In nnmh:python, Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:

> greg andruk wrote:
>> In nnmh:python, Bill Rodgers <Bill at nospam.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > I would like to check for the existance of a file before I
>> > attempt an open and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a
>> > way to do this.
>> 
>> os.stat() will do the job.

>>>> os.stat('kablooie')
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
> OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'kablooie'
>>>> 

Right, it throws an exception, just what was asked for.  And on
success, the permissions and file/dir/etc. status are available.



From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 03:23:24 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 09:23:24 +0200
Subject: Tkinter app 'freezes' when I use after_idle
Message-ID: <ksu2na636b.fsf@telelogic.se>

I am working on an Tkinter application that is supposed to fetch data
from the internet (wow!) (a deja-client).

So I have done myself a small module that by request (for example from
the Tkinter.after_idle) does select on a list of sockets, and if there
exists any data, fetches it, and if all data is received, calls a
callback.

It works.. except for that the application window freezes, except for
the parts that I update with info about what happens.. It seems as
thought tkinter doesn't take its time to update.. 

I have tried to do a after(100, after_idle, params) so it should let
tkinter do its stuff (or have I got something wrong here)?

What have I missed?? 

The code can be fetched from:
        http://www.fukt.hk-r.se/~flognat/dejasearcher.zip

the readme.txt contains info about the files and problem.

        /andy


  -----------== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
   http://www.newsfeeds.com       The Largest Usenet Servers in the World!
------== Over 73,000 Newsgroups - Including  Dedicated  Binaries Servers ==-----



From pj at sgi.com  Thu Oct  7 17:31:21 1999
From: pj at sgi.com (Paul Jackson)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 21:31:21 GMT
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
References: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no> <7tdgdk$mmr@dfw-ixnews19.ix.netcom.com> <37FAF2D8.8F43623A@bibsyst.no> <7tig3m$tn@dfw-ixnews19.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <7tj3f9$dd0a@fido.engr.sgi.com>

aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:
|> I don't know.  What I do know is that your original post used the magic
|> word "intersection".  To me, that implies that a flat-file database
|> approach is the wrong one.

Not necessarily.  The unix sort and join commands work just
fine to intersect flat files, if they are cleanly formatted
with that in mind.

Granted - I have drifted away from the needs of the original
poster.
-- 

=======================================================================
I won't rest till it's the best ...	   Software Production Engineer
Paul Jackson (pj at sgi.com; pj at usa.net) 3x1373 http://sam.engr.sgi.com/pj



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 29 04:22:15 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:22:15 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBKOPFDEKGPDKEKFGMEEAGCKAA.robert@leftfieldcorp.com>
Message-ID: <38195937.F376E3A8@lemburg.com>

Robert Leftwich wrote:
> 
> On my dual PII-350 running NT4+SP4 I get the following :
> 
> >>> RegQueryValueEx(keyNTCurVer,'CurrentType')
> ('Multiprocessor Free', 1)

So it does refer to SMP... I wonder what the 'Free' in there means ;-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    63 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From ab007 at hszk.bme.hu  Fri Oct 15 03:51:10 1999
From: ab007 at hszk.bme.hu (Balint Aradi)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:51:10 +0200
Subject: initialization of lists in classes
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910150904020.2553-100000@ural2>

Hi, 

  I would like to ask something about initialization of lists in
classes. Given the Python code

	class test:
	    list = []
	    float = 3.2
	
	    def __init__(self):
	        print 'list, float (#1):', self.list, self.float
	        self.list.append(1,2)
	        self.float = self.float + 2.0
	        print 'list, float (#2):', self.list, self.float

	print 'a:'
	a=test()
	print 'b:'
	b=test()


I get the result

	a:
	list, float (#1): [] 3.2
	list, float (#2): [(1, 2)] 5.2
	b:
	list, float (#1): [(1, 2)] 3.2
	list, float (#2): [(1, 2), (1, 2)] 5.2


 I don't understand the mechanism behind that. Why is b.list initialized
with the value of a.list? (Or why isn't b.float initialized with the value
of a.float?)  I'm quite a newbie in Python, so this was probably a stupid
question, but can anyone explain that to me?

Thanks a lot, 

   
   B?lint


Ps. I'm using: Python 1.5.1 (#1, Dec 17 1998, 20:58:15)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on
linux2






From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 18 17:18:28 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:18:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Lists on JPython 1.1b3
References: <380AAC12.DE3A1C24@x.x>
Message-ID: <14347.36516.260678.664899@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "EJ" == Eric Jacobs writes:

    EJ> I'm just trying to get started with JPython, and I'm having a
    EJ> little bit of trouble with attributes of lists. (Please let me
    EJ> know if this is not the best group to post about JPython in.)

No, this isn't the best list for JPython questions.  Please use
jpython-interest at python.org.  You can subscribe to this list by
visiting the URL

    http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/jpython-interest

but you don't need to subscribe in order to ask a question.  I'll
answer here anyway...

    >> l = [3,2,1] l.sort()
    EJ> Traceback (innermost last): File "<console>", line 1, in ?
    EJ> java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org/python/core/PySequence:
    EJ> method __findattr__(Lja
    EJ> va/lang/String;)Lorg/python/core/PyObject; not found
    EJ>         at org/python/core/PyList.__findattr__
    EJ>         at org/python/core/PyObject.__getattr__
    EJ>         :

My knee-jerk answer is to turn of your JIT and try again.  I've just
seen too many problems go away when the JITs are disabled, so if you
see something unexpected, always always always, disable the JIT and
try again.  JPython generates legal Java bytecode of course, but it
does it in a way that's not quite typical of the patterns emitted from
a Java source code compiler, and it seems that JITs often have
problems doing the right thing.  It's a shame too, because I see
pystone performance improve by 10x with JITs turned on -- in fact on
my machine (Sparc Ultra 2, Solaris 2.6), pystones with JPython on a
JIT'd JVM are (slightly) better than CPython 1.5.2.

Anyway, I suggest this also because I tested this simple example out
on stock JPython 1.1beta3 and on my current CVS snapshot and had no
problems.   However, I had no problems even with the JIT enabled, but
that could be due to differences in the Java platform.

Okay, so assuming you do turn off your JIT and you still have the
problems, the best thing to do is to try to grab the latest CVS tree
and re-test it, or submit a complete code sample and sufficient
platform information into the JPython bug database.

    EJ> Traceback (innermost last): File "<console>", line 1, in ?
    EJ> TypeError: sort(): expected 0-1 args; got 6 ^^^ Since PyList
    EJ> is a class, PyList.sort should be an unbound method and should
    EJ> be taking at least one argument. This seemed sort of
    EJ> suspicious. (PyList.sort() with no args crashed the same way
    EJ> as the PyList.sort(l) above.)

No, you really can't call methods on builtin objects this way.  When
you do it this way, you don't really get an unbound method in the same
sense you would if you accessed a method through a Python class.  What
happens in this case is that the argument lists aren't getting aligned
correctly, so you never end up with a valid `self'.  You have to get
the method through normal Python attribute lookup in order to get self
pointing to the proper object.

    EJ> I looked at the dictionary class and found I didn't have any
    EJ> trouble getting dictionaries to work.

The trick you use works well if you're getting the methods through the
Java reflection mechanism.  In stock 1.1beta3 PyDictionary was using
reflection, not the new mechanism.  PyLists used the new mechanism.
Since the non-reflection mechanism is about twice as fast as using
reflection, I have adopted it for many of the methods of most of the
other built-in types.  I'm not sure it's worth continuing to support
the call format you're using for the builtin objects.

    EJ> I also noted that the methods of the non-functional list class
    EJ> and the working dictionary class were considered different
    EJ> kinds of methods:

    >> PyList.sort
    >> <builtin method 'sort'>
    >> PyDictionary.keys
    >> <java function keys at 685>

    EJ> This seemed to be a bogus distinction; since JPython is an
    EJ> implementation of Python in Java, shouldn't all "built-in"
    EJ> functions of Python really be Java functions?

They are actually implemented different Java objects.  In the latter
case, Java reflection is the primary mechanism for method lookup.  In
the former case, it's more explicitly coded (and as mentioned above,
twice as fast -- so the difference seems worth it).
    
So in general, for the builtin objects you should use the Pythonic way
of doing the method lookups.

Hope that helps,
-Barry



From ferni at loxinfo.co.th  Fri Oct 15 02:29:35 1999
From: ferni at loxinfo.co.th (Jon Fernquest)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:29:35 +0700
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <005b01bf15e5$dfe341d0$0801a8c0@bobcat> <005c01bf15ee$1b131b60$042292cb@akha>
Message-ID: <000901bf16d6$aa81a9e0$052292cb@akha>

chris wright wrote:
>I've written a native python logic programming framework if that's helpful.
>It has quite good unification performance and I'm using it as the basis for
>some reactive planning stuff with BDI agents that I've implemented in
>Python.....if you really need to have the performance.

Sound's great.
I'd like to try it out.
Is it available somewhere?
Does it use SLD resolution, like Prolog?

Having a good logic/ai/nlp toolset available would be great, e.g.:

1. term unification (w/ and w/o occurs check)
2. dag/graph unification
3. lambda expression reduction
4. skolemization
5. reduction to predicate logic normal forms
6. a strips like planner
7. finite state tools
8. earley parser...etc

A lot of these tools are available at the
CMU AI repository in Lisp form.
(I rewrote several of them in Perl but I began
to feel like I was reinventing the wheel.)

Tim Peter's wrote:
>...or try to get the world interested in a brand new
>PrologScript language <0.9 wink>.

Python is perfect given my goals. Why reinvent the wheel?
I just want to make as many high-powered tools available
in the application domain I'm working in, CALL (Computer Aided Language
Learning) so language teachers (who seem to be limited to Javascript
right now, ugh, or the Mac's HyperCard which is great but not portable,
non-standard, and really doesn't have that much to glue together anyway)
can whip together something of their own creation from trustworthy
components...gui,linguistic/nlp,multimedia,web,database,dtp...etc..

Everything in the current CALL repositories of software is platform
specific (usually Mac or PC) and monolithic take it or leave it,
not take what you want and leave what you don't,
and tends to focus on repetitive grammar drills...language is a lot
more than grammar...e.g. listening comprehension, research on the
structure of conversation:

http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/traum/
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~poesio/
http://www.ling.gu.se/~cooper/
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WSV/hp/schilder-english.html

could be integrated with audio to better explain what's
happening in dialogue. (It's pretty difficult to explain
in writing how intonation patterns convey meaning in conversation.)

IMHO
Ousterhout's paradigm of the glue language applied with Python
could raise the productivity of CALL and create yet another
corp of non-programmer programmers,
(language teacher programmers (scary?))
that Guido van Rossum envisions in his essay
"Computer Programming for Everyone"
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html

Cheers,

Jon Fernquest
bayinnaung at hotmail.com









From skip at mojam.com  Fri Oct 29 15:20:14 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:20:14 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Regex problem with multiline matches
In-Reply-To: <19991029150848.A106981922@vislab.epa.gov>
References: <19991029150848.A106981922@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <14361.62318.90382.177379@dolphin.mojam.com>

    >>>> print re.compile( "b(.)", re.M ).match( "aa\nbb" )
    None

Randall,

The match method anchors the search at the beginning of the string.  Try the
search method instead:

    >>> print re.compile( "b(.)", re.M ).search( "aa\nbb" )
    <re.MatchObject instance at 8125338>

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Mon Oct 11 09:45:21 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:45:21 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de>
Message-ID: <7tspkq$inm@mail.psy.uva.nl>

| >with C++ Builder.
|
| Yep.

I am interested.
Would you share with us your insights/ clues/ makefile(s)/ patches, please?

Thank you,
ionel





From banderson at boi.hp.com  Tue Oct  5 14:39:12 1999
From: banderson at boi.hp.com (Bill Anderson)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:39:12 +0000
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu>
Message-ID: <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com>

Jeff wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 09:56:26AM -0400, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> > I would like to seek some generality in my things, but I hardly see how.
> > Things are so tuned to of our particular setup, that it seems to me that
> > making things general enough to be exportable, sharable or publishable
> > would require an effort which is inordinate with our real needs.  Moreover,
> > to be fully honest, playing such games is far from being my preferred bag,
> > anyway.  I still hardly accept that there are bad guys on this planet:
> > this is really not the world I was hoping for in my youth :-).  Life would
> > be *so* easier without them.  Good guys should kill all the bad guys! :-)
> >
> 
> "good will always triumph over evil, because evil is dumb" -- spaceballs.
> that's a perfect world, though, so it's best to shoot for keeping the honest
> people honest ;).. as for generality, I have some of that, but it's an
> interface to 'os.system' not direct calls into the kernel. if anything it
> keeps the code cleaner because it will be less likely to change across
> kernel versions.


On that note, it is worth making the comment that ipchains is gone in
2.3.x, and hence 2.4.

-- 
Bill Anderson 					Linux/Unix Administrator, Security Analyst
ESBU (ARC)					banderson at boi.hp.com
My opinions are just that; _my_ opinions.



From rhays at interaccess.com  Fri Oct 15 06:11:47 1999
From: rhays at interaccess.com (Bob Hays, Computer Geek)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 05:11:47 -0500
Subject: JPython?
References: <3804e4c8$0$11278@news.execpc.com>
Message-ID: <PKUFOAuiREgnHmqVGTLIq=PLK0Cv@4ax.com>

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:00:07 -0500, Dan Star <danstar at execpc.com>
wrote:

>Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a just-in-time
>compiler that translates python code to java byte-code so that the
>python code can run in a WEB browser that supports java?  If so, I would
>assume this places many restricitions on the Python language elements
>you can use.  Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its
>own language set?

>From our perspective (as a place about to install a production system
using JPython), JPython is a python interpreter written in 100% pure
Java(TM) that converts CPython (that's traditional Python written in
C) scripts to Java bytecodes that are executed in the JVM.  This
bytecode can be saved to .class files.  The interpreter can be run by
itself or embedded easily inside other Java programs.  Java classes
and jar files in the classpath can be used like any Python class,
which means for example that we can use the same XML parser that we're
using in our Java classes inside the JPython interpreter; this
provides at least two very neat side effects:

1) Experience using Java classes == increased knowledge of using
JPython, and
2) Its easy to translate working and stable Python code into Java code
for increased performance and sharing with non-JPython Java software.

Our experiences have been very good with JPython;  staff have learned
Python quickly (typically 1 - 3 days) and have found tremendous
speedups in development.  For efforts where the user just doesn't know
what they want, JPython provides a good prototype environment.  And,
it took me about 15 minutes to translate a JPython method to a method
in a Java class (once it stablized and worked).

Once it gets delivered, I'll post something about the project to the
page Barry has set up to track users of JPython.

Have fun! - Bob



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Thu Oct  7 09:18:46 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 15:18:46 +0200
Subject: Nice comments about python at www.perl.com
References: <KR%K3.9695$lE.35715@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <37FC9DB6.9197279F@bibsyst.no>

the_wrights wrote:

> There are some nice comments made about python over at www.perl.com
> http://www.perl.com/pub/1999/09/trips/tripreport.html
> This is a report on the ORA Open Source conference
>
> Just goes to show how nice the perl guys really are. (And I find them so, in
> fact)
>
> No, I haven't cross posted to c.l.p.m.!!!
>
> Cheers
>
> chris

Good. I`ve had some bad experiences with "hardcore-perl-hackers" lately, so
it`s good to see things going in the right direction.

Thomas Weholt




From wilcoxn at ucsub.colorado.edu  Thu Oct 21 14:52:01 1999
From: wilcoxn at ucsub.colorado.edu (WILCOX  NATHAN WESLEY)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 18:52:01 GMT
Subject: Python-Unix shell
Message-ID: <7unnch$dqj@peabody.colorado.edu>

Hello Python Fanatics!

I've been thinking (and coding) a little bit about a Python enabled unix shell.
Are there any projects along these lines?  If not, I'm interested in starting
an Open Source project do this.

If you are interested, read the (messy and unfinished) proposal at:
http://csel.cs.colorado.edu/~wilcoxn/docs/pysh_proposal

And download a simple little pseudo-shell I've written at:
http://csel.cs.colorado.edu/~wilcoxn/source/pysh.py

If people are interested in this project, it'd ne nice to have a mailing list
and a public/semi-public CVS repository.  I'll contact my school sysadmins
about this.

I'll be checking the group periodically for responses/interest in this, or if
you want to get my attention quicker, e-mail me at "Nathan.Wilcox at colorado.edu".


-- 
Thanks,
N



From jima at aspectdv.com  Tue Oct 26 18:22:45 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:22:45 -0700
Subject: [JPython] dir and java classes
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910261419180.254-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>
References: <14358.5566.792900.94308@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <199910262217.PAA16707@hermes.aspectdv.com>

To further compound the teaching problem, dir()
is inconsistent between Python and JPython.
So when trying to teach someone JPython,
I always advise them to install Python just
so that they can use the "more fully loaded"
dir() of Python to help in their learning process.
Not pretty.

Jim



At 02:28 PM 10/26/99 -0700, David Ascher wrote:
>>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:
>
>BAW> Okay, so what can you do to get the information you want?
>BAW> Well, it isn't really that difficult to write your own dir()
>BAW> function that, given an instance traversed into the instance's
>BAW> class to find method and attribute names.  For completeness you
>BAW> probably want to cruise the entire class hierarchy (but maybe
>BAW> not).
>
>BAW> So the issue is, why doesn't dir() do this by default?  
>
>I think that it's a very real question.  The purpose of dir() is fairly
>ill-defined.  It makes sense for modules and builtin objects in CPython,
>but it's quite inconsistent as soon as classes and instances are brought
>in.  It's currenty quite hard to explain to novices, mostly because
>
> 1) they need it the most, especially when learning about the language
>    in interactive mode, and
>
> 2) understanding what dir() does currently requires a fairly deep
>    understanding of the various kinds of objects, certainly deeper than
>    should be required (IMHO).
>
>If it were up to me, dir() would return all the things that I can do a
>getattr with, with the exclusion of all the names which start with an
>underscore.  That's a rule which I can explain in two minutes and
>leverages on the other distinction between 'first class' and 'not first
>class' attributes in Python (see 'from ... import *', pseudo-private
>variables, reserved method names, etc.).
>
>Making a new version of dir() for my own purposes does not work when I'm
>teaching "Python", not "David's Python".
>
>--david
>
>
>
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From python-list at teleo.net  Mon Oct  4 19:59:30 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 16:59:30 -0700
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <99100417033105.19038@quadra.teleo.net>

[Michael Vanier, on Mon, 04 Oct 1999]:

:: With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
:: person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
:: marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs for
:: a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)
:: 
:: No offense meant, really.  I was just a little surprised.
:: 
:: Mike
:: 
:: --------------------------------------------------------------
:: Mike Vanier	mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
:: Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
:: GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.


Huh. I wouldn't interpret that as anything other than honest enthusiasm.
On the other hand, how would you characterize the last line of your
signature? ;-)



From x at x.x  Sun Oct 31 20:55:09 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 20:55:09 -0500
Subject: hasattr(obj, attr) overloading?
References: <7cOS3.4888$Ec1.78104@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <381CF2FD.EC834CD@x.x>

claudius at catlover.com wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to overload the hasattr method (by default it calls __getattr__
> and checks for an exception.  However, my __getattr__ can be a heavy hit that
> I'd rather avoid for hasattr calls.)
> 
> If not, perhaps a feature for the next minor revision?

How 'bout:

def hasattr(o, a, orig_hasattr=hasattr):
	if orig_hasattr(o, "__hasattr__"):
		return o.__hasattr__(a)
	return orig_hasattr(o, a)

__builtins__.hasattr = hasattr


This is assuming, of course, that the "heavy hit" won't occur checking for
a __hasattr__ attribute. It also won't work for a C module that wants to
call PyObject_HasAttr[String]. Finally, you'd have to mess around with it
a little bit if you want to check for attributes of a class (the class
will return an unbound method.)

The default argument avoids losing the original reference to the built-in
hasattr. Assigning to the __builtins__ module will allow other (Python)
modules to use the new function.



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 29 06:00:59 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:00:59 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJOENFCDAA.kputland@wisen.com> <38188904.BFD13231@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3819705B.6078E0C9@lemburg.com>

FYI, I've uploaded a new version with experimental Java and win32 support
which you may want to test (version 0.5.0):

        http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.

Things that are still missing:
? support for MacOS
? support for Amiga, OS/2, MS-DOS and VMS
? support for more Linux distributions (other than: 'SuSE','debian',
  'redhat','mandrake')

I don't have access to any of the above, so I'd appreciate your help.

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    63 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Fri Oct 15 10:51:45 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:51:45 +0100
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <7u7bph$hvt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <sX8aSLAB+zB4EwlN@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <7u7bph$hvt$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, rturpin at my-deja.com writes
>Given Python's run-time typing and the ability to generate call stacks
>of line numbers and module names, I suspect there is a way to answer
>this question, but it has escaped my perusal of my books and the online
>documentation.  Help appreciated.
>
>Russell
>
>PS to previous discussion:  I now use re's less, and string functions
>more.
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
someone posted this a while back


from sys import exc_info
def _tb():
        return exc_info()[2]
        
def who_called_me(n=0):
        try:
                raise None
        except:
                f = _tb().tb_frame.f_back
                while n>0:
                        t = f.f_back
                        if not hasattr(t,'f_code'): break
                        f = t
                        n = n - 1
                c = f.f_code
                return c.co_filename, c.co_name, f.f_lineno

if __name__=='__main__':
        import sys
        def test():
                print who_called_me()
        def test1():
                print who_called_me(1)
        def test2():
                print who_called_me(2)
        test()
        test1()
        test2()

-- 
Robin Becker



From despamme.bstankie at eye.psych.umn.edu  Fri Oct  1 03:12:01 1999
From: despamme.bstankie at eye.psych.umn.edu (Zamboo)
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 02:12:01 -0500
Subject: References vs copies w/ *x
Message-ID: <despamme.bstankie-0110990212010001@pub56k-29-72.dialup.umn.edu>

Hello,

I have read through the Learning Python book and have found some peculiar
behavior with the *x (repetition) command.  Here is what I am doing and
getting:

>>> a=[1,2,3]
>>> b=[a[:]]*3
>>> b
[[1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3]]
>>> b[0][2]=10
>>> b
[[1, 2, 10], [1, 2, 10], [1, 2, 10]]


Notice that if I change one of the elements in b, it changes all of the
elements.  I assume that the repetition is also referencing a memory
location, but how can I force the repetition command to make copies?

Thanks,
Brian

-- 
<if you want to e-mail me please de-spam my address>



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Oct 13 23:33:33 1999
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 20:33:33 -0700
Subject: Looping redux. was: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <slrn80ab5q.27c.thantos@brimstone.mecha>
Message-ID: <38054F0D.510309DD@Lugoj.Com>

Alexander Williams wrote:
> Python is designed to minimize the syntactic sugar poured in the
> gas-tank of your coding; "do ... while" truly is only a syntactic
> abstraction for an initialized while loop
[...]
> Its not that
> much more typing, the test is very clearly marked at the top of the
> structure, and we have the benefit of a single, consistant means of
> presenting the loop rather than thirteen varying ones.

Every control structure is mere syntactical sugar for the elegantly simple
"if <cond> goto <label>" and "goto <label>" control statements. And in a
heartbeat I could get by with the use of the bare "if" form by doing "if
true goto <label>" where needed.

Therefore, I propose the following:

thefuture: if version == python2 goto thefuture

So there.



From clement at ans.com.au  Tue Oct  5 00:56:55 1999
From: clement at ans.com.au (Clement)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 14:56:55 +1000
Subject: print longs
References: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com> <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <37F98517.DD12EF2F@ans.com.au>

Try '%d'

Greg Ewing wrote:
> 
> Nathan Clegg wrote:
> >
> > Do I have to convert
> > to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?
> 
> Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this
> is a pain as well, but Guido doesn't seem to be
> among them, so we're stuck with this for the time
> being.
> 
> Greg

-- 

Regards

Clement



From arcege at shore.net  Mon Oct 18 12:46:12 1999
From: arcege at shore.net (Michael P. Reilly)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:46:12 GMT
Subject: Executing binaries...?
References: <y0joge0ln5e.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <380861E5.920ED539@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <o9IO3.330$LR3.71613@news.shore.net>

M.-A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
: "Magnus L. Hetland" wrote:
:> 
:> Is there any way to execute python binaries with something like
:> execfile (giving it a special environment as a dict)? The only way I
:> can thing of is using execfile that imports another file (which is
:> compiled)... Is there any other way?

: def execpyc(filename,globals=None,locals=None):

:     """ Execute a byte compiled file filename in globals, locals 
:     """
:     import marshal
:     f = open(filename,'rb')
:     f.read(8) # skip header (id check omitted)
:     code = marshal.load(f)
:     exec code in globals,locals
:  

Is there anything wrong with the standard function?
  execfile(filename, [globals[, locals]])

<URL: http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/built-in-func.html>

  -Arcege




From moshez at math.huji.ac.il  Wed Oct  6 04:29:24 1999
From: moshez at math.huji.ac.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:29:24 +0200
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
In-Reply-To: <37FA5400.444F0075@rubic.com>
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37FA5400.444F0075@rubic.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991006102740.5496G-100000@sundial>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Jeff Bauer wrote:

> >     path_elements = string.split(path, "/")[1:]
> 
> You might consider using os.sep, rather than 
> "/" slash as your path separator.

Or even better, use the functions in os.path. They know better.
Can you say:
c:\webserv/cgi-bin/script ?
(Have no doubt: I've seen these kind of paths on my NT box)

--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka at geocities.com>. 
INTERNET: Learn what you know.
Share what you don't.




From zakons at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 27 09:19:11 1999
From: zakons at my-deja.com (zakons at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:19:11 GMT
Subject: urllib.urlopen and firewalls
References: <B9AA1D5DA95ED211900100805F6FFF9C0244501F@exbhbhmb01.us.dbisna.com> <ksd7u1q0ie.fsf@telelogic.se>
Message-ID: <7v6u4b$sh6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

It works! Thanks. Freedom at last...
SZ

In article <ksd7u1q0ie.fsf at telelogic.se>,
  andy.eskilsson at telelogic.se wrote:
> Yep, read the source Luke ;-) real hard..
>
> Unfortunetaly it is not well documented..
>
> *Legal disclaimer* I believe it works on Python 1.4 and up, I can't
>  recall if it was in 1.3 and down.. Geez I started pythoning when it
>  was in version 1.1.. am I senior then or? (When I finaly managed to
>  print out all the docs for 1.1, 1.2 was released...)
>
> It uses the environment variable [protocol]_proxy (urllib around line
> 972 python 1.5.2) so if you set the environment variable http_proxy to
> http://my.proxy:port/ it hopefully will work out :-)
>
>         /Andy
>
> / "Zakon, Stuart" <ZakonS at eccelerate.com> wrote:
> | Is it possible to make the following function:
> |
> | urllib.urlopen(url)
> |
> | work across a firewall?
> |
> | Thanks,
> | Stuart Zakon
> |
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct  7 11:32:23 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 04:32:23 +1300
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
Message-ID: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com>

My attempts at getting IDLE to work on my Mac
last night were very depressing.

I found a way to force Tkinter to load the
standard tcl functions that weren't getting
loaded. Now IDLE will start up.

But its menu bars keep getting lost!

If I open 2 windows and switch back and forth
between them a few times, the IDLE menus disappear
and get replaced by a default Wish menu bar from
Tcl/Tk.

Surely *someone* else has tried to run IDLE on
a Mac? Should I expect it to work, or is Tkinter
on a Mac just a dead loss and I should just give 
up now?

There is another problem as well, not related
to Tk. If I turn on "Delay console window until
needed" in the Python Prefs, and run a script which
writes to stdout, the console window appears, but
without any menus -- and if I hit command-Q, a
crash occurs.

This is the Python 1.5.2c1 Mac binary distribution,
installed on a PowerMac under System 8.0.

Thanks for any help,
Greg Ewing
greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
greg.ewing at compaq.com



From j.spies at hccnet.nl  Fri Oct 22 19:37:26 1999
From: j.spies at hccnet.nl (J.Spies)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 01:37:26 +0200
Subject: Problem with JPython and jre jdk1.1.8
References: <380FAD56.23B9EF27@hccnet.nl> <14351.36420.739624.920728@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3810F536.C6F02988@hccnet.nl>

"Barry A. Warsaw" schreef:
> 
> >>>>> "JS" == J Spies <j.spies at hccnet.nl> writes:
> 
>     JS> As an oldtime ABC-Python fan I like the development of
>     JS> JPython.  At work we use Java!
> 
> Cool!  BTW, the best place to ask JPython questions is
> jpython-interest at python.org.
> 
>     JS> I'm trying JPython11beta3 with jdk1.1.8 on Windows NT and
>     JS> Windows 95.
> 
> I've had several reports of problems with JDK1.1.8 on Windows.  I just
> sucked down 1.1.8 on Sparc/Solaris to see if it fixed a problem with
> BigInteger.modPow() -- it doesn't -- but 1.1.8 seems pass all the
> other JPython test cases.  On Windows, so far I've only tested Suns
> 1.2.x and MS's 1.1.4 JVMs and both seem to work fine.
> 
> See <http://www.jpython.org/platform.html> for my latest information
> about compatibility.  My next step is to check out IBM's 1.1 JVM for
> Linux.
> 
> -Barry

Thank you for the quick reply. With jdk1.2 I'm able to run all
but some demo programs.

Jaap Spies
CS Department Hogeschool Drenthe

Let's keep Peace in Mind



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 08:36:46 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 12:36:46 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Will Ware <wware-nospam at world.std.com> wrote:
> That is called "junk DNA" because it is never translated to a
> protein. There are various conjectures about it.

a quick web search for "junk DNA" brought up three
major theories (since they were posted on the web,
they have to be true.  all of them):

    1. the great designer only did one design,
    and the DNA that we consider as junk is
    actually used by extra-terrestrial beings.

    (motorola processors, that is)

    2. since there's no possible chance that an
    evolutionary process would leave junk in
    there, Darwin was obviously wrong.

    (GvR is in good company, in other words ;-)

    3. statistical analysis shows that the junk
    looks like human text, which clearly shows
    that it is actually used in some yet unknown
    way.

    (docstrings?)

</F>




From kirank at giasbma.vsnl.net.in  Mon Oct 11 08:40:02 1999
From: kirank at giasbma.vsnl.net.in (kiran.k)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:40:02 +0500
Subject: how to declare array of class instances
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991011173819.25251A-100000@giasbma>

hi everyone :-)

1>
	Could anyone tell me howto declare an array (or list) of class
	instances.
	
	say--
	
	class trial():
		tmp=0
		def func(self,x):
			self.tmp=x
			:
			
	inst=trial()   #instance of trial class
	arr=[]
	arr.append(inst) 
	
	however, all instances of trial as arr[0-n] seem to have the same
	values of local variables in the class.		
	i.e arr[0].tmp==arr[n].tmp
	
	even if the input from keyboard is taken as 
	for loop:
		arr[n].func( input(""))
		
	arr[0].tmp would hold the last value inputted in the for loop
	i.e that of arr[n].tmp
	
2>     	suppose a function takes three parameters
	def func(self,x,y,z):
		--
		
	if i want the parameters to be keyboard inputs,
	is there any other way besides
	
	func( input(""), input(""), input(""))
	
	thanking you in anticipation
	
	kiran.k			

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Software is like sex,
		its better when its free
				--Linus Torvalds	
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




From eric at fruitcom.com  Sat Oct 30 05:41:16 1999
From: eric at fruitcom.com (Eric Smith)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 09:41:16 GMT
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line (oops)
References: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com> <87so2ttegm.fsf@slip166-72-251-9.ma.us.prserv.net>
Message-ID: <slrn81lf9o.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>

Greg --
gerglery at usa.net (greg andruk) posted in comp.lang.python on 30 
Oct 1999 04:55:37 -0400:
 > I'll assume you meant `...($r eq "whatever" or $r eq "de")...' there.
Absolutely - I lazily copied one of my prototyping iterations from my
.bash_history - as luck would have it, it was illogical.  Always trying to
find the way to say something in as few bytes as possible).
 > 
 > Anyway, Python's not especially amenable to one-liners.  Instead, it
 > has a really spiffy interactive mode you can leave running in a window
 > or spare console session that works like you probably wish `perl -d'
 > worked:
Yeah, it is a nice "shell" interface for testing, however one liners are
useful:
1. I use their history arrows to access them from the unix shell
2. You can use the unix fc for editing long ones
3. You can paste them into your scripts.
4. They are easy to go back to and edit etc.

This would certainly be high on my Python wish list (once I started
wishing).  Especially if one was learning from fresh and had a very short
attention span :(
 > 
 > meowing:~$ pytest
 > Python 1.5.2+ (#2, Oct 25 1999, 05:27:05)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on linux2
 > Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
 > >>> r = 'de'
 > >>> r in ('whatever', 'de')
 > 1
kewl
 > >>> # and just for the heck of it...
 > ... r == 'whatever' or 'de'
 > 'de'
For me this _always_ prints the token after the `or'.

Thanx for your guidance.

ciao


-- 
Eric Smith
eric at fruitcom.com
www.fruitcom.com

unix perl - sailing to war in an Armada of nutshells.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 16:53:22 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 20:53:22 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu><14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL><FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com><001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <006d01bf0f73$ac849910$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov> wrote:
> Of course, that's (supposed to be) the difference between Evolution
> and Engineering; in Natural Selection, only runtime behavior matters,
> but in our field, there's (supposed to be) an omniscient designer
> critically examining the code.

optimist! ;-)

and in the software universe, runtime behaviour
doesn't matter that much -- you can always fix the
bugs in the next release:

http://www.shift.com/shiftstd/SiteMap/frames/mag7.6.asp?searchfor=7.6bombsquad

</F>




From cgw at fnal.gov  Wed Oct  6 09:03:37 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:03:37 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
In-Reply-To: <19991006105348.B700@Ridcully.home>
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
	<7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
	<7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>
	<7tdoc8$hno$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
	<slrn7vkrh5.6vp.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>
	<19991006105348.B700@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <14331.18601.119141.140031@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Malcolm Tredinnick writes:
 > On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 09:21:28PM +0000, Blake Winton wrote:
 > > On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:51:25 GMT, Preston Landers wrote:
 > [ ...random deletions... ]
 > 
 > > >> 'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.
 > > >
 > > >Isn't that what touch does?
 > > 
 > > Nope.  touch only changes the time if the file already exists...
 > 
 > I guess it depends on the version of touch you are using. By default,
 > the GNU version *does* create a file of zero length if it doesn't
 > previously exist. This is a documented faeture. If you don't want this
 > to happen, you must pass the -c or --no-create option.

That wasn't the point; the problem with the posted Python code was
that if the file *did* exist, it would be truncated, losing any
existing data.



From Jean-Marc.Jezequel at irisa.fr  Wed Oct 20 04:05:58 1999
From: Jean-Marc.Jezequel at irisa.fr (Jezequel Jean-Marc)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:05:58 +0200
Subject: TOOLS Europe 2OOO Call for Contribution
Message-ID: <380D77E6.40047D97@irisa.fr>

TOOLS Europe 2000
   "Enterprise Architecture - Patterns - Components"

Mont St Michel & St Malo, France
    June 5-8, 2000

http://www.tools.com/europe


CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS (deadline 31st January 2000)

(Please accept our apologies if you receive more than one copy. Please
forward this message to colleagues you think might be interested.)

TOOLS is the major international conference series devoted to
applications of object-oriented technology.  TOOLS Europe 2000 will be
held in Le Mont St Michel, at the borderline of Normandy and Brittany
in the north-west of France, and will continue the commitment to
excellence of earlier TOOLS conferences in Europe, Australia, Asia and
the USA.

The proceedings will be published world-wide by the IEEE Computer
Society.


PAPERS

TOOLS Europe 2000 is now soliciting papers on all aspects of
object-oriented technology. All submitted papers will be refereed and
assessed for technical quality and usefulness to practitioners and
applied researchers.

TOOLS Europe particularly welcomes papers that present general
findings based upon industrial experience. Such papers will be judged
by the quality of their contribution to industrial best-practice
(rather than to the body of research knowledge).


TUTORIALS and WORKSHOPS

Tutorials and workshops form an important part of TOOLS
conferences. TOOLS Europe 2000 is keen to receive proposals for
tutorials, workshops and panels on topics.


MORE DETAILS

Please visit the conference website for more details.
http://www.tools.com/europe
-------------- next part --------------
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From arcege at shore.net  Thu Oct 21 16:51:52 1999
From: arcege at shore.net (Michael P. Reilly)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 20:51:52 GMT
Subject: unmimify or ...................
References: <7uke53$3i8$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <007101bf1afe$ce62f3b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <I1LP3.914$LR3.161036@news.shore.net>

Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:
: tester89 at hotmail.com wrote:
:> Does anyone know if a module exists that would take an email message
:> with or without attachments and create objects for each portion of the
:> message?

: not really, but the multifile and mimetools/rfc822
: modules (all in the standard library) will take you
: a bit closer to a solution.

There is also my mimecntl module which creates consistant read/write
MIME objects.

  http://starship.python.net/~arcege/modules/mimecntl-1.2.py

For example:
  mimeobj = mimecntl.MIME_recoder(open('mailFromGuido'))
  if mimeobj.multipart:
    for attachment in mimeobj:
      attachment = attachment.decode()
      if attachment.multipart:
        print 'Warning: sorry, this program does not recurse into ' \
              'multiparts.. yet'
      else:
        if hasattr(attachment.ctype, 'name'):
          filename = attachment.ctype.name
        elif attachment.has_key('content-disposition') and \
             hasattr(attachment['content-disposition'], 'filename'):
          filename = attachment['content-disposition'].filename
        else:
          filename = None
        if filename:
          open(filename, 'wb').write(attachment.read())
          print 'Writing attachment %s' % filename
        else:
          print '-' * 40
          print attachment.read()
          print '-' * 40
  else:
    mimeobj.decode()
    print '-' * 40
    print mimeobj.read()
    print '-' * 40

In addition, there is the standard module "mailbox" which bases its
content of rfc822.Message but could be modified to return
mimetools.Message instead (unfortunately, it wasn't designed to allow a
subclass to easily change what kind of "Message" class to use).

Hope this helps.

  -Arcege




From tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Oct 18 23:39:38 1999
From: tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 03:39:38 GMT
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
References: <3807B4D0.127E7261@prescod.net>
Message-ID: <CBCC7D468A7D505B.D9B18CE170894480.6E783335C8125E27@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3807B4D0.127E7261 at prescod.net>,
Paul Prescod  <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
>Okay, I'm an idiot. On a couple of different occaisions I have needed to
>do some CGI prototoyping and I have found CGIServer. "Cool", I say. Then
>I try to get it working on Windows, changing things here and there until
>I realize (at "fork") that its hopeless. The experience is so annoying
>that I erase it from my brain until the next time. (or perhaps it isn't
>frustrating ENOUGH).

Heh, I've done it at least twice myself, so maybe we're both idiots.

>
>I would appreciate a comment at the top of that program that says that
>it doesn't run on Windows. Perhaps it could even test for os.fork at the
>beginning and crash if it isn't installed.

  if sys.platform == 'win32' :
	raise "CGIServer won't run on Windows!"

should work fine.

Tres.
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tres Seaver           tseaver at palladion.com       713-523-6582
Palladion Software    http://www.palladion.com



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 17 15:16:27 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 15:16:27 -0400
Subject: multi-level break
In-Reply-To: <4HkSiAA+aOC4EwuD@puckish.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <1271935461-11108476@hypernet.com>

Toby Kelsey wrote:

> At the moment I am setting and checking flag variables to emulate
> this, which I find tedious and ugly.  Am I missing a better
> idiom?

Some people abuse exceptions for this.
 
> As much as I dislike feeping creatures, it would be nice to see
> "break <num>" in version 2.0.  IMHO obvious, simple and useful.

Bleah ;-(.

- Gordon



From aahz at netcom.com  Sun Oct 17 15:26:58 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:26:58 GMT
Subject: A question
References: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi> <FJrGMt.LIB@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <7ud7u2$k1k$1@nntp4.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <FJrGMt.LIB at world.std.com>,
Will Ware <wware-nospam at world.std.com> wrote:
>
>Other folks have mentioned glob.glob(), which will work fine for
>things like "*.txt". If you want something more flexible, for
>instance all the *.c and *.h files that mention printf,
>you'd want to iterate on the output of something like
>
>	find . -name '*.[ch]' -exec grep -l printf {} \;

What's wrong with os.path.walk() and agrep.py?
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Wed Oct 27 07:09:38 1999
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:09:38 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>

> [...] BTW, is there any way (other than using the registry) to find
> out the patch level of WinNT, e.g. something like "Windows NT 4.0 with
> SP4" ? Since this information seems vital on WinNT I think it should
> be included in the version string.

You can use the command
"winmsd /s /f"
to generate a report containing more than you ever wanted to know about NT.
Flags: /s - summary report (about 13kB here),
       or /a - complete system report (about 40kB)
       /f - system report will be sent to file,
       or /p - system report will be sent to printer


The first few lines are:
  Microsoft Diagnostics Report For \\THOMASNOTEBOOK
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

  OS Version Report
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Microsoft (R) Windows NT (TM) Workstation
  Version 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 4) x86 Uniprocessor Free
  Registered Owner: Thomas Heller, ION-TOF GmbH
  Product Number: <...deleted...>

Problems I see:
a - the report is written to the file <computername>.txt in the current
directory
    (hostname.exe will return this name)
b - the report is written in the language corresponding to the NT version
c - you may want to start winmsd with the command line
    "start /wait winmsd /s /f"
    so that the command returns when winmsd is finished.
d - winmsd displays a progress box (which you may not want to see?)
e - I'm not sure if winmsd is included in every version of NT,
    I could only check several NT4.0 boxes here.


Thomas Heller
ION-TOF GmbH




From x at x.x  Sat Oct  9 01:24:38 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 01:24:38 -0400
Subject: Newbie question about __getattr__ and __setattr__
References: <1103_939440882@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>
Message-ID: <37FED196.AD791AC5@x.x>

Felix Thibault wrote:

... snip 2-level merger code
> 
> >>> import Dicky
> >>> i =Dicky.Nester({'a': {'b': {'c': 'd'}}})
> >>> i
> {'a': {'b': {'c': 'd'}}}
> >>> i = i+{'a':{'b':{'e':'f'}}}
> >>> i
> {'a': {'b': {'c': 'd', 'e': 'f'}}}
> >>>
> 
> I also wanted to be able to do this by assignment so I tried to
> make a __setattr__ method, but if I do:
> 
> i[1][2][3] = 4

A couple of things going on here. First, you want to deal with
__getitem__ and __setitem__ -- those deal with the [] subscript
operator -- rather than __getattr__ and __setattr__ that deal
with the . attribute operator.

The syntax that you want to write the assignment is supported
by the interpreter by default; you don't need to change 
anything for that. The only catch is that the first two layers
of dictionaries need to exist beforehand. So if you had

   i = {1: {2: {}}}
   i[1][2][3] = 4
 
then i would be {1: {2: {3: 4}}} as you'd expect.

So the easiest solution really would be to predefine all the
possible keys before you make any such assignment. If you
can't do that, the problem you're going to run in to is, 
as you mentioned, you're going to get a __getitem__ call
on a non-existent key, and you don't know whether it's part
of a read operation (and you should raise KeyError), or
it's part of a new assignment operation (and you should
create the sub-dictionaries.)

In other words, in the expression

   i[1][2][3]
   ^^^^^^^
this part is always going to be an r-value. If it's part
of an assignment, the [3] will be an l-value, and thus
__setitem__ will be called. Or if the whole expression
is an r-value, then the [3] will be an r-value and
__getitem__ will be called. But this won't help you
because the [1] and [2] will be __getitem__ in any case!

So if you want that assignment to work when the sub-
dictionaries aren't predefined, you can have your
__getitem__ always create new dictionaries. That's
fairly simple, just add a method:

	def __getitem__(s, k):
		if k not in s.keys():
			s[k] = Nester({})
		return s.data[k]

Be sure to mention the s.data[k] and not just s[k], or
you'll end up in an infinite loop. Here, if the key is not
found, we generate a new custom Nester object, so that it
works for more than one level. In fact, because there's no
limit placed here, this will work for any number of nested 
levels:
i['a']['b']['c']['d']['e'][...

The disadvantage is that reading a missing value will
result in a new empty dictionary being created and returned!
So unless you want to be really careful and write a clean-
up routine which can handle this, you're going to have a
bunch of extra empty dictionaries floating around. You will
also never get KeyError with this simple method.

It seems that the parser would know whether a compound
construct like i[1][2][3] is going to be an l-value or
r-value, and could emit a different code that could be
passed on to __getitem__ (BINARY_SUBSCRL, maybe, means
that this expression is intended to be an l-value.) It
would be difficult to make this change in a compatible
way. It's a thought..

Hope this helps.



From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Oct 11 17:05:22 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:05:22 +0200
Subject: lazy function calling?
References: <380202B7.ADF0E803@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <38025112.67DBD1C7@lemburg.com>

Berthold Hoellmann wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I think I can remember a Python extension module, posted or announced
> here a while ago, where it was possible to make functions callable lazy.
> This means I could call a function spam just writing spam instead of
> spam(). Was I just dreaming or is it real. And if it's real, where can I
> get it :-)?

David Ascher once posted something along these lines... as I remember
he used it to display help information by simply typing 'help'
at the prompt. The trick was to wrap the function into an object
that calls the function whenever you ask for its representation.

>>> def spam(): print 'Spam'
... 
>>> class CallMe:
...     def __init__(self,func):
...             self.func=func
...     def __repr__(self):
...             rc = self.func()
...             return str(rc)
... 
>>> test = CallMe(spam)
>>> test
Spam
None
>>>

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    81 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Mon Oct 11 11:33:47 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 15:33:47 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

On Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:16:15 +1000, skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:
>
>In the third stage, type inference will attempt to ascribe types to
>the variables, and use some fixed ad hoc speedups to improve
>interpreter speed even further.

How do you plan to mix type inference and extension-type/Python-class
unification? 

As I understand it, type inference in OO languages is generally only a
win if you can do enough to infer the actual runtime type of the
object. IOW, it's not enough to know that the object is an instance of
some subclass of the class Number, but that it's a direct instance of
the class Integer.  Then you can avoid paying the cost of polymorphic
dispatch, and can take advantage of knowing the actual method called
to do additional optimizations (like inlining).

But if Python's primitive types are made into real Python classes,
then any type can be potentially be subclassed, which makes inferring
the runtime type a much harder prospect. 

AFAICT, you need to either add something like Java's "final" keyword,
do whole-program analysis (does eval defeat this?), or do dynamic
compilation like Self. Or are there some cool new tricks you can steal
for Viper from the OCaml compiler..?


Neel



From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 19 16:32:51 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 20:32:51 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk> <380CCF9A.3BD80F74@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <7uikhj$jdv$1@nntp6.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <380CCF9A.3BD80F74 at maxtal.com.au>,
skaller  <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:
>
>	So the answer is: probably, I will release it for
>free evaluation (but not commercial use). But I'm not sure
>how to best approach this problem. Any ideas?

Talk to Sam Rushing, http://www.nightmare.com/
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From phd at sun.med.ru  Wed Oct 27 04:11:09 1999
From: phd at sun.med.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:11:09 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Russian mailing list for Python, Zope
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.20.9910271158080.11957-100000@sun>

Hello!

   Russian-speaking Pythoneers, Zopers unite!

   I am trying to revive the mailing list for russian-speaking. I also want
to add the Zope topic to the list. I am writing and debuggung simple web
site based on Zope, and soon will provide read-only access to the managemenet
interface for everyone who want to learn how to install, configure and run
Zope application.

   Anyone interesting to talk about beloved Python language and Zope in
Russian please subscribe:
   echo subscribe python | mail majordomo at list.glas.net
It is stndard majordomo, all commands available, including "help".

   Our webpages are here:
http://www.glasnet.ru/~jno/Python/
http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/motorola/668/
http://www.chat.ru/~pythonrus/

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From DASH14 at webtv.net  Fri Oct 15 19:03:34 1999
From: DASH14 at webtv.net (Charmeleon)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:03:34 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Im new Help
References: <p6q3dvc5px0.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <24213-3807B2C6-6@storefull-252.iap.bryant.webtv.net>

Thanxs for the Help




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 19 03:07:14 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 09:07:14 +0200
Subject: Read one key press.
References: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <00a101bf1a00$95d66080$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> wrote:
> if I have the following program:
> 
> key = raw_input("press a key: ")
> if key == 'a':
>     print "you pressed 'a'"
> elif key == '^['
>     print "you pressed escape"
> 
> it doesn't work. Well, it works but it itsn't what I'm looking for. I want
> ONE key input. Can this me done easyly?

well, at least it can be done in Python.  here's something
that appears to work on Windows and Linux (should have
been in the guide, but didn't quite make it).

# tty-example-2.py

import sys

try:
    # windows or dos
    import msvcrt
    getkey = msvcrt.getch
except ImportError:
    # assume unix
    import tty, termios, TERMIOS
    def getkey():
        file = sys.stdin.fileno()
        mode = termios.tcgetattr(file)
        try:
            tty.setraw(file, TERMIOS.TCSANOW)
            ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(file, TERMIOS.TCSANOW, mode)
        return ch

print "press 'q' to quit..."

while 1:
    ch = getkey()
    if ch == "q":
        break
    print ch,

print

</F>

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




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Oct 19 11:27:11 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 15:27:11 GMT
Subject: Speeding up Python
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <17A17FA984A0D11A.B75C6BB797C7EC5A.CAE8955019FB70D8@lp.airnews.net>

In article <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000 at fep132.fep.ru>,
Oleg Broytmann  <phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:
>On 19 Oct 1999, TToommLL wrote:
>> I read that Industrial Light And Magic is using Python, but I don't see how
>> that is possible.  I need to do some heavy floating point and math.sin() number
>> crunching  but find that Python takes 40 times as long as C++.  I tried JPython
			.
			.
			.
>   Do low-level stuff in low-level languages, and high-level stuff in high
>lavael languages.
>
>   Do number crunching in C, compile your code into a python module using
>compiler optimisation, link with optimised (both in terms of algorithms and
>compiler) math library.
>   And glue all your modules together with Python!
			.
			.
			.
Also, acquaint yourself with NumPy.  It might speed
satisfying development by a large factor.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De  Thu Oct 21 11:59:53 1999
From: Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De (Andreas Rozek)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:59:53 +0200
Subject: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr
References: <000501bf1bda$5f6ea350$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <380F3879.9F6F92AB@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>

Hello,

> The closest to this would be os.popen() This doesn't allow you to trap
> stderr as far as I am aware.

Thanks, from the description, it looks as if that would fit partially,
at least - although (coming from Java) it's not what I was really loo-
king for, namely a replacement for "Runtime.getRuntime().exec(...)". 
> 
> This should work on Unix and Windows.

Yes,  according to the library reference.  I'll try that solution this
evening.

Thanks for your answer!

-- 

Andreas Rozek
Rechenzentrum Universitaet Stuttgart       ******   **   **   *****
Kommunikationssysteme/BelWue-Entwicklung   **   **  **   **  **
Allmandring 3a                             **   **  **   **  **
D-70550 Stuttgart                          ******   **   **   *****
                                           ***      **   **       **
Telefon: ++49 (711) 685-4514               ** **    **   **       **
Telefax: ++49 (711) 678-8363               **   **   *****   ****** 
E-Mail:  Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De
URL:     http://WWW.Uni-Stuttgart.De/People/Rozek



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Wed Oct 13 06:30:47 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:30:47 +0200
Subject: Connecting to IP address w/proxy?
Message-ID: <38045F57.F2C8A6D5@hvision.nl>

Howdy y'all,

I wrote a nice little chat program in Python, which uses connection to
an IP address. For completeness, some relevant code excerpts follow
here. It's no heavy wizardry. :)

    def listen(self):
        """ Start connection as a server. """
        if self._connected:
            raise ConnectionError, "Already connected"
        s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
        HOST = ''
        print self.port
        s.bind(HOST, self.port)
        s.listen(1)
        self.conn, self.addr = s.accept()
        self.conn.setblocking(0)
        self._connected = 1
        # make sure we poll the server after <poll_period> seconds:
        self.listenID = self.after(self.poll_period, self.poll_server)

    def connect(self, host='127.0.0.1'):
        """ Start connection as a client. """
        if self._connected:
            raise ConnectionError, "Already connected"
        s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
        s.connect(host, self.port)
        s.setblocking(0)
        self._connected = 1
        self.conn = s
        self.addr = host
        self.listenID = self.after(self.poll_period, self.poll_server)

Now this worked fine and dandy, until some #&@(#) installed a proxy
server. And now I obviously cannot connect to an IP address anymore,
among other things. So my question is, is there a way to connect to an
address through the proxy? I had a similar problem with my webcrawler,
but the proxy settings in urllib were easy to find out, so that's solved
now. I wondered if there's a similar solution for direct connections.
Anyone did this? Otherwise, does anyone know of a way around this?

TIA,

--Hans Nowak





From EdwardW at stamps.com  Thu Oct 14 00:43:18 1999
From: EdwardW at stamps.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:43:18 -0700
Subject: ADO in MS-IIS with MS-SQL Server
Message-ID: <3D655391DC4FD311B4D500A0C9E1E76E145708@rusheen.stamps.com>

Can anyone help me get some basic ADO connections going with Python.  I'm
running Python inside of MS-IIS with not problems.  What I can't seem to be
able to get working is an ADO connection to my SQL database.

I have no idea how to get started, what to import, what to run makepy.py
against (I've already run it against everything in sight on NT server).

Please help, if I get over this small hill I'll be on my way to heaven
"using Python at work on a daily basis".  

Thank you to anyone and all.

Ed--



From ayinger1 at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 13 20:52:23 1999
From: ayinger1 at my-deja.com (yinger)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 00:52:23 GMT
Subject: recursive copy in a directory tree?
Message-ID: <7u39g2$ki5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi.

  I am looking for a python util that *recursively* copies files from a
source directory tree to a target with wildcard syntax.

  In other words, something like

     recurcopy('source','target','*.html')

that would copy all html files in the source directory tree to the
target directory tree (creating any missing directories in the target
as it goes along).


  I have to use something that is relatively platform independent, so
I'm stuck with using the os, shutil, and glob modules.

  Are there any existing utils out there.  (Again, I can't use any of
the popen modules, as they only work on Unix -- and they don't work on
CYGWIN, I tried that too.)

Thanks in advance,

Andrew


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From towen at nw.com.au  Mon Oct  4 01:25:48 1999
From: towen at nw.com.au (towen at nw.com.au)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 05:25:48 GMT
Subject: for faq?: multithreaded curses getch()
References: <37F70BFD.2EC25E1A@nw.com.au> <slrn7vf91h.e5.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <37f8376f.802823@news.nw.com.au>

On 3 Oct 1999 22:41:20 GMT, cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
wrote:

>Pada Sun, 03 Oct 1999 15:55:41 +0800, Todd Owen bilang:
>| To get the getch thread to block without holding the GIL, the solution I
>| found was to do a select on stdin, as described in...
>| a faq-oriented summary :)...!
>| Hint for using curses module with threads: to wait for a keypress
>| without blocking other threads, try inserting a
>| "select.select([sys.stdin], [], [])" call before the call to getch().
>
>stdwin.nodelay(1) also works--it causes getch() to always be non-blocking.

Yes that would be good for some situations (especially
single-threaded).  In this case however I didn't mind blocking the
user-input thread while waiting for a character to arrive, but I
wanted other threads to be able to run while it was waiting for input.
On a C-implementation level, the select() call is wrapped in
"Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS/Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS", whereas the getch()
call isn't.

Todd.




From kputland at wisen.com  Wed Oct 27 17:14:50 1999
From: kputland at wisen.com (Karl Putland)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:14:50 -0600
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <381728B1.48815843@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJMELDCDAA.kputland@wisen.com>

Try this on for size

Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
IDLE 0.5 -- press F1 for help
>>> from win32api import RegOpenKeyEx, RegQueryValueEx
>>> from win32con import HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
>>> from win32api import RegEnumValue
>>> key = RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,r'SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion')
>>> i=0
>>> while 1:
	try:
		str,obj,type = RegEnumValue(key,i)
		print str,obj,type
		i=i+1
	except:
		break


SoftwareType SYSTEM 1
InstallDate 934559805 4
RegisteredOwner Administrator 1
RegisteredOrganization wisen.com, Inc. 1
CurrentBuild 1.511.1 () (Obsolete data - do not use) 1
CurrentVersion 4.0 1
CurrentBuildNumber 1381 1
CurrentType Uniprocessor Free 1
SystemRoot C:\WINNT 1
SourcePath C:\I386\ 1
PathName C:\WINNT 1
ProductId 13299OEM004225197031 1
CSDVersion Service Pack 4 1
Plus! VersionNumber IE 5 5.00.2314.1003 1
>>>


Karl Putland
kputland at wisen.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of M.-A. Lemburg
> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 10:31 AM
> To: Thomas Heller
> Cc: python-list
> Subject: Re: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
>
>
> Thomas Heller wrote:
> >
> > > Thomas Heller wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I searched the MSDN again,
> > > > it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
> > > > and installed by default.
> > >
> > > Sound even better ;-) (It doesn't seem to exist on Win95, so I'll
> > > only use it for WinNT.)
> > >
> > > What command string would I have to pass to os.popen to get the output
> > > (I only need the first few lines) without any windows popping up ?
> > >
> > That's were the problem (mentioned earlier) start. This is windows here,
> > so do not expect for programs to write to stdout!
> >
> > As I said before, winmsd writes its output to the file <hostname>.txt.
> > AFAIK, you cannot pipe the output somewhere else, nor can you change the
> > name of this file.
> >
> > The following script demonstrates how to do it:
> >
> >   import string, os, sys
> >   hostname = string.strip (os.popen ("hostname && winmsd /s /f").read())
> >   file = open (hostname + '.txt')
> >   for i in range (12):
> >     sys.stdout.write (file.readline())
> >
> > The output on my system are:
> >
> >   Microsoft Diagnostics Report For \\THOMASNOTEBOOK
> >   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >   OS Version Report
> >   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >   Microsoft (R) Windows NT (TM) Workstation
> >   Version 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 4) x86 Uniprocessor Free
> >   Registered Owner: Thomas Heller, ION-TOF GmbH
> >
> > BUT: Be prepared to receive this in other languages!
> > AND: winmsd displays a progress dialog window like this
> >
> > +--------------------------+
> > | Generating WinMSD report |
> > |    +-------+             |
> > |    | Cancel|             |
> > +----+-------+-------------+
> >
> > which closes automatically after the second or so, when the report
> > is complete. I did not find a way to suppress this window.
> > Hope this helps,
>
> Well it does, but I don't think weird windows popping up when
> calling a Python function is not really tolerable. Having the
> program write to a fixed filename is even less -- you'd write
> that file (which contains private data I suppose) into the
> current dir which could be just about anywhere...
>
> Perhaps some of the win32 wizards out there could help out
> with a function that gets this data from the registry (either
> direct via MarkHs win32 package or indirect via "regedit") ?
>
> Anyway, thanks for looking into this, Thomas.
>
> --
> Marc-Andre Lemburg
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Y2000:                                                    65 days left
> Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
> Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/
>
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From xtian_the_great at hotmail.com  Sun Oct 31 01:48:49 1999
From: xtian_the_great at hotmail.com (Xtian Muirhead)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:48:49 +1300
Subject: Changing cursors...
Message-ID: <7vgqh7$a5v6q$1@titan.xtra.co.nz>

Hello -

I've been having a play with Tkinter, and I've ported across
a program that I wrote while learning VB, but I've had one
problem. There's one step that has a chunk of processing
which takes a few seconds to complete. In the old program, I
changed the cursor to an hourglass at the start, and reset
when the program finished. Trying to do the same in the new
version doesn't seem to work:

      self.btnIterate['state'] = DISABLED # after the call to
      self.btnClear['state'] = DISABLED   # update_idletasks,
                                          # the buttons are
                                          # disabled, but...

      self.root['cursor'] = 'wait'        # ...this doesn't happen.
      self.root.update_idletasks()

      # do some processing... (cursor is an arrow)

      self.btnIterate['state'] = NORMAL
      self.btnClear['state'] = NORMAL
      self.root['cursor'] = 'arrow'

      # after the callback processing is finished the cursor is
      # still the arrow - if I comment this out, the cursor
      # does change, but not until the callback processing
      # finishes.

It looks like update_idletasks() doesn't do cursors - is this
correct? (I looked in all the answer-type places of which I
could think.)

Xtian

xtian at regurgitator.zzn.com







From puter_programmer at yahoo.com  Mon Oct 11 05:53:33 1999
From: puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:53:33 GMT
Subject: ob_refcnt and Py_BuildValue 
Message-ID: <3801b250.51460343@news.supernews.com>

I'm just learning how to write C extension modules in Python and I
have a question about the reference counts.  Is there any reason
Py_BuildValue would output an object with a reference count other than
1?  I put together a simple test and when building an integer object I
get a ob_refcnt value of 4.  In other code where I'm using
Py_BuildValue for an integer object I'm getting 7 for ob_refcnt and I
really don't understand why.

I've included the test code below.  When run on my system the printf
prints out "refcnt=4" when it seems to me it should be printing out
"refcnt=1".

TIA
-Dan



#include "/usr/local/include/python1.5/Python.h"


static PyObject * 
test_test(self, args)
	PyObject * self;
	PyObject * args;
{
    PyObject *x;
    int y=10;

    x = Py_BuildValue("i", y);
    printf("refcnt=%d\n", x->ob_refcnt);
    Py_INCREF(Py_None);
    return Py_None;
}


static PyMethodDef test_methods[] = {
    {"test", test_test, METH_VARARGS},
    {NULL,	NULL}
};


void inittest() {
    (void) Py_InitModule("test", test_methods);
}







From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 16:09:59 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 22:09:59 +0200
Subject: Tkinter app 'freezes' when I use after_idle
References: <ksu2na636b.fsf@telelogic.se> <3819864B.297FCB9E@home.com>
Message-ID: <ks7lk653oo.fsf@telelogic.se>

Thanx, you showed me something I have missed.. it is probably what I
needed, the tkinter fileevent.

        /Andy

/ Doug Hellmann <doughellmann at home.com> wrote:
| [...]
| Tk will not update the display while you are doing work in your idle
| handler unless you call update() or update_idletasks().  It sounds like
| you are doing that for some widgets, as you see some changes on the

Yep a couple of labels that I set..         

| display.  But if your idle handler blocks while reading data from the

I am trying not to block..using select to see if there are anything to
read,I don't know how much time is spent in my code around the select loop.. 

| network, it might take a while to come back.  Keep in mind that as long
| as the program is running your callback code, the display will not be
| updated.  

*HMM* Ok lets try to sort this out.. Of course the first call to the
 function is from a callback, when I press the 'go' button a call is
 made to 'checkfunc'. Last in checkfunc I call
 self.after_idle(checkfunc) this would stay away from the event??

| 
| You could use a file handler to let Tk watch the socket for you (instead
| of doing your own select).  You would then get a callback when there is
| data for you to read from the socket.  I've had success with this scheme

*bonk* I have heard about that, time to take a dig into my TCL/TK book again.. 

| watching the read end of a pipe.  As a little bit of data is available,
| I read it into a buffer.  When the pipe is empty (read 0 bytes in the
| event handler), I know I have all of the data and I start doing the real
| processing.  Of course, if you can process part of the data at a time
| that would be even more efficient.
| 
| Doug



From ckotso at cs.ntua.gr  Fri Oct 29 19:17:11 1999
From: ckotso at cs.ntua.gr (Constantinos A. Kotsokalis)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 23:17:11 GMT
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
References: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr> <B43F505E.226C%petrilli@digicool.com>
Message-ID: <slrn81kam9.hn.ckotso@geek.dialup.ntua.gr>

On Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:23:42 -0400, Christopher Petrilli wrote:
>I think Tim Peters is the correct foil to Tom Christiansen :-0

Well, let's vote 3 people (just for the fun of it, and who knows
maybe we can convince someone to go, this way). My votes go to

1. Guido van Rossum (yes I know you are surprised)
2. Fredrik Lund
3. Tim Peters

<getting-used-to-reading-such-conclusions>-ly y'rs,
  Costas

-- 
Constantinos A. Kotsokalis - ckotso at cs.ntua.gr - NTUA - ECE Dept.
"Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers."



From skip at mojam.com  Sat Oct  2 08:23:17 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 07:23:17 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: newbie question int to string conversion
In-Reply-To: <7t4n7n$kdj$1@hub.org>
References: <m3emfegwg3.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
	<7t4n7n$kdj$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <14325.63797.550594.431553@dolphin.mojam.com>

    D'Arcy> Does exception handling carry a lot of overhead?  I routinly do
    D'Arcy> things like this.

    D'Arcy>     try: return string.atoi(v)
    D'Arcy>     except:
    D'Arcy>         try: return string.atof(v)
    D'Arcy>         except: return string.strip(v)

    D'Arcy> Of course, this is in a CGI where network lag hides a multitude
    D'Arcy> of sins.  :-)

Exception handling is expensive if you hit the except clause a lot.  If it's
an occasional thing or you are only processing a small number of CGI inputs,
you should be okay.  On the other hand, if you're doing something (bizarre)
like

    v = "abc"
    for i in range(10000):
        try: result = string.atoi(v)
        except:
            try: result = string.atof(v)
            except: result = string.strip(v)

then you should test for valid input before attempting conversion.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Wed Oct 20 17:49:51 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 17:49:51 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: akuchlin@mems-exchange.org's message of "20 Oct 1999 14:09:48 -0400"
References: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim> <3dzoxd7vkj.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <vr904x1z40.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling) writes:

> I've always wondered why he considered 37 helpful.

Because it is a factor of any number made up by repeating any single digit
some multiple of three times?  (v.g. 111, 222222, 333333333, 444444444444)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From savageb at pacbell.net  Thu Oct 14 21:03:34 1999
From: savageb at pacbell.net (savageb)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 18:03:34 -0700
Subject: Text/Cursor User Interface with Python
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se>
Message-ID: <J3vN3.435$ws.19458@typhoon-sf.snfc21.pbi.net>

tommy <tommy at artech.se> wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Someone who know any good module for Python to easy write Text/Cursor
> Interfaces???
>
> I like it to have support for widget like:
>
> - scrollboxs
> - dialog box
> - input box
> - menu
> - lists
>
> Shoule be used to make textbased UI for applications end I dosen't like to
> spend time on wroting the UI more like to spend time to write the
> applications instand.
>
> Thanks Tommy

Hi, Tommy,

Although it doesn't have everything you mention, you should take a look at
the cmd module. It comes standard with the Python distribution, and it
includes a commandline and semi-automatic help services. Well worth checking
out.

Bob



From dalke at bioreason.com  Sun Oct 10 16:19:57 1999
From: dalke at bioreason.com (Andrew Dalke)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:19:57 -0600
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>  <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>  <slrn7vvjai.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <slrn7vvjn6.tue.thantos@brimstone.mecha> <380027E7.D0CC35EF@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <3800F4ED.641A81FB@bioreason.com>

David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net> asked:
> Who is Dylan?

>From Simon and Garfunkle's "Simple Desultury Phillipic",
(see http://www.paulsimon.org/noframe.html)

| He's so unhip that
| When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
| Whoever he was.
| The man ain't got no culture,

 Your off-tangent reference for the day :)

						Andrew Dalke
						dalke at acm.org



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 04:21:18 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:21:18 +0200
Subject: Byte type advice
References: <7uiksq$gcv$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>
Message-ID: <02e401bf1ad4$17d4e380$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Scott Barron <kain at twilight.> wrote:
> Is there any Byte type in Python?  What I am specifically trying to do
> is port some VB code which has a Byte type defined as an unsigned 8-bit
> number.  Would it be safe to use a regular Python number type, or am I
> going to have to do more work?

python integers correspond to long integers
in C, and are usually signed 32-bit values.

you can probably use them in this case, but
you have to watch out for places where your
program expects some special behaviour from
the byte variables (such as wraparound, or
truncation to 8 bits, or something).  you might
need to insert "& 0xff" or even "% 0xff" in some
places.  it all depends on the code...

use chr() and ord() to convert to and from binary
strings.

</F>

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




From madonl at bigfoot.com  Thu Oct 28 00:39:06 1999
From: madonl at bigfoot.com (Louis Madon)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 00:39:06 -0400
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au> <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <3817D36A.1BA8DAE@bigfoot.com>

Greg Ewing wrote:
> 
> Multiple dispatch is an attractive idea, but it makes me uneasy.
> One reason is that it's not clear what the rules should be.
> 
> Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
> and there are methods defined for the combinations
> foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
> 
> Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
> which method should get called?

Neither, you should get a "message ambiguous" error unless (as you say
below) some arbitrary rule is used to disambiguate.    

> 
> Arbitrary rules can of course be invented, but there is
> no single choice that is obviously "right" the way there
> is with single dispatch.

Yes, but why is having a "single choice" so important?  There is an
analogy here with static vs. dynamic typing.  In a statically typed
language there is always a well defined (ie. single choice) type for
each variable so you know you'll never get a type error at runtime.  Not
so with dynamic typing, nonetheless many people prefer that for numerous
reasons (eg. greater flexibility), and argue that type errors can be
dealt with during testing.  Similarly, multiple dispatch gives you a
more expressive object system - thus permitting simpler, more reusable
class models in many cases - so dealing with the occasional ambiguous
message error during testing seems a small price to pay. 

> 
> Multiple inheritance has a similar problem, which is why
> I'm not all that keen on it either, unless used in a very
> restricted way.

But if the domain you need to model isn't naturally hierarchical you'll
end up with redundancy in your class model making the projects'
evolution and maintenance more tedious.  No MI is Ok if the project is
relatively small, but as you scale things up the redundancy problem just
keeps getting worse.  [Admittedly, MI is not implemented to well in some
languages, eg, c++, but thats no reason to throw the baby out with the
bath water].

> 
> If you have multiple dispatch *and* multiple inheritance,
> things get just too hairy to contemplate. I tried to devise
> a set of rules for this case once, but my brain got dangerously
> close to exploding and I had to give up...

Can you elaborate? I mean about MD + MI (Its ok, I'll keep a safe
distance from you so feel free to self destruct while considering
this :-)

Louis



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Fri Oct 29 02:31:07 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 02:31:07 -0400
Subject: search (match) backward
In-Reply-To: <3817CBE6.4A7BFD2B@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <000201bf21d7$2efd4a20$af2d153f@tim>

[Tim, sketches the usual NFA-based proof that the regular languages are
closed
 under reversal]

[John Farrell]
> In theory, yes, but I don't believe that REs can necessarily be
> converted to state machines, particularly not DFAs.

Definitions:  I was using RE, NFA and DFA in their long-established "comp
sci" senses, where it's been equally long established <wink> that the three
are interchangeable.

> For example:
>
>> (?P=name)
>> Matches whatever text was matched by the earlier group named name.
>> This implies that the value is stored somewhere, and DFAs cannot do
>> that.

Right, backreferences are too powerful for REs to capture; for that matter,
they're too powerful for full-blown context-free grammars!  That makes them
a very strange addition to the "regular expression" repertoire.

> \number is similar.

Well, identical <wink>:  named groups are light syntactic sugar for numbered
backreferences; Python's search engine doesn't even know named groups exist
(they're converted to numbered backreferences in a preprocessing step).

> I am not sure about these either:
> [lookahead assertions]

Those don't add real power to REs, although they're *convenient*.  One of
the strangest uses for positive lookahead assertions is the idiom

   (?=regexp1)regexp2

as a way to write a regexp that succeeds only if a string matches both
regexp1 and regexp2.  In  other words, it's a bizarre way to express
language intersection.  "comp sci" REs are provably closed under
intersection without tricks like that.

> I don't know whether there are other types of state machines that
> have the memory to implement the RE specification properly, and are
> still susceptible to Tim's argument.

I don't think there are, taking "RE" in the Perl/Python sense.  For example,
offhand I don't think it's possible to write a Perl/Python (ir)regular
expression that matches all and only the reversal of strings matched by this
Perl/Python IRE:

    ^(.+)(.+)(\1|\2)+$

Backreferences destroy many nice RE properties.  A practical one is that a
DFA can always be constructed for any (comp sci) RE that says yea or nay on
any string in worst-case linear (in the length of the string) time.  Add
backreferences, and matching suddenly becomes an NP-Complete problem (see,
e.g.,

    http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/NPC/

).

> However I believe for the subset of REs which do not use the constructs
> mentioned above, Tim's argument is correct.

Oh yes!  But that argument is even older than I am <wink>.

ire-is-well-named-ly y'rs  - tim





From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Oct 28 19:25:10 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 12:25:10 +1300
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com> <87d7tzi14v.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <c75iu3rm5k9.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Dave Cole <djc at itga.com.au> writes:

> > actually a much quicker test is:
> > Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> > Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> > >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> > >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> > >>> a
> > [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> > >>>
> 
> heresy:~% python
> Python 1.5.2 (#0, Sep 13 1999, 09:12:57)  [GCC 2.95.1 19990816 (release)] on linux2
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))
> >>> a
> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
> >>> 
> 
> - Dave

that's an unnecessary lamdba there.

a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))

is the same as:

a.sort(cmp)

but, then that's the same as:

a.sort()

--
Tim Evans




From mcfletch at vrtelecom.com  Sat Oct 23 12:39:25 1999
From: mcfletch at vrtelecom.com (Mike Fletcher)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 12:39:25 -0400
Subject: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
In-Reply-To: <7usfo2$mip$1@news.udel.edu>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIOEMJCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>

Another approach:

def x( r,b,g ):
	def y( r,b,g, recurse ):
		a,b,c = dosomething(r,b,g)
		return recurse( a,b,c, recurse )
	return y( r,b,g, y)

Which is not really pretty (unless you're a devoted fan of continuation
passing I suppose), but should work :) .  Enjoy,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Terry Reedy
Sent: October 23, 1999 10:12 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
...
No.  The easiest thing to do is move the definition of fill_code_list()
out of the body of display_codes() (perhaps with a leading underscore).
...




From emile at fenx.com  Fri Oct  1 07:49:30 1999
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 04:49:30 -0700
Subject: References vs copies w/ *x
References: <despamme.bstankie-0110990212010001@pub56k-29-72.dialup.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <tl1J3.1900$r8.63155@news.direcpc.com>

Brian,

>>> a = [1,2,3]
>>> b = [[]]*3
>>> b = map(lambda x:a[:],b)
>>> b[1][1] = 'c'
>>> b
[[1, 2, 3], [1, 'c', 3], [1, 2, 3]]

-----or-----

>>> a = [1,2,3]
>>> b = []
>>> for i in range(3):b.append(a[:])
>>> b[1][1] = 'c'
>>> b
[[1, 2, 3], [1, 'c', 3], [1, 2, 3]]

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com
-------------------


Zamboo <despamme.bstankie at eye.psych.umn.edu> wrote in message
news:despamme.bstankie-0110990212010001 at pub56k-29-72.dialup.umn.edu...
> Hello,
>
> I have read through the Learning Python book and have found some
peculiar
> behavior with the *x (repetition) command.  Here is what I am doing
and
> getting:
>
> >>> a=[1,2,3]
> >>> b=[a[:]]*3
> >>> b
> [[1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3]]
> >>> b[0][2]=10
> >>> b
> [[1, 2, 10], [1, 2, 10], [1, 2, 10]]
>
>
> Notice that if I change one of the elements in b, it changes all of
the
> elements.  I assume that the repetition is also referencing a memory
> location, but how can I force the repetition command to make copies?
>
> Thanks,
> Brian
>
> --
> <if you want to e-mail me please de-spam my address>





From cnetzer at mail.arc.nasa.gov  Fri Oct  1 20:49:45 1999
From: cnetzer at mail.arc.nasa.gov (Chad Netzer)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 00:49:45 +0000
Subject: lzw.py
References: <37F384C4.9486B017@darwin.in-berlin.de> <37F4005C.385FFC8E@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <37F556A9.FAB9C822@mail.arc.nasa.gov>

Chad Netzer wrote:

   [Some ugly stuff that I've deleted]

Man, I've got to stop using Netscape's stupid News reader software...
Hope the presentation didn't marr the information.





From jam at quark.emich.edu  Wed Oct  6 02:13:36 1999
From: jam at quark.emich.edu (Jeff)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 02:13:36 -0400
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <19991006021336.B28582@quark.emich.edu>

On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 02:56:24AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> While looking through the Docs, I don't see any method to set the
> local computers clock via python?
> 
> Did I miss something, or is that actually "missing" from python??
> 
> 		- Benjamin
> 

it's only missing because there (probably) isn't a clean way to do it across
platforms. you could probably quite easily do it with a libc call in linux,
but could you use that same code to do it in a win32 or os/2 or even BSD
environment without a lot of headaches? probably not.

how badly do you need this functionality?

regards,
J
-- 
|| visit gfd <http://quark.newimage.com/> 
|| psa member #293 <http://www.python.org/> 
|| New Image Systems & Services, Inc. <http://www.newimage.com/>



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Oct 19 17:50:49 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:50:49 -0400
Subject: interprocess on Windows?
In-Reply-To: <7ui7v9$it0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <1271753400-22060293@hypernet.com>

> Forced to Windows (98), can I do interprocess communication with
> Python, i.e. having two objects that communicate with each other?
> (like in Linux).

Sockets are portable (as long as you remember that select 
*only* works on sockets on Windows).

If you download the Win32 extensions, you can use the native 
Windows IPC methods.

- Gordon



From fdrake at acm.org  Thu Oct 21 17:33:49 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:33:49 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
In-Reply-To: <87k8ogih25.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca>
	<87k8ogih25.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <14351.34493.930412.999462@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
 > But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into
 > another?  For example, is there some way by which a newly created
 > object could soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy
 > has already been registered?  If one similar object is found, this

  A truely Vile Hack ;-)

	>>> class C: pass
        ...
        >>> c1 = C()
        >>> c2 = C()
        >>> c2.__dict__ = c1.__dict__
        >>> c1.foo = "bar"
        >>> c2.foo
        'bar'

  Not to be used in real code!


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct 12 22:33:24 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 02:33:24 GMT
Subject: Freeze for Windows NT?
References: <001c01bf150d$435ed5f0$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-VjJRP7doxjVZ@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:55:28, "Mark Hammond" 
<mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:

> > 	I'm attempting to use Freeze under Windows NT, and I
> > believe that I
> > need
> > a recompiled version of Python?!?!?!?
> 
> Well, freeze itself requires a C compiler which would seem to make it
> instantly useless for you.
> 
> I suggest you check out Gordon's installer at
> http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/.  If this works for you it is
> probably a much better alternative.

I'll take a look, but the problem is that my boss doesn't want python 
installed
on additional machines.  Freeze seems to be a nice alternative, we do
technically have a C compiler available to us.  The "trick" here is 
that it is
*NOT*  Visual C++ v5.

I've tried rebuilding python under C++ Builder (borland), which I was 
not
at all successful with.

Anyone with success stories, can apply inside....

			- Benjamin
================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 15 06:30:07 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 06:30:07 -0400
Subject: SWIG Question
In-Reply-To: <7u5gev$8bp$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7u5gev$8bp$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <19991015063006.A582376@vislab.epa.gov>

frankmcgeough at my-deja.com:
 |
 |I am a SWIG newbie. It looks pretty cool. I was able to download it
 |today and get basic stuff working in a couple hours.

Yeah.  It's certainly a useful tool.

 |Question: I have a number of C++ classes that have string members that
 |are returned by get methods.
 |
 |ex: std::string getErrorString();
 |
 |SWIG maps this to a string representing a pointer by default. I'd like
 |to do a .c_str() and convert the value to a Python string. How do I
 |setup a typemap to do this?

I've only wrapped C with Python, but I'd guess you want to look at using
%addmethods to add a function to your class to access your string as a char
* (or just add one to your C API).  SWIG will wrap this such that it is
accessible as a Python string.  So there's no need to use any
Python-specific code in the wrappers.

Possibly something like this, though you'll want to do something more
intelligent with the size and location of the returned string buffer:

     %addmethods MY_STRING
     {
       const char *GetCString()
       {
          static  char result[80];

          result[0] = '\0';
          stncat( result, internal_str, sizeof(result)-1 )
          return result;
       }
     }

Randall



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 31 05:46:56 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 05:46:56 -0500
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
Message-ID: <oqaeozu7rz.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Oops!  I should probably have forwarded to the list as well...  Otherwise,
very little chance remains to see Python mode modified, if only one person
sees the suggestion :-).

-------------- next part --------------
An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: Default indentation of 4 columns
Date: 31 Oct 1999 05:27:33 -0500
Size: 1401
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/19991031/390404af/attachment.mht>
-------------- next part --------------

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 15 23:22:49 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 23:22:49 -0400
Subject: mxODBC windows and cursors
In-Reply-To: <7u8nsf$icq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <1272079080-2469890@hypernet.com>

damien_morton at my-deja.com wrote:
>  I have been using the mxODBC library in a win32 environment, and
> Ive struck a small problem. Perhaps someone can help. 
[snip]
> The result of executing this code is listed below:
> >>> OperationalError: ('S1000', 0, '[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server
> >>> Driver]
> Connection is busy with results for another hstmt', 3205)
> 
> 
> This seems to indicate to me that I can have only one active
> cursor per connection. Is this necessarily true? 

Nope. As the error msg shows, this a limitation of the driver, 
not ODBC, nor the DB.

> Is there some
> way around this limitation, or will I need to maintain a
> connection for each cursor? (my tests indicate that each
> connection is about 600K, whereas each cursor is about 3K)

You'd probably do better to fetch everything you need from one 
statement before executing the next. If your processing really 
involves both resultsets, the DB would be even happier if you 
worked out how to do what you want using set processing 
instead of record-at-a-time processing.

- Gordon



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Tue Oct  5 21:51:34 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 11:51:34 +1000
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=3Coqd7ut5ngu=2Efsf=40titan=2Eprogiciels-bpi=2Eca=3E=3B_f?=
 =?iso-8859-1?Q?rom_Fran=E7ois_Pinard_on_Tue=2C_Oct_05=2C_1999_at_08:42:2?=
 =?iso-8859-1?Q?5PM_-0400?=
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu> <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com> <oqd7ut5ngu.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <19991006115134.A802@Ridcully.home>

My attempt at an explanation of what is going on with regards to
ipchains in the Linux 2.4 kernels... (for non-Linux users, this is
likely to be a little bit boring and very non-Python orientated. My
apologies.)

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 08:42:25PM -0400, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> Bill Anderson <banderson at boi.hp.com> ?crit:
> 
> > it is worth making the comment that ipchains is gone in 2.3.x, and
> > hence 2.4.
> 
> Are you serious?  If this is true, it is worth telling indeed, before we
> invest too much Python work in that direction.  Could you tell me/us more?
> What is happening exactly?  If you happen to know, _why_ is it happening?

For a start, there is both good news and bad news. At least for the
forseeable future, you will still be able to use ipchains. However, it
is not compatible with iptables and ipnatctl (the new tools), so you
can choose to stay with what you know or upgrade -- but you can't go
halfway.

The new package, as a whole, is called Netfilter and as of October 4
was at version 0.1.10 and required a kernel version of 2.3.18 or
higher. I have no personal experience with using it, since I am
staying clear of the 2.3.x kernels for the moment. I have tried to
keep up with the discussions on what is going on and there are
pointers later on to the documentation.

As I mentioned, the old ipchains package has been split into two.
Firstly, we have ipnatctl, which handle Network Address Translation
(NAT), masquerading and transparent proxying. In short, it does any
work that requires mangling the source and/or destination addresses of
your packages. (Anybody wondering why you would want to do this, etc,
should probably contact me via e-mail for more information. I'll
assume networking knowledge for the present.)

The other half of the package is iptables which is concerned with the
packet filtering side of things. Once you get used to the fact that
you have to deal with two programs, the split kind of make sense.

As to the "why", apart from manageability, Rusty Russell, the guy who
is the major contributor to the Netfilter package explains it by
saying that he felt he has done a better job on the filtering side of
things this time than he did with the ipchains package (to be honest
and fair, he has been saying for a long time that there are some
problems with ipchains - mostly efficiency-wise from what I
understand).

The interfaces to the new programs (at least from the command line)
are not amazingly different from ipchains, but I'm not sure how it
looks from a lower-level perspective. There is a netfilter hacking
HOWTO at the web sites below that may be of some use.

For more information on the Netfilter package, look at 
http://antartica.penguincomputing.com/~netfilter
http://www.samba.org/netfilter
http://netfilter.kernelnotes.org

Hope this helps,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From aahz at netcom.com  Sat Oct 23 10:55:51 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 14:55:51 GMT
Subject: SF Bay: Python Training?
Message-ID: <7usi9n$2cc$1@nntp1.atl.mindspring.net>

We just hired a new webmaster who has never done any programming.  Does
anyone know of any Python training taking place over the next month or
two in the SF Bay Area?  (Yes, I know about the other options; I'm
hoping to possibly piggy-back on some other company's training session.)
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Mon Oct  4 13:09:55 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 03:09:55 +1000
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>; from Benjamin Schollnick on Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 10:11:21AM +0000
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991004171229.A678@Ridcully.home> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <19991005030955.A1012@Ridcully.home>

OK, I think I can clear up most of the problems now -- two of which I
should have noticed on my first pass through the message. Apologies
for any time wasted. :-)

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 10:11:21AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
[ ...snip... ]
> > 	From my experimentation is GMTIME:
> > 
> > python MKTIME calcs				RFC 868
> > (Base 1970, Jan 1)		          (Base Jan 1, 1900)
> > Jan 1, 1970	- 18,000.0			2,208,988,800
> > Jan 1, 1976	- 189,320,400.0			2,398,291,200
                     ^^^^^
A typo. This should be 189,302,400.0

> > Jan 1, 1980	- 3,155,550,800.0		2,524,521,600 (CORRECTION)
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Another typo. There are too many 5's in this number. Get rid of one of
the fives and the number is only out by the systematic error I mention
below (making it is sensibly incorrect, rather than insanely so).

[ ...more stuff deleted... ]
> I simply:
> 
> >>> import time
> >>> print time.gmtime(0)
> (1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0)
> >>> print time.mktime(1970, 1,1,0,0,0,3,1,0)
> 18000.0
> >>> print time.mktime(1980, 1,1,0,0,0,3,1,0)
> 315550800.0
>

The problem here is that mktime() assumes the tuple you are passing it
is in the local timezone (i.e. mktime() undoes the localtime()
function, rather than the gmtime() function). I should have realised
this is what you were doing when I saw that magic 18000 number and
your email address. That represents the number of seconds that have to
be added to a local time to get the equivalent UTC (or GMT) time (i.e.
you are 6 hours *behind* UTC).

In relation to your original problem, however, this should not be a
problem, since time.time() returns the number of seconds since the
epoch in UTC, so you simply need to add the number of seconds between
1/1/1900 and 1/1/1970 (2,208,988,800) to get the value in RFC 868
format.

As an aside, to get your example above to work, you need to be a
little "devious", otherwise you get bitten by daylight savings time as
well as timezones. :-)

To explain, suppose timetuple is 9 element tuple representing
something returned by time.gmtime(), for example. Then, if you are
*not* in daylight savings time, the correct number of seconds is

time.mktime(timetuple) - time.timezone

However, if you are in daylight savings time, you need to use

time.mktime(timetuple) - time.altzone

To determine if you are in daylight savings time or not for a random
date, you should look at the last component of the tuple returned by
time.localtime(). Conveniently enough, time.mktime() ignores the
daylight savings flag, so you can just feed the number it returns back
into time.localtime() to get a new tuple and test its last component.
If the last component is zero, use time.timezone, otherwise use
time.altzone .

(Of course, I can write that last paragraph with confidence now - but
I just spent five or ten minutes going bananas while I tried to work
out was going wrong. In Australia, 1/1/1980 is in daylight savings
time, so until I noticed that pesky last component I was adding the
wrong correction to the time.mktime() result. Interestingly, 1/1/1970
is *not* in daylight savings time according to my machine -- although
I believe that in this case the computer is in error, rather than
reality being wrong. Northern Hemisphere residents may not notice that
error so quickly, unless they test a less "pretty" date like 1 July,
or something.)

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Oct 26 03:53:25 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:53:25 +0200
Subject: any way to protect __dict__?
References: <7v28m3$s88@u2.netgate.net>
Message-ID: <38155DF5.CAB13702@lemburg.com>

Chris Knight wrote:
> 
> Hi all, I've been working on a class that has the __get/setattr__ function but
> I want to protect __dict__ so that all attribute access has to go through these
> functions.  Is there a way to do such a thing?
> 
> Perusing the C API, I'd guess I could do this through an object created in C.
> I haven't spent much time with the C API so I don't fully understand what the
> limitations of such an implementation might imply...

Protecting __dict__ only is difficult, since this is handled by the
class/instance implementation. One way to achieve what you have in
mind is to protect the whole object against access from other
objects and only enable a small set of allowed methods.

mxProxy will help you a long way in achieving this without having
to switch over to protected execution mode:

	http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/mxProxy.html

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From jklymak at apl.washington.edu  Thu Oct 21 12:44:42 1999
From: jklymak at apl.washington.edu (Jody M. Klymak)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 09:44:42 -0700
Subject: win32: cygwin modules?
References: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu> <7un8pq$qk9$1@smaug.cape.com>
Message-ID: <aepcpssl.fsf@apl.washington.edu>

Hi Norman,

Well to partially answer my own question I found this page by smacking
dejanews appropriately:
http://starship.python.net/crew/kernr/mingw32/Notes.html I haven't
completed all the steps, but it *seems* to be a step-by-step on
setting up mingw32 to create dlls that python can use as extensions.
(Of course I'm hoping someone will step in here and correct me if I'm
confused) maybe that will help you out?

Cheers,  Jody

>>>>> "NV" == Norman Vine <nhv at cape.com> writes:

    NV> Jody M. Klymak writes:
    >> Has anyone built modules from c-source using cygwin (20.1 if it
    >> matters) that work with python?

    NV> Hi

    NV> I have had limited success with python 1.52 and cygwin 20.1
    NV> building static versions of addon libraries

    NV> The numeric module is a good test

    NV> I had problems with the socket and related modules I presume
    NV> if one could get these to work then we would have a cygwin
    NV> python

    NV> I have not tried this for a while as I was waiting for a newer
    NV> release of cygwin

    NV> If you are interested I can send you what I have but I believe
    NV> that Guido added my mods to make python with cygwin to the
    NV> standard distribution

    NV> I am interested in getting python compiling with cygwin for
    NV> another project I am working on that you might find
    NV> interesting

    NV> http://www.flightgear.org

    NV> I have a long standing interest in making something like this
    NV> with bathymetric data

    NV> Cheers

    NV> Norman Vine -- nhv at cape.com




-- 
Jody Klymak                         APL/School of Oceanography,
Doctoral Candidate                  University of Washington
mailto:jklymak at apl.washington.edu   (206)-685-9080
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/jklymak/



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct 19 21:11:27 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:11:27 -0400
Subject: Language question
In-Reply-To: <1271749005-22324681@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <000501bf1a98$08a75b40$252d153f@tim>

[Brian Kelley]
> This question actually comes up due to accident (bug?)  Here is
> the scenario
>
> class foo:
>       """insert foo here"""
>
> def bar(foo):
>       """this should really be class bar(foo):  Insert bar
>       here"""
>
> As far as python is concerned, this is prefectly legal except
> that the user of bar will probably get None for their troubles.
> That is foobar = bar() is the same thing as foobar = None.
>
> My question is, is there any real reason to allow this? ...

[Gordon McMillan]
> What's to disallow? ...

After several readings, I believe Brian objects to Python allowing him to
reuse the name of a class as a formal argument name, in a context where
"class" in place of "def" would have been legal.  That is, he would like
Python to ignore what he typed and infer his intent <wink>.

wouldn't-we-all-ly y'rs  - tim





From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 14 05:31:23 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:31:23 +1300
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com> <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de> <38043F91.F3F36D5A@compaq.com> <006601bf1582$a22f3dc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <3805A2EB.BD14BD64@compaq.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> afaik, Scriptics doesn't support Tk on Mac at
> this time.

At http://www.scriptics.com/products/tcltk/choose.html#platform,
under the heading "Supported Platforms", it says:

	* Macintosh (68K and Power Mac)

Looks like they at least claim that it works.

Greg



From cgw at fnal.gov  Fri Oct 29 10:23:58 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:23:58 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Destroying files
In-Reply-To: <0b6201bf220d$e603ef40$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net>
	<19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov>
	<000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>
	<19991029074757.A106968704@vislab.epa.gov>
	<0b6201bf220d$e603ef40$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <14361.44542.921119.98123@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Darrell writes:
 > >Randall Hopper
 > > Safest bet is a reformat of your hard drive.
 > 
 > I think reformatting only destroys the linkage between blocks. The data
 > remains.
 > 
 > Write in 'C' for DOS something that will write to a file until the disk is
 > full. Boot into DOS from floppy delete everything and run your disk filler.
 > And reformat for good measure.
 > 
 > Repeat until paranoid concerns are diminished to acceptable levels.

If you're really paranoid, you will worry about "bad blocks" - data
could be written to the disk into a block which is subesquently marked
"bad" by the disk controller; after this even "write zeros to the disk
until it's full" won't overwrite information in "bad" blocks.  A
sufficiently determined "bad guy" with the right tools could possibly
get at this information.

I've read that the military actually grinds up old disk drives, and
that some people even worry that since bit-densities are so high on
current-day disks that even after "grinding" one of the fragments
might contain recoverable data.  Seems unlikely to me, but I've read
that people in the military worry about this.



From chris at double.co.nz  Fri Oct 29 08:02:15 1999
From: chris at double.co.nz (Chris Double)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 01:02:15 +1300
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au> <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <3814B184.459B0E22@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <wk904m8jeg.fsf@double.co.nz>

skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:

> 	I see. I had never thought about it this way, despite
> reading some theory based on this idea, you have put this
> very simply. Thanks!

Clos, Dylan and Cecil are examples of languages that have multiple
dispatch.

> That is, it would be possible to specialised
> the dispatcher for each message kind, depending
> on what makes sense for that kind of message.

With Dylan you can dispatch on what are called singleton objects. That
is, the exact identity of an object.

Contrived example:

// Default for all messages
define method handle-message( window, msg, wparam, lparam) ... end;

// Called when msg is the instance of the WM_CREATE object (which may
be an integer) on an instance of <edit-window>.
define method handle-message( window :: <edit-window>, 
  msg == WM_CREATE, 
  wparam, 
  lparam)
 // Do something
 ...

 // Call next most specific method
 next-method();
end;

You probably get the idea. Clos has the same thing with 'EQL'
specialisers. Dylan can also dispatch on unions of types:

define method do-something( token :: one-of(#"word", #"sentence") )
end;

Where 'one-of' is a method which returns a type that behaves for type
matching purposes as a superclass of the types of the arguments passed
to it. The above method will be selected if called with
do-something(#"word") or do-something(#"sentence") but not anything
else.

I think Cecil is even more flexible in the things it can do in
dispatch. Clos is legendary for how flexible its dispatch mechanism
is.

Chris.



From spamfranke at bigfoot.de  Wed Oct 20 18:26:54 1999
From: spamfranke at bigfoot.de (Stefan Franke)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:26:54 GMT
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
Message-ID: <380e3730.35917151@news.btx.dtag.de>

I'm looking for the appropriate SR software to build a part of a room
installation. The task differs somewhat from the usual "dictate into
word" applications:

In the recorded audio stream should be recognized as many words as
possible - speaker independent and in German! (I can hear you shudder)


In unclear cases - there will probably be lots of them - the closest
interpretations would be OK.

Therefore completeness and correctness don't have the highest priority
in this case. 

The application is supposed to run on a Win 9x machine. Direct
accessibility from Python would be super, otherwise possible via
COM/SAPI from M$, admittedly I don't know anything about its
capableness.

I read the postings about NatLink in c.l.p, but in absence of a demo
version of NatSpeak I cannot tell anything about its suitability, so I
would be pleased to hear some opinions of this group's numerous SR
experts!

Regards,
Stefan




From gherron at aw.sgi.com  Fri Oct  8 17:22:46 1999
From: gherron at aw.sgi.com (Gary Herron)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 14:22:46 -0700
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
References: <1272710597-42056950@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <37FE60A6.B8357717@aw.sgi.com>

Gordon McMillan wrote:
> 
> A new beta (03) of the Win32 Installer package is available on
> starship:
> 
> http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/beta03.html
> 

The url needs a captial `B' in the word `beta' to be accessed:

  http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/Beta03.html

As for the actual content once you get past the URL problem ...

It looks very intriguing.  I'm eager to try it out.

Thanks, 
Gary

-- 
Dr. Gary Herron <gherron at aw.sgi.com>
206-287-5616
Alias | Wavefront
1218 3rd Ave, Suite 800, Seattle WA 98101
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From just at letterror.com  Thu Oct 14 04:21:54 1999
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:21:54 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim>
References:  <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BE36049@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.c
 om>
Message-ID: <l03102801b42b3f63d2d1@[193.78.237.148]>

At 12:25 AM -0400 10/14/99, Tim Peters wrote:
>[comparing Robin Boerdijk's xstruct C extension module
>     http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html
> with Just van Rossum's sstruct Python module
>     http://starship.python.net/crew/just/code/sstruct.py
>]


>> So far, I have only documented up to the point that I thought that people
>> who need to interact intimately with C structs from Python (and have been
>> struggling with struct.pack and struct.unpack to do that) would get
>> enthousiastic about this new module.

Hm, that was largely my motivation, too... The lack of interest in
sstruct.py proved to me that very few people work a lot with C structs.
Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky myself.

>Curiously enough, I hardly ever muck with C structs.  I too would like to
>hear from people who do!

I developed sstruct.py mainly because I needed to be able to read and write
an existing binary file format (TTF files) which uses a lot of C structs. I
found myself doing lots of stuff like:

    (self.foo, self.bar, self.zazoo, self.blarg =
          struct.unpack(format, data[:struct.calcsize(format)]))

and

    data = struct.pack(format, self.foo, self.bar, self.zazoo, self.blarg)

which gets very tedious when the number of struct elements is large. But I
also wanted my struct wrapper to work with some existing classes, so a
solution which would just work with class instances and/or dicts seemed
most straightforward to me. Hm, actually, it still does: for my purposes it
would be undesirable to have a special struct object.

>I only jumped in here because I thought you had
>written a very interesting module, and your announcement was followed by
>days of silence.  You may not like the approach I've taken here, but it has
>gotten the module some much-needed publicity <wink>.

Which goes for sstruct.py, too, so thank you very much...

Just





From thomas at bibsyst.no  Wed Oct 20 06:28:31 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 12:28:31 +0200
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
Message-ID: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

I got an idea ( and I`m a newbie, so bare with me ) :

I got an database in which I want to store some customized objects.
These objects are in my opinion not very big, but they seem to take up a
lot of space anyhow, when pushed into a database. On solution I`ve used
in a similar situation using a different programming language, was to
use plain strings, and use some sort of delimiter between each
attribute. That will of course not include any methods defined in any
object. Then the string is stored in a database in the "d[id] = str"
fashion.

These strings can also be be some length, and often lots of repetitive
info. Then it struck me that I could use zlib to compress the string
before inserting it into the database, and decompress it when it was
taken out. The number of items to be processed couldn`t be huge due to
the decompression time of course, but with few items this could possibly
work, and result in a smaller database.

I was thinking maybe I could use pickle and compress the pickled object
too, before storing it into the database and save some space. Pickled
objects also seem to have lots of repetitive data.

Now my question is :

1. has this been tested and found ineffective in relation to a) speed of
decompression or b) size of objects not big enough to gain any
significant size advantage by compression
2. if not tested, why? Maybe a subclass of pickle could implement
compression and decompression of objects?

Since these scripts are to be run on 400Mhz computers and the number of
items will not exceed 20-30, objects being relativly small, how will the
speed be? Any clues??

Awaiting flames and harsh words of discouragement,
Thomas Weholt




From mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu  Tue Oct  5 16:37:43 1999
From: mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu (Michael Vanier)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 20:37:43 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> (message from
	Charles G Waldman on Tue, 5 Oct 1999 11:06:04 +0200 (MET DST))
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <199910052037.NAA01885@endor>

> From: Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 11:06:04 +0200 (MET DST)
> Cc: python-list at cwi.nl
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
> 
> Michael Vanier writes:
> 
>  > With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
>  > person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
>  > marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs for
>  > a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)
> 
> Do you know anything about so-called "Junk DNA"?  To me, Guido's quote
> seems like a perfectly apt analogy for what one of my former
> co-workers liked to call "surgical code adhesions".  It's not like
> he's dropping some pointless reference to some pie-in-the-sky
> technology like DNA-based computing.  It's simply an analogy drawn
> from outside the world of computer science, which shows that somehow,
> in addition to writing and maintaining Python and other software, and
> answering numerous silly and not-so-silly questions on this newsgroup,
> he manages to stay well-informed about a wide variety of subjects.
> 

Actually, yes, I know something about junk DNA (I have a degree in
molecular biology).  To the best of my knowledge (please correct me,
anyone, if I'm wrong) no one has ever proved that so-called junk DNA serves
no function whatsoever, although it isn't transcribed into proteins --
e.g. it may have some role in maintaining the structural integrity of
chromosomes during cell division etc.  My point is that the analogy is not
as sound as it appears, and for that reason, I suppose, it tweaked my
internal bogo-meter, something that Guido has never even come *close* to
doing before.

Interestingly, I found another computer/DNA quote in the book "ANSI Common
Lisp" by Paul Graham, describing the extensibility of lisp:

  "Like DNA, such a language does not go out of style."

This is yet more marketing-speak, of course, which detracts from an
otherwise excellent book.

Mike






From Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De  Mon Oct 25 06:28:00 1999
From: Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De (Andreas Rozek)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 12:28:00 +0200
Subject: Q: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr 
 (on Win32)
References: <380F22AA.5EF2D410@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De> <38103636.0@nnrp1.news.uk.psi.net>
Message-ID: <381430B0.8D3A06B@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>

Pat,

thank you very much for your answer - I'll try your approach right now!

-- 

Andreas Rozek
Rechenzentrum Universitaet Stuttgart       ******   **   **   *****
Kommunikationssysteme/BelWue-Entwicklung   **   **  **   **  **
Allmandring 3a                             **   **  **   **  **
D-70550 Stuttgart                          ******   **   **   *****
                                           ***      **   **       **
Telefon: ++49 (711) 685-4514               ** **    **   **       **
Telefax: ++49 (711) 678-8363               **   **   *****   ****** 
E-Mail:  Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De
URL:     http://WWW.Uni-Stuttgart.De/People/Rozek



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Mon Oct 25 04:43:52 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:43:52 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
In-Reply-To: <slrn816bip.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910250842340.2713-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
> of course there is always zope, but it's like a sledgehammer for lots
> of stuff, and pretty complex.

   I didn't find it such complex. I am using ZTemplates on many of my sites
(along with PyApache) and plan to power some sites with Zope. I've found it
excellent product!

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 24 10:16:29 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 10:16:29 -0400
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
Message-ID: <oq904sc08y.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Hi, people.  I'm reasonably trying to follow Guido's style guide, somewhat
helped in doing so by the nice Emacs Python mode.

The only thing that really rebukes me is the interdiction to use capitals in
comments to mark non-terminals (or variables), as it does not get accompanied
by a better suggestion, or at least, none yielding as much clarity.

The 4 columns indentation rule is quite acceptable on average, expect when
I have things like, say:

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
            and function_name not in transparent_functions):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            if name not in transparent_files:
                return name, line_number

The pseudo-alignment of the `and' with `name' is rather ugly to my eyes.
It would be alleviated a bit by using `\' on the preceding line instead
of `(', but the style guide suggests that we favour '(', which looks
like a good thing.  Do some of you share my little irritation, here?
Would someone have developed some elegant and easy compromise?  I hardly
see one, but who knows, people sometimes have unexpectedly good ideas! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From dozier at abs.net  Thu Oct 21 16:45:47 1999
From: dozier at abs.net (Bill Dozier)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:45:47 -0400
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com>
Message-ID: <dozier-2110991645470001@pm4-s15.dial-up.abs.net>

In article <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0 at rubic.com>, Jeff Bauer <jbauer at rubic.com> wrote:

>One followup to Fredrik's announcement.  If you
>decide it purchase the material through FatBrain,
>set up your account *first*, and then place
>your order.  

Also, be aware that the electronic version is WinBlows only. Fatbrain
doesn't really make this clear up front (this is not Fredrick's fault).



From ivanlan at callware.com  Mon Oct 18 17:11:31 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:11:31 -0600
Subject: getargs 1.2
Message-ID: <380B8D03.85602A9@callware.com>

Hi All--
The latest version of getargs is available at:

	http://www.pauahtun.org/ftp.html

near the bottom of the page.

1.  Fixed /dev/null - nul problem
2.  Added VERSION variable
3.  Improved HTML docs, which are separately available at
	
	http://www.pauahtun.org/getargs.html

<more-arguments-than-even-klingons-know-what-to-do-with>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From doughellmann at home.com  Fri Oct 29 07:29:03 1999
From: doughellmann at home.com (Doug Hellmann)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:29:03 GMT
Subject: Tkinter app 'freezes' when I use after_idle
References: <ksu2na636b.fsf@telelogic.se>
Message-ID: <3819864B.297FCB9E@home.com>


Andrew Markebo wrote:
> 
> I am working on an Tkinter application that is supposed to fetch data
> from the internet (wow!) (a deja-client).
> 
> So I have done myself a small module that by request (for example from
> the Tkinter.after_idle) does select on a list of sockets, and if there
> exists any data, fetches it, and if all data is received, calls a
> callback.
> 
> It works.. except for that the application window freezes, except for
> the parts that I update with info about what happens.. It seems as
> thought tkinter doesn't take its time to update..
> 
> I have tried to do a after(100, after_idle, params) so it should let
> tkinter do its stuff (or have I got something wrong here)?

Tk will not update the display while you are doing work in your idle
handler unless you call update() or update_idletasks().  It sounds like
you are doing that for some widgets, as you see some changes on the
display.  But if your idle handler blocks while reading data from the
network, it might take a while to come back.  Keep in mind that as long
as the program is running your callback code, the display will not be
updated.  

You could use a file handler to let Tk watch the socket for you (instead
of doing your own select).  You would then get a callback when there is
data for you to read from the socket.  I've had success with this scheme
watching the read end of a pipe.  As a little bit of data is available,
I read it into a buffer.  When the pipe is empty (read 0 bytes in the
event handler), I know I have all of the data and I start doing the real
processing.  Of course, if you can process part of the data at a time
that would be even more efficient.

Doug



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 18 14:32:42 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:32:42 +0200
Subject: Examples using curses module.
Message-ID: <19991018203242.A30860@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hello,

I need some examples using the curses module; can someone send me some?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From tbradshaw at orchestream.com  Tue Oct 12 09:26:10 1999
From: tbradshaw at orchestream.com (Tobe Bradshaw)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:26:10 +0100
Subject: Folks..
Message-ID: <380336F2.557DDFC0@orchestream.com>

Just convince me that this NG is in fact just very quiet and it's not my
news feed that's broke..

-- 
Toby Bradshaw                     'It's probably not my fault'
--
Software Engineer,             
Orchestream,
Glen House,
125, Old Brompton Road,
London SW7 3RP.
--
Tel +44 (0) 171 598 7553



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Sat Oct 23 10:30:21 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 16:30:21 +0200
Subject: sparse matrix representation?
References: <221019990852479530%zippy@cs.brandeis.edu>
Message-ID: <7usgpi$sc1@mail.psy.uva.nl>

| I want to work with 50k x 50k matrices with mostly zeroes, so a hash
| would be the efficient way to represent this.

I do not see why and how. Would you like to elaborate?

|
| Does the Python numerical library handle large sparse matrices ?

Not right now.
However, I use Numeric's arrays to represent sparse matrices and it works
fine, at least for rather simple computations.


ionel





From skip at mojam.com  Thu Oct 28 18:13:35 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:13:35 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
In-Reply-To: <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com>
	<3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <14360.51855.397053.482045@dolphin.mojam.com>

    >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
    >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
    >>> a
    [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
    >>> 

I thought the comparison function was supposed to return -1, 0 or 1.  Yours
only returns 0 or 1.  See:

    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/typesseq-mutable.html

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 13:44:58 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 17:44:58 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
Message-ID: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Anyone know of a function equilivent in concept to a 'recursive
touch?'

Where if I say:

touch foo/bar/baz.txt

If the directories foo and bar don't exist, create them, then create
baz.txt inside of bar.

An equivilent unix command would suffice.

thanks,

---Preston

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aahz at netcom.com  Sat Oct 16 23:39:02 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 03:39:02 GMT
Subject: re question
References: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <c75g0za3g94.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <7ubgcm$ner$1@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <c75g0za3g94.fsf at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>,
Tim Evans <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>To match everything between two occurances of %%%, including embedded
>%, this expression will work:
>
>get = re.compile(r'%%%(.*?)%%%')
>
>The important part is the *?, which matches the smallest possible
>string rather than the largest.

This fails on '%'*7.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 16:45:54 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 16:45:54 -0400
Subject: BSD3 - virtual server - dyld.h not found [Q]
References: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9910181536400.1100-100000@kuarajy.infosys.com.ar>
Message-ID: <5liu435bb1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

PythonMaster <python at infosys.com.ar> writes:

> 	I am trying to compile Python 1.5.2 on a virtual server (iServer)
> that runs BSD/OS 3.1 - Virtual Kernel.
> 
> 	I am getting the following error:
> 
> gcc -D_HAVE_BSDI -c -g -O2 -I./../Include -I.. -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I/
> ./importdl.c
> ./importdl.c:269: mach-o/dyld.h: No such file or directory
> *** Error code 1
> 
> I have tryied "./configure --without-dyld" but I always get the same
> error. In the configure log I get always, even if I put the --without-dyld
> command in the ./configure script, the following message:
> 
> checking for --with-dyld... yes

Definitely don't try --without-dyld.

I don't understand how WITH_DYLD can get defined.

To debug this, remove config.cache, rerun configure, and read through
config.log -- hopefully it has a clue.

You may also read the generated config.h and simply edit it to remove
the #define WITH_DYLD that it contains.  If there is no WITH_DYLD
there, it's really a mystery -- maybe your system defines it somehow???

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



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Mon Oct 25 18:58:18 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 08:58:18 +1000
Subject: Implementing COM-interfaces in Python
In-Reply-To: <38147729.87E945A2@bart.nl>
Message-ID: <000901bf1f3c$6e09ad50$0501a8c0@bobcat>

> How do you implement custom COM-interfaces in Python? I read in the
> tutorial that you need to supply a list of strings in the variable
> _com_interfaces_ ... but is that sufficient for interfaces
> you declared
> yourself?

Python can not use vtable based COM interfaces without C++ glue code.
This means you will probably need to write a PythonCOM extension
module.  There are tools we use to automate that process - the 2 that
exist now are SWIG (slightly modified) and a tool included in the
win32com package (win32com.makegw).

Mark.




From jima at aspectdv.com  Tue Oct 26 19:45:49 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:45:49 -0700
Subject: [JPython] dir and java classes
In-Reply-To: <14358.12137.719156.762469@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <14358.5566.792900.94308@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>
 <199910262217.PAA16707@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <199910262341.QAA21103@hermes.aspectdv.com>

That makes sense.  func_code, for example, seems
to be available for JPython methods but not for Java methods,
I guess.

Jim


At 06:47 PM 10/26/99 -0400, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
>
>>>>>> "JA" == Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> writes:
>
>    JA> To further compound the teaching problem, dir() is
>    JA> inconsistent between Python and JPython.  So when trying to
>    JA> teach someone JPython, I always advise them to install Python
>    JA> just so that they can use the "more fully loaded" dir() of
>    JA> Python to help in their learning process.  Not pretty.
>
>This will be fixed for JPython, for those attributes and objects that
>make sense.  Some attributes on some objects have no equivalent in
>JPython, and those will not show up with dir() -- they'll also raise
>AttributeErrors if you try to access them.
>
>-Barry
> 



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 12:17:06 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:17:06 GMT
Subject: Python guide Brain posted
References: <7sp529$ipg$1@ssauraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com> <slrn7v0el3.cu5.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <7td89j$510$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <slrn7v0el3.cu5.bgdarnel at bgdarnel.dhis.org>,
  bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell) wrote:

> Since it came up here, I think I'll take the opportunity to point out
my
> own project, ThoughtStream, which has a similar purpose to the Brain,
> and will probably have useful Unix and Palm versions far before
> Natrificial will.  The desktop version is written in Python, using
> wxWindows for the GUI, so it will work on Windows and Unix.

This sounds fascinating.  Where can I find this?  I'm curious about the
technical aspects more than the GUI; such as, does it use a SQL backend?

Thanks,

---Preston

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 11 14:12:21 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:12:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim>
	<37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com>
	<vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
	<m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
	<873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
	<001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
	<14338.3253.395447.688829@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<14338.7420.226290.477877@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <14338.10373.752899.870140@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "SM" == Skip Montanaro <skip at mojam.com> writes:

    SM> How do you distinguish between a translatable string and a
    SM> call to a function named "_"?

You don't (or at least I don't in my admittedly sketchy forays so
far).  My pygettext.py uses tokenize to find all the function _()
calls and extracts the string inside them, writing them to the .pot
file.  It's still up to the application to write the _ function (which
probably does a caching lazy run-time translation of the string), and
make it global available.

-Barry



From gemodek at t-online.de  Thu Oct 21 03:56:56 1999
From: gemodek at t-online.de (Stephane)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:56:56 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de> <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk> <939885152.117641@news.adtranzsig.de>
Message-ID: <380EC748.48559349@t-online.de>

Dirk-Ulrich Heise wrote:
> 
> >
> >The reason for the query is that we are thinking of embedding a Python
> >engine within a BCB program, so we do not really want to use VC at all.
> 
> Me too. The BCB app is working for quite a while now, but still i'm stuck
> to my old WINAPI-based app that contains a Python 1.4 because
> i'm still seeking the perfect architecture for the new one...
> Might take another 2 years
> until i really start programming it. (The apps i write at home tend to be
> a little like Cyc or Xanadu, i suppose. I mean the timescale, not the
> goals.)
> 
Hi,

I also tried to embed some python calls in a c/C++ WIN32 application
(actually MSVC 6.0). My only problem is that I don?t find some good
starting tutorial (yes, I read the Python C api doc). Writing Python
extension is easy, I did it already.
But I spent some time playing around and trying to embed something, but
I didn?t have a real success up to now.

If you know some examples/tutorials/howtos it would be very nice.

Thanks

 Stephane

(Please mail me also directly)



From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct 19 17:30:37 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:30:37 -0600
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <vrzoxfpdwp.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
		<Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org> <14348.57394.697161.702340@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <380CE2FD.D110548C@callware.com>

Hi All--

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "DA" == David Ascher <da at ski.org> writes:
> 
>   DA>                              If nothing else, it is proof that
>   DA> the human mind will delve obsessively into arcane knowledge for
>   DA> no other reason than because it can.
> 
> But you don't need to buy the Friedl book for that.  Remeber that
> paper about the Mayan calendar at last year's conference?
> [Hi, Ivan :-).]
> 

I'm not obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive
obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive
obsessive.

<g>
<no-time-for-witticisms-in-total-panic-mode>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Fri Oct 15 21:23:13 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 16 Oct 1999 01:23:13 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <1272252635-69603208@hypernet.com> <7u5nsp$poc$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn80erat.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <7u8k21$imq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Cliff Crawford <cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu> wrote:
> Pada 14 Oct 1999 23:10:17 GMT, Martijn Faassen bilang:
> | Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
> | > If Python were Puritan, you wouldn't have for loops. Any loop 
> | > can be coded as
> | [snip]
> | > The fact that "for" exists and "while" takes a condition (and 
> | > both take an "else" clause) is symptomatic of the 
> | > insidious Dutch tendency to permissiveness.
> | 
> | Which is why those Mayflower people left the Netherlands for North
> | America way back when. Too permissive. :) 
> | 
> | it's-okay-to-call-us-insidious-ly yours,

> Eh?  Weren't the people on the Mayflower from Britain?

> trying-to-remember-the-story-of-thanksgiving-from-his-youth-ly yrs, Cliff

They were from Britain. But the pilgrims moved to the Netherlands
to live there for a while, as they were persecuted in Britain. The
Netherlands was too permissive for their puritan tastes, however, so they
went to North America after that. They picked up some sympathizers from
London before their voyage, so more than half the settlers were never in the
Netherlands.

Regards,

Martijn

-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 12 11:24:02 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:24:02 +0200
Subject: Creating Python Class Instances From C API
References: <38034BEA.173F2315@turner.com>
Message-ID: <001301bf14c5$d153b4e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

bill barrington <bill.barrington at turner.com> wrote:
>     I would like to create a python class instance using the python/C
> API for eventual return back into "python space".  IOW, I want to
> accomplish the equivalent of the following python code, but from within
> an extension:
> 
> instance = Class(<whatever>)

start here:
http://www.python.org/doc/current/api/object.html

and then look at the cPickle.c source code
(see find_class, Instance_New, load_inst, ...).

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From kiyolee*remove* at ctimail.com  Sat Oct 30 20:46:58 1999
From: kiyolee*remove* at ctimail.com (Kiyo Kelvin Lee)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 11:46:58 +1100
Subject: Tcl82.dll not found
References: <MbKS3.4152$IT5.272573@ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <7vg3hd$75q$1@newton.pacific.net.au>

You must use Tcl8.0.5 included in Python 1.5.2. It's somehow hard-linked to
use Tcl80.dll/Tk80.dll. Tcl8.0.5 and Tcl8.2 can coexist in a system. If you
really want to use Tcl82.dll/Tk82.dll, you have to recompile Python
yourself.
Kiyo

Art Goldhammer <agold1 at mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:MbKS3.4152$IT5.272573 at ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net...
> I've just installed Python 1.5.2 on a Win98 machine that already had
Tcl8.2
> installed, so I didn't install the Tcl8.0 that came with Python.
> Unfortunately, Tkinter doesn't work. I've traced the problem to FixTk.py,
> which is looking for Tcl80.dll, which of course it doesn't find, because
> Tcl82.dll is the file in the directory where it's looking. Do I really
have
> to install an older version of Tcl to get Tkinter working? Thanks, Art
>
>




From phd at phd.russ.ru  Fri Oct 22 10:06:23 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:06:23 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
In-Reply-To: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221405340.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 rainer2207 at my-deja.com wrote:
> test = "Hello"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"

   You've spent too much time with perl. Python does not interpolate
variables in strings. Do this:

print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=%s>" % test

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Tue Oct  5 07:52:26 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:52:26 +1000
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>; from Benjamin Schollnick on Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 01:37:02AM +0000
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rocheste <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <19991005215226.A724@Ridcully.home>

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 01:37:02AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
[ ... snip ...]
> Client13 was written to take advantage of a daemon running under 
> Windows NT on
> port 13, which broadcasts like this:
> 
> 		Mon Oct  4 21:27:45 1999 (In plain text.)
> 
> Which is nice, but annoying because for some *STRANGE* reason I can't 
> get 
> time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X') to work.
> 
> Everytime I try STRPTIME, I get a attribute error.  Can anyone point 
> out what 
> I'm goofing up?  

I think you want the format string to be '%a %b %d %X %Y'. That is,
some of the commas are not necessary and %A and %B expect the *full*
day and month names, whereas %a and %b handle the abbreviated
versions. Secondly, your example had the time and year the wrong way
around.

> 
> BTW-> Anyone have suggestions for making the server a little bit 
> "friendlier" either
> 	code / execution wise?

Yes. :-)

[refer to original post for server code]

Since we can probably assume that this server will be used to serve
times between 1900 and 2099 (you were intending to rewrite it sometime
in the next 100 years, weren't you?), the leap calculation can be
simplified.

1900 is not a leap year and 2000 is a leap year, you can probably just
lose the leapyear() function and rewirte calc_leap_years as

def calc_leap_years(year):
	if (year > 1900):
		return ((year - 1900) - 1)/4
	else:
		return 0

Of course, you can reduce it to a single line if you make the
assumption that the year will always be greater than 1900. And it
probably isn't wonderful programming practice to return 0 if say
year==1897 anyway (raise an exception?), but that is another issue.
This should be a fair bit faster than looping through the years.

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From loredo at spacenet.tn.cornell.edu  Fri Oct  8 13:58:19 1999
From: loredo at spacenet.tn.cornell.edu (Tom Loredo)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 13:58:19 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <37FDA132.61E1B9F9@compaq.com> <7tjfu3$l8s$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <37FE30BB.46E5523B@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu>

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> The trouble with junk DNA is that it doesn't seem to code for *any* active
> RNA or protein in the cell. So it's unlikely junk DNA consists of
> control structures.

Well, it seems we're all nonexperts who have gone far afield in this
thread, but I must say I don't follow this line of reasoning at all.
In fact, as I mentioned already in this thread, there is a lot of
research in the biophysics community based on the premise that
the noncoding DNA *is* in fact a control structure---chemicals
bonding to noncoding regions appear to trigger the expression of adjacent
coding regions.  The noncoding regions are thus control structures
that let the environment influence gene expression.

The speaker at our colloquium last week spoke of this as if it
were a broadly accepted viewpoint, but not being in the community
myself I can't say whether it's highly theoretical or not.

Peace,
Tom Loredo



From jima at aspectdv.com  Wed Oct 13 19:27:18 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:27:18 -0700
Subject: JPython?
In-Reply-To: <3804e4c8$0$11278@news.execpc.com>
Message-ID: <199910132322.QAA11710@hermes.aspectdv.com>

As a very active JPython user, here is my take on it.

Yes, you can think of JPython as a mechanism
that lets you run "Python" in a Web browser that supports
Java.  You can also look at it as a mechanism for
adding scripting capability to Java applications.

But I think of it in a somewhat different way. 
JPython is a second implementation of Python
that uses the Java VM instead of the Python
runtime.  Why is this useful?  Because of the
following tradeoffs.  In JPython you don't have
access to Python C-based extension modules.
Bad, obviously.  But you do have access to
the basic core language structures and to
any Python modules implemented completely
in Python.  Neutral -- obviously you have this
in standard Python as well.  But, the real kicker
is this: with JPython you DO have complete 
access to ALL Java APIs.   Without having to 
do any work at all. No wrappers, no JNI, no CORBA
no anything.   Instant availability.  All in the
same JVM.

I am in a situation where I need to develop
huge applications and for various business
and other reasons I am absolutely committed
to using Java APIs (Swing for the UI, etc.).

Without JPython, Java is the only real choice
for programming the applications
since doing wrappers to make all Java APIs
available in Python is just not practical.

With JPython, though, I can develop all of my
applications using the Python language
(as opposed to the C-Python implementation)
and still make use of all the Java APIs.

Personally, I believe the Java APIs are 
gaining enormous momentum for applications
programming.  I think the ability to program
in a high-level, dynamic language like Python
while having seamless access to all of the Java 
APIs is a killer combination.

Jim



At 03:00 PM 10/13/99 -0500, Dan Star wrote:
>Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a just-in-time
>compiler that translates python code to java byte-code so that the
>python code can run in a WEB browser that supports java?  If so, I would
>assume this places many restricitions on the Python language elements
>you can use.  Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its
>own language set?
>
>--Dan
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From puter_programmer at yahoo.com  Sat Oct  2 15:09:19 1999
From: puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 19:09:19 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com> <7t5ffa$1h6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se>
Message-ID: <37f7564e.33979028@news.supernews.com>

On 2 Oct 1999 17:30:18 GMT, viktor at dtek.chalmers.se (Viktor Fougstedt)
wrote:

>puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan) writes:
>
>
>
>>I suppose I should clarify my request. :-)
>
>>What I want to do is to have a parent process spawn off a child
>>process which then waits for new file descriptor (socket) to come from
>>the parent.  The parent after it spawns several children will wait
>>listen on a socket for new connections which it will pass to one of
>>the child processes after the connection has been established.
>
>
>Depending on the UNIX flavour you use, the passing of open
>filedescriptors is done in different ways. On most System-V-based
>systems, such as Solaris, sending an open fildescriptor in regular
>C-programs requires you to have an open STREAM between the two
>processes (a pipe will do fine most of the time). You then ioctl()
>this stream with a I_SENDFD in the sender end and a I_RECVFD in the
>receiver end, and your filedescriptor will be passed.
>
>I do not know if you can use the fcntl.ioctl() call in Python to do
>the same thing, but my guess is it should work (if you are on a
>machine whose UNIX dialect supports the I_SENDFD/I_RECVFD ioctls, that
>is. Check your local ioctl() manpage). A quick glance at the Python
>interpreter's source-code seems to indicate that this _should_ work,
>but I'm not certain.
>
>I suppose the best thing would be to actually try it. :-) IPC in UNIX
>isn't exactly a breeze to get working properly, and sending
>open fildescriptors between otherwise unrelated processes is not the
>easiest form of IPC there is, either.
>
>If I get the time tonight, I'll give it a shot and see if I can make
>it work.
>
>
>/Viktor...


I'm currently needing the module for a project that will run on a
Linux machine and unfortunately Linux does appear to support the
System-V approach.  There is no I_SENDFD or I_RECVFD in the ioctl()
man page.  I have found two example code URLs so far and both use the
socketpair() call which isn't in the Python socket module.  So I'm
assuming my only option is to write a C module to do this?  If I can
get it done it might be a nice compliment to my only other C module
appropriately named hello_world. ;-)

http://www2.awl.com/cseng/books/lad/src/passfd.c
http://x26.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=443099042

-Dan








From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct 15 08:14:11 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:14:11 +0200
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87puylf1fs.fsf@psyche.evansnet> <939986364.317422@cdwork.cvt.stuba.sk>
Message-ID: <004b01bf1706$caee22f0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Radovan Garabik <garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid> wrote:
> any chance of doing this portably? (i.e. I'd like to run daemon under unix
> and windows)

to run something in the background, you
can do:

    os.spawnv(os.P_NOWAIT, program, (program,) + args)

making a real NT service is a bit more work. check
the newsgroup archives for details (I'm pretty sure
you need the win32 extensions for this...  if you al-
ready have them, check the demo library).

</F>

coming next week:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From dhubbard at badger.com  Tue Oct 19 20:28:05 1999
From: dhubbard at badger.com (David Hubbard)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:28:05 -0700
Subject: Need Python programmers, full-time or consultants
Message-ID: <01BF1A57.4E8E78A0@m108.badger.com>

Badger Technology, Inc. (www.badger.com) has a product that is based on 
python (OmniRemote).  Now that it is starting to sell like hotcakes, we 
need people to program in a consulting and full-time basis.  Python is used 
to adapt the OmniRemote to telecommunication and data communications 
equipment for the purpose of monitoring and control.

The full-time Application Engineering job description is as follows:

- Script programming (Python & shell scripts) on Badger Network Management 
products for adaptation to SONET, data, cellular, and telephone networks.
- Data network planning and configuration.  Badger offers data networking 
products in conjunction with Network Management.
- Installation supervision and occasional training of Badger products.
- Badger product configuration
- Some travel in the U.S. is required.

Please contact Roy Chestnut (Director of Technical Support ) at (888) 
957-8600 ext. 639 or rac at badger.com. I can be reached at ext. 620 or 
dhubbard at badger.com.

David Hubbard
Badger Technology, Inc.
VP, Sales & Marketing
(408)957-8620




From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Tue Oct 12 09:57:26 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 15:57:26 +0200
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
References: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0joge8cxot.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <7tnvvs$mjd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <y0jk8osd6m1.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

joshzeidner at my-deja.com writes:

>  Yeah but then he has to parse the HTML to get what he wants.  Not to
> mention that you are needlessly overloading the web server.
> 

What do you mean? He asked how to call a cgi script from a cgi script
- and that's what I do. What else could he have meant? What other
output than HTML would you like from a cgi script?

>  its called DATA SCRAPING and it aint too much fun.

Bah - using re that's no problem.

> 
>   -josh z
--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Tue Oct 19 14:53:21 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 14:53:21 -0400
Subject: sys.exit() doesn't exit
Message-ID: <19991019145321.A46095201@vislab.epa.gov>

I have this situation:

    A Python script (makes calls to:)
    |
    - A C library  (which issues callbacks back to:)
      |
      - The Python script (which invokes:)
        |
        - sys.exit()

Calling sys.exit() in the Python callback doesn't terminate the
application.  Apparently, the SystemExit exception gets lost crossing the C
library frames in the stack.  What's really going on though?

If I want to throw an exception in a Python callback like this, is there a
way for it to unwind the stack across the C library and trigger in the
controlling Python stack frames?

Thanks,

Randall

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From shrogers at ionet.net  Thu Oct 28 21:21:44 1999
From: shrogers at ionet.net (Steven H. Rogers)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:21:44 -0500
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com> <38146d39.12662187@aplnews> <5logdntdds.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3818F6A8.D5F8E601@ionet.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Maybe a different route would work: Sun is porting the JVM to the Palm,
> so we could use JPython to translate Python to Java class files and
> run those!
> 

The Psion 5mx has a JVM available.  Has anyone tried JPython on that
palmtop?

-- Steve



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct  9 19:12:23 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 12:12:23 +1300
Subject: Newbie question about __getattr__ and __setattr__
References: <1103_939440882@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>
Message-ID: <c75n1tsuo14.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault) writes:

[snip]
> I also wanted to be able to do this by assignment so I tried to
> make a __setattr__ method, but if I do:
> 
> i[1][2][3] = 4
> 
> I get an exception from __getattr__. So my question is- Is there
> a way to tell that __getattr__ is being called in an assignment, and not
> to get a value, and is there a way to get all the keys and values at once?
> Or is this a Bad Idea?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Felix

What about just storing all the nested keys as a tuple:

i[1,2,3] = 4

The dictionary key will be a tuple, which is fine as any immutable
object can be a key.  It might not be as efficient, but if you wanted
efficiency you would be using C, not python.

--
Tim Evans



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Tue Oct 19 15:52:44 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:52:44 -0400
Subject: SWIG trouble...
In-Reply-To: <y0jbt9vl9oj.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
References: <y0jbt9vl9oj.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <19991019155244.A46097657@vislab.epa.gov>

Magnus L. Hetland:
 |I'm just having some trouble making SWIG work properly, and I wondered
 |if maybe it was a standard problem... I've compiled it, and it runs
 |and generates wrappers etc., but when I import the resulting modules
 |in Python, I get stuff like:
 |
 |>>> dir(example)
 |['__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'cvar', '\200\242 ', '\320&
 |\034\320\006 \034\322\002 \014\200\242`']
 |>>> 

Haven't seen that problem myself.

Are you using shadow classes or no?

  If yes (example.py), see what example.py looks like.

  If no (example.c), probably due to some trash in your .i file or the .h
  file's you're %importing.  Check out the PyMethodDef array at the bottom
  of the generated example.c wrapper module and the init<module> function
  right below it.  Is there trash in the strings being registered with
  Python?

A shot in the dark, but hopefully this gives you something to work with.

Randall



From davidopp at megsinet.net  Thu Oct  7 00:10:49 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 00:10:49 -0400
Subject: [Fwd: Call for Papers: Testing Computer Software Conference (TCS2000)]
Message-ID: <37FC1D48.DB13828D@megsinet.net>

I thought that this too may be of interest to the group.

Sincerely,

David Oppenheimer
-------------- next part --------------
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From: pazpax at clark.net (Peter Zuckerman)
Subject: Call for Papers: Testing Computer Software Conference (TCS2000)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 23:56:44 GMT
Size: 7617
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/19991007/696b6bf7/attachment.mht>

From dfan at harmonixmusic.com  Wed Oct  6 09:58:00 1999
From: dfan at harmonixmusic.com (Dan Schmidt)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 09:58:00 -0400
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <wkbtac8uc7.fsf@turangalila.harmonixmusic.com>

harri.pasanen at trema.com writes:

| I made some effort to track down a python module that could be used as
| unix diff.  Currently I'm in fact popen'ing diff itself, but for I'd
| like to have a self-contained utility.
| 
| I'm not comparing big files, so a Python only solution will probably be
| fast enough.
| 
| Failing a ready solution, can someone perhaps point me to a description
| of the algorithm, so I could implement it myself.

If you know Perl too, you should look at
<http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/diff/>, where Mark-Jason Dominus has
implemented the diff algorithm in that language.  Translating it into
Python should be straightforward.

-- 
Dan Schmidt | http://www2.thecia.net/users/dfan/



From jam at quark.emich.edu  Wed Oct 13 09:26:55 1999
From: jam at quark.emich.edu (Jeff)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:26:55 -0400
Subject: Off-topic Internet Question
In-Reply-To: <38029546.C0F6FABF@altavista.net>
References: <38029546.C0F6FABF@altavista.net>
Message-ID: <19991013092655.A3311@quark.emich.edu>

On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 10:56:22PM -0300, Geraldo Lopes wrote:
> Is it possible a Python script fill a internet page with arbitrary
> values, simulate the send button and get the results ?
> 
> Is it possible with Python ? What Do I need to know to make this ?
> 
> Thanks (a lot) in advance
> 
> Geraldo Lopes de Souza
> 

yes. in most cases you can do this with python. I would advise you to check
with the maintainer of the page (if it isn't you) to make sure that they
don't mind having an automated program tested against their server. if you'd
still like to do this, perhaps you can post a few more details about the
problem?


regards,
J
-- 
|| visit gfd <http://quark.newimage.com/> 
|| psa member #293 <http://www.python.org/> 
|| New Image Systems & Services, Inc. <http://www.newimage.com/>



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Fri Oct  1 05:04:28 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 09:04:28 GMT
Subject: Last question of the day (This one's easy!)
References: <877ll88031.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <7t1tes$itq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Nolan Darilek wrote:
[snip]
> Initially, I thought that if a MUD server could be written in Java
> (http://www.twistedmatrix.com) a Python version would be smaller,
> easily readable, etc.

> Now, however, I'm becoming concerned about how possible/practical this
> would be, and if I'm possibly using Python for something for which it
> isn't intended. I began doing research into Python's speed vs. Java,
[concerns about Python's speed for use in a mud server snipped]

I've done some thinking about the use of Python as a mud server language
as well, and I suspect it's well up to the job. Compare for instance with
Zope (www.zope.org), which implements a dynamic *web* server in Python. If
you can do that, you can do the same for muds. Of course Zope has parts
written in C for speed, but you can do that for a mud server too, if
necessary.

Also compare with lpc of lpmuds, which you mentioned. I doubt lpc code can
run that much more quickly than python code (if at all), and lpmuds have
been around for years now and work just fine.

Python has a lot of exciting technologies that would make building a mud
easier. Lots of standard stuff is already done for you, for one. Then there
are interesting things like the Zope object database which you may want to
use to build a persistent database for a mud. There's all sorts of things to
make Python talk to remote methods as well (CORBA, XML-RPC, etc).

My main concern with using Python as a mud server is infinite loops, and
costly methods in general. A mud shouldn't 'hang' when some coder inside
happens to code a buggy object with an infinite loop in it. Instead the
mud should detect a method is costing way too many ticks (or bytecode
executions) and abort it. I've seen two main ways to get around this; one
is Zope's approach; basically it limits its DTML so that you can't write
infinite loops. I don't much like this one for muds, as you'd like people
to use Python to extend it.

Another possibility is to do something like Will Ware's microthreads do;
they work by using the 'tick' approach and thus even if one thread loops
infinitely the rest is still fine. Unfortunately microthreads depend on
a module that contains a patched Python interpreter loop, which isn't
exactly easy to maintain..

I only have limited knowledge about how full fledged multithreading can
help here, perhaps someone else can give an answer.

I've also been curious how Joe Strout gets around this problem in his POO
(a MOO inspired Python based mud).

Regards,

Martijn

-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct 16 18:55:45 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:55:45 -0400
Subject: re question
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991016140520.2128A-100000@sundial>
Message-ID: <000001bf1829$95a7ef80$172d153f@tim>

[Moshe Zadka, disliking
r"""
    %%%
    ( [^%]*
      (?: % (?! %%)
          [^%]*
      )*
    )
    %%%
"""
]

> I may be missing something obvious here, but that seems to positively
> /beg/ for a minimalistic match, something like:
>
> re.compile(r'%%%(.*?)%%%')
>
> This will result in taking everything until the *first* %%% following our
> initial %%%, which was what the poster wanted.

As does the regexp above.  The first one is better for two reasons:

1) It's more robust under modification.  That is, "the loop" in the first
regexp says "match up until the first %%%" (if any); the loop in the second
says "match some number of characters", and what those are depends entirely
on the loop's context.  The loop in the first means the same thing
regardless of context, so can be reused in other contexts without surprises.

2) It's much faster.

Since Max seemed to be asking in "copy and paste" mode, better to give him
something that's less likely to screw him tomorrow <wink>.

[Tim]
>> Regular expressions are overkill here.  The above can be done
>> quicker and easier via string.find:

[Moshe]
> I agree. And much, MUCH better if the text to be match grows to be more
> then a couple of KBs, at which pcre will stumble somehow, if it all.

PCRE isn't that sluggish, provided you learn how this flavor of regexps
works.  Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expression" book is wholly applicable.
The regexp at the top is a vanilla instance of his "loop unrolling" pattern,
and won't choke on inputs of any size, whether matching or non-matching.

Here's a made-up 1Mb string:

guts = 999 * 'x' + '%'
data = '%%%' + 1000* guts + '%%%'

Searching this with the original regexp is slower than using string.find,
but well under a factor of two slower.  Searching it with the minimal-match
version is about 14 times slower (btw, minimal-match patterns are much
slower in Perl too).

regexps-are-as-obscure-as-floating-point-ly y'rs  - tim





From mcfletch at vrtelecom.com  Sun Oct  3 20:04:59 1999
From: mcfletch at vrtelecom.com (Mike Fletcher)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 00:04:59 GMT
Subject: re vs. sgmllib (was: Moving from Perl to Python)
In-Reply-To: <000401bf0de4$9b071360$812d153f@tim>
References: <000401bf0de4$9b071360$812d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIAEKCCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>

Pipe:

http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/mxTextTools.html
http://members.home.com/mcfletch/programming/simpleparse/simpleparse.html

Simpleparse generates fairly naive state machines for mxTextTools (i.e. I
don't do any gross optimisation, not even fast-map-type optimisations of
leftmost productions) which only handles a very limited grammar set (most
notable limitation is that it will not handle the following correctly if you
are expecting regex-style parsing:

v := t*, s

In essence, once a production (t*) has matched, backtracking does not cause
it to be re-tried with a smaller match.  This could be "fixed", but I
haven't had any need to do so myself.  Having the generator build the state
machine so that this will work even with complex multi-production
backtracking is a little beyond anything in which I'm interested.

As a minor note, using simpleparse and/or mxTextTools to define a tokeniser
might give a decently performing tokeniser engine on which the Earley system
could run (though there'd still be the basic overhead of the resolution
phase).  Since tokenisation is normally LL(1), the limitations of
simpleparse shouldn't stand in the way.  No need for it myself, but it might
interest someone somewhere.

Cheers,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
Tim:
...
I rarely save URLs, so you'll have to trudge thru DejaNews to find these (or
maybe their authors will pipe up):
...
Least conventional, & fastest:  Marc-Andre Lemburg's mxTextTools.  You
basically build your own state machine out of Python tuples, which are
executed by a C extension module; very fast, very delicate.  MikeF put a
more conventional layer on top of it, in his own unconventional <wink> way.
...




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Tue Oct  5 06:53:03 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 23:53:03 +1300
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org> <14328.59652.711031.469373@dolphin.mojam.com> <37F8F904.C4261EC8@callware.com> <emacs-smtp-347-14329-448-20560@export.andrew.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <37F9D88E.D4E1AE99@compaq.com>

Brian E Gallew wrote:
> 
> Because there is no obviously correct behaviour for such a function.
> Two obvious cases:
> a) dict(list1, list2) # What should it do if the lists aren't the same
> size?
> b) dict(list1) # Is list1 keys, values, or both?

There should be 2 ways of calling it:

   dict(keys = [...], values = [...]) 
	# exception raised if lists not the same length

   dict(items = [(k, v),...])

and the keywords should be compulsory, so that it's always
clear what is being done.

Greg



From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Fri Oct 15 13:45:20 1999
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:45:20 GMT
Subject: Playing MIDI files
Message-ID: <7u7p7c$sp9$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

mdoering at comlineag.de (Martin D?ring) writes:

> Is there a module to play midi-files from python?

I have an interface for OSS under Linux, and together with Jack Jansen's MIDI
library it's easy to write a MIDI player (in fact I did). I haven't used all
this for a long time because my sound card doesn't work any more under Linux
after I upgraded to RedHat 5.2, but I am sure I kept the stuff somewhere...
Let me know if you are interested. --
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Konrad Hinsen  | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr Centre de Biophysique
Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.55.69 Rue Charles Sadron  | Fax: 
+33-2.38.63.15.17 45071 Orleans Cedex 2  | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/ France 
| Nederlands/Francais
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI  Tue Oct 19 06:50:15 1999
From: mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI (Markus Stenberg)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 13:50:15 +0300
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:
> Les Schaffer <godzilla at netmeg.net> wrote:
> > just started using the getopt module. i was surprised to see it
> > returns the options in list format rather than perl's (better)
> > dictionary format.
> maybe that's because the order of the options may some-
> times be important, and python dictionaries are unordered.
>
> how does Perl handle that?

It does not. Nor should Python, for that matter. GNU tools' approach these
days is to make options order-neutral, barring cases where it'd hurt
backwards compatibility/functionality. 

Ever wondered why 'rsh host -l login' and 'rsh -l login host' _both_ work
on boxes with GNU-ish stuff, and just _one_ of them works on most modern
UNIXes? :P I've zapped rsh family of aliases from my system [moved to total
ssh use], but I recall the different syntaxes applied on HP<>Digital UNIX
for instance.

> (or maybe it's just the C heritage that shows through.
> guess you're expected to loop over the options, just
> as in C, and in that case, getopt.py has already made
> the opt = opt.items() for you...)

Looks like C heritage to me. IMNSHO order-oriented parsing of options is
Pure Evil(tm) and I consider Perl (for once) to do the Right Thing.

> </F>

-Markus

-- 
	    Markus Stenberg
Finger fingon at mpoli.fi for my PGP public key



From lemiss at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 31 22:58:53 1999
From: lemiss at my-deja.com (G. Lewis)
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 03:58:53 GMT
Subject: commas vs. spaces. vs. the legions of new lines
Message-ID: <7vj35t$8p1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


Geez, you peoples, quit sniping on the folks posting their little
modules lately (if i may snipe at you to say)!

So the unix old-timers <wink> know a billion and one ways to convert
Dos to Unix text files.  Why discourage someone from making a pure
python implementation... and a decent attempt at it as well, with
subdirectories and attempts at some sort of "smart" file type guessing.
Not a tool I'd use, myself, but surely it has value. Or even if it
didn't, still surely it does not deserve denegration. Not one person
complimented his code. Just a load of "tr is my best buddy, saved my ass
a few times in war, I'll tell you" messages. Sad. What is this,
comp.lang.perl?!! <more winks>

Then a sincere fellow posts a nice little routine which puts (gasp!)
spaces in numbers. (It IS valid formatting!) What does he get? People
saying that if you pipe those numbers to other programs you will blow
things up (great insight!). People claiming the use of spaces in numbers
is heretical and perhaps not even a valid form of artistic expression
(if not scientific) (at least someone stuck up for the honour of our
hapless poster over this practice---after all, spaces are a metric
thing, are they not? I believe i was taught that in school long
ago---though i've always used commas in my real-life). The poster does
have a point you know: it is weird the way it is so common to see comma,
decimal point, or SPACE seperators in real life, that hardly a
programming language has a standard routine for this very common
formatting practice.

Anyhow, lets be nice and not snipe. Otherwise people like me might start
sniping about the snipping. And then people will start sniping about the
people like me sniping about the sniping. And on and on.

c.l.py has an exellent reputation for being extremely friendly and
helpful---i'm astonished at the general endless patience I've seen
exhibited here, even for the most inane and pathetic newbie FAQs.
Lets keep it!

Sorry to lecture. Just had to get it off my chest. Had nothing better
to do at the moment. Etc etc. One big happy family, and all that! I
know you'll forgive me.



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mricket2 at ford.com  Fri Oct 29 07:55:06 1999
From: mricket2 at ford.com (Mark Ricketts)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:55:06 -0400
Subject: parallel port programming using Python?
References: <19991014.22042400@mis.configured.host> <KimO3.9837$pL5.20871@news.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <7vc1tg$5477@eccws12.dearborn.ford.com>

I'm kind of a novice when it comes to c programming, I've used basic on the
pc but since I'm acquaninting myself with linux I figured the best way to
learn a new language is to attempt an actual useful project.  I'd like to
build a little xyz robot using stepper motors for motion control that will
be operated via the parallel port.  I've already got the thing working in
the DOS/Windows world, but I am so into the whole linux philosophy that I
want to redo it using Python in Linux.  Python is said to be a very easy
language to pick-up but so far I haven't found any language routines that
will allow me to access the parallel port for this type of control.  So Mike
I'm very interested in what you are doing, maybe you could expand on what
your project is all about, and how it's progressing.


------
msdr at sprint.ca


Mike Linnen <mlinnen at usa.net> wrote in message
news:KimO3.9837$pL5.20871 at news.rdc1.az.home.com...
> I am in the process of rolling my own extension to python that allows
> parrallel port access.  If you know C it is not to hard to extend pyhtons
> functionallity.
>
>
> Mark Rickets <markr at tfz.net> wrote in message
> news:19991014.22042400 at mis.configured.host...
> I want to use python for data acquisition from the parallel port.  I
> am using Mandrake-Linux as the operating system  on a PC if that makes
> a difference.  Are there any modules available in Python that allow
> one to access the system parallel port for this type of function?
>
> msdr at sprint.ca
>
>
>
>
>





From mats.kronbladh at entra.se  Fri Oct  8 06:43:27 1999
From: mats.kronbladh at entra.se (Mats Kronbladh)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 12:43:27 +0200
Subject: Beginner asks question about Python on Linux
References: <7tkge6$asd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37FDCACE.E066A626@entra.se>

stephen.allison at cenes.co.uk wrote:
> 
> [...] What I want to know is
> if there is a way of getting the output of the grep straight into
> Python, so I won't have to use a temporary file.  I have since learned
> about killing all processes of a given name, so it's a bit academic,
> but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it's possible to do
> this, using either Python cleverness or some shell commands I'm not
> aware of.

I currently have host booted for NT, but I think this will work under
posix as well:

	C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32>d:\dev\python\python
	Python 1.5 (#0, Dec 30 1997, 23:24:20) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
	Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
	>>> import os
	>>> f = os.popen("dir c:\\")
	>>> f.readline()
	' Volume in drive C has no label.\012'
	>>> f.readline()
	' Volume Serial Number is 07CE-0C12\012'
	>>> f.readline()
	'\012'
	>>> f.close()

Try this, it might be just what your looking for...?

Regards,

/mk
______________________________________________________________________
Mats Kronbladh				   Entra Internet Solutions AB
mats.kronbladh at entra.se				  http://www.entra.se/
Cellular: +46-70-9790576



From dacut at kanga.org  Fri Oct  1 00:23:39 1999
From: dacut at kanga.org (David A. Cuthbert)
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 04:23:39 GMT
Subject: Circular refs
References: <000001bf0975$aacabc20$402d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <37F43709.CC7204D3@kanga.org>

Tim Peters wrote:
> [David A. Cuthbert]
> > ...
> > I've also toyed with the idea of replacing the Python gc code with
> > a Lins collector (which is based on reference counting but has the
> > ability to reclaim cycles).
> 
> You would hit bad problems with this (I did <0.5 wink>).  Such as: (a) you
> can't color reclaimed cells (Python doesn't pretend to own memory, and
> happily accepts PyObject* pointers from external modules -- the type's
> destructor decides what to do with reclaimed cells, and Python never assumes
> it can carry info in a dead external object);

The (admittedly cheesy) workaround here is: all PyObjects must be allocated
on the heap, and they must be allocated using a specific allocator.  This
also means that external modules must be rewritten.  Not pretty, I'll admit,
but I've had this solution forced on me when using C++ in some environments.

(I realize that I'm neglecting the whole issue of external types here...
that's yet another whole can of worms and spilt milk that'll just clog up
the kitchen sink that we burned before we crossed it. :-)

> (b) even adding two bits for a
> color field actually adds 4 bytes to each object, due to structure
> alignment rules on popular platforms;

Not necessarily.  You can trade this for performance if you're willing to
share the reference count with the color bits.  Normally, of course, I'd
take the 4 byte overhead.  Some applications (CAD tools, e.g.) do require
minimum sized objects since hundreds of millions of them may be active at
any one time...

> and, (c) the Lins "local" sweep too often ends
> up touching the whole world, since e.g. from any frame you can reach its
> function's module's global namespace, from which you can often reach sys,
> from whose sys.modules dict the entire system is reachable.

Yep, though, again, there are speed/memory usage tradeoffs you can apply
here (limit the search depth depending on the amount of memory needed,
etc.).  Now, you won't find me volunteering to tune the thing... :-)



From chapman at bioreason.com  Thu Oct 21 11:33:35 1999
From: chapman at bioreason.com (Mitch Chapman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:33:35 -0600
Subject: Please help, trying to configure pygtk and pygimp
References: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910210307490.25465-100000@rac2.wam.umd.edu>
Message-ID: <380F324F.A49EB7AD@bioreason.com>

Sarino Suon wrote:
> 
> If anyone has successfully done so, won't you help me get past the
> installation? Every time I run ./configure (for both pygtk+ and pygimp),
> this error comes up:
> 
>         "Couldn't find the python config makefile. Maybe you are missing
>         the development portion of the python installation"
> 
> This cannot be, since I fully compiled and installed Python 1.5.2. Can
> someone help me?

What platform (OS, version) are you using?

If you're on RedHat, perhaps you've built and installed Python 1.5.2 in 
/usr/local/bin, but still have /usr/bin at the start of
your path.  In that case the configure script may be finding the
version of Python which comes with RedHat, and which does not include
the lib/python1.5/config/ directory.

For more help, I'd recommend checking the pygtk mailing list archive at
	http://www.mail-archive.com/pygtk at daa.com.au/

and/or subscribing to the pygtk mailing list and re-posting your
question there.  Instructions for subscribing are available at
	http://www.daa.com.au/~james/pygtk/

Hoping this helps...

-- 
Mitch Chapman
chapman at bioreason.com



From jklymak at apl.washington.edu  Thu Oct 21 12:49:00 1999
From: jklymak at apl.washington.edu (Jody M. Klymak)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 09:49:00 -0700
Subject: Mingw32 modules (was: "win32: cygwin modules")
References: <Pine.GSO.4.05.9910210159170.15211-100000@inky>
Message-ID: <3dv4pslf.fsf@apl.washington.edu>

Hi Robert,

Thanks, I found your page via dejanews ten minutes after I posted (why
oh why does dejanews default to only searching "recent" messages?).
I'm giving it a try.
 
>>>>> "RK" == Robert Kern <kern at its.caltech.edu> writes:

    RK> Simply put, don't bother with CygWin.  It does have a few
    RK> problems working with Python.  Mingw32 works perfectly AFAICT.
    RK> See my page <URL:
    RK> http://starship.python.net/crew/kernr/mingw32/Notes.html > for
    RK> detailed instructions.

    RK> To the Python Gods:

    RK> Has this been asked often enough to make it a FAQ?

I'd agree that this is an important piece of information - one of the
attractions of python is that its free, so it seems kind of cruel to
require one to buy expensive C compilers on Win32 machines in order to
get extensions to work.

Thanks a lot,   Jody

-- 
Jody Klymak                         APL/School of Oceanography,
Doctoral Candidate                  University of Washington
mailto:jklymak at apl.washington.edu   (206)-685-9080
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/jklymak/



From cfelling at iae.nl  Thu Oct 14 19:46:03 1999
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 01:46:03 +0200
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
References: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7ttk6r$ids$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <5loge456a9.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7u2gsa$2a0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7u5pvr$2ou$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>

Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <5loge456a9.fsf at eric.cnri.reston.va.us>,
>   Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:

>> My guess as to why he's getting the error that he's getting is that
>> tar somehow stops reading the gzip output before gzip is done.  Maybe
>> the rest of the tar output (if there's any) would be a clue.

> There was no additional output from tar.  I used the verbose flag, and
> it printed that it untarred' all the files, then it printed the message
> about recieving exit code of 1 from gzip.

Guido's remark shed a faint light on some almost extinct part of my brain
and suddenly I start remembering that once I encountered a similar behaviour
of tar and gzip. It had to do with excess bytes in the gzipped file, but
elas my memory is like it always was, a rusty colander, and no matter what
I try I can't reproduce it on my current machine. I also dimmly remember
something like it had to do with tar-balls from elsewhere, not locally made
ones. Well, this isn't going to help you much, is it. And I lack the old
Atari the try it out:(

-- 
groetjes, carel



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Fri Oct 22 09:09:14 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:09:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: kwp & jpython
References: <380dcb8b.0@sahara.cablecat.com>
Message-ID: <14352.25082.602668.808179@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "CO" == Carlos Ors <cors at recercai.com> writes:

    CO> I interested in use kjpylint (from kwp) with jpython.
    CO> and I get this error:

    CO> ImportError: no module named regex

regex is the older Python regular expression module.  It is not
supported in JPython and probably will never be unless someone Out
There donates such a module.  JPython supports the "new" re module for
regular expressions (re isn't all that new anymore, but it's the
standard since it provides Perl5 compatible regexs).

Maybe someone can port kjpylint to re and donate that back to Aaron.

-Barry



From skip at mojam.com  Sun Oct 10 02:18:13 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 01:18:13 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Marking translatable strings
In-Reply-To: <87iu4gv9uq.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim>
	<37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com>
	<vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
	<m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
	<873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
	<001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<87iu4gv9uq.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
Message-ID: <14336.12197.162081.897637@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Florian> T('...') could mean anything, not only string translation.
    Florian> Perhaps something entirely new should be chosen to help
    Florian> automatic processing.

I agree.  I think the t"""ranslatable string""" notation would work well.
It's simple, the machinery for parsing it is pretty much already there, what
with raw strings and all.  Visually, it's pretty unobtrusive.  There is no
conflict with existing syntax like the T() notation.  It could be handled at
any phase between editing and run-time.  A special preprocessor (if you
wanted translation separate from byte code generation or run-time) could do
whatever translation was possible there.  Any untranslated strings could be
passed through.  Similarly, at byte-compilation time a translate step could
be invoked if need be.  Finally, if any translatable strings were left at
run-time (they've have to be specially marked by the byte compiler of
course), they could be translated then (or passed through as-is if this
final translation step failed).

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 29 12:28:47 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:28:47 -0400
Subject: walk calling visit within a class?
In-Reply-To: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933D003@rimail03>
Message-ID: <1270908719-9651880@hypernet.com>

Betancourt, Josef asks:

>    This is probably a dumb question but.... Lets say I have a
>    class:
> 
> class theclass
>       def aVisit(self, pat, dirname, dirlist):
>   ............
> 
>  def testfiles(self, patobject, targetpath):
>   os.path.walk( targetpath, self.aVisit, self.patobject)
> 
> #end class theclass
> 
> Since os.path.walk requires a visit function that has an argument
> signature of:  (arg, dirname, names), how is a visit member
> function used within a class?  Or can someone fill in the whole I
> have in my Python fundamentals?

You're on the right track.

Fundamentals: theclass.aVisit is an "unbound" method; 
calling it will require an instance of theclass as the first arg.

x = theclass()
x.aVisit is a "bound" method - the self arg has been squirreled 
away in the binding. It can therefor be called just like it was a 
function. 

This code works:

import os

class theclass:
    def __init__(self):
        self.patobject = []
        
    def aVisit(self, pat, dirname, dirlist):
          print "aVisit called on", dirname

    def testfiles(self, targetpath):
         os.path.walk( targetpath, self.aVisit, self.patobject)

x = theclass()
x.testfiles('c:/temp')

- Gordon



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sun Oct 24 19:32:22 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 12:32:22 +1300
Subject: [Q] keeping *args and using it later
References: <7uur88$pm0$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <c75r9ikl4hl.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

"Joao Neto" <vascog at uol.com.br> writes:

> Hi!
> 
> If I use a method to receive another method and its arguments, something
> like:
> 
> def keepCall( method, *args )
>    newTuple = (method, args)
>    myQueue.append( newTuple)
> 
> How can I call that method later? Just typing
> 
>    nextTuple = myQueue[0]
>    myQueue.remove(nextTuple)
> 
>    nextTuple[0](nextTuple[1])
> 
> doesn't seem to work...
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Joao

func, args = myQueue.pop(0) # requires 1.5.2 I think
apply(func, args)

--
Tim Evans




From pier at parc.xerox.com  Tue Oct 19 19:51:57 1999
From: pier at parc.xerox.com (Ken Pier)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:51:57 PDT
Subject: Signal Handler ignored on Windows NT
Message-ID: <380D041D.A31357D6@parc.xerox.com>

We are using signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler) to set a signal
handler for ControlC interrupts.  This works on UNIX (Solaris2.6) and on
NT if our program is interrupted during time.sleep().  However, if it is
interrupted during a select call, the handler is called on UNIX but not
on NT.

Particulars: python1.5.2 on Sun Solaris2.6 and the compiled version out
of py152.exe on NT 4.0, Service Pack 5.

Advice?

--
Ken Pier
Xerox PARC
"Nothing would ever be accomplished
were it not for unwarranted optimism."





From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 28 03:38:55 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:38:55 +1000
Subject: How to eliminate consol window in MS Windows
In-Reply-To: <7v7897$cem$1@sunnews.cern.ch>
Message-ID: <001101bf2117$7e0d0490$0501a8c0@bobcat>

>  : O change the file extension from .py to .pyw to do it
> automatically.
>
> does it work when you call the script from another python script
> via os.system? it does not for me, the console window is opened
anyway
> os.system('program.pyw '+arguments)

That is a peculiarity with os.system on the windows platform.  The
simplest way to achieve what you specifically need is to use
win32api.ShellExecute().  If you want really fine grained control you
must use win32process.CreateProcess.  Unfortunately both these
techniques need the win32 extensions.

Mark.




From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Oct 22 03:43:45 1999
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:43:45 +0200
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library (ADDITIONAL INFO)
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com> <dozier-2110991645470001@pm4-s15.dial-up.abs.net> <99102116004802.00599@quadra.teleo.net> <008a01bf1c5b$fea3c2d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <016201bf1c61$2b81b730$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>

> so for now, I'm afraid prospective non-Windows customers
> will have to see the eMatter thing as a distribution method
> only: use a friend's computer to download it, print a copy,
> and treat it as just another "pMatter" book.

It would be nice if the book were formatted for double-side
printing.

Thomas Heller





From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 14:32:41 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 18:32:41 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>  <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>  <FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>  <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL>  <jlaepxt3jj.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <7tip09$dqk$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Michael Vanier <mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu> wrote:
> And there may be other
> uses for untranscribed DNA as well -- who knows?

> But back to python... :-)

Not just yet! Another theory for introns (backed by some evidence) is that
they're parasitical DNA; sometimes apparently some introns can cause 
themselves to be inserted in other parts of the DNA, etc.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Wed Oct 20 09:28:59 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 13:28:59 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: unmimify or ...................
In-Reply-To: <7uke53$3i8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910201328210.5417-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999 tester89 at hotmail.com wrote:
> Does anyone know if a module exists that would take an email message
> with or without attachments and create objects for each portion of the
> message?

   mimetools.py
   It is in the std distro.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From culliton at clark.net  Thu Oct 14 00:45:24 1999
From: culliton at clark.net (Tom Culliton)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 04:45:24 GMT
Subject: is there a record separator? RS
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000@crb.crb-web.com>
Message-ID: <EddN3.908$9%5.19289@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

Sort answer, No, although it's been a long standing TODO item.  Guido
even agreeded to it in principle but the volunteer (who shall remain
nameless) got sidetracked and never delivered the patch. 8-(  (Mea
culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...)

Longer answer, there are extension modules that will do this for you.
You can also either slurp in the whole file and string.split it on
your desired record seperator or do it a chunk at a time.  At one
point I actually even had a Python class which wrapped a file object
to do this... hmmm... and which seems not to be in any of the obvious
places... :-(

In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000 at crb.crb-web.com>,
Linux User  <luser at no.where> wrote:
>Is there anything similar to the configurable record separator that perl
>and awk use?
>
>Thanks,
>Wayne



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Mon Oct  4 09:56:26 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 04 Oct 1999 09:56:26 -0400
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: Jeff's message of "Thu, 30 Sep 1999 10:04:23 -0400"
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu>
Message-ID: <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Jeff <jam at quark.emich.edu> writes:

> I have need to write a firewall configuration script in python, and
> one of my design goals is that python not act as just another /bin/bash
> replacement.  what I'd like is a module that knows how to directly make
> the ioctl calls described in the ipfw(4) man page (so I don't have to
> resort to 'os.system("/sbin/ipchains -F")', which looks ugly).

I worked on about the same problem this weekend.  I still do not feel ready
to dive into a C interface.  I did not want to repeatedly do `os.system',
which would surely incurs a lot of overhead.  As a compromise, even if
far from being a speed winner, I do the equivalent of "popening" `/bin/sh'
and feeding it with the generated `ipfwadm' or `ipchains' commands, so at
least, the shell is called only once, instead of once per command.  Still,
the shell has to decode the command text that my Python script generates,
and repeatedly fork the program: much less than ideal.

Enough problems with organising the chains, I told to myself, no need to
tackle too many problems at once and drawn myself: I'll live with the slow
speed in the meantime, and probably for a long while.  What I would love
to have, however, is a Tkinter interface to drive all this, as my users
are quite lost if they cannot "click easy", and I would like to give them
the possibility to dig momentary tunnels without having to call me.

I would like to seek some generality in my things, but I hardly see how.
Things are so tuned to of our particular setup, that it seems to me that
making things general enough to be exportable, sharable or publishable
would require an effort which is inordinate with our real needs.  Moreover,
to be fully honest, playing such games is far from being my preferred bag,
anyway.  I still hardly accept that there are bad guys on this planet:
this is really not the world I was hoping for in my youth :-).  Life would
be *so* easier without them.  Good guys should kill all the bad guys! :-)

> I am willing to work on the project, but I thought I saw *something*
> whiz by on the mailing list regarding this same issue.

I do not clearly see how we could put our efforts in common, nor what I
can bring which you would not already know, but yet, I'm open to fruitful
collaboration, if it can be organised easily and time-economically! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Wed Oct 27 13:06:00 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 18:06:00 +0100
Subject: from (some module) import *
References: <38172D03.2CF4CAE5@cfdrc.com>
Message-ID: <m3r9igivif.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Ed <elb at cfdrc.com> writes:

> I'm new to Python, I hope I'm not trying to do the wrong thing here, but
> pls correct me if I am:
> 
> I want to prompt for a module name, then import it.  How do I make the
> module name in the "from" or "import" operators a variable?  I was
> trying
> 
> print "enter the file name"
> filename = raw_input()
> from filename import *

well, you can do this:

module = __import__(filename)

to mimic the effect of `import filename'.

I'm struggling to think of why you might want to do `import *' in this
situation.

You could do this:

exec "from %s import *"%raw_input()

but you'd need to watch for people typing in things like

"sys import exit; import os; os.system('rm -rf ~'); from sys"

depending on trust arrangements.

> This "module" I'm hoping to import contains only a list, Data = [...],
> and I have lots of such modules to process - each with different values
> in the Data list - and it changes all the time.  I thought I could
> change my script to prompt for the file/module name rather than edit the
> script each time I wanted to process a different file/module.

Ahh, then do 

module = __import__(raw_input())

and manipulate module.Data.

HTH,
Michael



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Fri Oct 15 10:22:05 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 16:22:05 +0200
Subject: Executing binaries...?
Message-ID: <y0joge0ln5e.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Is there any way to execute python binaries with something like
execfile (giving it a special environment as a dict)? The only way I
can thing of is using execfile that imports another file (which is
compiled)... Is there any other way?

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From mikael at isy.liu.se  Fri Oct 22 09:58:03 1999
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:58:03 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
In-Reply-To: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991022155803.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 22-Oct-99 rainer2207 at my-deja.com wrote:
 >  test = "Hello"
 >  print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"
 >  
 >  but this returns the string test rather than "Hello". Is there anyway
 >  I can get it to pass "Hello"? Am I right in leaving out the double
 >  quotes for the value part? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

test is a variable in your python code, not in the generated html code.
Is there anything wrong with

print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=" + test + ">"

or have I completely misunderstood your question?

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    22-Oct-99
Time:    15:55:08

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From python-list at teleo.net  Mon Oct 18 02:53:43 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:53:43 -0700
Subject: Developing and testing modules live
In-Reply-To: <871zatfdbg.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
References: <871zatfdbg.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <99101800040801.04094@quadra.teleo.net>

[Nolan Darilek, on Sun, 17 Oct 1999]:
:: Is there a way to quickly reread the module without restarting?

Sounds like a job for the reload builtin, as in

>> reload(test)

Be aware that reloading only reloads the particular module's file, not
any other modules that the reloaded file happened to import.



From delgado at Mathematik.Uni-Bielefeld.DE  Thu Oct 28 18:02:19 1999
From: delgado at Mathematik.Uni-Bielefeld.DE (Olaf Delgado)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:02:19 +0200
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
In-Reply-To: <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.10.9910282351360.32442-100000@pinax.Mathematik.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Brian Kelley wrote:

> actually a much quicker test is:
> 
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> >>>

Mmmh, this looks like a typical case of RTFM.
Or, in this case, RTFDS ... :)

Python 1.5.1 (#1, May  1 1999, 08:24:20)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314 
(e on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x, y: x > y)
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> a.sort.__doc__
>>> 

Python 1.5.2
(#3, Apr 29 1999, 20:12:29) [GCC 2.8.1] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
>>> a.sort(lambda x, y: x - y)
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> a.sort.__doc__
'L.sort([cmpfunc]) -- sort *IN PLACE*; if given, cmpfunc(x, y) -> -1, 0,
1'
>>>

Seems like the specification was changed from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2. Not a bug
therefore, but a feature. :)

Cheers,
Olaf





From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 18 12:59:42 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:59:42 +0100
Subject: Executing binaries...?
In-Reply-To: <o9IO3.330$LR3.71613@news.shore.net>
Message-ID: <002b01bf198a$2c50b050$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Is there anything wrong with the standard function?
>   execfile(filename, [globals[, locals]])

It doesn't handle .pyc's.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From daha at best.com  Fri Oct 29 21:00:06 1999
From: daha at best.com (David S. Harrison)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 01:00:06 GMT
Subject: Contribution: nice floating point number formatting
Message-ID: <381a4316$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com>

Having written a bunch of scientific software, I am always amazed
at how few languages have built in routines for displaying numbers
nicely.  I was doing a little programming in Python and got surprised
again.  I couldn't find any routines for displaying numbers to
a significant number of digits and adding appropriate commas and
spaces to long digit sequences.  Below is my attempt to write
a nice number formatting routine for Python.  It is not particularly
fast.  I suspect building the string by concatenation is responsible
for much of its slowness.  Suggestions on how to improve the 
implementation will be gladly accepted.

			David S. Harrison
			(daha at best.com)


# ---------------------- cut here --------------------------
import math

# Returns a nicely formatted string for the floating point number
# provided.  This number will be rounded to the supplied accuracy
# and commas and spaces will be added.  I think every language should
# do this for numbers.  Why don't they?  Here are some examples:
# >>> print niceNum(123567.0, 1000)
# 124,000
# >>> print niceNum(5.3918e-07, 1e-10)
# 0.000 000 539 2
# This kind of thing is wonderful for producing tables for
# human consumption.
#
def niceNum(num, precision):
    """Returns a string representation for a floating point number
    that is rounded to the given precision and displayed with
    commas and spaces."""
    accpow = math.floor(math.log10(precision))
    if num < 0:
        digits = int(math.fabs(num/pow(10,accpow)-0.5))
    else:
        digits = int(math.fabs(num/pow(10,accpow)+0.5))
    result = ''
    if digits > 0:
        for i in range(0,accpow):
            if (i % 3)==0 and i>0:
                result = '0,' + result
            else:
                result = '0' + result
        curpow = int(accpow)
        while digits > 0:
            adigit = chr((digits % 10) + ord('0'))
            if (curpow % 3)==0 and curpow!=0 and len(result)>0:
                if curpow < 0:
                    result = adigit + ' ' + result
                else:
                    result = adigit + ',' + result
            elif curpow==0 and len(result)>0:
                result = adigit + '.' + result
            else:
                result = adigit + result
            digits = digits/10
            curpow = curpow + 1
        for i in range(curpow,0):
            if (i % 3)==0 and i!=0:
                result = '0 ' + result
            else:
                result = '0' + result
        if curpow <= 0:
            result = "0." + result
        if num < 0:
            result = '-' + result
    else:
        result = "0"
    return result



From arnold at dstc.edu.au  Thu Oct 21 18:39:15 1999
From: arnold at dstc.edu.au (David Arnold)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:39:15 +1000
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 21 Oct 1999 18:04:04 +0200."
             <380F3974.FE3C6310@lemburg.com> 
Message-ID: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au>

-->"Marc-Andre" == M -A Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> writes:

  Marc-Andre> On SuSE Linux there's a file /etc/SuSE-release which
  Marc-Andre> tells me the version etc.

on Debian GNU/Linux the file /etc/debian_version contains the
distribution version number (ie. 2.1 for my local system).

   > cat /etc/debian_version 
   2.1
   > 

on RedHat Linux the file /etc/redhat-release contains the distribution
version number, and its code name, although the format seems to have
changed relatively recently ...

   > cat /etc/redhat-release 
   release 5.0 (Hurricane)
   >

   > cat /etc/redhat-release 
   Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Apollo)
   >

   > cat /etc/redhat-release 
   Red Hat Linux release 6.0 (Hedwig)
   >


  Marc-Andre> It's a pitty that "uname" doesn't return this
  Marc-Andre> information.

it does get you kernel version which can be useful, especially as
people are reasonably likely to upgrade the kernel within a
distribution.


  Marc-Andre> I was thinking of something similar to the config.guess
  Marc-Andre> shell script included in autoconf. A bit more
  Marc-Andre> simpleminded perhaps but with enough information to be
  Marc-Andre> recognizable by a human :-) I would like to include it
  Marc-Andre> in the mxCGIPython project (see my Python Pages) which
  Marc-Andre> automatically generates a canonical name for the system
  Marc-Andre> where the binary is being compiled on.

that'd be nice.



d




From felixt at dicksonstreet.com  Tue Oct 12 02:06:36 1999
From: felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 06:06:36 GMT
Subject: Newbie question about __getattr__ and __setattr__
References: <1103_939440882@ns1.dicksonstreet.com> <c75n1tsuo14.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <1105_939708396@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>

On 10 Oct 1999 12:12:23 +1300, "Tim Evans" <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault) writes:
> 
> [snip]
> > I also wanted to be able to do this by assignment so I tried to
> > make a __setattr__ method, but if I do:
> > 
> > i[1][2][3] = 4
> > 
> > I get an exception from __getattr__. So my question is- Is there
> > a way to tell that __getattr__ is being called in an assignment, and not
> > to get a value, and is there a way to get all the keys and values at once?
> > Or is this a Bad Idea?
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > Felix
> 
> What about just storing all the nested keys as a tuple:
> 
> i[1,2,3] = 4
> 
> The dictionary key will be a tuple, which is fine as any immutable
> object can be a key.  It might not be as efficient, but if you wanted
> efficiency you would be using C, not python.
> 
> --
> Tim Evans

Hmmm...what would be the efficiency problem with this way? I tried
rewriting  __setitem__ to take the tuple and use it to build the nested
dictionary, but that messed up has_key for tuples...it would be nice
to make has_key work so it could say {'a': {'b': {'c': 'd'}}} has a key
['a']['b']['c'], but this already works for tuples...and it seems like indexing
with tuples is a standard way to do it. 

Thanks!



From vdkoijk at linux01.prc.tno.nl  Wed Oct  6 08:47:18 1999
From: vdkoijk at linux01.prc.tno.nl (John van der Koijk)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 14:47:18 +0200
Subject: websucker.py versus password-protected web tree
Message-ID: <87k8p0bqqx.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>

Dear readers,

I'm out of luck trying to mirror a certain web-tree which is protected
by a password-username combination. Don't know how the protocol works
and when I use a browser I get something like this:


        Name                    Last modified       Size  Description
  __________________________________________________________________________

 [DIR]  Parent Directory        01-Oct-1999 12:26      -
 [TXT]  Test.htm                03-Oct-1999 14:29     1k
 [DIR]  demo/                   05-Oct-1999 19:21      -
 [TXT]  download.htm            05-Oct-1999 20:14     3k
 [   ]  es_demo.exe             03-Oct-1999 16:18   3.6M
 [DIR]  full/                   05-Oct-1999 19:44      -
 [DIR]  limited/                05-Oct-1999 20:04      -
     _________________________________________________________________

- I know the username and password ;-)

Websucker seems unable to cope with this and I can't find relevant
references in the urllib docs. Any pointers? Should I alter the URL?

Greetings,
-- 
John van der Koijk.
--
TNO Institute of Industrial Technology



From ivanlan at callware.com  Sun Oct 31 14:14:55 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 12:14:55 -0700
Subject: eff-bot Python book ... revisited
References: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <19991029081909.B106968704@vislab.epa.gov> <00fd01bf23cb$e4b6ed30$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <381C952F.2E8F30EC@callware.com>

Hi All--

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Or is this really an electronic-only book (proprietary
> > format or viewing server).  Hope not.
> 
> for now, it works best if you treat it as an
> electronically distributed paper book.  in
> other words, download and print. (a script
> archive, errata, and cover art will be posted
> within a few days).

It's an excellent book, and *cheap*.  A traditional book would run you
$29.95 or thereabouts.

Admittedly, I plan to take it to Kinko's and get it double-sided and
bound, which probably wipes out most of the savings for me.  But if you
want to 3-hole it and stuff it into a 3-ring binder, you save a bunch.

BTW, /F, thanks for letting us know that there will be cover art!  I was
just about to take it for binding today, but decided to wait.  My only
problem is that I bought the book from my work computer, and the only
color printer I have access to is here at home;-(


> <flame note="not directed to randall,
> and shouldn't be read by anyone made
> of flammable material">
> 
> and before even more people start whining
> about me "betraying Python in itself, and
> especially its Unix roots," note that 1) this
> book wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for
> the eMatter initiative, 2) I only wrote the
> book, not the distribution software, and
> 3) Python was originally written on a Mac.
> 
> in other words, future eff-bot guides will
> be available on Macs only!
> 
> thanks.  I feel better now ;-)
> 
> </flame>
> 

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!  Macs are the one platform I don't use!  Nooooooooo!
(Now *I* feel better.)

I'm no fonder of Windows than the next UNIX bigot, but I have to use
Windows for *lots* of good reasons (my work demands it; the book I'm
writing demands it; scanners, CD writers, TV cards, etc. work better on
Windows; and on and on).  Sure, my heart is in UNIX; I look at my NT
webserver, and if I don't reboot it every day it falls over.  My Linux
machines have been up since the last power failure--123 days.  There're
things to like and dislike about each one.  And sometimes, it only makes
economic sense to start with a product that you know people will buy and
be able to use, & later use some of the profits to produce versions for
less popular platforms.  So there.

So I'm fine with a Windows-only version for now.  (And last time I
checked, the PDF viewer for Linux sucked; maybe that's changed by now,
maybe Adobe offers their own 4.0 viewer for Linux. ...)

My only real complaint is that I wish the book were licensed per person
instead of per machine.  And that's not /F's fault.

<although-i'm-sure-that-plenty-of-things-are!>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From helka.folch at edf.fr  Thu Oct 14 06:56:50 1999
From: helka.folch at edf.fr (Helka FOLCH)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:56:50 +0200
Subject: statistics about newsgroup items
Message-ID: <3805B6F2.A3DF368E@edf.fr>

Hello,
I'd like to write a program that gets statistics concerning how many
times a given news-item has been accessed or how many news items on
average does a user read in a certain news group every time he/she
connects to it, etc
I've looked at the nntp protocol and the nntplib python library but I
can't see how this can be done.
Is it possible to write such a program using nntplib , or maybe using
something else?

Thanks,
Helka




From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 03:30:36 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 09:30:36 +0200
Subject: Doing network traffic in the 'background' from Tkinter app??
Message-ID: <kspuxy62ub.fsf@telelogic.se>

I have a Tkinter application that I would like to be able to download
data from the internet.. possibly from more than one socket at a
time..

How do yo do this??

I have been experimenting with a module that on call checks the active
connectons (with select) and downloads data if there are any, and if
it is done calls a callback..

The check-function is called from Tkinter's after_idle.. but the
application freezes.. 

Any other hints??

        /andy


  -----------== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
   http://www.newsfeeds.com       The Largest Usenet Servers in the World!
------== Over 73,000 Newsgroups - Including  Dedicated  Binaries Servers ==-----



From guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US  Sat Oct 23 15:21:10 1999
From: guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:21:10 -0400
Subject: [PSA MEMBERS] Interpreter lock
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 23 Oct 1999 11:36:17 PDT."
             <004b01bf1d85$7f4caad0$fa01a8c0@easystreet.com> 
References: <004b01bf1d85$7f4caad0$fa01a8c0@easystreet.com> 
Message-ID: <199910231921.PAA02120@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

> Is there a way to find out from the API if a given thread (via its
> PyThreadState structure) has the interpreter lock already?

No; Python's internal lock data structures don't record the owning
thread.

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



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 06:24:01 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 11:24:01 +0100
Subject: List vs. Tuple
In-Reply-To: <37FDD602.4FFCDBF1@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <000401bf1177$3d7d3760$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> It's the commas, not the parentheses, which make a tuple
> constructor.

If this is the case, I wonder why the parentheses are present
on the default repr() of a tuple?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 31 16:17:34 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 16:17:34 -0500
Subject: eff-bot Python book ... revisited
In-Reply-To: Ivan Van Laningham's message of "Sun, 31 Oct 1999 12:14:55 -0700"
References: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <19991029081909.B106968704@vislab.epa.gov> <00fd01bf23cb$e4b6ed30$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <381C952F.2E8F30EC@callware.com>
Message-ID: <oq3durs00h.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Ivan Van Laningham <ivanlan at callware.com> writes:

> (And last time I checked, the PDF viewer for Linux sucked; maybe that's
> changed by now, maybe Adobe offers their own 4.0 viewer for Linux. ...)

I'm far from PDF, but it happened that Ghostscript helped me at viewing it
conveniently on Linux -- through `gv', I rarely use Ghostscript directly.

However, sending to the printer from `gv' (a Tkinter introduction, if I
remember well?) was less happy, as the inter-letter spacing was all wrong,
making the printed result especially difficult to read.  Even if it helps
me (?!) at reading more slowly, the fatigue grows faster.  I have no idea
of the cause of this random spacing, far less the solution.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard





From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  1 08:41:28 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 12:41:28 GMT
Subject: Locking some methods from certain clients
In-Reply-To: <37EF8EEF.F8AF3D31@microform.fr>
References: <37EF8EEF.F8AF3D31@microform.fr>
Message-ID: <000901bf0c0a$479f1f00$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> 	I want to lock the accesse of some method of an object from other
> objects using it. But on a class by class basis. What I want is the
> possibility to know the class-name of a caller and if this caller is on
> my access list let it use my method. Something like this:
> [snip]

Try something like this:

import sys

class A:
    def callee(self):
        try:
            raise "This is a bit of a hack really"
        except:
            print "I was called by class " +
sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame.f_back.f_locals["self"].__class__.__name__

    def caller(self):
        self.callee()

class B(A):
    def caller(self):
        self.callee()


def test():
    a = A()
    b = B()
    a.caller()
    b.caller()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    test()


Be careful though. This makes the assumptions:
1. You are only going to call A.callee from an instance method
2. The instance method's first parameter is called "self"

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 18 11:52:44 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:52:44 +0200
Subject: Anaconda
In-Reply-To: <m3bt9wd8um.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
References: <19991018150359.A26882@optiplex.palga.uucp> <m3bt9wd8um.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <19991018175244.A28863@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Michael Hudson wrote:
> Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> writes:
> > Hmm, does anyone know if there's useful information on anaconda?
> > I'd like to use their libraries for creating console windows.
> 
> No, I don't know of any information. But I thought that anaconda was
> the flashy new PyGTK GUI installers libs, not the console stuff.
> 
> May be wrong, mind.

Oh, you might be right. I've only *looked* at te ftp tree on one of
redhat.com's mirrors, not yet in the source...

Well, does anyone know of any information on the console stuff?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From EarlGoodyer at news.vex.net  Thu Oct 28 16:47:30 1999
From: EarlGoodyer at news.vex.net (Earl Goodyer)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 20:47:30 GMT
Subject: uploading from webpage...suing python?...yep
References: <7va6h7$rtb$1@gxsn.com>
Message-ID: <7vacp2$10bs$1@hub.org>

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:57:20 +0100, Matthew Russell wrote:
>    I need a way to give remote users the ability to upload HTML files to
>apache.

There are a few scripts linked here...
http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/apyllo.py?find=cgi+upload
...




From dgobbi at hickory.irus.rri.on.ca  Wed Oct 27 15:01:43 1999
From: dgobbi at hickory.irus.rri.on.ca (David Gobbi)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 19:01:43 GMT
Subject: RedHat 6.0 install question
References: <FK9r6B.FwF@world.std.com> <m3u2ncixt1.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <7v7i6n$pbo$1@panther.uwo.ca>

There are a couple options for upgrading to python-1.5.2.  
You can take the brute-force approach and upgrade to 
RedHat 6.1 (I've upgraded several machines, it is a very
smooth process) or you can go to http://andrich.net
and pick up Oliver's wonderful python packages.

If you take option #2, you should do
rpm -e --nodeps python python-devel tkinter
before installing python 1.5.2

 - David

Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> wware-nospam at world.std.com (Will Ware) writes:

>> I'm setting up a RedHat 6.0 Linux box at work. RH6.0 comes with
>> Python 1.5.1, but I'm spoiled and would like to install 1.5.2.
>> Red Hat has (wisely) chosen to use Python extensively in their
>> installation process for Linux, so many packages depend on it.
>> When I try to uninstall 1.5.1, I get several worrisome messages:
>> 
>> [root at hrothgar prt_test]# rpm -e $(rpm -q -a | grep py)
>> error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
>> 	python is needed by kernelcfg-0.5-5
>> 	python is needed by modemtool-1.21-6
>> 	python is needed by netcfg-2.20-2
>> 	/usr/bin/python is needed by kernelcfg-0.5-5
>> 	/usr/bin/python is needed by netcfg-2.20-2
>> 	pythonlib >= 1.8 is needed by kernelcfg-0.5-5
>> 	pythonlib is needed by modemtool-1.21-6
>> 	pythonlib >= 1.20 is needed by netcfg-2.20-2
>> 
>> Has anybody successfully tackled this? If this machine weren't
>> at work, I'd be a little more cavalier about risking breaking
>> other things, but in this case I want to be a little careful.
>> Any success stories would be much appreciated, thanks.

> These are all optional configuration tools. Do you actually use them?
> I never have.

> If you upgrade to python 1.5.2, some of them will break, but in really
> easy to fix ways.

> To upgrade, you could snarf the relavent RPMs from redhat-6.1, which
> actually has a decent install of python with it (a novelty), use the
> RPMs from the python4linux project (see

> http://fourthought.com/Python/python4linux.html

> I've not tried these, but they should be cool - more extension modules
> than w/redhat 6.1) or build your own from source. If you want *cfg to
> still work, make sure you build with --prefix=/usr.

> HTH,
> Michael


-- 
--David Gobbi, MSc                    dgobbi at irus.rri.on.ca
  Advanced Imaging Research Group
  Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct  4 08:58:55 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:58:55 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
In-Reply-To: <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl>
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl> <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <19991004145855.A29393@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Thomas Wouters:
> 
> On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 11:29:56AM +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> <Dutch Python Users Group proposal snipped>
> 
> > Sounds like a good idea. I'm in. We should get the Dutch Zopers into this
> > as well; we do have a Dutch Zope mailing list.
> > So, now we need a website and mailing list. Anybody have any ideas?
> 
> I can host a site and a mailing list ( + other assorted things) -- it would
> sit nicely next to the Amsterdam Perl Mongers site ;) (www.amsterdam.pm.org)
> I'd just need a hostname/domain and a name for the list... anyone have
> something creative in mind ? :)
> 

What kind of system is that?

We might can also host it at nl.linux.org, if my system administrator
agrees. The address would be python.nl.linux.org or
nlpug.nl.linux.org or something. The server runs Linux + Apache + Zmailer (MTA)
+ Majordomo + MySQL + python 1.5.2...

Any comments?

groeten,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	    Alles over spelletjes onder Linux in het Nederlands.
www.nl.linux.org      De Nederlandse Linux homepage met veel Nederlandse HOWTOS.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		     Leer vreemde woorden en definities.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger Ik ben een "Asperger", lees er hier meer over.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit       Mijn homepage, met informatie over mij en foto's.



From Oliphant.Travis at mayo.edu  Tue Oct  5 13:03:54 1999
From: Oliphant.Travis at mayo.edu (Travis Oliphant)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 12:03:54 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: converting between PIL and NumPY
In-Reply-To: <37F9FFA9.657BDDF6@udel.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910051131430.3962-100000@us2.mayo.edu>

> Could someone send me some quick info on converting between a PIL object
> and a NumPy array?  (I seem to recall this being discussed in August,
> but I can't find it in deja.com.  Are there any better places to look? I
> really hate deja.com.)

For now you have to use the tostring() method of one object and use the
fromstring command of the other toolkit.  If both objects implemented
the (new in Python 1.5.2) buffer interface you could do this without
having two copies of the same basic data.

I have only really tried to do it for PIL images of type 'L' (8-bit
char).

To get PIL object: (suppose num_image is a 2-D numpy array)
This will give an 8-bit image so you lose informtion.

import Image
import gist       # contains the bytscl command which returns 8-bit data
	          # from whatever NumPy array you give it
imsize = list(num_image.shape)
imsize.reverse()  # the shape is reversed from NumPy standard
imstring = gist.bytscl(num_image,top=255).tostring()
im=Image.fromstring('L',imsize,imstring)

To get a NumPy array (of type UnsignedInt8) from a PIL image (of type 'L')

import Numeric
num_image = Numeric.fromstring(im.tostring(),Numeric.product(im.size),'b')
num_image.shape = Numeric.array(im.size)[::-1]

To convert to and from other PIL types is similar.

> 
> I want to do some image filtering with my own routines.  Has anyone
> written a wrapper routine that slides a moving window over an image and
> provides these values to a python list (or numpy array) for a user
> defined routine to process?  If not, I may roll my own.

Nothing quite so general.  I do have some general purpose convolution
routines in signaltools if your filtering is linear and shift invariant
(i.e. can be written as a convolution). You can find signaltools at
http://oliphant.netpedia.net

If you come up with a general way to do this kind of "moving window
arbitrary filtering" in a fast way (i.e. no Python for loop), and you
would let me make it a part of signaltools, I'd love to know about it.

Best,

Travis








From tim_one at email.msn.com  Thu Oct 14 01:11:47 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 01:11:47 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>

[Joshua Marcus, fighting initial lack-of-feature bloat <wink>]
> ...
> There are, in fact, other situations in which one actually wants a
> "do...while" loop & one is forced to either repeat code or make a
> meaningless initial assignment.

Those are never necessary, although it's amazing how often people fall into
believing they are.  The usual Python idiom for:

    do {
        xxx;
        yyy;
    } while (condition);

is simply:

    while 1:
        xxx
        yyy
        if not condition:
            break

The criminally insane sometimes write the last line instead as:

        if not condition: break

but putting it on separate lines (as God intended) is key to making the
idiom instantly (after you're used to it -- about two days) recognizable for
what it is.

> ...
> I'd be surprised if they find the 'do...while' loops confusing to read.

Has been debated many times.  There's no pleasant way to spell it in Python;
all blocks have opening keywords, but never closing keywords.

suspecting-you're-going-to-reinvent-the-last-10-proposals-anyway<wink>-ly
    y'rs  - tim





From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct  9 17:31:53 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 17:31:53 -0400
Subject: IDLE and pythonwin won't run
In-Reply-To: <37FE2DC8.10C720CD@kodak.com>
Message-ID: <000901bf129d$b48a6f40$b32d153f@tim>

[Warren Poe]
> I downloaded py152.exe from www.python.org site and installed it
> successfully on Windows NT 4.0 machine, but when I tried IDLE or
> pythonwin, nothing happened.

We can't see you, see you need to draw a more detailed verbal picture of
what you tried.

There is no chance that PythonWin could work after what you described, since
PythonWin is a separate download from py152.exe.

As for IDLE, did you also install Tcl/Tk?  If not, that's your problem.  Or
if so, bring up a DOS box, cd to your Python installation directory, and try
this:

D:\Python>python
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import Tkinter
>>> Tkinter._test()

If that doesn't pop up a little dialog box, copy+paste whatever error msgs
you get.  Those msgs will probably show up in the FAQ somewhere too.

it-ain't-hard-just-mysterious-ly y'rs  - tim





From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 21 04:52:28 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:52:28 +0200
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
References: <380e3730.35917151@news.btx.dtag.de>
Message-ID: <380ED44C.43A51959@lemburg.com>

Stefan Franke wrote:
> 
> I'm looking for the appropriate SR software to build a part of a room
> installation. The task differs somewhat from the usual "dictate into
> word" applications:
> 
> In the recorded audio stream should be recognized as many words as
> possible - speaker independent and in German! (I can hear you shudder)
> 
> In unclear cases - there will probably be lots of them - the closest
> interpretations would be OK.
> 
> Therefore completeness and correctness don't have the highest priority
> in this case.
> 
> The application is supposed to run on a Win 9x machine. Direct
> accessibility from Python would be super, otherwise possible via
> COM/SAPI from M$, admittedly I don't know anything about its
> capableness.
> 
> I read the postings about NatLink in c.l.p, but in absence of a demo
> version of NatSpeak I cannot tell anything about its suitability, so I
> would be pleased to hear some opinions of this group's numerous SR
> experts!

I think Dragon Systems is working on a Python interface... just
add some timbot bait here and wait for him to jump into the thread ;-)
Some of Tim's favorites: speed, performance, regular expressions,
things you wouldn't dream of doing...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    71 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct 27 23:57:07 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:57:07 -0400
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
In-Reply-To: <3817EA8D.6AC04CFE@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <000401bf20f8$80be5a00$0a2d153f@tim>

[Tim]
> The first language I saw that took multimethods seriously was Cecil
> ...

[John Skaller]
> The main thing about Cecil, though, is that
>
> 	a) it is prototype based
> 	b) it throws out encapsulation

They would not agree with #b.  This is argued at length in the referenced
papers.

part-of-taking-mm-seriously-is-giving-up-file-based-source-code-ly y'rs  -
tim





From hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Fri Oct  8 15:47:36 1999
From: hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 21:47:36 +0200
Subject: Better python interactive prompt
References: <ted.drain-0810990918360001@mjordan.jpl.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <871zb5ws6f.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

First you should incorporate the readline module. For this you need to 
have the readline library installed on your system.

I have started to build a more comfortable interactive prompt, named
ipp. Look at http://starship.python.net/crew/jhauser/miscellany.html

It's just a start.

HTH
__Janko



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct  6 05:45:24 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 09:45:24 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37FA5400.444F0075@rubic.com> <Pine.SOL.3.96.991006102740.5496G-100000@sundial>
Message-ID: <003801bf0fdf$83eb1ad0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Moshe Zadka <moshez at math.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Jeff Bauer wrote:
> 
> > >     path_elements = string.split(path, "/")[1:]
> > 
> > You might consider using os.sep, rather than 
> > "/" slash as your path separator.
> 
> Or even better, use the functions in os.path. They know better.
> Can you say:
> c:\webserv/cgi-bin/script ?
> (Have no doubt: I've seen these kind of paths on my NT box)

Or even better, use os.makedirs (!)

</F>




From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Oct 26 09:36:05 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:36:05 +0200
Subject: Python and PythOz
References: <7v44sc$rur$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3815AE45.BBB1B1E2@lemburg.com>

Kevin Dahlhausen wrote:
> 
> "Dan Grassi" <Dan at Grassi.com> wrote:
> 
> >Hi,
> >
> >First I have to agree that Python is the greatest language I have ever
> >found.  I just wish it were a viable language for the Internet.  But no, I
> >have to use PHP3 if I want to be able to write programs others can also
> >install and run.
> 
> Nope, no flames.   I have to agree with you - it kills me that I can't find a
> place to run Python CGI.   If only we had a Python intepreter implemented in
> Perl......................

Looks like you should take a look at the mxCGIPython project:

	http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/mxCGIPython.html

This should get you started on pretty much any machine...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us  Tue Oct 12 11:42:58 1999
From: kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us (Jeffrey Kunce)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:42:58 -0500
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
Message-ID: <s8031147.030@mail.conservation.state.mo.us>

> I want to run the python interpreter as a deamon process. So when
> I exit the shell it started from it keeps on running in the background.

Take a look at daemonize.py at http://starship.python.net/crew/jjkunce/ 
It provides an easy way to make any python script into a daemon.

It doesn't specifically answer all your questions, but you may find it useful.

  --Jeff




From ilya at glasnet.ru  Wed Oct 13 15:34:22 1999
From: ilya at glasnet.ru (Ilya Etingof)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:34:22 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python SNMP module
In-Reply-To: <5650A1190E4FD111BC7E0000F8034D26A0F071@huina.oceanic.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.4.05.9910132305400.2837-100000@glas>

Hi Doug,

Yes, I'm aware of SNMPy module. Initially, I was planning to use it
in my program but it did not fit good enough in my case. My application
uses non-blocking I/O so it is build around the single select() system
call. I have not found an easy way to expose sockets used internally by
SNMPy to my core select() syscall so I ended up developing a SNMP packets
encoder/decoder which can be build into my application's I/O stream.

I have not thought about a better interface yet. I was thinking to
make it handling other SNMP request types and possibly MIB parser...
 
Thanks,
ilya

 
On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Doug Stanfield wrote:

> Ilya,
> 
> I'm very interested in your module and your development.  I downloaded and
> scanned through the files, but haven't had a chance to try anything yet.  I
> assume you are aware of the other SNMP module for Python, SNMPy.
> <http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/snmpy.html>, a page
> set up by Cameron Laird, has a link to information and the source.  He's
> alreadey put there a mention of your efforts.
> 
> I understand your module is all Python, and SNMPy is using one or the other
> of the available PD libraries.  It appears some thought went in to the SNMPy
> interface design.  Have you given thought to using the same scheme or does
> that fit with your design plans?
> 
> -Doug-
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ilya at glas.net [mailto:ilya at glas.net]
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 1999 8:14 PM
> > To: python-list at python.org
> > Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python SNMP module
> > 
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've written a simple (and incomplete) SNMP V1 manager class. 
> > Currently
> > it holds BER encoders/decoders and a few transport methods. 
> > Only Get-Request
> > is supported (no problem to add other request types, though). No MIB
> > parser yet.
> > 
> > However, it is written entirely in Python and it works.
> > 
> > I hope this module may be helpful to Python community as a 
> > starting point
> > for developing a more sophisticated solution.
> > 
> > The package is available at 
> > ftp://ftp.glas.net/~ilya/tools/pysnmp.tar.gz
> > 
> > I'm interested 
> > in bug reports & fixes, suggestions and improvements. Please,
> > please send your feedback to <ilya at glas.net>.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > ilya
> > 
> > -- 
> > http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> > 
> 

--
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.





From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Mon Oct 11 09:30:52 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:30:52 -0400
Subject: fatal relocation error when import shared libs on SOlaris 2.6
In-Reply-To: <37FE4584.17E9B221@apti.com>
References: <37FE4584.17E9B221@apti.com>
Message-ID: <19991011093052.A78043@vislab.epa.gov>

James L. Preston:
 |I have a new SPARCStation running Solaris 2.6, and I have been installing
...
 |My problem is with extension modules, i.e. PIL and Numeric. If I import
 |_imaging or multiarray, for example, I get a message like:
 |
 |ImportError: ld.so.1: python: fatal: relocation error: file
 |./multiarraymodule.so: symbol PySequence_Length: referenced symbol not
 |found
 |
 |Basically, it appears that the shared object module (multiarray.so, for
 |example) is calling functions from libpython, or somewhere else, but they
 |don't get found.  I am using gnu ld and the configuration scripts for the
 |modules generate the link command "ld -G" for generating the .so files.
 |
 |Should I generate a libpython.so in /usr/local/lib? Or is there some
 |other problem?

Sounds like your multiarray.so is dynamically linked with libpython.so.
But when something loads multiarray.so, the dynamic linker doesn't know
where to find the dependent lib libpython.so.

This is an RPATH problem.  Here is the solution and a couple alternative
hacks:

1) Relink multiarray.so and this time specify an RPATH to where
   libpython.so lives (i.e. on Solaris, add "-R /usr/local/lib")

2) (Hack) Force multiarray.so to link with the static python library
   (i.e. libpython.a)

3) (Hack) Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH at run-time to include /usr/local/lib

4) Augment the system dynamic linker path to include /usr/local/lib
   (man ldconfig).

Randall



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Wed Oct 13 05:31:10 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 11:31:10 +0200
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
References: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0joge8cxot.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <7tnvvs$mjd$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0jk8osd6m1.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <38037E74.73BE20BD@wildenhain.de>
Message-ID: <y0jemezmwtd.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Tino Wildenhain <tino at wildenhain.de> writes:

> "Magnus L. Hetland" wrote:
> > 
> > joshzeidner at my-deja.com writes:
> > 
> > >  Yeah but then he has to parse the HTML to get what he wants.  Not to
> > > mention that you are needlessly overloading the web server.
> > >
> > 
[...]
> double bah, cgi-scripts do not need to deliver HTML only. 

No - I didn't make that assumption. I just wrote how he could call the
script by URL; the sentence "but then he has to parse the HTML to get
what he wants" was not brought up by me.

> In fact they can return every datatype you want. plain-text,
> images, whatever data. since CGI is 8-bit clean, you 
> can even deliver pickled python-objects if you want.
> (make sure you call them in a sandbox, you never know...)

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From hniksic at srce.hr  Thu Oct 14 11:22:53 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 17:22:53 +0200
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <873dveynjm.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

>     while 1:
>         xxx
>         yyy
>         if not condition:
>             break

Actually, Python is full of `while 1' loops.  One gets used to them
after a while (and my C loops with multiple exit points tend to have
them too), but they're not really nice.  One wonders what's the point
of having a condition in the while loop if you're not to use it.  :-)



From da at ski.org  Mon Oct  4 23:53:05 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 20:53:05 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <000501bf0ed3$0effd9c0$4da2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.05.9910042051340.156-100000@david.ski.org>

On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Tim Peters wrote:

> I *hope* Python2 has a generic "number" concept, and doesn't distiguish
> among ints, longs, floats and complexii <ahem> by default. 

So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..

BTW, it's "complices" (from the French for 'accomplice').  

--david ascher




From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Sun Oct 17 10:26:09 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 16:26:09 +0200
Subject: Python compilers?
References: <87aeq86am8.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
		<slrn7uuv1r.77.stephan@pcrm.win.tue.nl> <37F13686.5265A9FD@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <3809DC81.5ADF6C89@appliedbiometrics.com>


skaller wrote:
...
>         That's correct. The interpreter Viperi is now running well enough
> to execute the pystone benchmark .. 10 times slower than CPython 1.5.2.
> Some of the functionality, however, is already faster than Python.
> For example, long integer seem faster. On the other hand, list
> concatenation is currently 100 times slower (I wish I knew why,
> the code is compiled down to machine code, there is no interpeter
> overhead involved).

If you send me a copy of the list implementation source code,
I can probably tell you why.

cheers - chris

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
     we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home



From tjs at longford.cs.monash.edu.au  Mon Oct 18 23:15:23 1999
From: tjs at longford.cs.monash.edu.au (Toby J Sargeant)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 13:15:23 +1000
Subject: python 1.5.2 coredump (repost).
Message-ID: <19991019131523.F9391@longford.cs.monash.edu.au>

[this is a repost of something I sent last week, which didn't receive any
 responses. python 1.5.2 coredumps (due to an assertion failure) when
 running the re module tests, if it is compiled with -DPy_DEBUG]

System configuration:
	Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 13 1999, 14:15:09)
	gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)
	Linux ephedra 2.2.7 #2 Thu May 6 14:10:35 EST 1999 i686 unknown
	glibc-2.1.1
	(Redhat 6.0)

Compile:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/contrib/python-debug --with-threads
make OPT='-DPy_DEBUG'

[toby at ephedra Python-1.5.2]$ ./python Lib/test/test_re.py
Adding parser accelerators ...
Done.
Running tests on re.search and re.match
Running tests on re.sub
Running tests on symbolic references
Running tests on re.subn
Running tests on re.split
Running tests on re.findall
Running tests on re.match
Running tests on re.escape
Pickling a RegexObject instance
Running re_tests test suite
Fatal Python error: UNREF invalid object
Aborted (core dumped)

This happens with or without --with-threads

Stack trace follows:

#3  0x8072c43 in Py_FatalError (msg=0x80a027b "UNREF invalid object")
    at pythonrun.c:1036
#4  0x80524f1 in _Py_ForgetReference (op=0x8125a88) at object.c:658
#5  0x8052534 in _Py_Dealloc (op=0x8125a88) at object.c:680
#6  0x805d729 in eval_code2 (co=0x8139260, globals=0x8135728, locals=0x0, 
    args=0x80f0398, argcount=1, kws=0x80f039c, kwcount=0, defs=0x80da4e4, 
    defcount=1, owner=0x0) at ceval.c:1656
#7  0x805d505 in eval_code2 (co=0x8109150, globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8, args=0x0, argcount=0, kws=0x0, kwcount=0, defs=0x0, 
    defcount=0, owner=0x0) at ceval.c:1612
#8  0x805965e in PyEval_EvalCode (co=0x8109150, globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at ceval.c:324
#9  0x8072836 in run_node (n=0x80e5f88, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py", globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at pythonrun.c:887
#10 0x80727e5 in run_err_node (n=0x80e5f88, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py", globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at pythonrun.c:872
#11 0x80727af in PyRun_File (fp=0x80c4b08, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py", start=257, globals=0x80f44e8, 
    locals=0x80f44e8) at pythonrun.c:860
#12 0x8071cfa in PyRun_SimpleFile (fp=0x80c4b08, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py") at pythonrun.c:570
#13 0x807189f in PyRun_AnyFile (fp=0x80c4b08, 
    filename=0xbffffda9 "Lib/test/test_re.py") at pythonrun.c:451
#14 0x804fb9c in Py_Main (argc=2, argv=0xbffffca4) at main.c:287
#15 0x804f5f0 in main (argc=2, argv=0xbffffca4) at python.c:12



From nospam at bitbucket.com  Fri Oct 15 23:02:27 1999
From: nospam at bitbucket.com (Phil Mayes)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 20:02:27 -0700
Subject: Printing with PythonWin
Message-ID: <JURN3.273$VY5.7192@newsfeed.avtel.net>

I'm trying to print using PythonWin, and when I do:
    import win32ui
    win32ui.CreatePrintDialog(1538).DoModal()

the OK button is inactive, maybe because MFC communicates via a
PRINTDLG structure for which there seems to be no PythonWin support.

There -is- documentation for a useful-looking PyCPrintInfo object
which:
  "Encapsulates an MFC CPrintInfo class, its member CPrintDialog
  class, and the PRINTDLG structure member of the CPrintDialog."

but I can't find any way to create one, and the source for the
member functions isn't linked in with the std PythonWin modules.

Have I overlooked something, or am I entering (da-da-da-dum)
the development zone?

[More background: I'm not using CView, the text to print is in a
RICHEDIT control.]

TIA,  Phil

Phil Mayes    pmayes AT olivebr DOT com






From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 31 03:01:22 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 03:01:22 -0500
Subject: Produce .pyc without execution
In-Reply-To: "Adrian Eyre"'s message of "Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:42:18 +0100"
References: <001701bf2224$2e5a9a80$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <oqzox0t0vh.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

"Adrian Eyre" <a.eyre at optichrome.com> writes:

> > Is there a way to compile a module without executing it? Just check syntax
> > and produce the .pyc file?

> See Lib/compileall.py

For one of my Python projects (I begin to have a few :-), I get this done
through my various `Makefile.am' files, with an `install-data-hook' goal.
Let me share an example with you.  Below, I include `configure.in',
the top-level `Makefile.am', then `src/Makefile.am'.  I do not include
`lib/Makefile.am': it is bigger than the `src/' one and brings nothing new.

Finally, I include `src/GNUmakefile', which I planted in the `src/' directory
of the distribution hierarchy, by opposition of the build hierarchy.
I have a similar `lib/GNUmakefile'.  These special files do not get
distributed, but they are very convenient for me.  My build hierarchy is
`local/' under the top-level, and after I modified a few Python files,
I just do `C-c C' in Emacs, which is my own binding for `M-x compile',
right from any source window, to save, install and recompile in one blow.

However, I could not decently propose this scheme for integration in
Automake, and that makes it a bit unsatisfactory.  It would be nicer, for
example, if `src/*.py' files were recompiled into the `src/' build hierarchy
from the `src/' distribution hierarchy, and then installed from there.
But `compileall' wants to install compiled files next to sources in the
same directory, which is a bit inconvenient.  Any simple solution?

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-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct 10 19:48:24 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 19:48:24 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
In-Reply-To: <87g0zjj73u.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <000001bf1379$f17c77e0$7fa2143f@tim>

[Sonny Parlin]
> ...
> Please keep in mind that I'm pretty ignorant to how Perl (or python
> for that matter) is implemented under the hood.

[Hrvoje Niksic]
> You probably don't want to know about Perl.  :-)

Indeed, it is a marvel to me that they manage to keep Perl running at all!
No wink implied -- the Perl source is frightening.

> Python, on the other hand, is very clean and very slow.

It isn't slower than Perl in my experience (the contrary) -- but then I use
Perl for the little bit of serious text-crunching and regexp-slinging that
comes up in my work.  Perl put extraordinary effort into implementing those
efficiently; outside of them, I find that Python is typically faster.
Disclaimer:  I haven't used Perl for anything *but* text-crunching and
regexp-slinging for several years, and it could be they've sped it "in
general" since then.  To judge from its current source code, though, it
would have to have been sped supernaturally to overcome the maze of internal
special cases.

try-timing-a-program-with-bigints<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 11 07:08:16 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:08:16 +0100
Subject: Beginner's question : Embedding Python - problem with PyRun_SimpleString
In-Reply-To: <00dd01bf11a9$03cbdb20$410902bf@eros.systus.com>
Message-ID: <000701bf13d8$eb3388b0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Thanks for this tip. Actually I'm running under Win32 I need to figure out
> how to redirect stderr.

Well. Here's one way to do it (n.b. I haven't tested whether this compiles):

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Catch method
static PyObject* catch(PyObject* self, PyObject* args)
{
    char* string;

    // Check args
    if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "Os", &self, &string))
        return NULL;

    // Do something with string
    my_func(string);

    // And return
    Py_INCREF(Py_None);
    return Py_None;
}

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Declare Python exports
static struct PyMethodDef catch_methods[] = {
    { "catch", catch, 1 },
    { NULL,    NULL,  0 }
};

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Main
void main()
{
    Py_Initialise();
    PyObject* catch = Py_InitModule("catch_module", catch_methods);
    PyObject* catch_dict = PyModule_GetDict(catch);
    PyObject* catch_func = PyDict_GetItemString(catch_dict, "catch");
    PyObject* class_dict = PyDict_New();
    PyObject* empty_tuple = PyTuple_New(0);
    PyObject* class_name = PyString_FromString("Catch");
    PyObject* catch_class = PyClass_New(empty_tuple, class_dict,
class_name);
    PyObject* catch_meth = PyMethod_New(catch_func, 0, catch_class);
    PyDict_SetItemString(class_dict, "write", catch_meth);
    PyObject* catch_inst = PyInstance_New(catch_class, 0, 0);
    PySys_SetObject("stderr", catch_inst);
    Py_DECREF(class_dict);
    Py_DECREF(empty_tuple);
    Py_DECREF(class_name);
    Py_DECREF(catch_class);
    Py_DECREF(catch_meth);
    Py_DECREF(catch_inst);

    // Run Python code here
    PyRun_SimpleString("wibble");

    // Finish up
    Py_Finalize();
}

> What about for the normal output of a command ?
Anything you 'print' will go to stdout.

> Do I have to redirect stdout as well ?
If you want to catch this too, then yes.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From msrisney at ingr.com  Thu Oct 14 04:21:34 1999
From: msrisney at ingr.com (msrisney at ingr.com)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 01:21:34 -0700
Subject: ADO in MS-IIS with MS-SQL Server
In-Reply-To: <3D655391DC4FD311B4D500A0C9E1E76E145708@rusheen.stamps.com>
Message-ID: <7u409u$slq7@eGroups.com>

here are some samples, David Sparrman has some good examples, at
http://personal.byggdok.se/~ds/python/ as well, good luck.

BTW, for some reason I have found relatively little documentation on 
ADO and Python, anyone intersted in writing up a tutorial???





import win32com.client
from win32com.client import constants


db=win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Connection")
rs=win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Recordset")

# ODBC  DSN,User,PWD
db.Open('Joust','','')


# create a table
print "Creatin a table with two columns, col1, and col2"
db.Execute("create table python_table (col1 varchar(25), col2 int)")


# Open recordset and insert one record
print "Inserting one record into python_table"
rs.Open("python_table", db, constants.adOpenDynamic,
constants.adLockOptimistic, constants.adCmdTable)
rs.AddNew()
rs.Fields("col1").Value="scott"
rs.Fields("col2").Value=123
rs.Update()
rs.Close()





# Since the table just was created it contains only one record
rs.Open("SELECT col1, col2 FROM python_table", db)
print "Retreived data:"
print "     Name = ", rs.Fields("col1").Value
print "    value = ", rs.Fields("col2").Value
print "Dropping table"
db.Execute("drop table python_table")
rs.Close()
db.Close()
print "All done!"





From shouldbe at message.com  Wed Oct 27 12:29:40 1999
From: shouldbe at message.com (Arinte)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:29:40 -0500
Subject: Using python to run scripts
Message-ID: <7v75hc$1eik$1@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>

I want to use python in my app to run test scripts.  I am trying to learn it
right now.  But, what I wanted to know is when I get ready to distribute the
app (if ever =-(), does the user have to have all of python installed or is
it just a dll or something.  This is strictly for windows on the App side
anyway.

Thanks...





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 28 21:46:09 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:46:09 -0400
Subject: Newbie Alert: Discrete Event Simulator
In-Reply-To: <s1hsmdspr0861@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <1270961677-6466507@hypernet.com>

Bryan Morris wrote:

[big snip]
> If you're still with me... here's the
> Problem:
> The simulation seems to run fine, except after the Scheduler
> handles a few events I get a Traceback error saying the Scheduler
> can't find the proper Event_Handler instance.
> 
> What I've tried:
> When I step through the debugger and the Object_Manager stores
> the name and object instance address (e.g., "Pong instance at
> AAAA").  The first event to be scheduled for "Pong" tries to get
> the associated object instance from the Object_Manager but
> instead it gets back something else (e.g., "Pong instance at
> BBBB").  Which causes the traceback when I call this instance's
> Process_Event function.
> 
> My questions:
> a) When I Register an object instance and store it in the
> dictionary, am I guaranteed that that object instance will not
> move?  

Yes.

> He says with only a "dangerous" (i.e., little)
> understanding of what the garbage collection does. As you can
> imagine, this is kind of critical to my design as it stands. b)
> If not, any other ideas? c) Have I been vague enough, or do you
> need more info?

You have been more than sufficiently vague. You are 
undoubtedly stepping on yourself somehow ;-).
 
> I don't really want to send the code for open view until at least
> I bang my head against the wall a few more times...

We're nice, here. Nobody's rooting for the wall.

at-least-not-publicly-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From mal at lemburg.com  Sun Oct 10 08:58:21 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:58:21 +0200
Subject: BUG: classobject.c
References: <000901bf1199$eb17b090$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <38008D6D.E48AE016@lemburg.com>

Adrian Eyre wrote:
> 
> 3 lines starting at 1554:
>                 funcname = PyObject_GetAttrString(func,"__name__");
>                 if (funcname == NULL)
>                         PyErr_Clear();
> 
> should be (perhaps - not sure if this will leak or not):
>                 funcname = PyObject_GetAttrString(func,"__name__");
>                 if (funcname == NULL)
>                         PyErr_Clear();
>                 else
>                         Py_INCREF(funcname);

The PyObject_* APIs return object references with incremented refcount.
You don't need the Py_INCREF here -- it would cause a memory leak.

> or else - line 1562:
>         Py_XDECREF(funcname);
> 
> causes an free'd memory read (fname) at line 1567:
>         if (self == NULL)
>                 sprintf(buf, "<unbound method %.100s.%.100s>", fcname, fname);
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
> Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
> Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
> Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
> http://www.optichrome.com
> --------------------------------------------

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    82 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 11 14:16:09 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:16:09 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <000501bf1414$b17e2940$ee2d153f@tim>

[Greg Ewing]
> Also, to clarify Tim's rather waffly characterisation of when my
> closures do or don't cause cycles, it's quite simple: they never
> cause cycles unless you write code which makes them do so.

[Jeremy Hylton]
> I think this description is at least as waffly as Tim's :-).

I went into some detail on when Greg's patch would and wouldn't create
cycles in an earlier (but still very recent) msg, and didn't feel like
repeating it all.  That was certainly less waffleworthy than Greg's
content-free tautology above <wink>.

> It seems to me that most of the interesting uses of lexical scoping
> necessarily create cycles.  Is there a large class of uses that will
> not create cycles?

In Greg's approach, yes -- although at a cost.

> One of the prototypical uses of lexical scoping is functions like
> these:
>
> def make_adder(num):
>     def adder(x):
>             global num
>             return x + num
>     return adder
>
> In this case, adder maintains a reference to make_adder's
> environment, and that environment maintains a reference to adder,
> because adder was defined there.  So we have a cycle...

In Greg's scheme (which you may be confusing with John Skaller's), you write
that in the more Scheme-like way:

def make_adder(num):
    def adder(x):
        return x + num
    return adder

That is, Greg doesn't change the meaning of Python's "global", and you don't
want "global" here.  Non-local references are searched for up a chain of
static (lexical) links, in the usual way.

The "def adder" does *not* create a closure (and hence neither a cycle)
under Greg's scheme.  It binds a new kind of object to "adder", a trivial
wrapper around the function object currently stored.  No info about bindings
is contained in this new object.  The sole purpose of the new object is to
force a *later* operation to create a closure.

The magic all happens in LOAD_FAST, which is (for speed), alas, the worst
possible opcode to pick on.  When LOAD_FAST retrieves an object of this new
type, *then* it creates a closure, out of the function wrapped by the new
object and the current frame.  The beauty of it is that this closure (the
object returned by "return") is anonymous:  it refers to make_adder's
locals, but make_adder's locals do not refer to *it*.  make_adder's locals
refer only to the new wrapper object bound to "adder", which in turn refers
only to the (raw) function object.

So there is no cycle here, and everything works fine.  It's very clever.
It's also hard to know when you're creating a cycle, unless you're Greg <0.1
wink>; e.g., this variant does create a cycle:

def make_adder(num):
    adder = lambda x: x + num  # lambda is now very different from def
    return adder

and so does:

def make_adder(num):
    def adder(x):
        return x + num
    def suber(x):
        return x - num
    methods = [adder, suber]
    return methods

while:

def make_adder(num):
    return lambda x: x + num

does not; and so on (see my earlier msg).

no-msg-really-gets-sent-until-it's-typed-twice<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From lutz at rmi.net  Wed Oct  6 19:29:10 1999
From: lutz at rmi.net (Mark Lutz)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 23:29:10 GMT
Subject: GvR interview online
Message-ID: <199910062329.RAA09051@shell.rmi.net>

Apologies if this has already been posted, but I just noticed
a new interview of some guy named Guido, at this page:

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

The interviewer is Frank Willison, O'Reilly Editor-in-Chief.
You can also reach it from O'Reilly's homepage, www.oreilly.com.

Cheers,

--Mark Lutz  (http://rmi.net/~lutz)



From amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU  Thu Oct 28 16:55:37 1999
From: amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Amit Patel)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 20:55:37 GMT
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3817D36A.1BA8DAE@bigfoot.com> <38184747.CFECCA94@compaq.com> <3818A533.159F56BF@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <7vad89$jgk$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>

 Louis Madon  <madonl at bigfoot.com> wrote:
| Greg Ewing wrote:
| > I'm a bit bothered by the idea that *adding* a new
| > method could cause previously valid calls to become
| > invalid. If I have only foo(A, B) and foo(AA, B)
| > defined, then calling foo(AA, BB) is okay. But if
| > I add a foo(A, BB), then all my existing foo(AA, BB)
| > calls, anywhere in the program, suddenly become ambiguous.
| 
| This scenario is telling you something about your architecture: perhaps
| you shouldn't be calling foo(AA, BB) or perhaps you should do some
| refactoring of the class model or perhaps you need to add a specific
| foo(AA, BB) method.  IMHO, this process helps to produce a better
| architecture.

I don't know I'm calling foo(AA, BB).  All I know is that I have an "A
like" object and a "B like" object (Python examples: file-like object
and sequence).  I then call foo on these two arguments, and the system
complains.

Therefore it can't be my fault when the foo(AA, BB) call fails.

My caller (1) doesn't know I'm calling foo (after all, why should he
know the implementation details of my class?), and (2) only gave me
one of the two arguments, and therefore is unaware of the combination
that is about to take place.

Therefore it can't be my caller's fault when foo(AA, BB) fails.

When defining foo(AA, B), the author of AA may not know about foo(A,
BB), so it can't be AA's fault if the call fails.

When defining foo(A, BB), the author of BB may not know about foo(AA,
B), so it can't be BB's fault if the call fails.


Everyone wrote "correct" code but when it's put together it fails.
That doesn't scale well.  :(


     - Amit




From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 18 14:12:18 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 18:12:18 GMT
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org>
Message-ID: <7ufntp$s1u$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

The suggestions other people have posted will work.  Probably the best
way is to have the parts of the string in a list and string.join them.
This is probably the most efficient (though I haven't done benchmarks
or anything.)

Here is the quick and dirty way:

s = some_string
pos = given_position
delimiter = ","

new_string = "%s%s%s" % (s[:pos], delimiter, s[pos:])

good luck,

---Preston

In article <3804F889.30739C22 at bruer.org>,
  Jim Bruer <jim at bruer.org> wrote:
>
> How do you insert a delimiter into a string at a given position?

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From poe at kodak.com  Fri Oct  8 13:45:44 1999
From: poe at kodak.com (Warren Poe)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 13:45:44 -0400
Subject: IDLE and pythonwin won't run
Message-ID: <37FE2DC8.10C720CD@kodak.com>

I downloaded py152.exe from www.python.org site and installed it
successfully on Windows NT 4.0 machine, but when I tried IDLE or
pythonwin, nothing happened.

Any idea why it won't run?  I am new to python and don't know where to
find info for fixing this problem.  I would appreciate answers asap.
Thanks in advance.







From bjorn at roguewave.com  Fri Oct 29 13:15:18 1999
From: bjorn at roguewave.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:15:18 -0600
Subject: Medusa and cgi scripts...?
Message-ID: <51C9F3C392D0D111A15600A0C99E64A9AF5600@localhost>

I've been playing with Medusa for a little while, and I can't seem to get it
to work with cgi scripts (written in python of course).  I tried renaming
them to .py, .mpy, but no results.

Does anyone have a quick howto?

-- bjorn



From python-list at teleo.net  Sun Oct 31 17:29:04 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 14:29:04 -0800
Subject: eff-bot Python book ... revisited
In-Reply-To: <381C952F.2E8F30EC@callware.com>
References: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <00fd01bf23cb$e4b6ed30$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <381C952F.2E8F30EC@callware.com>
Message-ID: <99103116022800.00566@quadra.teleo.net>

[Ivan Van Laningham, on Sun, 31 Oct 1999]:

:: It's an excellent book, and *cheap*.  A traditional book would run you
:: $29.95 or thereabouts.

Agreed! I took it to the beach this morning and learned a bunch, while
enjoying the sun. Thanks Frederik. :)

:: Admittedly, I plan to take it to Kinko's and get it double-sided and
:: bound, which probably wipes out most of the savings for me.  But if you
:: want to 3-hole it and stuff it into a 3-ring binder, you save a bunch.

This raises a question, which perhaps one of the physicists, chemists,
or Kinko's employees on this list can answer ... how to print Frederik's
book at home on both sides.

I printed the book both sides, using inexpensive paper, on my LaserJet.
Whenever I do this, the first pass (odd pages only) subjects one
surface to intense heat, buckling/warping the stack. This makes it
nearly impossible to feed the stack back through for the second (odd)
pass without jamming the printer.

However, this time, I let the stack sit for several days, to allow the
moisture in the fibers to reequalize (?) -- and it worked.

Anyone have a better (quicker) idea?



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Fri Oct 22 12:12:54 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:12:54 -0700
Subject: distutils installation fails in WinNT; sys.exec_prefix empty
In-Reply-To: <7uq176$3sr$1@eve.enteract.com>
Message-ID: <000801bf1ca8$4c701300$53001064@bobcat>

> Why wouldn't sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix be set to correct values
> after installing on NT?  Did I do something wrong, or is this a bug
in
> the installer?  Or is the distutils code wrong to expect those
values
> to be correct?  Is there something I can do to work around the
> problem?  I couldn't see any registry key that I could tweak.  I'm
> willing to help solve this problem, but I don't know where to look
> next.

My guess is that you have moved Python.exe from its default spot.  If
Python.exe is not in the Python directory, it can not determine these
values (as it goes sniffing for string.py based on the location of the
executable).

Mark.




From timo at bbn.com  Fri Oct 22 14:07:21 1999
From: timo at bbn.com (Tim O'Malley)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:07:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-WCrVfFWPxQki@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221525430.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
	<rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-WCrVfFWPxQki@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <14352.42917.262237.82280@ghost.bbn.com>

hola.

Benjamin Schollnick writes:
 > I agree, it's nice.... But the instructions aren't written right...
 > Hard to use a module when the docs/examples are telling 
 > you the wrong thing.

Your comment is noted.
  Help me fix the docs/example.  Submit changed text to me.

(and I'll thank you)

-- 
.....................................................................
.   happy daze            .   Age and treachery will beat           .
.        -tim O           .       youth and skill every time.       .
.....................................................................



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Tue Oct  5 06:46:18 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 23:46:18 +1300
Subject: print longs
References: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com>
Message-ID: <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com>

Nathan Clegg wrote:
> 
> Do I have to convert
> to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?

Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this
is a pain as well, but Guido doesn't seem to be
among them, so we're stuck with this for the time
being.

Greg



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Fri Oct  8 01:13:42 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 01:13:42 -0400
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
In-Reply-To: <199910071211.IAA10358@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <000601bf114b$e3290940$7c2d153f@tim>

FYI,

> ...
> but (a) it's painful to write your own atof(), %e, %f, %g formatter
> in a platform independent manner with the best accuracy,

That's for sure.

> (b) it seems such a waste of effort since the C library has one,

No, it doesn't.  Very few libcs do floating-point I or O with best accuracy
(Sun does -- and offhand I don't know of anyone else!), which means Python's
FP I/O is as platform-dependent as C's.  It's such a subtle problem that the
IEEE-754 std doesn't demand proper rounding for float<->string conversion,
despite that it demands it for everything else.  These days that's widely
considered to be a bug in the std.

David Gay wrote excruciating "proper" FP conversion code, available from
NETLIB.  Ten dollars to the first person who can prove it correct <wink>.
It's actually easy to get this right, provided you don't care how slow it
runs (if you're willing to fake thousand-bit integers, it's a snap).

floats-are-really-large-rationals-ly y'rs  - tim





From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sun Oct 24 09:31:54 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 13:31:54 GMT
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <1271354562-2632983@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <01E317D42527FC5F.A35D548EBCB64C7C.7C5E6B812D216D74@lp.airnews.net>

In article <1271354562-2632983 at hypernet.com>,
Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>this way: Python without double-underscore stuff is safe as 
>Mommy's milk. Python with double-underscore stuff is riskier 
>(tends to stack overflow unexpectedly), but still sanctioned, 
>approved and so documented. But when you get into throwing 
>exceptions so you can pull apart the traceback, you're on your 
>own. This is implementation detail stuff, and if your code 
			.
			.
			.
>Some C++ column I read recently said that the C++ 
>committee members (who, of course, approved RTTI) were 
>informally discussing this and could not find an example of 
>RTTI usage that wasn't better done without RTTI.
			.
			.
			.
>Eval isn't needed very often. Assuming (pretty safely, I think) 
>that the unknown code in question follows at least some kind 
>of expected interface, it is both safer, easier, and more 
>comprehensible to do something like:
>
> mod = __import__(<unknown>)
> mod.doYourThing()
>
>(and there are other, safer ways to do most of the other uses 
>of eval).
			.
			.
			.
Thanks.  Our current status is therefore that all
known demands for introspection-goop either
1.  can be satisfied by __*__ references,
    which we all recognize as slightly out-
    side normal operations, or
2.  are the result of a misdesign for which
    we can exhibit a superior alternative,
    often involving disciplined polymorphism
    or an interface from an explicit class
    definition.
This feels slightly alien to me, but I can get over
it.  I think it's particularly valuable to write up
explanations of the form, "If you find yourself
wanting to XX, take it as a hint to study your design
in search of a YY, which will yield a better design."
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From philh at vision25.demon.co.uk  Fri Oct 29 17:12:50 1999
From: philh at vision25.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 99 21:12:50 GMT
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial> <19991028065755.B10826@better.net> <y0jogdjcshq.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <slrn81hbci.g.bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <941231570snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>

In article <slrn81hbci.g.bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
           bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu "Bernhard Reiter" writes:
> On 28 Oct 1999 19:20:01 +0200, Magnus L. Hetland <mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no> wrote:
> >William Park <parkw at better.net> writes:
> >
> >> On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 11:19:28AM +0200, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> >> > Hi!
> >> > 
> >> > I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with some 
> >> > cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep same 
> >> > "last changed" time and more.
> >> > 
> >> > You can get it at http://buffy.acmecity.com/sanctum/195/dos2unix
> >> > 
> >> > It's in the public domain, so you can do with it whatever you want.
> >> 
> >> What's wrong with 'fromdos' and 'todos' avaiable in most Linux
> >> distributions?  You can perform those features using shell.  Since your
> >> target audience is Unix people, there is no need to reinvent wheel.
> >
> >Or dos2unix/unix2dos, also readily available already...? :)
> 
> Hey, what about "recode"? :)
>         Bernhard

I'm a "tr" man, myself.


-- 
Phil Hunt - - - - - - - - -  philh at vision25.demon.co.uk
   - Linux was 8 years old on 17th September! See: -
http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/prog/linuxbirthday.html




From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Oct 26 04:13:17 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:13:17 +0200
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia>
Message-ID: <3815629D.84CD340B@lemburg.com>

Dan Grassi wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> First I have to agree that Python is the greatest language I have ever
> found.  I just wish it were a viable language for the Internet.  But no, I
> have to use PHP3 if I want to be able to write programs others can also
> install and run.
> 
> Why?  Well, PHP3 has a few things integrated that Python does not and they
> are killers.  Actually just two.
> 
> Authentication, that is the ability to get the user ID and password and
> MySQL database access is just plane impossible, no I can't rely on .htaccess
> files and mod_pyapache does not supply this as does the the PHP3 module --
> so sad.

Why should it be impossible to get the authentification data from Python ?

Could it be that you are referring to the fact that Apache does not
set those environment variables ? If yes, there is a solution used
by the Zope people (actually due to Paul Everitt, I think). Put this
into you Apache config file:

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization}  ^(.*)
 RewriteRule ^/(.*) /path/to/scripts/mypython.cgi/$1 [e=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%1,t=application/x-httpd-cgi,l]

> The second, database access is more of a problem.  The lack of documentation
> and requirement to compile c code is not acceptable, I just can't write a
> Python program and expect even a minority of people to be able to install
> it.  Further, most will not have the required access from their IHP.  The
> several flavors of MySQL access also do not help.  The PHP3 solution was to
> make DB access a part of the language, surely this is the wave of the
> future.  Just look at a PHP3 manual, it covers exactly how to access the
> various databases.

There are lots of RPMs providing DB access for Python out there, so it's really
only a matter of OS package installation, not compilation. Building
DB access into the core would be the wrong path, since there are simply
too many different ways to communicate with DBs from within Python, e.g.
low-level DB specific APIs, ODBC, ADO, DAO, etc. pp.
 
> So its is back to PHP3, it pretty much works right out of the box on most
> IHPs even if it is not nearly as elegant as Python.  The default install
> instructions include how to install MySQL capabilities so IHPs tent to
> install it that way.

If you need an IHP with MySQL support and preconfigured Python access,
simply join the PSA and get yourself an account on starship.python.net
for free.

As for the other topics that would go under your subject line,
have a look at the chapter "11. Internet Protocols and Support"
in the Python Lib Reference. There's so much more to the Internet
than MySQL and authentication...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From python-list at teleo.net  Wed Oct  6 11:52:08 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 08:52:08 -0700
Subject: websucker.py versus password-protected web tree
In-Reply-To: <87k8p0bqqx.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>
References: <87k8p0bqqx.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>
Message-ID: <99100608533904.00964@quadra.teleo.net>

[John van der Koijk, on Wed, 06 Oct 1999]:
:: Dear readers,
:: 
:: I'm out of luck trying to mirror a certain web-tree which is protected
:: by a password-username combination. Don't know how the protocol works
:: and when I use a browser I get something like this:

Have you tried http://user:password at host.domain?



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 14 06:04:26 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:04:26 +1300
Subject: reverse function of id()
References: <7u1n9o$rqf$1@feed.teaser.fr> <m3hfjvjzy7.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3805AAAA.59CD13B8@compaq.com>

Michael Hudson wrote:
> 
> "Olivier Deckmyn" <olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr> writes:
> 
> > Hi !
> >
> > Is there a way to get the Python Object whose id is X...
> 
> Not in the core; it would be easy enough to do in an extension, but
> it's a licence to crash the interpreter

And so it would be vastly preferable to just keep a
reference to the object in the first place.

If you tell us more about why you think you need to
do this, maybe we can suggest an alternative.

Greg



From teyc at bigfoot.com  Thu Oct 21 09:00:06 1999
From: teyc at bigfoot.com (Chui Tey)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:00:06 +1000
Subject: Database exploration tools?
References: <380EEED4.A888FFD2@darwin.in-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <7un1ng$7ei$1@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au>

Actually Zope at www.zope.org has a browse feature to explore databases.
Not sure if that's what you are after.

Sincerely,

Chui


Dinu C. Gherman <gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:380EEED4.A888FFD2 at darwin.in-berlin.de...
> Hi,
>
> I'm just wondering if there is any "Database Explorer" tool
> written in Python, with or without GUI, for Oracle or also
> other databases?
>
> I started to write a bare bones thing like this that cannot
> do anything more right now, but generate ("report") table
> descriptions and differences thereof (not quite finished)
> for Oracle. The latter was the original motivation to get
> started, by doing comparisons of databases of different
> product releases, due to a lack of documentation...
>
> This is what it is meant to accomplish (soon...):
>
> # dbdiff.py  (likely to change)
> #
> # Describing Oracle database tables and diff's thereof.
> #
> # Features:
> #   - Output in ASCII, HTML, PDF and LaTeX.
> #   - Working on existing (installed) Oracle databases.
> #   - Tested on Oracle 7.3.4 and Windows NT 4.
> #   - Using mainly DCOracle and Piddle (for PDF) packages.
> #   - Printing a report with table descriptions.
> #   - Printing a report describing table differences.
> #   - Filtering of table, column and attribute names.
>
> Has something similar being done already? I'm just looking
> at TOAD (http://www.toadsoft.com) and it seems tempting to
> do something like this in Python... well, if the day had
> 72 hours, perhaps... ;-)
>
> Well, I will put some anonymised sample output files on the
> starship as soon as the code is just a bit cleaner as it is
> right now (and the reports are a bit more complete)...
>
> BTW, how much of a chance is there to make a simple explo-
> ring tool database-independant (I'm just a bit familiar
> with Oracle)?
>
> Regards,
>
> Dinu
>
> --
> Dinu C. Gherman
> ................................................................
> Food for Echelon: Delta Force, SEAL, virtual, WASS, WID, Dolch,
> secure shell, screws, Black-Ops, O/S, Area51, SABC, basement,
> ISWG, $@, data-haven, NSDD, black-bag, rack, TEMPEST, Goodwin,
> rebels, ID, MD5, IDEA, garbage, market, beef, Stego, ISAF, NARF,
> Manfurov, Kvashnin, Marx, Abdurahmon, snullen, Pseudonyms, MITM,
> Gray Data, VLSI, Leitrim... -- Visit http://www.hacktivism.org





From zajac at nortelnetworks.com  Thu Oct 28 18:27:42 1999
From: zajac at nortelnetworks.com (Ron A. Zajac)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:27:42 -0500
Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
Message-ID: <3818CDDE.CF68E8BD@nortelnetworks.com>

Dearest, Darling Python Weenies,

I looked about http://www.python.org/ a bit, and also scouted around on
my O'Reilly "Programming Python" CD, but couldn't find a Quick Ref
beyond 1.3.  I'm using 1.5; is there such an animal?

Thanx in advance!






From jcosby at wolfenet.com  Thu Oct 28 20:37:34 1999
From: jcosby at wolfenet.com (Jon Cosby)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:37:34 -0700
Subject: Destroying files
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net> <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>

Yes, I'm on Windows 95. No, deleting files does not remove them from your
hard drive; They can be recovered by computer forensics experts or by nosey
hacks. I'm putting my PC up for sale, and the thought is troubling.


Jon Cosby

E-mail: jcosby at wolfenet.com
Web Site: http://www.wolfenet.com/~jcosby/

----- Original Message -----
From: Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com>
To: Jon Cosby <jcosby at wolfenet.com>
Cc: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Destroying files


> |Is there a utility out there for finding and destroying deleted files
from
>  |my hard drive?
>
> I'm not sure if this is a genuine question or flame bait.  Could you
> clarify your request?  What platform?  What tools do you use to delete?
>
> On a hunch, is this MSWindoze?  And are the "deleted" files you speak of
in
> that "wastebasket" thing?  If so, realize that you can turn the
wastebasket
> off (i.e. really delete files when you say to delete them).
>
> --
> Randall Hopper
> aa8vb at yahoo.com
>




From paul.robinson at quantisci.co.uk  Mon Oct 11 05:27:40 1999
From: paul.robinson at quantisci.co.uk (Paul Robinson)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:27:40 GMT
Subject: how to translate a virtual path to a physical path in a CGI script
References: <000b8d9b.daa24cc0@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com> <7tfept$lkc$1@news.kolumbus.fi> <09920fb9.d5cb6bd6@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com> <14331.34861.43390.369768@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <7tsai4$gs0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <14331.34861.43390.369768 at dolphin.mojam.com>,
  skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro) wrote:
>
>     >> Currently I am running IIS
 ...
>     >> I managed to write a mappath() function yesterday, which
substracts
>     >> PATH_INFO from PATH_TRANSLATED to derive the document root,
and join
>     >> the given logial path to it.  This way is definitely not
reliable, is
>     >> it?
>
> Unfortunately, no, it's not.  On Apache at least (and probably on
other web
> servers as well), you can define lots of mappings between virtual
paths and
> absolute paths within the same server.
 ...
> Given that, it may be possible to rummage around in the config file
and
> build a list of potential directories where files could be located,
then try
> locating the file using that list.

In IIS the same config information is in the registry at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC\Parameters\Vi
rtual Roots

These can be extracted using Python in order to make the deduction
about the physical location of the virtual directories.

    Paul.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tbryan at python.net  Mon Oct 18 21:18:44 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 21:18:44 -0400
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
References: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim> <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <380BC6F4.CADA6492@python.net>

Michael Hudson wrote:

> If I execute:
> 
> [mwh21 at atrus src]$ python -c "raw_input()"
> 
> then type f, f, control-c, control-c (that wierdness I'm used to) I
> get:
> 
> ffTraceback (innermost last):
>   File "<string>", line 1, in ?
> KeyboardInterrupt
> 
> However, if I try
> 
> [mwh21 at atrus src]$ python -c "import readline; raw_input()"
> 
> and hit f, f, and then just one control-c, I get just:
> 
> ff
> 
> and then I'm back to the bash prompt.

Okay.  I tried this on a Red Hat 6.0 machine. 
readline-2.2.1-5
python-1.5.2-2 (from Oliver Andrich's page)
I get the same results as those you report above.

On the Starship, we've got Red Hat 5.2 and a 
Python 1.5.2 that I built from source.  rpm reports
readline-2.2.1-1
On the Starship, your second example doesn't just dump me 
back to the prompt.  I get an uncaught KeyBoard interrupt
after one Control-C.

> python 1.5.2 (both from redhat 6.1 & a fairly recent cvs)
> readline-2.2.1-5 (according rpm -q readline)
....
> Is that enough information to help anyone explain what's going on?
> Anyone experience/not experience the phenomenon (I got one negative
> via email).

Maybe you try it with a different version of readline?  For example, the 
RPM that came with Red Hat 5.2.

---Tom



From tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Oct  6 22:27:49 1999
From: tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 02:27:49 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <37f7564e.33979028@news.supernews.com> <5lvh8p6zbt.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <37F85D6E.D50D1771@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <48589E844533C64C.BD805910C2AC08ED.AB710872ECE12F8F@lp.airnews.net>

In article <37F85D6E.D50D1771 at compaq.com>,
Greg Ewing  <greg.ewing at compaq.com> wrote:
>Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> 
>> I would guess that creating a
>> server AF_UNIX socket in the parent and a client AF_UNIX socket in the
>> child, connecting the latter to the former, would allow you to do the
>> same thing.
>
>Try using an ordinary pipe first. On BSD-flavoured unices, pipes
>are often implemented as a pair of unix-domain sockets.
>
>You'll definitely need sendmsg() and recvmsg(), though, so
>you'll still have to write some C.
>
>Greg

Pipes would be less portable (SysV IPC uses another mechanism).  Here is a
rendition of the actual read/write FD code which works on my Linux boxes,
and should work on *BSD as well:

------------------------- cut here -----------------------------------------

include <sys/socket.h>
#include <iovec.h>


typedef struct msghdr   MsgHdr;
typedef struct cmsghdr  CMsgHdr;
typedef struct iovec    IOVec;

typedef union                   /* force alignment of trailing data */
        {
            CMsgHdr     cm;
            char        control[ CMSG_SPACE( sizeof( int ) ) ];
        }               CMsgHdrUnion;


/*
 *  Pass a descriptor across a Unix domain stream socket.  Return number of
 *  bytes of main payload passed (caller should pass at least one byte, to
 *  allow peer to detect EOF cleanly).
 *
 *  See W. R. Stevens, Unix Network Programming (2nd ed), vol 1, p. 389.
 *
 *  In "pre-forked child" use case, sockFD may be one end of a socketpair();
 *  for unrelated servers, should be created by bind()/connect().
 */

ssize_t
write_fd( int       sockFD  /* AF_UNIX stream socket                        */
        , void*     payload /* Payload buffer                               */
        , size_t    nPL     /* Size of payload                              */
        , int       sendFD  /* Descriptor to be passed                      */
        )
{
    MsgHdr          msg;    /* sendmsg() buffer                             */
    IOVec           iov[1]; /* scatter-gather payload vector                */

    CMsgHdrUnion    controlX;

    CMsgHdr*        cmptr;

    msg.msg_name        = NULL;     /* name not used for stream sockets.    */
    msg.msg_namelen     = 0;

    iov[0].iov_base     = payload;  /* set up scatter-gather.               */
    iov[0].iov_len      = nPL;
    msg.msg_iov         = iov;
    msg.msg_iovlen      = 1;

    /*
     *  XXX:  Older Unixen may use msg_accrights instead of msg_control.
     */
    msg.msg_control     = controlX.control;
    msg.msg_controllen  = sizeof( controlX.control );

    cmptr               = CMSG_FIRSTHDR( &msg );
    cmptr->cmsg_len     = CMSG_LEN( sizeof( int ) );
    cmptr->cmsg_level   = SOL_SOCKET;
    cmptr->cmsg_type    = SCM_RIGHTS;

    *( (int*) CMSG_DATA( cmptr ) ) = sendFD;

    return( sendmsg( sockFD, &msg, 0 ) );
}


/*
 *  Receive a descriptor across a Unix domain stream socket.  Return number of
 *  bytes of main payload passed (should be least one byte, to distinguish
 *  EOF).
 *
 *  See W. R. Stevens, Unix Network Programming (2nd ed), vol 1, p. 387.
 *
 *  In "pre-forked child" use case, sockFD may be one end of a socketpair();
 *  for unrelated servers, should be created by bind()/connect().
 */
ssize_t
read_fd( int        sockFD  /* AF_UNIX socket over which to pass descriptor */
       , void*      payload /* Payload buffer                               */
       , size_t     maxPL   /* Size of payload buffer                       */
       , int*       recvFD  /* Address of descriptor being received         */
       )
{
    MsgHdr          msg;    /* recvmsg() message buffer                     */
    IOVec           iov[1]; /* Scatter-gather payload vector                */
    ssize_t         nPL;    /* Size of actual payload received              */
    CMsgHdrUnion    controlX;

    CMsgHdr*        cmptr;

    msg.msg_name        = NULL; /* name not used for stream sockets         */
    msg.msg_namelen     = 0;

    iov[0].iov_base     = payload;  /* set up scatter-gather                */
    iov[0].iov_len      = maxPL;
    msg.msg_iov         = iov;
    msg.msg_iovlen      = 1;

    /*
     *  XXX:  Older Unixen may use msg_accrights instead of msg_control.
     */
    msg.msg_control     = controlX.control;
    msg.msg_controllen  = sizeof( controlX.control );

    /*
     *  XXX:  Stevens does'nt pre-initialize cm, but RH 5.2 acts flaky
     *        without it.
     */
    cmptr               = CMSG_FIRSTHDR( &msg );
    cmptr->cmsg_len     = CMSG_LEN( sizeof( int ) );
    cmptr->cmsg_level   = SOL_SOCKET;
    cmptr->cmsg_type    = SCM_RIGHTS;

    *( (int*) CMSG_DATA( cmptr ) ) = -1;

    nPL = recvmsg( sockFD, &msg, 0 );

    if ( nPL <= 0 )
        return( nPL );

    /*
     *  XXX:    Might realloc, so reseat?
     */
    cmptr = CMSG_FIRSTHDR( &msg );

    if ( cmptr != NULL
      && cmptr->cmsg_len    == CMSG_LEN( sizeof( int ) )
      && cmptr->cmsg_level  == SOL_SOCKET
      && cmptr->cmsg_type   == SCM_RIGHTS
       )
        *recvFD = *( (int*) CMSG_DATA( cmptr ) );
    else
        *recvFD = -1;       /* descriptor was not passed */

    return( nPL );
}

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tres Seaver           tseaver at palladion.com       713-523-6582
Palladion Software    http://www.palladion.com



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 26 16:57:34 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:57:34 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [JPython] dir and java classes
In-Reply-To: <14358.4444.401404.506993@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <3815E954.986826F3@oslo.geco-prakla.slb.com>
	<14358.4444.401404.506993@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <14358.5566.792900.94308@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>

[Shanghaiing this discussion from jpython-interest.]

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

  BAW> Okay, so what can you do to get the information you want?
  BAW> Well, it isn't really that difficult to write your own dir()
  BAW> function that, given an instance traversed into the instance's
  BAW> class to find method and attribute names.  For completeness you
  BAW> probably want to cruise the entire class hierarchy (but maybe
  BAW> not).

  BAW> So the issue is, why doesn't dir() do this by default?  You
  BAW> could insert your superdir() into __builtin__, say in your
  BAW> sitecustom.py or $PYTHONSTARTUP file.  Otherwise, that's
  BAW> something to debate in the larger Python community.  If some
  BAW> agreement on exactly what information superdir() would return
  BAW> (and how to make it backward compatible) were reached, I'm sure
  BAW> the changes would find their way into the Python language (and
  BAW> thus JPython).

Maybe we just need to have an introspection module that contains a
bunch of helpers for tasks like these.  By having it in a module, we
don't have to deal with trying to add builtins but we still guarantee
it's part of the standard battery pack.  Once the module exists,
people can use your suggestion and just do something like
    from introspect import *
in one of their own customization files.

What would we need to put in such a module?

I have a getMethods function that gets loaded into my Python
interpreter automatically...

import types

def getMethods(arg):
    methods = {}
    classes = []
    if type(arg) == types.InstanceType:
        classes.append(arg.__class__)
    elif type(arg) == types.ClassType:
        classes.append(arg)
    else:
        raise TypeError, "arg must be class or instance"
    while classes:
        klass = classes[0]
        del classes[0]
        classes = classes + list(klass.__bases__)
        for name in dir(klass):
            attr = getattr(klass, name)
            if callable(attr):
                methods[name] = 1
    return methods.keys()

Jeremy




From guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US  Mon Oct 25 14:24:07 1999
From: guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:24:07 -0400
Subject: Python Consortium Announcement
Message-ID: <199910251824.OAA00617@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

The Python Consortium is officially launched today.  As proposed at
the Python Conference last year in Houston, several big Python players
are joining forces to further and promote Python and JPython
development.  Current members of the Python Consortium are:

    Full members:
	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
	Hewlett-Packard

    Associate members:
	Digital Creations
	Interet Corporation
	Foretec Seminars

For more information about the consortium, see the Python Consortium
webpage on Python website: http://www.python.org/consortium/.  We
issued a press release which you can find at 
http://www.python.org/consortium/press1.html.

If you are currently a corporate PSA member, consider joining the
consortium instead.  More power to Python!

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



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 13:58:49 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:58:49 +0200
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim><37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com><vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA><m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de><873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org><001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com><oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca><14338.3253.395447.688829@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> <14338.7420.226290.477877@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <001b01bf1412$47b87120$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at mojam.com> wrote:
>     Barry> Writing it _('translate') is, I think the best approach, and the
>     Barry> one I plan to take when I (eventually) get time to
>     Barry> internationalize Mailman.
> 
> How do you distinguish between a translatable string and a call to a
> function named "_"?

fwiw, we're shipping massively multilingual
applications using the T() approach.  works
perfectly, with off-the-shelf pythons...

(so as usual, eff-bot's advise is to spend all this
energy writing applications, instead of trying
to figure out why a perfectly working strategy
doesn't work ;-)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From u970130 at studbo.hit.no  Sat Oct 16 22:40:34 1999
From: u970130 at studbo.hit.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 02:40:34 GMT
Subject: Problems with Modules
Message-ID: <38093539.8835494@news.eunet.no>

Hi,

I`ve just installed Python 1.5.2, using the source, under Linux, Suse
6.2. But some modules seem to be missing, especially the Berkley DB
bsddb-module, cpickle, zlib and almost every module in the
Module-folder in the Python 1.5.2-package. 

I saw when I ran 'make test' that some of the steps were skipped due
to some missing optional feature which couldn`t be imported. Is my
system, the linux distr., missing something? Do I have to install the
Berkley Db-library before the bsddb-module?

I want to install every module available to Python, but most important
is the bsddb and the other database-related modules. 

In short, why isn`t certain modules installed when I try to install
Python from scratch?

Thomas



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct 16 21:52:55 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 14:52:55 +1300
Subject: re question
References: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>
Message-ID: <c75g0za3g94.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

"Max M. Stalnaker" <stalnaker at acm.org> writes:

> I have the following code:
> 
>  def subset(self):
>   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
>   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]
> 
> Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
> stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
> single %.  The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags is
> just the way I tried and had sometime success.
> 
> Maybe there is a better way to do this.  Or someone could perhaps suggest re
> code that would do it.  Thank you.
> 
> My current idea is to construct a single character sentinel out of something
> greater than chr(128) and use that.  This will probably work in this
> application, but I feel like I am missing something.
> 
> --
> Max M. Stalnaker  mailto:stalnaker at acm.org  http://www.astarcc.com

To match everything between two occurances of %%%, including embedded
%, this expression will work:

get = re.compile(r'%%%(.*?)%%%')

The important part is the *?, which matches the smallest possible
string rather than the largest.

--
Tim Evans




From edwardam at home.com  Sun Oct 31 08:27:35 1999
From: edwardam at home.com (Edward Muller)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:27:35 -0500
Subject: XML-RPC and Pickle.....
References: <381BB57A.E8AD1AD6@home.com> <003f01bf2385$944e3880$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <381C43C7.F8349B49@home.com>

Thank you. I was thinking about that as I fell asleep last night. I
realized that I did not have the class defenition in the module on the
other side.

duh...


Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> Edward Muller <edwardam at home.com> wrote:
> > I am trying to unpickle and object on another machine after bieng sent
> > via xml-rpc.....and I get the following error:
> > xmlrpclib.Fault: <Fault 1: 'exceptions.SystemError:Failed to import
> > class foo from module __main__'>
>
> just guessing here, but it looks like the someObject
> class is defined in your main program (at the client
> end), and that you're not using the same script as
> the main program on the server end.
>
> solution: move the class definition to a separate
> module, and make sure that module is present on
> both ends of the connection.
>
> </F>
>
> <!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the standard python library:
> http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
> -->




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct 16 06:19:29 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 06:19:29 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <953918B2ED88ABC2.709107A8A9EC8398.9B8FB1D7D6CEDA3C@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim>

[Joshua Marcus]
> ...
> There are, in fact, other situations in which one actually wants a
> "do...while" loop & one is forced to either repeat code or make a
> meaningless initial assignment.

[Tim]
> Those are never necessary, although it's amazing how often
> people fall into believing they are.  The usual Python idiom ...

[Cameron Laird]
> It amazes me less than you.

Are you picking a fight again <wink>?

> Surely you remember the pedagogic fashion--is it still in bloom?--of
> preferring "single-exit" control structures.

It's alive and well, at least in Eiffel.  No "early exit" loops there!  If
there's only one exit, the conjunction of the sole exit condition and the
loop invariant must establish the loop postcondition, and that makes the
proof framework as simple as possible.  That's a Great Good, so far as it
goes.  Which is, alas, approximately nowhere:  the day serious reasoning
about programs becomes widespread is the day most programmers abandon their
craft to resume drug trafficking <wink>.

> I suspect many of the people stumbling around in this area bear that
> burden still; they fear someone will "take off points" for every break
> or continue.

Well, they will lose points, and they should.  But they also gain points for
not ending up with a single exit condition choked with six artificial
Boolean vrbls -- trading control complexity for data complexity may fool the
automated complexity-checker, but the code is still a mess.  Let's see ...
there are 856 gotos in Python's source code -- Guido must agree <wink>.
(Odd!  Before counting, I would have sworn there were only a handful ...
hmm, over 216 in almodule.c alone ... it's a *very* lumpy distribution.)

> Also, Mr. Niksic is right to posit that a "while 1 ..." looks
> suspicious to newcomers.

I agree -- heck, it still looks suspicious to me!  "while 1" is not a good
thing; but all in all it is a minor thing.

>> Has been debated many times.  There's no pleasant way to spell
>> it in Python; all blocks have opening keywords, but never closing
>> keywords.

> I'm thinking about whether that'll help a LOT in getting the message
> through.

Which message would that be?  I have no objection to richer loop constructs,
so that's not *my* message <wink>.  As the resident Hoary Corporate
Apologist, my only message is that It's All In The Archives, and the chance
of anything changing here in Python1 is zero.  The only thing that ever got
close to having a fighting chance (largely thanks to introducing no new
keywords) was the "and while" statement; and that committed hypergeneralized
suicide when it got expanded to the truly eccentric "and if" stmt.  This is
why Guido so rarely has to squash a suggestion <0.5 wink>.

leave-'em-alone-and-they-inflate-themselves-to-absurdity-ly y'rs  - tim





From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Thu Oct 28 19:22:00 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:22:00 +0100
Subject: LCP solution method
Message-ID: <65d$JDAYqNG4Ew8Z@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

I'm playing with an advanced Linear complementarity problem solution
method (Burke/Xu's non-interior method). This is only of interest to
numericists where should I post/keep this kind of source?
-- 
Robin Becker



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Tue Oct 19 15:55:44 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 05:55:44 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
Message-ID: <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au>

William Tanksley wrote:
 
> This is totally orthogonal to your post, but I'm just curious: I like how
> Dylan allows one to write the first argument of a function either as a
> distinguished or ordinary paramter -- that is, "abs(1)" is the same as
> "(1).abs()".
> 
> Can we do the same with Viper?

	No. I was going to implement it, but when I considered it,
I realised it wouldn't work well in Python. The problem is 
several fold: in the first place, there's nothing magical
about function calls in python:

		x.a (args)

is really:

	(x.a) (args)

that is, an attribute lookup _followed_ by a function call.
So we would need to say that if

	x.a

fails, try looking for 'a'. Worse, consider:

	x.a = 1

Woops! Will this really assign to a local or module
variable, and not an attribute of the object? [No]

Anyhow, it started to look seriously inconsistent in Python.

> Of course, I'm about to ask for multiple dispatch, but since everyone who
> even knows what multiple dispatch is already knew I was going to ask for
> it...  So I won't bother asking.

	What do you want it to do? Any idea how it should work in Python?
 
-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From madonl at bigfoot.com  Fri Oct 29 23:03:03 1999
From: madonl at bigfoot.com (Louis Madon)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 23:03:03 -0400
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 
 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990106480001@bruce.bgh>
Message-ID: <381A5FE7.1EBECBE2@bigfoot.com>

Bruce Hoult wrote:
> 
> In article <381A421D.D8C8E22F at bigfoot.com>, Louis Madon
> <madonl at bigfoot.com> wrote:
> 
> > [I'm cross-posting this to comp.lang.dylan as I think the Dylaners' may
> > be able to cast more light on this and/or correct any short-comings in
> > my thinking]
> >
> >
> > In the beginning Greg Ewing wrote:
> >
> > > Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
> > > and there are methods defined for the combinations
> > > foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
> > >
> > > Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
> > > which method should get called?
> >
> >
> > Several people said its "ambiguous".
> 
> Interesting case.
> 
> Certainly it's ambiguous.
> 
> I note that the ambiguity can arise *only* if some module that (directly
> or indirectly) calls foo() also (directly or indirectly) depends on both
> AA and BB.
> 
> For example, you suggested that maybe something in module X calls
> something in module Y, passing it a BB.  Module Y creates an AA (which X
> doesn't know about) and calls foo(AA, BB).  oops.  The only place that
> this problem can be detected at compile-time is in module X, and then only
> if the compiler knows that module Y imports both AA and foo EVEN IF IT
> DOESN'T RE-EXPORT THEM.  This seems like a big ask.

I agree, but isn't that what runtime exceptions are for?

> 
> I'm wondering what the semantics of the exact situation are.  Will the
> right result occur if foo(A, BB) or foo(AA, B) is called for arguments of
> type (AA, BB)?

I think the semantics need to be really simple: if there's any doubt
throw an exception.  If the system starts making guesses about whether
this method or that method could handle it, it might get it wrong, and I
think it also makes reasoning about the program more difficult.

>  If not then perhaps foo() is trying to do too much and
> should be split up?  In particular, perhaps there should instead be a
> bar(A) and baz(B) and just a single, generic, version of foo(A, B) that
> calls bar(A) and baz(B) as part of its operation.  In which case the
> implementator of AA should make a bar(AA) and the implementatior of BB
> should make a baz(BB). And then all is sweetness and light :-)

You're not suggesting explicit type tests inside foo(A, B) are you? 
Thats precisely the kind of thing we need to get away from.  I could
come along and define a new class AB that inherits from both A and B and
all of a sudden your typecase is broken.

Louis.



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Tue Oct 26 15:02:51 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:02:51 -0400
Subject: Tkinter: Where are event.state constants?
Message-ID: <19991026150251.A106638497@vislab.epa.gov>

I have:

  picture.bind( "<ButtonPress-1>"  , click_cb )
  picture.bind( "<ButtonRelease-1>", click_cb )

In click_cb(), event.state is 0 for ButtonPress and 256 for ButtonRelease.

Where are the Tkinter constants for these?  Or how should one distinguish
between a press and release in a callback?

(I want to avoid having a separate callback for each type of event.)

Thanks,

Randall

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 19 06:01:45 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:01:45 +0200
Subject: integrating SocketServer with Tkinter Event-Loop
References: <7ufjn1$ajn$1@artcom0.north.de>
Message-ID: <027e01bf1a18$f490f0a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Peter Funk <pf at artcom0.north.de> wrote:
> I want to write a Python application with a Tkinter based GUI which
> serves incoming requests using a SocketServer in the same process at the
> same time.  I am trying to use the standard lib module 'asyncore' for 
> this purpose.

whoa!  does this really work?

(cannot really tell if your post is a question
or not, but I definitely wouldn't have done
it that way...  and I don't understand how
it can work -- after all, doesn't the Socket-
Server stuff assume blocking sockets?)

</F>

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




From bitz.nospam at bitdance.com  Thu Oct 28 16:10:56 1999
From: bitz.nospam at bitdance.com (R. David Murray)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:10:56 GMT
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia>
Message-ID: <3818ac43.393560616@news.giganews.com>

At <a href=http://www.fcgnetworks.net>FCG Networks</a> we support
Python for cgi (though I intend to tweak things for better integration
soon, such as enabling the Apache module).  I'm in the process of
setting up Zope, and we intend to make extensive use of it and provide
support for it.  First, though, I have to get past this little BSDI
compile bug I posted about earlier...

--RDM



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Sat Oct  9 12:18:30 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 09 Oct 1999 18:18:30 +0200
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com> <007f01bf0f61$ac3768a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <37FE12C4.FD169F72@strs.co.uk>
Message-ID: <y0jr9j4cxt5.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Ian Clarke <I.Clarke at strs.co.uk> writes:

> > check out ping's rxb.py module:
> > 
> >     http://www.lfw.org/python/
> 
> This module is excellent.  If I had the power to do it, I would
> encourage use of this in preference to the more conventional way of
> writing regexps.  Just as few people would condone writing C code with
> no whitespace formatting, I will now consider using the built-in method
> bad programming practice, and would encourage others to do the same.
> 

Well - I still don't like the non-standard welcome() and banish()...
And it doesn't cover all of the functionality of the re module...
Perhaps a revised version could be made.


> Ian.

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From da at ski.org  Fri Oct 29 13:45:58 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 12:45:58 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Oct 29)
Message-ID: <10EC8C45C8875A38.883DCCF84E781B93.F74C086665EBF2CD@lp.airnews.net>

The Python world is hopping this week, with some high-profile
announcements:

    Two books out this week!  Fredrik Lundh (a.k.a. eff-bot) published
    his guide to the standard Python library as an eMatter volume:
        http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
  
    David Beazley releases a great summary of the essential Python
    information in his most excellent book (I know, I reviewed it):
         http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp&AN=540981804

    Frank Willison is still pushing Python and Zope at ORA, in very
    sneaky ways:
         http://www.oreilly.com/frank/rossum_1099.html
         http://www.oreilly.com/frank/

    The Python Jobs board is live, and already populated with quite a
    few job offers, some at marquee companies, some at intriguing
    startups:
         http://www.python.org/Jobs.html

    Marc-Andre Lemburg bit the bullet and with help from many, has a
    module which gives much more information than sys.platform:
         http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

    There's an interesting discussion on whether multimethods
    (a.k.a. multiple dispatch) could and should be used in Python.
         http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp&AN=540981803
         http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp&AN=542008708

    Barry Warsaw releases JPython 1.1b4, fixing bugs and increasing
    speed both:
         http://www.jpython.org


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

      Python.org's Python Language Website is the center of Pythonia
          http://www.python.org

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

      Python Consortium emerges as an independent nexus of activity
          http://www.python.org/consortium

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

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

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

    Archive probing trick of the trade:
        http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=threaded&showsort=date&maxhits=100&groups=comp.lang.python


Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=~g%20comp.lang.python%20Python-URL%21


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
  http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/

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


-- The Python-URL! Team--

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

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From ivanlan at callware.com  Thu Oct 21 18:37:13 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:37:13 -0600
Subject: Jobs for Pythonistas
Message-ID: <380F9599.A0E3128B@callware.com>

Hi All--
I just got a phone call from HP in Cupertino CA, looking for 8 to 12
Python programmers.

Must be willing to relocate, I gather (lets me out, dammit).  Applicants
don't have to already know Python, but should have some OOP experience.

If you're interested, call

Natalya Flom 408-343-6376

I pointed her at the new Jobs board, too.

<sounds-like-a-live-one-to-me>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu  Tue Oct  5 17:04:45 1999
From: mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu (Michael Vanier)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 14:04:45 -0700
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>

David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net> writes:

> Michael Vanier wrote:
> 
> > Here's a quote from Guido in a recent interview
> > (http://207.178.22.52/articles/conversations/005.html):
> >
> > > The tools will give them a lot of hand holding, a lot of insight into the
> > > existing code and will help them get an idea of what the consequences of
> > > changes would be. That is, you can say, ``Okay, now I have this code and
> > > I think I want to make this change. You tell me where this variable is
> > > used elsewhere in the program--what the dependencies are, what code is
> > > using this function. Maybe this function isn't being used at all!'' Just
> > > like in our DNA, there are large pieces of software containing unused
> > > code. Nobody noticed it was no longer needed, so nobody bothered to take
> > > it out.
> >
> 
> I'm not sure if he should have used DNA as an example.  I'm OK with extra info
> being in my DNA.  My Nuclei have never given me an error message that the
> nucleus is running out of space...lol.

[Interesting comments about Microsoft bloatware removed]

> As to the signature line, I trust that this is sarcasm.  Please tell me that
> you don't view advocating a certain OS as some type of religious crusade.  I
> hope that Linux and Windows can challenge each other to make better, more
> functional software.  A marketplace with healthy competitors and lots of 
> choice for consumers is of great benefit to us all.

Wow!  Way off topic, but:

1) Yes, it's meant in jest.  I don't advocate Linux as a religious crusade.

2) It's not *100%* in jest, because I don't like Microsoft's business
   practices.  Actually, I could care less about their software as long as
   I don't have to use it.

> > With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
> > person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
> > marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs for
> > a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)
> 
> I think you may have gone a bit too far by insinuating that Guido was
> "chemically inconvenienced" when he made his statement.  You could have easily
> rewritten your paragraph in the following sentence: "With all due respect, were
> you high when you said this?"  Prefacing an insult with the clause "with all
> due respect" does not make an insult any less insulting.  Leave the guy alone.
> As long as Guido doesn't say "I am going to discontinue my work on Python as
> open source and create a better, proprietary software," I could care less what
> he says.  Simplistic, even absurd metaphorical comparisons are often made in an
> attempt to reach the minds of the intellectually challenged.

Right, and that's exactly what I hope Guido *doesn't* start doing.  By
making these comparisons, you do impress the "intellectually challenged"
but at the price of losing credibility with people who are in a position to
accurately evaluate what you're saying.  To me, this is a Bad Thing.  

The "slip something into your coffee" line was a *joke*, of course, hence
the smiley.  Sorry if that wasn't clear.

> P.S. Guido's a cool dude.  Leave him alone.  Did you never hear you the saying
> "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all!" ? You can
> take issue with a person's statements without turning it into a personal
> attack.  You will notice that I did not personally attack you or insinuate you
> were on drugs anywhere in this post.

Look, I know Guido is a great human being, and I tried hard to frame my
statement in a way that wouldn't come across as an insult.  I guess I
didn't succeed.  The fact is that it's very difficult to avoid making (what
to me are) grandiose and misleading analogies when one becomes more visible
publicly, especially since the public just eats it up.  However, that
shouldn't stop people from expressing their opinions, and my opinion was
that the statement in question *sounded* like marketing-speak.  Whether it
was *intended* to sound that way is another question; given what I know of
Guido, I strongly doubt it, but someone who knew nothing of python who was
reading that interview might get a negative view of python as a result, and
that would *really* be a shame.

It's very, very dangerous to say "let person X say whatever he wants,
because he's a great man".  All statements should be evaluated on their own
merits.

Mike


--------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Vanier	mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hto
create better software :-)




From the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au  Thu Oct 14 06:04:07 1999
From: the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au (the_wrights)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:04:07 +1000
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <000101bf1600$98d6faa0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <_NhN3.8260$D33.31311@ozemail.com.au>

Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:000101bf1600$98d6faa0$ba2d153f at tim...
> [Jon Fernquest]
> > ...
> > What is the best glue strategy for a scripting language like Python
> > to use with Prolog, a language for which there is a lot of outstanding
> > code but which is difficult to integrate into systems written with
> > imperative languages?

I've written a native python logic programming framework if that's helpful.
It has quite good unification performance and I'm using it as the basis for
some reactive planning stuff with BDI agents that I've implemented in
Python.

Of course, if you really need to have the performance and features of
Quintus prolog &c then I'd agree that you should wrap up the C++ WAM. Check
out SWIG (www.swig.org)

cheers

chris wright





From bgdarnel at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 24 13:20:30 1999
From: bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 17:20:30 GMT
Subject: PalmPython
References: <7uuvnk$9ks$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn816fuv.h8a.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>

In article <7uuvnk$9ks$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, Stuart Woodward wrote:
>Does anyone know where is PalmPython these days? I did a Google search
>and all the links to it seemed broken as did the one from the Modules
>page on python.org.

It's been renamed to Pyrite (Palm Computing doesn't like people using
"Palm" in product names), and is now at http://pyrite.linuxbox.com

-Ben

-- 
Ben Darnell              bgdarnel at unity.nc su.edu
http://www4.nc su.edu/~bgdarnel/thoughtstream/




From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct  6 12:40:54 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 12:40:54 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca> <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <5lemf87888.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> When I finally got the joke, I found it _so_ American-centric and _so_
> displaced, that it was not funny at all.  These people were imposing their
> non-sense on me, just for the narrow pleasure of laughing between themselves?
> I very vaguely remember that children do that at the start of adolescence.
> This humour was rather immature, and in my feeling, not very respectful.

Take it easy, Fran?ois.  It's part of learning a culture.  It can be
fun.  I've been doing it for four years now, and there still are
tons of cultural references I don't get.  "Getting" a reference for me 
is an enjoyable experience, not frustrating like you describe.

While we're on the subject: I still don't understand why a DNA
reference is considered objectionable marketing speak by some.  I've
never heard DNA references in marketing speak, I think.  In stupid
Sci-Fi movies, yes.  But marketing?  Must be another cultural think
I'm missing. :-)

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



From pf at artcom-gmbh.de  Tue Oct 19 17:13:49 1999
From: pf at artcom-gmbh.de (Peter Funk)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 23:13:49 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: integrating SocketServer with Tkinter Event-Loop
In-Reply-To: <027e01bf1a18$f490f0a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> from Fredrik Lundh at "Oct 19, 99 12:01:45 pm"
Message-ID: <m11dgZp-000twYC@artcom0.north.de>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> > I want to write a Python application with a Tkinter based GUI which
> > serves incoming requests using a SocketServer in the same process at the
> > same time.  I am trying to use the standard lib module 'asyncore' for 
> > this purpose.
> 
> whoa!  does this really work?

At least the tiny example server I posted to comp.lang.python works as 
I expected it to do. 

I've tested it here only locally with Py1.5.2/SuSE Linux.  
And yes: it was possible to request files from it using the URL
'http://localhost:8080/xmlrpclib.py' (with xmlrpclib.py being an
arbitrary not so small file living in the same directory, where I 
started the example server program).

Indeed I have downloaded your fine xmlrpc library and have a more
elaborated test application with a Tkinter GUI and an integrated
xml-rpc server.  I plan to use xml-rpc as some kind of easy to use
remote control interface to my application, which does simulate a
virtual cylinder engraving machine.

> (cannot really tell if your post is a question
> or not, but I definitely wouldn't have done
> it that way...  and I don't understand how
> it can work -- after all, doesn't the Socket-
> Server stuff assume blocking sockets?)

Well: the asyncore 'poll()' uses 'select' and so internally asserts that 
the socket is ready to read at the time, when xmlrpcserver.RequestHandler
gets called by SocketServer.TCPServer.handle_request.  I wasn't able to 
figure out, where the non blocking socket would play havoc to the code
in 'SocketServer.py' ...  :-(
I was afraid, that it wouldn't be that easy. :-(

Do you have any better suggestions how to accomplish, what I want?

Regards from Germany and many thanks for your good work, Peter Funk
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, 27777 Ganderkesee, Tel: 04222 9502 70, Fax: -60



From x at x.x  Tue Oct 12 20:17:46 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 20:17:46 -0400
Subject: Newbie question about __getattr__ and __setattr__
References: <1103_939440882@ns1.dicksonstreet.com> <37FED196.AD791AC5@x.x> <1103_939706845@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>
Message-ID: <3803CFAA.8A5B8785@x.x>

Felix Thibault wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 09 Oct 1999 01:24:38 -0400, Eric Jacobs <x at x.x> wrote:
> >
> > A couple of things going on here. First, you want to deal with
> > __getitem__ and __setitem__ -- those deal with the [] subscript
> > operator -- rather than __getattr__ and __setattr__ that deal
> > with the . attribute operator.
> >
> > The syntax that you want to write the assignment is supported
> > by the interpreter by default; you don't need to change
> > anything for that. The only catch is that the first two layers
> > of dictionaries need to exist beforehand. So if you had
> >
> >    i = {1: {2: {}}}
> >    i[1][2][3] = 4
> >
> > then i would be {1: {2: {3: 4}}} as you'd expect.
> [snip]
> > So if you want that assignment to work when the sub-
> > dictionaries aren't predefined, you can have your
> > __getitem__ always create new dictionaries. That's
> > fairly simple, just add a method:
> >
> >       def __getitem__(s, k):
> >               if k not in s.keys():
> >                       s[k] = Nester({})
> >               return s.data[k]
> >
> > Be sure to mention the s.data[k] and not just s[k], or
> > you'll end up in an infinite loop. Here, if the key is not
> > found, we generate a new custom Nester object, so that it
> > works for more than one level. In fact, because there's no
> > limit placed here, this will work for any number of nested
> > levels:
> > i['a']['b']['c']['d']['e'][...
> >
> > The disadvantage is that reading a missing value will
> > result in a new empty dictionary being created and returned!
> > So unless you want to be really careful and write a clean-
> > up routine which can handle this, you're going to have a
> > bunch of extra empty dictionaries floating around. You will
> > also never get KeyError with this simple method.
> 
> So I would need to, for example, make a function that checks
> the value of a key and deletes it and raises a KeyError if it's {}, and
> then call that function after every read ?

That would be one way to do it. That's assuming, of course, that
you don't want to actually store {} in the dictionary. Another way
that would work if you know that number of nested levels that are
supposed to be in the dictionary would be to count down that
number with every __getitem__. So, you might do: (from the
example __getitem__ above)

			  if s.l > 0:
	                       	s[k] = Nester({}, s.l-1)
			  else:
				s[k] = {}

In this case when l (the current level) gets down to 0, it
will generate a regular dictionary rather than the one using
the Nester wrapper. In this case, the normal dictionary code
will raise KeyError when a key is not found. This will also
not generate extra {}'s that you have to delete, but it will
lock you into using a certain number of levels.



From kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us  Fri Oct 29 18:51:35 1999
From: kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us (Jeffrey Kunce)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:51:35 -0500
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
Message-ID: <s819ded3.051@mail.conservation.state.mo.us>

>I think Tim Peters is the correct foil to Tom Christiansen :-0

Last time the tchrist-bot showed up here, something in its 
flame-war subroutine broke, and it went into an endless 
loop until Guido shut it down.

The Tim-bot, though prone to occasional tangents and
deep recursion, is much better behaved. 

I attribute the difference between the two t-bots to the 
comparative robustness of the languages in which they
are programmed.

<tom-this-is-in-jest-so-don't-flame-me>-ly y'rs,

  --Jeff





From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Thu Oct 21 06:45:40 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:45:40 +0200
Subject: Database exploration tools?
Message-ID: <380EEED4.A888FFD2@darwin.in-berlin.de>

Hi,

I'm just wondering if there is any "Database Explorer" tool 
written in Python, with or without GUI, for Oracle or also
other databases?

I started to write a bare bones thing like this that cannot
do anything more right now, but generate ("report") table 
descriptions and differences thereof (not quite finished)
for Oracle. The latter was the original motivation to get 
started, by doing comparisons of databases of different 
product releases, due to a lack of documentation...

This is what it is meant to accomplish (soon...):

# dbdiff.py  (likely to change)
# 
# Describing Oracle database tables and diff's thereof.
# 
# Features:
#   - Output in ASCII, HTML, PDF and LaTeX.
#   - Working on existing (installed) Oracle databases.
#   - Tested on Oracle 7.3.4 and Windows NT 4.
#   - Using mainly DCOracle and Piddle (for PDF) packages.
#   - Printing a report with table descriptions.
#   - Printing a report describing table differences.
#   - Filtering of table, column and attribute names.

Has something similar being done already? I'm just looking
at TOAD (http://www.toadsoft.com) and it seems tempting to
do something like this in Python... well, if the day had 
72 hours, perhaps... ;-)

Well, I will put some anonymised sample output files on the 
starship as soon as the code is just a bit cleaner as it is
right now (and the reports are a bit more complete)...

BTW, how much of a chance is there to make a simple explo-
ring tool database-independant (I'm just a bit familiar
with Oracle)?
 
Regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
................................................................
Food for Echelon: Delta Force, SEAL, virtual, WASS, WID, Dolch,
secure shell, screws, Black-Ops, O/S, Area51, SABC, basement, 
ISWG, $@, data-haven, NSDD, black-bag, rack, TEMPEST, Goodwin, 
rebels, ID, MD5, IDEA, garbage, market, beef, Stego, ISAF, NARF, 
Manfurov, Kvashnin, Marx, Abdurahmon, snullen, Pseudonyms, MITM, 
Gray Data, VLSI, Leitrim... -- Visit http://www.hacktivism.org



From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Sat Oct  9 14:15:23 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 18:15:23 GMT
Subject: Resident Python Interpreter
Message-ID: <7to0nk$n8n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


 Hello Python People,

   I was wondering if there is a way to have a resident python
interpreter for CGI scripting similar to the Perl ISAPI extension for
ACtiveState Perl.  For instance I need to have a CGI script create a
python data object and have this object persist in a shared namespace
from CGI process to CGI process.  I know that Python has a COM
interface to an interpreter.  CAn I use this COM server to accomplish
what I am describing?

  -Thanks!
    Josh Zeidner


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Wed Oct  6 14:21:26 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 14:21:26 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: Guido van Rossum's message of "06 Oct 1999 12:40:54 -0400"
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca> <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <5lemf87888.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <vrd7use4ex.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> ?crit:

> Take it easy, Fran?ois.  It's part of learning a culture.  It can be fun.

By all means, I'm for the fun parts! :-) Local trademarks can wait... :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From sekter at mail.matav.hu  Wed Oct 13 18:34:36 1999
From: sekter at mail.matav.hu (Arpad Kiss)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 00:34:36 +0200
Subject: HTTP or/and HTTPS server in Python!
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013192705.16210D-100000@butler.artech.se>
Message-ID: <011c01bf15cb$21cbc510$010101c1@home>

Yes, there are some implementations:
-SimpleHTTPServer.py in the standard distribution,
-Medusa,
-ZServer(this is based on Medusa)

Best regards,
Arpad

----- Original Message ----- 
From: tommy <tommy at artech.se>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 1999 7:28 PM
Subject: HTTP or/and HTTPS server in Python!


> 
> Hi!
> 
> I wounder if someone have wrote a HTTP or even a HTTPS server in Python?
> 
> I know that client side of HTTP and HTTPS is avaiable in Python, but how
> about the servers?
> 
> Yes know about modules for useing Python from apache. But I need to use
> Python standard alone for this. 
> 
> SOme1 who have any good suggestions for me?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> file://Tommy
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From culliton at clark.net  Wed Oct 20 00:05:08 1999
From: culliton at clark.net (Tom Culliton)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 04:05:08 GMT
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
References: <380B8EB5.B03BB07A@nmt.edu> <Sq9P3.280$Xd2.30761@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <UbbP3.141$Dz4.2735@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

I actually know several tricks for doing this (from my debugger
development days) and all of them would require some C code.  Don't
forget that executing arbitraty assembly code can get you in all sorts
of trouble.  It might actually be worthwhile digging around to find a
virtual 386 software emulator and writing a python binding for it.
That way you won't bomb your python interpreter when you mess up.



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sun Oct 17 01:06:56 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 05:06:56 GMT
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <003701bf171e$fc797820$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <199910152247.PAA14699@hermes.aspectdv.com> <3807B77A.87D824F8@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <13B697B21AFE023E.6897FE671A2DA67E.CDF33673E7FAABAD@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3807B77A.87D824F8 at bioreason.com>,
Andrew Dalke  <dalke at bioreason.com> wrote:
>Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com>:
>> So does
>> 
>> >>>try:
>> >>>  raise: "Hack"
>> >>>except "Hack"
Is there a profound and/or interesting
reason Python doesn't provide the kinds
of introspective features we're discus-
sing here (a traceback, for example)
without the detour through the land of
exception-tossing?
			.
			.
			.
>So string literals work, likely because they are interned to
>the same object, but equivalent strings don't work.  I believe
>there is some history to things working this way because
>exceptions in Python used to be string only.
>
>
>BTW, my standard code for generating exceptions is
>
>try:
>  1/0
>except ZeroDivisionError:
>  print "Ok"
Me, too!
			.
			.
			.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From hei at adtranzsig.de  Mon Oct 11 04:27:53 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:27:53 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de>

simon_bacon at my-deja.com schrieb in Nachricht
<7tqmtb$e1p$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>...
>Has anyone compiled 1.5.2 with Borland compilers?  Preferably
>with C++ Builder.

Yep.

--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net






From jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au  Fri Oct 22 07:51:17 1999
From: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason Stokes)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 11:51:17 GMT
Subject: Dictionary and List
References: <7upflt$m0n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <VcYP3.5580$P3.6267@ozemail.com.au>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:52:45 GMT, sorot at my-deja.com <sorot at my-deja.com> wrote:

>I'm using python 1.5.1. While i'm writing the part of python script
>like this
>
>## Part of script ##
>my_list = []
>my_dict = {'a':'','b':[]}
>x = ['a','b','c','d']
>for i in range(0,len(x)):
>   my_dict['a'] = x[i]
>   my_list.append(my_dict)
>
>print my_list
>## end ##
>
>The out put should be like
>my_list = [{'a':'a','b':[]},{'a':'b','b':[]},{'a':'c','b':[]},
>{'a':'d','b':[]}]
>
>But i got output
>my_list = [{'a':'d','b':[]},{'a':'d','b':[]},{'a':'d','b':[]},
>{'a':'d','b':[]}]

You're inserting a reference to the same object my_dict into a list, four
times.  To get four different copies you need to copy my_dict and store in
the list the reference to the new object.

-- 
Jason Stokes: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au



From thomas at xs4all.nl  Fri Oct 29 02:35:30 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:35:30 +0200
Subject: [OT] Destroying files
In-Reply-To: <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>; from jcosby@wolfenet.com on Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 05:37:34PM -0700
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net> <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov> <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <19991029083529.C29354@xs4all.nl>

On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 05:37:34PM -0700, Jon Cosby wrote:

> Yes, I'm on Windows 95. No, deleting files does not remove them from your
> hard drive; They can be recovered by computer forensics experts or by nosey
> hacks. I'm putting my PC up for sale, and the thought is troubling.

Deleted files are really deleted, the _data_ that was in them is just not
erased. If I remember correctly from Way Back When(tm) I used to hack
around in DOS and other FAT-oriented OS's (Atari :) FAT16 (and probably the
newer FAT types) even keep most of the file information almost-at-hand,
everything but the first character of the filename. I may be mistaken,
though.

If you are really afraid of people reading your files, DO NOT DELETE THEM.
First, fill them with garbage, random data, by opening them and writing in
them ( -- no use removing the file and creating a new one, it wont use the
same disk-sectors) Then, dont just delete the files, just erase everything.
Format the disk, preferably by an entirely different type of computer, like
a Macintosh or a UNIX flavor with it's own ideas about disk partitioning and
the like. If you use DOS format, be sure to say 'no' to 'keep undo
information' -- you never know what the bastards can find from that. Then,
after the disk is reformated, fill it with harmless data.

This might still not be enough, however.... 'They' can currently recover
deleted AND overwritten information if they know where to look, by looking
for magnetic residue of the old pattern in the magnetic particles of the
harddrive. Not very likely, and _very_ expensive even in the best case, but
none the less... If you want to be really sure, destroy the harddrive. Wreck
it, break the airseal, take out the metal platters and mutilate those. Of
course, your PC might not be worth quite the same after you do this. :)

Still, I want to note two things about your post:

It's not possible in Python to recover deleted files, unless the win32
extensions offer it, or someone else wrote the wrappers for the necessary
function calls. It's certainly possible to use Python to do filesystem stuff
if the bindings are there. (a python-loving friend of mine even wrote an
encrypted-ext2fs driver in Python to recover the encrypted ext2fs-UMSDOS
partition he'd lost by defragmenting his DOS drive the UMSDOS partition was
sitting on. How's that for the power of Python ? :)

Nevertheless, it's all a bit overboard. Formatting your harddrive without
undo-information should make it more than moderately hard to find a specific
file. You can still read some of the data, but it wouldn't be clear what
data belongs where or in what order. If you have really sensitive
information on your harddisk, where a single 512k diskblock may contain
information that mustn't get out in the open, either corrupt it, falsify it
(great way to spread misinformation) or just encrypt it with some weak
encryption like zip's crypt -- with the file fragmented, it'd be nearly
impossible to crack it.

Or if it's _really_ _really_ sensitive, get your company (or whoever pays
you) to put in a replacement drive, and destroy the drive. But if it's
_really_ _really_ _really_ that sensitive, you should start worrying about
other things, like people getting a 'photocopy' of the sensitive information
from your own eyeballs with a simple retinal residue scanner if you've been
looking at it too long. Or being able to see what data's being sent to and
from the disk by measuring magnetic interference, so they could snoop the
data by attaching a very small sensor+transmittor to the back of your PC. Or
a guy named David hacking into your computer by randomly calling numbers and
entering random passwords, almost confusing you into starting WWIII... ;)

offtopic'ly y'rs,
	Thomas

[The day starts good if you can start the day with a longish off-topic post
on the best mailing list in the world.]

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From hniksic at srce.hr  Sat Oct 16 20:47:07 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 02:47:07 +0200
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
Message-ID: <871zauoltg.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

In all kinds of circumstances it would be very useful to call an
external filter to process some data, and read the results back in.
What I needed was something like popen(), only working for both
reading and writing.  However, such a thing is hard to write in a
simple-minded fashion because of deadlocks that occur when handling
more than several bytes of data.  Deadlocks can either be caused by
both programs waiting for not-yet-generated input, or (in my case) by
both their writes being blocked waiting for the other to read.

The usual choices are to:

a) Write a deadlock-free communication protocol and use it on both
   ends.  This is rarely a good solution, because the program that
   needs to be invoked is in most cases an external filter that knows
   nothing about our deadlock problems.

b) Use PTY's instead of pipes.  Many programmers prefer to avoid this
   path because of the added system resources that the PTY's require,
   and because of the increased complexity.

Given these choices, most people opt to use a temporary file and get
it over with.

However, discussing this problem with a colleague, he thought of a
third solution: break the circularity by using a process only for
reading and writing.  This can be done whenever reading and writing
are independent, i.e. when the data read from the subprocess does not
influence future writes to it.

The function below implements that idea.  Usage is something like:

rwpopen("""Some long string here...""", "sed", ["s/long/short/"])
  -> 'Some short string here...'

I've put the function to good use in a program I'm writing.  In
addition to getting rid of temporary files, the whole operation timed
faster than using a tmpfile (that was on a single-CPU machine).  The
function will, of course, work only under Unix and its lookalikes.
Additional information is embedded in the docstring and the comments.

I'd like to hear feedback.  Do other people find such a thing useful?
Is there a fundamental flaw or a possibility of a deadlock that I'm
missing?


def rwpopen(input, command, args=[]):
    """Execute command with args, pipe input into it, and read it back.
    Return the result read from the command.

    Normally, when a process tries to write to a child process and
    read back its output, a deadlock condition can occur easily,
    either by both processes waiting for not-yet-generated input, or
    by both their writes() being blocked waiting for the other to
    read.

    This function prevents deadlocks by using separate processes for
    reading and writing, at the expense of an additional fork().  That
    way the process that writes to an exec'ed command and the process
    that reads from the command are fully independent, and no deadlock
    can occur.  The child process exits immediately after writing.

    More precisely: the current process (A) forks off a process B,
    which in turns forks off a process C.  While C does the usual
    dup,close,exec thing, B merely writes the data to the pipe and
    exits.  Independently of B, A reads C's response.  A deadlock
    cannot occur because A and B are independent of each other -- even
    if B's write() is stopped because it filled up the pipe buffer, A
    will happily keep reading C's output, and B's write() will be
    resumed shortly.
    """
    # XXX Redo this as a class, with overridable methods for reading
    # and writing.
    #
    # XXX Provide error-checking and propagating exceptions from child
    # to parent.  This would require either wait()ing on the child
    # (which is a bag of worms), or opening another pipe for
    # transmitting error messages or serialized exception objects.
    #
    # XXX This function expects the system to wait for the child upon
    # receiving SIGCHLD.  This should be the case on most systems as
    # long as SIGCHLD is handled by SIG_DFL.  If this is not the case,
    # zombies will remain.

    def safe_traceback():
        # Child processes catch exceptions so that they can exit using
        # os._exit() without fanfare.  They use this function to print
        # the traceback to stderr before dying.
        import traceback
        sys.stderr.write("Error in child process, pid %d.\n" %
                         os.getpid())
        sys.stderr.flush()
        traceback.print_exc()
        sys.stderr.flush()

    # It would be nice if Python provided a way to see if pipes are
    # bidirectional.  In that case, we could open only one pipe
    # instead of two, with p_readfd == p_writefd and c_readfd ==
    # c_writefd.
    p_readfd, c_writefd = os.pipe()
    c_readfd, p_writefd = os.pipe()
    if os.fork():
        # Parent
        for fd in (c_readfd, c_writefd, p_writefd):
            os.close(fd)
        # Convert the pipe fd to a file object, so we can use its
        # read() method to read all data.
        fp = os.fdopen(p_readfd, 'r')
        result = fp.read()
        fp.close()                      # Will close p_readfd.
        return result
    else:
        # Child
        try:
            if os.fork():
                # Still the same child
                os.write(p_writefd, input)
            else:
                # Grandchild
                try:
                    # Redirect the pipe to stdin.
                    os.close(0)
                    os.dup(c_readfd)
                    # Redirect stdout to the pipe.
                    os.close(1)
                    os.dup(c_writefd)
                    # Now close unneeded descriptors.
                    for fd in (c_readfd, c_writefd, p_readfd, p_writefd):
                        os.close(fd)
                    # Finally, execute the external command.
                    os.execvp(command, [command] + args)
                except:
                    safe_traceback()
                    os._exit(127)
        except:
            safe_traceback()
            os._exit(127)
        else:
            os._exit(0)




From robin at alldunn.com  Thu Oct 28 20:50:20 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:50:20 -0700
Subject: fastcgi and python
References: <3818D1B2.B8B77E22@hp.com>
Message-ID: <Ub6S3.634$Iv2.24117756@news.randori.com>

Sunil Tripathy <sunil_tripathy at hp.com> wrote in message
news:3818D1B2.B8B77E22 at hp.com...
> Hi ,
>   I am trying use python for fastcgi applications on Windows NT. I
> downloaded fastcgi development kit from www.fastcgi.com and also I
> downloaded the python/c api fastcgiappmodule from
> http://www.digicool.com/releases/fcgi/.

If you want to try an all Python solution, take a look at
http://starship.python.net/crew/robind/#fcgi


--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!







From emile at fenx.com  Mon Oct  4 21:00:43 1999
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 18:00:43 -0700
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org>
Message-ID: <MdcK3.14$y51.2493@news.direcpc.com>

How about:

>>> a = [1,2,3]
>>> b = ['a','b','c']
>>> c = {}
>>> def d(a,b):
 c[a]=b
>>> toss = map(d,a,b)
>>> c
{3: 'c', 2: 'b', 1: 'a'}

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com
-------------------


Boudewijn Rempt <boud at rempt.xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:7tanv8$ga$1 at essle.valdyas.org...
> I was wondering whether it is possible to convert two lists into one
> dictionary with one simple function: i.e., I've got a list of keys,
> and a list of values like this:
>
> list1=['a','b','c']
> list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']
>
> and I want do something easy and speedy to these two lists that
> will give me:
>
> dict1={'a': 'aaa', 'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc'}
>
> preferably with the proviso that if there aren't enough values in
> list2, the dictionary is padded out with Nones. Is there something
> built in, or do I have to loop trough list1 myself? I'm going to do
> this an awful lot of times.
>
> --
>
> Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt





From rey at esrf.fr  Mon Oct 11 07:41:37 1999
From: rey at esrf.fr (rey at esrf.fr)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:41:37 GMT
Subject: Tkinter/Tcl8.1: can't find init.tcl
Message-ID: <7tsidf$loo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I found the following problem when compiling Python with tkinter
on top of a Tcl/Tk 8.1 installation.

The following error appears:
-----
>>> from Tkinter import *
>>> root=Tk()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/users/rey/mypython/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 886,
in __init__
    self.tk = _tkinter.create(screenName, baseName, className)
TclError: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following directories:




This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.
-----

The problem actually comes from the fact that from Tcl8.1 onwards a
call to Tcl_FindExecutable() is necessary when initializing Tcl.

I added that line to the _tkinter.c file and it works

Python-1.5.2/Modules/_tkinter.c:

function: Tkapp_New()
[...]
        ckfree(argv0);

        /* My code */
        Tcl_FindExecutable(argv0);

        if (Tcl_AppInit(v->interp) != TCL_OK)
                return (TkappObject *)Tkinter_Error((PyObject *)v);


I think it may help.

Vicente REY


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Thu Oct 21 17:29:35 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:29:35 +0200
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
In-Reply-To: <m3puy8a2gc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <199910212128.WAA29877@axil.hvision.nl>

On 21 Oct 99, Michael Hudson wrote:

> Not 100% sure I understand your problem. I seem to be having trouble
> thinking of ways of explaining what I actually want to say here, so
> let's just have an example:

[snippet snipped]

> do-you-think-this-is-snippet-material-Hans?-ly y'rs Michael

Sure! ^_^ Added it to my ever-growing pile of latent snippets.

Bring-em-on-ly yours,


--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Python Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/
The Purple Kookaburra Forum: http://www.delphi.com/kookaburra/



From ivanlan at callware.com  Fri Oct 29 18:13:04 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:13:04 -0600
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk> <7vd1oa$itk$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <381A1BF0.3F2B98B2@callware.com>

Hi All--

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> Ian Clarke <I.Clarke at strs.co.uk> wrote:
> [quoted from the Ruby documention]
> > Problems with Python are:
> 

[bobbitt]

> > * No way to automatically convert between long integer and small
> > integer.
> 
> I'll leave this to someone else. Is this a problem? A feature?
> 

I'll only address this issue, because it affects my Mayan code.

To me, it's a problem.  It's a great big pain to have to be constantly
on the lookout for overflows and to remove 'L's from string
representations of longs.  Sure, I could work completely with longs, but
a great deal of Mayan mathematics is done with small constant integers
(7, 13, 9, 260, 365, 819, 18980 and so on).  I'm reluctant to convert
and lose the speed advantage for numbers in the range -MAXINT to
MAXINT.  Someone else complained about transparent conversions being a
bad thing (tm), but for me they would be a *big* win.  My code would
become much clearer.

At the same time, I can certainly see that others wouldn't like the
behavior that I would; not everyone is working with numbers and dates
large enough to take up significant amounts of memory (beside which mere
trillions of years pale).  However, built in support for Very Large
Numbers is one of the reasons I *love* Python.

<one-person's-gigayear-is-another's-nanosecond>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From puter_programmer at yahoo.com  Fri Oct  1 22:12:28 1999
From: puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 02:12:28 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
Message-ID: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com>


Has anyone attempted to pass file descriptors from one process to
another under using Python on Linux?  I want to build a little web
server that accepts connections and hands them off to child processes
exactly like Apache does.

If anyone has an existing module that handles this or has sample code
they don't mind sharing or even some good tips to get me going in the
right direction it would be greatly appreciated.  I've found examples
on DejaNews of C code for Linux but writing a C module for Python is a
little beyond me.

Thanks!
-Dan





From raymondjiaNOraSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid  Wed Oct  6 13:09:53 1999
From: raymondjiaNOraSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid (raymondjia)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 10:09:53 -0700
Subject: how to translate a virtual path to a physical path in a CGI script
References: <000b8d9b.daa24cc0@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com> <7tfept$lkc$1@news.kolumbus.fi>
Message-ID: <09920fb9.d5cb6bd6@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>

Thanks for your reply.

Currently I am running IIS, which provides PATH_INFO and
PATH_TRANSLATED and so on.  So I have no problem getting to know the
physical path for the script itself.  What I really need is a function
that given *any* virtual path, it can translate it into a physical one.

I managed to write a mappath() function yesterday, which substracts
PATH_INFO from PATH_TRANSLATED to derive the document root, and join
the given logial path to it.  This way is definitely not reliable, is
it?

Here it is:
#
import urllib, string
from os import *

def mappath(virtual_path):
	if virtual_path[0] == '/':		
		self_virt = urllib.url2pathname(environ['PATH_INFO'])
		self_xlated = environ['PATH_TRANSLATED']
		pos = string.rfind(self_xlated, self_virt)
		doc_root = self_xlated[0:pos]
		return path.join(doc_root, urllib.url2pathname(virtual_path[1:]))
	else:
		return path.join(getcwd(), urllib.url2pathname(virtual_path))	
#

raymond

In article <7tfept$lkc$1 at news.kolumbus.fi>,
torppa at polykoira.megabaud.fi (Jarkko Torppa) wrote:
> In article <000b8d9b.daa24cc0 at usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>,
> raymondjia wrote:
> >Hi, all
> >
> >Can anybody tell me how to translate a virtual path to a physical
> one
> >in a CGI script?  I browsed through the recent topics and
> couldn't find
> >the answer.  Basicly what I need is the equivalent of ASP's
> >Server.MapPath().
> >
> >Is there any Python CGI FAQ page around?
> This is not python specific, it is more specific to your
> webservers cgi
> implementation.
> apache on unix sets the following environment variables that have
> the infomation
> you seem to be looking for.
> PATH_INFO
>        /haloo
> PATH_TRANSLATED
>        /www/htdocs/haloo
> QUERY_STRING
> REQUEST_URI
>        /~torppa/koe.cgi/haloo
> SCRIPT_FILENAME
>        /homes/polykoira/torppa/.public_html/koe.cgi
> SCRIPT_NAME
>        /~torppa/koe.cgi
> the request was for /~torppa/koe.cgi/halloo
> /~torppa/koe.cgi is the cgi-bin.
> --
>  Jarkko Torppa                torppa at staff.megabaud.fi
>   Megabaud Internet-palvelut



* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!




From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 14 18:39:02 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 00:39:02 +0200
Subject: Python for HP-UX
References: <3805F2E8.64189D2@imf.au.dk>
Message-ID: <38065B86.2373F92E@lemburg.com>

Emil Hedevang Lohse wrote:
> 
> I have a simple request: Python for HP-UX.
> 
> I have downloaded the sourcecode and tried to compile it but it will not work.
> So is it possible that anyone out there could email the compiled Python??

Just to get started, you could try the Python-one-file interpreter
cgipython which is available via my Python Pages (look for mxCGIPython).

There are (compiled) two versions available:

	cgipython-1.5.2-HP-UX-A.09.03-9000_715-unknown.gz
	cgipython-1.5.2-HP-UX-B.10.20-9000_782-unknown.gz

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    78 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 08:59:24 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 13:59:24 +0100
Subject: Help needed for gratuitous kludge
Message-ID: <000701bf118c$f2444fc0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

I'm trying to create an extension module which exports classes
with C methods.

Consider the following C++ code (compiled to a_module.pyd):

static PyObject* a_method(PyObject* self, PyObject* args)
{
    // Code not important
}

extern "C" void __declspec(dllexport) inita_module()
{
    PyObject* a_tuple = PyTuple_New(0);
    PyObject* a_dict = PyDict_New();
    PyObject* a_string = PyString_FromString("MyClass");
    PyObject* a_class = PyClass_New(a_tuple, a_dict, a_string);

    PyObject* mod = PyImportAdd_Module("a_module");
    PyObject* dict = PyModule_GetDict(mod);
    PyDict_SetItemString(dict, "MyClass", a_class);
}

How can I bind 'a_method' to be an instance method of 'MyClass', so
that the self parameter is passed to it. 

I don't care how hacky the solution is. Even if the instance has to
be passed through 'args'.

It must be possible (preferably without have to use an extension type.)
    
--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 12 19:11:59 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 19:11:59 -0400
Subject: Suppressing console on Windows?
References: <7trona$v8$1@corolla.OntheNet.com.au> <3801e3a3.10897435@news.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <5lwvss5g3k.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

edlsoft at mindspring.com (Burt Leavenworth) writes:

> On Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:19:04 +1000, "Brian Blackwell"
> <blackers at netscape.net> wrote:
> 
> >My apologies if this is a FAQ, but is there a way to prevent the text
> >console appearing when running a Tkinter-based Python script on Windows?
> >
> >Thanks in advance
> >Brian Blackwell
> >
> >
> One solution that works for me is the following:
> Say your script is test.py
> set up a batch file, say xtest.bat:
>    @echo off
>    python test.py
> 
> Go to Windows Explorer and right click on xtest.bat, click Properties,
> select Program tab, select 'minimized' in Run: box, and check 'Close
> on exit'
> Then at the desktop, click Start, Run and type: c:xtest
> The DOS box should not appear.

Actually, the "pythonw.exe" interpreter (with a "w" in its name) is
intended for this.  If you name your script "test.pyw" it will
automatically run pythonw when you double click the script.  Note that
if there is an error you will see nothing; the best thing to do is to
rename the script to "test.py" or drop the "test.pyw" file on the
"python.exe" (without "w" in its name).

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



From kain at twilight.  Sun Oct 17 18:31:18 1999
From: kain at twilight. (Scott Barron)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 22:31:18 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news> <3805EDAE.888C6CEA@python.net>
Message-ID: <7udinm$g6$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>

In article <3805EDAE.888C6CEA at python.net>, Thomas A. Bryan wrote:
>Ahmad Munif wrote:
>> 
>> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table 
>> widget,notebook widget, etc).
>> PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.

Check out the PWM set on the Tkinter section of www.python.org.
It seems to have lots of the widgets you might be interested in



From aflinsch at njeb.att.com  Thu Oct  7 07:51:08 1999
From: aflinsch at njeb.att.com (Alex Flinsch)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 07:51:08 -0400
Subject: Disk access going mental with Pythonwin?
References: <37FBCB5A.D461E873@darwin.in-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <37FC892B.C6EAD423@njeb.att.com>


"Dinu C. Gherman" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> while editing a file sitting on a floppy disk using Pythonwin
> I just noticed that there is a disk access each time I move
> the mouse pointer (!) over any part of the Pythonwin window!
>
> Sounds unbelievable, but it's true! Ok, I know I'm running a
> crap operating system when I use Pythonwin (Windoze95, will do
> the same tomorrow on NT), but is it really THAT MUCH CRAP???

Happens on NT too, but only when file is on a floppy. It might be
happening when file is on a hard disk, but just not noticiable since the
drive access light might be blinking on/off too fast to notice it.

>
> Or is it Pythonwin itself? Hard to believe... At least I have
> not observed that ever before with other programs.

Doesnt seem to happen with other programs. I think it might be
Pythonwin.






From dalke at bioreason.com  Fri Oct 15 19:23:38 1999
From: dalke at bioreason.com (Andrew Dalke)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:23:38 -0600
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <003701bf171e$fc797820$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <199910152247.PAA14699@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <3807B77A.87D824F8@bioreason.com>

Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com>:
> So does
> 
> >>>try:
> >>>  raise: "Hack"
> >>>except "Hack"
> 
> only work by happenstance because the standard 
> Python implementation keeps a reusable list
> of literals (guessing) or because there is something
> formal in the language that says it must work?

I'm guessing the former, since:

>>> s = "A" + "B"
>>> try:
...     raise "AB"
... except s:
...     print "Ok"
... 
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in ?
AB
>>> s
'AB'
>>> try:
...     raise "AB"
... except "AB":
...     print "Ok"
... 
Ok
>>> try:
...     raise s
... except "AB":
...     print "Ok"
... 
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in ?
AB


So string literals work, likely because they are interned to
the same object, but equivalent strings don't work.  I believe
there is some history to things working this way because
exceptions in Python used to be string only.


BTW, my standard code for generating exceptions is

try:
  1/0
except ZeroDivisionError:
  print "Ok"

which doesn't have the string problem.

						Andrew Dalke
						dalke at acm.org



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 11 19:10:12 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:10:12 -0400
Subject: Who maintains Tkinter?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910111331540.24886-100000@moogle.tcct.nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <000401bf143d$c568bf00$f1a2143f@tim>

[SysProg - Nathan Paul Simons]
> A few months ago, i attempted to get some answers to a question
> about a bug with tkinter.  i received no reply.

As you suspected, that means everyone hates you <wink>.

> Therefore, i would like to know who maintains tkinter so that i could
> contact them directly.

The maintainer of record is Guido Himself.  He doesn't read everything on
c.l.py, so chances are he never saw your msg.  He won't have time to answer
random questions (repeating them on c.l.py with ever-increasing desperation
often works ...).  Sounds more like you wanted to submit a patch, though.
In cases like that, email Guido directly; but check out the CVS tree first
(chances are surprisingly high that your patch is no longer needed), and the
patch guidelines on python.org.

hoping-your-next-question-goes-smoother-ly y'rs  - tim





From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 15:03:00 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 19:03:00 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim> <oq7ll0k3fw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <7tiqp4$lau$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
[snip]
> In an international community of free software developers, we try to use
> a reasonable level of English, and it is a real pleasure that people are
> impeccable, on the average.  And if it gets difficult, there is no problem
> if the difficulty brings with it some bits of culture, literature, movies,
> theatre; this is all good, nice, and very welcome.  But when the difficulty
> gets reduced to a local-centric commercial trademark for some insignificant
> drug, by all the hell tell me, which kind of culture is that...

American culture! :) Is it a problem that something has a weird name,
as long as you can use it? Things have to be given names, after all, and
it's fun to be creative. I mean, the acronym 'GNU' is quite bizarre to
outsiders (non programmers) as well.

Anyway, I shouldn't post so much in this thread!

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Sun Oct  3 16:32:56 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 20:32:56 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7t8eho$dbu$602@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://members.xoom.com/IaniSys/




From moshez at math.huji.ac.il  Wed Oct  6 02:12:07 1999
From: moshez at math.huji.ac.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 08:12:07 +0200 (IST)
Subject: How do loose the /012
In-Reply-To: <etd1zb9bcvw.fsf@w20-575-109.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991006080931.5496B-100000@sundial>

[Courtesy CC sent by mail]

On 5 Oct 1999, Alex wrote:

> >>> import re
> >>> text=re.sub('\n','',text)
> >>> text=re.sub('\.','.\n',text)
> >>> print text

I will kindly remind everyone that this is Python, not Perl. Hence, we
should not go the tortureous RegEx route, when we have the (in Python,
more efficient) string way.

In particular, string.translate and string.replace would do just as well,
and you wouldn't have to escape your ".", either.

--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka at geocities.com>. 
INTERNET: Learn what you know.
Share what you don't.




From jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au  Tue Oct 19 20:05:08 1999
From: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason Stokes)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 00:05:08 GMT
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <199910191923.MAA00522@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <UG7P3.16444$D33.48625@ozemail.com.au>

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:27:59 -0700, Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> wrote:

>At 07:03 PM 10/19/99 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>>steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:
>>
>>hey, what makes you think len(obj) is less object-
>>oriented than obj.len() ?  it's just syntax, you know.
>>
>
>But it IS less consistent syntax with not much advantage
>("del" is a different story).  So it would be very nice if
>I could write aList.len() if I prefer that to len(aList).

Experienced pythoners might correct me, but I believe Python's object model
is younger than its basic design.  Plus, Python has to balance the
consideration that many people do not wish to program in the object-oriented
manner.

Personally I prefer a completely consistent committment to object
orientation, like, say, Smalltalk, but horses for courses and all that.

-- 
Jason Stokes: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au



From martinp at mincom.com  Mon Oct 25 02:02:27 1999
From: martinp at mincom.com (Martin Pool)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:02:27 +1000
Subject: Backspace key and Arrows in JPython
References: <3811EE14.5185CD02@worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <3813F273.6603D719@mincom.com>

binette wrote:
> 
> I have both Python and JPython installed on my linux box (redhat).
> 
> For some reason I have no problem using the up and down arrows to access
> past command (bash shell style) in Python but can't use 'hem in JPython.
> Same for the Backspace key.

CPython gets command history and editing from the GNU readline native
library.  (So do bash and gdb, for that matter.)  That library isn't
present or accessible in the JVM, so JPython can't do it.

However, I understand that there is a Java port of readline somewhere,
so perhaps it could be patched into JPython.

> Can someone tell me how to do it?

One OK workaround is to run JPython underneath emacs using M-x shell or
M-x py-shell: you then get history and editing done by emacs without the
shell knowing about it.

> (Also, I have no idea how to  fix it (generally) on linux either.  I
> just know that some shells let me do it and others don't)

It's pretty straightforward to patch libreadline into unix apps.

-- 
 /\\\  Mincom | Martin Pool          | martinp at mincom.com
// \\\        | Software Engineer    | Phone: +61 7 3303-3333
\\ ///        | Mincom Ltd.          | 
 \///         | Teneriffe, Brisbane  | Speaking for myself only



From bgdarnel at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 28 09:16:42 1999
From: bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 13:16:42 GMT
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com> <slrn8197k4.pru.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <p5n1t3n0as.fsf@sstdw013.bbn.hp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn81gj5r.280.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>

In article <p5n1t3n0as.fsf at sstdw013.bbn.hp.com>, Markus Kohler wrote:
>bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell) writes:
>> Unfortunately, Palm devices have an unfairly small amount of memory.  On
>> a Palm III, a running application gets 4k of stack space, and 36k of
>> dynamic heap (i.e. what malloc and free operate on).  The rest of the
>> device's memory is protected, and can only be accessed by calling the
>> Data Manager functions.  I'm not familiar with CPython's internals, but
>> it seems that it would be very difficult to fit within those
>> constraints.  On top of that, you've got a 16 mHz m68k processor, so
>> performance is not going to be very good.
>> 
>
>As far as I know there is a trick to get around this limitation. 
>Look at PocketSmalltalk an implementation of Smalltalk for the
>Pilot :
>http://www.tiac.net/users/ajb/pocketst/index.html. 

Yes, PocketSmalltalk uses the Data Manager functions I referred to
above.  I don't think it is possible (it's definitely not easy) to
graft this functionality onto the existing CPython.  You'd have to
basically start from scratch.  As cool as it would be to have Python
available on my Palm, I don't think it's a worthwhile effort
considering the current processor and memory available, but it could be
useful as the Palm platform expands.

-Ben
-- 
Ben Darnell              bgdarnel at unity.nc su.edu
http://www4.nc su.edu/~bgdarnel/thoughtstream/




From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 21 17:25:56 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:25:56 -0700
Subject: DCOM servers in Python... how?
In-Reply-To: <380DEF98.F09757A8@bart.nl>
Message-ID: <004701bf1c0a$dd28ea00$53001064@bobcat>

> Now I don't know that much about DCOM. I have been roaming through
the
> Pythonwin COM documentation and wonder if it all also holds true for
> DCOM. The only DCOM example program I saw was for a client
> though. What
> is the easiest way to implement a DCOM server then?

There is nothing special at all except, as Gordon mentioned, possible
security implications.  You should run "dcomcnfg.exe" on the server to
see what the default policy for the machine is - from memory, the
default is very open.

Basically, just register any Python COM object on the server.  Then,
from the client, use either:

* win32com.client.DispatchEx() and nominate the machine, or
* run dcomcnfg and configure the particular server.

Actually, there is one additional complication - if the Python object
is also installed locally as an inproc object (which by default there
will be), then this is used regardless of the dcom config for that
object.  From memory, if you use the DispatchEx route, it side-steps
this complication.

Mark.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 17 08:53:02 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:53:02 +0200
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <Pine.GSO.4.20.9910171633480.2777-100000@sun>
Message-ID: <000b01bf189e$8cf59f70$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

> > (and no, it hasn't been fixed.  I doubt it can be
> > fixed without breaking stuff).
> 
>    Mmm??? Are there a line of code that *relies* on that misfeature?

yes, there are tons of code that relies on the
fact that the default values are evaluated once,
and more importantly, that they are evaluated
in the namespace where the function/lambda
is defined.

in fact, it's currently the only reasonable way
to pass local variables into a nested namespace
(like when using lambdas).  it's also often used
to speed things up, by binding commonly used
globals to local names.

...

but sure, I'm sure Guido is open for proposals. I
don't think you can get away with "always evaluate
them on each call," though...

</F>

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




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct 27 21:50:40 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:50:40 -0400
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
In-Reply-To: <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <000e01bf20e6$d7041880$c8a2143f@tim>

[Greg Ewing]
> Multiple dispatch is an attractive idea, but it makes me uneasy.
> One reason is that it's not clear what the rules should be.
>
> Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
> and there are methods defined for the combinations
> foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
>
> Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
> which method should get called?
>
> Arbitrary rules can of course be invented, but there is
> no single choice that is obviously "right" the way there
> is with single dispatch.

The first language I saw that took multimethods seriously was Cecil.  As is
often the case for pioneers, they answered the question in *the* obviously
right way, then waited a decade for everyone else to realize that subsequent
"improvements" weren't <wink>:  in Cecil, it's an error to call foo(AA, BB),
precisely because it's hopelessly ambiguous.

In the absence of static typing, this makes for a curious new class of
error:  adding a new multimethod can cause previously-working code to blow
up at runtime, if the new MM introduces new ambiguities (e.g., if only
foo(A,B) and foo(AA, B) were defined, foo(AA, BB) was called and resolved to
the latter, then you add a new foo(A, BB)).  You really, really, really want
to get told about that at compile-time.

There's much interesting reading (including rigorous definition of Cecil's
dispatching scheme) at:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/projects/cecil/www/Papers/papers.html

your-brain-won't-explode-but-your-compiler-might<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From kain at twilight.  Thu Oct 28 15:52:15 1999
From: kain at twilight. (Scott Barron)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 19:52:15 GMT
Subject: eff-bot Python book ... revisited
Message-ID: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>

Hey folks,

I've downloaded and just about finished the ematter from fatbrain.  I must say
this is an excellent book for the price.  While not really a beginner's book
it makes a fantastic 'tips and tricks' manual.  Great job Fredrik, I know I
definitely appreciate your effort and will get great use from this book.

On to the fatbrain flames (Hey, I gotta jump on the bandwagon).  It's a great
concept but, along with anything still in its infancy, could use a little work.
I had a bit of trouble connecting to the registration server and it took me
about 45 minutes before I could actually open the book.  Of course, I dislike
the fact that I can only open the file on one machine, but if you *really* want
to read it on another machine and platforM, it is possible.  I don't know how
legal that is so I'll let you figure that out on your own.

Anyway, I hope to see more Python ebooks published in the future.  Its a great
thing if you want to read a book on the road (easier than scanning a real 
book!).  I can't wait for your Tkinter books Fredrik, keep up the great work!

Scott




From kent at tiamat.goathill.org  Tue Oct 12 12:29:14 1999
From: kent at tiamat.goathill.org (Kent Polk)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 16:29:14 GMT
Subject: Solaris 7 and 64bit Python
Message-ID: <939744530.45147@fezzik.endicor.com>

I'm trying to build a 64bit Python for Solaris 7. I'm using :
-xtarget=ultra -xarch=v9 -xcode=pic32 as per instructions for
.so libraries. ld doesn't complain about the build and I can 
build other applications this way.  Unfortunately, the result
(python) just hangs when executed. Truss reports:

.
.
.
open("/dev/zero", O_RDWR)                       = 5
mmap(0x00000000, 40960, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_NORESERVE,\
 5, 0) = 0xFFFFFFFF7F770000
close(5)                                        = 0
mprotect(0xFFFFFFFF7F770000, 8192, PROT_NONE)   = 0
lwp_create(0xFFFFFFFF7F789690, LWP_DETACHED|LWP_SUSPENDED, 0xFFFFFFFF7F779D14)\
 = 4
lwp_continue(4)                                 = 0
lwp_create()    (returning as new lwp ...)      = 0
lwp_schedctl(SC_STATE|SC_BLOCK, -1, 0xFFFFFFFF7F779B48) = 0
lwp_schedctl(SC_DOOR, 0, 0x00000000)            = 5
door_bind(5)                                    = 0
sigaction(SIGWAITING, 0xFFFFFFFF7F220CB0, 0x00000000) = 0
close(5)                                        = 0
time()                                          = 939679984
lwp_sema_wait(0x10018ACC8)      (sleeping...)
signotifywait()                 (sleeping...)
lwp_cond_wait(0xFFFFFFFF7F227178, 0xFFFFFFFF7F227188, 0xFFFFFFFF7F789A00) \
 (sleeping...)
door_return(0x00000000, 0, 0x00000000, 0) (sleeping...)

This was from a previous Python build for std Solaris with threads
which runs correctly. I simply changed the cc options.

Has anyone had success at this?

Thanks




From guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US  Thu Oct  7 08:11:02 1999
From: guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 08:11:02 -0400
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 07 Oct 1999 11:31:44 BST."
             <002b01bf10af$27123890$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> 
References: <002b01bf10af$27123890$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> 
Message-ID: <199910071211.IAA10358@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

[me]
> > Hm, that's odd.  Python is supposed to ignore the locale when you use
> > atof(); the locale module exports a version of atof() that honors the
> > locale after you call locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "").
[Adrian Eyre]
> Even if setlocale() was not called through the Python wrapper?

Perhaps not.  Python needs the locale to be "C" for its own internal
purposes.

> > What platform are you on?
> Win32
> 
> > It seems that perhaps the Tcl version you
> > are using calls setlocale() on that platform?
> In the embedding code, there is a call to setlocale(LC_ALL, "") before
> Py_Initialise().

What embedding code?  I thought you were using IDLE.  Are you saying
that you are using IDLE from an embedding application?  (It is always
necessary if any 3rd party C code is involved when reporting a Python
problem; embedding counts as such :-)

If so, why do you call setlocale(LC_ALL, "")?

There may be no good solution if your embedding application needs to
do that -- there are too many places in the Python runtime that expect
the locale to be C.  I suppose this could be fixed by not using any of
those, but (a) it's painful to write your own atof(), %e, %f, %g
formatter in a platform independent manner with the best accuracy, (b)
it seems such a waste of effort since the C library has one, (c)
finding and fixing all locale dependencies (there are others!) in the
Python source code is about as much fun as systematically searching
for Y2K bugs in a program of similar size.

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



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 29 19:35:39 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:35:39 -0400
Subject: Accessing class variables
In-Reply-To: <v04003a00b43fd15b4372@[195.180.62.154]>
Message-ID: <1270883107-11192393@hypernet.com>

Peter Sommerfeld writes:
> Sorry folks, I'm confused. What's that ?
[code snipped]
> I can access class variables via the instance ?
> Bug, new feature or even an old one and I'm crazy ?

No, no, not even but not odd, old, 

and-probably-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu  Wed Oct 13 20:11:55 1999
From: josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Joshua Marcus)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 00:11:55 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
Message-ID: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu>

Friends,

I'm sure this is a common complaint, and that the answer has been given a 
hundred times but my frustration demands this:

What is the %$*&@#!@ rationale behind not including a do...while control 
structure in Python?

I know you can simply work around it, e.g:

line = "foo"
while input != "":
    line = fp.readline()
    process(line)

... but why must I do this every time?  Am I missing something?

--j



From rturpin at do.not.use  Sun Oct 24 10:18:57 1999
From: rturpin at do.not.use (Russell Turpin)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 09:18:57 -0500
Subject: One good reason for introspection  (was: "What is the name of what 
 called me?")
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017081520.9169B-100000@sundial> <22101999.3@sanctum.jae> <EA4BCCBF98340313.E7B2447D778F2968.62055E04A84ECBEB@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <38131551.F9922A6A@do.not.use>

Debuggers are good, but I hate to assume that software (even
mine) is 100% bug-free once it is in a production environment.
It can be very difficult to reproduce the conditions that 
create an infrequent bug unless the program itself leaves 
behind some information, a trace, for post-execution analysis.

In C and C++, I have always used macros to generate trace
files.  Tracing is always optional, and the advantage of a 
macro is that the test can be outside the expensive function
call.  With Python (a) there is no macro capability, and 
(b) I suspect the function call isn't that expensive in the
larger scheme of things.  This makes it tempting to wrap trace
functions together with the required data as a trace object
that is inherited by any object that wants to perform tracing.

Consider, now, that I decide some application methods should
have their entry and exit traced, possibly along with entry
parameters and exit values.  The application method must be
responsible for formatting the part of the message displaying
values, since it alone deals with these.  But where should
the code be that says it was foo() that has been entered or
exited?  One answer is: let foo() do it.  The problem with
this is that it reproduces foo's name in places other than
the def statement.  Like comments, these are often left
behind when future enhancement copies and revises foo() to 
create spam() and eggs().  (If foo() were merely renamed to 
bar(), that would not be so bad, since anyone reading the 
trace would think "there is no foo(), so I must search for 
the trace procedure that thinks it is told it is in foo()."  
But to have two or three functions generating the same trace 
statements is a real recipe for confusion!)

The better technique is to have the trace procedure snag the 
name of its caller.  Hence, my question that gave rise to 
this debate.

On the larger issue, I am somewhat ambivalent.  I see no reason
of proper behavior for a program to have access to the names of 
any of its objects.  Philosophically, names live in design space, 
not execution space.  Names are required ONLY for debugging, 
tracing, and other forms of program analysis.

BUT.  I have never met a programming environment that provides
so rich an environment for programming analysis that software
developers would want for nothing else in this regard.  Given
this, I think it behooves language designers to provide 
introspection features, including ways to peek at the call
stack without generating an exception.  Furthermore, if it is
alright to peek at the call stack for exception handling, I 
see no reason to forbid it when executing non-exception code.

Russell



From parkw at better.net  Sat Oct 23 20:00:38 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 20:00:38 -0400
Subject: Python on Minix
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023160237.7138A-100000@general3.asu.edu>
References: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023160237.7138A-100000@general3.asu.edu>
Message-ID: <19991023200038.A12447@better.net>

On Sat, Oct 23, 1999 at 04:10:55PM -0700, sthaiyar at imap2.asu.edu wrote:
> hi all,
> 	i am trying to install python1.5.2
> on minix. however, when i run './configure',
> i get lots of:
> 
> checking (some file) ...here file: not found
> grep: bad regular expression
> 
> I am assuming here that these messages arent
> supposed to show up. BTW, i am running Minix
> of a 486 IBM Thinkpad.
> I read the README file and saw for Minix
> when using ack, "CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=: ./configure",
> so i typed './configure CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=:'  (is this right???)
> and got the same results as above. i even tried
> 'make' a "make: dont know how to make @srcdir@/configure".
> any pointers???
> 
> sriram thaiyar

1.  Environment variables must come before command:
	CC=cc AR=... ./configure
    per instruction.

2.  Is there a compelling reason for running Minix?  Why not Linux?



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Wed Oct  6 09:55:33 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 15:55:33 +0200
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <000401bf0fb8$1050e7c0$cf2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <y0jn1tw386i.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
> 
> None is a valid key.  If you're going to adopt half a bad idea, go all the
> way <0.5 wink>.

Well - the problem is that you would probably have several Nones, and
lose a lot of your data... Oh, well. The reason I suggested the None
thing is that that was what was requested in the original problem
statement in this thread.

> 
> else-the-spurned-orphan-will-murder-us-in-our-sleep-ly y'rs  - tim
> 
> 
> 
> 
--

  Magnus
  Lie                                     Please forward all spam to
  Hetland                                                uce at ftc.gov



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct  8 12:08:14 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:08:14 -0400
Subject: GUI Builder for Python (was Re: Python Port Newbie)
In-Reply-To: <uHlL3.14520$lE.42049@ozemail.com.au>
References: <uHlL3.14520$lE.42049@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <19991008120814.A1616283@vislab.epa.gov>

tyler Peter:
 |I have developed an app for Windows in Vis Basic 6 but now want to port to
 |Linux.  Thinking of re-writing the app in Python on Linux, but would like to
 |work under similar development environment as available in Vis B.
 |
 |Does anybody know if there is a similar development environment + form
 |builder for Python?

To the form builder part of your question, here are some past references to
graphical GUI builders for Python:

  http://x46.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/dnquery.xp?ST=PS&QRY=%22gui+builder%22&defaultOp=AND&DBS=1&format=threaded&showsort=date&maxhits=100&groups=*python*

in particular:

  http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=509559897
  http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=529504634

I haven't tried either (yet).

Randall



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Fri Oct 29 15:56:37 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 21:56:37 +0200
Subject: self-registering objects?
Message-ID: <7vcu4u$592@mail.psy.uva.nl>

Hi,

I would like objects of a certain class to be able of registering themselves
in a global dictionary, __register__, possibly upon __init__.

__register__ should contain associatins such as:

{ 'ID': <__main__.certain_class instance at ####> }

Unfortunately, the naive:

def __init__(self, etc.):
    global __register__
    self.ID = 'instance1'
    __register__[self.ID] = self

Does NOT work.

The object that I find in the __register__ under the given ID is apparently
just the bare bones of the class and gets none of the changes incured to the
instance after registration.

It's is not a problem if I register the object "from outside",
but I would like to understand what's going on...


ionel






From robin at alldunn.com  Sun Oct  3 20:58:48 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:58:48 -0700
Subject: Directory select dialog box?
References: <Arcturax-0210992302520001@ppp41.pm2.midd-oh.siscom.net> <mark.938950413@declan>
Message-ID: <oZSJ3.13$BK2.2425202@news.randori.com>

Mark C Favas <mark at chem.uwa.edu.au> wrote in message
news:mark.938950413 at declan...
> Arcturax at no_spam.siscom.net (Arcturax) writes:
>
> >I have a question
> >regarding bringing up a dialog box that will allow selection of just a
> >directory, not a file.
>
> >I need one that will work under both Windows NT and Unix and would prefer
> >the version that brings up the standard dialogs for either system like
the
> >tkopenandsave dialogs do.  I heard there was a patch for this, but cannot
> >find it after spending two days of hard net searching and deja-news
> >searching.
>
> I, too, would be interested in one that brings up the standard dialogs for
> either system. I have one based on the Pmw widget set, but it has its own
look
> and feel. If this would suit your purpose, mail me and I'll send it to
you.

wxPython has all the standard Common Dialogs for windows and good
equivalents for other platforms.

    http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!






From skip at mojam.com  Thu Oct  7 12:23:17 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:23:17 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: List vs. Tuple
In-Reply-To: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>
References: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <14332.51445.565843.559763@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Matthew> Can someone explain to me why if there is only a string in a
    Matthew> list/tuple they behave differently when looped through.  For
    Matthew> example,

    >>>> list=['abcd']
    >>>> tuple=('abcd')

Matthew,

Your tuple isn't a tuple at all.  It's just a string.  To indicate a
singleton tuple you must include a trailing comma:

    tuple = ('abcd',)

This is an area of Python's syntax that often trips new users up (right
about when they get used to indentation-based block structure ;-).  Since
parens are used both to force expression evaluation order and to define
tuples, the trailing comma in the singleton tuple disambiguates the two
cases.  Lists don't have this problem since there is no ambiguity in the
semantic meaning of square brackets.

Now, stepping a bit away from the original problem...

You might find it helpful to get in the habit of always terminating tuples
and lists with a comma (though I must confess I only do this in one special
case myself).  This makes it less likely you'll get bitten by the bug that
bit you.  For large lists or tuples it can make it easier to insert new
entries.  For example, suppose you had a static list of first names:

    firsts = [ "Guido", "Jeremy", "Barry", "Mel" ]

Adding new names to the list gets to be a bother when your list gets big
enough cross a line boundary, so your natural instinct is to line wrap the
list:

    firsts = [ "Guido", "Jeremy", "Barry", "Mel", "Adam", "John", "Dana",
	       "Chevy", "Eddie", "Gilda", "Jane", "Kevin" ]

After a few more additions you might find it difficult to see what's been
added and want them alphabetized.  Once you cross this threshold, it's
easier to just make them one string per line and terminate each string with
a comma.  You can then use an external sort program with impunity to sort
the list after adding new names:

    firsts = [
	       "Adam",
	       "Barry",
	       "Chevy",
	       "Dana",
	       "Eddie",
	       "Fred",
	       "Gilda",
	       "Guido",
	       "Jane",
	       "Jeremy",
	       "John",
	       "Kevin",
	       "Mel",
	      ]

Now, this is not a generally going to be a good way to maintain long static
lists or tuples, but for the occasional case it works, and the trailing
comma thing makes it easier to sort the items without worrying about where
you need to insert or delete commas.

Far enough afield for you?

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From python at infosys.com.ar  Mon Oct 18 14:45:09 1999
From: python at infosys.com.ar (PythonMaster)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:45:09 -0300 (ART)
Subject: BSD3 - virtual server - dyld.h not found [Q]
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9910181536400.1100-100000@kuarajy.infosys.com.ar>

Hi!

	I am trying to compile Python 1.5.2 on a virtual server (iServer)
that runs BSD/OS 3.1 - Virtual Kernel.

	I am getting the following error:

gcc -D_HAVE_BSDI -g -O2 -I./../Include -I.. -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c
getversion.c
gcc -D_HAVE_BSDI -g -O2 -I./../Include -I.. -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c graminit.c
gcc -D_HAVE_BSDI -g -O2 -I./../Include -I.. -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c import.c
gcc -D_HAVE_BSDI -c -g -O2 -I./../Include -I.. -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I/
./importdl.c
./importdl.c:269: mach-o/dyld.h: No such file or directory
*** Error code 1

Stop.
*** Error code 1

Stop.
$

I have tryied "./configure --without-dyld" but I always get the same
error. In the configure log I get always, even if I put the --without-dyld
command in the ./configure script, the following message:

checking for --with-dyld... yes

We have just hired the Virtual server, is it possible that a lib is
lacking? I have compiled successfully Python151 in another virtual server
some months ago...

TIA.

/B

Bruno <bmatt at acm.org>
a.k.a. PythoniK <python at infosys.com.ar>






From hei at adtranzsig.de  Wed Oct 13 07:12:20 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:12:20 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de> <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <939813183.668045@news.adtranzsig.de>

Tim Eccles schrieb in Nachricht <38041E61.5936C196 at tile.demon.co.uk>...
>Hello Dirk-Ulrich
>
>How difficuly was it?

About 1 or 2 days(?) - didn't measure (actually it took me half a
year, workin on it 10 min a day, but not every day).  I know, this doesn't
help
you much...

>Is it just a matter of writing a correct MAKE
>file, or do we have to manipulate the source code.

no and yes, but you get it for free from me if you wait a little...

>
>The reason for the query is that we are thinking of embedding a Python
>engine within a BCB program, so we do not really want to use VC at all.

Me too. The BCB app is working for quite a while now, but still i'm stuck
to my old WINAPI-based app that contains a Python 1.4 because
i'm still seeking the perfect architecture for the new one...
Might take another 2 years
until i really start programming it. (The apps i write at home tend to be
a little like Cyc or Xanadu, i suppose. I mean the timescale, not the
goals.)

You don't have to wait for 2 years for my patch, though. Just a few hours
from now.  If it's still there.
--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net






From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sat Oct  9 11:31:03 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 15:31:03 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <37FDA132.61E1B9F9@compaq.com> <7tjfu3$l8s$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <37FE30BB.46E5523B@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <7tnn3n$q7g$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tom Loredo <loredo at spacenet.tn.cornell.edu> wrote:
> Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> 
>> The trouble with junk DNA is that it doesn't seem to code for *any* active
>> RNA or protein in the cell. So it's unlikely junk DNA consists of
>> control structures.

> Well, it seems we're all nonexperts who have gone far afield in this
> thread, but I must say I don't follow this line of reasoning at all.
> In fact, as I mentioned already in this thread, there is a lot of
> research in the biophysics community based on the premise that
> the noncoding DNA *is* in fact a control structure---chemicals
> bonding to noncoding regions appear to trigger the expression of adjacent
> coding regions.  The noncoding regions are thus control structures
> that let the environment influence gene expression.

Aaaah..so they're *templates*. That could make sense. Templates are
by a the way somewhat like goto 'labels'. You have to use something like
that in DNA because you don't have numeric addresses.

> The speaker at our colloquium last week spoke of this as if it
> were a broadly accepted viewpoint, but not being in the community
> myself I can't say whether it's highly theoretical or not.

Anyway, this sounds sensible. Though I must add that they can't be
*all* the control structures; the other half must be the coding DNA that
produces the chemicals that bind to this template DNA.

Throwing in a wild theory; this may also explain why there's a lot of 
junk DNA... it can do some simple measurements of how much of a certain
type of chemical is already in the cellular environment. You could have
something like 'if more than 60% of a particular type of template is bound,
express this gene'. You need a lot of duplications for something like
that.

But that's just a wild guess. :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct  4 10:51:51 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (prestonlanders at my-deja.com)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 14:51:51 GMT
Subject: NURB's and Python?
Message-ID: <7taetu$3ej$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Does there exist a module for encapsulating / dealing with NURBs in
Python?

NURB == Non-uniform rational b-spline curve.

Just curious.  I'd hate to have to write my own if someone else has
already done the grunt work.

thanks,

---Preston


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From rsmol at bart.nl  Wed Oct 20 12:36:40 1999
From: rsmol at bart.nl (Richard Smol)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 18:36:40 +0200
Subject: DCOM servers in Python... how?
Message-ID: <380DEF98.F09757A8@bart.nl>

Hi there,

For a research project here I want to be able to prototype DCOM-servers
quickly. For this I am of course thinking of Python!

Now I don't know that much about DCOM. I have been roaming through the
Pythonwin COM documentation and wonder if it all also holds true for
DCOM. The only DCOM example program I saw was for a client though. What
is the easiest way to implement a DCOM server then?

Thanks in advance...

Greetz,

RS



From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 16:11:55 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 22:11:55 +0200
Subject: Doing network traffic in the 'background' from Tkinter app??
References: <kspuxy62ub.fsf@telelogic.se> <19991029085829.A106971705@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <ks3duu53lg.fsf@telelogic.se>

/ Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
| [...] 
| I can't tell exactly what you're doing from your description, but check
| out Tk's fileevent callback:

Bingo, Thanx!

Basically what I want is to give the user the possibilty to mess
around with my application while it fetches data from THE internet(TM)

        /Andy



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 12 22:43:58 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 22:43:58 -0400
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
References: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7ttk6r$ids$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <5loge456a9.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

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

> Quoth Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com>:
> | I'm trying to untar a large file from within a Python script.
> | I'm calling tar like this:
> |
> | filename = "/tmp/data.tar.gz"
> | status, result = commands.getstatusoutput("tar xzvf %s" % filename)
> | if status:
> |    print "error! tar said:\n%s" % result
> | else:
> |    # continue
> |
> | The problem is that every time I get an error status from tar, though
> | tar seems to completely extract all files.  I get this as the last 2
> | lines of output:
> |
> | gzip: stdout: Broken pipe
> | tar: Child returned status 1
> |
> | If I try to perform this same operation from the command line, it works
> | fine.  But if I try to do it in Python, I get this error status.  Has
> | anybody seen anything like this?
> 
> I think there may be a bug in commands.getstatusoutput.  Here's what I
> see in commands.py:
> 
> def getstatusoutput(cmd):
>     """Return (status, output) of executing cmd in a shell."""
>     import os
>     pipe = os.popen('{ ' + cmd + '; } 2>&1', 'r')
>     text = pipe.read()
>     sts = pipe.close()
>     if sts == None: sts = 0
>     if text[-1:] == '\n': text = text[:-1]
>     return sts, text
>  
> I suspect your problem may go away if you rewrite that function, changing
> "text = pipe.read()"  to something like this:
> 
>     text = ''
>     while 1:
>         frag = pipe.read()
>         if frag == '':
>             break
>         text = text + frag
> 
> Basically, you need this if your command is going to write more than once
> to output.  The way it's written now, that read() catches the first output
> and then closes the pipe, so the command will get a SIGPIPE the next time
> it writes output.

Donn, I don't think that there's a bug in getstatusoutput().  Python's
read() method on file objects already contains the loop you are
suggesting.

My guess as to why he's getting the error that he's getting is that
tar somehow stops reading the gzip output before gzip is done.  Maybe
the rest of the tar output (if there's any) would be a clue.

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



From viktor at dtek.chalmers.se  Sun Oct  3 07:27:46 1999
From: viktor at dtek.chalmers.se (Viktor Fougstedt)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 11:27:46 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com> <7t5ffa$1h6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se> <37f7564e.33979028@news.supernews.com> <5lvh8p6zbt.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7t7eji$7dm$1@nyheter.chalmers.se>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

>puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan) writes:

>> I'm currently needing the module for a project that will run on a
>> Linux machine and unfortunately Linux does appear to support the
>> System-V approach.  There is no I_SENDFD or I_RECVFD in the ioctl()

>My guess is that those examples use socketpair() because it's
>convenient, not because it's necessary.  I would guess that creating a
>server AF_UNIX socket in the parent and a client AF_UNIX socket in the
>child, connecting the latter to the former, would allow you to do the
>same thing.  You might even be able to do this between unrelated
>processes.  Of course, this is pure speculation...

It should definately work without socketpair(), and even between
unrelated processes. But I do not think it will work without
sendmsg()/recvmsg(), which are needed to be able to set the message
type to a proper value. Even then it's kind of a thin line to walk
down, since the msghdr struct looks different on different UNIX
dialects... 

But if one were to implement sendmsg()/recvmsg() in the socket module,
which shouldn't be much work I suppose, it is very probable that it
would be possible to pack()/unpack() a struct that could be used to
pass open filedescriptors on Linux. The simplest implementation of
sendmsg()/recvmsg() could just pass a pack()ed struct as a msghdr, and
then it's up to the Python user to make sure it's a correct msghdr.


/Viktor...


-- 
--|     Viktor Fougstedt, system administrator at dtek.chalmers.se     |--
--|                http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~viktor/                |--
--| ...soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. /Tom Lehrer |--



From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Sun Oct 24 10:32:25 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 14:32:25 GMT
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017081520.9169B-100000@sundial> <22101999.3@sanctum.jae>  <EA4BCCBF98340313.E7B2447D778F2968.62055E04A84ECBEB@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <slrn8168j0.7s1.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

Cameron Laird <claird at starbase.neosoft.com> wrote:
>
> Even if we stick to userland applications, and deny Python a
> "systems" role, examples like Scheme show it's possible to have a
> healthy tradition of application-oriented idioms which rely on
> code-data dualities.
>
> I'm a tiny bit surprised, in fact, that Python programs "eval" as
> little as they do.  I'll conjecture, again, that there might be some
> deeper reason that this is so.  Generalized appeals to propriety,
> though, seem to me misplaced.

You answer your own question here. eval is rarely used in Python
because it is rarely useful. Even in Perl, where there was once very
extensive use of eval, it was only used to get around misfeatures of
the language (eg, to fake exceptions and first-class regexps). And
Perl has since grown so it's no longer needed in those roles.

"eval" is rarely useful because interpreting strings as programs is
basically the wrong thing to do. A program is a highly structured data
structure, and a string isn't. So it's quite difficult to build up a
program from pieces. To do it right, you need to build a parse tree
and then walk it to generate the code to give to eval. This is so much
work it's rarely worth the effort. 

In the Lisp family of languages, eval is much more useful because you
are not treating programs as strings -- you are treating source code
as a data structure. This means that generating programs from smaller
pieces is a much easier task.

But note that eval is hardly ever used in Scheme and CL anymore,
either. The same source-code/data-structure that makes using eval
in nontrivial roles makes building more specific mechanisms feasible. 
That is, you can use the Scheme or CL's macro system to add the 
language features that you need in a structured fashion. This is 
safer, more convenient, and more efficient that blindly using eval. 


Neel



From kain at twilight.  Sat Oct 30 00:50:37 1999
From: kain at twilight. (Scott Barron)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 04:50:37 GMT
Subject: opening anydbm files
Message-ID: <7vdtet$3i4$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>

Hi folks,

According to the docs and Fredrik's book this should work but I get the
following:

Python 1.5.2 (#8, Oct 13 1999, 22:39:47)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import anydbm
>>> db = anydbm.open ("foo", "c")
>>> db["1"] = "foo"
>>> db["2"] = "bar"
>>> db["3"] = "baz"
>>> db.close ()
>>> db = anydbm.open ("foo", "r")
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/local/lib/python1.5/anydbm.py", line 80, in open
    raise error, "need 'c' or 'n' flag to open new db"
anydbm.error: need 'c' or 'n' flag to open new db
>>> db = anydbm.open ("foo", "w")
[--Snip same error as above --]
>>> db = anydbm.open ("foo")
[--Snip same error as above--]
>>> db = anydbm.open ("foo", "c")
>>> db["1"]
'foo'


Could anyone point me to the reason I might be getting these errors?  Using
c will work fine for now but I'd like to open readonly sometime.

Thanks,
Scott




From tbryan at python.net  Wed Oct 20 22:22:14 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:22:14 -0400
Subject: perl re to regex for emacs
References: <7uj9lf$b56$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7ulb09$os3$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380E78D6.63382D29@python.net>

mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote:
> 
> I did work out perl style re.  Now is there a utility which will
> convert this re to emacs style re?

Why would you want to convert it to an emacs-style regular expression?

Python's re module uses basicaly the same syntax as Perl's regular 
expressions.  

---Tom



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 25 13:49:36 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:49:36 +0200
Subject: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr
References: <000501bf1bda$5f6ea350$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <380F3879.9F6F92AB@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De> <mIxQ3.83$iL.19750@news.goodnet.com>
Message-ID: <007301bf1f11$4efcd200$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Tom Vrankar <no at spam.net> wrote:
> If you don't like the side-effects of os.system() on Windows, try instead the 
> Windows-specific function os.spawnv (flag, program_path, argv), where the 
> undocumented flag =0 for blocking behavior, and flag =1 for asynchronous 
> behavior.

or, in other words, os.P_WAIT or os.P_NOWAIT.
(as mentioned in the library reference).

</F>

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




From l.szyster at ibm.net  Fri Oct 15 09:54:53 1999
From: l.szyster at ibm.net (Laurent Szyster)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:54:53 +0100
Subject: Cisco config?
References: <7u2rhe$j3s@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com> <Qr7N3.86$nf1.14912@news.shore.net> <7u30l1$q31@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <3807322D.D1A66F2A@ibm.net>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <Qr7N3.86$nf1.14912 at news.shore.net>,
> Michael P. Reilly <arcege at shore.net> wrote:
> >Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote:
> >:
> >: I've found Gconfig, but my searching hasn't turned up anything for
> >: automated configuration of a Cisco router (a la "expect").  Any
> >: pointers?
> >
> >What about using Expect or ExpectPy?
> 
> Well, yes, (that's what 'a la "expect"' meant) but we're not exactly
> Cisco experts here and I was hoping that someone else might have a bit
> of code to share so we don't have to start from scratch.  I'm given to
> understand (I'm not the person likely doing the work) that among other
> things the prompt changes as the configuration changes....

Well, the Cisco console prompt has three "states" I know about:

 hostname>
     The normal prompt

 hostname#
     Once you issued the 'enable' command (and entered a valid
     password), the prompt changes like when you become superuser
     on a UNIX console

 hostname(config)#
     If you then issue 'configure terminal', the prompt changes
     again reflecting the fact that you are configuring the
     router

There may be other prompt form. Hope this helps ...


Laurent



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Fri Oct  8 16:29:30 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 20:29:30 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
Message-ID: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello all,

I know there's been some casual discussion here about Python 2.x.  I'm
wondering if anyone would be willing to summarize a list of language
features generally desired or expected for Python 2.  I'm not really
asking about the implementation but the language itself; any
interesting changes ahead?

And just because I like to start flame wars, I'll go ahead and add my
own feature to the wishlist:  nested scopes / namespaces.  Is this a
pipe dream, or just too hard to implement given the internal structure
of Python (which I'm not really familiar with.)  Maybe I'm just going
about it all wrong, but it seems like much of my code would be cleaner
given arbitrarily nested scopes.  I've discussed this with people
before on c.l.python but never really got an explanation that made
sense (to me) for the way it is now.

By the way, is there a function equivilent to the following in the
standard Python module library?

def unquote(s):
    """Remove any enclosing quotes around a string."""
    if (s[:1] == "'" and s[-1:] == "'") or (s[:1] == '"' and s[-1:]
== '"'):
        return s[1:-1]
    else:
        return s

thanks,

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From paul at prescod.net  Fri Oct 15 19:12:16 1999
From: paul at prescod.net (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 19:12:16 -0400
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
Message-ID: <3807B4D0.127E7261@prescod.net>

Okay, I'm an idiot. On a couple of different occaisions I have needed to
do some CGI prototoyping and I have found CGIServer. "Cool", I say. Then
I try to get it working on Windows, changing things here and there until
I realize (at "fork") that its hopeless. The experience is so annoying
that I erase it from my brain until the next time. (or perhaps it isn't
frustrating ENOUGH).

I would appreciate a comment at the top of that program that says that
it doesn't run on Windows. Perhaps it could even test for os.fork at the
beginning and crash if it isn't installed.

 Paul Prescod



From cors at recercai.com  Wed Oct 20 16:01:15 1999
From: cors at recercai.com (Carlos Ors)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:01:15 +0200
Subject: kwp & jpython
Message-ID: <380dcb8b.0@sahara.cablecat.com>

I interested in use kjpylint (from kwp) with jpython.
and I get this error:

  Exception in thread "main" Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  File "c:\Archivos de programa\Python\kwp\kjpylint.py", line 80, in ?
  File "c:\archiv~1\python\kwp\pygram.py", line 378, in ?
  File "c:\archiv~1\python\kwp\kjParser.py", line 16, in ?
ImportError: no module named regex

Can I solve tis problem or kjpylint is only for python?

How can I solve the problem in the first case?


                Thanks in advance.

Carlos.


P.D: Please, answer me to karlos at softhome.net if you could.







From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sat Oct  2 05:10:48 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 02 Oct 1999 10:10:48 +0100
Subject: Read stdout from shell command, was: Becoming root
References: <oqg105i7ja.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <FIJqFr.AC5@world.std.com> <19990924165114.A753@krikkit.vollmert.home> <FIKo7M.1FC@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <m3emfeb013.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

wware-nospam at world.std.com (Will Ware) writes:
> I find I do this quite frequently, usually using something like
> os.popen('some shell command').readline()[:-1] and sure, it works,
> but it's really ugly, and I'm always left with the nagging suspicion
> that since I didn't explicitly close the os.popen(), it might still
> be floating around.

Agree with the ugliness, but don't worry about the dangling pipe:
os.popen() returns a file object and file objects call "close" when
they go out of scope, which this one does pretty rapidly.

Regards,
Michael



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Tue Oct  5 04:46:24 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 10:46:24 +0200
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
Message-ID: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

Was just wondering if anybody cared to help me with this problem :

I got a program were the user will search a database based on keywords.
Example use :

app_name -s python rpm src
where -s is the option used for searching the database, the rest is
words to search for, app_name is eh ... well, the script.
The first thing that will be done is to fetch entries in the keywords
database, organized as dictionaries :

python = 432,5435,533,54343,5344 ...
rpm = 42432,43246,533,6753,234,64644,66545,6446 ...
src = 43535,543636,533,6564,6547443,535633,256474 ...

Something like this perhaps :

for word in sys.argv(1:):
	words_dict[word] = dyna_list # the result from the dictonary could be a
lists or a string, containing entries later converted to a list
	
But here I need to create a new list-object for each keyword. I don`t
know how many keywords the user has specified so this has to be dynamic.
How can I create list-objects like this on-the-fly? Can I use a list of
lists? It will probably not be integers used for entry-ids in the end,
more likely strings, or lists if this is possible.

What I need is a way of making an intersection of this lists, so that
only entries containing all keywords will be displayed. The final
product should be a list to iterate, fetching the valid entries in
another database.

I`m a newbie to python, so be gently. 

PS! How can I find info on what module returns what kind of info? I look
into the os-module for info on what the stat-method returns, but I
didn`t find the info anywhere. Then I looked at the stat-module, but
that didn`t clear up anything either. I want to know how I can turn
(432432,43242,4356,0,1,543643754,765474) stuff the stat-method returns
into more readable text.

Thomas Weholt



From hateme212 at hotmail.com.removeit  Wed Oct 20 00:56:02 1999
From: hateme212 at hotmail.com.removeit (John Hater)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 04:56:02 GMT
Subject: any new projects and ideas
References: <7ujidc$l3p$1@news.vsnl.net.in>
Message-ID: <8E658059Ahateme212hotmailcomr@10.132.8.46>

ruchirt at mailcity.com (ruchir) wrote in <7ujidc$l3p$1 at news.vsnl.net.in>:

>hi,
>    im new to linux and also python, i took the tutorial but im looking
>    for 
>some ideas to
>use python for. If anyone has some interesting ideas, pls let me know
>                                                                        
>                                  

I need an X window News reader using gtk+. I am thinking of use
python to do it (cuz python already provides most services a news agent
needs: nntp, mail, uudecode, mime, list...). python binding for gtk+ is
also ready to use. Of course python can bring powerful script ability to
the news agent. If you want it, you can have my idea. If not, I will do
it myself later on.


Any other cool idea? 



From edwardam at home.com  Wed Oct 27 23:04:44 1999
From: edwardam at home.com (Edward Muller)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:04:44 GMT
Subject: How to control app from Python?
References: <38160DD8.5C695E09@theriver.com>
Message-ID: <3817BD5F.7E05BDC9@home.com>

Andy Fox wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'd like to use Python to control another (non Python) app.  Ideally, I
> would like to start the other app, then tell it to do a few things, then
> stop it.
>

What platform?

>
> I've done some experimenting with os.system() and os.popen().  It is
> remarkably easy to start an app, but not so easy to stop it.
>
> I've found some really interesting looking functions in the win32pipe
> module, but I'm at a loss how to use them.  For example, there's a
> 'popen' 'popen2' 'popen3' and 'popen4.'  There must be a reason for
> having four apparently similar functions.
>
> I'm using 1.5.2 on a Windows NT box.  I've been swimming around in
> documentation for the last few days, and doing some experimenting, but
> could use some guidance.
>

oh....Do you want to type and click and stuff? (ie.. is it a visual appp?)
Or is it a console typpe of app?

>
> Any suggestions?
> --
> Andy Fox




From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 10 22:29:01 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:29:01 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>

Greg Ewing wrote:
 
> I'd just like to point out that my closures are only "read only"
> because I have deferred making a syntactic decision about how to declare
> variables as "nonlocal" for assignment purposes; there's no inherent
> reason why my closures couldn't be read-write.

You do not need to make any decision. Just use the current 'global'
declaration, this is what Viperi does. The trick is to understand that
'global' means 'up one level exactly', as it does in python now (which
only has two levels).

If you want to write up TWO levels of scope, then the parent
must also contain a global directive:

def f():
   x = 0
   def g():
      global x
      def h():
        global x
        x = 1


This seems consistent. It is not entirely python compatible,
since the global directive in the function h() would normally
refer to module scope. But that is probably irrelevant,
since lexically scoped nested functions aren't compatible with
python ones anyhow.

If you wish to minise syntactic changes to Python, you might
consider this solution, it will also be compatible with
Viper. :-)

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Sat Oct 23 22:45:20 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 04:45:20 +0200
Subject: sparse matrix representation?
References: <221019990852479530%zippy@cs.brandeis.edu>
Message-ID: <7utrrn$41f@mail.psy.uva.nl>

[Patrick ]
| The normal representation of a matrix uses an array.  An array takes up
| memory for every location.
|
| For a sparse array, you have many locations that are zero.  You can use
| a hash (dictionary) to represent only the non-zero locations and save a
| great amount of memory.

---

As I know it, a hash/dict is still more expensive (both in terms of space
and retrieval speed) than the commonly used schemes to represent sparse
matrices.


The latter are one of the following:
1.
simply a bundle of three corresponding arrays: (row_indices, column_indices,
values)
2.
a bundle of 2 corresponding arrays (row_indices, values), plus a third one
(number_of_non_zeros_per_column).
3.
a bundle of 2 corresponding arrays (flat_row_indices, values). The shape of
the matrix is stored separately, the flat_row_index of an element is its
index corresponding to the element if the matrix is flattened ( or erected?
:-) columnwise.

The second version is used by MATLAB which has a very good support for
sparse matrices.
The first one takes more space but its easier to use for simplistic things.


Do not use a dictionary: you'd shoot your application in the foot.
Besides, using a dictionary you'll be unable to take advantage of Numeric.


ionel









From rturpin at my-deja.com  Mon Oct  4 23:35:47 1999
From: rturpin at my-deja.com (rturpin at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 03:35:47 GMT
Subject: Why TERRIBLE performance of regular expressions in re module ?
Message-ID: <7tbrmi$5do$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

While debugging a CGI script, I came across the following
strange behavior: a regular expression that seems to
require exponential time to recognize a string.  For the
first twenty some-odd characters, it performed fine.  I
added another character, and the time became .. well,
noticeable.  Another character, and recognition required
30+ seconds.  Another, 1:15.  Another, 2:2x.  Another,
just under 5 minutes.  Another, 9 minutes, plus.

It doesn't take a genius to recognize this progression
and decide not to proceed.  What puzzles me is this:
regular expressions have a well-recognized EFFICIENT
recognition algorithm: they are turned into state machines
that perform LINEARLY on the length of the input string.

I don't think I am doing anything strange.  (Though I don't
rule it out).  Has anyone seen this behavior, or does
anyone have an explanation for it?

Thanks!

Russell


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aahz at netcom.com  Sun Oct 17 10:49:58 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 14:49:58 GMT
Subject: Newbie Q: A good introduction to python...
References: <7uc2cp$2vr$1@bw107zhb.bluewin.ch>
Message-ID: <7ucnmm$kpo$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <7uc2cp$2vr$1 at bw107zhb.bluewin.ch>,
Markus Meng <meng.engineering at bluewin.ch> wrote:
>
>I just wonder where I can get a good - almost objective -
>introduction for python. Actually we do ALL of our programming
>in Tcl/Tk and C/C++ on Win and Unix platforms. However
>I would like to see if it is not better to switch from Tcl/Tk to
>python. We need full fledged graphical GUI's...

Start with http://www.python.org/doc/
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Mon Oct 25 02:17:22 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:17:22 +1000
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
In-Reply-To: <7v0ktf$4gj$1@news.wrc.xerox.com>
Message-ID: <004001bf1eb0$99d713f0$0501a8c0@bobcat>

> > def complex(real=0.0, imag=0.0):
> >     """real=0., imag=0. -> return a complex number.
> >
> >     Keyword arg "real" (default 0.) gives the real part of
> the result.
> >     Keyword arg "imag" (default 0.) gives the imaginary
> part of the result.
> >     """
>
> IIRC there's a stricture in the Style Guide against repeating
arglists
> in doc strings.  It's certainly ugly, since when one looks at the
code
> the information is now present twice (possibly once right and once
> wrong).  Surely the Right Thing is for calltips (and any other tool
> that displays docstrings) to autogenerate the calling syntax from
the
> func_code?

It does do that.  The heuristic is to build the arglist, then use the
first line of the docstring.  In Tim's example, the args would appear
twice in the calltip window too (once built, once from the docstring)

I guess that Tim was actually talking about docstrings coded in C,
where dynamic information about the args is not available (so Im
guessing he used Python code to make the example clearer, but failed
:-)

However, look at "string.split.__doc__" - this does use a style
similar to what Tim described and it is in .py code - and indeed does
end up showing the arg information twice in the calltip window.

So-basically-I-have-no-idea-what-Tim-meant<wink>-ly,

Mark.




From the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au  Sun Oct 17 07:14:27 1999
From: the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au (the_wrights)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:14:27 +1000
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <005b01bf15e5$dfe341d0$0801a8c0@bobcat> <005c01bf15ee$1b131b60$042292cb@akha> <000901bf16d6$aa81a9e0$052292cb@akha>
Message-ID: <26iO3.13814$D33.39970@ozemail.com.au>

Jon Fernquest <ferni at loxinfo.co.th> wrote in message
news:000901bf16d6$aa81a9e0$052292cb at akha...
> chris wright wrote:
> >I've written a native python logic programming framework if that's
helpful.
> >It has quite good unification performance and I'm using it as the basis
for
> >some reactive planning stuff with BDI agents that I've implemented in
> >Python.....if you really need to have the performance.
>
> Sound's great.
> I'd like to try it out.
> Is it available somewhere?

I'll put it up on starship when this week is over
> Does it use SLD resolution, like Prolog?
Yep.

One of the fun things that I'm trying to do it to implement sound negation
(like Lee Naish's NU-Prolog). This is a major win...but the performance will
be less than blistering!

cheers

chris wright
>





From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Oct 11 08:24:48 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:24:48 +0200
Subject: BUG: classobject.c
References: <000501bf13d3$85610b20$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <3801D710.7A38CB84@lemburg.com>

[CC to Guido because I think you have indeed found a bug here...]

Adrian Eyre wrote:
> 
> > The PyObject_* APIs return object references with incremented refcount.
> > You don't need the Py_INCREF here -- it would cause a memory leak.
> 
> Well. All I know is that the result of the PyObject_GetAttrString is
> returning an object with a refcount of 1. And since PyString_AS_STRING
> returns a pointer within the PyStringObject struct, then the
> Py_XDECREF causes this to become invalid. Perhaps the Py_XDECREF should
> be moved down to the line before the return.

Ah, now I get your point: you mean the fname pointer could possibly
point to the already free'ed string contents due to the DECREC being
done prior to formatting the representation.

That could be the case... guess you did find a bug ;-)
 
> Perhaps I've done something wrong. But I'm not sure how. If the
> refcount is one, it tends to suggest that this is a new reference.
> (i.e. the object didn't exist previously.) Do all PyMethodObjects
> have an attribute called '__name__'?

Yes. The additional code using PyObject_GetAttrString() was added
to allow arbitrary callable object to be used in place of the
method's function object. This was done to enable writing methods
in C rather than in Python for performance reasons.

Moving the Py_XDECREF in classobject.c:instancemethod_repr() just
in front of the return should fix the problem, just as you suggested.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    81 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct 13 18:18:53 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:18:53 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: JPython?
References: <3804e4c8$0$11278@news.execpc.com>
Message-ID: <14341.1357.499750.980655@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "DS" == Dan Star <danstar at execpc.com> writes:

    DS> Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a
    DS> just-in-time compiler that translates python code to java
    DS> byte-code so that the python code can run in a WEB browser
    DS> that supports java?

Sort of.  Yes, part of what it does is translate Python source code to
Java bytecode, dynamically loading said bytecode into your JVM, and
executing it.  It isn't limited to a browser, and in fact works well
with most 1.1 and 1.2 JVMs (modulo your favorite JIT bugs).
    
    DS> If so, I would assume this places many restricitions on the
    DS> Python language elements you can use.

Actually it doesn't.  I think it's a testament to JimH that JPython
implements very nearly the same language spec that CPython does.  For
a mostly up-to-date comparison, please see

    http://www.jpython.org/docs/differences.html

Most of these are IMO mostly below the radar of the average Python
hacker.  The most significant difference is in the libraries.
Anything that's written in pure Python should work the same in both
implementations.  CPython of course has a host of built-in modules
implemented in C.  Some of these have been ported to Java and are
available in JPython, but not all (contributions welcome!).  Of course
JPython has access to the vast array of Java libraries, which CPython
does not.
    
    DS> Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its own
    DS> language set?

JPython is a completely separate implementation, but it should feel
very natural to any Python programmer.  It is interesting how this
second implementation helps to delineate exactly what is part of
the Python language definition, and what are implementation details.

Hope that helps,
-Barry



From mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no  Sat Oct 30 11:07:13 1999
From: mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 16:07:13 +0100
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial> <19991028065755.B10826@better.net> <y0jogdjcshq.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <slrn81hbci.g.bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu> <941231570snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <y0j66zoga5a.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

philh at vision25.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt) writes:

> I'm a "tr" man, myself.
> 

Ah - brilliant... I can see the `tr -d '\r'` from dos to unix, (and
mac<->unix is of course trivial), but what about unix to dos? (I guess
you could use `sed 's/\n/\r\n/g'`...)

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Thu Oct 21 06:45:22 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:45:22 +0100
Subject: PythonWin rebuild problem
References: <380E401B.4419BFC@munger.edu>
Message-ID: <KDEzzAAC7uD4EwB$@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <380E401B.4419BFC at munger.edu>, Grant <lame.adress at munger.edu>
writes
>I've had trouble rebuilding PythonWin using Visual C++ v6.0.  I get
>the following error message:
>
>     Deleting intermediate files and output files for project
>     'pythonwin - Win32 Release'.
>     --------------------Configuration: pythonwin - Win32
>     Release--------------------
>     Compiling resources...
>     Compiling...
>     stdafxpw.cpp
>     Compiling...
>     pythonwin.cpp
>     Linking...
>     LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "mfc42.lib"
>     Error executing link.exe.
>
>     pythonwin.exe - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
>
>Anybody know how to fix it?
>
>thanks much,
>
>-Grant
>
I have VC++ 6.0 and it definitely has this file inside
C:\program files\Microsoft\Visual Studio\VC98\MFC\lib

have you installed VC++ 6.0 everything properly.
-- 
Robin Becker



From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 17:01:43 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 23:01:43 +0200
Subject: Tkinter app 'freezes' when I use after_idle
References: <ksu2na636b.fsf@telelogic.se> <3819864B.297FCB9E@home.com>
Message-ID: <ksyacl51ag.fsf@telelogic.se>

Thanx, you showed me something I have missed.. it is probably what I
needed, the tkinter fileevent. but.. but.. now reading on.. Unix
only.. DARN! Any other hints.. 

        /Andy

/ Doug Hellmann <doughellmann at home.com> wrote:
| [...]
| Tk will not update the display while you are doing work in your idle
| handler unless you call update() or update_idletasks().  It sounds like
| you are doing that for some widgets, as you see some changes on the

Yep a couple of labels that I set..         

| display.  But if your idle handler blocks while reading data from the

I am trying not to block..using select to see if there are anything to
read,I don't know how much time is spent in my code around the select loop.. 

| network, it might take a while to come back.  Keep in mind that as long
| as the program is running your callback code, the display will not be
| updated.  

*HMM* Ok lets try to sort this out.. Of course the first call to the
 function is from a callback, when I press the 'go' button a call is
 made to 'checkfunc'. Last in checkfunc I call
 self.after_idle(checkfunc) this would stay away from the event??

| 
| You could use a file handler to let Tk watch the socket for you (instead
| of doing your own select).  You would then get a callback when there is
| data for you to read from the socket.  I've had success with this scheme

*bonk* I have heard about that, time to take a dig into my TCL/TK book again.. 

| watching the read end of a pipe.  As a little bit of data is available,
| I read it into a buffer.  When the pipe is empty (read 0 bytes in the
| event handler), I know I have all of the data and I start doing the real
| processing.  Of course, if you can process part of the data at a time
| that would be even more efficient.
| 
| Doug



From hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Sun Oct  3 11:43:54 1999
From: hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 03 Oct 1999 17:43:54 +0200
Subject: simple IRC client
References: <qoNLpGAda193EwbZ@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <87g0zs78lh.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

There was an announcement on frechmeat of geektalk. It is written in
perl but has an python client at least :-)

Another possibilty is pygcs by Jeff Blaine. It's a simple chat server.
http://www2.shore.net/~jblaine/code-GCS.html.

Or the old traditional talk, there is a talk client in the ftp area at 
python.org called xtalk. But all these need a server/damon somewhere.

If you find something else, a short notice would be fine... :-)


HTH,
__Janko

-- 
  Institut fuer Meereskunde             phone: 49-431-597 3989
  Dept. Theoretical Oceanography        fax  : 49-431-565876
  Duesternbrooker Weg 20                email: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de
  24105 Kiel, Germany



From hniksic at srce.hr  Tue Oct 19 15:45:30 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 21:45:30 +0200
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <vrzoxg159l.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <068c01bf19d9$235abcd0$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <87904z6so5.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Darrell" <darrell at dorb.com> writes:

> At the risk of showing my ignorance, this makes sense to me.
> [.0-9]+[a-z]? matched, so there was no need to find a match on the right
> hand side ???

Except that regular expressions are generally supposed to yield the
longest, not the first match.

I believe the current behaviour is an optimization -- if a match is
found in a subexpression, it is considered matched.  Otherwise, all
subexpressions would have to be matched in all cases merely to find
the longest match.  That operation might well be expensive.

FWIW, Perl behaves the same way.

The documentation doesn't seem to specify if the "greedy" behaviour of
regexps is supposed to apply to alternatives.



From ferni at loxinfo.co.th  Wed Oct 13 22:44:46 1999
From: ferni at loxinfo.co.th (Jon Fernquest)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:44:46 +0700
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <005b01bf15e5$dfe341d0$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <005c01bf15ee$1b131b60$042292cb@akha>

Prolog Glue Language?....

Gordan McMillan wrote:
>General parsing books are rare (most focus on some obscure
>corner of a very large turf), and the "intro" ones usually hand
>hold you through building one according to the author's choice
>of tools without conveying any deeper understanding, or any
>idea how big the turf really is.
>The "best" book is available at

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/PTAPG.html

>(thanks to Tim for this reference). This maps the turf very well, but you
>won't really learn "how".

This book is great! Thanks.

A great complement to the extended descriptions in this book
are the extremely concise descriptions in the paper:

Principles and Implementation of Deductive Parsing
Stuart M Shieber, Yves Schabes, and Fernando C.N. Pereira
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~shieber/papers.html

It offers very concise specifications of several
parsing algorithms including the following:

1. CYK (4 lines)
2. Pure Top-Down (Recursive Descent) (5 lines)
3. Pure Bottom-Up (Shift Reduce) (5 lines)
4. Earley's Algorithm (6 lines)
5. Augmented Phrase Structure Formalisms
6. Combinatory Categorical Grammars (9 lines)
7. Tree-Adjoining Grammars (9 lines)

The flip-side of the concise descriptions is some (perhaps hard to grasp)
prolog code for the deductive engine that drives the parsing.
Which raises the question....

What is the best glue strategy for a scripting language like Python
to use with Prolog, a language for which there is a lot of outstanding
code but which is difficult to integrate into systems written with
imperative languages?

There are whole domains of problems in AI and linguistics that would have
quick reusable solutions available for them if this was possible.

People writing Prolog seem to rely a lot on proven fragments/snippets of
code that are handed down from generation of programmer to programmer
maybe because a lot of code in prolog is counter-intuitive and
difficult for the imperative programming mind to grasp
and write...like even your standard sequential read statement.

Anyway for processing natural language (parsing, semantic and discourse
interpretation)
and almost every other topic in AI Prolog has been the most extensively
used language so there is a huge body of efficient solutions already out
there.
(efficient = runs quickly on a Warren Machine (WAM), the Prolog virtual
machine).

The problem is how do you use a glue language like Python with legacy
Prolog code in the way a glue language is meant to be used
in the sense of Ousterhout's paper "Scripting: Higher Level Programming
for the 21st Century" (available at his site).

If I have a prolog module I want to integrate into a larger system
the quick and dirty solution is just to use the c converter that usually
comes with most prolog systems and make the c-code into an extension
to be glued into larger systems.
But I see at least two problems with this:

1. There is no standard interface to c across all prolog systems.
2. The c code generated is going to make porting the module to all
platforms the scripting language runs on more difficult.

Isn't a better approach to have a Warren machine built right into the
scripting language as an extension so that Prolog code could be embedded
right into scripts? (Note: There are Warren machines written in C++ out
there
in the public domain.)

I've tried rewriting Prolog code in imperative languages,
but that's a losing battle.....
with it's unification and backtracking capabilities
Prolog is still the best tool out there for a wide range of problems.
The problem is, *it needs a glue language more than the languages that
already have
a glue language* like C, C++, Java...

What to do?

Jon Fernquest
bayinnaung at hotmail.com





From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 14:27:29 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 18:27:29 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca> <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <5lemf87888.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7tiomh$dqk$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
> Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> When I finally got the joke, I found it _so_ American-centric and _so_
>> displaced, that it was not funny at all.  These people were imposing their
>> non-sense on me, just for the narrow pleasure of laughing between themselves?
>> I very vaguely remember that children do that at the start of adolescence.
>> This humour was rather immature, and in my feeling, not very respectful.

> Take it easy, Fran?ois.  It's part of learning a culture.  It can be
> fun.  I've been doing it for four years now, and there still are
> tons of cultural references I don't get.  "Getting" a reference for me 
> is an enjoyable experience, not frustrating like you describe.

I've been doing it too, and not even in the US -- but I've been online for
a while now, and there's lots of things I've picked up.

I remember asking someone back in '91 what the word 'slang' meant, and even
more amusingly, I recall myself asking "What does 'getting laid' mean?" :)

It's an enjoyable experience to me too. I've seen references in lpmud
source to Swedish words. I've also been exposed to quite a bit of
Finnish culture through online experiences. Etc, etc.

> While we're on the subject: I still don't understand why a DNA
> reference is considered objectionable marketing speak by some.  I've
> never heard DNA references in marketing speak, I think.  In stupid
> Sci-Fi movies, yes.  But marketing?  Must be another cultural think
> I'm missing. :-)

Microsoft DNA, anyone? :)

Anyway, talk all you like, Guido. Not that I have anything to say about
it. :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From darrell at dorb.com  Tue Oct 26 13:11:11 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:11:11 -0400
Subject: An article on Python in practice
References: <19991026133227.A601@Ridcully.home> <02b301bf1fd0$730be040$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com> <3815DBDE.96D8FF4A@callware.com>
Message-ID: <02ce01bf1fd5$1a9ff950$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

> 
> Why?  gvim.org provides pre-built 95/98/NT executables already.
> 
Yelp they do.
But gvim version 54 didn't have the python option turned on.


--Darrell




From alrice at swcp.com  Sat Oct  9 19:46:33 1999
From: alrice at swcp.com (Alex Rice)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 17:46:33 -0600
Subject: JPython, getting started Q.
Message-ID: <37FFD3D9.865046F8@swcp.com>

Hi, I'm *really* interested in JPython, but I am having trouble getting started
with some simple applets. I'm sure I just don't understand how JPython calls
java overloaded methods...

Consider the following Java code, to initialize a Java applet and get the
graphics
context for double-buffered rendering:

import java.applet.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class Render extends Applet implements Runnable  {

    Image image;
    Graphics graphics;
    Thread thread;
  
    public void init() {
	super.init();
	image = createImage(getBounds().width, getBounds().height);
	graphics = image.getGraphics();
	requestFocus();
    }
    <snip>

Now, trying to implement this in JPython, I can't get past the createImage()
call.
I never get an image returned, it's always None.

from java.applet import *
from java.awt import *

class MyApplet(Applet):

    def init(self):
        Applet.init(self)
        self.image = self.createImage(640,480)
        self.graphics = self.image.getGraphics()
        self.requestFocus()
    <snip>

Here is some interactive which kinds of illustrates what the problem is:

JPython 1.1beta3 on java1.1.7B (JIT: null)
Copyright (C) 1997-1999 Corporation for National Research Initiatives
>>> from java.applet import *
>>> from java.awt import *
>>> o = Applet()
>>> o
java.applet.Applet[panel0,0,0,0x0,invalid,layout=java.awt.FlowLayout]
>>> o.createImage
<method java.awt.Component.createImage of java.applet.Applet instance at
135125757>
>>> o.createImage(100,100)
>>> o.createImage(None)
sun.awt.motif.X11Image at 80dd548
>>> 

The former should call java.awt.Component.createImage(int width, int height)
the latter calls java.awt.Component.createImage(ImageProducer producer)

I can't get the former (what I want) to work! Any suggestions? Thanks!

Also, is there any equivalent to java's "implements" in Jpython? If I understand
correctly, that's only used by the Java compiler to enforce interfaces, right?

Alex Rice



From dolson at bethel.edu  Thu Oct 21 15:19:53 1999
From: dolson at bethel.edu (Doug Olson)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:19:53 -0500
Subject: Python Threads
Message-ID: <380F6759.148CBE9E@bethel.edu>

I am new to python, and have been playing around with python threads. 
This is very cool.  Does anyone know where some good documentation for
the threading.py module is?  The documentation that I can find at
www.python.com and that came with the debian packages I installed is
pretty sparse.

I am trying to set up a multithreaded script where one thread will open
a pipe for reading from a tcpdump process.  However, anytime I open a
pipe with the multithreaded python script, I'm getting some strange
behavior... Main thread dies, but other threads seem to live on...  Does
anyone know the state of the threading in python?

Doug Olson
dolson at bethel.edu



From jon at rdt.monash.edu.au  Sun Oct 31 20:49:24 1999
From: jon at rdt.monash.edu.au (Jonathan Giddy)
Date: 1 Nov 1999 01:49:24 GMT
Subject: Exceptions from callbacks
References: <381CA8E5.5D69E64@lords.com>
Message-ID: <7virj4$b7b$1@towncrier.cc.monash.edu.au>

Eric Dorland <dorland at lords.com> writes:

>I'm writing a Python wrapper for a library. The library stores some
>callbacks for some events, and with some glue code, get these to call
>python functions. That's the easy part. Now since its the library these
>callback and not Python per se, how do you pass an exception back to the
>interpreter, because you can't return NULL from the callback. Do you
>just set the exception, and Python will pick up on it?

Assuming these are synchronous callbacks from within the one thread (Python
code calls C interface calls library calls C callback calls Python callback), 
you can call PyErr_Clear() before calling the library routine, then return
if PyErr_Occurred() is true afterwards, return NULL from the C interface.  
See the Python/C API manual, section 1.3 "Exceptions".

If they happen to be asynchronous callbacks from threads started by the 
library, the simplest solution is to ignore them, maybe calling 
PyErr_PrintEx(0) to warn the user.

Jon.



From thomas at xs4all.nl  Fri Oct 15 11:48:55 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:48:55 +0200
Subject: Nested if's
In-Reply-To: <19991015112051.22237.00000571@ng-fr1.aol.com>
References: <19991015112051.22237.00000571@ng-fr1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <19991015174854.D16240@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Oct 15, 1999 at 03:20:51PM +0000, GeoJempty wrote:

> Enough for intros.  I'm having a problem nesting if statements.  I'm defining a
> function, and my syntax checks fine, until I try the following:

> if digit > 0:
>   if digit = 5:
>     variable = variable + whatever

> In the context of a CGI program this causes an Internal server error,

The problem is not the nesting, the problem is that you aren't testing for
equality, you're assigning. 'digit = 5' assigns 5 to 'digit'. What you want
is 'digit == 5' which returns 1 if digit is 5, and 0 otherwise (*)

But in python, you can't assign inside an if statement (or inside any
other statements, for that matter.) So Python throws an exception, which
terminates your python script, and leaves the webserver hanging there.
(hence the error 500.)

(You should thank Guido though, in other languages, this would have run just
fine, with the exception that whatever 'digit' really was, as long as it was
larger than 0, it would end up being 5.)

What you are looking for is:

if digit > 0:
  if digit == 5:
    variable = variable + whatever

Also, CGI isn't the right runtime enviroment for these things, mostly
because the webserver will give you an Error 500 without much other info the
moment it sees an error. And printing out errormessages before the standard
'Content-Type: text/plain' is an error. It's probably best to try and run
such scripts at the command line prompt, or if that's not possible, put this
in front of the CGI scripts you're trying to debug:

print "Content-Type: text/plain\n"
import sys
sys.stderr = sys.stdout

This way, error reports are printed to normal standard output (which the
webserver sends to your browser) instead of
standard error output, which the webserver usually puts in the error logfile
along with a timestamp.

webservers-errorhandling-suck-ly y'rs, Thomas.

(*) Yes, I know this isn't really correct. It doesn't really test wether
'digit' is 5, it tests wether 'digit's 'value' is equal to '5', using a
__cmp__ method on 'digit' or on '5' if there are any. Just like 'digit = 5'
doesn't really assign the value of '5' to 'digit', just makes 'digit' a
pointer to the same object as '5' is. Semantics, semantics ;)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From tino at wildenhain.de  Thu Oct 14 06:33:53 1999
From: tino at wildenhain.de (Tino Wildenhain)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:33:53 +0200
Subject: ADO in MS-IIS with MS-SQL Server
References: <3D655391DC4FD311B4D500A0C9E1E76E145708@rusheen.stamps.com>
Message-ID: <3805B191.7EBD5F97@wildenhain.de>

Hello Edward,

Edward Wilson wrote:
> 
> Can anyone help me get some basic ADO connections going with Python.  I'm
> running Python inside of MS-IIS with not problems.  What I can't seem to be
> able to get working is an ADO connection to my SQL database.
> 
> I have no idea how to get started, what to import, what to run makepy.py
> against (I've already run it against everything in sight on NT server).
> 
> Please help, if I get over this small hill I'll be on my way to heaven
> "using Python at work on a daily basis".

First of all you dont need ADO for database-access with python from
inside IIS.
You can use it, if you want in the same manner VB uses it. As like as
you 
have the Request and Response objects ready for use so it is with the
ADO.
I personally prefer (if I really have to deal with the IIS-beast)
the use of the odbc-module (it comes with the Win32-extension)

import odbc, dbi
connection=odbc.odbc("Datasource/user/pwd")
cursor=connection.cursor()
cursor.execute(query)

any of:
cursor.fetchone()
cursor.fetchmany(maxcount)
cursor.fetchall()

and so on. The documentation and examples are useable :)
HTH

Tino Wildenhain



From news at dorb.com  Mon Oct 11 10:03:30 1999
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:03:30 -0400
Subject: how to monitor method calls
References: <7tsns3$pjj$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <G5mM3.8209$86.425676@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

Check out pdb in the docs and see the "how it works" section.
    sys.settrace(func) sets the global trace function

For the line method name stuff check out the exceptions module.

Also here's some code.
def myDirExcept(howFarBack):
        """
        Get the directory of the module running at "howfarBack "
        in the stack frames
        Unix stores a relative path
        Windows stores an absolute path
        """
        try:
                raise ZeroDivisionError
        except ZeroDivisionError:
                f = sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame

        for i in range(howFarBack):
                f = f.f_back

        t = f.f_code
        # Try dir(t) for a list of useful stuff
        fname = t.co_filename
        p = string.split(fname, os.sep)
        fname = string.join(p[:-1], os.sep)
#        print "Usr Mydir:",fname, "\n"*5
        return fname



--
--Darrell
<zakons at eccelerate.com> wrote in message news:7tsns3$pjj$1 at nnrp1.deja.com...
> I am looking to do some introspection on running python programs to
> track method calls on objects.
>
> Is there a 'hook' into python to intercept all method calls?
> If so, can someone point me to the right way to introspect which class
> owns the method, the name of the object, etc.
> Any examples out there of this?
>
> Thanks much,
> Stuart Zakon
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





From hniksic at srce.hr  Thu Oct 21 16:40:02 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 22:40:02 +0200
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <87k8ogih25.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into
> another?  For example, is there some way by which a newly created
> object could soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy
> has already been registered?  If one similar object is found, this
> newly created object would immediately dismiss itself in favour of
> the previous one, and the genuine class instantiator would return
> the previous object.  Is that possible?

The solution that springs to one's mind is to tweak the return value
of __init__().  Unfortunately, anyone who's tried something like that
noticed that Python enforces __init__() to return None.

However, tackling this problem might be an interesting use for
metaclasses (see http://www.python.org/doc/essays/metaclasses/).  I
don't understand metaclasses well enough (if at all) to code this, but
it looks like it should be easy to do.

Anyone wants to try?



From dirkl at home.com  Tue Oct 19 15:24:20 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:24:20 -0700
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
In-Reply-To: <000101bf1a49$ca036c60$53001064@bobcat>
Message-ID: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECAEGCFFAA.dirkl@home.com>

Thanks for the response..

I tried the first approach  and got the following is the response: "This
object does not support enumeration". In the second approach, "r" comes back
as None. I tested both with IIS and PWS.

Where can I go to dig deeper into this?

Thx,
D

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Hammond [mailto:mhammond at skippinet.com.au]
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 8:51 AM
To: 'LS, Python'
Subject: RE: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)


Im not in a position to test this, but one of either:

for r in Request:
  print r

i=1
while 1:
  try:
    r = Request.Item(i)
  except pythoncom.com_error:
    break

should work...

Mark.
-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Dirk Leas
Sent: Saturday, 16 October 1999 1:38
To: LS, Python
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)


I've installed PythonWin and am trying to do some python scripting w/n
ASP. If you know the form field by name, something like "name =
str(Request("name"))" works great. How do you access Request fields if
you don't know their name -- say you wanted to write a generic dump
script that would dump all the field names and values? Seems like
there would be a way to coerce the COM Request into some type of
python sequence. Anybody know the "secret racoon handshake"?

Thanks
D






From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 14:33:24 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:33:24 +0200
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <008501bf1417$1cf90b70$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

<henk_p at my-deja.com> wrote:
> I already hacked python's main.c file to recognize a new -b startup
> parameter. In this code I do a POSIX rfork(NOWAIT) when the -b parameter
> is processed.

hmm.  a POSIX function that *none* of the Unix
boxes I have to access to seems to have.  and it's
not part of the Single Unix Specification either...

are you sure it's POSIX?

(all on-line references I could found said that
rfork is a *major* security hole in BSD unix...)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm





From jeff at advance.com  Thu Oct 28 11:31:51 1999
From: jeff at advance.com (Jeff Emanuel)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:31:51 -0600
Subject: doesn't like / as a divide symbol
References: <7v8gnb$2d0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <38186C67.39549EC3@advance.com>


battery841 at usa.net wrote:
> 
> I am new to Python.  I am trying to write a program that will do a
> redundant math equation for my science class.  However, when I try to
> run the program, it gives me the following error:
> 
>   File "saturated.py", line 20, in ?
>     PERCENT_SATURATED=SATURATION_ARRAY[count] / MEASURED_ARRAY[count]
> TypeError: bad operand type(s) for /
> 
> I don't get what's wrong with that.  I believe that all my arrays are
> okay.  Any ideas?

Don't believe it, check it.
You could debug by adding these before line 20

  print type(SATURATION_ARRAY[count])
  print type(MEASURED_ARRAY[count])


> 
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.

-- 

Jeff Emanuel
Landmark Graphics Corporation
jeff at advance.com



From ivanlan at callware.com  Wed Oct  6 11:34:54 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:34:54 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rocheste <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
		<19991005215226.A724@Ridcully.home> <37FB334F.492B55DC@hk.rfa.org>
Message-ID: <37FB6C1E.A997A6F9@callware.com>

Hi All--

Bill Eldridge wrote:
> 
> Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> > def calc_leap_years(year):
> >         if (year > 1900):
> >                 return ((year - 1900) - 1)/4
> >         else:
> >                 return 0
> >
> > Of course, you can reduce it to a single line if you make the
> > assumption that the year will always be greater than 1900. And it
> > probably isn't wonderful programming practice to return 0 if say
> > year==1897 anyway (raise an exception?), but that is another issue.
> > This should be a fair bit faster than looping through the years.
> 
> Researching this:
> ------------------------------
> Years devisabl by 4 ARE leap years
> Except years devisable by 100 are NOT leap years
> Except years devisable by 400 which ARE leap years
> Except years devisable by 4000 which are NOT leap years!
> ------------------------------
> I thought there was a third rule in addition to %100 & %400 for
> millenia.
> 

[large bobbitt]

No.  There is no such rule.  One was first proposed by Sir John
Herschel, but never formally adopted.  The modern practice of inserting
leap seconds in relatively arbitrary fashion obviates the necessity of
such a millennial rule, at the wholesale expense of predictability and
calculability.  The 4000-year rule would correct the Gregorian calendar
satisfactorily within 1 day in 30,000 years.

The erstwhile Soviet Union had a rule in their version of the Gregorian
calendar, such that millennial years evenly divisible by 3000 and 9000
(or maybe it was 7000) were not leap.  This took their accuracy out to
about 70,000 years, as I recall.

See Zerubavel, Eviatar. _Hidden Rhythms: Schedules and Calendars in
Social Life_.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1981. 

<check-with-the-pope-if-you-don't-believe-me>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 10:01:50 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 00:01:50 +1000
Subject: Integers and Floats
References: <19991011180728.A14620@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <3809D6CE.22A82D3B@maxtal.com.au>

Gerrit Holl wrote:
> >>> 131 / 4 * 4
> 128
> 
> I think the ouput of the first two statement is ok, but why can't python store
> an integer and a float as the same thing? And is the conversion between an
> integer and a float so big? Or are floats just slower? Do I have to do the
> following:
> 
> >>> int(float(131) / 4 * 4)
> 131


Yes. float/float and int/int are two distinct operations, you have
to cast at least one of a pair of integers, to force the
floating operation.

Note that while this is also true in my python implementation Viper,
there is another technique:

	x = rational(131)
	print x / 4 * 4

131

because Viper also supports arbitrary precision
rational arithmetic :-)

Note your formula is suspect: use

	int (float(131) / 4 * 4 + 0.5)

instead. The reason is that rounding errors
may result in the floating answer being

	130.99999999

which is  130 truncated, not 131.
-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From aahz at netcom.com  Thu Oct 14 11:31:19 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 15:31:19 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <939757160snz@vision25.demon.co.uk> <m3yad8uhlq.fsf@c34680-a.grlnd1.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <7u4t07$ol0@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>

In article <m3yad8uhlq.fsf at c34680-a.grlnd1.tx.home.com>,
David Fenyes  <dfenyes at flash.net> wrote:
>
>Any good editor (such as emacs) should automatically wrap the line
>you're typing, add a new comment marker, and indent the text to the
>proper place.  The problem with multi-line comments is that they don't
>nest well, amplifying the annoyance of commenting/uncommenting a group
>of lines.

Comments can be defined to nest.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From x at x.x  Mon Oct 18 01:11:46 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 01:11:46 -0400
Subject: Lists on JPython 1.1b3
Message-ID: <380AAC12.DE3A1C24@x.x>

I'm just trying to get started with JPython, and I'm having a little
bit of trouble with attributes of lists. (Please let me know if this
is not the best group to post about JPython in.)

>>> l = [3,2,1]
>>> l.sort()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org/python/core/PySequence: method
__findattr__(Lja
va/lang/String;)Lorg/python/core/PyObject; not found
        at org/python/core/PyList.__findattr__
        at org/python/core/PyObject.__getattr__
        :

dir(l) and other methods of l cause the same problem.

Then, I was looking at the classes:

>>> from org.python.core import PyList, PyDictionary
>>> dir(PyList)
['toString', 'hashCode', 'sort', 'extend', 'pop', 'reverse', 'remove',
'insert',
 'index', 'count', 'append', 'initModule', '__add__', '__findattr__',
'__len__',
 '__class__']
>>> PyList.sort(l)
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org/python/core/ListFunctions.__call__
        at org/python/core/PyObject.invoke
        :

java.lang.NullPointerException: java.lang.NullPointerException
>>> PyList.sort(1,2,3,4,5,6)
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: sort(): expected 0-1 args; got 6
                            ^^^
Since PyList is a class, PyList.sort should be an unbound method and
should be taking at least one argument. This seemed sort of
suspicious. (PyList.sort() with no args crashed the same way as
the PyList.sort(l) above.)

I looked at the dictionary class and found I didn't have any
trouble getting dictionaries to work. The methods of PyDictionary
exhibited the expected behavior:

>>> PyDictionary.keys()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: keys(): expected 1 args; got 0
>>> {2:3, 4:5}.keys()
[4, 2]

I also noted that the methods of the non-functional list class and
the working dictionary class were considered different kinds of
methods:

>>> PyList.sort
<builtin method 'sort'>
>>> PyDictionary.keys
<java function keys at 685>

This seemed to be a bogus distinction; since JPython is an
implementation of Python in Java, shouldn't all "built-in"
functions of Python really be Java functions? In any event,
these functions called builtins weren't working. There was
at least another problem in the PyList class independent
of that, though, because:

>>> PyList.toString
<method java.lang.Object.toString of java.lang.Class instance at 692>
>>> PyList.toString([5,6,7])
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: toString(): expected 0 args; got 1
>>> PyList.toString()
'class org.python.core.PyList'

I don't believe that is the intended effect of PyList.toString.
In PyDictionary, toString is a method of dictionary objects that
writes the dictionary out as a string.

Finally, I saw in the NEWS file that a new procedure for
implementing built in methods was being tried on list
objects:

- A new framework for looking up the methods for builtin types has
  been enabled.  This can speed up method calls by a factor of 2.
  The feature is currently experimental and has only been
  implemented for list objects, but will be implemented for other
  builtin objects for the next release.

So at least I knew something really freaky wasn't going on,
but I still am just trying to learn JPython and I lack the
technical knowledge to figure out what's going on here.

Can anyone help me fit these clues together? Any ideas?



From seanh at unforgettable.com  Wed Oct 20 04:01:45 1999
From: seanh at unforgettable.com (Sean Hummel)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:01:45 GMT
Subject: Read one key press.
References: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp>
	 <00a101bf1a00$95d66080$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <JFeP3.524$D8.5432@ha1>

It really seems like this problem should be solved by a builtin.  I've found
a need for this in many of my applications as well, and I was lucky I only
needed to write the application for windows.




----------
In article <00a101bf1a00$95d66080$f29b12c2 at secret.pythonware.com>, "Fredrik
Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:


> Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> wrote:
>> if I have the following program:
>>
>> key = raw_input("press a key: ")
>> if key == 'a':
>>     print "you pressed 'a'"
>> elif key == '^['
>>     print "you pressed escape"
>>
>> it doesn't work. Well, it works but it itsn't what I'm looking for. I want
>> ONE key input. Can this me done easyly?
>
> well, at least it can be done in Python.  here's something
> that appears to work on Windows and Linux (should have
> been in the guide, but didn't quite make it).
>
> # tty-example-2.py
>
> import sys
>
> try:
>     # windows or dos
>     import msvcrt
>     getkey = msvcrt.getch
> except ImportError:
>     # assume unix
>     import tty, termios, TERMIOS
>     def getkey():
>         file = sys.stdin.fileno()
>         mode = termios.tcgetattr(file)
>         try:
>             tty.setraw(file, TERMIOS.TCSANOW)
>             ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
>         finally:
>             termios.tcsetattr(file, TERMIOS.TCSANOW, mode)
>         return ch
>
> print "press 'q' to quit..."
>
> while 1:
>     ch = getkey()
>     if ch == "q":
>         break
>     print ch,
>
> print
>
> </F>
>
> <!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the standard python library:
> http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
> -->
>
>
> 



From skip at mojam.com  Mon Oct  4 20:19:39 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 19:19:39 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com>
References: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com>
	<37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <14329.17435.747539.406310@dolphin.mojam.com>

    >> Do I have to convert to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?

    Greg> Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this is a pain as
    Greg> well, but Guido doesn't seem to be among them, so we're stuck with
    Greg> this for the time being.

I can't read Guido's mind, but I don't think that's the reason str and repr
work the way they do.  repr and str are supposed to provide you with string
representations that are suitable to convey the object's meaning in a couple
different contexts, one being readability by humans and one being to later
reparse the string (by eval for example).  If they displayed 2L**38 as
'274877906944', instead of '274877906944L', I'd consider them broken, since
essential information about the object's type is lost.

People that deal with numbers that represent monetary figures might lament
the fact that numbers are not formatted automatically with commas, points or
spaces inserted in the right spots.  That doesn't make the current display
format incorrect, just inappropriate for that application.

If you want no-L print behavior automatically, simply implement a UserLong
class (analogous to UserList/UserDict) that behaves like a long but has
suitable __repr__ and __str__ methods:

    class UserLong:
      def __init__(self, val):
	self.val = val
      def __repr__(self):
	return repr(self.val)[:-1]
      __str__ = __repr__
      ... arithmetic ignored ...

    >>> u = UserLong(2L**38)
    >>> u
    274877906944

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From phiberop at hotmail.com  Wed Oct  6 19:28:53 1999
From: phiberop at hotmail.com (phiberop at hotmail.com)
Date: 6 Oct 1999 23:28:53 GMT
Subject: HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE IN WEEKS!!
Message-ID: <7tglvl$ct4$360@news-int.gatech.edu>

just read the document...trust me....
begin 644 money.txt
M2$]7(%1/($)%0T]-12!!($U)3$Q)3TY!25)%($E.(%=%14M3("$A(0T*.B`D
M)"0D(`T*.B!(3U<@5$\@5%523B`D,S`@24Y43R`D-3`L,#`P(2$@3U(@355#
M2"!-3U)%(2$@4D5!1$E.1R!42$E3($-/54Q$($-(04Y'12!93U52($Q)1D4A
M($D at 9F]U;F0@=&AI<R!O;B!A(&)U;&QE=&EN(&)O87)D(&%N9"!D96-I9&5D
M('1O('1R>2!I="X at 02!L:71T;&4@=VAI;&4 at 8F%C:RP at 22!W87, at 8G)O=W-I
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M8F4 at 82!S8V%M(BP at 8G5T(&QI:V4@;6]S="!O9B!U<RP at 22!W87, at 8W5R:6]U
M<RP@<V\@22!K97!T(')E861I;F<N($%N>7=A>2P@:70@<V%I9"!T:&%T('EO
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M870@=V%S(&ET+B!3;R!A9G1E<B!T:&EN:VEN9R!I="!O=F5R+"!A;F0@=&%L
M:VEN9R!T;R!A(&9E=R!P96]P;&4 at 9FER<W0L($D@=&AO=6=H="!A8F]U="!T
M<GEI;F<@:70N($D at 9FEG=7)E9"`B=VAA="!H879E($D at 9V]T('1O(&QO<V4@
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M=&5D('1H92!M96%S;'D@)#,P+B!796QL($=515-3(%=(050A(2XN+B!W:71H
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M('1H92!S96-O;F0@=V5E:R!)(&AA9"!M861E(&$@=&]T86P@;V8@;W9E<B`D
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M3&5T(&UE('1E;&P@>6]U(&AO=R!T:&ES('=O<FMS(&%N9"!M;W-T(&EM<&]R
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M970@=&AE(&EN9F]R;6%T:6]N(&]F9B!O9B!I="!A<R!Y;W4@;F5E9"!I="X@
M22!P<F]M:7-E('EO=2!T:&%T(&EF('EO=2!F;VQL;W<@=&AE(&1I<F5C=&EO
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M;VYE>2!T:&%N('EO=2!T:&]U9VAT('!O<W-I8FQE(&)Y(&1O:6YG('-O;65T
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M;G0[(&ET(&ES(&YO="!I;&QE9V%L.R!A;F0@:70@:7,@=FER='5A;&QY(&YO
M(')I<VL at +2!I="!R96%L;'D@=V]R:W,A(2$A($EF(&%L;"!O9B!T:&4 at 9F]L
M;&]W:6YG(&EN<W1R=6-T:6]N<R!A<F4 at 861H97)E9"!T;RP@>6]U('=I;&P@
M<F5C96EV92!E>'1R86]R9&EN87)Y(&1I=FED96YD<RX at 4$Q%05-%($Y/5$4@
M4&QE87-E(&9O;&QO=R!T:&5S92!D:7)E8W1I;VYS($5804-43%DL(&%N9"`D
M,3(P+#`P,"!O<B!M;W)E(&-A;B!B92!Y;W5R<R!I;B`R,"!T;R`V,"!D87ES
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M(2!7:&%T(&%R92!T:&4 at 8VAA;F-E<R!O9B!T:&%T(&AA<'!E;FEN9R!W:&5N
M('1H97)E(&%R92!T;VYS(&]F(&YE=R!H;VYE<W0@=7-E<G, at 86YD(&YE=R!H
M;VYE<W0@<&5O<&QE('=H;R!A<F4@:F]I;FEN9R!T:&4@:6YT97)N970 at 86YD
M(&YE=W-G<F]U<', at 979E<GED87D at 86YD(&%R92!W:6QL:6YG('1O(&=I=F4@
M:70 at 82!T<GD_($5S=&EM871E<R!A<F4 at 870@,C`L,#`P('1O(#4P+#`P,"!N
M97<@=7-E<G,L(&5V97)Y(&1A>2P@=VET:"!T:&]U<V%N9',@;V8@=&AO<V4@
M:F]I;FEN9R!T:&4 at 86-T=6%L(&EN=&5R;F5T+B!296UE;6)E<BP@<&QA>2!&
M04E23%D at 86YD($A/3D535$Q9(&%N9"!T:&ES('=I;&P@<F5A;&QY('=O<FLN
M($1O;B=T(&QE="!T:&ES(&5X8VET:6YG(&]P<&]R='5N:71Y('!A<W,@>6]U
M(&)Y(2!'3R!&3U(@250L($%.1"!93U4 at 5TE,3"!334E,12!7251(24X at 5T5%
;2U,A(2$L($%3($U!3ED at 1$E$(`T*#0H-"@T*
 
end




From phil at filsa.net  Sun Oct 31 03:35:59 1999
From: phil at filsa.net (phil at filsa.net)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:35:59 GMT
Subject: Python 1.5.2 RPM for LinuxPPC?
Message-ID: <7vgv1g$tfm$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


Hello--

I'm looking for an rpm for Python 1.5.2/LinuxPPC... does anyone have
one?

Thanks in advance,

Phil at filsa dot net.
Python Newbie


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Wed Oct 13 06:51:44 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 11:51:44 +0100
Subject: reverse function of id()
References: <7u1n9o$rqf$1@feed.teaser.fr>
Message-ID: <m3hfjvjzy7.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

"Olivier Deckmyn" <olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr> writes:

> Hi !
> 
> Is there a way to get the Python Object whose id is X...

Not in the core; it would be easy enough to do in an extension, but
it's a licence to crash the interpreter so I wouldn't like it on *my*
system...

HTH,
M



From jam at quark.emich.edu  Wed Oct  6 02:06:05 1999
From: jam at quark.emich.edu (Jeff)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 02:06:05 -0400
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com>
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu> <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com>
Message-ID: <19991006020605.A28582@quark.emich.edu>

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 06:39:12PM +0000, Bill Anderson wrote:
> 
> On that note, it is worth making the comment that ipchains is gone in
> 2.3.x, and hence 2.4.
> 

*that* is something I did not know.. where can I find information regarding
what it is going to be replaced with?

regards,
J
-- 
|| visit gfd <http://quark.newimage.com/> 
|| psa member #293 <http://www.python.org/> 
|| New Image Systems & Services, Inc. <http://www.newimage.com/>



From news at dorb.com  Sat Oct  9 22:19:58 1999
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 22:19:58 -0400
Subject: opening a file to read under windows
References: <7tokcq$lab$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <9ISL3.6911$46.251456@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

Give the name as "c:\\dir\\file.txt"
Because \d and \f are escape characters.
You can also use "c:/dir/file.txt"
Since /d and /f aren't escape characters.
Python will sort it out.

--
--Darrell

dave hatton <dave.hatton at mail.com> wrote in message
news:7tokcq$lab$1 at uranium.btinternet.com...
> Help!
>
> This is driving me mad!
>
> How should I open a text file for reading under windows? (98 in this case)
>
> Every thing I try results in an error message which shows the filename
> correctly but with "\\" between each element not "\"
>
> I'm using "fd = open(filename, 'r')" where filename="c:\dir\file.txt"
>
> Thanks
>
> Daveh
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 05:16:51 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 09:16:51 GMT
Subject: lineno and filename in exceptions
References: <37F75C62.F4824BE8@gmx.de>
Message-ID: <00ca01bf0f12$5c98d0d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Udo Gleich <Udo.Gleich at gmx.de> wrote:
> I would like to catch syntax errors and other errors in script
> files and open an editor at the right line number.
> 
> If I catch a syntax error the exeption has the attributes lineno and
> filename. This information is not included e.g. in attribute errors
> name errors.

> Question: Is there a way to get line number and file name in errors
> other than SyntaxError?

you can dissect traceback, frame, and
code objects to get the required info.
here's an example:

import sys, traceback
try:
    execfile("script.py")
except Exception, argument:
    et, ev, tb = sys.exc_info()
    while tb:
        co = tb.tb_frame.f_code
        print co.co_filename,
        print traceback.tb_lineno(tb)
        tb = tb.tb_next
    print et, ev

</F>




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct 12 19:31:08 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:31:08 GMT
Subject: Cookies on NT 4
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-slHd67dfdsd8@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

Folks,

	I'm working on a CGI that is using COOKIES (cookie.py) and running 
into a slight problem.

	The CGI is being run on a Windows NT box running PWS (IIS 4).
	I can get the cookie to be sent to the "client browser", but it 
appears that I
	can't get the cookie to be "read" from the client browser.

	As far as I can tell "HTTP_COOKIE" isn't a environmental value on the
machine?????

	Can anyone verify how to retrieve a cookie under Win NT/IIS/PWS?
	

			- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct 27 23:51:37 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:51:37 -0400
Subject: search (match) backward
In-Reply-To: <3816CF53.DB623BAC@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <000301bf20f7$bd007d00$0a2d153f@tim>

[Greg Ewing]
> ...
> This raises the interesting question of whether there is an
> algorithm for reversing an RE (i.e. find an RE which matches
> the reverse of the strings that the original RE matches).
> Can it even be done in general? My intuition says yes, but
> I can't think of a proof off the top of my head.

Yes, but thinking about it in terms of REs is exceedingly clumsy.  The proof
is easy if you look at machines instead:  build a state machine that accepts
the language defined by the RE.  Build a derived machine with the same set
of states, but invert the transitions, make the new machine's accepting
states the original machine's start states, and make the new machine's start
states the original machine's accepting states (special case here:  if the
language is empty, there may not be any accepting states in the original
machine).  You're done!  By construction, you now have an NFA that accepts
the reversed language (we're really just running the original machine
"backwards").

Convert to a DFA, then back to an RE.  This is how it's done in practice,
too -- trying to approach it at the level of syntactic transformation is a
god-awful mess.  As Jon Fernquest got close <wink> to claiming a short while
ago, REs are a miserable notation for some elegant machinery.

irregularly y'rs  - tim





From tolot at utolot.toppoint.de  Tue Oct 19 21:03:21 1999
From: tolot at utolot.toppoint.de (Marc Christiansen)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 99 20:03:21 CDT
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
References: <3807B4D0.127E7261@prescod.net> <CBCC7D468A7D505B.D9B18CE170894480.6E783335C8125E27@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <tolot.098y@utolot.pr-versum>

Tres tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com wrote:
> In article <3807B4D0.127E7261 at prescod.net>,
> Paul Prescod  <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
>>I would appreciate a comment at the top of that program that says that
>>it doesn't run on Windows. Perhaps it could even test for os.fork at the
>>beginning and crash if it isn't installed.
> 
>   if sys.platform == 'win32' :
> 	raise "CGIServer won't run on Windows!"
> 
> should work fine.

I'd prefer

  if not hasattr(os,'fork'):
  	raise "CGIServer won't run on "+sys.platform

like Paul suggested, because there are more systems that don't have fork
(e.g. Amiga :-()

Marc
-- 
"Claims about the evils of cannabis have been exaggerated: The question now
 is not whether it should be legalised, but how and when."
                        http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980221/contents.html
PGP-Key fingerprint   EE 2E C1 06 D1 28 89 D2  F9 CE 35 7B F8 F4 42 52



From thantos at brimstone.mecha  Sat Oct  9 03:00:27 1999
From: thantos at brimstone.mecha (Alexander Williams)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 07:00:27 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>
Message-ID: <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>

Note that Scheme already does what many consider 'the right thing'
(myself, among others), and that Scheme is a language in which
functions are first-class objects, possess closures (lambdas), and has
arbitrarily deep lexical scoping (of the kind I wish Python
possessed).

Note that you can do away with the 'global' statement altogether in
Python-With-Lexical-Scope/Closure since you can create an empty object
named 'Global' in the top-level scope which will then be accessible in
all others (as long as you're smart enough to not shadow it).

[Ahhhh, to have Scheme's lexical scope and Haskell's lazy
evaluation/list comprehensions/type declarations/type inferences in
Python syntax.  Pure bliss.]

-- 
Alexander Williams (thantos at gw.total-web.net)
"In the end ... Oblivion Always Wins."



From meowing at banet.net  Thu Oct 14 19:22:16 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 19:22:16 -0400
Subject: statistics about newsgroup items
References: <3805B6F2.A3DF368E@edf.fr>
Message-ID: <87u2nt7ck7.fsf@banet.net>

Helka FOLCH <helka.folch at edf.fr> wrote:

> I'd like to write a program that gets statistics concerning how many
> times a given news-item has been accessed or how many news items on
> average does a user read in a certain news group every time he/she
> connects to it, etc

NNTP does not reveal readership statistics.  You will need access to
the server's log files.  Visit news.software.nntp, there was much
discussion of how to get exactly that information (and whether keeping
such statistics is even a good idea) this week.

If instead you want to measure *posting* activity, just fetch all the
headers and count them ;)



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Oct 19 22:23:33 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:23:33 -0400
Subject: Language question
In-Reply-To: <000501bf1a98$08a75b40$252d153f@tim>
References: <1271749005-22324681@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <1271737035-23044798@hypernet.com>

[Tim Peters]
> [Brian Kelley]
> > class foo:
> >       """insert foo here"""
> >
> > def bar(foo):
> >       """this should really be class bar(foo):  Insert bar
> >       here"""

> [Gordon McMillan]
> > What's to disallow? ...
> 
> After several readings, I believe Brian objects to Python
> allowing him to reuse the name of a class as a formal argument
> name, in a context where "class" in place of "def" would have
> been legal.  That is, he would like Python to ignore what he
> typed and infer his intent <wink>.

Oh! And I just did that this morning! But I blamed it on not-
enough-coffee.

tOo-mUcH-bzz-iS-sTiLl-nOt-bzz-eNoUgH-lY-y'Rs

-gOrdOn


- Gordon



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct 21 14:04:57 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:04:57 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Python startup performance ?
In-Reply-To: <slrn80qg4c.j1b.adsharma@c62443-a.frmt1.sfba.home.com>
References: <slrn80qg4c.j1b.adsharma@c62443-a.frmt1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <14351.21961.784412.608301@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "AS" == Arun Sharma <adsharma at home.com.nospam> writes:

  AS> Not a big deal - but would be helpful when executing a large
  AS> number of python scripts over and over again.

Here's the same stuff on my (aging) Sparc Ultra2.  (I'm averaging the
user and sys times over 20 runs and disregarding the real "wallclock"
time.)

time -p perl -e 'print "hello world\n"'
user 0.011
sys 0.0135
total 0.0245

time -p python -c 'print "hello world\n"'
user 0.065
sys 0.051
total 0.116

So I'm seeing close to the factor of four that Bjorn reported.
 
I thought it was interesting to see what effect the -S and -X options
had on startup performance.

The -X option disables class based exceptions.  Since the exceptions
are defined by Python source code that needs to be executed when the
interpreter starts.  It has a small effect.

time -p python -X -c 'print "hello world\n"'
user 0.052
sys 0.0405
total 0.0925

I'm less clear on what the -S option does, but I assume it depends in
large part of what your site's Python configuration looks like.  It is
reading a bunch of .pth files that affect that path and looking for a
sitecustomize module.  I've got 4 .pth files for my installation.

time -p python -S -c 'print "hello world\n"'
user 0.0305
sys 0.0205
total 0.051

The two together bring Python startup time much closer to Perl startup
time. 

time -p python -S -X -c 'print "hello world\n"'
user 0.0175
sys 0.0205
total 0.038

Using this incantation, Python is only 50% slower than Perl.  So all
the extra time is going to nifty features like class-based exceptions
and support for customizing the local Python installation.

Jeremy



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Fri Oct 15 18:03:22 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 22:03:22 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <1272252635-69603208@hypernet.com> <7u5nsp$poc$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn80erat.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada 14 Oct 1999 23:10:17 GMT, Martijn Faassen bilang:
| Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
| > If Python were Puritan, you wouldn't have for loops. Any loop 
| > can be coded as
| [snip]
| > The fact that "for" exists and "while" takes a condition (and 
| > both take an "else" clause) is symptomatic of the 
| > insidious Dutch tendency to permissiveness.
| 
| Which is why those Mayflower people left the Netherlands for North
| America way back when. Too permissive. :) 
| 
| it's-okay-to-call-us-insidious-ly yours,

Eh?  Weren't the people on the Mayflower from Britain?

trying-to-remember-the-story-of-thanksgiving-from-his-youth-ly yrs, Cliff


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From jim at interet.com  Fri Oct  8 08:24:53 1999
From: jim at interet.com (James C. Ahlstrom)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 08:24:53 -0400
Subject: DOS Python
References: <slrn7vkr0c.15r.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <199910060516.GAA03225@axil.hvision.nl> <7tiu4o$12k@ieng9.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <37FDE295.FDA0B359@interet.com>

William Tanksley wrote:

> But anyhow, this still isn't working for me, and I'm slamming up against
> a nasty deadline.  The problem is that I have to run this under pure DOS,
> and I _must_ call an external program.  When I do "import os" under wpy,
> it tells me that there's no such module.

You need to get the Python library modules and set the correct
PYTHONPATH.
Get the library from python.org.  Some module names are too long, so
include
the directory DOS-8X3 on your PYTHONPATH too.  This directory contains
truncated names.

Jim Ahlstrom



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 04:05:35 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:05:35 +1000
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
Message-ID: <000a01bf1488$912fcd00$0801a8c0@bobcat>

[Apols if this shows up twice - I think my ISP's news server is not
propagating correctly - original msgid
is<7thfol$l33$1 at m2.c2.telstra-mm.net.au>]

> ack! I hope yer joking. ;)

>in my opinion facilities to set the date and time in a cross platform
manner
>would be a non-trivial excercise and a security violation of the
machine. I
>wouldn't want the average university student to walk up to a win32
machine
>with pythonwin installed and be able to muck about with the date and
time
of
>a machine with the simplicity of a function call-- at the least, a
'trick'
>ought to be required (like using 'os.system' or a custom C extension)
just
>to keep things from getting out of hand.

ack! I hope yer joking. ;)  Ignoring the fact that you consider access
to setting the time a greater hole than accessing os.system(), what
are the choices here?:

* Dont provide that functionality, even for people who have a
legitimate need.

* Introduce some sort of "authentication" scheme into Python so that
you prove you are "worthy" of using this feature.

* Rely on the OS to restrict people.

The latter is clearly the only reasonable alternative.  Win95 and 98
can't do this, but they are "personal" OS'.  WinNT can restrict this.
If other OS' can't restrict this feature, blame the OS, not Python!

FWIW, win32api.SetSystemTime() can do this on Windows...

Mark.




From x at x.x  Thu Oct 21 17:36:55 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:36:55 -0400
Subject: Problem with JPython and jre jdk1.1.8
References: <380FAD56.23B9EF27@hccnet.nl>
Message-ID: <380F8777.F6CBE459@x.x>

J.Spies wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> As an oldtime ABC-Python fan I like the development of JPython.
> At work we use Java!
> 
> I'm trying JPython11beta3 with jdk1.1.8 on Windows NT and Windows 95.

For some reason JPython requires at least jre1.2 on Win32.



From g_will at cyberus.ca  Mon Oct 18 07:53:51 1999
From: g_will at cyberus.ca (Gordon Williams)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:53:51 GMT
Subject: Creating a File
Message-ID: <01bf195f$5dc8ee20$b242c3d1@Cyberus.cyberus.ca>

I have been looking through the docs for an answer to this simple question.
 How do I create a new file??

thanks,

Gordon Williams




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Sun Oct  3 22:44:43 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 02:44:43 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

Folks,

	I'm running into some small problems with a RFC 868 timeserver
python daemon I've been working on.

	The main "killer" is simple, I can't find a way to have python 
generate
the correct "values" for the RFC.

	The RFC (868) is impressively vague:

		"When the connection is established, the server 
		 returns a 32-bit time value and closes the connection."

	Well, I've got the code working, and "standard" clients can connect
and work (somewhat), except they are receiving "bad" data, which goofs
up
the time calculation on their part.

	Here's the problem:

	I'm using Pythons time module, (specifically) time.time() to
generate the time information.  Even though time is specified to : 
"return the time
as a floating point number expressed in seconds since the epoch, in 
UTC", it doesn't
"match up" with the RFC results even when the 1900 vs 1970 date is 
taken into effect.

	The RFC states that "The time is the number of seconds since 00:00 @ 
1900 Jan 1.

	From my experimentation is GMTIME:

python GMTIME calcs							RFC 868
(Base 1970, Jan 1)						          (Base Jan 1, 1900)
Jan 1, 1970	-              18,000.0						2,208,988,800
Jan 1, 1976	-    189,320,400.0						2,398,291,200
Jan 1, 1980	- 3,155,550,800.0					2,524,421,600

I don't see how python's Jan 1, 1980 calcuation can exceed the RFC's 
calculation, unless the
calculation is returning *NON-LINEAR* results, which doesn't make 
sense if it's the # of secs since
Jan xxxx.

Also, I can't duplicate the RFC 868 values if I manually perform the 
calculations.

My "big question", is simple:

	Can anyone suggest a way to convert from pythons time.time() to the 
RFC date(s)?

	Included is my code for othe server, and the time programs I've been 
using for the
time/date experiments.

			- Benjamin

Timeserver.py

import time
import struct
#
#
# Python Times:                                         RFC 686
#
#       1, Jan 1970, 00:00 =        18,000.0    /       2,208,988,800 
 (2209006800)
#       1, Jan 1976, 00:00 =   189,320,400.0    /       2,398,291,200 
 (2208970800)
#       1, Jan 1980, 00:00 = 3,155,550,800.0    /       2,524,421,600 
 (-631129200)
#
#
epoch           = 18000 # Thu Jan 01 @ 00:00:00 @ 1970 (Win NT v4 & 
v1.5.2-0)

tserver_base    = 2,208,988,800.0

def timeserver_calculation():
        return time.time()

import sys

from socket import *

def server(host="", port=37, backlog=5):
        sock = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
        sock.bind (host, port)
        sock.listen (backlog)
        print "listening on port %s (%s, %s)" % (port, `host`, 
backlog)
        while 1:
                connection = (conn, addr) = sock.accept()
                print 'connected by %s \nat %s' % connection
                ft = timeserver_calculation()
                conn.send ( struct.pack("!i", ft))
                conn.close()

if __name__ == "__main__":
        server('', 37, 1)


>From GMTIME to floating (Manual Calculations)

import time
#
#       Constants
#
#secs_in_year    = 31536000      # 365*24*60*60
secs_in_year    = 365.1666666666667 * 24*60*60
print secs_in_year
secs_in_day     = 24*60*60      # 86400

timetuple       = time.gmtime(0)
total           = float(0)
print timetuple
total           = float(timetuple[0]-1900) * float(secs_in_year)
print total
total           = total + float(timetuple[7] * secs_in_day)
print total
total           = total + float(timetuple[5] + (timetuple[4] * 60) + 
(timetuple[3]*60*60))
print total
total = float(total)
print float(2208988800.0) - total

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From x at x.x  Sun Oct 17 19:09:08 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 19:09:08 -0400
Subject: Problems with Modules
References: <38093539.8835494@news.eunet.no>
Message-ID: <380A5714.F164D18E@x.x>

Thomas Weholt wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I`ve just installed Python 1.5.2, using the source, under Linux, Suse
> 6.2. But some modules seem to be missing, especially the Berkley DB
> bsddb-module, cpickle, zlib and almost every module in the
> Module-folder in the Python 1.5.2-package.
> 
> I saw when I ran 'make test' that some of the steps were skipped due
> to some missing optional feature which couldn`t be imported. Is my
> system, the linux distr., missing something? Do I have to install the
> Berkley Db-library before the bsddb-module?

Well, you have to have it available. To enable the optional modules,
edit the file Modules/Setup, and uncomment the ones you need. For
bsddb, it links to the libdb.a in a directory of your choice. zlib
and gdbm link using -lz and -lgdbm. cPickle should be in by default;
check to make sure you spell it with a capital p.



From mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no  Thu Oct 28 13:20:01 1999
From: mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 19:20:01 +0200
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial> <19991028065755.B10826@better.net>
Message-ID: <y0jogdjcshq.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

William Park <parkw at better.net> writes:

> On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 11:19:28AM +0200, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with some 
> > cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep same 
> > "last changed" time and more.
> > 
> > You can get it at http://buffy.acmecity.com/sanctum/195/dos2unix
> > 
> > It's in the public domain, so you can do with it whatever you want.
> 
> What's wrong with 'fromdos' and 'todos' avaiable in most Linux
> distributions?  You can perform those features using shell.  Since your
> target audience is Unix people, there is no need to reinvent wheel.

Or dos2unix/unix2dos, also readily available already...? :)

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From bsb at olis.north.de  Tue Oct  5 18:39:41 1999
From: bsb at olis.north.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 00:39:41 +0200
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
In-Reply-To: Preston Landers's message of "Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:34:18 GMT"
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <871zb9zb2q.fsf@baal.winnegan.north.de>

Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> writes:

> Sorry to answer my own question, but I wrote a primitive little
> implementation of my request pending discovery of 'the official
> version.'  Note that mine actually uses the unix touch command but it
> could easily be modified to use the more portable python open(file, "w")


[...]

As Aahz pointed out, open has malicious side effects. If you have
Python 1.5.2 (otherwise you really should upgrade), here's an quick
implementation which still has some minor shortcomings (cf comments)

CU
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at infodrom.north.de - voice: +49-441-6990134

############## http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/ ###############
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From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 19 11:50:36 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 01:50:36 +1000
Subject: COM object Type
In-Reply-To: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6D7@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <000001bf1a49$b3116660$53001064@bobcat>

> I would like to know what is the type of a COM object. What
> module do I have
> to import to have this type handy?

Every COM interface has a different type.  These types are exposed via
the pythoncom.TypeIIDs map, keyed by IID.

Eg:

>>> pythoncom.TypeIIDs[pythoncom.IID_IDispatch]
<type 'PyIDispatch'>
>>>

Mark.




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Oct 21 15:32:53 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 15:32:53 -0400
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
Message-ID: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca>

Hi, people.  Here I am, with another question.

In one program, I keep a registry of created objects into a dictionary.
Objects register themselves through their __init__ method.  From outside
the class, I check if a given object has already been created, so to avoid
creating another one that would be too similar, kind of redundant.

It would be neat if I could hide this check.  The ideal would be that the
instantiating call returns an already existing similar object if it exists,
instead of a brand new one.  A simple trick is to not instantiate directly,
but through some service function that does the check, returning either
the old object, or a brand new one.

But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into another?
For example, is there some way by which a newly created object could
soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy has already been
registered?  If one similar object is found, this newly created object would
immediately dismiss itself in favour of the previous one, and the genuine
class instantiator would return the previous object.  Is that possible?

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From ljz at asfast.com  Sun Oct 24 15:48:01 1999
From: ljz at asfast.com (Lloyd Zusman)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 15:48:01 -0400
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241351350.29582-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <slrn816bip.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net> <ltiu3wpt8f.fsf@asfast.com> <slrn816jka.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>
Message-ID: <ltaep8pmku.fsf@asfast.com>

erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela) writes:

> On 24 Oct 1999 13:24:16 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> wrote:
> >I've been reading this thread with interest.  In general, I like the
> >fact that httpdapy re-uses the same interpreter similarly to the way
> >that mod_perl does it, and for the types of applications I write, that
> >indeed is quite worthwhile.  [ ... ]
> 
> yes. any big python program is too slow with cgi. there are
> other solutions to this than httpdapy.
> 
> [ ... ]
> 
> then therre is fastcgi, which is a general mechanism for
> this, there is a fastcgi module for apache, and then
> there are fastcgi modules for eg perl and python. i
> think there is a c library too. see http://www.fastcgi.com
> 
> i just found an interesting python fastcgi page:
> http://www.suxers.de/python/fcgi.htm
> 
> [ ... ]

I tried this one after installing mod_fastcgi-2.2.2.  The function
within the `test.fcg' example program took a huge amount of time to
run, despite the fact that all it does is to print its arguments ...
and this is even when I commented out the call to `sleep' inside of
it.

Unless there's something I'm missing about the FastCGI installation,
this isn't very fast at all ... ???


> >[ ... ] I'm wondering if there's
> >anyone who has been able to get httpdapy up and running under the
> >following configuration:
> >
> >  Python 1.5.2
> >  Apache 1.3.9 with the following modules:
> >    mod_perl 1.21 (non-DSO)
> >    php4 (DSO)
> >
> 
> i had troubles too, and ended up downgading my apache. no idea what the
> problem is - apache segfaulted when trying to invoke httpdapi.
> 
> this occurred under the debian gnu/linux unstable version
> (potato). it works fine with stable.

I can't get it to work under RedHat Linux version 5.0 with my own
compilations of Python and Apache, which work just fine without
httpdapy.

Oh well ...

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz at asfast.com



From nhv at cape.com  Thu Oct 21 10:42:35 1999
From: nhv at cape.com (Norman Vine)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:42:35 -0400
Subject: win32: cygwin modules?
References: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <7un8pq$qk9$1@smaug.cape.com>

Jody M. Klymak writes:

> Has anyone built modules from c-source using cygwin (20.1 if it
> matters) that work with python?

Hi

I have had limited success with python 1.52 and cygwin 20.1
building static versions of addon libraries

The numeric module is a good test

I had problems with the socket and related modules
I presume if one could get these to work then we
would have a cygwin python

I have not tried this for a while as I was waiting for a newer release
of cygwin

If you are interested I can send you what I have
but I believe that Guido added my mods to make python with cygwin
to the standard distribution

I am interested in getting python compiling with cygwin
for another project I am working on that you might find interesting

http://www.flightgear.org

I have a long standing interest in making something like this
with bathymetric data

Cheers

Norman Vine  -- nhv at cape.com






From tbryan at python.net  Thu Oct 14 16:12:09 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:12:09 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim> <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB2650@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
Message-ID: <38063919.31D59457@python.net>

Robin Boerdijk wrote:

> I have one concern left though: Just like I overlooked
> Just's sstruct module, people will overlook
> this module (and start implementing something similar themselves, 
> like I did). If we can't get modules like this into the core Python 
> distribution, could there be links from the Python documentation to 
> point to these 'improved' modules ?

I thought that's what comp.lang.python.announce and 
http://www.python.org/download/Contributed.html
were for.  I hope people are checking archived c.l.py.a 
messages and the "Modules" page at www.python.org before 
they run off and spend time implementing something new.

---Tom

P.S. I notice that xstruct is already on the Modules page, 
so you must have found it.  I decided to post anyway so 
that others know where to look. :)



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 11 15:31:22 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:31:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <000501bf1414$b17e2940$ee2d153f@tim>
References: <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<000501bf1414$b17e2940$ee2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <14338.15114.317626.752067@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

  [I wrote:]
  >> def make_adder(num):
  >>     def adder(x):
  >>             global num
  >>             return x + num
  >>     return adder
  >> In this case, adder maintains a reference to make_adder's
  >> environment, and that environment maintains a reference to adder,
  >> because adder was defined there.  So we have a cycle...

>>>>> "TP" == Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

  TP> In Greg's scheme (which you may be confusing with John
  TP> Skaller's), you write that in the more Scheme-like way:

(Yes.  I'm definitely getting my Skallers and Ewings confused.  Sorry.)

  TP> def make_adder(num):
  TP>     def adder(x):
  TP>         return x + num
  TP>     return adder

  TP> The "def adder" does *not* create a closure (and hence neither a
  TP> cycle) under Greg's scheme.  It binds a new kind of object to
  TP> "adder", a trivial wrapper around the function object currently
  TP> stored.  No info about bindings is contained in this new object.
  TP> The sole purpose of the new object is to force a *later*
  TP> operation to create a closure.

Ok.  I think I've got it now.  These are the read-only variant of
closures, right?  So the following will not work?

def make_accumulator():
    sum = 0
    def accumulate(x):
	sum = sum + x
	return sum
    return accumulate

Of course, there isn't much lost here, because I can spell this in
Python a lot more easily by starting with "class."

  TP> I went into some detail on when Greg's patch would and wouldn't
  TP> create cycles in an earlier (but still very recent) msg, and
  TP> didn't feel like repeating it all.

now-on-to-reading-the-earlier-messages-later-ly y'rs,
Jeremy



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sun Oct 17 04:50:15 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 21:50:15 +1300
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
References: <1271992746-7662859@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <c75r9iunzg8.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

"Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> writes:

> Bill Rodgers asks:
> 
> > I would like to check for the existance of a file before I
> > attempt an open and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way
> > to do this.  I would like to tell the user that the file he
> > specified doesn't exist.  Is there a way to do this or do I need
> > to catch the exception and deal with it that way?
> 
> os.path.exists(nm), probably also os.path.isfile(nm).
> 
> Of course, the fact that it exists and is a file still doesn't mean 
> the user can open it.
> 
> 
> - Gordon

os.access() sould be mentioned as well, it can check that the user has
permission to open the file in whatever mode you want.  Provided
you're using Unix and Pthon 1.5.2, that is.

--
Tim Evans




From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 29 13:57:31 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:57:31 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJOENFCDAA.kputland@wisen.com> <38188904.BFD13231@lemburg.com> <3819705B.6078E0C9@lemburg.com> <7vc1rk$ip2$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3819E00B.439CD256@lemburg.com>

Uwe Zessin wrote:
> 
> In article <3819705B.6078E0C9 at lemburg.com>,
>   "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
> > FYI, I've uploaded a new version with experimental Java and win32
> > support which you may want to test (version 0.5.0):
> >
> >         http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py
> >
> > To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.
> >
> > Things that are still missing:
> > ? support for MacOS
> > ? support for Amiga, OS/2, MS-DOS and VMS
>                                         ***
> 
> I decided to wait some time to allow the more popular ports to
> 'shake out' and then try to understand the module.
> 
> Being a non-Unix person it is not always apparent to me what
> value is supposed to be returned from the different functions.
> 
> It also looks like I need to do some enhancements in the OpenVMS
> port - e.g. it's currently missing uname() support.

What I basically need is some kind of API which does OpenVMS
specific things and then returns information like system,release,
version,machine,processor plus any other infos that are important
w/r to OpenVMS.

All return values should be strings. E.g on Linux I get:
>>> platform.uname()
('Linux', 'degas', '2.2.10', '#3 Tue Aug 24 12:22:39 MEST 1999', 'i586',
 'unknown')

On Win95 I get this:
('Windows', 'miro', '95', '4.00.950', '', '')

Things that cannot be determined should be returned as ''.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    63 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From vikram at tcsi.com  Thu Oct  7 19:08:43 1999
From: vikram at tcsi.com (Vikram Singh)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 16:08:43 -0700
Subject: JPython...
Message-ID: <37FD27FB.8741B654@tcsi.com>

I am a newbie and have this trivial question...

I have some python scripts that used the "pyhton" interpreter
to run, can it also run in the same way with the "jpython" interpreter?

I guess what I want to know, that can I call some C functions and
some java methods in the same python scripts.

Thanks
-Vikram




From python-list at teleo.net  Wed Oct 20 17:21:56 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 14:21:56 -0700
Subject: Any DNS Modules?
In-Reply-To: <7ul8vb$fne$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
References: <7uifuv$g1d$1@marcie.fissiontech.com> <5l1zar59v4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7ul8vb$fne$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <99102014321404.04931@quadra.teleo.net>

[Amit Patel, on Wed, 20 Oct 1999]:
:: Guido van Rossum  <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
:: | 
:: | The DNS package is listed on the Python website (follow the Modules
:: | link in the top bar).  Does nobody use that?  Searching python.org
:: | for DNS would also have brought this up.
:: | 
:: 
:: I've looked at it but I never figured out how to use it.  :-( If I
:: knew the DNS protocol (things like "MF", "WKS", "MX", "AXFR", ...) I
:: would probably be able to figure out what the DNS package does, but I
:: don't really know much about DNS -- all I want to do is turn hostnames
:: into IP addresses and IP addresses into hostnames.  All this stuff
:: about transfer functions and classes and types and building records is
:: just too much for me.  (I currently use socket.* functions for that
:: but I wanted something asynchronous.. so that's why I looked at the
:: DNS package.)

Sounds like you want to familiarize yourself with nslookup, which you
can access via os.popen()  -- from Unix at least.

e.g.:
>>> import os
>>> f = os.popen('nslookup python.org').readlines()



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Tue Oct 19 11:12:16 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 11:12:16 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: "Darrell"'s message of "Mon, 18 Oct 1999 22:24:57 -0400"
References: <vrzoxg159l.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <068c01bf19d9$235abcd0$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <vr4sfnqt9r.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

"Darrell" <darrell at dorb.com> ?crit:

> [.0-9]+[a-z]? matched, so there was no need to find a match on the right
> hand side ???

Traditionally (for me!), regular expressions are compiled into an automaton
in such a way that no backtracking occurs, all alternatives are kind of
logically matched in parallel.  The longuest overall match wins, at the
whole regular expression level.  This was rather ubiquitous in Unix.

Take Flex, for which all input is indeed a kind of biiig alternative.
Since each rule has an action associated, there is a supplementary rule by
which the action executed is the one for the longest match, and the one which
appears earlier in the Flex source, in case many rules match the same length.

The problem is that the representation of those efficient automatons often
require a lot of memory.  I'm no specialist, but I got that `Rx' failure
was partly revolving around the proper tuning of such explosions.  A good
part of Flex virtues is the proper care around various memory compression
schemes for representating the matching automatons.

I wrote a few regular expression matching packages myself, but none has
never been worth retaining.  It is just to say that I've always been a bit
curious about such matters.  But from the few people I know who maintained
_good_ regular expression packages, it seems that maintenance requires a lot
of investment and energy.  Backtracking matchers are usually easier to write.

Having `|' to be non-commutative is a bit Snobolish to me.  (I loved Snobol,
in its time :-).  I would be tempted to guess that this prohibits the writing
of real fast matchers, but the truth is that I really do not know, and would
have to think much harder before really asserting anything in that area.

I was a bit astonished by the `[*+?]?' constructs.  I felt they were only
meaningful to give a meaning to the precise extent of various `(...)',
since these just cannot change what is the overal longuest match anyway,
and wondered how these were implemented.  But if, as Tim writes in another
reply, the longuest match rule just does not hold, it surely changes a lot
of things, and the implementation suddenly becomes much less mysterious! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 04:54:34 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:54:34 GMT
Subject: Anyone have success w/STRPTIME???
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-R7GdiTzGgOlL@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <008f01bf0f0f$a209f1b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Benjamin Schollnick <junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> Can anyone point me in the right direction, re: STRPTIME?
> 
> To my knowledge the strptime function(s) are correct below,
> yet under both OS/2 & Win NT, I am getting a attribute error.

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-time.html
says:

    strptime (string[, format])

    Parse a string representing a time according to
    a format. /.../ This function may not be defined
    on all platforms.

dir(time) will show you if it's defined on your
platform (it's not available on Windows)

</F>




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Oct 20 16:52:31 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 20:52:31 GMT
Subject: Speeding up Python
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <7ukvp4$16f@mail.psy.uva.nl>
Message-ID: <0A7D1AD927575E9B.B0B35141D4C8672D.F415ED8B17CAA381@lp.airnews.net>

In article <7ukvp4$16f at mail.psy.uva.nl>,
Ionel Simionescu <ionel at psy.uva.nl> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>If you are bound to the use of quite unusual data structures, which make
>difficult vectorization, then you may need to use Python for prototyping
>only. However, no widely used math package or language can help you better
>in such a case.
			.
			.
			.
Now *that* surprises me.  Maybe I've misunderstood
what you've written here; do you truly prefer Python
to Mathematica and Matlab for, say, magnetohydrody-
namic or relativistic gravitational field solutions?
Now this has me thinking ... we've certainly compared
"scripting languages" often enough.  It's past time
to make explicit how well Mathematica and NumPy do
common engineering calculations.  The first thing I
realize in thinking about this is that I'd write
quite differently in the two; object orientation
really does make a difference.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From rgh at uk.research.att.com  Fri Oct 29 11:11:51 1999
From: rgh at uk.research.att.com (Rob Hague)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 16:11:51 +0100
Subject: Recovering method names at runtime
Message-ID: <kug0yui4lk.fsf@uk.research.att.com>

Is there any way to get a list of the method names of a class at runtime
(like, for example, the Java reflection API)? I'm intending to write a
class browser.

-- 
((Rob Hague) (AT&T Labs, Cambridge) (01223 343215)
     ( '(There are some who say that life is an illusion, and reality is but
         a figment of the imagination. If this is so, then Brad and Janet are
         quite safe.) (The Rocky Horror Show)))



From skip at mojam.com  Wed Oct  6 22:10:49 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 21:10:49 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: binary file reading in python
In-Reply-To: <37FBFC5B.FE883E51@austin.rr.com>
References: <37FBFC5B.FE883E51@austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <14332.297.823575.429911@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Daniel> ... the recipe files themselves are stored in binary format
    Daniel> which I would have to read in and parse.  

Daniel,

Check out the struct module:

    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-struct.html

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From meowing at banet.net  Thu Oct 14 22:07:28 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 22:07:28 -0400
Subject: is there a record separator? RS
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000@crb.crb-web.com> <EddN3.908$9%5.19289@dfw-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <87ln9574wv.fsf@banet.net>

Tom Culliton <culliton at clark.net> wrote:

> Sort answer, No, although it's been a long standing TODO item.  Guido
> even agreeded to it in principle but the volunteer (who shall remain
> nameless) got sidetracked and never delivered the patch. 8-(  (Mea
> culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...)

Well, it annoyed me enough that I gave it a try, and think it might
actually be working right.  Daring folks may want to give this a try:

 <URL:http://members.xoom.com/meowing/python/fileobj.tar.gz>

These are intended to work with the released 1.5.2 sources.  I put
together the changes as replacment copies of fileobject.c and
fileobject.h, so that the diff-challenged can experiment too.  Save
the original fileobject.*, copy in these ones, fire up make and cross
your fingers.

Doc changes are included; briefly, file objects get a new separator
attribute, and the read and readine methods now take an optional
second argument which if true will trim separators.

I believe this is consistent with what TODO number 4.11 discusses; if
it turns out to be acceptable I can send it in as a proper patch
against the CVS tree.



From peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de  Fri Oct 29 19:23:39 1999
From: peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de (Peter Sommerfeld)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 01:23:39 +0200
Subject: Accessing class variables
Message-ID: <v04003a00b43fd15b4372@[195.180.62.154]>

Sorry folks, I'm confused. What's that ?

Python 1.5.2c1 (#56, Apr 12 1999, 14:19:52)  [CW PPC w/GUSI w/MSL]
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>>
>>> class Foo:
...     x = "a class var"
...     def __init__(self,s):
...         self.s = s
...
>>> foo = Foo("an instance var")
>>>
>>> print type(Foo)
<type 'class'>
>>>
>>> print Foo.x
a class var
>>>
>>> print type(foo)
<type 'instance'>
>>>
>>> print foo.s
an instance var
>>>
>>> print foo.x	# huh ?
a class var
>>>

I can access class variables via the instance ?
Bug, new feature or even an old one and I'm crazy ?

-- Peter





From ivanlan at callware.com  Mon Oct 25 11:43:16 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:43:16 -0600
Subject: Programming for Web
References: <E11feps-000Aa3-00@msk1.mail.ru>
Message-ID: <38147A94.3AEF3AD7@callware.com>

Hi All---

Kirill.Budkevich at python.org wrote:
> 

[bobbitt]

> We have highly qualified web programmers (PERL, CGI(SSI,SSL),
> JAVA).
> Our specialists speak Your language.

Hmm, yes, glad to see that you speak Python.

<a-python-by-any-other-name-is-a-perl>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From Alessandro.Bottoni at think3.com  Mon Oct 11 09:24:43 1999
From: Alessandro.Bottoni at think3.com (Alessandro Bottoni)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:24:43 +0200
Subject: Automating MS Exchange Server with Python?
Message-ID: <6D8A17398E28D3119F860090274DD7DB0642C6@pces.cadlab.it>

I have to develop a few automation procedures (AKA "Agents") for our MS
Exchange Server and I wonder if I can use Python for this task. 
Does anybody knows if there is a CDO (Collaborative Data Objects) or a MAPI
(Messaging API) interface/module/anything-else for Python?
Thanks in advance
--------------------------------
Alessandro Bottoni
(Alessandro.Bottoni at Think3.com)
(abottoni at yahoo.com)
Web Programmer
Think3 inc.
(www.think3.com)




From tgfuchs at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 15 06:06:17 1999
From: tgfuchs at my-deja.com (tgfuchs at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:06:17 GMT
Subject: non-file-based web server?
References: <87hfjuwngo.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <7u6uaj$8gu$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <87hfjuwngo.fsf at ethereal.dhis.org>,
  Nolan Darilek <nolan at ethereal.dhis.org> wrote:
> Wow, nice technical terminology in the subject line, no? :)
>
> Out of curiousity, is there an HTTP server written in Python which
> doesn't depend on files? Instead, what I'd like to do is to use
> HTMLgen to generate dynamic content within the program, and serve
> that via the web server.
>
> My goal, in a nutshell, is to implement a simple package installer
> which uses a web interface. Basically, the installer launches a web
> server and either gives the user the URL to connect to, or launches a
> specific web browser to view the page and start the
> installation. Though I'm sure I could provide HTML with the package,
> it'd be great if the pages could all originate within the install
> script.
>
It is easy to write your own http server derived from BaseHTTPServer.py.
This is my preferred method for a simple GUI.
See the following code as an example.

"""
simple http server
it executes a system command and returns stdout or return code of command
as plain text

arguments: -port portnumber
default port: 8000
accepted urls:
      /command?cmd=command       # perform command
      /command/form/get          # send form for get
      /command/form/post         # send form for post

This server is intended to be a starting point for writing any simple http
server. Modify the part between -- edit begin -- and -- edit end -- supported
methods are GET, HEAD and POST, where POST content-type must be
application/x-www-form-urlencoded Two functions must be provided:
analyse(pathlist, d, headOnly = None)  pathlist is the path part as list
splitted by '/'  d is the query string as dictionary  headOnly is set, if
method is HEAD	the function must return value a triple:  typ  content-type,
if not set, the http return code is 404  size  optional  info  forwarded to
do function do(info, fout)  info is the result of analyse  fout the output
stream	the function must write the content to fout

"""

import os
import sys
import string
import SocketServer
import BaseHTTPServer
import urllib
import socket

class RequestHandler(BaseHTTPServer.BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_GET(self):
        info = self.send_head()
        do(info, self.wfile)

    def do_HEAD(self):
        self.send_head(headOnly = 1)

    def do_POST(self):
        ctyp = self.headers.getheader('content-type')
        if ctyp != 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded':
            print 'POST ERROR: unexpected content-tpye:', ctyp
            return
        clen = self.headers.getheader('content-length')
        if clen:
            clen = string.atoi(clen)
        else:
            print 'POST ERROR: missing content-length'
            return
        data = self.rfile.read(clen)
        dummy = self.rfile.read(2)
        self.path = '%s?%s' % (self.path, data)
        self.do_GET()

    def send_head(self, headOnly = None):
        pathlist, d = urlParse(self.path)
        typ, size, info = analyse(pathlist, d, headOnly)
        if typ:
            self.send_response(200)        # http return code: ok
            self.send_header('Content-type', typ)
            if size:
                self.send_header('Content-length', size)
        else:
            self.send_response(404)        # http return code: not found
        self.end_headers()
        return info

# url handling

def urlParse(url):
    """ return path as list and query string as dictionary
        strip / from path
        ignore empty values in query string
        for example:
            if url is: /xyz?a1=&a2=0%3A1
            then result is: (['xyz'], { 'a2' : '0:1' } )
            if url is: /a/b/c/
            then result is: (['a', 'b', 'c'], None )
            if url is: /?
            then result is: ([], {} )
    """
    x = string.split(url, '?')
    pathlist = filter(None, string.split(x[0], '/'))
    d = {}
    if len(x) > 1:
        q = x[-1]                  # eval query string
        x = string.split(q, '&')
        for kv in x:
            y = string.split(kv, '=')
            k = y[0]
            try:
                v = urllib.unquote_plus(y[1])
                if v:               # ignore empty values
                    d[k] = v
            except:
                pass
    return (pathlist, d)

# --------------  edit begin ----------------------------

defaultPort = 8000                 #   set default port for server

def analyse(pathlist, d, headOnly = None):
    size = None
    info = ''
    typ = None
    #print pathlist, d    # test only
    if pathlist == ['command'] and d.keys() == ['cmd']:
        typ = 'text/plain'
        if not headOnly:
            info = syscmd(d['cmd'])
            size = len(info)
    elif pathlist[:2] == ['command', 'form'] and d == {} and \
         pathlist[2:] in [['get'], ['post']]:
        typ = 'text/html'
        if not headOnly:
            info = buildform(pathlist[2])
            size = len(info)
    return (typ, size, info)

def do(info, fout):
    fout.write(info)

# task specific helper functions
def syscmd(cmd):
    f = os.popen(cmd, 'rb')
    rsp = f.read()
    rc = f.close()
    return rsp or 'RC: %s' % rc

def buildform(method):
    # get hostname of server
    try:
        host = socket.gethostname()
    except:
        host = "???"
    doc = '''\
<TITLE>command %(host)s</TITLE>
<H1>command %(host)s</H1>
<P>
<FORM ACTION="/command" METHOD="%(method)s">
command:  <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="cmd" SIZE=80>
<BR>
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT>
</FORM>
''' % locals()
    return doc

# --------------  edit end ----------------------------

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # argument handling
    try:
        i = sys.argv.index('-port')
        port = string.atoi(sys.argv[i+1])
        del sys.argv[i:i+1]
    except:
        port = defaultPort

    # start server
    print 'Serving on port', port
    server = SocketServer.TCPServer(('', port), RequestHandler)
    server.serve_forever()



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From meowing at banet.net  Thu Oct 14 23:58:38 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 23:58:38 -0400
Subject: is there a record separator? RS
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000@crb.crb-web.com> <EddN3.908$9%5.19289@dfw-read.news.verio.net> <87ln9574wv.fsf@banet.net> <YjxN3.1379$9%5.28842@dfw-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <87aepl6zrl.fsf@banet.net>

Tom Culliton <culliton at clark.net> wrote:

> Thats the first part of the job done.  Another thing that made it a
> biggish task was the intent that it be supported for all the standard
> file like objects, such as StringIO, cStringIO, etc,

Yup, already been playing with those two, because choosing between
fast and capable was crazy-making stuff.

> I remember there being about a half dozen.

For some of them it's really just a matter of making the separator
attribute available and passing it through.  A bit o' grepping will
turn up the rest, I'm sure =)

> If you're interested you can used deja-news to dig up the original
> discussion with the details.

I'll try.  Anyone recall the approximate dates and/or subjects?

> To put words in Guido's mouth, my impression was that it would have
> to be uniformly available to be acceptable.

Figured as much.  Already stuffed a backward compatibility hook into
PyFile_GetLine() so that objects without a separator attribute don't
gag, but that's kind of icky.



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Fri Oct 29 01:51:43 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:51:43 +1000
Subject: Importing and packages
Message-ID: <381935EF.59CCE21B@maxtal.com.au>

I have some confusion discovering what Python actually does,
and what it is supposed to do, importing modules.
So I am presenting an algorithm I intend to implement for Viper,
in the hope someone more knowledgeable than me of what Python
does, should do, and will do in 1.6/2.0, will comment.

Here is the situation. When an import has a module name
of the form

	top.sub1.sub2 ... subn

then the 'sub' components will always be loaded
from the directory containing the 'parent'
component, if there is no file, an ImportError is raised.

Now the hard bit, loading 'top'. First, top is
searched for in the directory of the module
containing the import statement. If it is found there,
it is loaded as as

	parent.top

where 'parent' is the name of the importing module,
with one exception: if the importing module is
the main file __main__, the module is just named

	top

but it is considered a submodule of the __main__ package.
in this sense __main__ is considered as the __init__
module of a package, and the directory containing
the main file is considered as a package directory.
This means relative loading is conditionally supported
with respect to the main file (and recursively).

If top is NOT found in the directory of the importing
module, then sys.path is searched, and the module
(if found) is a top level module named

	top

The mechanism I used DOES NOT POLLUTE sys.path,
as Python 1.5.2 does.

[To implement this, Viper modules contain an attribute

	__directory__

which names the directory containing the file
(which is named in __file__: the directory variable
simply eases the burden of parsing the tail off)]

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From nospam at bitbucket.com  Sat Oct 23 16:08:58 1999
From: nospam at bitbucket.com (Phil Mayes)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 13:08:58 -0700
Subject: any new projects and ideas
References: <7ujidc$l3p$1@news.vsnl.net.in>
Message-ID: <2BoQ3.551$VY5.14111@newsfeed.avtel.net>

ruchir wrote in message <7ujidc$l3p$1 at news.vsnl.net.in>...
>hi,
>    im new to linux and also python, i took the tutorial but im looking for
>some ideas to
>use python for. If anyone has some interesting ideas, pls let me know


A bug-tracking tool would be cool.  A recent post failed to elicit
anything in Python ...

Stephane wrote in message <380B4B52.61D0A979 at gmx.de>...
>does there exist a bug tracking tool/database written in
>Python which is free. The only tool I know is bugzilla.
>What about the bug lists at python.org?
--
Phil Mayes    pmayes AT olivebr DOT com
Olive Branch Software - home of Arranger







From kdart at pacbell.net  Fri Oct  1 12:10:20 1999
From: kdart at pacbell.net (Keith Dart)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 09:10:20 -0700
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] For WindowMaker users...
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9910010907030.5362-100000@behemoth.kdart.com>

I wrote a little module for making WindowMaker menus from scripts. This
uses the UserDict class, so that making menus is just like assigning to
dictionaries. More details are in the file itself.

It is located at the below URL, among a few other things. 

<http://www.employees.org/~kdart/python/>



                       /___\\|//__////
                       \   (+ +)  \\\\
-- --------------------oOOo~(_)~oOOo----------------------------------------
Keith Dart 
<mailto:kdart at techie.com>
<http://www.employees.org/~kdart/>
============================================================================




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Wed Oct  6 11:51:05 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 11:51:05 -0400
Subject: The Python version of the Translation Project robot
Message-ID: <oq670kij2u.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Hi, people.

A few weeks ago, while walking my first Python steps, we were comparing
the speed of Perl and Python, and some of you wanted to peek at my code.
I put the last piece of the puzzle into production yesterday, and it now
makes more sense to give references:

   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/bin/tp-robot
   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/bin/po-register
   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/lib/python/*.py

There are also a few other small Python tools in .../bin/, and maybe two
remaining scripts still in Perl -- I will convert them later.  I observed
the slowness after having converted:
   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/lib/perl/File.pm
into:
   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/lib/python/po.py
by executing the tool:
   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/bin/po-normalize
on some bigger PO files from the central PO archives.

After a few weeks of Python work, I've grown up enough to see _a lot_ of
things that I can improve on my own, both at the sentence detail level and at
the overall global structuring.  This is currently Perl written in Python.
I did not really start Pythonishing the style yet.  Also, I will revisit
the above code for various reasons, so it is meant to clean up over time.
Be sure I do know there is a myriad of things that need to be attended.

Your criticism is welcome, of course.  Please do not exhaust yourself at
listing out every tiny detail that you see that could be improved, unless
you really feel like it (I guess it may be a healthy exercise to bang on
a different head, once in a while! :-)

                                                Keep happy!

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From dirkl at home.com  Sun Oct 10 13:13:07 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:13:07 GMT
Subject: JPython Servlet Examples?
Message-ID: <DO3M3.15316$%a1.56621@news.rdc1.az.home.com>

Anybody have some sample source for implementing Servlets w/ JPython?

TIA,
D





From sri at asu.edu  Sat Oct 23 20:57:16 1999
From: sri at asu.edu (sri at asu.edu)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 17:57:16 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Python on Minix
In-Reply-To: <19991023200038.A12447@better.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023175216.1863B-100000@general4.asu.edu>

i just tried 'CC=cc AR=... ./configure' and i still
get error messages such as 'here file: not found' and
'grep: bad regular expression' and 'regex: nexted +?-
regular expression'. so maybe the grep and sed on
minix2.0.0 are at fault.
the compelling reasons is that i have only minix installed on
my laptop, and even minix makes it kinda slow!

sriram thaiyar


> 
> 1.  Environment variables must come before command:
> 	CC=cc AR=... ./configure
>     per instruction.
> 
> 2.  Is there a compelling reason for running Minix?  Why not Linux?
> 




From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 21 06:40:47 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 06:40:47 -0400
Subject: Im new Help
In-Reply-To: <p6q3dvc5px0.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
References: <376-38066AB5-93@storefull-255.iap.bryant.webtv.net> <p6q3dvc5px0.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <19991021064047.A55250007@vislab.epa.gov>

Martin von Loewis:
 |DASH14 at webtv.net (Charmeleon) writes:
 |> I just downloaded python and got the book by o'relliy. the only thing i
 |> know how do to do is is make a button does anyone know where I can
 |> download games written in python so I can see the sorce.
 |
 |There are not many games available were you can source code for;
 |please search on www.python.org for "game", or any other appropriate
 |keys.
 |
 |One game I found was
 |
 |http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/simple/letters.py.html

Here are a few more:
  
    PySol     -  http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/pysol.html
    Pegboard  -  http://www.havenrock.com/softlab/pegboard/index.html

Randall



From garry at research.att.com  Tue Oct  5 10:39:31 1999
From: garry at research.att.com (Garrett G. Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 14:39:31 GMT
Subject: Python guide Brain posted
References: <7sp529$ipg$1@ssauraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com> <slrn7v0el3.cu5.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <37FA0DA3.E587201B@research.att.com>

Ben Darnell wrote:

> Since it came up here, I think I'll take the opportunity to point out my
> own project, ThoughtStream, which has a similar purpose to the Brain,
> and will probably have useful Unix and Palm versions far before
> Natrificial will.  The desktop version is written in Python, using
> wxWindows for the GUI, so it will work on Windows and Unix.

i wrote myself one in tkinter a while back.
great fun, though i didn't use it much once i had it working.
learned a lot about tkinter, though.

> I also have utilities to convert from the Brain's file format to
> ThoughtStream's XML format, but it's not ready for general use yet. 

i'd be interested in seeing these when they're ready.


-- 
Garry Hodgson			"Hey, mister, can ya tell me,
garry at sage.att.com		where a man might find a bed?"
Software Innovation Services	He just grinned and shook my hand,
AT&T Labs			"No", was all he said.



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Wed Oct  6 03:45:26 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 09:45:26 +0200
Subject: Database Tutorials, How-Tos etc.
Message-ID: <37FAFE16.8C6ACE16@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

Was wondering if there are any database tutorials available online,
especially using the bundled databases that comes with Python. I would
be great to see some simple examples, but not as complex as Gadfly. Why
isn`t there a How-To on this?

And as always, I`ve got a special interest in stuff related to Berkley
DB.

Thomas Weholt



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 25 10:45:14 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:45:14 +0100
Subject: Python on Minix
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023160237.7138A-100000@general3.asu.edu>
Message-ID: <000a01bf1ef7$8c34f720$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

I have managed to get it to work on Minix, but it was a bit of a
challenge.

The first problem was with configure:

> checking (some file) ...here file: not found
> grep: bad regular expression

These are due to known bugs in Minix's versions of /bin/sh and
/usr/bin/grep. Patches to fix these are available from:

http://minix1.hampshire.edu/

After that, you'll get problems with a lot of the includes not
including /usr/include/sys/types.h. I found the easiest fix for
this was to add "#include <sys/types.h>" to the top of 
/usr/include/unistd.h.

A bit later on, some other stuff will fail in the Modules/
directory (a think it's a bug in make). You'll need to remove
the dependencies from the bottom of the Makefile that are
automatically generated.

The final problem is that Minix only supports 14 character
filenames, and some of the files in the Python distribution are
longer than that. This will require the filenames to be renamed
appropriately, changes to the Makefile, and any files which
include them.

I think that's all the problems I encountered. Except for a
few problems in the time module.

> I read the README file and saw for Minix
> when using ack, "CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=: ./configure",
> so i typed './configure CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=:'  (is this right???)

You need to type it in as it says:

CC=cc AR=aal RANLIB=: ./configure

But I think configure picks these all up for you, so just typing
"./configure" should do it (providing you address the problems with
sh and grep.)

Alternatively, I could send a precompiled version, or a version
that builds straight out of the box.

I'm not sure how Guido can claim that Python will build okay on
Minix. Admittedly most of this isn't his fault, but the 14
character limit (POSIX standard) ought to be addressed, and
perhaps the fussyness of Minix's includes.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From ej at ee.duke.edu  Thu Oct 21 14:19:04 1999
From: ej at ee.duke.edu (eric jones)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:19:04 -0400
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
References: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <7unl9o$cvq$1@news.duke.edu>

Hey Thomas,

I have run into similar issues storing large arrays of numerical data using
"shelve".  The files were in the 10 MB range, and reading them took several
seconds.  Using binary pickles instead of string pickles cut the files size
by 3 and the read time by 5-10.

The module below is binary pickle replacement for shelve.  Really, the only
change to the class is the __setitem__() method which uses a binary pickle.
The __getitem__() method will automatically recognize whether the pickle is
binary or ascii, so you don't need to fool with it.  This is very nice
because the files are read compatible with the standard shelve module.

Also, note the use dumbdbm instead of anydbm in __init__().  This isn't
necessary, it was just more convenient since I use a lot of different
machines, and never know what modules are installed.

eric

from shelve import Shelf
try:
 import cPickle
 pickle = cPickle
except ImportError:
 import pickle

class DbfilenameShelf(Shelf):
 """ Regular shelf that always uses dumbdbm for compatability purposes
 """
 def __init__(self, filename, flag='c'):
  import dumbdbm
  Shelf.__init__(self, dumbdbm.open(filename, flag))

class fast_DbfilenameShelf(DbfilenameShelf):
 """ Pickles object before storing them
 """
 def __setitem__(self, key, value):
  self.dict[key] = pickle.dumps(value,1)  ########### this is the magic line
########

def open(filename, flag='c'):
 """Open a persistent dictionary for reading and writing.

 Argument is the filename for the dbm database.
 See the module's __doc__ string for an overview of the interface.
 """
 return fast_DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag)

def slow_open(filename, flag='c'):
 return DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag)

Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote in message
news:380D994F.E6E775EA at bibsyst.no...
> Hi,
>
> I got an idea ( and I`m a newbie, so bare with me ) :
>
> I got an database in which I want to store some customized objects.
> These objects are in my opinion not very big, but they seem to take up a
> lot of space anyhow, when pushed into a database. On solution I`ve used
> in a similar situation using a different programming language, was to
> use plain strings, and use some sort of delimiter between each
> attribute. That will of course not include any methods defined in any
> object. Then the string is stored in a database in the "d[id] = str"
> fashion.
>
> These strings can also be be some length, and often lots of repetitive
> info. Then it struck me that I could use zlib to compress the string
> before inserting it into the database, and decompress it when it was
> taken out. The number of items to be processed couldn`t be huge due to
> the decompression time of course, but with few items this could possibly
> work, and result in a smaller database.
>
> I was thinking maybe I could use pickle and compress the pickled object
> too, before storing it into the database and save some space. Pickled
> objects also seem to have lots of repetitive data.
>
> Now my question is :
>
> 1. has this been tested and found ineffective in relation to a) speed of
> decompression or b) size of objects not big enough to gain any
> significant size advantage by compression
> 2. if not tested, why? Maybe a subclass of pickle could implement
> compression and decompression of objects?
>
> Since these scripts are to be run on 400Mhz computers and the number of
> items will not exceed 20-30, objects being relativly small, how will the
> speed be? Any clues??
>
> Awaiting flames and harsh words of discouragement,
> Thomas Weholt
>





From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Mon Oct 11 11:43:49 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 15:43:49 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>  <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>  <slrn7vvjai.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <slrn7vvjn6.tue.thantos@brimstone.mecha>  <380027E7.D0CC35EF@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <slrn8043vk.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

On Sun, 10 Oct 1999 01:45:12 -0400, David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net>
wrote:
>Alexander Williams wrote:
>>
>> I could accept this solution (though I'd rather spell 'nonlocal' as
>> '=:' as Dylan does, as it certainly makes sense in context).
>
>Who is Dylan?

Dylan (portmanteu of DYnamic LANguage) is a very slick language that
attempts to keep as many powerful Lisp-like features as possible while
still allowing separate compilation and fast binaries. Its semantics
are somewhat like Scheme plus the Common Lisp Object System, though
IMO it's even cleaner than either of those two alone.

You can find a free compiler at http://www.gwydiondylan.org. It's well
worth looking at because a lot of the features being mooted for Python
2.0 have already been implemented in Dylan, and it can give a good 
sense of how other people approached the same problems.


Neel



From charleshixsn at mail.earthlink.net  Fri Oct 29 14:49:37 1999
From: charleshixsn at mail.earthlink.net (Charles Hixson)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:49:37 -0700
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0  preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990106480001@bruce.bgh> <381A5FE7.1EBECBE2@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990252300001@bruce.bgh>
Message-ID: <3819EC41.A7491639@mail.earthlink.net>

> > You're not suggesting explicit type tests inside foo(A, B) are you?
>
> Aww, *maate*.  Strewth, I'm not suggesting any such thing as a type test.
>
No.  If you know when you are writing the methods that you need to special case
for foo (AA, BB), then you write a method for that variant.  If you don't know,
then the processing of the case depends in a defined way on the cases that you did
define.  If the method executed is foo (A, B), then the processing should not
depend on specializations of A and of B.  If you need to handle the
specializations, then define handlers for them. (e.g. foo (AA, BB) ).

The problem was caused by the hypothesis that no handler existed, and the question
was "Then what should the language do?"  My answer is:  Any of the choices is
valid, so pick one and stick with it.  Of course the best answer is to write the
new handler, but that violates the conditions of the statement of the problem.






From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 21 17:20:47 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:20:47 -0700
Subject: Debugger: PythonWin 127
In-Reply-To: <380EEC85.BFF74E8E@quantisci.co.uk>
Message-ID: <004501bf1c0a$24c0a980$53001064@bobcat>

> I seem to have tried all the possibilities I can find (like clicking
> buttons,  left clicking on stuff etc.)
> All I have is a "Watch" window with <New Item> in it!

Click once on "<New Item>".  It should become editable.  Add any
expression you like!

Mark.




From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Tue Oct 19 15:15:57 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:15:57 +0200
Subject: Examples using curses module.
In-Reply-To: <3d3dv78biq.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <19991018203242.A30860@optiplex.palga.uucp> <3d3dv78biq.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <19991019211557.A26034@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Andrew M. Kuchling wrote:
> Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> writes:
> > I need some examples using the curses module; can someone send me some?
> 
> I assume you've seen the Curses HOWTO at 
> http://www.python.org/doc/howto/curses/ ?

I'm sorry!
I was wrong asking this without looking in the HOWTO's section.

regards,
Gerrit.



From pioneer at wam.umd.edu  Wed Oct 20 03:29:59 1999
From: pioneer at wam.umd.edu (Sarino)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 03:29:59 -0400
Subject: Can't configure pygtk+ or pygimp for installation
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910200326250.24756-100000@rac1.wam.umd.edu>

Hello. I'm having a terrible time installing pygtk+ and pygimp. The
following error message comes up for both installations when I run
./configure: 

	"Couldn't find the python config makefile. Maybe you are missing
	the development portion of the python installation"

This cannot be, since I fully compiled and installed Python 1.5.2. Can
someone help me?

							--- Sonya




From kern at its.caltech.edu  Thu Oct 21 05:12:54 1999
From: kern at its.caltech.edu (Robert Kern)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 02:12:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Mingw32 modules (was: "win32: cygwin modules")
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.05.9910210159170.15211-100000@inky>

[posted and e-mailed to Jody Klymak]

My apologies for not replying to the original message.

[delete miscellaneous ramblings about USENET propagation and getting used
to UNIX newsreaders]

Simply put, don't bother with CygWin.  It does have a few problems working
with Python.  Mingw32 works perfectly AFAICT.  See my page <URL:
http://starship.python.net/crew/kernr/mingw32/Notes.html > for detailed
instructions.

CygWin works for the most part, but the mixing of the runtimes between the
interpreter and the extension does cause a few problems though none that
actually crashes anything (that I've found).

I hope that mingw32 works for you.  It may not if compface.c needs the
UNIX layer.

To the Python Gods:

Has this been asked often enough to make it a FAQ?

--
Robert Kern
kern at caltech.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
 Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
  -- Richard Harter




From jbauer at rubic.com  Sun Oct 17 21:58:56 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 20:58:56 -0500
Subject: Syntax error - what's wrong?
References: <7udsaq$lll$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380A7EE0.2C2EB3C0@rubic.com>

Andre-John Mas wrote:
>  I have never programmed in Python before and need a quick crash
>  course. I am installing Redhat Linux 6.1 and I am getting a Python
>  related error.

Andre-John,

Your code worked when I pasted into to my editor
and ran under Solaris 2.6, Python 1.5.2.

Here is a slightly different version which should
accomplish the same goals:

def zfill(x, width):
    fmt = "%%0%dd" % width
    return fmt % int(x)

# optional test routine ...
if __name__ == '__main__':
    for x, width in [(12, 3), (-3, 3), (1, 6), ('17', 4)]:
        print "zfill(%s, %d) = %s" % \
              (x, width, zfill(x, width))

I tend to prefer downloading Python source and
compiling it, rather than rely on the Linux
distributions -- they always seem to leave out 
my favorite features. ;-)

Regards,

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 15:59:16 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:59:16 +0200
Subject: using string.splitfields
References: <3801483c.10251569@news.eunet.no>
Message-ID: <013d01bf1423$1a340190$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Thomas Weholt <u970130 at studbo.hit.no> wrote:
> Just wondering how I could use more field-separators when I use the
> string.splitfield method.

you can't.  string.split can only
deal with a single separator.

(string.splitfield is obsolete, btw.
use string.split instead).

in this case, you can use
re.split instead:

import re
print re.split("[.+!]", "this.is+a!string")
## ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string']

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 11 06:49:41 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:49:41 +0100
Subject: Suppressing console on Windows?
In-Reply-To: <7trona$v8$1@corolla.OntheNet.com.au>
Message-ID: <000601bf13d6$521cc710$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> My apologies if this is a FAQ, but is there a way to prevent the text
> console appearing when running a Tkinter-based Python script on Windows?

Run the script with pythonw.exe instead of python.exe. Assuming you
have run the installer for pythonwin, then just renaming the script to
have a .pyw extension should achieve this.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Thu Oct 21 20:12:52 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 20:12:52 -0400
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
In-Reply-To: "Fred L. Drake, Jr."'s message of "Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:33:49 -0400 (EDT)"
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca> <87k8ogih25.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr> <14351.34493.930412.999462@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <vr1zao45iz.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." <fdrake at acm.org> ?crit:

> Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>  > But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into
>  > another?  For example, is there some way by which a newly created
>  > object could soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy
>  > has already been registered?

> 	>>> class C: pass
>         ...
>         >>> c1 = C()
>         >>> c2 = C()
>         >>> c2.__dict__ = c1.__dict__
>         >>> c1.foo = "bar"
>         >>> c2.foo
>         'bar'

Quite interesting.  So you are saying that the implementation of an instance
is fully held in its __dict__?  That would be simple enough, then...

>   Not to be used in real code!

Yet if you are right, this is exactly the functionality I was looking for.
What else, then?  I do agree that `self.__dict__ = some.__dict__' might look
tinily odd within an `__init__' function, at least until I get used to it :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Mon Oct 25 08:58:41 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:58:41 -0400
Subject: Q: Shared python extension module calling another shared library?
In-Reply-To: <EqxQ3.80$iL.19750@news.goodnet.com>
References: <EqxQ3.80$iL.19750@news.goodnet.com>
Message-ID: <19991025085841.A106433148@vislab.epa.gov>

Tom Vrankar:
 |I've finally tried to write a python extension module, just for practice.
...
 |But my first problem is linking libraries. I'm trying to write an extension 
 |module as a shared library on HP-UX using gcc that in turn calls another 
 |shared library that appears to be C++ based
...
 |I realize I don't completely understand all the nuances of shared
 |libraries, particularly when I've got one calling another. And the dfi
 |library uses a c++ library that claims to override some of the standard C
 |functions. Is this a complication, or does dynamic linking make sure the
 |proper libraries satisfy unresolved globals in different C modules?
 |
 |Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to go about linking this
 |mess together? Or how at least to debug whatever problem import has? Any
 |help is appreciated.

I'm no expert as I've only done this twice (one on three different UNIX
platforms).  I can't comment about the "using different C libs" issue as
it's not come up for me.

However I can give a word about cascading .so dependencies:

       python 
          -> dynamically links 'mywrappers.so'
               -> dynamically links 'mylib.so'
                     -> dynamically links its depends ('libc.so', etc.)

For this to work without hacks (e.g $LD_LIBRARY_PATH), the libraries each
have to have been compiled with the right RPATH (dynamic library search
path) so that the dynamic linker can locate an executable's or ashared
library's shared library dependencies.  

For example, mywrappers.so's RPATH needs to include a directory for where
mylib.so is going to be so it also can be found.

Most modern UNIX OSs support RPATH at compilation link-time.
Unfortunately, the ld linker flag used to specify it differs widely.

  SGI IRIX   : RPATH_FLAG   = "-rpath"
  Sun Solaris: RPATH_FLAG   = "-R"
  FreeBSD    : RPATH_FLAG   = "-rpath-link"
  DEC OSF1   : RPATH_FLAG   = "-rpath"

In my limited experience, DEC OSF1 is the only one of these four that
didn't seem to support RPATH specification in shared libraries for shared
library dependencies (in the OS version they're running here).  That is, in
this case:

    python -> A.so -> B.so

the dynamic linker couldn't find B.so, even though A.so's RPATH told it
where to look.  There, the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH hack is required.

Use a build production something like this:

  BUILD_SO  = $(LINK_SO) $(LDFLAGS) $(RPATH_FLAG) mylibdir \
                                    -Lmylibdir -lmylib

Unfortunately, LINK_SO varies from OS to OS also.  gcc -shared helps with
this if you can afford to use it.

 | From: no at spam.net (Tom Vrankar)

Consider a Yahoo web mail accont (http://mail.yahoo.com).  Free, works
well, and they run an open source OS.  If spam gets bad, change your user
name.  Works for me.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From jeff at nmt.edu  Mon Oct 18 17:18:46 1999
From: jeff at nmt.edu (Jeff Shipman - UC)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:18:46 -0600
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
Message-ID: <380B8EB5.B03BB07A@nmt.edu>

I am building an interactive Intel Assembly interpreter using Python. I
am now needing to add the part where my binary code is taken, loaded
into memory and executed. I've heard the only way of doing this is to
use C (how, I'm not quite sure yet *grin*). I am having trouble making
up a module in Python. I've looked at the example in the handbooks I've
found and they don't seem to work for me.  Could someone show me a
working example and tell me what include files, etc I would need for it
to compile correctly.

If anybody knows of a better way to take binary code and execute it,
then please feel free to tell me! =)

--
Jeff Shipman

shippy at cs.nmt.edu






From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Fri Oct  8 17:46:30 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 21:46:30 GMT
Subject: Python and IDL interface
References: <37FE2EC3.253632DD@kodak.com>
Message-ID: <7tloni$89s$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


 Check out Fnorb.  You can find the link on the www.python.org site.

  -Josh Zeidner

In article <37FE2EC3.253632DD at kodak.com>,
  Warren Poe <poe at kodak.com> wrote:
> Where can I find documentation on writing Corba/IDL inferface in
> python?  Has anyone done this before?  Thanks in advance
>
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From no at spam.net  Sun Oct 24 01:11:13 1999
From: no at spam.net (Tom Vrankar)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 05:11:13 GMT
Subject: PC Speaker Sound
References: <hhWI3.5$kM2.277@Jupiter.bridgewater.edu> <007701bf10c5$e5c2bdd0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <RxwQ3.74$iL.18529@news.goodnet.com>

The way I've done this is to download win32all and call:
     win32api.Beep(frequency, duration_in_milliseconds)
although I've seen this not work in some installations. Don't know why, 
though.

							twv@

In article <007701bf10c5$e5c2bdd0$f29b12c2 at secret.pythonware.com>, 
fredrik at pythonware.com says...
>
>David Rushby <drushby at email.com> wrote:
>> I know this is an offbeat question, but how does one go about generating PC
>> speaker tones from Python?
>
>afaik, there's nothing in the standard distribution
>for this (however, 1.5.2 added wave-playing support;
>see the winsound module for more info).
>
>but if you have a compiler and a little time to spare,
>you can grab the latest and greatest version of the
>winsound sources:
>
>    http://www.python.org/download/cvs.html
>
>(or grab the current tarball from:
>http://starship.python.net/crew/da/pythondists/
>
></F>
>

-- 
                         ---------------------------------
                                               Tom Vrankar
                                            twv at ici.net
                                 http://home.ici.net/~twv/
                                         Rhode Island, USA




From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Tue Oct 12 22:24:08 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 02:24:08 GMT
Subject: Custom objects & performance
References: <3803D821.197F75DF@x.x>
Message-ID: <slrn807trr.2fr.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

On Tue, 12 Oct 1999 20:53:53 -0400, Eric Jacobs <x at x.x> wrote:
>Recently I've been working on some Python classes which I need to be
>fairly quick. Here's the conundrum I've been running into: in order
>to make the objects compute faster, I often use auxiliary lists and
>dictionaries as caches, so if a particular result is needed
>frequently, I don't have to recompute it every time. So far, so
>good; the trouble is invalidating these caches when the input info
>changes. Here's the three options I've been exploring:

[snip the bad ideas ;) ]

>2. UserList / UserDict type things. So in the example above,
>     foo.list would be an object which emulates a list and
>     provides special processing whenever a value is written
>     to it. That works great, except of course that it takes
>     a large performance hit especially when there are a lot
>     more reads than writes--and speed is the reason why I'm
>     trying to do this at all.

This is the Right Thing in terms of not fighting the language.  So the
first question is: have you written a prototype of this approach and
profiled it to make sure that __getitem__ calls are a dominant cost? 
(Python makes profiling dead easy; anytime you have even the slightest
curiosity about performance profile your program before doing anything
else.)

If your function computations are even moderately expensive, then I
would be quite shocked if the benefits of memoizing them don't vastly
outweigh the costs of __getitem__ calls. Python function calls are
heavyweight, but not /that/ bad -- even my P2-233 can manage around
330,000 function calls/second.

If does turn out that __getitem__ calls are too expensive, then a)
rethink whether caching the results is at all worthwhile, and b) try 2
or 5 different prototypes in Python, and c) write a C extension type
for your program based on the fastest prototype.


Neel



From djc at itga.com.au  Mon Oct  4 21:57:43 1999
From: djc at itga.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 11:57:43 +1000
Subject: Determining python installation prefix
Message-ID: <87k8p27enc.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>

I have some Python modules that I want to install via Makefile on a
number of boxes.  On the Linux box, the installation prefix is /usr,
whereas on Solaris and FreeBSD, the prefix is /usr/local.

Is there a nice way to ask the Python interpreter where it was
installed?  I have come up with this ugly hack:

(unset PYTHONPATH; echo 'import sys; print sys.path[1]' | python -)

But I would not like to rely on that...

- Dave



From tbryan at python.net  Thu Oct 14 18:11:05 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 18:11:05 -0400
Subject: Sort List
References: <7u5v55$ivo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380654F9.10C75A5E@python.net>

sorot at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> I'm the newbie of Python. 

Before posting more questions, you probably want to look at 
http://www.python.org/doc
In particular, read through the tutorial and become familiar with 
the library reference.

See also http://www.python.org/Help.html
That page has pointers to the "tutor" list and to the FAQ.

> I wonder that is there any function for sorting list alphabetically? 

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Apr 18 1999, 16:03:16)  
[GCC pgcc-2.91.60 19981201 (egcs-1.1.1  on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> list = ['apple','orange','banana','kiwi']
>>> list.sort()
>>> list
['apple', 'banana', 'kiwi', 'orange']

> And is there any function to get the date and time of OS?

>>> import time
>>> time.ctime(time.time())
'Thu Oct 14 18:10:36 1999'

---Tom



From rmeegan at murl.com  Thu Oct 14 14:42:10 1999
From: rmeegan at murl.com (Robert Meegan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:42:10 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Basics
In-Reply-To: <939924569.767039@neptune.uniserve.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910141335170.790-100000@robert.polytopic.com>

On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Fergus Hayman wrote:

> Hi  Not sure how to declare a string
> 
>     print " Hello , what is your name"
>     name = raw_input()
>     Eric
>     print " Hello" , name
>     if name = =Eric:                # This line is wrong , not sure of
> string assignment ?
>             print " Your a bloke"
>     else:
>             print " Are you kidding"
> 
>  Thanks
> 
> 


The program:

print 'Hello, what is your name?'
name = raw_input()
print 'Hello,' name
if name == 'Eric':
	print "You're a bloke."
else:
	print 'Are you kidding?'


will do what you want.

I recommend that you spend a few minutes looking at the tutorial
before asking more questions like this.

http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

--- Robert


Robert Meegan

Murl.com - 
Because it's not just your data, it's your life.




From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Sat Oct  9 18:35:29 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 22:35:29 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>  <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>
Message-ID: <slrn7vvjai.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

On Sat, 09 Oct 1999 07:00:27 GMT, Alexander Williams 
<thantos at brimstone.mecha> wrote:
>
>Note that you can do away with the 'global' statement altogether in
>Python-With-Lexical-Scope/Closure since you can create an empty object
>named 'Global' in the top-level scope which will then be accessible in
>all others (as long as you're smart enough to not shadow it).

Actually, you can't. You still need a keyword of some kind to 
explain what is and isn't shadowed.

The problem is that in Python variables are both created with and
modified by an assignment statement. This means that it's not 
possible to unambiguously tell from the syntax whether you want
to create a new variable in the current scope or modify a variable
in an enclosing scope. IOW, what should the following code do?

def puzzle(s):
    def inner():
        s = "Nee"
    inner()
    return s

What should puzzle("Shrubbery") return? "Shrubbery" or "Nee"? Right now
the ``s = "Nee"'' statement creates a new variable binding as well as 
performs an assignment, so puzzle("Shrubbery") returns "Shrubbery". 

Scheme and Dylan avoid this problem by separating declaration and
assignment into the let and set! (:= for Dylan) forms. Thus the
spelling of the two versions is unambiguous:

(define (puzzle-1 s)
  (let ((inner (lambda ()
                 (let ((s "Nee")) ()))))
    (inner)
    s))

(define (puzzle-2 s)
  (let ((inner (lambda ()
                 (set! s "Nee"))))
    (inner)
    s))

If we wanted to keep the current overloading of "=", Python would need
a "nonlocal" keyword to disambiguate. (This is kind of the backwards
of the Scheme solution.) So the Python tranlation of puzzle-2 would
be this:

def puzzle_2(s):
    def inner():
        nonlocal s    # We want use the s from an enclosing scope
        s = "Nee"
        return s
    inner()
    return s

IMO it's not quite as elegant as the Scheme version, but the difference
is small enough to be a matter of taste.


Neel



From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 15 22:03:00 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 22:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
In-Reply-To: <3807B4D0.127E7261@prescod.net>
References: <3807B4D0.127E7261@prescod.net>
Message-ID: <14343.56532.513673.71358@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Paul Prescod writes:
 > I would appreciate a comment at the top of that program that says that
 > it doesn't run on Windows. Perhaps it could even test for os.fork at the
 > beginning and crash if it isn't installed.

Paul,
  Good idea.  I added a platform-dependence comment to the top of the
documentation in CVS, but that's not released yet.  I'll make
adjustments in the source file as well.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de  Mon Oct  4 13:44:47 1999
From: Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de (Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:44:47 GMT
Subject: Anyone read me?
Message-ID: <E11YCAN-0000bx-00@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>

Hi,

I seem to have problems with python-list... I'm getting everything that is
written, but I myself can't post. If anybody reads this, could you just drop
me a one-liner, so that I can track where I went wrong?

TIA,
		--Bj?rn



From markusk at sstdw013.bbn.hp.com  Thu Oct 28 08:21:15 1999
From: markusk at sstdw013.bbn.hp.com (Markus Kohler)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 14:21:15 +0200
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com> <slrn8197k4.pru.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <p5n1t3n0as.fsf@sstdw013.bbn.hp.com>

bgdarnel at my-deja.com (Ben Darnell) writes:

> In article <3813F1B7.49D49499 at mincom.com>, Martin Pool wrote:
> >(I think that subject keeps 3Com's lawyers happy. ;-)
> >
> >Has anybody worked on porting the Python interpreter to these
> >handhelds?  
> >
> >After thinking about it a little it seemed it should be possible to cut
> >Python back enough to fit into a fairly small amount of memory. 
>                                   ^^^^^^
> Unfortunately, Palm devices have an unfairly small amount of memory.  On
> a Palm III, a running application gets 4k of stack space, and 36k of
> dynamic heap (i.e. what malloc and free operate on).  The rest of the
> device's memory is protected, and can only be accessed by calling the
> Data Manager functions.  I'm not familiar with CPython's internals, but
> it seems that it would be very difficult to fit within those
> constraints.  On top of that, you've got a 16 mHz m68k processor, so
> performance is not going to be very good.
> 

As far as I know there is a trick to get around this limitation. 
Look at PocketSmalltalk an implementation of Smalltalk for the
Pilot :
http://www.tiac.net/users/ajb/pocketst/index.html. 

Markus
-- 
Markus Kohler  mailto:markus_kohler at hp.com

"Love what you do.  Success requires passion."
Carly Fiorina, CEO Hewlett-Packard



From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Wed Oct  6 11:53:22 1999
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 15:53:22 GMT
Subject: DOS Python
References: <slrn7vkr0c.15r.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <199910060516.GAA03225@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn7vms3i.1al.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 05:17:24 GMT, Hans Nowak wrote:

>> Thanks a lot, Hans.

>I don't really maintain the DOS version anymore, but I'll still try 
>to help and answer questions if I can.

Ah, okay.  I hadn't realized that -- the Downloads page still points to
you first.  This probably ought to be changed.

I switched to the WPY version of DOS Python, and everything is fine.
Although I am vaguely wondering what WPY has to do with DOS...  :)

>--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From hniksic at srce.hr  Fri Oct 22 19:52:21 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 01:52:21 +0200
Subject: Dictionary and List
References: <7upflt$m0n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <873dv3ymve.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

sorot at my-deja.com writes:

> for i in range(0,len(x)):
>    my_dict['a'] = x[i]
>    my_list.append(my_dict)

A side note: the above `for' loop shows a construct I frequently see
in Python sources that seems borrowed from C.  I don't think there is
any need to create a [0, len(x)) range, and then iterate over it; the
Pythonish way of writing it would be:

for item in x:
  my_dict['a'] = item
  ...

Not only does it make it clearer what is going on (item iterates over
sequence x), but it's also more efficient because the consing of
range() is avoided.



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct  2 18:25:38 1999
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 10:25:38 +1200
Subject: YA-Newbie: Progress (but still baffled by deepcopy/pickle 
 issues...:)
References: <8E48C2767PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <8E5062134PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <37F433BB.CC11F8AB@compaq.com> <8E526A561PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148>
Message-ID: <37F68660.8536BA0F@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Fred Pacquier wrote:
> 
> Maybe, yes. I have a hunch it may be a problem in the wxWindows/wxPython
> interface, in which case it's probably hard to find.

In any case, since you don't want the bitmaps to be
copied by deepcopy, referring to them indirectly is
the correct thing to do.

Alternatively, don't use deepcopy at all, and write your
own custom copier that copies just what you want. I
usually prefer to steer clear of deepcopy because of
its propensity for copying too much.

Greg



From bgkloss at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 28 03:19:21 1999
From: bgkloss at my-deja.com (bgkloss at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 07:19:21 GMT
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia> <381599b1.89775720@news.oh.verio.com> <38162C4F.EB030755@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <7v8tdo$al7$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

> > Nope, no flames.   I have to agree with you - it kills me that I
can't find a
> > place to run Python CGI.
>
> Er, why not just use http://www.pair.com/ ?  Their hosting quality is
> quite good, and they DO support Python.
>
> Unfortunately no Zope yet, though.  :(
Also try Hurricane Electric - http://www.he.com - they don't install
python by default, but you have a shell account and can install it if
you like.  Haven't tried Zope yet, I'm afraid


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 02:19:59 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:19:59 +0200
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn80plsc.n1t.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
Message-ID: <024b01bf1ac3$235c7530$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

William Tanksley <wtanksle at hawking.armored.net> wrote:
> Someone else poionted out that member functions versus unqualified
> function calls are not a valid way to distinguish OO from non-OO.  This is
> true in general, but Python is a little different -- your judgement, as
> tainted as it is by OO-propaganda, happens to be correct in this one case.

can you elaborate?

after all, the built-in len function looks something
like this:

    def len(obj):
        if hasinterface(obj, as_sequence):
            return obj.sequence_length()
        if hasinterface(obj, as_mapping):
            return obj.mapping_length()
        raise TypeError, "len() of unsized object"

which, for my non-purist eyes, surely looks as if
Python treats "obj" as an arbitrary object.

</F>

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




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 15 04:38:55 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:38:55 +0100
Subject: initialization of lists in classes
In-Reply-To: <001a01bf16e4$10deba90$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <003101bf16e8$b7394230$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> class test:
>>     list = []
>>     float = 3.2
>> 
>>     def __init__(self):
>>         print 'list, float (#1):', self.list, self.float
>>         self.list.append(1,2)
>>         self.float = self.float + 2.0
>>         print 'list, float (#2):', self.list, self.float

> until you know exactly how class variables behave,
> make sure you initialize all your instance variables
> in the constructor instead:
> 
> class test:
>      def __init__(self):
>          self.list = []

The other one to be careful of is this:

class test:
    def __init__(self, list = []):
        self.list = list
        self.list.append(1,2)

Looks perfectly harmless, but:

>>> a=test()
>>> b=test()
>>> a.list
[(1, 2)]
>>> b.list
[(1, 2), (1, 2)]

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Oct 12 21:35:15 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 21:35:15 -0400
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
In-Reply-To: <1272472771-56362108@hypernet.com>
References: <1272541430-52232301@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <1272344736-64063348@hypernet.com>

YAR (Yet another revision):

http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html now points to
rev c of the beta: Installer_b_03c.exe.

Fixed:
  package support (wait a minute, didn't I claim I'd fixed that 
already? - shhh, maybe they won't notice..)
  a SetupTK script to configure the tk sub-project for your 
installation (Linuxers can think "./configure")
  other bug fixes.

And the download keeps getting smaller! 

when-it-gets-to-0-KB-and-does-everything-I'll-be-done-ly y'rs
 

- Gordon



From mnizette at ulb.ac.be  Mon Oct 18 06:54:19 1999
From: mnizette at ulb.ac.be (Michel NIZETTE)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 12:54:19 +0200
Subject: exec behaviour; Functions as instance members.
Message-ID: <380AFC5B.899379F9@ulb.ac.be>

Hello,

Two questions from a beginner :

1) Inside a function definition why doesn't

exec "global i"
exec "i = 1"

set the global variable i to 1, although

exec "global i\ni = 1"

does ?

2) To define a function as a member of a class instance, is there a
shorter way than introducing a temporary function name as in the
following ?

def Temp():
    # Code...
ClassInst.Func = Temp
del Temp

Thanks !




From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 10:09:54 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 00:09:54 +1000
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000801bf146b$43e99160$11a2143f@tim> <al8k8osopqd.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <3809D8B2.8950F472@maxtal.com.au>

Markus Stenberg wrote:
> -Markus Stenberg
> 
> I _wish_ there was a fast Python compiler or something; my fiddling with
> Py2C sources (awhile ago) didn't result in very useful speed improvements
> without zapping some functionality, but I hope someone'll produce one, one
> of these days ;->

	Its on the way! Be patient. Send money if you want the
work to proceed quicker :-)

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From felixt at dicksonstreet.com  Thu Oct  7 23:12:32 1999
From: felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 03:12:32 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>  <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>  <FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>  <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL>  <jlaepxt3jj.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <7tip09$dqk$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <1103_939352352@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>

On 7 Oct 1999 18:32:41 GMT, m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen) wrote:
> Michael Vanier <mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > And there may be other
> > uses for untranscribed DNA as well -- who knows?
> 
> > But back to python... :-)
> 
> Not just yet! Another theory for introns (backed by some evidence) is that
> they're parasitical DNA; sometimes apparently some introns can cause 
> themselves to be inserted in other parts of the DNA, etc.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Martijn
> -- 
> History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
> No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?

Careful! A few more steps down this road and we might get to selfish-gene
land, where the whole organism is cobbled together to serve the genes!

Horrors! :)
Felix



From jpc at informatics.jax.org  Tue Oct  5 11:17:17 1999
From: jpc at informatics.jax.org (John Corradi)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 11:17:17 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <7td22n$vs4$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <051019991117179815%jpc@informatics.jax.org>

In article <7td22n$vs4$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, srenner at lycosmail.com wrote:

> Wait right there. The analogy between DNA and a "code" or a "blueprint"
> is commonly made, but it's not a good analogy. Wittgenstein's "Zettel
> #206" (not his numbering) is relevant. But Guido wasn't making that
> analogy. He was comparing code which has parts that are never used to
> DNA which contains sequences which are never transcribed into protein,
> or introns. DNA as "code" for morphology or for an organism is nonsense,
> but DNA sequences as code for amino acid sequences is perfectly
> reasonable, and the intron/extron distinction makes a fine analogy. It's
> unexpected instead of cliched, and it makes perfect sense, so Guido is
> right and you are out of line.

I'm a biologist and couldn't help but jump in here.  I agree that
Guido's is a good analogy, although unlike useless code, "junk DNA" may
serve some function(s) that are yet to be understood (in other words, I
wouldn't want to parse my DNA and remove those regions just yet). 
Clarification: introns are not the same as junk DNA.  While introns are
non-coding segments withing genes, they do serve to demarcate splice
sites that allow for alternative coding messages to be derived from the
same gene.  They (introns) also often contain binding sites for
regulatory proteins.  There is a lot of non-coding DNA which has
characterized functionality - bottom line: non-coding != junk.

Now that we're way off topic...

-- 

John Corradi
jpc at informatics.jax.org



From x at x.x  Tue Oct 19 21:06:43 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:06:43 -0400
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380D15A3.590978E0@x.x>

steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I've been working through the Python tutorial, and a have a few queries
> about the syntax of Python.  Python seems to me to basically be a very
> nicely constructed language, but I have been wondering about a few
> (seeming) syntactic anomalies:
> 
> i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed, why are things like
> len() not member functions of list/tuples ?

Because tuples and strings don't have member functions. Lists do, but
it is kept that way so that the syntax is the same for all three. In
future version we might see strings and tuples having member functions
also (there's no reason why they can't.)
 
> ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
> those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
> operator seems peculiar.

Why have d[2] = 500, and not force something like d.setitem(2,500)?

Actually, there is a syntactic symmetry here which is actually kind of
neat (although probably of little practical value.) The argument to the
del operator is an l-value. That's syntactically the same thing as what
appears to the left of an equal sign in assignment statement. So del is
really the opposite of the assignment statement.

	d[2] = 500			del d[2]

If d is a Python object, those would be the same as

	d.__setitem__(2,500)		d.__delitem__(2)

(For built-in types, it goes to PySequence_GetItem/DelItem in the C
interface, but the idea is the same.)

del is also used to remove variables from the local namespace,
using the same analogy:

	x = 2				del x

Here, I can't think of any acceptable alternative to using the del
operator. You might think of it as being like:

	del locals()['x']
or
	locals().__delitem__('x')

but neither of these is legal Python (the first won't work in a
function.) Nor are they particularly pretty. So it makes sense
to have the del operator as long as we have the traditional l=r
assignment syntax.
 
> Are these historical artefacts, or is the language designed liek tis
> for a reason ?  If so some can someone tell me the reasoning behind
> this scheme ?  I have mostly really liked what I've seen of Python so
> far, but niggles like these are really annoying me!

Python doesn't claim to be a pure object-oriented language, in the
way that, say, Smalltalk is. So in a sense, these are artifacts. They
simply reflect our arbritrary conventions for writing mathematical
expressions and programming constructs. Python places more emphasis
on readability rather than object-oriented purity in this regard, and
I think it's a good compromise. There's a kind of novelty in writing
if statements as methods of True and False objects, but when you want
to write good, readable, understandable code, it's best to use the
traditional if-then-else paradigm. I'll take 2+3 over 2.add(3) any
day, impure though it may be.



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct 14 15:23:47 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:23:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB2650@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
References: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim>
	<0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB2650@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
Message-ID: <14342.11715.902925.758156@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "RB" == Robin Boerdijk <robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com> writes:

  RB> I do want to come back on the buffer interface though. I think I
  RB> have no alternative for using it. How else can I encapsulate a C
  RB> API function that expects a pre-allocated buffer as a parameter.

  RB> For example, how could I encapsulate the following C function:

  RB>     int GetMessageFromQueue(void* buffer, int bufsize);

  RB> where buffer is an application supplied buffer of size
  RB> bufsize. The function will return the part of the buffer
  RB> actually filled. The only one who knows what a reasonable size
  RB> of the buffer is is the application programmer (who is
  RB> programming in Python).

This sounds a lot like the recv method on sockets.

The C API to recv is:

     ssize_t recv(int socket, void *buffer, size_t length,
          int flags);

The Python program calls the recv method on a socket and passes a
buffer size (call the arg buflen).

The C implementation of the recv method is pretty simple:
1. Allocate a string of size buflen.
2. Call recv and pass the Python string's ob_sval as the buffer
   argument.
3. Check how many bytes were actually returned and Resize the string
   to that size.

Jeremy



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Sun Oct 31 16:16:56 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 22:16:56 +0100
Subject: pythondoc-0.6 on Windows NT- how to install?
Message-ID: <7vibjn$er2@mail.psy.uva.nl>

Hi,

I've tried for about an hour to unwind the web of smart imports used by
pythondoc without succes.

If anyone has a working installation, please let me have a copy of the
critical files
or just tell me what needs to be patched.


Thank you,
ionel


PS
The pythondoc dir is on my path,
I did rename the extensionless 'pythondoc' to 'pydoc.py',
but
I get an import error in pythondoc/xref/xref.py : function main(...)
It cannot import internalXref, then it cannot import message.







From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Sat Oct 30 11:32:30 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:32:30 +0200
Subject: Curses: .newpad()?
Message-ID: <19991031132702.A16935@optiplex.palga.uucp>

(due problems with my system, I'm not sure if I already sent this email)

Hello,

in the Curses HOWTO, the following example is given:

----- * -----
pad = curses.newpad(100, 100)
#  These loops fill the pad with letters; this is
# explained in the next section
for y in range(0, 100):
    for x in range(0, 100):
        try: pad.addch(y,x, ord('a') + (x*x+y*y) % 26 )
except curses.error: pass

#  Displays a section of the pad in the middle of the screen
pad.refresh( 0,0, 5,5, 20,75)
----- *** -----

This doesn't work, because the curses module doesn't have a function called
newpad. First, I thought I was having problems because I hadn't downloaded the
version from http://andrich.net/python/selfmade.html#ncursesmodule, but I don't
see such a function in the source from that package. What's wrong?

By the way, if I try to compile this module, I'm getting the following error:

----- *** -----
make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/python1.4/config/Makefile', needed by `sedscript'.  Stop.
----- *** -----

Oh, now I'm reading the Makefile (oh, so _there_ are the installation
instructions!), do I _really_ have to recompile the whole python distribution?

regards,
Gerrit.



From gterum at c2i.net  Thu Oct 28 19:05:16 1999
From: gterum at c2i.net (Geir Bjarte Terum)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:05:16 GMT
Subject: class name lookup
Message-ID: <3818D679.A1CAC933@c2i.net>

I'm wondering if there is any better way to look up a class name at run
time than what I've come up with this far. I wan't to retrieve the
instance class name from within base class.

Example:

class parent:
  def __init__(self):
    print 'class name = ', str(self)   # or repr(self)

class chield(parent):
  def __init__(self):
    parent.__init__(self)

if __name__=='__main__':
  c = chield()

The result here is something like:
"class name = <__main__.chield instance at 797210>"

But I would like something like:
"class name == chield"   # Even "__main__.chield" may do fine.

If I can rely on that the format returned from str() or repr() is
platform independent and konsistent in time, I can always strip down the
string as I please. Anyway, is there any other more natural way of doing
this?

Regards
- gb -




From thomas at xs4all.nl  Thu Oct 28 09:38:40 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:38:40 +0200
Subject: BIND interface
Message-ID: <19991028153839.B29354@xs4all.nl>

At the risk of sounding like a newbie, i'm looking for a python interface to
the configuration of bind (the named bind, that is,) preferably 8.2... Our
named configuration is getting fairly unwieldy, what with the perl script
magic that tries to edit it automatically and the sales reps who forget to
remove domains...

Anyway, if there is no such beast (it needn't be complete... it's mostly
about removing and adding domains, and changing their zonefiles) i'll write
my own, maybe even complete enough for other people to be of use... ;)

b[l]inded'ly y'rs,

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Oct 11 17:17:01 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:17:01 +0200
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380253CD.1295D2B0@lemburg.com>

henk_p at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> Hi Y'all,
> 
> I want to run the python interpreter as a deamon process. So when
> I exit the shell it started from it keeps on running in the background.
> I know this is possible under unix by using the nohup command, but
> that is not a very nice solution.
> I already hacked python's main.c file to recognize a new -b startup
> parameter. In this code I do a POSIX rfork(NOWAIT) when the -b parameter
> is processed. The parent process returns to the shell, the
> child process will continue in the background.
> now you can do:
> 
> python -b loopd.py
> 
> And loopd keeps on running forever, and python returns its PID to the
> shell.

You can use one of the many daemonize functions that have been posted
to this list. dejanews will probably bring up a whole bunch of them.
 
> It would also be possible to do this in a module, but the POSIX module
> does not export the rfork function.
> Can somebody tell me why rfork() is not included in the posix module?.

Can't find it on Linux ... are you sure about it being POSIX conform ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    81 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From GabeN at captura.com  Tue Oct 26 13:33:12 1999
From: GabeN at captura.com (Gabe Newcomb)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:33:12 -0700
Subject: os.execv() documentation woes...any help?
Message-ID: <7309F1998D14D3119DD80008C7C9CA80420567@GIBRALTAR>

I'm trying to find decent documentation on the execv() function in the os
module. The online Python module help for this function is minimal:

execv (path, args) 
	Execute the executable path with argument list args, replacing the
current process (i.e., the Python interpreter). The argument list may be a
tuple or list of strings. Availability: Unix, Windows

I'm having a hard time getting started with this. Additionally, help with
finding acceptable arguments to pass to a given executable would be great,
but that is likely specific to the executable, no? The documentation I've
got are the two O'Reilly books (Programming Python and Learning Python).

Generally, I'm working on NT 4.0 Workstation. My goal is to be able to
execute commands at the command line via a Python script--not too ambitious,
I believe.

Many thanks to any who respond!

Gabe Newcomb 



From bill at hk.rfa.org  Wed Oct  6 07:45:14 1999
From: bill at hk.rfa.org (Bill Eldridge)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:45:14 +0800
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rocheste <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <37FB364A.F35C6BD9@hk.rfa.org>

Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> Please note these clients are *NOT* finished, because I don't see
> anyway to set the
> date & time inside of PYTHON.  Anyone that can point out a way to
> change the computers
> clock via python, I'll appreciate it.

Something like:

if os.environ[OS]=='Linux':
	newtime= time.strptime(<some calculation>)
	os.system('/bin/date ' + newtime)
else if re.search('Windows',os.environ[OS]):
	newday= time.strptime('%M %D %Y', %<some calculation>)
	newtime= time.strptime('%H%m%s',<some other calculation>)
	os.system('date + ',newday)
	os.system('time + ',newtime)

You might try os.name as well.  Not as nice as an internal-to-Python
solution, but I don't know of another way.


--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at hk.rfa.org



From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Sat Oct 30 19:04:53 1999
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 17:04:53 -0600
Subject: ANN: Unspeakably obscure Just Intonation module, ratio.py
Message-ID: <jtemecv4a2.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

        For people who are into just intonation -- or even know what
it is -- I have written a module to make dealing with JI ratios a
little easier, including methods to handle varous sorts of
katapyknosis as well as the creation of JI chords.  There are also
some functions not part the Ratio class which make dealing with scales
and interval lists more fun.

        Code with documentation and a short interactive example can be
found at http://www.execpc.com/~wsannis/ratio.html .

subminorly yours,
wm



From kelley at bioreason.com  Fri Oct 29 11:36:54 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:36:54 -0600
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <000101bf21d7$2daf1f40$af2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <3819BF15.1A830B67@bioreason.com>

Tim Peters wrote:

> [Brian Kelley, finding a phantom bug, and then embracing a
>  phantom solution <wink>]
>
>
> OK, everyone has beat you soundly about the head and shoulders for not using
> a 3-outcome sort function -- and they were right to do so.  I should really
> keep quiet at this point, but I can't resist:

Yeah, I feel properly chastised.  Especially since Andrew wrote his excellent
mini-sorting HOWTO.  The caveat emptor is that I found this "phantom bug" on
really old code.  And so I can give a little something back that we have found
useful:  our desired method of sorting these days is something like:

sort_list = []
for a in objects:
 sort_list.append( (a.attribute, objects.index(a), a) )

sort_list.sort()

Tuple sorting is much faster than lambdas and this prevents several problems we
have with breaking ties especially since the sorting routine has changed from
1.5.1 and 1.5.2 which are both deteminisitic, just deterministic in a
completely different way.  It  is very important for us to have the same
results for a sort which means a standard way of breaking ties.

Looking back, it was unfortunate that I said "bug", what I should have said was
"difference" or better yet "has the sorting routine changed between 1.5.1 and
1.5.2?".  But this was posted after many hours tracking down the problem.  So
it *was* a bug, just *my* bug that happened to work in python 1.5.1 but not
python 1.5.2.

Needless to say, just becuase something works, doesn't mean it's right.
Although stupid comments can lead to interesting discussions (ala the
difference in sorting between 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 which, actually, was my question
in the first place although even I didn't know it at the time.)

--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From sk at fyemf.fys.ntnu.no  Mon Oct  4 11:27:23 1999
From: sk at fyemf.fys.ntnu.no (Steinar Knutsen)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 15:27:23 -0000
Subject: Linux, Python, and pipes
References: <7taffc$3m1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tah0r$gq0$1@fyemf.fys.ntnu.no>

In article <7taffc$3m1$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, <prestonlanders at my-deja.com>
wrote:

>Anyone know what's up with pipes and Python on Linux?  It seems that
>when trying to pipe the output of a Python program, the pipe does not
>start flowing until the Python program exits.  For programs with long
>running times and lots of log/debug output, that means you can't begin
>to look at the output until the program terminates.

STDOUT from Python is usually buffered, therefore the pipe won't start
flowing before the buffer is full. You can turn off the buffering by
giving the flag "-u" when starting the interpreter. (Another possibility
would of course be flushing STDOUT at fitting intervals.)
-- 
Steinar



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Fri Oct 15 09:57:40 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 15:57:40 +0200
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <slrn80ab5q.27c.thantos@brimstone.mecha>
Message-ID: <y0jwvsoloa3.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

thantos at brimstone.mecha (Alexander Williams) writes:

> On 14 Oct 1999 00:11:55 GMT, Joshua Marcus <josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
> >What is the %$*&@#!@ rationale behind not including a do...while control 
> >structure in Python?
> >
> >I know you can simply work around it, e.g:
> >
> >line = "foo"
> >while input != "":
> >    line = fp.readline()
> >    process(line)
> >
> >... but why must I do this every time?  Am I missing something?
> 
> Yes, you're missing three things:
> 
>   1) That initalization line should be "line = fp.readline()"

*And* you should have

  process(line)
  line = fp.readline()

But - why not use fileinput? <wink>

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From mehta at mama.indstate.edu  Thu Oct 21 22:39:26 1999
From: mehta at mama.indstate.edu (mehta at mama.indstate.edu)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 02:39:26 GMT
Subject: chat, irc
Message-ID: <7uoiou$2ok$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello,

I am behind firewall and am unable do usual irc.  If there is a web
site on which we have python channel please let me know.

Thanks.
miten.mehta at Qwest.com


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct 26 11:25:57 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:25:57 -0600
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com>

Hi All---

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> Adrian Eyre wrote:
> >
> > > Some things where I need some more help are:
> > > [snip]
> >
> > And Windows NT by the looks of it. All I get from the program is:
> > "win32"

This is all I see, to.  I'm running NT 4.0 Workstation, SP5.

> 
> Hmm, you should be seing something like:
> 
> Windows-NT-4.00.xxx
> 
> Could you send me the output of typing "ver" at the command prompt
> (this is the information the module uses on Windows NT) ?
> 

Windows NT Version 4.0

<you-mean-they-ain't-the-same?>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 10 13:57:15 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 19:57:15 +0200
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process
References: <37FF5655.F6A0B896@ionet.net>
Message-ID: <00d901bf1348$e41a11b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Steven H. Rogers <shrogers at ionet.net> wrote:
> Given a Java application and a Zope webserver (may or may not be running
> on the same machine):  What would be a good way to set up a
> communications link between the two?  

> Some tools that come to mind are HTTP, ILU, XML.  Has anyone done
> anything like this and/or care to comment?

XML-RPC is probably the easiest way (HTTP+XML,
sort of).  Zope speaks it well, and so does Java:

    http://www.xmlrpc.com/

</F>




From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Tue Oct  5 09:35:51 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 15:35:51 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
In-Reply-To: <7tb0jf$pj6$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl> <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl> <19991004145855.A29393@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991004153416.B28556@xs4all.nl> <7tb0jf$pj6$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <19991005153551.A8616@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Martijn Faassen:
> Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 02:58:55PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:
> 
> [discussions of webservers snipped]
> 
> As long as it runs Zope. :)
> 

It does not (yet, I hope).

groeten,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	    Alles over spelletjes onder Linux in het Nederlands.
www.nl.linux.org      De Nederlandse Linux homepage met veel Nederlandse HOWTOS.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		     Leer vreemde woorden en definities.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger Ik ben een "Asperger", lees er hier meer over.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit       Mijn homepage, met informatie over mij en foto's.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 03:13:33 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:13:33 +0200
Subject: integrating SocketServer with Tkinter Event-Loop
References: <m11dgZp-000twYC@artcom0.north.de>
Message-ID: <028801bf1aca$9ee4e460$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Peter Funk <pf at artcom-gmbh.de> wrote:
> Well: the asyncore 'poll()' uses 'select' and so internally asserts that 
> the socket is ready to read at the time, when xmlrpcserver.RequestHandler
> gets called by SocketServer.TCPServer.handle_request.  I wasn't able to 
> figure out, where the non blocking socket would play havoc to the code
> in 'SocketServer.py' ...  :-(

well, I'm not 100% sure, really, but this may work only if the
read operations never run out of data (which may be the
case in your test setup -- your server is simply fast enough...).

but I might be wrong, and I suspect it'll take a while to set
things up so I can verify that...

> I was afraid, that it wouldn't be that easy. :-(
> 
> Do you have any better suggestions how to accomplish, what I want?

ah, that's easier!  I'd use two dispatchers: one for the listening
socket, and one to handle the connection channels.  when the
former accepts a new connection, it creates an instance of the
latter which implements the actual protocol.

<!--
if you have the eff-bot guide, check the examples on page 166
and 172 (the HTTP example shouldn't be that hard to tweak for
XML-RPC; drop me a line if you need help).
-->

or you can look at the medusa sources.

</F>

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




From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 19 15:11:25 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 19:11:25 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu> <14348.40578.648039.972783@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7uifot$nsi$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <14348.40578.648039.972783 at weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>,
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
>
>  It's those flags with optional arguments that hold the highest
>possibility of confusion for users.  Is 'foo -v 1' a command with one
>option and one parameter, or is it a command with one option that
>takes a value?  If the value is optional, it's not clear.  I don't
>know what the "right" way to deal with it is, perhaps, but not using
>optional values for options seems the safest.

Depends whether you allow "-v 1" or "-v1".
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 22 14:13:07 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:13:07 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
In-Reply-To: <vr1zao45iz.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca>
	<87k8ogih25.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
	<14351.34493.930412.999462@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<vr1zao45iz.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <14352.43315.346223.613450@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Fran?ois Pinard writes:
 > Quite interesting.  So you are saying that the implementation of an instance
 > is fully held in its __dict__?  That would be simple enough, then...

  Not quite, as another poster pointed out.  The two objects wouldn't
even be == unless you wrote a .__cmp__() method that did the right
thing.  You'd probably also want to write a .__hash__() that did the
right thing as well, since the default hash wouldn't "do the right
thing" any more.

 > >   Not to be used in real code!
 > 
 > Yet if you are right, this is exactly the functionality I was looking for.
 > What else, then?  I do agree that `self.__dict__ = some.__dict__' might look
 > tinily odd within an `__init__' function, at least until I get used to it :-)

  I wasn't serious; I think the factory function with a cache is the
'right' way to do it; this is just nasty hackery that I thought a
little cute, in an evil sort of way.  You want the factory function.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 14:52:56 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:52:56 +0200
Subject: stdin, out of a spawnv process?
References: <380159C6.B74B054C@ptway.com>
Message-ID: <00bd01bf1419$d58340f0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Brian Haskin <haskin at ptway.com> wrote:
> Is there a way to write to the stdin and read from the stdout of a
> process launched with os.spawnv()?

afaik, no.

you can use dup and friends to redirect
to ordinary files, in the usual way.

or you might be able to find something in
the pythonwin distribution; you can surely
do this on the Windows API level, using
things like CreatePipe, SetStdHandle, etc.
not entirely trivial, though.

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From sekter at mail.matav.hu  Mon Oct 25 18:04:26 1999
From: sekter at mail.matav.hu (Arpad Kiss)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 00:04:26 +0200
Subject: LOCALE + NT
Message-ID: <00a001bf1f35$36029590$010101c1@home>

Janos Blazi <jblazi at netsurf.de> wrote in message
news:anglicanism-7v1gp8/INN-2.2.1/assemble at broadway.news.is-europe.net...
> Can ANYBODY tell me how to use a German locale on NT 4.0? After all, NT
> shoul offer POSIX support and that shoulb be anough, shouldn't i?
>

 On my Windows NT box the system default is Hungarian, but the locale module
partly works:
number and date/time formatting is ok, sort order is wrong.
I think you can set the German locale this way:
import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,'de')
After this number and time formatting should work automaticly. For sorting I
tried to use locale.strcoll, but the return values of this function aren't
correct for Hungarian locale.
Arpad Kiss






From brundage at aimnet.com  Sat Oct  2 16:52:49 1999
From: brundage at aimnet.com (Marty Brundage)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 13:52:49 -0700
Subject: (newbie) Array of dictionaries
References: <krH1N9kfUJRE66saKRbldgciktYP@4ax.com> <87k8p686mk.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de> <1ln2N3f+WAJBaGTZAc76Jo71bgzt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <1W72N90vXoMm+5Yj3p03=nIh6XCQ@4ax.com>

Marty Brundage <brundage at aimnet.com> wrote:


>Which is only good for small fixed length arrays of dictionaries.  It
>seems odd that the general case does not require an explicit
>delaration.

After posting this I tried again and found it's incorrect, so I am
posting this correction.  The following solution, which works, was
privately emailed to me:


dicts = []
for x in range( 20):
	dicts.append( {})

## assign values
dicts[0]['this'] = 'that'
dicts[18]['thos'] = 'them'
dicts[2]['this'] = 'wherefore'

## retrieve values from all dicts
for dict in dicts:
	print dict.get( 'this' )

## retrieve single values
print dict[18]['thos']




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct  8 10:24:05 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 16:24:05 +0200
Subject: Python as a first language
References: <7tjfk2$8o6$1@sparky.wolfe.net>
Message-ID: <006b01bf1198$c7e15dc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Jon Cosby <jcosby at wolfenet.com> wrote:
> I've seen past references in this newsgroup to an article recommending
> Python as a first language. Can anyone point me to this?

here are a few:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
http://members.xoom.com/alan_gauld/tutor/tutindex.htm
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html

</F>




From lijnzaad at ebi.ac.uk  Tue Oct  5 17:45:20 1999
From: lijnzaad at ebi.ac.uk (Philip Lijnzaad)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 22:45:20 +0100
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> 	<14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> 	<FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com> 	<001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <u7905hscr3.fsf@ebi.ac.uk>

> an advantage or a disadvantage to their host organism, the most likely
> outcome is that they simply continue to be propagated, mostly
> unchanged.  

yup, this is called genetic drift, and has been likened (I have no refs) to
brownian motion in sequence space. 

> It seems to me
> (but I am not a biologist!) that it would be extremely unlikely, that
> without a "Divine Planner", DNA strands would evolve in a way so as to
> be devoid of "Junk" sections.... that's just asking too much, to ask
> not just for a molecule that "does the job" of carrying the genetic
> information, but that does it with 100% efficiency.  There's not
> sufficient selective pressure for the DNA to be forced to be efficient
> (as opposed to, for example, the sunlight-collecting efficiency of a
> leaf, where efficiency matters).  The code-bases are small, molecules
> are cheap, and there's plenty of room for some extra unused bits in
> there.

I'm not going into religuous debates here, but current understanding is that
this is very achievable. For small bacteria and especially viruses, the junk
is very costly indeed, and getting rid it offers a selective advantage (and
they they have little or no junk DNA). 

What's more (and this I think is exceeddingly interesting and has been
pointed out many times before): some viruses (I thnk phiX 174 is one) have
double coding. To explain: each triplet of nucleotides (DNA building blocks;
there are 4 different ones) translates to one amino acid (protein building
blocks; of these there are 20 different ones). Now 4x4x4 gives 64 different
triplets, coding (with a lot of redundancy) for 20 differnt amino acids. This
is called the genetic code, and there are largely the same throughout all the
kingdoms (there are a few variations, but let's gloss over that) Now to
translate DNA into protein, it is critical that you now where the triplets
start; CGT TTG AAC CCC specifies a differnt piece of protein than 
    [C] GTT TGA ACC [CC], which is exactly the same DNA but the translation
was started shifted one nucleotide to the right. In most cases, this protein
is just nonsense, but some viruses actually make use of this: they use the
same stretch of DNA to specify different stretches of protein, basically
exploiting the redundancy in the genetic code. Very cool, and I've been told
that in the early days of computing and especially games programming, similar
tricks with the instructino sets of of early microprocessors were done.

I vaguely remember that the 'digital organisms' of Thomas Ray (in his
brilliant study "Evolution, Ecology and Optimization of Digital Organisms";
see http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/pubs/tierra/tierrahtml.html) actually
discovered the very same trick. If the Tierran critters can discover this
optimization technique, I see no reason why bacteria and viruses might not
discover it as well. Ah well,

                                                                      Philip

-- 
Enough is more than a lot.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Lijnzaad, lijnzaad at ebi.ac.uk | European Bioinformatics Institute,rm A2-24
+44 (0)1223 49 4639                 | Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton
+44 (0)1223 49 4468 (fax)           | Cambridgeshire CB10 1SD,  GREAT BRITAIN
PGP fingerprint: E1 03 BF 80 94 61 B6 FC  50 3D 1F 64 40 75 FB 53



From moshez at math.huji.ac.il  Sun Oct 17 15:04:23 1999
From: moshez at math.huji.ac.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:04:23 +0200 (IST)
Subject: RS in Files: Novel Thoughts (well, not that much)
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017205818.8058B-100000@sundial>

I'm reading Design Patterns, and I was struck by the decorator pattern:
exactly what's needed to implement record seperators in files. Well, 
I sat down, and in 15 minutes I had a (slow, highly non-optimized) version
of a record seperated file object. Here it is, to anyone who wants to 
implement it.

Note to the optimizer: a true masochist can do everything here in a C
level object, which will cache _file.read to minimize lookup, and might
even do optimizations if the underlying object is a Python file object.

Note to the regression tester: due to its length, the regression test
has been snipped. Sorry.

Note to the generalizer: this class can trivially be changed to 
support REs as record seperators, thereby having functionality Perl
doesn't, yet. Hint hint.

----------------- begin code ------------------------
from string import find

class FieldSeperatorFile:

        def __getattr__(self, name):
                return getattr(self._file, name)

        def __init__(self, file, field_seperator='\n'):
                self._file=file
                self._buf=''
                self._seperator=field_seperator
                self._buf_size=4096

        def set_sepeator(self, field_seperator):
                self._seperator=field_seperator

        def read(self, size=-1):
                if size<0:
                        ret=self._buf+self._file.read()
                        self._buf=''
                        return ret
                if size<len(self._buf):
                        ret=self._buf[:size]
                        self._buf=self._buf[size:]
                        return ret
                ret=self._buf+self._file.read(size-len(self._buf))
                self._buf=''
                return ret

        def readline(self):
                while 1:
                        n=find(self._buf, self._seperator)
                        if n>=0:
                                break
                        read=self._file.read(self._buf_size)
                        if not read:
                                ret=self._buf
                                self._buf=''
                                return ret
                        self._buf=self._buf+read
                ret=self._buf[:n+len(self._seperator)]
                self._buf=self._buf[n+len(self._seperator):]
                return ret
------------------- end code ----------------------

--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka at geocities.com>. 
INTERNET: Learn what you know.
Share what you don't.




From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 14:34:18 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:34:18 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Sorry to answer my own question, but I wrote a primitive little
implementation of my request pending discovery of 'the official
version.'  Note that mine actually uses the unix touch command but it
could easily be modified to use the more portable python open(file, "w")

import os, string, commands

class execution_exception(Exception): pass

def recursive_touch_helper(path):
    """A helper function for recursive_touch.  Given a path, calls
itself recursively until entire path exists, and returns the same path
string.  If something went wrong, it returns None."""
    path_list = []

    path_elements = string.split(path, "/")[1:]

    counter = 1
    for element in path_elements:
        new_element = ""
        for component in range(counter):
            new_element = new_element + "/%s" % path_elements[component]
        path_list.append(new_element)
        counter = counter + 1

    for path in path_list:
        # see if it exists
        if os.path.isdir(path):
            continue

        # else try to mkdir it
        else:
            try:
                print "making %s" % path
                os.mkdir(path)
            except OSError, msg:
                return None

    return path

def recursive_touch(filename):
    """Tries to create filename with unix touch commands.  It is
recursive in the sense that any directory components of filename will
be silently created (if possible) before touching the actual file.
Throws execution_exception if any part of the operation fails.  FYI:
this is not technically a 'recursive funtion'; it just behaves in a
recursive manner."""
    pathname, basename = os.path.split(filename)

    # check if we're already good to go
    if os.path.isfile(filename):
        return

    if not os.path.isdir(pathname):
        if recursive_touch_helper(pathname) != pathname:
            raise execution_exception, "Could not create path."

    status, output = commands.getstatusoutput("touch %s" % filename)
    if status:
        raise execution_exception, "could not touch %s" % filename
    else:
        return  # success

path = "/usr/home/planders/tmp/foo/bar/baz.txt"

try:
    recursive_touch(path)
except execution_exception, msg:
    print "Failed. \n%s" % msg

print "Success."


In article <7tdden$929$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
> Anyone know of a function equilivent in concept to a 'recursive
> touch?'
>
> Where if I say:
>
> touch foo/bar/baz.txt
>
> If the directories foo and bar don't exist, create them, then create
> baz.txt inside of bar.
>
> An equivilent unix command would suffice.

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From nummedal at ed.ntnu.no  Sat Oct 16 15:48:43 1999
From: nummedal at ed.ntnu.no (Dag Nummedal)
Date: 16 Oct 1999 21:48:43 +0200
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
References: <7u55gb$vkq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <uwvsnozms.fsf@ed.ntnu.no>

quickbbs at my-deja.com writes:
[...]
> 	2) Even though the time.asctime (timetuple) reports the right
> 		time, the tuple when processed by SetSystemTime is off by
> 		5 hours.  It might be due to a setting somewhere in windows
> 		but can someone glance at this and make sure everything
> 		looks AOK?
[..]
> #
> timetuple = time.localtime(dt)


Use time.gmtime, not time.localtime.

> print "Time - ", time.asctime(timetuple)
> 
> #
> #
> #
> if sys.platform == "win32":
>         import win32api
>         win32api.SetSystemTime (timetuple[0], timetuple[1], timetuple[6],
> timetuple[2], timetuple[3], timetuple[4], timetuple[5], 0)
> 

Also SetSystemTime uses dayofweek with sunday as 0, while time module uses 0
as monday. Use: (timetuple[6]+1)%7

-- 
Dag Nummedal



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Tue Oct 19 11:29:26 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 11:29:26 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: "Tim Peters"'s message of "Tue, 19 Oct 1999 03:31:51 -0400"
References: <000301bf1a04$034c8100$6f2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <vrzoxfpdwp.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> ?crit:

> Are you sure you used to hack Perl <0.7 wink>?

I did a lot of Perl, but I do not consider myself as a hacker.  More of an
artist or a stylist, maybe :-).  All winks apart, I try to write clear and
straightforward code, to the point of boredom sometimes, and do not like
bugs very much.  In fact, I'm a child of the Dijkstra school of thought.
So I might program for years, without much chance to discover peculiarities
of a language, because I stay so safely between the tracks, all the time :-).
On the other hand, Python is so clearly designed, at least as far as I
understand it, that I'm ready to dare some unusual exploration.  It's fun!

> Possibly.  OTOH, Python could "optimize" <wink> the regexp
>     cat|catfish
> to plain
>     cat
> since it's impossible for catfish to match without first matching cat.

Maybe, but _this_ is rather plain.  I'm not sure it would be really worth.
At least, much, much less interesting that longuest matches... :-)

> Jeffrey Friedl's book [...]

I do not buy much books, but thanks for the reference, and the explanations.
You have been quite helpful to me, Tim, since I got around.  Thanks a lot!

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 19:55:28 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:55:28 +1000
Subject: Freeze for Windows NT?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-Jzrrpdu6VYWK@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <001c01bf150d$435ed5f0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

> 	I'm attempting to use Freeze under Windows NT, and I
> believe that I
> need
> a recompiled version of Python?!?!?!?

Well, freeze itself requires a C compiler which would seem to make it
instantly useless for you.

I suggest you check out Gordon's installer at
http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/.  If this works for you it is
probably a much better alternative.

Mark.






From gopaliv at my-deja.com  Fri Oct  8 13:49:48 1999
From: gopaliv at my-deja.com (gopaliv at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 17:49:48 GMT
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
Message-ID: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I have two cgi scripts.  I need to invoke the other cgi script from
the first cgi script.  How should I do this?

Thanks
Gopal


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Wed Oct  6 05:28:43 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 09:28:43 GMT
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991006021336.B28582@quark.emich.edu>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 06:13:36, Jeff <jam at quark.emich.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 02:56:24AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> > While looking through the Docs, I don't see any method to set the
> > local computers clock via python?
> > 
> > Did I miss something, or is that actually "missing" from python??
> > 
> > 		- Benjamin

> it's only missing because there (probably) isn't a clean way to do it across
> platforms. you could probably quite easily do it with a libc call in linux,
> but could you use that same code to do it in a win32 or os/2 or even BSD
> environment without a lot of headaches? probably not.

Makes sense.

> how badly do you need this functionality?

It's kinda a little pointless to run a time client and then have to 
manually
set the time, you sort of loose the "millisecond" timing >weak grin<.

I am prepared to deal with this, I can have the client use the Sys 
module
and make a system shell call to DATE & TIME, which will work
under both OS/2 & Windows.

It's annoying, but I can work around it for said platforms.  *nix, and

everything else are out of luck, since I don't know how to set their 
clock,
but........ That's what modifying the source if for.

Honestly though, I think it's a semi long term gap that probably 
should
be filled.  At least on a platform by platform basis.  After all 
STRPTIME isn't
supported everywhere, why should TIME or DATE (or whatever they get
called).

			- Benjamin



From garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid  Mon Oct 18 07:41:28 1999
From: garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid (Radovan Garabik)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 11:41:28 GMT
Subject: Text/Cursor User Interface with Python [Redhat?]
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se> <7u52qk$tcg$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <940250398.510689@cdwork.cvt.stuba.sk>

Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
 : Hey there,

 : I've just discovered that the Redhat Linux 6.1 installer is written in
 : Python and includes a text-based 'GUI' (dialog boxes, menus, selection
 : lists, etc.)  It appears to use the newt toolkit (which depends on
 : slang) and a special Redhat-developed pythonlib library.

debian has just made out of it a package python-newt, so far (from 
reading documentation) it looks good.

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph.uniba.sk           |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!



From cfelling at iae.nl  Sun Oct 31 22:48:28 1999
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 1 Nov 1999 04:48:28 +0100
Subject: Listbox.. ACTIVE-item is the one selected previously..
References: <ksemebjifu.fsf@telelogic.se>
Message-ID: <7vj2ic$ich$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>

Andrew Markebo <andrew.markebo at telelogic.se> wrote:

> z=None
> def click(event=None):
>    global z
>    print z.get(ACTIVE)

                 ^^^^^^ us ANCHOR instead, works for me

-- 
groetjes, carel



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Mon Oct 25 23:32:27 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:32:27 +1000
Subject: An article on Python in practice
Message-ID: <19991026133227.A601@Ridcully.home>

Just saw this article over at LinuxPlanet:
	http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/1132/1/

A good example of somebody using Python to solve a practical "real world"
problem and written in a style accesible to all. 

Short precis for those with slow connections: Somebody using Python to
extract information from a large database on another web site in order to
put a restricted set of this information on his own website. Also includes
a little example of using Python as a scripting language in vim.

Probably worth having around as an advocacy sort of article (good to show
to people to convince them that Python is useful). I *do* realise I'm
preaching to the choir here, but just in case ... :-)

BTW, don't be put of by the "LinuxPlanet" bit --- it's not a Linux
specific article.

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick



From paul at prescod.net  Sat Oct 16 10:58:17 1999
From: paul at prescod.net (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:58:17 -0400
Subject: Bridging the chasm
Message-ID: <38089289.90BF6257@prescod.net>

Apologies if I missed an earlier discussion of this idea.

Increasingly I have this problem that there is a lot of cool software in
the "Java world" and a lot of cool software in the "C" world and I want
to use them together. CPython is awesome for gluing together "C" stuff
and JPython is awesome for gluing together "Java" stuff but there is no
glue between them. I propose (for Python 2) to abolish the distinction
between CPython and JPython and have a single Python implementation that
can talk to both worlds.

Obviously such an implementation would need to be written in C (or C++).
Obviously it would also need to embed a Java Virtual Machine in order to
run Java code. Managing these requirement is not a problem: after all,
every virtual machine is already written in C++ and there is a lot of
JVM code around that we could use as a starting point for our new Python
interpreter.

Of course a Python interpreter also needs a Python virtual machine and a
Python compiler. Well if we've already got a JVM and we've already got
JPython then we HAVE a python compiler and virtual machine.

Of course if this were all there were to it, I'd be really proposing
that we just get rid of CPython in favor of JPython. That's not what I'm
proposing, however. Unlike today's JPython, I believe that we should
have our OWN implementation of the JVM with the following features:

 * optimized "extension" byte codes for common Python-specific
primitives like INVOKE_DYNAMIC

 * support for "Python-style" embedding in C (maybe backwards
compatible, maybe only similar)

 * Python finalization semantics

 * Circular reference detection and removal

 * a combined Python/Java stack

As we add type inferencing and type declarations to Python we could use
the appropriate Java bytecodes.

I propose that all of the "extension" byte codes be optional
optimizations for code that can be otherwise implemented by a "runtime"
class library like the current JPython runtime. Running Python with a
-compile_java option could compile to "pure" bytecodes in "real" Java
classfiles. Those classfiles could be used on regular JVM
implementations. 

Of course if you leave the Python interpreter then you may lose

 a) speed (in some cases)
 b) compatibility with "C" extensions
 c) reliable finalization

But you might gain portability and speed (in some cases).

 Paul Prescod



From j.spies at hccnet.nl  Thu Oct 21 20:18:30 1999
From: j.spies at hccnet.nl (J.Spies)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 02:18:30 +0200
Subject: Problem with JPython and jre jdk1.1.8
Message-ID: <380FAD56.23B9EF27@hccnet.nl>

Hi,

As an oldtime ABC-Python fan I like the development of JPython.
At work we use Java!


I'm trying JPython11beta3 with jdk1.1.8 on Windows NT and Windows 95.
On NT I get jre.exe:
	Instruction at 0x1001053a referenced memory at "0x0...0"
	The memory could not be "read".
On Windows 95
	JRE caused an invalid page fault
	in module JAVAI.DLL at 0157:1001053a
etc., while I'm executing

jpython button.py or jpython converter.py
(applet demos from www.python.org)

With linux RedHat 6.0, jdk1.1.7b the same programs simply do
nothing at all.

What is wrong?


Jaap Spies
CS Department Hogeschool Drenthe

Let's keep Peace in Mind



From avaj8 at a1freenet.co.uk  Wed Oct  6 16:47:56 1999
From: avaj8 at a1freenet.co.uk (N)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 20:47:56 GMT
Subject: How to lookup on RMS indexed files in Open VMS ?
References: <37faf48a.914420@news.mcmail.com> <7tfl7a$q5s$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37fbb52a.15177613@news.mcmail.com>

Thanks Uwe 
I will have to dig deep and do some reading...

Vielen Dank


On Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:09:56 GMT, Uwe Zessin <zessin at my-deja.com>
wrote:

>In article <37faf48a.914420 at news.mcmail.com>,
>  avaj8 at a1freenet.co.uk (N) wrote:
>> Hi Python gurus
>>
>> Is there a solution for reading RMS indexed files in Open VMS ?
>> More particularly how to do the lookup on them - on particular keys?
>> Otherwise reading them sequentially is of little use to me...
>
>Nick,
>I have created a number of "objects" in my OpenVMS port that allow
>a lot of RMS features to be used. However, the "RAB" object is not
>fully debugged and I have not done much with the "XABKEY" object,
>either.
>
>Feel free to take a look at:  http://www.decus.de/~zessin/pyvms/
>
>Any feedback is welcome.
>
>--
>Uwe Zessin
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.




From ivanlan at callware.com  Thu Oct 21 13:06:49 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:06:49 -0600
Subject: Guido/Rosella
Message-ID: <380F4829.D6929284@callware.com>

Hi All--
Ran across this dialogue in a sig on another mailing list I'm on:

  Guido:    Those spirits you consult, why don't they help me?
  Rosella: Your attitude about them is wrong.
                You have too many reservations ...
                You want too many guarantees.
  Guido:    All right ... but what do they say to you?
  Rosella: They always say the same things.
                 They're very rational spirits.
                 They say that you're free,
                 that you have to choose,
                 and there isn't much time.

  (From Federico Fellini's "8 1/2".)

<i-wonder-if-the-timbot-qualifies-as-a-rational-spirit?>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From herzog at online.de  Sat Oct  9 12:31:15 1999
From: herzog at online.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 09 Oct 1999 18:31:15 +0200
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <m3ln9czeaz.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> I know it looks very nit-picky, but since this is meant to become just
> part of the life of those caring about internationalisation (quite a few
> by now), any slight increase in legibility will be a big win over time.
> For example, comparing:
> 
>   T('translated string literal')
>   _('translated string literal')
> 
> it seems to me that the second form is less cluttered than the first.

This matches my impression and experience. I've used _ for this in
Sketch quite extensively, and find that it's unobtrusive and manages to
look slightly special, which is ok, because translating a string is very
different from normal string operations. C programs that use GNU gettext
for internationalisation also use _ for this purpose.


> But the main problem with the writing above is that is has to mean something
> which gets executed, we consider that `T' or `_' is some translating
> function.  In practice, it significantly occurs that we need to mark
> strings as translatable, without translating them right away, sometimes
> in contexts where a function call would not be syntactically correct.

The only place I can think of where Python's syntax forbids a function
call but allows a string literal is a doc-string. In C this is more of a
problem since you can't put a function call e.g. in a global array
initializer, so you have to use preprocessor macros for this, but this
is not a problem in Python. The only reason not to use a function for
marking strings as translatable without translating them is probably
performance, but the overhead for such a solution would be negligible in
most cases, I guess.

As for doc-strings, they should always be considered translatable and
the translatin should be done by the tools that process them, as I
stated elsewhere on this topic.


> So, even if we can use special function calls as extra hints to "mark"
> their string argument, there are other contexts where the strings themselves
> need to be "marked" more intimately within the Python language.  How the
> interpreter might be involved, or not, into dynamically translating such
> strings, without using explicit translating functions like `T' or `_',
> might be the subject of thought and debates, as they are many approaches for
> doing it.  Besides, none would work anyway if Guido does not get interested.

I don't think python has to be changed to accommodate translation. Using
explicit function calls is more pythonic than implicit translation of
t-strings or somesuch. It would be nice, though, if python had some
standard module for this.

If function calls to mark strings as translatable without translating
them is too slow, your suggestion of prefixing strings with an empty
string literal (""'text' instead of just 'text') would be ok, I think.

It doesn't break existing code because the meaning is still the same.
Such existing code only makes a difference to the program which extracts
translatable strings as it might end up putting strings into po-files
that aren't actually meant to be translated and will never be
translated.


> On a related, but different topic, there is something which is little known,
> but that might be of interest to those who would like to read `.mo' files
> (compiled PO files) directly in Python, without going through `gettext'.
> When we designed the `.mo' file format for GNU, I insisted that `msgfmt'
> sorts the strings in lexicographical order of `msgid' (untranslated) strings,
> even if `gettext' does not need it.  The goal was to help scripting languages
> that could not easily use the precise double hashing algorithm of `gettext',
> by making possible to just binary search in the compiled file.

gnome-python has a pure-python module, gettext.py, that can read .mo
files. I haven't tried it yet, though.



-- 
Bernhard Herzog	  | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
herzog at online.de  | http://www.online.de/home/sketch/



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Sun Oct 17 22:41:27 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 02:41:27 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <slrn80kkc1.1r1o.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Sat, 16 Oct 1999 06:19:29 -0400, Tim Peters bilang:
| > Also, Mr. Niksic is right to posit that a "while 1 ..." looks
| > suspicious to newcomers.
| 
| I agree -- heck, it still looks suspicious to me!  "while 1" is not a good
| thing; but all in all it is a minor thing.

I always liked BEGIN...WHILE...REPEAT in Forth.  I guess the Python version
would look like:

  begin:
    x=f.readline()
  while x:
    print x

The point being, you check the condition in the middle of the loop, instead
of at the beginning or the end.

waiting-for-the-keyword-police-to-drag-him-away-ly yr's, Cliff


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 14 04:04:45 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:04:45 +1300
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au> <14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au> <14339.41837.609410.864634@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <5lr9j056ud.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <38058E9D.9C7FA64F@compaq.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

>         def f():
>                 sum = 0
>                 def accumulate(x):
>                         global sum
>                         sum = sum+x
>                 ...code using accumulate()...
>                 return sum
> 
> tends to create obfuscated code.

I can't see anything very obfuscated about that -- the
two uses of sum are only two lines apart, after all.

It could become obfuscated if the code were much more
complicated. But it's the very simple cases like that --
where the overhead of defining and instantiating a
class would totally swamp the code being wrapped --
that one feels the lack of lexical scoping most keenly.

In any case, is that really any worse than

         def f():
                 sum = [0]
                 def accumulate(x):
                         global sum
                         sum[0] = sum[0] + x
                 ...code using accumulate()...
                 return sum[0]

which is the sort of thing people are going to do if
you restrict lexical scoping to being read-only. To my
way of thinking, the original version is clearer.

I suspect that, if you introduce read-only lexical scoping,
you're just going to substitute the stream of "Why is there
no #@%$#$% lexical scoping in Python" complaints with "Why 
the #@%$#$% can't I assign to a non-local variable in Python"...

Greg



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Fri Oct 15 14:27:44 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 19:27:44 +0100
Subject: Test for plain files
References: <38067a0c.17243317@news.eunet.no>
Message-ID: <m3g0zciin3.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

u970130 at studbo.hit.no (Thomas Weholt) writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I need to know wether or not a file is a dir or a plain file. I`m
> using os.walk to traverse directory-tree, and want to process only
> plain files. How can I do this or what module can be used? 
> 
> I`ve allready looked into os.stat for info, but is there sort of a
> os.stat.isdir() function available? 

close: os.path.isdir is what you want.
hth,
Michael



From gregm at iname.com  Wed Oct 20 00:40:04 1999
From: gregm at iname.com (Greg McFarlane)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 14:40:04 +1000
Subject: Scrolling Regions within a Frame.
In-Reply-To: <0Z5P3.17659$Bf6.222555@pm02news>; from Dave Rose on 19 Oct 1999 at 10:07:56PM
References: <0Z5P3.17659$Bf6.222555@pm02news>
Message-ID: <19991020144004.60564@nms.otc.telstra.com.au>

On 19 Oct, Dave Rose wrote:
> I am trying to create a scroll bar for a frame that contains many frames
> that contain many buttons.  I have not found any way to encapsulate the
> frames to make them scroll.

One of the megawidgets (Pmw.ScrolledFrame) in Pmw, Python megawidgets,
does this.  You can find Pmw at <http://www.dscpl.com.au/pmw/>.

-- 
Greg McFarlane     INMS Telstra Australia     gregm at iname.com



From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct  5 15:09:58 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 19:09:58 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>

In article <7tdgb9$bbv$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
Preston Landers  <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>Sorry to answer my own question, but I wrote a primitive little
>implementation of my request pending discovery of 'the official
>version.'  Note that mine actually uses the unix touch command but it
>could easily be modified to use the more portable python open(file, "w")

I haven't really looked at your code, but I needed to mention that
'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct  5 01:23:28 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 01:23:28 -0400
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.05.9910042051340.156-100000@david.ski.org>
Message-ID: <000301bf0ef1$c1ba9140$f92d153f@tim>

[Tim]
> I *hope* Python2 has a generic "number" concept, and doesn't distiguish
> among ints, longs, floats and complexii <ahem> by default.

[David Ascher]
> So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..

Yes -- and it should return 7 <wink>.

sqrt has a right to define its domain.  What I would like to see is this not
fail:

>>> math.sqrt(4+0j)
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: can't convert complex to float; use e.g. abs(z)
>>>

sqrt(4) is utterly vanilla, and it's computer-centric nonsense that the
"+0j" somehow makes 4 not 4.  This all ties into a principled reason for 1/2
to return 0.5, of course -- or some other internal equivalent that doesn't
suffer silent catastrophic loss of information.  These "different rules for
different numbers", like tagging long ints with "L", don't make much sense
to people.

> BTW, it's "complices" (from the French for 'accomplice').

J'aime manger le poulet.

a-sister-made-me-memorize-that-once<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From meowing at banet.net  Sat Oct 16 23:23:09 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: 16 Oct 1999 23:23:09 -0400
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
In-Reply-To: "Bill Rodgers"'s message of "Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:06:07 -0600"
References: <zWaO3.2925$lv2.105561@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <879052ekma.fsf@slip-32-101-160-199.ma.us.prserv.net>

In nnmh:python, Bill Rodgers <Bill at nospam.com> wrote:

> I would like to check for the existance of a file before I attempt an open
> and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way to do this.

os.stat() will do the job.



From torppa at polykoira.megabaud.fi  Wed Oct  6 08:20:13 1999
From: torppa at polykoira.megabaud.fi (Jarkko Torppa)
Date: 6 Oct 1999 12:20:13 GMT
Subject: how to translate a virtual path to a physical path in a CGI script
References: <000b8d9b.daa24cc0@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>
Message-ID: <7tfept$lkc$1@news.kolumbus.fi>

In article <000b8d9b.daa24cc0 at usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>, raymondjia wrote:
>Hi, all
>
>Can anybody tell me how to translate a virtual path to a physical one
>in a CGI script?  I browsed through the recent topics and couldn't find
>the answer.  Basicly what I need is the equivalent of ASP's
>Server.MapPath().
>
>Is there any Python CGI FAQ page around?

This is not python specific, it is more specific to your webservers cgi
implementation.

apache on unix sets the following environment variables that have the infomation
you seem to be looking for.

PATH_INFO 
       /haloo 
PATH_TRANSLATED 
       /www/htdocs/haloo 
QUERY_STRING 

REQUEST_URI 
       /~torppa/koe.cgi/haloo 
SCRIPT_FILENAME 
       /homes/polykoira/torppa/.public_html/koe.cgi 
SCRIPT_NAME 
       /~torppa/koe.cgi 

the request was for /~torppa/koe.cgi/halloo
/~torppa/koe.cgi is the cgi-bin.

-- 
 Jarkko Torppa                torppa at staff.megabaud.fi
  Megabaud Internet-palvelut



From jim at bruer.org  Wed Oct 13 17:24:26 1999
From: jim at bruer.org (Jim Bruer)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 17:24:26 -0400
Subject: delimiting text file??
Message-ID: <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org>

I've made it through the first 3 chapters of, Learning Python and
various online tutorials. With some excitement I'm trying to write my
FIRST program which will read a text file and comma delimit it, so it
can be read into a database table. I can read and write the file (line
by line) ok, but:

How do you insert a delimiter into a string at a given position?

Tried "f.insert(i,x)" then realized this is for mutable sequences.This
is so stupid I'm embarrassed to ask.




From thomas at xs4all.nl  Thu Oct 28 02:58:17 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 08:58:17 +0200
Subject: mktime and tupples
In-Reply-To: <3817CF66.8128A13F@qut.edu.au>; from r.albanese@qut.edu.au on Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 02:21:59PM +1000
References: <3817CF66.8128A13F@qut.edu.au>
Message-ID: <19991028085817.A29354@xs4all.nl>

On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 02:21:59PM +1000, Rico Albanese wrote:

> I am writing a web application and I am trying to get a string which
> represents a date (eg. 16071999) and generate from this the
> corresponding Unix Time in secs from Epoch.  So with the following code
> I am trying to generate a tuple which is suitable to pass to
> time.mktime() as a parameter.  I have imported all of the required
> modules but the following code bombs out at the line "thetime=...".  Are
> the variables y, m, d strings? How do I create a tuple (ie. variable
> "atime" below) so that it is a valid parameter for time.mktime()?  Here
> is my code :

You forgot to include the error message, but fortunately my python gave the
same one ;)

> yr=re.search('[0-9]{1,4}$',c_date)  #pull year from 16071999 eg. 1999
> dymnth=re.search('^[0-9]{1,4}',c_date)  #pull out day/month from
> 16071999 eg. 1607
> daymonth=dymnth.group()
> dy=re.search('^[0-9]{1,2}',daymonth)  #pull out day from 16071999 eg. 16
> 
> mnth=re.search('[0-9]{1,2}$',daymonth)  #pull out month from 16071999
> eg. 07
> y=yr.group()
> m=mnth.group()
> d=dy.group()
> atime=(y,m,d,0,0,0,0,0,0)

You're forgetting that re's group() returns strings. Let me guess, you are
used to perls' automatic conversions ? :) y, m and d are strings containing
digits (because that's what you 're' for), so the tuple contains

>>> atime
('1999', '07', '16', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

See the difference between the first three elements and the rest ? You need
to convert the strings to ints first:

>>> atime=(int(y),int(m),int(d),0,0,0,0,0,0)
>>> atime
(1999, 7, 16, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

Now mktime works properly:

>>> thetime=time.mktime(atime)
>>> thetime
932076000.0
>>> time.ctime(thetime)
'Fri Jul 16 00:00:00 1999'

Couple of other hints though... time.strptime() does mostly what you want
without using nasty regexps ;) See the library reference for more
documentation on it. And dont forget that the python interpreter is very
interactive. You can generally just paste your script into your python
interpreter, and see where it goes wrong, and find out why. Simply printing
atime in your above script would have given a lot more hints. Alternatively,
use python -i, which forces interactive mode after the script finishes...
also great for post-mortem investigations...

A-lot-of-our-knowledge-of-inner-workings-comes-from-postmortems'ly y'rs,
	Thomas
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From herzog at online.de  Mon Oct 11 19:24:14 1999
From: herzog at online.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 01:24:14 +0200
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <m3ln9czeaz.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <oqyaddz6ev.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <m3bta51nxd.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Bernhard Herzog <herzog at online.de> ?crit:
> 
> > The only reason not to use a function for marking strings as translatable
> > without translating them is probably performance, but the overhead for
> > such a solution would be negligible in most cases, I guess.
> 
> Oh, you have to be careful with that.  We discovered rather soon, in the
> preliminary discussions, a while before `gettext' existed, that some people
> (usually English speaking) are extremely sensitive to the loss of performance
> that might be induced by internationalisation.

I guess they were also C-programmers and C-programmers tend to be
'performance conscious'. Python already has a substantial overhead
compared to C, so a little more may often be acceptable, IMO.

> More than once, I saw applications having preset structures holding a lot of
> translatable strings, yet very few of all these strings will be effectively
> used to build some output while the program runs.  If we use a Python
> function call in those positions, the program will proceed to translating
> _all_ strings while initialising the structure, and this would mean an
> appreciable slowdown, that I would be tempted to consider unacceptable.

Well, I was talking about the equivalent of the N_ preprocessor macro
which is only used to mark strings for translation but which does not
translate the strings. If you use a python function like 'def N_(s):
return s' as the python equivalent you end up with lots of function
calls which essentially do nothing. The translation will be done just
before a message is actually printed.

Function calls are relatively costly in Python, so in the case you
described this overhead may still be unacceptable, but that depends on
how often or long the program is executed.

> Loading all strings from a PO file (compiled or not) at once, and
> establishing a Python dictionary for them at program startup, might also be
> a costly operation, that would be prohibitive in big applications.

I've tested the gnome-python gettext.py module a bit over the weekend,
and it does just that (although it reads from the mo-file). It can be
used as a drop-in replacement for the intl C-module (the interface to
GNU gettext).

I've tested it with Sketch (about 400 translated strings) and didn't
notice any slowdown on startup, but then again, Sketch already does a
lot things when it starts like importing lots of python and C-modules or
scanning directories for fonts, so a bit more isn't really noticeable.

> Lazy processing of PO files would be a much more attractive avenue for
> Python, as it is for other languages.

Of course.


-- 
Bernhard Herzog	  | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
herzog at online.de  | http://www.online.de/home/sketch/



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Fri Oct 15 11:41:31 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:41:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <38058E9D.9C7FA64F@compaq.com>
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
	<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
	<38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>
	<14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au>
	<14339.41837.609410.864634@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<5lr9j056ud.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<38058E9D.9C7FA64F@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <14343.19243.257573.974054@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "GE" == Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:

  GE> I suspect that, if you introduce read-only lexical scoping,
  GE> you're just going to substitute the stream of "Why is there no
  GE> #@%$#$% lexical scoping in Python" complaints with "Why the
  GE> #@%$#$% can't I assign to a non-local variable in Python"...

I agree whole-heartedly with you here!

Jeremy



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Sat Oct 30 03:40:21 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:40:21 +1000
Subject: rstrip
In-Reply-To: <381A7208.D53BB0E0@wjk.mv.com>; from William King on Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 12:20:25AM -0400
References: <381A7208.D53BB0E0@wjk.mv.com>
Message-ID: <19991030174021.A1362@Ridcully.home>

On Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 12:20:25AM -0400, William King wrote:
> #made a string with leading tabs
> 
>  x  =  "        Test"
> 
> #used rstrip(x) to eliminate leading tabs (whitespace)
> import string
> string.rstrip(x)
> 
> #resulted in
> 
> \011\011Test
> 
> #lstrip will take away tabs (whitespace) and strip will do same
> #but it appears that rstrip does not on Windows 95
> #is this a bug? or do I have to do something to redefine whitespace?

Everything is fine, don't panic! rstrip removes *trailing* whitespace (i.e.
the 'r' stands for 'right', just like the 'l' in lstrip is 'left'). Do some
experiments with strip, lstrip and rstrip on a string with leading and
trailing whitespace and you'll see the difference. 

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From lamzak at hotmail.com  Fri Oct 22 08:17:15 1999
From: lamzak at hotmail.com (lamzak at hotmail.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:17:15 GMT
Subject: wrote a simple LDAP script to contact ldap.bigfoot.com
Message-ID: <7upkk9$p62$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi,

I (lamzak at hotmail.com) wrote a simple LDAP script to contact /
retrieve information from ldap.bigfoot.com (or any (?) public LDAP
server). Maybe interesting for others:


# Retrieving information from bigfoot.com / ldap.bigfoot.com using
python LDAP module
# LamZak 1999
# Needs ldap.pyd and LDAP32.DLL (on Windows)
# LDAP API calls are documented in RFC1823
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1823.html
#

import ldap, sys

# Open connection to LDAP server:
l = ldap.open("ldap.bigfoot.com", 389) # there must be some beautiful
CONSTANT for 389

# Authenticate to LDAP server:
l.simple_bind_s("","")

# Search:
res = l.search_s("cn=r smith",ldap.SCOPE_SUBTREE,"objectclass=*")

# res = l.search_s("o=gemini",ldap.SCOPE_SUBTREE,"objectclass=*")
	# not OK
# res = l.search_s("mail=gemini",ldap.SCOPE_SUBTREE,"objectclass=*")
	# not OK

print res

# Close the connection:
l.unbind()



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From steve_w at localhost.localdomain  Sun Oct 31 22:57:03 1999
From: steve_w at localhost.localdomain (steve_w at localhost.localdomain)
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 03:57:03 GMT
Subject: Python 1.5.2 RPM for LinuxPPC?
References: <7vgv1g$tfm$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn81q54c.8mr.steve_w@localhost.localdomain>

In article <7vgv1g$tfm$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, phil at filsa.net wrote:
>
>
>Hello--
>
>I'm looking for an rpm for Python 1.5.2/LinuxPPC... does anyone have
>one?
>
Yes.  Chad Netzer has packaged a source rpm that builds for LinuxPPC
without a problem.  There are some pitfalls to look out for though.
LinuxPPC uses some RedHat admin tools that are written in Python and
which produce run-time syntax warnings (or maybe failures) if you
upgrade to Python 1.52 without also fixing them.  Your best bet is
to go to his web site at <http://2xtreme.net/chadn/python/> then
read the instructions there about upgrading netcfg and pythonlib at
the same time you remove and replace the LinuxPPC python 1.51 packages
with his.  

Steve Wall  




From stalnaker at acm.org  Sat Oct 16 15:12:21 1999
From: stalnaker at acm.org (Max M. Stalnaker)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 12:12:21 -0700
Subject: re question
References: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>
Message-ID: <D64O3.9668$E_1.520519@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>

Thank you for the many responses.

I learned about minimalistic searching, which I had not used before and so
did not think to apply to this problem.  This is probably what I thought I
was missing.

I learned that maybe my approach was limited and I should learn to use
htmllib.  Probably the way I am doing it now is only suitable for large
tables of data and should be limited to that.

In the meantime, I used span twice and extracted the string that way.  This
does not require special sentinels either since I can search for the
beginning tag and for the end tag.

Thank you again.




"Max M. Stalnaker" <stalnaker at acm.org> wrote in message
news:T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473 at typ11.nn.bcandid.com...
> I have the following code:
>
>  def subset(self):
>   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
>   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]
>
> Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
> stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
> single %.  The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags
is
> just the way I tried and had sometime success.
>
> Maybe there is a better way to do this.  Or someone could perhaps suggest
re
> code that would do it.  Thank you.
>
> My current idea is to construct a single character sentinel out of
something
> greater than chr(128) and use that.  This will probably work in this
> application, but I feel like I am missing something.
>
> --
> Max M. Stalnaker  mailto:stalnaker at acm.org  http://www.astarcc.com
>
>





From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Fri Oct  8 21:09:28 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 21:09:28 -0400
Subject: Marking translatable strings
In-Reply-To: Bernhard Herzog's message of "09 Oct 1999 18:31:15 +0200"
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <m3ln9czeaz.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
Message-ID: <oqyaddz6ev.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Bernhard Herzog <herzog at online.de> ?crit:

> The only place I can think of where Python's syntax forbids a function
> call but allows a string literal is a doc-string.

My impression as well.

> The only reason not to use a function for marking strings as translatable
> without translating them is probably performance, but the overhead for
> such a solution would be negligible in most cases, I guess.

Oh, you have to be careful with that.  We discovered rather soon, in the
preliminary discussions, a while before `gettext' existed, that some people
(usually English speaking) are extremely sensitive to the loss of performance
that might be induced by internationalisation.  This is why there are so
many tricks, both within `gettext' and Makefile engineering, to either get
speed or just opt out.  Now, it seems that the idea of internationalisation
made its way among programmers, enough that we have much less reluctance than
we used to.  But still, we should probably stay careful about performance.

One important point in that matter is to lazy-translate as much as we can,
to have better program start time.  PO files usually are installed all
pre-hashed (compiled) so the load time could be reduced to about what
it takes to find the proper file, plus the proper `mmap' system call.
Files are not loaded until the time a translation is effectively needed --
as there are many cases where programs just do output anything at all,
or nothing needing a translation.  Under GNU C, each textual `gettext'
call ensures a particular string is hashed only once, the translation is
then immediately cached into a variable allocated by the macro, and reused
directly afterwards.

More than once, I saw applications having preset structures holding a lot of
translatable strings, yet very few of all these strings will be effectively
used to build some output while the program runs.  If we use a Python
function call in those positions, the program will proceed to translating
_all_ strings while initialising the structure, and this would mean an
appreciable slowdown, that I would be tempted to consider unacceptable.

Loading all strings from a PO file (compiled or not) at once, and
establishing a Python dictionary for them at program startup, might also be
a costly operation, that would be prohibitive in big applications.  This is
surely a simple way to prototype and experiment around internationalisation,
but it should not stay in the long run.  Lazy processing of PO files would
be a much more attractive avenue for Python, as it is for other languages.

> Such existing code only makes a difference to the program which extracts
> translatable strings as it might end up putting strings into po-files
> that aren't actually meant to be translated and will never be
> translated.

Indeed.  We already have a few PO files having more than one thousand
entries.  Some experimental extractions I did show me that Emacs would
require many dozens of thousands entries.  Since Python seems to scale very
well for big projects, we should seek solutions that scale equally well,
and are not going to slowly get in the way while a project grows.

> gnome-python has a pure-python module, gettext.py, that can read .mo
> files.  I haven't tried it yet, though.

I did not find the time either, yet I definitely should, and will.
You'll help me if, when ready, I cannot easily locate that module. :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From boncelet at udel.edu  Mon Oct 25 05:21:00 1999
From: boncelet at udel.edu (Charles Boncelet)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:21:00 +0000
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
		<018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
		<al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
		<m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net>
		<14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
		<m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <381420FC.41AC9EED@udel.edu>

How about "-v" for normal verbosity and "-V" for extra verbosity.
More than that and you are probably asking for debugging information
and I suggest "-D n" for debug level "n".

	Charlie Boncelet

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." wrote:
> 
> Les Schaffer writes:
>  > ahhh, okay. hadnt thought about that one. i usually dont write stuff
>  > that needs that kinda thing. on the other hand, what would be wrong
>  > with coding -v3 (verbose level 3)? seems easier to me somehow...
> 
> Les,
>   There's certainly nothing wrong with that, except that simply -v for
> verbose becomes impossible.  Using yet another option seems like
> overkill from a UI perspective (too many options to explain).
> 
>  > wanted to hear what they were. still, i personally will veer towards
>  > the getargs or similar py modules for my own stuff....
> 
>   Sounds quite reasonable to me!
> 
>   -Fred
> 
> --
> Fred L. Drake, Jr.           <fdrake at acm.org>
> Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From shrogers at ionet.net  Sun Oct 10 12:29:26 1999
From: shrogers at ionet.net (Steven H. Rogers)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 11:29:26 -0500
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process
References: <37FF5655.F6A0B896@ionet.net> <004401bf1291$654f0aa0$010101c1@home>
Message-ID: <3800BEE6.826D190B@ionet.net>

Arpad Kiss wrote:
> 
> What about xml-rpc?

I'll look into it. 

-- Steve



From chale at texas.net  Sun Oct 10 17:14:07 1999
From: chale at texas.net (CHale)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:14:07 -0500
Subject: sending ctrl chars using sio module
Message-ID: <Fi7M3.12108$Ft.385384@news5.giganews.com>

Hi all,
I am new to python and I am trying to send hex data strings out the serial
port. I am using the siomodule and python1.5.2.
I used the modem.py and it works fine talking to my modem. So I adapted it
to send control chars to my X10 cm11a controller - or at least that's what I
am attempting.  So I am trying to send raw binary data  out the serial port
using sio. Can anyone offer some advice here?

I tried using Serial.Port.cmd(self, str) - where str is a decimal list of
bytes [4,124].
By contrast, the modem app was sending strings of printable text.

It may not be relevant, but I am using the RSP_FIXEDLEN mode for response.
Could it be that the Serial.Port.cmd() is the wrong method to use? Is there
another more appropriate for binary data? or is the list object just the
wrong way to go about this?

Class snippet:
class CtrlrModule(Serial.Port):
    <snip>
    def cmd(self, str=''):
            self._trace('cm11A.cmd')
            cmdStrng = str
            chkSum = str[0] + str[1]

            # send it to port
            print len(cmdStrng)
            Serial.Port.cmd(self, str)    # <*** the offending linecurrently
            rsp = ok = Serial.Port.read(self,1)







From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Mon Oct 18 10:47:13 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 15:47:13 +0100
Subject: Anaconda
References: <19991018150359.A26882@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <m3bt9wd8um.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> writes:
> Hmm, does anyone know if there's useful information on anaconda?
> I'd like to use their libraries for creating console windows.

No, I don't know of any information. But I thought that anaconda was
the flashy new PyGTK GUI installers libs, not the console stuff.

May be wrong, mind.

Michael



From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Sun Oct 17 11:06:39 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 17:06:39 +0200
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <3802F1F7.C6BD5BE2@compaq.com> <5lu2nw576n.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <38059BEF.20C08E68@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <3809E5FF.9E28CD2@appliedbiometrics.com>

Now I feel I have to reply :)

Sorry about the topic shift.

Greg Ewing wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >
> > The magic may easily be
> > triggered at the wrong moment -- e.g. the debugger may be looking at
> > your stack frame, and depending on whether it copies the object it
> > pulls out of your stack frame into a local variable before looking at
> > it or not, it will see either a function or the magic object.

<big snip>

> > Note that this is also one of the reasons why I'm feeling uneasy with
> > the stackless Python patch set ... it uses a magic object
> 
> I wouldn't reject the whole idea of a stackless interpreter
> on the basis of that implementation, though. I suspect the
> author used a special object because it got the job done with
> minimal changes to the existing code. There are other ways to
> signal to the interpreter what is to be done next.

Thanks a lot, Greg. This is exactly true: In order to come up
with a working solution which avoids to rewrite everything,
this implementation uses a special object.

There is not much more "magic" than in the standard implementation
BTW, since Python already has a special object: NULL, which means
"evaluator, there is no valid result, please wind back and handle
the error".
I'm just adding a third state which says
"evaluator, there is a frame to be evaluated right now, please
wind back and let it happen".

Note that like NULL, this object never pops out to the interpreter
level, it is just an element of an internal protocol. If Python was
using exceptions instead of NULL to trigger special handling, it
could as well be implemented that way, and there are other ways.

> > (another reason is that it can't be
> > done in JPython so it can't be made a part of the language standard)
> 
> Has supporting JPython become an official guiding principle
> behind mainstream Python development? That may turn out to be
> somewhat restrictive in the long term.

This is the first time that I hear this argument from Guido.
Is getting rid of Stackless Python enough of a challenge to
define JPython compatibility as a Python standard requirement?
Well, at least *some* effect, while different from my targets. :-)

And who has tried to port SP to JPython already? Is there any
reason why JPython should not be able to become stackless?

Tell me it's impossible, and I will try to implement it,
since Stackless Python was told to be impossible as well.

Accepting-Guido's-claim-if-I'm-allowed-to-revert-it
- if-possible-in-JPython-then-it-will-be-standard- -ly 'yrs - chris

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
     we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home



From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Wed Oct 27 09:14:39 1999
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 15:14:39 +0200
Subject: search (match) backward
References: <7v4c3h$19k$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3816CF53.DB623BAC@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <y0jn1t5lzcw.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:

> mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote:
[...]
> This raises the interesting question of whether there is an
> algorithm for reversing an RE (i.e. find an RE which matches
> the reverse of the strings that the original RE matches).
> Can it even be done in general? My intuition says yes, but
> I can't think of a proof off the top of my head.

I want to try! :)

OK... A regular expression expresses a regular language, right? And
they are built from union, concatenation, and closure... (I'm assuming
that all other stuff in the re module follows from this... Though with
lookahead etc. this is probably not the case...)

So...A regular set is a singleton set, the union of two regular sets,
the concatenation of two regular sets, or the closure of a regular
sets. I guess I just have to show how to reverse all of these
constructs...

A singleton set consists of only one symbol, so it doesn't have to be
reversed. A union doesn't express order, so that doesn't have to be
reversed either (but of course both of the sets being used must be).
Concatenation must be reversed - and van, quite simply. Just
concatenate the sets in the opposite order (after they themselves have
been reversed). Finally - closure does not have to be reversed, since
patterns from the same set are repeated, and the order is
insignificant.

So - as far as I can see, it can be done, and only the concatenation
actually needs rearranging... So - while I'm at it...

There's no parser here, but I think it should be trivial to construct
(with this minimal regexp grammar).

----- rereverse.py -----

class RegExp:
    def __init__(self, left, right):
        self.left = left
        self.right = right

class Singleton(RegExp):
    def __init__(self, value):
        self.value = value

    def accept(self, visitor):
        return visitor.visitSingleton(self)

class Union(RegExp):
    def accept(self, visitor):
        return visitor.visitUnion(self)

class Concatenation(RegExp):
    def accept(self, visitor):
        return visitor.visitConcatenation(self)

class Closure(RegExp):
    def __init__(self, child):
        self.child = child
        
    def accept(self, visitor):
        return visitor.visitClosure(self)

class RegexpReverser:
    def visitSingleton(self, singleton):
        return singleton.value

    def visitUnion(self, union):
        l = union.left.accept(self)
        r = union.right.accept(self)
        return "("+l+"|"+r+")"

    def visitConcatenation(self, concat):
        l = concat.left.accept(self)
        r = concat.right.accept(self)
        return r+l

    def visitClosure(self, closure):
        c = closure.child.accept(self)
        return "("+c+")*"


if __name__=="__main__":
    r = Concatenation(Union(Singleton("a"),
                            Singleton("b")),
                      Closure(Singleton("c")))
    rr = RegexpReverser()
    result = r.accept(rr)
    print result

------------------------

> 
> Greg

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From rimbault at cybercable.fr  Sun Oct 17 15:35:16 1999
From: rimbault at cybercable.fr (Jean-Claude Rimbault)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:35:16 +0200
Subject: A question
References: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi>
Message-ID: <380A24F4.D83CDA9E@cybercable.fr>

Kristian Nylund wrote:

> Could someone tell me an easy way to do
> something like "for i in `ls *.txt`..."
> in python?

The glob module is your friend:

import glob

for i in glob.glob('*.txt'): print i





From madonl at bigfoot.com  Fri Oct 29 22:51:41 1999
From: madonl at bigfoot.com (Louis Madon)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:51:41 -0400
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 
 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <m1KYeLAuVYG4EwP9@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <381A5D3D.34BAB971@bigfoot.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> In article <381A421D.D8C8E22F at bigfoot.com>, Louis Madon
> <madonl at bigfoot.com> writes
> >
> ...
> I'm a bit confused here after seeing the argument presented as a
> function of only two types. Say I implement + for floats and then Tim
> does it for rationals then in terms of functional mappings + has 2
> inputs and one output ie 3 possible types are involved.
> 
> Thus my take is that we have
> 
> f  f  and r  r
>  f +       r +
> 
> after the combination we have
> 
> f  f r and r f r
>   f+ .      f. .
>   r. .      r. +
> 
> so to my way of thinking to fill in we seem to have to modify the
> existing operators or provide the mapping f-->r or r-->f
> --
> Robin Becker

Well a rational need not require two inputs if you present it as an
object but I understand what you're getting at.  In dylan at least,
there is the notion of "method congruence".  All methods added to a
multimethod must have the same signature (ie. interface) - only the
argument types can differ (well its a bit more sophisticated than that
but thats the basic idea).  That guarantees that clients can always do
the add (or whatwever) in a generic way without concern for the make up
of the individual types.  Ofcourse you can always define additional
multi-methods to express a general concept in a different style.

Louis.



From bkhunter at best.com  Thu Oct 28 17:02:17 1999
From: bkhunter at best.com (Bill Hunter)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:02:17 -0700
Subject: Where can I find Python enthusiasts?
Message-ID: <9JEYOD6GVlcrZDyqHozfhabgj7tM@4ax.com>

How available would you say Python programming talent is and where
should I start looking for programmers?  I know, I know, Python is so
easy to get started with that any decent programmer can be fluent in a
day  :- )  ... but humor me for a minute and help me figure out how to
introduce and staff this in our company. Should I be posting more
explicit information about the job opportunity in this forum (assuming
that is ok?), asking you about contract programmers, or wearing a
trench coat and lurking about on street corners in Amsterdam and
Reston waving handsful of cash?

We are in San Francisco, btw, if any of you are avid Pythoneers and
fed up with your current job.



From cgw at fnal.gov  Wed Oct 20 06:55:34 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 12:55:34 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
In-Reply-To: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
References: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <14349.40870.777064.518592@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Thomas Weholt writes:

 > I was thinking maybe I could use pickle and compress the pickled object
 > too, before storing it into the database and save some space. Pickled
 > objects also seem to have lots of repetitive data.

If you zlib-compress each pickled object, you're going to get some
savings in space, due to "internal redundancy" (i.e. low entropy) in
the objects themselves; but it seems to me that there is also
redundancy *between* the objects; how to exploit this is not at all
clear to me however.

It would be nifty if you could dynamically compress/uncompress the
whole database file, e.g. using some kind of "compressed file system",
but this presents difficultes - AFAIK there is some limited
"compressed file system" support for Linux but it's read-only, due to
the obvious difficulties of positioning and writing into the middle of
an existing compressed block.  Also "mmap" support is tricky...

I also want to point out that your database files may not be as big as
you think they are.  Gdbm files are typically sparse files, that is,
they don't take up as much space on disk as you would assume from "ls
-l", because these files contain "holes".

 > Awaiting flames and harsh words of discouragement,

Sorry to dissapoint you!



From culliton at clark.net  Fri Oct 15 00:10:00 1999
From: culliton at clark.net (Tom Culliton)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 04:10:00 GMT
Subject: is there a record separator? RS
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000@crb.crb-web.com> <87ln9574wv.fsf@banet.net> <YjxN3.1379$9%5.28842@dfw-read.news.verio.net> <87aepl6zrl.fsf@banet.net>
Message-ID: <sOxN3.1392$9%5.29057@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

In article <87aepl6zrl.fsf at banet.net>, greg andruk  <meowing at banet.net> wrote:
>Tom Culliton <culliton at clark.net> wrote:
>> If you're interested you can used deja-news to dig up the original
>> discussion with the details.
>
>I'll try.  Anyone recall the approximate dates and/or subjects?

I was just looking at it.  The subject was

	"Record seperator for readline(s)"

and the dates were Feb 2nd 1998 through Feb 10th 1998 inclusive.

>> To put words in Guido's mouth, my impression was that it would have
>> to be uniformly available to be acceptable.
>
>Figured as much.  Already stuffed a backward compatibility hook into
>PyFile_GetLine() so that objects without a separator attribute don't
>gag, but that's kind of icky.

Guido suggested that it be set to "\n" by default, i.e. it should
always be there.  Check the htread out, lots of good thoughts,
considerations and alternatives, ... are discussed there.



From andy at robanal.demon.co.uk  Sat Oct  2 13:35:33 1999
From: andy at robanal.demon.co.uk (Andy Robinson)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 17:35:33 GMT
Subject: lzw.py
References: <37F384C4.9486B017@darwin.in-berlin.de> <99093010375300.14370@quadra.teleo.net> <37F3A215.15A88B6B@darwin.in-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <38003d96.37710865@news.demon.co.uk>

"Dinu C. Gherman" <gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de> wrote:

>Patrick Phalen wrote:
>> 
>> PNG, (zlib loads and save .png files) sounds like what you want. 
>> It was written to avoid that problem.
>
>How do you know what I want? ;-) I wanted to see how LZW works
>and code it. This is what I did. I'm just frustrated that I may
>not share the code with anybody...


I think that decompression is free, but you'll have to ask them to be
sure.  And I'd imagine you only need to compression for your own
satisfaction to prove the obvious round trip 

Getting it working is an impressive achievement - I hope they let you
share it...

Regards,

Andy






From spooky at dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Oct 11 13:44:59 1999
From: spooky at dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk (Robert Longstaff)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:44:59 +0100
Subject: select() interruption by signal
Message-ID: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>

In my app I have a select() call inside a continuous loop waiting for 
asynchronous data input from various connected sources. As this call blocks 
and I need to perform other mini tasks I have an alarm call that fires 
every 2s that is reset inside its handler.

However I've found that this alarm signal, although being caught 
successfully by the handler, also interrupts the select() causing the app 
to bomb out:

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "./myapp.py", line 169, in ?
    inList, outList, specialList = select.select(select_mask, [], [])
select.error: (4, 'Interrupted system call')

Is this just a timing thing? Is the select() 'catching' the signal at the 
same time as the handler or is the signal 'hanging around' longer than it 
should?

Is there an option to get the select() to ignore signals or should I trap 
the exception (and throw it away)? I can't find any more information in the 
Python manual or man select. I'm using v1.5.1 on Linux.

Thanks in advance.

Robert.

P.S. I thought I'd ask this as a more 'general' question before including 
any source.



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 21 12:04:04 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 18:04:04 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
References: <380ED19E.1CA8168A@lemburg.com> <al8iu41m637.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <380F3974.FE3C6310@lemburg.com>

Markus Stenberg wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> writes:
> > Is there a way to find out the name of the OS distribution a script is
> > running on ?
> 
> Short answer: No.
> 
> > E.g. I'd like a function that returns 'Redhat6.1'/'SuSE6.2' or
> > 'Win95'/'Win98'/'WinNT' or 'MacOS8'/'MacOS9' etc.
> 
> Longer answer: It is possible to guess, but not trivially [by either
> hugging filesystem tightly, or by TCP/IP fingerprinting]. And AFAIK there
> isn't such a module available for Python, anyhow.

Well that's good enough for me :-) Let's see...

On SuSE Linux there's a file /etc/SuSE-release which tells me the
version etc.

There must be similar things on other systems... e.g.
one could check command.com on WinXX and query the registry (forgot
the key though) to find out which version it is running. It's a pitty
that "uname" doesn't return this information.

I was thinking of something similar to the config.guess shell
script included in autoconf. A bit more simpleminded perhaps but
with enough information to be recognizable by a human :-) I would
like to include it in the mxCGIPython project (see my Python Pages)
which automatically generates a canonical name for the system
where the binary is being compiled on.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    71 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From c.kotsokalis at noc.ntua.gr  Fri Oct 29 11:36:23 1999
From: c.kotsokalis at noc.ntua.gr (Constantinos A. Kotsokalis)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 15:36:23 GMT
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
Message-ID: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr>

This was forwarded to me. Anyone interested in coming face 2 face
with Tom and Brent? :-) Don't ask me why I don't go, I'm far from
being a Python expert (I'm trying, though).

--- Begin Forwarded Message ---

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:29:02 +1000
From: Greg Rose <ggr at qualcomm.com>
Subject: Python advocate needed for Perl/Python/Tcl bakeoff
Sender: owner-sage-members at usenix.org
To: sage-members at usenix.org
Reply-To: Greg Rose <ggr at qualcomm.com>
Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19991028192212.00bef2d0 at avalon.qualcomm.com>


Long ago there was a shell/perl/awk bakeoff invited talk at a USENIX 
conference somewhere or other. It was fun for all involved, and was very 
well received. We're looking to do something similar at the LISA conference 
in Seattle. Unfortunately we've been utterly unable to secure a Python 
advocate with a system administration background for the panel.

It would be on thursday 11th november. The idea would be to have a 
moderator (that would be me) and three advocates, and a slightly rowdy 
audience. We'd ask each advocate to nominate in advance some simple 
sysadmin task which shows their language to its advantage, and also to do 
the solutions to the other two's tasks... then there'd be some room for 
(presubmitted) tasks from the audience to be solved on the fly.

Do you know Python? Are you intending to attend LISA? Would you be willing 
to do this? We have Tom Christiansen for perl and Brent Welch for Tcl/Tk. 
Would you still be willing to do this? :-) Think of the fame and the 
tourist trade.

Please contact me directly, no need to bother the list. Please include a 
short statement about why you'd be good at this, since I don't know Python 
very well and will have to choose the advocate. Then, if you're not chosen, 
you should come to the bakeoff and heckle...

Greg.

Greg Rose                                     INTERNET: ggr at Qualcomm.com
Qualcomm Australia        VOICE:  +61-2-9181-4851   FAX: +61-2-9181-5470
Suite 410, Birkenhead Point,             http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/
Drummoyne NSW 2047    232B EC8F 44C6 C853 D68F  E107 E6BF CD2F 1081 A37C
--- End Forwarded Message ---

-- 
Constantinos A. Kotsokalis || c.kotsokalis at noc.ntua.gr
National Technical University of Athens
Network Management Center
Tel. No: +30 1 7721861



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 09:26:43 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:26:43 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <3802F1F7.C6BD5BE2@compaq.com> <5lu2nw576n.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3809CE93.63420C85@maxtal.com.au>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> (I'm falling into the middle again.  But this is interesting.  I hope
> I haven't misunderstood Greg's description.)
> 
> Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:
> > Under my scheme, that piece of code in itself does not create
> > a cycle. This is because a nested def does not immediately create
> > a closure; instead it creates a special "local function object"
> > which simply wraps the function. A closure is created "on
> > demand" whenever a local function object is fetched out of a
> > local variable. This is analogous to the way a bound method
> > object is created whenever a function is fetched out of a
> > class during an attribute lookup.
> 
> Hm.  I don't find it analogous, and while I agree that it's a clever
> hack to avoid cycles, I don't like it much. 

	But the real problem is simply that the inner function is
named, which can be avoided using a proper lambda. This isn't
a 'transparent' solution. However, until CPython gets a real
garbage collector (which solves the problem), a way to simultaneously
delete and return a function would be interesting: consider
changing 'del x' to an expression returning x, then:

	def make_adder():
		def adder ..
		return (del adder)

will remove adder from make_adder's stack frame, eliminating
the cycle.	

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 14:58:04 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:58:04 +0200
Subject: sending ctrl chars using sio module
References: <Fi7M3.12108$Ft.385384@news5.giganews.com>
Message-ID: <00cb01bf141a$8d12ada0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

CHale <chale at texas.net> wrote:
> I tried using Serial.Port.cmd(self, str) - where str is a decimal list of
> bytes [4,124].

not sure I follow here (you didn't include
the traceback, so I don't know why that
line offends you ;-).

but I suspect you're looking for a way
to create a binary string from a set of
character values?  (unless the docs says
so, the chances that the "cmd" function
will do this for you is quite small).

here are a few ways to do this:

str = chr(1) + chr(2) + chr(3)

import struct
str = struct.pack("3B", 1, 2, 3)

import string
str = string.join(map(chr, [1, 2, 3]), "")

import array
str = array.array("B", [1, 2, 3]).tostring()

hope this helps!

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Sun Oct  3 02:49:46 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 06:49:46 GMT
Subject: What GUI-lib to use
References: <37F1D710.47A82D23@bibsyst.no> <7st3i8$abd$1@essle.valdyas.org> <slrn7vcna2.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <7t6uaa$fh$1@essle.valdyas.org>

Alan Daniels <daniels at mindspring.com> wrote:
> (boud at rempt.xs4all.nl) wrote:

>>You might take a look at vipyl, the PyKDE point-and-click programming
>>environment, for a look of what the future could bring.

> Do you have a reference for this? Nothing showed up Google...

It has only just now appeared on comp.lang.python.announce:

 http://www.henning-schroeder.de/en/python/vipyl/
 

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 29 11:24:58 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:24:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Recovering method names at runtime
In-Reply-To: <kug0yui4lk.fsf@uk.research.att.com>
References: <kug0yui4lk.fsf@uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <14361.48202.552472.417543@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Rob Hague writes:
 > Is there any way to get a list of the method names of a class at runtime
 > (like, for example, the Java reflection API)? I'm intending to write a
 > class browser.

  There's a class browser in IDLE; you might want to take a look at
that.  You should probably use the CVS version since IDLE has changed
a lot since the 1.5.2 release.  For more information on CVS, see:

	http://www.python.org/download/cvs.html


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From I.Clarke at strs.co.uk  Fri Oct  8 11:50:28 1999
From: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk (Ian Clarke)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 16:50:28 +0100
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com> <007f01bf0f61$ac3768a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <37FE12C4.FD169F72@strs.co.uk>

> check out ping's rxb.py module:
> 
>     http://www.lfw.org/python/

This module is excellent.  If I had the power to do it, I would
encourage use of this in preference to the more conventional way of
writing regexps.  Just as few people would condone writing C code with
no whitespace formatting, I will now consider using the built-in method
bad programming practice, and would encourage others to do the same.

I wonder what the reaction would be on comp.lang.perl.misc if I made
this suggestion there?  (I suspect it would be the Usenet equivalent of
thermonuclear war - Perlers are very attached to their ability to
obfuscate code ;).

Ian.



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Fri Oct  8 12:41:20 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 17:41:20 +0100
Subject: Better python interactive prompt
References: <ted.drain-0810990918360001@mjordan.jpl.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <m3iu4hst3j.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

ted.drain at jpl.nasa.gov (Ted Drain) writes:

> Hi all,
> Has anyone written a hack (I mean feature addition) to the python
> interactive prompt under UNIX?  I'm looking for features similar to the
> ones present in the GNU readline library:
> 
> - Command history
> - Command line editing
> - etc, etc
> 
> I may try to write this myself, but it means parsing the lines somewhat to
> handle the different indentation, prompting, etc.
> 
> Thanks
> Ted

the time machine strikes again!

"import rlcompleter"-ly y'rs Michael

no really, hang on; you mean you *don't* get command line editing by
default? If you import rlcompleter you get completion but you should
get editing and history anyway. what platform's this? 

If readline's installed, try compiling your own Python; make sure the
readline module's uncommented in Modules/Setup.

hth,
Michael



From mona at eel.ucsd.edu  Fri Oct 29 19:55:05 1999
From: mona at eel.ucsd.edu (Mona Wong)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:55:05 -0700
Subject: vector?
Message-ID: <9910291655.ZM20772@eel.ucsd.edu>

Hi:

	I am new to python ... I'm sure you've heard that too many times before
...

	Anyway, to make vectors using python, is there a module or should I
just make it out of arrays?

	I searched the archive but didn't see any info related to vectors.

	Thanks, in advance, for your help.

Sincerely,

Mona


-- 
==================================================================
Mona Wong
graphics / visualization programmer wanna-be & web fool-arounder
National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research
University of California, San Diego
http://www-ncmir.ucsd.edu/

"The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off"
				A Landmark instructor
==================================================================




From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 12 10:50:10 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 14:50:10 GMT
Subject: Folks..
References: <380336F2.557DDFC0@orchestream.com>
Message-ID: <7tvhr2$2eb@dfw-ixnews21.ix.netcom.com>

[posted and e-mailed]

In article <380336F2.557DDFC0 at orchestream.com>,
Tobe Bradshaw  <tbradshaw at orchestream.com> wrote:
>Just convince me that this NG is in fact just very quiet and it's not my
>news feed that's broke..

It's your newsfeed.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From steve_allison at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 19 12:25:19 1999
From: steve_allison at my-deja.com (steve_allison at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:25:19 GMT
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
Message-ID: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello all,

I've been working through the Python tutorial, and a have a few queries
about the syntax of Python.  Python seems to me to basically be a very
nicely constructed language, but I have been wondering about a few
(seeming) syntactic anomalies:

i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed, why are things like
len() not member functions of list/tuples ?

ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
operator seems peculiar.

Are these historical artefacts, or is the language designed liek tis
for a reason ?  If so some can someone tell me the reasoning behind
this scheme ?  I have mostly really liked what I've seen of Python so
far, but niggles like these are really annoying me!

Perplexed,

Steve

--
Steve Allison
Never reads dejanews mail


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From srenner at lycosmail.com  Mon Oct  4 12:33:38 1999
From: srenner at lycosmail.com (srenner at lycosmail.com)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 16:33:38 GMT
Subject: Linux, Python, and pipes
References: <7taffc$3m1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tah0r$gq0$1@fyemf.fys.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <7takt1$85i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>



sys.stdout.flush()



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:02:58 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:02:58 -0400
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vkk9r.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <000301bf0fb8$0e935940$cf2d153f@tim>

[Tim]
> ...
> These "different rules for different numbers", like tagging long
> ints with "L", don't make much sense to people.

[William "Billy" Tanksley]
> I'd like that too.  Only keep floats out of it if possible -- Lisp had
> the right idea there.  I think 1/2 should return 1/2 unless otherwise
> coerced.
>
> ABC worked that way, IIRC.

Yes, and that's why Python doesn't <0.1 wink>.  A simple numeric loop that
doubles its storage and processing requirements on each iteration is a
common outcome of using unbounded rationals under the covers.  That's not
user-friendly either; rationals are as much a tool for experts as
floating-point *should* be, but for different reasons.

The only scheme I've seen that "real people" pick up at once is REXX's --
because Cowlishaw deliberately implemented an arithmetic that mimics what
people do with pencil and paper (fixed-but-unbounded precision decimal
floating point, with a massive exponent range).  In a lucky break, despite
that people no longer know how to use pencils, much the same scheme is used
in pocket calculators.

I think Python2 is going to need a lot of ways to spell numeric literals
<wink>.

> 'bots have sisters?

Humanist.

all-god's-children-have-sisters-ly y'rs  - tim





From wtanksle at hawking.armored.net  Sat Oct 23 10:23:59 1999
From: wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 14:23:59 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999 05:55:44 +1000, skaller wrote:
>William Tanksley wrote:
>> This is totally orthogonal to your post, but I'm just curious: I like how
>> Dylan allows one to write the first argument of a function either as a
>> distinguished or ordinary paramter -- that is, "abs(1)" is the same as
>> "(1).abs()".

>> Can we do the same with Viper?

>	No. I was going to implement it, but when I considered it,
>I realised it wouldn't work well in Python. The problem is 
>several fold: in the first place, there's nothing magical
>about function calls in python:

>		x.a (args)

>is really:
>	(x.a) (args)
>that is, an attribute lookup _followed_ by a function call.

Yes, I see.  This does make this syntax effectively impossible.  Okay,
just as well.

>So we would need to say that if
>	x.a
>fails, try looking for 'a'. Worse, consider:

Actually, you'd always define x.a when you defined a globally.  Not that
hard, just a huge waste of space and time :).

>Anyhow, it started to look seriously inconsistent in Python.

You know, I'd always thought of that as a problem with Python (although it
makes certain things simpler), but I just recently found the XML-RPC
client written in Python.  Because Python is not supposed to have
knowledge of objects' internals, the XML-RPC calls are direct -- you just
write "xml_object.method(...)" rather than having to quote the names of
the remote methods, as you have to do with every other XML-RPC API.

Cool.

>> Of course, I'm about to ask for multiple dispatch, but since everyone who
>> even knows what multiple dispatch is already knew I was going to ask for
>> it...  So I won't bother asking.

>	What do you want it to do? Any idea how it should work in Python?

Multiple dispatch.  Hmm...

Okay, the type of OO you're familiar with is also known as single dispatch
-- you take a message, a bunch of parameters, and a special parameter
(called 'this' or 'self'), and you look up the meaning of the message in
self's method table.

With multiple dispatch, OTOH, you take a message and a bunch of
parameters, and you look up the meaning of the message in the message's
parameter table.

You can think of it as being like a combination of overloading and
templates, but resolvable at runtime.  Thus, it's MUCH more powerful
without being more risky -- in fact, it's less risky than most
implementations of overloading (C++'s especially).

>John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct 30 19:49:35 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 12:49:35 +1300
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <c75aep1n5qq.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <87904konsk.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-ID: <c757lk4mmsw.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:

> "Tim Evans" <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:
> 
> > Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> > 
> > > Hi!
> > > How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try
> > > 
> > > startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
> > > os.system(startexe)
> > > 
> > > but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
> > > gets the final file written correctly.
> > > os.popen() seems to make my system unusable 'cos it slurps the generated 
> > > file und these pictures are HUGE. Any hints are welcome.
> > > Linux 2.2.11 python 1.5.2
> > > Ciao
> > > 	Gregor
> > 
> > Not a Python solution, but the `convert' program from `imagemagick' is
> > really good at this sort of conversion (ps -> image) and can do all of
> > the above line in a single step IIRC, so you don't need the pipes.
> Tell me where I can change the resolution and I'll do it. 
> 

Not sure if this is the right option, but here's an extract from the
convert man page:

       -density <width>x<height>
              vertical and horizontal resolution in pixels of the
              image.

              This  option specifies an image density when decod?
              ing a Postscript or Portable  Document  page.   The
              default is 72 pixels per inch in the horizontal and
              vertical direction.  This option is used in concert
              with -page.

I have found from my own experience that the -density option must be
placed *before* the postscript file.  For example:

convert -density 1000x1000 bar.ps -geometry 500x500 png:bar.png

--
Tim Evans



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Sat Oct  2 17:05:01 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 23:05:01 +0200
Subject: Numeric, how to do in place full-array modification?
Message-ID: <7t5s4u$mat@mail.psy.uva.nl>

Hi,

I want to do the following:

for t in range( T ):
   net = dot( C, x )
   x   = A*net*(1-net)

Because these arrays might turn to be large, I want to pre-alloate <net> and
write both <net> and <x> in place rather than creating new arrays.


Intuitively, I would write it like:

net = zeros(shape, typecode)
for t in range( T ):
    net[:] = dot( C, x)
    x[:]   = A*net*(1-net)

But, I recall that, when on the right hand side, a[:] is used precisely to
create a new sequence. Therefore, I'm unclear about the semantics of this
form.

So, the question is: how to modify in place a full array?

Thank you,
ionel





From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Wed Oct 13 06:23:41 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:23:41 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BE36049@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f at tim...
> [Tim, asks why the xstruct extension
>     http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html
>  is written in C
> ]
>
> [Robin Boerdijk]
> > There are a number of reasons for implementing the xstruct module in C
as
> > opposed to implementing it as a Python wrapper around the current struct
> > module.
> >
> >  ... [code to randomly change the value of a field somewhere in the
middle
> >       of a binary string] ...
>
> But that's not a reasonable implementation -- the data only needs to be in
> packed form when it's made externally visible; e.g., Just van Rossum's
> sstruct module got toward a similar end by slinging ordinary class
instance
> dicts:
>
>      http://starship.python.net/crew/just/code/sstruct.py
>
> Mutations are faster that way, despite being written in Python.  Just pays
> for a regular struct.pack() at the end (and/or struct.unpack() at the
> start), though.

I have done a comparison on how fast sstruct is compared to xstruct using
the Xsdp example that comes with xstruct. The test scripts are at the end of
this post. They both do 10000 iterations of creating and packing an
XsdpMessage. On my computer, the sstruct script takes 2.4 seconds, the
xstruct script takes 0.33 seconds.

> It would help if you beefed up the docs.  For example, none of the
module's
> magic constants are documented (whether for layout, field type or
"flags");
> doc strings are generally absent; and objects of type structdef and
> structobject respond to dir() by returning an empty list.  Because of
this,
> you really have to be an expert in the use of the current struct module to
> approach the xstruct module, and there's no way to figure it out except by
> reading the implementation code.

You are right. So far, I have only documented up to the point that I thought
that people who need to interact intimately with C structs from Python (and
have been struggling with struct.pack and struct.unpack to do that) would
get enthousiastic about this new module.

> You could not at present, although it's not clear that's a bad thing.  The
> buffer interface has had a troubled history, and it's unclear whether it
> will survive.

That's a problem. My next step would have been to add buffer support to
cStringIO and socket to make it all work together. Just imagine the amount
of string copies this would save.

> It's not ready for prime time (e.g., it's easy to crash the interpreter
with
> the little that's already there, staying within pure Python).

Can you give me an example ?

> mucking-with-raw-c-structs-is-a-thing-to-avoid-ly y'rs  - tim

And that's exactly why I want this to be implemented properly as a Python
extension module !!!!

Robin

-- test script for sstruct ---

import sstruct
import time
import copy

XsdpMessageFormat = """
  >
  magic:4s
  major_version:B
  minor_version:B
  byte_order:B
  message_type:B
  correl_id:L
  data:16s
"""

default_msg = {}
default_msg['magic'] = "XSDP"
default_msg['major_version'] = 1
default_msg['minor_version'] = 0
default_msg['byte_order'] = 0

before = time.clock()

for i in xrange(0, 10000):
    msg = copy.copy(default_msg)
    msg['correl_id'] = 0x01020304
    msg['message_type'] = 1
    msg['data'] = "Hello, World !"
    sstruct.pack(XsdpMessageFormat, msg)

after = time.clock()

print "10000 iterations in", after - before, "seconds"

--- test script for xstruct ---

import xstruct
import time

XsdpMessage = xstruct.structdef(xstruct.big_endian, [
  ("magic",        (xstruct.string, 4),   "XSDP",   xstruct.readonly),
  ("version",      (xstruct.octet,  2),   (1, 0)),
  ("byte_order",   (xstruct.octet,  1),    0,       xstruct.readonly),
  ("message_type", (xstruct.octet,  1)),
  ("correl_id",    (xstruct.unsigned_long, 1)),
  ("data",         (xstruct.string, 16))
])

before = time.clock()

for i in xrange(0, 10000):
    msg = XsdpMessage()
    msg.correl_id = 0x01020304
    msg.message_type = 1
    msg.data = "Hello, World !"

after = time.clock()

print "10000 iterations in", after - before, "seconds"






From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Oct 17 18:26:46 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 22:26:46 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <1272093334-1612528@hypernet.com> <7u8kln$imq$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <3807BDF1.DFBAE054@python.net>
Message-ID: <7udif6$pic$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Thomas A. Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
> Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> Then the alien space bats created the timbot, who 
>> started comp.lang.python, and that's
>> how we've all arrived where we are now.
>> 
>> for-more-on-the-bats-read-soc.history.what-if-ly yours,

> Oh?  I thought the space bats were just the ones 
> who introduced the space-eating nano-viruses into
> unsuspecting Python programmers' code. 

Ah, it must've been them who have invented the evil alien whitespace-eating
nanoviruses! I hadn't made that connection yet. :)

> time-to-kill-the-thread-before-it-really-gets-off-topic-ly yours

we-could-start-talking-about-DNA-ly yours,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 28 04:47:34 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:47:34 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJMELDCDAA.kputland@wisen.com>
Message-ID: <38180DA6.E62D5C9E@lemburg.com>

Karl Putland wrote:
> 
> Try this on for size
> 
> Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> IDLE 0.5 -- press F1 for help
> >>> from win32api import RegOpenKeyEx, RegQueryValueEx
> >>> from win32con import HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
> >>> from win32api import RegEnumValue
> >>> key = RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,r'SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
> NT\CurrentVersion')
> >>> i=0
> >>> while 1:
>         try:
>                 str,obj,type = RegEnumValue(key,i)
>                 print str,obj,type
>                 i=i+1
>         except:
>                 break
> 
> SoftwareType SYSTEM 1
> InstallDate 934559805 4
> RegisteredOwner Administrator 1
> RegisteredOrganization wisen.com, Inc. 1
> CurrentBuild 1.511.1 () (Obsolete data - do not use) 1
> CurrentVersion 4.0 1
> CurrentBuildNumber 1381 1
> CurrentType Uniprocessor Free 1
> SystemRoot C:\WINNT 1
> SourcePath C:\I386\ 1
> PathName C:\WINNT 1
> ProductId 13299OEM004225197031 1
> CSDVersion Service Pack 4 1
> Plus! VersionNumber IE 5 5.00.2314.1003 1
> >>>
> 

Thanks, I'll try to come up with a function that does the above
and returns the data in a platform.py compatible tuple format.
It will only work on machines with MarkH's win32 package installed,
but it's definitely better than having windows pop up :-)

Is there a way to directly extract a certain key from the registry ?
I'd need the values of the keys 'CSDVersion', 'CurrentVersion' and
'CurrentBuild'. Plus perhaps 'CurrentType' if someone could enlighten
me with a suitable interpretation ;-) ... 'Uniprocessor Free' sounds
somewhat strange.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    64 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Fri Oct 22 11:21:30 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:21:30 +0200
Subject: Language detection module?
References: <380F1AE7.3466A879@darwin.in-berlin.de> <slrn80v4cb.49r.thantos@chancel.org> <211019992350304779%pereira@research.att.com>
Message-ID: <381080FA.386BD09F@darwin.in-berlin.de>

Fernando Pereira wrote:
> 
> In article <slrn80v4cb.49r.thantos at chancel.org>, Alexander Williams
> <thantos at chancel.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:53:43 +0200, Dinu C. Gherman
> > <gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de> wrote:
> >
> > >is there anything already like a function that I can pass an
> > >arbitrary string and it will tell me wether it is written in
> > >English, French, German, etc.?
> >
> > The method you use below is part of what I call the 'fast, dumb and
> > happy' method of algorithms.  :)  (No shame there, I use it all the
> > time.)  It takes careful crafting, but its algorithmically simple.  If
> > you want something a bit more robust ...

True, just 10 minutes work, so don't expect more... ;-)

> The standard way of doing this doesn't involve clustering, which is
> hard, provided that you have training samples for each target language.
> From the training sample for language L, one builds a "language model"
> M[L] that estimates the probability M[L](S) of any string S according
> to the language. Given a test string T, guess its language to be the L
> such that M[L](T) is highest. One can build language models in many
> ways, but most of the simple ones involve n-gram statistics. There are
> certain subtleties on how to deal with test strings containing n-grams
> not found the training sample for some language. For details, consult

Yep, but clustering needs much sample data and even then, you 
will probably have to decide about the cluster shape and the
according best algorithm... from the few things I recall pretty
comlex.

I think in my case a "human pre-clustering", i.e. a method rough-
ly following my previous example (Quick and Dirty programming, if 
you want to call it that way) will do the job -- without any kind
of sample data, except some built-in "rules". 

Coming-back-with-some-examples-one-day-maybe'ly,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
................................................................
Food for Echelon: Delta Force, SEAL, virtual, WASS, WID, Dolch,
secure shell, screws, Black-Ops, O/S, Area51, SABC, basement, 
ISWG, $@, data-haven, NSDD, black-bag, rack, TEMPEST, Goodwin, 
rebels, ID, MD5, IDEA, garbage, market, beef, Stego, ISAF, NARF, 
Manfurov, Kvashnin, Marx, Abdurahmon, snullen, Pseudonyms, MITM, 
Gray Data, VLSI, Leitrim... -- Visit http://www.hacktivism.org



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Thu Oct  7 09:01:29 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 15:01:29 +0200
Subject: Is the server down or what?
In-Reply-To: <37FC84F9.F1C51C28@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <199910071257.NAA00125@axil.hvision.nl>

On 7 Oct 99, at 13:33, Thomas Weholt wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I`m not getting any goddamn articles in this newsgroup today. Are people
> asleep or is the server down or what?
> 
> Thomas

Maybe we can exchange places. I got every message twice. 

Mailing list users: am I the only one who got them twice? Maybe there 
has been a message about this which I've missed? I only recall one 
about some renewal of python-list; it didn't say anything about this 
extra service though. :)

Doubly yours,

--Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/



From fred at ontosys.com  Fri Oct 22 12:34:34 1999
From: fred at ontosys.com (fred at ontosys.com)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 16:34:34 GMT
Subject: distutils installation fails in WinNT; sys.exec_prefix empty
References: <000801bf1ca8$4c701300$53001064@bobcat>
Message-ID: <7uq3mq$6hs$1@eve.enteract.com>

In article <000801bf1ca8$4c701300$53001064 at bobcat>,
Mark Hammond <mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:
>My guess is that you have moved Python.exe from its default spot.

Good call!  Actually, I hadn't moved python.exe, but I did have an old
python.exe that was being found in my PATH when I ran 'python' from a
shell.  What fooled me is that after starting up the old python
executable it would report itself as "Python 1.5.2".  Anyway, I
removed the old python.exe and now when I run the Python 1.5.2
executable directly I find that sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix are set
correctly.

Thank you for the help.  Now I'll try that distutils install again...

--
Fred Yankowski



From darcy at vex.net  Fri Oct  8 09:28:31 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 8 Oct 1999 13:28:31 GMT
Subject: PyGreSQL difficulties
References: <37FDCD98.EF1D5917@seanet.com> <37FDE65C.135B381@seanet.com>
Message-ID: <7tkrhu$1tpj$1@hub.org>

Jim Driese <jdriese at seanet.com> wrote:
> Jim Driese wrote:
>>>> cnx.query("create table cities (name text,population float8,altitude
> int)");
>>>> cnx.query("create table capitals (state varchar(2)) inherits
> (cities)");
>>>> cnx.query("create unique index on cities using btree (name)");
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> pg.error: ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "on"

> So, table creation went ok but I was unable to create an index (I _can_ do
> this under psql, however).  None of the sample programs had an index
> example.  Does anybody know of a good online pygres reference?

I would be surprised if you could do this in psql as it is invalid syntax.
Try this.

 cnx.query("create unique index cities_name on cities using btree (name)")

An index always needs a name.

Note that the semicolon is not needed in Python, btw, unless you have
multiple statements on a line.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From robert_kuzelj at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 08:55:18 1999
From: robert_kuzelj at my-deja.com (robert_kuzelj at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:55:18 GMT
Subject: [ANN] JavaPythonConsole 0.1
Message-ID: <7upmrl$qpb$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

JavaPythonConsole 0.1
http://www.itemj.com/produkte.htm

from the readme-file
I   intensions
    i was wishing for a confortable editor for jpython.
    the two available ones (standard-dos-console and
    the console inf demo/swing) were not exactly what
    i was looking for.
    1) an editor who actually behaves like an editor
       (meaning cursor-up moves the cursor on line up)
    2) no duplication of statements when hitting the
       enter-key (thats what PythonWin does)
    3) separation of input and output-Streams
    so i took the console.py from demo/swing and
    began changing it till it suited me.
    (btw. i hope that its legal - afaik all python
    distributen is os - please give me hint if i did
    something wrong)

ciao robertj


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From cfelling at iae.nl  Sun Oct 31 11:41:26 1999
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 17:41:26 +0100
Subject: Contribution: nice floating point number formatting
References: <381a4316$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com> <19991030063317.A16991@better.net>
Message-ID: <7vhrfm$glv$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>

William Park <parkw at better.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 01:00:06AM +0000, David S. Harrison wrote:
>> # Returns a nicely formatted string for the floating point number
>> # provided.  This number will be rounded to the supplied accuracy
>> # and commas and spaces will be added.  I think every language should
>> # do this for numbers.  Why don't they?  Here are some examples:
>> # >>> print niceNum(123567.0, 1000)
>> # 124,000
>> # >>> print niceNum(5.3918e-07, 1e-10)
>> # 0.000 000 539 2
>> # This kind of thing is wonderful for producing tables for
>> # human consumption.

> It may be good for human eye, but it creates havoc when piped to another
> program.

Besides, in true human languages (like Dutch:) the use of point and comma is
interchanged. Better have an option for that then, or even better obey locale.

And for the spaces in the decimal part, are you shure that is conventional?
I can't remember having seen this *ever* in my life. At least not in my life
as a programmer.

-- 
groetjes, carel



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 11:36:28 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:36:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Spread of mailman
References: <05a301bf1a0f$63f2c770$f0c809c0@lslp7o.lsl.co.uk>
Message-ID: <14348.36860.819610.893468@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "TJI" == Tony J Ibbs <tony at lsl.co.uk> writes:

    TJI> I had a little shock this morning when I saw the traditional
    TJI> "change to mailman" spread of messages in my inbox (you know,
    TJI> the "Welcome to ..."  where you're already a member of
    TJI> mailing list "...") - but not for a Python related
    TJI> issue. Turns out the HPV (human powered vehicle) mailing
    TJI> lists are converting to mailman - "market" penetration in
    TJI> action.

    TJI> It's always neat to see connections between one's favourite
    TJI> things...

Indeed!



From x at x.x  Wed Oct 13 17:59:17 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 17:59:17 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f@tim> <01d701bf1553$c1e459e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <380500B5.E9024C34@x.x>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>
> > Haven't heard of this, but don't people use SWIG anymore <0.7 wink>?
> 
> real programmers don't ;-)
> 
>     http://www.nightmare.com/~rushing/dynwin/index.html
> 
> (uses Sam's calldll and npstruct modules to access every
> little corner of windows without any custom win32 inter-
> faces)

When I need to use calldll for windows functions I use this little
one-liner:

Prototype = lambda l,n,i,o:
            lambda a,l=l,n=calldll.get_proc_address(l,n),i=i,o=o: 
	    calldll.call_foreign_function(n,i,o,a)

Then:

Kernel32 = calldll.load_library("Kernel32.dll")

CreateFile = Prototype(Kernel32, "CreateFileA", "siiiiii", "i")

Works well for quick hacks. The only annoying thing is it
actually creates a function that takes a tuple rather than the
actual arguments, so you have to remember to double the
parentheses.

In order to avoid that you'd have to use the non-existant
syntax:

	lambda *a, l=l, ...

Oh well, so much for the default argument hack, huh?



From djc at itga.com.au  Thu Oct 28 20:35:52 1999
From: djc at itga.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 10:35:52 +1000
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com> <87d7tzi14v.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au> <c75iu3rm5k9.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <87904nhul3.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Evans <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

Tim> that's an unnecessary lamdba there.

Tim> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))

Tim> is the same as:

Tim> a.sort(cmp)

Tim> but, then that's the same as:

Tim> a.sort()

I agree, I was trying to show that the sort with lambda comparison
function did work.  The original article said that it didn't word.

- Dave




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Fri Oct  8 21:56:46 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 21:56:46 -0400
Subject: Tiny difficulty with `multifile'
Message-ID: <oqiu4hz481.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Hi, people.  Just do not pay much attention to this message, unless you
feel like taking a rest of your own problems with the problem of someone
else :-).  This is not an important matter, anyway.

I'm trying to use Python to study MIME submissions (my goal is to give
that ability to the TP robot), and am very pleased to discover how easy
it is to study complex messages with the Python libraries.  I'm teased
by something I do not understand (yet I can easily work around it), and
I wonder if some of you will be kind enough to explain this little matter
to me.  First, here is the code I use for testing:

---------------------------------------------------------------------->
import mimetools, multifile

def essai():
    mime_walk(walker, multifile.MultiFile(open('/tmp/message2')))

def mime_walk(walker, file, level=0):
    entity = mimetools.Message(file)
    if entity.getmaintype() == 'multipart':
        boundary = entity.getparam('boundary')
        if boundary:
            file.push(boundary)
            mime_walk(walker, file, level + 1)
            try:
                while file.next():
                    mime_walk(walker, file, level + 1)
            except multifile.Error:
                pass
            file.pop()
    elif entity.gettype() == 'message/rfc822':
        mime_walk(walker, file, level + 1)
    else:
        walker(entity, file, level)

def walker(entity, file, level):
    print '%s%d. %s; %s; %s' \
          % (' ' * 2 * level, file.level,
             entity.gettype(), entity.getplist(), entity.getencoding())

essai()
----------------------------------------------------------------------<

Given a message having this structure (shown with Pterodactyl Gnus):

---------------------------------------------------------------------->
920828    [ 367: beatty at COSMOS.VLSI.C] <* mixed> mew-law encoding?
920828        [  12: beatty at COSMOS.VLSI.C] <1 richtext>
920828        [ 325: beatty at COSMOS.VLSI.C] <2 rfc822>
920826            [ 309: Derek Beatty        ] <2.* mixed> mail from Wacky
920826                [   7: Derek Beatty        ] <2.1 text> index.rtf
920826                [ 284: Derek Beatty        ] <2.2 audio> VoiceMail_beatty0.vox
920826                [   0: Derek Beatty        ] <2.3 text>
920828        [   5: beatty at COSMOS.VLSI.C] <3 richtext>
----------------------------------------------------------------------<

the above Python code yields:

---------------------------------------------------------------------->
  0. text/plain; []; 7bit
  0. text/richtext; []; quoted-printable
      0. text/plain; []; 7bit
      0. text/plain; ['type=microsoft-rtf', 'name=index.rtf']; 7bit
      0. audio/basic; ['name=VoiceMail_beatty0.vox']; base64
      0. text/plain; []; 7bit
  0. text/richtext; []; quoted-printable
----------------------------------------------------------------------<

and I wonder why `file.level' invariably prints as `0'.  The level I
maintain myself is not, as shown by the variable margin.  Should I do
anything special to protect the level within the MultiFile?  I thought that
`file.push' and `file.pop' would have done it automatically, but apparently,
I miss something.

Oh, for those who might wonder, I added the `try:' clause because there
is a MIME formatting error in the original message -- the closing boundary
is missing at the end of the quoted `message/rfc822', before resuming the
outer structure, and I wanted to be immune to such errors.  I also think
that there might also be faked entities which are purely white, and which
Gnus knows how to ignore.  I'll investigate this a bit later.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From thomas at xs4all.net  Fri Oct  1 10:39:01 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 16:39:01 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
In-Reply-To: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp>
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 03:51:39PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:

> almost all python meetings are currently in the USA. So that's
> unavailable for all European people (except England, which has
> it's own PUG already). And that while there are so much Dutch
> people here! Wouldn't it be a nice idea to start a Dutch Python
> Users Group, or a NederLandse Python Gebruikers Groep (NLPGG)?

I'd be all for it. If there are enough Dutch folx actually, like, living in
the Old Country ;-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From dirkl at home.com  Sat Oct  9 14:10:50 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 18:10:50 GMT
Subject: OO Details
Message-ID: <37FF842F.BA011E3D@home.com>

I was looking through the language reference (www.python.org) and was
unable to find details about how the OO features work. Specifically, I'm
wondering how ambiguous methods are resolved in multiple inheritance and
stuff like that.

Where are some good detail references? I thumbed through the Learning
and Programming O'Reilly books and they didn't seem to cover that level
of detail (though I didn't exhaustively read them).

TIA,
D




From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct  7 09:41:20 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 07 Oct 1999 09:41:20 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley) writes:

> I thought that had been determined a while ago -- it's the explanation I'm
> familiar with, in my non-specialist position.  In fact, one source I saw
> (I have no recollection at all where) claimed that most of our coding DNA
> is similar to most other species, and only the noncoding DNA is really
> different.
> 
> Seems kinda far-fetched, but there you have it.

The idea that most DNA is the same seems plausible to me -- like a
"subroutine library".  It could explain how certain variations
(e.g. different skin coloring patterns) can show up through
"mutations" very quickly if the environment changes.

It would also explain in part what viruses (the biological kind!) do:
they make calls into the subroutine library!

Of course there's also the matter that a large fraction of the genetic 
code encodes the basic cell metabolism (which is extremely complicated 
and totally essential to everything else) rather than outward
appearance and specializations like fang size or tail length.

I don't know that the difference would be in the non-coding DNA, though.

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



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Oct 28 20:16:59 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 13:16:59 +1300
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com> <3818CC4D.3B3658D7@appliedbiometrics.com> <3818D282.1C506BB8@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <c75g0yvm35w.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Brian Kelley <kelley at bioreason.com> writes:

> Christian Tismer wrote:
[snip] 
> but I can assure you that now it has become:
> 
> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(y, x) ) and
> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y) )
> 
> or better yet forming the appropriate tupes and using a normal sort.
> 

Substitute:

a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(y,x))   ====>   a.sort()
a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))   ====>   a.sort(); a.reverse()

According to the docs:

'''
The sort() method takes an optional argument specifying a comparison
function of two arguments (list items) which should return -1, 0 or 1
depending on whether the first argument is considered smaller than,
equal to, or larger than the second argument. Note that this slows the
sorting process down considerably; e.g. to sort a list in reverse
order it is much faster to use calls to the methods sort() and
reverse() than to use the built-in function sort() with a comparison
function that reverses the ordering of the elements.
'''

So don't provide your own function, especially a lambda when you don't
need to, and get a reverse sorted list by sorting and reversing.

--
Tim Evans




From srenner at lycosmail.com  Wed Oct  6 14:28:17 1999
From: srenner at lycosmail.com (srenner at lycosmail.com)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 18:28:17 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <7td22n$vs4$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <051019991117179815%jpc@informatics.jax.org>
Message-ID: <7tg4bh$6gc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


>
> I'm a biologist and couldn't help but jump in here.  I agree that
> Guido's is a good analogy, although unlike useless code, "junk DNA"
may
> serve some function(s) that are yet to be understood (in other words,
I
> wouldn't want to parse my DNA and remove those regions just yet).
> Clarification: introns are not the same as junk DNA.  While introns
are
> non-coding segments withing genes, they do serve to demarcate splice
> sites that allow for alternative coding messages to be derived from
the
> same gene.  They (introns) also often contain binding sites for
> regulatory proteins.  There is a lot of non-coding DNA which has
> characterized functionality - bottom line: non-coding != junk.
>
> Now that we're way off topic...
>
> --
>
> John Corradi


I shouldn't have mentioned introns. Of course 'junk DNA' is a product of
selection too -- the analogy with useless code breaks down if you push
it too far. But any analogy does. I didn't anticipate that my view
would have such broad support. How gratifying.

sr


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Before you buy.



From fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org  Sat Oct  9 11:21:01 1999
From: fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org (Florian Weimer)
Date: 09 Oct 1999 17:21:01 +0200
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <87iu4gv9uq.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org> wrote:
> > > Using ~ instead would probably help with that. It's only a unary
> > > operator and not defined for strings either. You'd just have to scan the
> > > sources for a ~ immediately followed by a string literal. 
> > 
> > What about a t'translated string literal', like r'raw string'?
> 
> is it really that hard to write, say,
> T('translated string literal') ?

T('...') could mean anything, not only string translation.  Perhaps
something entirely new should be chosen to help automatic processing.



From lame.adress at munger.edu  Wed Oct 20 18:20:11 1999
From: lame.adress at munger.edu (Grant)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 17:20:11 -0500
Subject: PythonWin rebuild problem
Message-ID: <380E401B.4419BFC@munger.edu>

I've had trouble rebuilding PythonWin using Visual C++ v6.0.  I get
the following error message:

     Deleting intermediate files and output files for project
     'pythonwin - Win32 Release'.
     --------------------Configuration: pythonwin - Win32
     Release--------------------
     Compiling resources...
     Compiling...
     stdafxpw.cpp
     Compiling...
     pythonwin.cpp
     Linking...
     LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "mfc42.lib"
     Error executing link.exe.

     pythonwin.exe - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)

Anybody know how to fix it?

thanks much,

-Grant




From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 14 13:10:58 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:10:58 GMT
Subject: Text/Cursor User Interface with Python [Redhat?]
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se>
Message-ID: <7u52qk$tcg$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hey there,

I've just discovered that the Redhat Linux 6.1 installer is written in
Python and includes a text-based 'GUI' (dialog boxes, menus, selection
lists, etc.)  It appears to use the newt toolkit (which depends on
slang) and a special Redhat-developed pythonlib library.

I haven't got into it much yet but it looks like it could be what I
need.  (The problem is that I'm stuck on an ancient slackware box at
work and can't extract the sourec from the pythonlib SRPM until I get
home.)

I'm going to play around with it this weekend and I'll report back to
the newsgroup.

thanks,

---Preston


In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000 at butler.artech.se>,
  tommy <tommy at artech.se> wrote:

> Someone who know any good module for Python to easy write Text/Cursor
> Interfaces???
>
> I like it to have support for widget like:
>
> - scrollboxs
> - dialog box
> - input box
> - menu
> - lists
>
> Shoule be used to make textbased UI for applications end I dosen't
like to
> spend time on wroting the UI more like to spend time to write the
> applications instand.

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


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Before you buy.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct  8 10:11:02 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 16:11:02 +0200
Subject: Image manipulation under Python / Tk
References: <7tksla$j3n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <006901bf1198$c77e0810$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Sindh <skodela at my-deja.com> wrote:
> I just wonder how to show a image from python. I tried to make it
> through canvas widget  of tk, hoping to put pixels on canvas. But Canvas
> does not have a method to show  dots.

no, but it has a method to show raster images,
which are made up of pixels:
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/canvas-image.htm

for a more flexible tool, see:
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

</F>




From jcosby at wolfenet.com  Thu Oct 28 08:56:51 1999
From: jcosby at wolfenet.com (Jon Cosby)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 05:56:51 -0700
Subject: Destroying files
Message-ID: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net>

Is there a utility out there for finding and destroying deleted files from
my hard drive?

--
Jon Cosby

E-mail: jcosby at wolfenet.com
Web Site: http://www.wolfenet.com/~jcosby/






From jfarrell at mincom.com  Wed Oct  6 00:03:11 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:03:11 +1000
Subject: How to use readline interactively?
References: <37FAA9F6.80EAE@mincom.com> <37FA8BF4.37B06774@python.net>
Message-ID: <37FAC9FF.60D66E5E@mincom.com>

"Thomas A. Bryan" wrote:
> John Farrell wrote:
> > import sys
> > while 1:
> >     print "> ",
> >     s = sys.stdin.readline()
> >     if s[-1] == '\n': s = s[:-1]
> >     if len(s) == 0: break
> >     print "Hello " + s

> You could use sys.stdout.write() in one or both places.
> 
> What you're seeing is the comma from the line
> print "> ",
> It is output as a space at the front of your
> print "Hello" + s

Of course, that makes sense. Thank you for explaining it.

> P.S. I'm sure you're just posting a code fragement, but I
> used EOF to get out of the while loop (like any good Python
> programmer :), and the code snippet died with an uncaught
> IndexError exception.

That's a habit I never got into, but I do remember spending hours
trying to handle EOF in C or maybe Pascal when I was at Uni. I guess
that's why I never got into the habit, because it broke my programs :-).
I find it mildly distressing that the user can arbitrarily tell the
program that it's not getting any more input, it would be kinder to
just hit Ctrl-Break and put the poor thing out of its misery.

The revised code snippet is:

import sys
while 1:
    sys.stdout.write("> ")
    s = sys.stdin.readline()
    if len(s) > 0 and s[-1] == '\n': s = s[:-1]
    if len(s) == 0: break
    sys.stdout.write("Hello " + s + '\n')

which works just like I want it to, and will even handle EOF. I seem
to remember already doing this in my proper app.

John



From foxes at theriver.com  Thu Oct 28 10:13:23 1999
From: foxes at theriver.com (Andy Fox)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 07:13:23 -0700
Subject: How to control app from Python?
References: <38160DD8.5C695E09@theriver.com> <3817BD5F.7E05BDC9@home.com>
Message-ID: <38185A03.9AB0FAD6@theriver.com>

The app to be controlled is visual.  The good news is that every
function can be accessed using only keystrokes (no mouse).  The bad news
is that the app was designed to be used interactively.

In retrospect, my question is probably not Python-specific, although I
would like to use Python to do all the work.

There are macro products on the market (like WinBatch and AutoMate) that
start and stop apps and "record keystrokes," so it must be possible to
do this.

I discovered Mark Hammond's win32 stuff at the python.org and starship
sites yesterday.  I'm looking into WinExec(), CreateProcess() and
ShellExec() now.

-- 
Andy Fox



From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Wed Oct 27 18:26:11 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 22:26:11 GMT
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au> <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>  <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <slrn81f1f4.8po.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> wrote:
>Multiple dispatch is an attractive idea, but it makes me uneasy.
>One reason is that it's not clear what the rules should be.
>
>Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
>and there are methods defined for the combinations
>foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
>
>Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
>which method should get called?

None of them; an "ambiguous method" exception should be raised. (Or if
you are in a statically-typed language ambiguous method dispatches can
be a compile-time error.) Seriously, an ambiguous method dispatch is a
sign of a problematic design.

The corresponding code in a singly-dispatching language is likely to
be a manual implementation of multiple dispatch using type tests on
the non-receiver arguments. IMO this is an accident waiting to happen,
since the method chosen can depend on the details of the order of the
type tests.

>If you have multiple dispatch *and* multiple inheritance,
>things get just too hairy to contemplate. I tried to devise
>a set of rules for this case once, but my brain got dangerously
>close to exploding and I had to give up...

I have done some programming in Dylan (which has MD and MI), and I
have never run into the problems you describe. I suppose that in
poorly-designed code it's possible, but the corresponding problems of
proliferating typecases and code duplication in singly-dispatching and
single-inheritance languages are sufficiently worse that I prefer MD
and MI.

Mileage varies, I guess.


Neel



From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 19 20:03:08 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 00:03:08 GMT
Subject: Language question
References: <380CE825.7676C6F3@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <7uj0rs$7h7$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <380CE825.7676C6F3 at bioreason.com>,
Brian Kelley  <kelley at bioreason.com> wrote:
>This question actually comes up due to accident (bug?)  Here is the
>scenario
>
>class foo:
>      """insert foo here"""
>
>def bar(foo):
>      """this should really be class bar(foo):  Insert bar here"""
>
>As far as python is concerned, this is prefectly legal except that the
>user of bar will probably get None for their troubles.  That is foobar =
>bar() is the same thing as foobar = None.

In addition to Gordon's comments, note very carefully that you have two
different "foo" here.  This would be perfectly legal, for example:

class foo:
  pass
def bar(foo):
  return foo*2
print bar(2)
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From dirkl at home.com  Fri Oct 29 18:21:58 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:21:58 -0700
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
In-Reply-To: <landauer-2910991221320001@landauer.apple.com>
Message-ID: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECEEMBFHAA.dirkl@home.com>

I used to have a boss who'd say, "If I can't walk into 'da bookstore and
find at least two books on it, you ain't usin' it!".

Later,
D




From zessin at my-deja.com  Wed Oct  6 10:09:56 1999
From: zessin at my-deja.com (Uwe Zessin)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:09:56 GMT
Subject: How to lookup on RMS indexed files in Open VMS ?
References: <37faf48a.914420@news.mcmail.com>
Message-ID: <7tfl7a$q5s$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <37faf48a.914420 at news.mcmail.com>,
  avaj8 at a1freenet.co.uk (N) wrote:
> Hi Python gurus
>
> Is there a solution for reading RMS indexed files in Open VMS ?
> More particularly how to do the lookup on them - on particular keys?
> Otherwise reading them sequentially is of little use to me...

Nick,
I have created a number of "objects" in my OpenVMS port that allow
a lot of RMS features to be used. However, the "RAB" object is not
fully debugged and I have not done much with the "XABKEY" object,
either.

Feel free to take a look at:  http://www.decus.de/~zessin/pyvms/

Any feedback is welcome.

--
Uwe Zessin


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Before you buy.



From michael.stroeder at inka.de  Sun Oct 10 09:24:22 1999
From: michael.stroeder at inka.de (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:24:22 +0200
Subject: Problems with strptime
Message-ID: <38009386.ACC2FD6D@inka.de>

HI!

I'm using time.strptime to parse several time-stamp strings like
time.strptime('451014100704Z','%y%m%d%H%M%SZ') with year without
century. This does not work in every case. Here's a list of time-strings
which failed. I cannot see a reason or a pattern why this fails.

***strptime failed 000311212045Z
***strptime failed 000323170912Z
***strptime failed 000325110134Z
***strptime failed 000212090033Z
***strptime failed 000311213753Z
***strptime failed 000311212045Z
***strptime failed 000323170912Z
***strptime failed 000325110134Z
***strptime failed 000311213753Z

My system is: S.u.S.E.-Linux 6.2 based on glibc-2.1 with pre-installed
Python 1.5.2.

Ciao, Michael.



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Oct 17 16:04:33 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 21:04:33 +0100
Subject: A question
References: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi> <FJrGMt.LIB@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <m3aephiwj2.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

wware-nospam at world.std.com (Will Ware) writes:

> Kristian Nylund (krnylund at io.yok.utu.fi) wrote:
> : Could someone tell me an easy way to do  
> : something like "for i in `ls *.txt`..." 
> : in python?
> 
> Other folks have mentioned glob.glob(), which will work fine for
> things like "*.txt". If you want something more flexible, for
> instance all the *.c and *.h files that mention printf,
> you'd want to iterate on the output of something like
> 
> 	find . -name '*.[ch]' -exec grep -l printf {} \;
> 
> and if you wanted to do something like that in Python, you'd want
> to know about commands.getoutput(). Specifically, you'd want to
> write something like this:
> 
> 	import commands
> 
> 	for file in commands.getoutput(
> 		"find . -name '*.[ch]' -exec grep -l printf {} \;"):
> 	    process(file)

I promise you that doesn't do what you expect: (I changed the command
line; you'll see why ;-)


for i in commands.getoutput(
          "find ~/src/haskell/ -name '*.lhs' -exec grep -l printf {} \;"):
    print i,":",

yields:

/ : h : o : m : e : / : m : w : h : 2 : 1 : / : s : r : c : / : h : a : s : k : e : l : l : / : H : u : g : s : 9 : 8 : / : l : i : b : / : e : x : t : s : / : D : y : n : a : m : i : c : . : l : h : s :

Oops. Thought's there, just need string.split(blah,"\n").

> So commands.getoutput() is good to know about if you need a little
> more flexibility than glob.glob().

Indeed.

hth,
Michael



From charleshixsn at mail.earthlink.net  Fri Oct 29 14:42:37 1999
From: charleshixsn at mail.earthlink.net (Charles Hixson)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:42:37 -0700
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0  preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <3819EA9D.6A46E845@mail.earthlink.net>

Louis Madon wrote:

> """ snip """
> In the beginning Greg Ewing wrote:
>
> > Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
> > and there are methods defined for the combinations
> > foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
> >
> > Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
> > which method should get called?
>
> Several people said its "ambiguous".

It's ambiguous unless you define what should happen.  To my mind the
apporpriate call would be to foo (A,B), but any one of them would be a valid
interpretation in the absence of language definitions.  Depending on search
order, it would seem most Pythonish to call the foo (AA, B) method, since
that would probably be the first one found along the left hand branch of the
search path, and it does fit.

This is *definitely* not being offered as an argument against
multi-methods.  It's merely a matter of defining the interpretation to an
agreed upon spec.  The Python interpretation of class inheritance of methods
provides a language oriented background against which I would say that in
Python the choice should be to select foo (AA, B).







From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 28 15:03:12 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:03:12 -0400
Subject: Using stdin / stdout on Unix
In-Reply-To: <87zox48i2d.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>
References: <87zox48i2d.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <19991028150312.B106850656@vislab.epa.gov>

Dave Cole:
 |I have only just started to use progress and am trying to make a
 |program (on Solaris) accept input from stdin and write to stdout.  The
 |only I have worked out is the following:
 |
 |INPUT THROUGH cat NO-ECHO.
 |OUTPUT THROUGH cat.
 |
 |This seems a bit stupid.  Surely there is a way to do the same thing
 |without having to bounce everything through cat.

Sounds like what you seek is called "expect", originating in Tcl-land
(IIRC) but I recall seeing references to expect for Python on this list.
Search the list archives or the Python web site for this string and you
should turn up hits.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From bh at cellware.de  Fri Oct  8 07:17:58 1999
From: bh at cellware.de (bernard)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 11:17:58 +0000
Subject: tkInter scoping problem ?
Message-ID: <37FDD2E6.7F903938@cellware.de>

To display an image on a canvas I tried

PhotoImage(name=name, file="./" + name + ".gif")
c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, image=name)

which works fine.

However when I use this code in the __init__ method of a class

class TeleTubby:
   def __init__(self, c, name, x, y):
      PhotoImage(name=name, file="./" + name + ".gif")
      c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, image=name)
      ...

I get the error 
      tcl Error: image "tinky" doesn't exist

Then trying

      self.pic = PhotoImage(file="./" + name + ".gif")
      c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, self.pic)
      
this time I get no error but no image.

But then this worked fine

     global pic
     pic = PhotoImage(file="./" + name + ".gif")
     c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, pic)

and so did using a class variable
     
     TeleTubby.pic = PhotoImage(file="./" + name + ".gif")
     c.create_image(x, y, anchor=NW, image=TeleTubby.pic)


Why is this ? And is there any way I can get the first two formulations
(image name or instance variable) to work in the context of a class
method ?

Confused-ly - bernard



From rainer2207 at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 09:33:41 1999
From: rainer2207 at my-deja.com (rainer2207 at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:33:41 GMT
Subject: Python timer
Message-ID: <7upp3m$sgd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I would like to write a CGI script which automatically refreshes the
HTML page it displays. I was wondering if there is a timer function and
how it can be used. Also what would be the best way to go about opening
the page (I think using urllib but I've found very little documentation
on this).


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From prescod at prescod.net  Fri Oct 29 09:29:23 1999
From: prescod at prescod.net (Paul)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:29:23 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
In-Reply-To: <002601bf1969$06d31320$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.991029082821.15131H-100000@amati.techno.com>

On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Adrian Eyre wrote:

> Better still, is it possible to implement os.fork() under Win32?

I would have thought not, but cygwin does it so it is possible, but 
perhaps hairy.

Does forking make sense for CGIHTTPServer or should it really be using 
threads?

 Paul Prescod




From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 22 08:29:59 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:29:59 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> Ok, here is my current version of the platform.py module. I would
> appreciate any hints to make it recognize even more platforms,
> distributions, OSes, etc.
> 
> Especially some code for MacOS would be nice.
> 
>         http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py
> 
> To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script. It will
> then print something like:
>         Linux-2.2.10-i586-SuSE-6.2-i386
> or
>         Windows-95-4.00.950

I just uploaded a new version that now uses a function based API.
This avoids the long import time due the module scanning binaries
or spawning shells. The location is the same as above and running
the script still prints the above text to stdout except that
the libc check is now only done on Linux systems ... do *BSD and
others have the problem of two different libc's ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    70 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 29 19:31:14 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:31:14 -0400
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
In-Reply-To: <slrn81kam9.hn.ckotso@geek.dialup.ntua.gr>
Message-ID: <1270883371-11176504@hypernet.com>

Constantinos A. Kots wrote:
> Well, let's vote 3 people (just for the fun of it, and who knows
> maybe we can convince someone to go, this way). My votes go to
> 
> 1. Guido van Rossum (yes I know you are surprised)

is busy

> 2. Fredrik Lund

lives halfway around the world

> 3. Tim Peters

Is possibly the most frightening candidate sys-admin on earth, 
other than myself.

backups-shmackups-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From sekter at mail.matav.hu  Mon Oct 11 18:01:53 1999
From: sekter at mail.matav.hu (Arpad Kiss)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:01:53 +0200
Subject: How do I shell-out on Win32 systems with python?
References: <7ttit1$f4n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <00c501bf1434$3ab9e720$010101c1@home>

Hi,
Try to use the win32pipe modul! Here is an example:

import win32pipe
i,o,e=win32pipe.popen3("dir")
pout=o.readlines()
perr=e.readlines()
....

Arpad

----- Original Message ----- 
From: yinger <ayinger1 at my-deja.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 10:56 PM
Subject: How do I shell-out on Win32 systems with python?


> I know that on Unix systems you can use the commands  or the popen
> modules.
> 
> What do I have to do to get the output from a command (like 'dir', or a
> batch file) executed on a Win32 system?
> 
> 
> 
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From ttoommll at aol.com  Tue Oct 19 10:53:44 1999
From: ttoommll at aol.com (TToommLL)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 14:53:44 GMT
Subject: Speeding up Python
Message-ID: <19991019105344.00876.00000475@ng-bj1.aol.com>

I read that Industrial Light And Magic is using Python, but I don't see how
that is possible.  I need to do some heavy floating point and math.sin() number
crunching  but find that Python takes 40 times as long as C++.  I tried JPython
thinking that it would gain the speed of the JIT but it's about 30 times as
long as using Java.  I wonder if I'm missing something.  Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Tom






From shrogers at ionet.net  Sun Oct 10 11:06:43 1999
From: shrogers at ionet.net (Steven H. Rogers)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:06:43 -0500
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process
References: <37FF5655.F6A0B896@ionet.net> <7to09o$mt0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3800AB83.30B2404A@ionet.net>

joshzeidner at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
>  - How dynamic is the data you are sychronizing?  Is it something more
> like a chat room or a BBS?

More like a BBS.  The Java process monitors a data stream, performing
actions on objects in the data stream in near real time.  I'd like to
give a certain class of users the ability to make "special requests" via
a web based form which would be saved either within the web server or an
external database.  The Java process will check these special requests
before acting and honor them when feasible. 

> 
>   I just thought of a good idea!  A very useful thing for Zope would be
> a CORBA/IIOP bridge because this is fully supported in Java( not to
> mention the industry distributed object standard ).  So all zope
> objects would also be CORBA objects.  And better yet, there is Fnorb so
> most of the marshalling stuff is already done.
Concur.
> 
>  Also, make sure you look into JPython.

I've looked at JPython and will likely use it for regression testing of
Java code.  I don't think it'll help here though.  I'm also considering
Apache with JServe, though this would restrict me to an external
database.  Zope is attractive because it combines web services,
persistent store, and search capability in what seems to be an easy to
manage package.  I need to do this quickly and have a couple of other
irons in the fire right now.

-- Steve



From wtanksle at ieng9.ucsd.edu  Thu Oct  7 16:00:24 1999
From: wtanksle at ieng9.ucsd.edu (William Tanksley)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 13:00:24 -0700
Subject: DOS Python
References: <slrn7vkr0c.15r.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <199910060516.GAA03225@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <7tiu4o$12k@ieng9.ucsd.edu>

In article <199910060516.GAA03225 at axil.hvision.nl>,
Hans Nowak <ivnowa at hvision.nl> wrote:
>On 5 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:03:01 GMT, Hans Nowak wrote:
>> >On 5 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:

I'm the same William Tanksley, BTW.  My account died and now I've got
another problem.

>> >> I just downloaded the DOS version of Python from Hans Nowak's page.
>> >> Probalm is, there don't seem to be any docs or modules included -- it's
>> >> just the .exe file.  Where do I get the .py modules which are supposed
>> >> to go with it, and where do I install them?
>> 
>> >Looks like a link is missing on my page. Try
>> >http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/python-1.5-lib.arj

>> Great.  I'll do that right away, if I can find an .arj extractor.
>> Speaking of which, is there any particular reason why you used .zip for
>> the executable and .arj for the (required) libraries?

>That's more for hysterical raisins; I wrote a script which packs a 
>directory and all its subdirectories in an arj file; I did not manage 
>to do so for zip files (back then, that is :).

pkzip -ad ?  It's part of the zip command set.

But anyhow, this still isn't working for me, and I'm slamming up against
a nasty deadline.  The problem is that I have to run this under pure DOS,
and I _must_ call an external program.  When I do "import os" under wpy,
it tells me that there's no such module.

The PythonDX library has long file names, which aren't supported under DOS.

arj appears to have two options for truncating the long file names.  Which
of them should I use?

>> Okay, this will clearly take some more work.  It seems that the arj
>> program doesn't support long file names, but the arj archive includes
>> them.  (How'd you manage that?)

>Oh it does, if you have the right version. Here's one:
>http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/Arj.exe
>I believe this link *is* on my site somewhere. :-)

Not that I could find.  You don't suppose that you could zip the archive up,
do you?

That'd be convenient.  Of course, I already have ARJ and so on, but for other
people -- and perhaps for me as well.

I'm in a world of hurt.  I hope someone can fix this!

>--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)

-Billy




From themadcomposer at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 14 08:27:00 1999
From: themadcomposer at yahoo.com (Ben)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:27:00 +1000
Subject: edit macspeech mssge
Message-ID: <3805CC10.80FC957F@yahoo.com>

my real email address is themadcomposer at yahoo.com for anyone that is
trying to reply
Thanks
Ben




From wware-nospam at world.std.com  Tue Oct  5 08:02:14 1999
From: wware-nospam at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 12:02:14 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>

Charles G Waldman (cgw at fnal.gov) wrote:
> Michael Vanier writes:
>  > With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
>  > person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
>  > marketing-speak....
> Do you know anything about so-called "Junk DNA"?  To me, Guido's quote
> seems like a perfectly apt analogy for what one of my former
> co-workers liked to call "surgical code adhesions".

An analogy to junk DNA would be my interpretation as well. The idea with
junk DNA is this: Our DNA (and that of every other living creature) is
a long string of chemical units called base pairs. The DNA sits inside
the nucleus of our cells. Periodically, a portion of the string is
copied to a substring called messenger RNA. The messenger RNA leaves
the nucleus and gets picked up by a gadget called a ribosome. The
ribosome translates the RNA string into a string of amino acids, also
known as a protein. As the protein is built, it starts folding itself
into a characteristic shape. This entire process (which is vastly
complicated when looked at in detail) is called protein synthesis.
Proteins do everything in the cell; they build the walls and internal
structures, they handle all the metabolism (actually, there is a complex
role played by a gadget called a mitochondrion, which has its own
system of DNA), and they build new ribosomes, and several thousand
other tasks.

In the DNA, there are markers for "beginning of amino acid string" and
"end of amino acid string". Each amino acid, or each such marker, is
coded by a sequence of three base pairs. There are, however, large
substrings within the DNA of any species that lie outside any pair of
beginning and end markers. That is called "junk DNA" because it is
never translated to a protein. There are various conjectures about it.
The most obvious is that it does nothing at all, and has accumulated
over billions of years of evolution and is never removed because there
is no process of DNA garbage collection. Another is that, while junk
DNA doesn't synthesize proteins, it is useful because it gives
mechanical stability to the double helix. I suppose you could conjecture
that it offers a little protection of the non-junk DNA from mutation
by radioactive particles, though that seems like a stretch.

Getting back to the analogy with software: In any very large, very old
software system, there will be a number of what are called kludges.
These are pieces of software that were put together in a hurry to
satisfy some short-term demand (often the ire of some attention-span-
challenged manager) and do not conform to whatever overall organization
was intended for the software. Or in a very large body of software, there
may be several different notions of overall organization, done by several
different people who came and went over the years without the chance to
talk to one another. There are often large pieces of code which are
permanently unused, but which are never discarded from the source code
database because they might some day be useful, or the aforementioned
manager is afraid of discarding any intellectual property, regardless
how useless it is.

In both cases, you have information being propogated into the future
which does not actually influence the behavior of the system. There is
a small (but presumably acceptable) cost associated with this propogation,
and in both cases, risk aversion keeps it around. It looks like an awfully
good analogy to me.
-- 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Resistance is futile. Capacitance is efficacious.
Will Ware	email:    wware @ world.std.com



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct 21 11:32:54 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:32:54 +0100
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
In-Reply-To: <380ED19E.1CA8168A@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <000401bf1bd9$8b155ef0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> E.g. I'd like a function that returns 'Redhat6.1'/'SuSE6.2' or
> 'Win95'/'Win98'/'WinNT' or 'MacOS8'/'MacOS9' etc.

I think the closest there is to this is sys.platform

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From tino at wildenhain.de  Thu Oct  7 02:06:06 1999
From: tino at wildenhain.de (Tino Wildenhain)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 08:06:06 +0200
Subject: Python Beginner Question!!!
References: <rvo96j9b8c18@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <37FC384E.1B630752@wildenhain.de>


Cm wrote:
> 
> I have never had any experience programming period, but I am really anxious to
> learn.  I bought the book, O'Reilly's "Programming Python", and began to read
> it, but I had no clue what was going on.  Does anybody have a suggestion for a
> book about beginning programming for someone who knows nothing about it.  I
> need any help I can get.
> 
I would recommend http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html
Its good for beginners as they can get in touch with the language _and_
the thoughts behind programming.
You can read it online and/or print it out and store it under your
pillow.

HTH

Tino Wildenhain



From johnm at magnet.com  Tue Oct  5 15:21:22 1999
From: johnm at magnet.com (John Mitchell)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:21:22 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
In-Reply-To: <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.05.9910051516270.13404-100000@lemur.magnet.com>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Preston Landers wrote:

> Sorry to answer my own question, but I wrote a primitive little
> implementation of my request pending discovery of 'the official
> version.'  Note that mine actually uses the unix touch command but it
> could easily be modified to use the more portable python open(file, "w")
> [100-lines of python deleted]

you could also try this (csh):

	set path=/tmp/test/path/here.txt

	mkdir -p $path:h	# make dir and all parent dirs

	touch $path		# create a zero-length file


- j





From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct 28 16:10:06 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:10:06 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: JPython 1.1 beta 4
Message-ID: <14360.44446.946679.376083@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

I'm pleased to announce the release of JPython 1.1 beta 4, the 100%
Pure Java implementation of the Python language.  Below is a summary
of changes since 1.1 beta 3.

Enjoy,
-Barry

  New JPython features and bug fixes

    - fixed a bug related to loading anonymous inner classes (PR#201).
      This is an experimental patch.  See registry file for entry
      python.options.extendedClassLoader
    - fixed Java exceptions when calling apply() with a bogus 3rd
      argument (PR#208)
    - fixed a 1.1beta3 problem with method objects having their
      im_self mysteriously changed out from under them (PR#186).
    - fixed problems with Python classes being deeply derived from
      Java classes and interfaces (PR#178, PR#195).
    - Improved memory footprint when using exec().
    - Dead threads are now reaped from thread state cache (Drew
      Morrissey).
    - Tuples, dictionaries, and strings now use fast method lookup
      mechanism.

  Improved CPython 1.5.2 compatibility

    - md5 module supported (no need to download anything extra)
    - dir() on function objects now returns a list containing __doc__,
      func_doc, __namme__, func_name, func_globals, func_defaults,
      func_code.  __doc__/func_doc is writable (but not func_defaults
      and func_code, which are writable in CPython). (PR#192)
    - dir() on code objects returns a list containing co_name,
      co_argcount, co_varnames, co_filename, co_firstlineno, co_flags.
      Not supported: co_nlocals, co_code, co_consts, co_names,
      co_lnotab, co_stacksize.  All attributes are read-only.
    - dir() on method objects returns a list containing im_self,
      im_func, im_class, __doc__, __name__.  These attributes are
      read-only.

<p><a href="http://www.jpython.org">JPython 1.1 beta 4</a> - a 100%
Pure Java implementation of the Python language.  (28-Oct-1999)



From hoel at GermanLloyd.org  Tue Oct  5 09:30:38 1999
From: hoel at GermanLloyd.org (Berthold Hoellmann)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:30:38 +0200
Subject: compile.py does not work on WinNT system
Message-ID: <37F9FD7E.4CB7E1E9@GermanLloyd.org>

Hello,

I try to port a little extension module I've written to WinNT. I thought
it would be a good idea to use compile.py from
http://starship.python.net:9673/crew/da/Code/compile/, but all I get
running "python compile.py" is:


--- snip ---
...

A Visual C++ 5.0 workspace will be generated, and must be built
manually.
Building workspace (.dsw) file for workspace
  Found python15.lib in G:\bin\Python\libs
  Found Python include directory in G:\bin\Python\include
Creating project (.dsp) file for StiffOnPlate
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "compile.py", line 927, in ?
    ws = Workspace(msdev)
  File "compile.py", line 864, in __init__
    project = Project(self, self.msdev, line, extra_stuff)
  File "compile.py", line 755, in __init__
    print getattr(self, 'noexport', None)
TypeError: getattr requires exactly 2 arguments; 3 given
--- snip ---

What's going wrong here?

Thanks

Berthold
-- 
email: hoel at GermanLloyd.org
   )
  (
C[_]  These opinions might be mine, but never those of my employer.



From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Fri Oct 29 12:33:55 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:33:55 -0400
Subject: walk calling visit within a class?
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933D004@rimail03>

Thanks for the info and the 'lesson'.   I had other problems and thought
this was contributing to the problem.
I'll read up again on bound vs. unbound.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gordon McMillan [mailto:gmcm at hypernet.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 12:29 PM
> To: Betancourt, Josef; 'Python list'
> Subject: Re: walk calling visit within a class?
> 
> 
> Betancourt, Josef asks:
> 
> >    This is probably a dumb question but.... Lets say I have a
> >    class:
> > 
> > class theclass
> >       def aVisit(self, pat, dirname, dirlist):
> >   ............
> > 
> >  def testfiles(self, patobject, targetpath):
> >   os.path.walk( targetpath, self.aVisit, self.patobject)
> > 
> > #end class theclass
> > 
> > Since os.path.walk requires a visit function that has an argument
> > signature of:  (arg, dirname, names), how is a visit member
> > function used within a class?  Or can someone fill in the whole I
> > have in my Python fundamentals?
> 
> You're on the right track.
> 
> Fundamentals: theclass.aVisit is an "unbound" method; 
> calling it will require an instance of theclass as the first arg.
> 
> x = theclass()
> x.aVisit is a "bound" method - the self arg has been squirreled 
> away in the binding. It can therefor be called just like it was a 
> function. 
> 
> This code works:
> 
> import os
> 
> class theclass:
>     def __init__(self):
>         self.patobject = []
>         
>     def aVisit(self, pat, dirname, dirlist):
>           print "aVisit called on", dirname
> 
>     def testfiles(self, targetpath):
>          os.path.walk( targetpath, self.aVisit, self.patobject)
> 
> x = theclass()
> x.testfiles('c:/temp')
> 
> - Gordon
> 




From ilya at glas.net  Sat Oct 16 11:49:15 1999
From: ilya at glas.net (ilya at glas.net)
Date: 16 Oct 1999 15:49:15 GMT
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python SNMP module
References: <7u17v3$n5l$1@news.glas.net>
Message-ID: <7ua6pr$p3q$1@news.glas.net>

A new version of PySNMP module has been released. It's mostly a bugfix
revision however a few significant functionalities have been added as well
(the GetNext request is now supported, see examples/snmpwalk.py for details).

This latest version of PySNMP module is available at 
ftp://ftp.glas.net/~ilya/tools/pysnmp.tar.gz

thanks,
ilya



From skip at mojam.com  Wed Oct  6 11:36:36 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 11:36:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
In-Reply-To: <y0jvh8k3exz.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com>
	<007f01bf0f61$ac3768a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<y0jvh8k3exz.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <14331.27780.928441.172997@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Magnus> Nice ... except I don't understand why you need the welcome()
    Magnus> and banish() functions... Why not standard importing like other
    Magnus> modules?  (Enlighten me, please... :)

I can't recall why, but I do recall that Ping explained it at some point.
Check the newsgroup archives.  There is probably something from around late
'97 or thereabouts.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Mon Oct  4 03:55:26 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 20:55:26 +1300
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com> <7t5ffa$1h6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se> <37f7564e.33979028@news.supernews.com> <5lvh8p6zbt.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <37F85D6E.D50D1771@compaq.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I would guess that creating a
> server AF_UNIX socket in the parent and a client AF_UNIX socket in the
> child, connecting the latter to the former, would allow you to do the
> same thing.

Try using an ordinary pipe first. On BSD-flavoured unices, pipes
are often implemented as a pair of unix-domain sockets.

You'll definitely need sendmsg() and recvmsg(), though, so
you'll still have to write some C.

Greg



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 21 11:47:28 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:47:28 +0200
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com>
		<14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
		<380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com> <14350.64746.924876.255108@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <380F3590.2C56140C@lemburg.com>

Charles G Waldman wrote:
> 
> M.-A. Lemburg writes:
>  >
>  > What does the output of ldd look like for glibc and libc on other
>  > platforms (e.g. Redhat, *BSD, etc.) ? On SuSE 6.2 Linux I get:
>  >
>  >         libX11.so.6 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40014000)
>  >         libdl.so.1 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libdl.so.1 (0x400b5000)
>  >         libm.so.5 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libm.so.5 (0x400b8000)
>  >         libc.so.5 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libc.so.5 (0x400c1000)
>  >
>  > for a program linked against libc5 and
>  >
>  >         libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40021000)
>  >         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
>  >
>  > for one linked against libc6 (glibc).
> 
> RedHat 6.0 looks exactly the same (except the path prefixes on the
> right differ),
> 
> Solaris output looks is also very similar:
>         libX11.so.4 =>   /usr/lib/libX11.so.4
>         libsocket.so.1 =>        /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1
>         libnsl.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libnsl.so.1
>         libdl.so.1 =>    /usr/lib/libdl.so.1
>         libc.so.1 =>     /usr/lib/libc.so.1

Hmm, not quite :-) libc.so.1 -- that was a looong time ago ?! Seems
that Redhat chose a different naming scheme here.

>         libXext.so.0 =>  /usr/openwin/lib/libXext.so.0
>         libmp.so.2 =>    /usr/lib/libmp.so.2
> 
> Don't have access to BSD at the moment, and the Irix box I tried seems
> to not have an `ldd' command. :-(   There's probably some Irix
> equivalent, or maybe just a configuration problem on the machine I
> tried, but I don't have time to go digging around right now.

I guess a simple text scan of the file will be the most portable
solution.
 
>  > Note that I can't deduce the glibc version from the above output.
> 
> Why not? You can clearly tell if you're getting libc.so.5 or
> libc.so.6.  Do you need more information than that?

Not really, but if I distribute binaries which contain e.g. glibc2.1
APIs and someone wants to run these on a glibc2.0 system it probably
won't work. I don't think I have to bother about libc5 systems since
they all should have installed the latest versions by now... well,
hopefully (and there's no way to even deduce the version from just
scanning the file, AFAIK).

Thanks for all the help,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    71 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 18 17:35:50 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:35:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Bug tracking tool in Python
References: <380B4B52.61D0A979@gmx.de>
Message-ID: <14347.37558.707672.802591@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "S" == Stephane  <smata1de at gmx.de> writes:

    S> does there exist a bug tracking tool/database written in
    S> Python which is free. The only tool I know is bugzilla.
    S> What about the bug lists at python.org?

We use Jitterbug for Python, JPython, and Mailman.  It's C code, and
while I have a few nits about it, it seems to work fairly well.  I
think the Zope folks have an issue tracker written in Python, but I
haven't played with it.

-Barry



From godzilla at netmeg.net  Mon Oct 18 15:05:29 1999
From: godzilla at netmeg.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 19:05:29 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <380B5582.F6C2CB09@callware.com>
Message-ID: <m267041nir.fsf@netmeg.net>

Ivan said:

> Try my getargs module.  It's available at:

looks good, thanks.

i am very impressed with your documentation too. you are to be
saluted.

btw: cool mayan glyphs and math on your web page.

les schaffer



From ivanlan at callware.com  Thu Oct 21 18:58:44 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:58:44 -0600
Subject: More info for Pythonista jobs
Message-ID: <380F9AA4.A6BE3FC6@callware.com>

Hi All--
Here's a tad more info from Natalya regarding the jobs:

"We are Python enthusiasts here and would be happy to find more
enthusiasts to work with. Our page is 

	http://www.hp.com/go/espeak 
"
Here's her email address:

	natalya_flom at nonhp-am.exch.hp.com


<bite-now-don't-let-that-worm-get-away>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Thu Oct  7 12:29:41 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 18:29:41 +0200
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <873dvnx254.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <199910071628.RAA06175@axil.hvision.nl>

On 6 Oct 99, Nolan Darilek wrote:

> Just a completely random question:
> 
> How much of the standard Unixish features does the DOS version of
> Python support? I don't use DOS, but it might be kinda neat to say
> that my software runs on everything from DOS to Linux. And, if it
> doesn't, no big deal; I'm merely curious if all of the standard
> libraries, or at least a large subset, are supported.

Let's see. Most of the standard libraries are supported... except for 
those that only make sense in a Unix environment, like mailbox 
specific thingies, etc. 

It has modules like crypt, curses, fcntl, gdbm, grp, pwd and termios 
built in. 

Due to the nature of DOS, Python-DX does not have threads, so any 
modules depending on that won't work. GUI stuff (Tkinter) obviously 
won't work either. There is a socket module, which works... in some 
cases. It is known to work for getting and sending mail, other 
features are not supported.

Then there are some "look and feel" things, which are more Unixish 
than Windows-ish, like exiting with Ctrl-D (rather than Ctrl-Z), 
using '/' as a path separator (rather than '\'), os.path is posixpath 
(rather than ntpath), etc), and incidental features, like a working 
os.popen() function.

The main reason it's close to Unix is that I compiled it with DJGPP, 
which is a DOS port of gcc, and it brings a lot of Unixish behavior 
with it. 

I can say that most Python code works, unless they're using GUI or 
networking stuff. (Since I am currently writing code which does use 
that, I'm using the Windows version now. :-) DOS can't do everything, 
but in spite of its limitations I think Python-DX is quite an 
acceptable Python.

--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Python Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/
The Purple Kookaburra Forum: http://www.delphi.com/kookaburra/



From evan at tokenexchange.com  Thu Oct  7 12:16:19 1999
From: evan at tokenexchange.com (Evan Simpson)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:16:19 -0500
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
References: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu> <37FCAF01.99B03CA3@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <nJ3L3.29$Ae3.68357@news-dal.corridex.com>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> wrote in message
news:37FCAF01.99B03CA3 at compaq.com...
> Let's approach this in a more general way. First,
> introduce dictionary unpacking:
>
>    (foo, bar, baz) = dict

Nice idea, but isn't this syntax dangerously similar to tuple unpacking?
One 'natural' interpretation of this as dictionary unpacking would be:

foo = dict[0]; bar = dict[1]; baz = dict[2]

which would semantically parallel tuple unpacking, but wouldn't do what you
want.  Besides, what about unpacking keys which aren't valid identifiers?
How about:

{ foo, (1, 3.5): bar, 'x. x. x.': baz} = dict

meaning

foo = dict['foo']; bar = dict[(1, 3.5)]; baz = dict['x. x. x.']

In other words, the same as yours except with {}s and the ability to specify
key:var combinations.





From gubitz at netcologne.de  Thu Oct 14 11:08:09 1999
From: gubitz at netcologne.de (gubitz at netcologne.de)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:08:09 +0200
Subject: Schlange der Erkenntnis
Message-ID: <pkr4u7.hg1.ln@garfield.suelz>

If you can read german: Take a look at
http://www.ksta.de/computer/616.html

ksta is a german newspaper. Today there is an article (about 150 lines)
in the newspaper
and in ksta-online about van Rossums memorandum: Computer Programming 
for Everybody.

Hans Gubitz



From frankmcgeough at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 14 17:03:38 1999
From: frankmcgeough at my-deja.com (frankmcgeough at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:03:38 GMT
Subject: SWIG Question
Message-ID: <7u5gev$8bp$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am a SWIG newbie. It looks pretty cool. I was able to download it
today and get basic stuff working in a couple hours.

Question: I have a number of C++ classes that have string members that
are returned by get methods.

ex: std::string getErrorString();

SWIG maps this to a string representing a pointer by default. I'd like
to do a .c_str() and convert the value to a Python string. How do I
setup a typemap to do this?

Thanks,
Frank


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Fri Oct 29 11:47:56 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:47:56 -0400
Subject: walk calling visit within a class?
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933D003@rimail03>

   This is probably a dumb question but.... Lets say I have a class:

class theclass
     	def aVisit(self, pat, dirname, dirlist):
		............

	def testfiles(self, patobject, targetpath):
		os.path.walk( targetpath, self.aVisit, self.patobject)

#end class theclass

Since os.path.walk requires a visit function that has an argument signature
of:  (arg, dirname, names), how is a visit member function used within a
class?  Or can someone fill in the whole I have in my Python fundamentals?


Thanks.
Josef

	




From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Fri Oct 29 12:23:52 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:23:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Recovering method names at runtime
In-Reply-To: <kug0yui4lk.fsf@uk.research.att.com>
References: <kug0yui4lk.fsf@uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <14361.51736.971563.572767@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>

Yes.  Check deja.com or your favorite comp.lang.python archive site
for the recent thread on "dir and java classes."  Despite what you
might think of the subject, it's got the answer to your question.
And it doesn't look like it showed up on deja.com, so look here:

http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-October/020122.html

Jeremy




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 05:36:24 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 09:36:24 GMT
Subject: Three decades of Python!
Message-ID: <011901bf0f15$1790f910$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

btw, I hope nobody has missed this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1999/10/99/monty_python/newsid_463000/463024.stm

</F>




From jfarrell at mincom.com  Thu Oct  7 20:56:16 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 10:56:16 +1000
Subject: Help with Grail please?
Message-ID: <37FD4130.646581CF@mincom.com>

Is there anyone out there who can help me get Grail working please?
My hypothesis is that it's choking on our firewall.

Thanks,

John
----
C:\download\grail-0.6>python grail.py
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "grail.py", line 499, in ?
    main()
  File "grail.py", line 155, in main
    browser.home_command()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Browser.py", line 400, in home_command
    self.context.load(home)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Context.py", line 487, in load
    scrollpos=scrollpos)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Context.py", line 378, in read_page
    Reader(self, url, method, params, show_source, reload, data, scrollpos)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Reader.py", line 447, in __init__
    if url: self.restart(url)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Reader.py", line 491, in restart
    BaseReader.__init__(self, self.last_context, api)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 62, in __init__
    self.start()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 85, in start
    self.checkapi_regularly()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 157, in checkapi_regularly
    self.callback()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 184, in checkmeta
    self.getapimeta()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 206, in getapimeta
    self.handle_meta(errcode, errmsg, headers)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Reader.py", line 544, in handle_meta
    if not self.handle_meta_prelim(errcode, errmsg, headers):
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Reader.py", line 534, in handle_meta_prelim
    self.restart(url)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Reader.py", line 491, in restart
    BaseReader.__init__(self, self.last_context, api)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 62, in __init__
    self.start()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 85, in start
    self.checkapi_regularly()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 157, in checkapi_regularly
    self.callback()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 184, in checkmeta
    self.getapimeta()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\BaseReader.py", line 206, in getapimeta
    self.handle_meta(errcode, errmsg, headers)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Reader.py", line 557, in handle_meta
    bkmks.record_visit(self.url, last_modified)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\ancillary\BookmarksGUI.py", line 1000, in
record_v
isit
    bookmarks = self.get_bookmarks_by_uri(uri)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\ancillary\BookmarksGUI.py", line 996, in
get_bookm
arks_by_uri
    self.initialize()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\ancillary\BookmarksGUI.py", line 900, in
initializ
e
    root, reader = self._iomgr.load(usedefault=1)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\ancillary\BookmarksGUI.py", line 269, in load
    fp, reader = self.__open_url_for_reading(filename)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\ancillary\BookmarksGUI.py", line 213, in
__open_ur
l_for_reading
    fp = urllib.urlopen(url)
  File "grail.py", line 344, in open_url_simple
    api = self.open_url(url, 'GET', {})
  File "grail.py", line 339, in open_url
    api = self.url_cache.open(url, method, params, reload, data=data)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\CacheMgr.py", line 159, in open
    return self.open_get(key, url, mode, params, reload, data)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\CacheMgr.py", line 199, in open_get
    item = SharedItem(url, mode, params, self, key, data)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Cache.py", line 74, in __init__
    self.reset()
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\Cache.py", line 91, in reset
    data=self.postdata)
  File "C:\download\grail-0.6\protocols\ProtocolAPI.py", line 119, in
protocol_a
ccess
    access = app.find_extension('protocols', sanitized).access
AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute 'access'



From godzilla at netmeg.net  Tue Oct 19 08:31:12 1999
From: godzilla at netmeg.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:31:12 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <m2904za4yj.fsf@netmeg.net>

/F said:

> maybe that's because the order of the options may some- times be
> important, and python dictionaries are unordered.

okay, but arg order not import for my stuff (at least, not right now).

les



From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Sat Oct 23 14:08:42 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 18:08:42 GMT
Subject: sparse matrix representation?
References: <221019990852479530%zippy@cs.brandeis.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn813udi.ecr.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>

Patrick Tufts <zippy at cs.brandeis.edu> wrote:
>I want to work with 50k x 50k matrices with mostly zeroes, so a hash
>would be the efficient way to represent this.
>
>Does the Python numerical library handle large sparse matrices as
>hashes?

No.  You could use dictionaries.  A wrapper class could make them
appear as arrays.

>If not, is there a Python library that does?

I have a extension module that wraps the Sparse1.3 library.  I
don't think is has been well tested by anyone besides me so
please let me know about any problems you find.

    http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nascheme/python/sparsemodule-0.2.tar.gz

If you are on Windows and don't have a compiler, I can make a
.pyd file for you.


    Neil



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Fri Oct 15 10:18:12 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:18:12 +0200
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
In-Reply-To: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <19991015161812.A13803@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Ahmad Munif:
> 
> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table widget,notebook 
> widget, etc).
> PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.
> 
> i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build 
> my database application ?

This question returnes veeeeeeeeeeery often, can someone write an HOWTO for
this question?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From jdnier at execpc.com  Thu Oct 28 17:20:38 1999
From: jdnier at execpc.com (David Niergarth)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:20:38 -0500
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial> <19991028065755.B10826@better.net> <y0jogdjcshq.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <slrn81hbci.g.bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <3818bdc3$0$52256@news.execpc.com>

Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn81hbci.g.bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu...
> On 28 Oct 1999 19:20:01 +0200, Magnus L. Hetland <mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no>
wrote:
> >William Park <parkw at better.net> writes:
> >
> >> On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 11:19:28AM +0200, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> >> > Hi!
> >> >
> >> > I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with
some
> >> > cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep
same
> >> > "last changed" time and more.
> >> >
> >> > You can get it at http://buffy.acmecity.com/sanctum/195/dos2unix
> >> >
> >> > It's in the public domain, so you can do with it whatever you want.
> >>
> >> What's wrong with 'fromdos' and 'todos' avaiable in most Linux
> >> distributions?  You can perform those features using shell.  Since your
> >> target audience is Unix people, there is no need to reinvent wheel.
> >
> >Or dos2unix/unix2dos, also readily available already...? :)
>
> Hey, what about "recode"? :)
> Bernhard

Or even "tr". (But hey, it's nice to have lots of wheels!)

[===========]__[]=<
 OO OO OO OO  OO O







From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 11 16:03:58 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:03:58 GMT
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
References: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7ttfr4$cno$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

BTW, just in case anyone is wondering, NO, I am not out of space on the
device.  However, the directories I'm working with are mounted via NFS
and it's quite possible that it's NFS weirdness related.

thanks,

---Preston

In article <7tt098$7i$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to untar a large file from within a Python script.
>
> I'm calling tar like this:
>
> filename = "/tmp/data.tar.gz"
>
> status, result = commands.getstatusoutput("tar xzvf %s" % filename)
>
> if status:
>    print "error! tar said:\n%s" % result
>
> else:
>    # continue
>
> The problem is that every time I get an error status from tar, though
> tar seems to completely extract all files.  I get this as the last 2
> lines of output:
>
> gzip: stdout: Broken pipe
> tar: Child returned status 1
>
> If I try to perform this same operation from the command line, it
works
> fine.  But if I try to do it in Python, I get this error status.  Has
> anybody seen anything like this?
>
> Like I said, all the data seems to extract fine.  It's just that my
> program looks for the non-zero error condition and stops there.

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From jima at aspectdv.com  Mon Oct 25 15:45:47 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 12:45:47 -0700
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
In-Reply-To: <024b01bf1ac3$235c7530$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
 <slrn80plsc.n1t.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
Message-ID: <199910251940.MAA22041@hermes.aspectdv.com>

Where can one find out more info on
"hasinterface" and "as_sequence"?

Is this a standard idiom for testing
for "sequence-ness"?

Is this different/better than something
like 

hasattr(anObject,"__get_item__")

I often want to determine whether or not
I am dealing with a sequence and would
like to use a "best practices" mechanism.

type(anObject) == type([]) or
    type(anObject) == type(())

seems too limited, BTW.

Any advice?

Thanks,

Jim


>
>    def len(obj):
>        if hasinterface(obj, as_sequence):
>            return obj.sequence_length()
>        if hasinterface(obj, as_mapping):
>            return obj.mapping_length()
>        raise TypeError, "len() of unsized object"
>
>which, for my non-purist eyes, surely looks as if
>Python treats "obj" as an arbitrary object.
>
></F>
>
><!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the standard python library:
>http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
>-->
>
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From algaba at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 24 12:25:54 1999
From: algaba at my-deja.com (Manuel Gutierrez Algaba)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:25:54 GMT
Subject: TeEncontreX, may it be a model for the python CPAN ?
Message-ID: <7uvbug$hi7$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I've been working lately in a kind of FAQ for TeX issues. The problem
we have ( I have ) is that there's lot of information spread all over
FAQ's, books... And TeX is quite difficult if you want to do something
special... So I decided to do a database of examples and TIPS. I
ended making TeEncontreX, whose structure  is very simple, and it
gives a reasonable nice interface to the user. Basically it's a
database ( a file with some marks in it) and a python script
(200 lines) that
makes all the job. Now, the question is:
Is a similar scheme worth for python?
Ok, I know Trove is on the way. But I wonder if this kind of bulk
information collecter, rather easy to create, and to add may be good
for creating something reasonbly big with the less of effort.
Instead of the high quality Trove model, a massive low quality model.
Well, all that can be found at
http://www.ctv.es/USERS/irmina/TeEncontreX.html
I've released all the sources in a GPL license.
If you think this could be done (AND IF YOU CAN HELP) then
send me a note.

 What's TeEncontreX ?
--------------------
It's an attempt to collect and centralize all the available data
about TeX, so that:
- Anyone will be able to find information in one place. No need for
books, FAQ's...
- Any newbie can learn TeX very fast, just reading the articles.
- People can add new articles (very easily) to the database.
- A data base of examples and tips can be used.
- The model it's very simple and it's somehow related to XML, because
it's basically a mark-up document, and a (trivial ) parsing system.
- All its contents may be found at
 http://www.ctv.es/USERS/irmina/TeEncontreX.html, where it'll
be updated frequently.

What's TeEncontreX made of?
---------------------------
It's made of three parts:
- The database ( Too.tex). It seems LaTeX, but it won't compile,
because it needs some \begin{verbatim}. Anyway it's a good idea
to have it in that form.
- The parser that creates the set of html. (AnalizaToo.py)
- TeEncontreX itself, that is, the help files ( the result).
All of them are thus: TeEncontreX*html and the main files
is called TeEncontreX.html. This is kept in the file
TeEncontreX.tar.gz It's not necessary, because it can be generated
with AnalizaToo.py and Too.tex, but I admit that nobody has python.

What's the license of it?
-------------------------
It's GPL, but that's the license of the compilation as a whole.
I usually take the articles from USENET or mailing lists, so each
article 'has' an author. If any author wants his article to be
removed from the database, obviously it will be removed or the
article will be 'adapted' :).

How to submit new articles/add articles/create my own database ?
Take a look at Too.tex and you'd realise the way the database is
constructed. Then email me at irmina at ctv.es

As this software is GPL you can build your own database system,
but if you do so, i'd like at least to know it :) , that my work
has been useful and good.

Enjoy it!


--
-------------
Manolo


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Fri Oct  1 22:16:29 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 22:16:29 -0400
Subject: Circular refs
In-Reply-To: <000501bf0bb5$2672b120$322d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <000101bf0c7c$2397eb60$fc2d153f@tim>

[Greg Ewing and Tim tangle over lexical closures vs immortal cyclic
 trash. Tim quotes
     http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python/lexscope.html
 thusly:

     It is still possible to create cycles if you're not careful. For
     instance, storing a local function or the value of a lambda
     expression in a local variable of a scope enclosing its definition
     will create a cycle.

 and sez that's "precisely the flavor of cycle that killed lexical closures
 3 years ago, as that's precisely the kind of thing the Scheme camp wants
 to do routinely"
]

Which isn't true!  I finally studied the patch instead of reading the docs
<wink>, and Greg's clever approach *does* stop the majority of "Scheme-like"
closure-slinging from creating cycles.  In the quote above, the module's
global scope needs to be exempted (it's also the module's local scope, but
"doesn't count" as being an enclosing scope in the above).

It appears difficult to give a precise user-friendly statement of when
cycles will and won't get created; e.g., this does create a cycle:

    def f():
        x = 1
        g = lambda: x
        return g
    k = f()

but this doesn't:

    def f():
        x = 1
        def g(): return x
        return g
    k = f()

provided they're both at top level.  OTOH, this variant of the first way
does create a cycle:

    def h():
        def f():
            x = 1
            def g(): return x
            return g
        a = f()
        return a
    k = h()

as does also:

    def h():
        def f():
            x = 1
            def g(): return x
            return g
        a = [f()]
        return a[0]
    k = h()

and, in general, code "that's safe" at top level may end up creating cycles
if it gets nested.

I expect most people would be safe most of the time, though.  At least at
first <0.5 wink> -- once it's there, people will push it beyond its original
goals, and soon enough any case of a cycle will get moaned over.

Upside:  code using this for modest little lambdas certainly looks prettier
than code abusing the default-argument mechanism.

Downside:  pystone took a 10% hit on my machine.  It may be due to the
notorious touchiness of ceval.c, but that seems a lot touchier on Guido's
favored platforms.  I expect it's more that the patch inserts a new
load-test-and-branch in the second-most (most, under -O) frequently executed
opcode; and, unfortunately, pystone has an atypically low dynamic incidence
of LOAD_FAST.  A fellow at work suggested an optimization I poo-poo'ed at
first, but one hack begets another <wink>:

1. Leave LOAD_FAST alone.

2. Add a new MAYBE_CREATE_CLOSURE opcode, whose body does what the patched
LOAD_FAST did.

3. Add smarts to compile.c, and particularly to its "optimize" function, to
analyze the targets of LOAD_FAST opcodes.  If a LOAD_FAST target name did
not appear in a "def" statement, the new check can't possibly succeed, so
there's no need to check it at runtime.  Else without flow analysis we can't
be sure, so change the LOAD_FAST to a MAYBE_CREATE_CLOSURE opcode.

In the absence of an unqualified win, how much is a partial solution to
lexical closures worth?

certain-the-python-community-will-be-in-100%-agreement<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 10 09:51:49 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:51:49 +0200
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com> <m3puynwdcj.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <004301bf1326$a3dd0840$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Sonny Parlin <sparlin at openpro.org> wrote:
> That seems kind of odd (that Python would be more slower than Perl) they
> are both scripting languages, and they are both coded in C underneath,
> anymore on this?

age, different execution models, different
approach to typing, etc, etc.

as for reading text files, it's a well-known
fact that Perl is sometimes *faster* than C:

    http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=505288860

unfortunately, Python's file object is still
layered on top of C's stdio.  but that may
of course change some day...

for more info on other speed issues, skip
over to http://www.python.org/search/
and search for "is perl faster than python"
(and similar phrases) in the newsgroup
archives.

</F>




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Mon Oct 18 09:56:22 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 02:56:22 +1300
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <380B2706.AC46CD4@compaq.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> "while 1" is not a good
> thing; but all in all it is a minor thing.

It should be spelt "while not spanishinquisition.expected", then
the intention would be obvious to all Python programmers.

Greg



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Wed Oct 27 05:07:57 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:07:57 +1300
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au> <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
Message-ID: <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com>

Multiple dispatch is an attractive idea, but it makes me uneasy.
One reason is that it's not clear what the rules should be.

Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
and there are methods defined for the combinations
foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).

Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
which method should get called?

Arbitrary rules can of course be invented, but there is
no single choice that is obviously "right" the way there
is with single dispatch.

Multiple inheritance has a similar problem, which is why
I'm not all that keen on it either, unless used in a very
restricted way.

If you have multiple dispatch *and* multiple inheritance,
things get just too hairy to contemplate. I tried to devise
a set of rules for this case once, but my brain got dangerously
close to exploding and I had to give up...

Greg



From Arcturax at no_spam.siscom.net  Sat Oct  2 23:02:52 1999
From: Arcturax at no_spam.siscom.net (Arcturax)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 23:02:52 -0400
Subject: Directory select dialog box?
Message-ID: <Arcturax-0210992302520001@ppp41.pm2.midd-oh.siscom.net>

I hope nobody minds my cross posting this between the python and tcl
groups since both seem to go hand in hand a lot.  I have a question
regarding bringing up a dialog box that will allow selection of just a
directory, not a file.

I need one that will work under both Windows NT and Unix and would prefer
the version that brings up the standard dialogs for either system like the
tkopenandsave dialogs do.  I heard there was a patch for this, but cannot
find it after spending two days of hard net searching and deja-news
searching.

Any help or pointers to sites that have or may well have this would be
very nice!

Thanks in advance!

-- 
Arcturax
Email: Arcturax at no_x_x_Spam.siscom.net (remove no___Spam to reply)
DC.D f+ s df++++ h-- CS a- m d+++ WL++* Fr L-(16') B:F,C,Z e-- g i U-
FChF5s A-- C* D H- M+ P- R+ T++++ W Z? Sm RLCT a cmn++++$ d++ e++ 
f- h* i+ j p++ sm#



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct 27 18:33:59 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:33:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
In-Reply-To: <38163CFD.D4A70BBD@python.net>
References: <000101bf1eb5$2f56e140$052d153f@tim>
	<38163CFD.D4A70BBD@python.net>
Message-ID: <14359.32215.691011.783574@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "TAB" == Thomas A Bryan <tbryan at python.net> writes:

  >> Tim Peters wrote:
  >> salvation-thru-whitespace-ly y'rs - tim
  TAB> Wow!  Can we make that Python's Official Motto?
  TAB> who'll-lead-the-first-crusade'ly yours ---Tom

IIRC correctly, the crusades caused endless trouble for the people in
the countries they passed to on the way to the holy lands.  They
didn't always arrive at their destination, and when they did they were
routed by their adversaries.

By those standards, I think we've had an endless stream of crusades
already.  They start as threads on comp.lang.python (or crossposted
there) that generates endless trouble, in the form of low
signal-to-noise ratio, for us regular readers.  Sometimes the threads
die off here, and when they don't, they don't win any converts in
comp.lang.perl.misc either.

Jeremy




From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 28 06:52:58 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 23:52:58 +1300
Subject: separate instances of modules
References: <381767DE.9AE670C@mdlink.de>
Message-ID: <38182B0A.8DF97C6D@compaq.com>

Helge Hess wrote:
> 
> Does anybody know how to create multiple 'module' instances with
> separate environments, eg:
> 
>   PyObject *c1 = Py_ImportAsNew("MyComponent.py");
>   PyObject *c2 = Py_ImportAsNew("MyComponent.py");

Instead of using the import mechanism, you could manually
read and compile the file, then create a new module object
and execute the code with the module's dict as the globals.

Greg



From aahz at netcom.com  Sun Oct 17 21:29:03 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 01:29:03 GMT
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
References: <m37lklivs8.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <7udt4v$n7q$1@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <m37lklivs8.fsf at atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>,
Michael Hudson  <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>Something I noticed but never got around to moaning about around the
>time of the transition from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 was that now hitting Ctrl-C
>at the interpreter prompt tends to dump me out to the shell.

I get KeyboardInterrupt in 1.5.2 on Solaris, with no dump to shell;
exactly the same as 1.5.1 on Linux or Solaris (don't have 1.5.2 on Linux
yet).
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Tue Oct  5 12:29:01 1999
From: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 18:29:01 +0200
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <87iu4ldb5e.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

Tim Peters has already written one, but not a conventional one :-)

Python-1.5.2/Tools/scripts/ndiff.py

It does not work with patch, but can be used to patch files with it's
own output.

HTH
__Janko

-- 
  Institut fuer Meereskunde             phone: 49-431-597 3989
  Dept. Theoretical Oceanography        fax  : 49-431-565876
  Duesternbrooker Weg 20                email: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de
  24105 Kiel, Germany



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 19 14:48:51 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 18:48:51 GMT
Subject: fastest string building?
Message-ID: <7uieee$nsa$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

 I was recently wondering what the fastest way to work with strings
was.  For instance, let's say I have a string, and I want to add some
things to the end, or possibly insert them in the middle.  If I were to
repeat that thousands or hundreds of thousands of times, what would be
the most efficient syntax to do it?

To my knowledge, there are basically three ways to do it.

1: s = part1 + part2 + part3 + ... partn

2: s = string.join([part1, part2, partn], "")

3: s = "%s%s%s%s" % (part1, part2, part3, part4)

Am I missing anything?

My guess was that method #2 is fastest, followed by 3 and then #1 would
be (by far) the slowest.

I did a quick test (using the unix shell 'time' command) which more or
less confirmed my hypothesis.

Just now, however, I decided to do a more indepth test with the Python
profiler.  The results were surprising: method #1 above was fastest,
followed closely by #3, and #2 lagged way back.  So, according to this
test, s = part1 + part2 + partn seems to be the fastest way to build a
string out of parts.

Can someone look at my profiling script and see if I made any obvious
errors?  Is behavior of strings already well-known?

By the way, the new_profile module below is just the same as the
regular Python profile with a new profiling constant calibrated for my
machine.

thanks,

---Preston



print "This program demonstrates the relative efficiency of different
types of string construction methods in Python."

print "Method 1:   s = a + b"
print "Method 2:   s = string.join([a, b], '')"
print "Method 3:   s = '%s%s' % (a, b)"

import string, time

def method_1(a, b, c, d, e):
    return a + b + c + d + e

def method_2(a, b, c, d, e):
    return string.join([a, b, c, d, e], "")

def method_3(a, b, c, d, e):
    return "%s%s%s%s%s" % (a, b, c, d, e)

def wrapper(method):
##    a = str(time.time())
##    b = "constant"
    c_range = 50
    d_range = 50
    e_range = 50

    for c in range(c_range):
        for d in range(d_range):
            for e in range(e_range):
                # args = (a, b, str(c), str(d), str(e))
                args = ("a", "b", "c", "d", "e")
                apply(method, args)

import new_profile
import pstats

def __main__():
    print "Profiling method_1:"
    new_profile.run("wrapper(method_1)", "/tmp/m1.prof")
    p = pstats.Stats("/tmp/m1.prof")
    p.strip_dirs().sort_stats('time','cum', 'nfl').print_stats
().print_callees()

    print "Profiling method_2:"
    new_profile.run("wrapper(method_2)", "/tmp/m2.prof")
    p = pstats.Stats("/tmp/m2.prof")
    p.strip_dirs().sort_stats('time','cum', 'nfl').print_stats
().print_callees()

    print "Profiling method_3:"
    new_profile.run("wrapper(method_3)", "/tmp/m3.prof")
    p = pstats.Stats("/tmp/m3.prof")
    p.strip_dirs().sort_stats('time','cum', 'nfl').print_stats
().print_callees()

    print "Finished!"

__main__()

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From shrogers at ionet.net  Sat Oct  9 10:51:01 1999
From: shrogers at ionet.net (Steven H. Rogers)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 09:51:01 -0500
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process
Message-ID: <37FF5655.F6A0B896@ionet.net>

Given a Java application and a Zope webserver (may or may not be running
on the same machine):  What would be a good way to set up a
communications link between the two?  

Some tools that come to mind are HTTP, ILU, XML.  Has anyone done
anything like this and/or care to comment?

-- Steve



From moshez at math.huji.ac.il  Sat Oct 16 08:11:37 1999
From: moshez at math.huji.ac.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 14:11:37 +0200 (IST)
Subject: re question
In-Reply-To: <000401bf17bf$e79a3a60$3e2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991016140520.2128A-100000@sundial>

[Posted and CCed to author. A tradition I will drop if it really annoys
anybody]

On Sat, 16 Oct 1999, Tim Peters wrote:

[Max M. Stalnaker]
> I have the following code:
>
>  def subset(self):
>   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
>   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]

[the timbot]
<snipped minor improvements>
> This is much like trying to match a Python triple-quoted string with a
> regexp.  Try this:
<a complex regex which does the job>

I may be missing something obvious here, but that seems to positively
/beg/ for a minimalistic match, something like:

re.compile(r'%%%(.*?)%%%')

This will result in taking everything until the *first* %%% following our
initial %%%, which was what the poster wanted.

> Regular expressions are overkill here.  The above can be done quicker and
> easier via string.find:

I agree. And much, MUCH better if the text to be match grows to be more
then a couple of KBs, at which pcre will stumble somehow, if it all.

> regexps-are-to-html-as-regexps-are-to-raising-children-ly y'rs  - tim

At least bot children.

next-thing-bots-will-have-a-mother-in-law-ly y'rs, Z.
--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka at geocities.com>. 
INTERNET: Learn what you know.
Share what you don't.




From Tomas.krmela at pvt.cz  Fri Oct 15 11:37:07 1999
From: Tomas.krmela at pvt.cz (Tomá¹ Krmela)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:37:07 +0200
Subject: Windows version  popen2.
Message-ID: <7u7hna$2bir$1@mail1.pvt.net>

Hello all,

I'am begginer in programing in Python .I' have one Question.I'm , in windows
in popen2 , error on os.fork. You have Windows Modifield version of module
Popen2.

                            Thanks
                                            Tomas.krmela at pvt.cz






From jdnier at execpc.com  Mon Oct 18 11:18:39 1999
From: jdnier at execpc.com (David Niergarth)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:18:39 -0500
Subject: Syntax highlighting for Ultra-Edit 32?
References: <38093126.5D25121F@usit.net> <380B0B38.32525982@mpi-dortmund.mpg.de>
Message-ID: <380b39f6$0$89136@news.execpc.com>

Marc Saric <marc.saric at mpi-dortmund.mpg.de> wrote

> Take a look at the Uedit web-page, there is some additional stuff,
> especially a list of Python-keywords usable for highlighting.

That list is pretty old and not very complete. I've put the Wordfile.txt
that I use at ftp://starship.python.net/pub/crew/dni/Wordfile.txt
It's not perfect but is easy to customize. Each new version of UltraEdit
(current is 6.20b) seems to add more features to Wordfile.txt so it's worth
reading the help file to see what's new.

--David Niergarth






From davidopp at megsinet.net  Wed Oct  6 12:19:15 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:19:15 -0400
Subject: Funny Names (was Re: Just like in our DNA...)
References: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim> <oq7ll0k3fw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <87puys35vi.fsf_-_@baal.winnegan.north.de>
Message-ID: <37FB7682.91CEF851@megsinet.net>

Just a little side note Siggy.  The URL in your signature line contains a comma
after the www instead of a period (or dot).  Thought you'd like to know.  Yes I
do actually visit some of those URL's just to see what people think is so
important about their site.

Sincerely,

David Oppenheimer

Siggy Brentrup wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I really don't want to take part in that silly DNA thread, hence the
> change in subject.
>
> Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> > You would not believe the number of times I did have to type this stupid
> > `robotussin' program name over the years, having not much clue from time
> > to time how I should exactly spell it.  The usual English dictionaries
> > and textbooks I consult would not give a clue.
>
> Don't cry too much, if you don't like to type that word there alway is
> `alias' or if that's not available write a simple wrapper script.
>
> Maybe there are  associations in french I don't know of? In german
> "Tussi" is a quite despective(? despektierlich in german) slang word
> for "young woman". I'd always take identifiers from a foreign language
> with a grain of salt.
>
> > In an international community of free software developers, we try to use
> > a reasonable level of English, and it is a real pleasure that people are
> > impeccable, on the average.  And if it gets difficult, there is no problem
> > if the difficulty brings with it some bits of culture, literature, movies,
> > theatre; this is all good, nice, and very welcome.  But when the difficulty
> > gets reduced to a local-centric commercial trademark for some insignificant
> > drug, by all the hell tell me, which kind of culture is that...
>
> Take it easy Fran?ois, you're living in an - at least partially -
> english speaking country :) so your odds at grok-ing those jokes stand
> a lot better than mine.
>
> As a non-native english speaker I always find it amusing to
> learn from associations like this about the culture of the creator.
> Aren't the US the marketing hype country per se? (No pun intended).
>
> CU
>   Siggy
>
> --
> Siggy Brentrup - bsb at infodrom.north.de - http://www,north.de/~bsb/
>
> ===============> http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/ <===============




From nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca  Tue Oct  5 21:11:09 1999
From: nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca (nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:11:09 -0600
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: <oqd7ut5ngu.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu> <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com> <oqd7ut5ngu.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <19991005191109.D3305@acs.ucalgary.ca>

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 08:42:25PM -0400, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> Bill Anderson <banderson at boi.hp.com> ?crit:
> 
> > it is worth making the comment that ipchains is gone in 2.3.x, and
> > hence 2.4.
> 
> Are you serious?  If this is true, it is worth telling indeed, before we
> invest too much Python work in that direction.  Could you tell me/us more?
> What is happening exactly?  If you happen to know, _why_ is it happening?

Yes it is true.  ipchains has been replaced with netfilter.

    http://www.rustcorp.com/linux/netfilter/

netfilter is simpler and more flexible.  It also allows more
stuff to be done in userspace (good news for people using
Python).  It is a really a cool piece of work.


    Neil




From arcege at shore.net  Mon Oct 18 13:14:52 1999
From: arcege at shore.net (Michael P. Reilly)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:14:52 GMT
Subject: Executing binaries...?
References: <002b01bf198a$2c50b050$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <gAIO3.331$LR3.71613@news.shore.net>

Adrian Eyre <a.eyre at optichrome.com> wrote:
:> Is there anything wrong with the standard function?
:>   execfile(filename, [globals[, locals]])

: It doesn't handle .pyc's.

You (re-)learn something new...  (ie. I should have known that :)

  -Arcege




From echuck at usit.net  Sat Oct 16 22:15:02 1999
From: echuck at usit.net (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 22:15:02 -0400
Subject: Syntax highlighting for Ultra-Edit 32?
Message-ID: <38093126.5D25121F@usit.net>

Hi,

I'm using UltraEdit-32 for Windows to edit my Python scripts. Overall,
it's a fairly nice editor with lots of customization options that
allowed me to make it behave the way I think a text editor should.

It also has a feature for syntax highlighting and comes standard with
modules for Perl, C++, etc.

I was wondering if anyone had a Python syntax highlighting module for
UltraEdit?

-Chuck





From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct  5 16:30:45 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 16:30:45 -0400
Subject: Burning all GIFs on Python.org?
References: <37FA2C2E.CF326636@darwin.in-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <5lhfk57doq.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

"Dinu C. Gherman" <gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de> writes:

> What about joining the "Burn all GIFs" movement [...]

I'm not in favor of using the Python website as a focal point of
political activism.  When we get a letter from Unisys we'll see what
we need to do; in the mean time, this seems rather blown out of
proportion.  I find Unisys' stance annoying and ill-advised, but I
don't see a need for python.org to take action unless we're pulled in
by Unisys, which at this point seems rather unlikely.  I'd rather pick
a more interesting battle (and I'm not referring to Python vs. Perl
:-).

Besides, all our GIFs are legal.

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



From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 12:27:00 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:27:00 GMT
Subject: mxODBC and NT services
References: <7rp9jg$7sh$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7td8s1$5h0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


  Hi Damian,

    Are you planning on using the WinNTServiceFramework class?  I am
currently working with this making a custom internet server that
provides a socket communication layer to an excel spreadsheet.

    I have found the docs on the NT service module for python to be
sparse.  Maybe we can trade info?

    -josh z



> hi people,
>
>    Im about to embark on something on an adventure in Python
> programming - the creation of an SMTP server that uses a database to
> store incoming and outgoing emails. All of the SMTP severs I have
> examined store incoming and outgoing emails as files in spool
> directories. For extremely large numbers of emails (50k+), this will
> bring an OS to its knees. A database, on the other hand, will cope
just
> fine (at least, thats my theory).
>
>     Before I embarked on this project, I thought Id post a note to see
> if anyone had any comments, suggestions, or warnings about the use of
> the mxODBC drivers, and about my project in general.
>
>     I intend using the mxODBC drivers in a fairly heavily
multithreaded
> environment under Windows NT - i.e. in an NT service. Most of the
> outgoing emails will be generated on demand as lists are processed,
so,
> in truth, there wont be massive volumes of data being transferred over
> ODBC. This thing will have to be pretty damned reliable though.
>
>     I have read that ODBC has certain limitations when running as an
NT
> service of with threads. Do anyone think this will be a problem at
all?
> Does anyone have any experince with this that they might share?
>
> Ive listed the relevant MS KB artiles below. Ive read them and think
> that the problems is probably much more minor than I imagine.
>
> Limitations of DAO, DAO SDK in NT Service or with Threads
> http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q156/1/38.asp
>
> Running ODBC Applications as Windows NT Services
> http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q136/4/81.ASP
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mark at chem.uwa.edu.au  Sun Oct  3 07:33:33 1999
From: mark at chem.uwa.edu.au (Mark C Favas)
Date: 3 Oct 99 11:33:33 GMT
Subject: Directory select dialog box?
References: <Arcturax-0210992302520001@ppp41.pm2.midd-oh.siscom.net>
Message-ID: <mark.938950413@declan>

Arcturax at no_spam.siscom.net (Arcturax) writes:

>I have a question
>regarding bringing up a dialog box that will allow selection of just a
>directory, not a file.

>I need one that will work under both Windows NT and Unix and would prefer
>the version that brings up the standard dialogs for either system like the
>tkopenandsave dialogs do.  I heard there was a patch for this, but cannot
>find it after spending two days of hard net searching and deja-news
>searching.

I, too, would be interested in one that brings up the standard dialogs for
either system. I have one based on the Pmw widget set, but it has its own look
and feel. If this would suit your purpose, mail me and I'll send it to you.

Mark
--
Email  - mark at chem.uwa.edu.au      ,-_|\                           Mark C Favas
Phone  - +61 9 380 3482           /     \               Department of Chemistry
Fax    - +61 9 380 1005      ---> *_,-._/   The University of Western Australia
                                       v                               Nedlands
Loc    - 31.97 S, 115.81 E                               Western Australia 6009



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Sat Oct  9 12:47:07 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 16:47:07 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7tnrib$r8r$29@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From tre17 at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Oct  5 22:22:06 1999
From: tre17 at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Timothy R Evans)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 15:22:06 +1300
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> <7tdoc8$hno$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vkrh5.6vp.bwinton@tor.dhs.org> <19991006105348.B700@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <c75zoxxut2p.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

"Malcolm Tredinnick" <malcolmt at smart.net.au> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 09:21:28PM +0000, Blake Winton wrote:
> > On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:51:25 GMT, Preston Landers wrote:
> [ ...random deletions... ]
> 
> > >> 'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.
> > >
> > >Isn't that what touch does?
> > 
> > Nope.  touch only changes the time if the file already exists...
> 
> I guess it depends on the version of touch you are using. By default,
> the GNU version *does* create a file of zero length if it doesn't
> previously exist. This is a documented faeture. If you don't want this
> to happen, you must pass the -c or --no-create option.
> 
> Cheers,
> Malcolm Tredinnick

Yes, but open(file,"w") will *delete* the current file and replace it
by a file with 0 length.  This is not what you want.

--
Tim Evans




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct 28 04:35:41 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:35:41 +0100
Subject: Forcing a import.
In-Reply-To: <7v7s6p$39b$1@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <002001bf211f$6b131a20$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> By the way, what is the difference between:
> 
>     PyRun_AnyFile() vs. PyRun_SimpleFile() vs. PyRun_File(), and
>     PyRun_String() vs. PyRun_SimpleString()? 

http://www.python.org/doc/current/api/veryhigh.html

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Wed Oct 27 10:22:31 1999
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:22:31 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com> <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38170692.D6D438C3@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <00f301bf2086$b4c43fd0$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>

I searched the MSDN again,
it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
and installed by default.

Thomas Heller
ION-TOF GmbH




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct 19 03:31:51 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 03:31:51 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: <vrzoxg159l.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <000301bf1a04$034c8100$6f2d153f@tim>

[Fran?ois Pinard, with a regexp containing alternatives, one of which can
 match a proper prefix of what's matching by another]
> ...
> I presume the longest match does not apply here, as it was usual for
> me so far, whenever regular expressions are concerned.

Are you sure you used to hack Perl <0.7 wink>?  CPython and JPython both
strive to mimic Perl regexp behavior here.

> May I guess this is all implemented with backtracking, with the first
> matching alternative shadowing the remaining alternatives?

Right.

> Isn't that commiting Python to a behaviour prohibiting later
> optimisations?

Possibly.  OTOH, Python could "optimize" <wink> the regexp

    cat|catfish

to plain

    cat

since it's impossible for catfish to match without first matching cat.

> Or is the exact behaviour just undefined?  What's the story? :-)

Jeffrey Friedl's book "Mastering Regular Expressions" (O'Reilly) defines it
in excruciating detail.  In short, a match is found at the leftmost position
(in the target string) possible; after that, the leftmost (in the regexp)
matching alternative wins, even if an alternative to its right can match a
longer substring; after that, leftmost greed wins for greedy quantifiers,
even if a longer substring could be matched overall by being less greedy
(similarly for minimal quantifiers).  For example,

>>> re.match("ax*(xy)?", "axxxxxy").group(0)
'axxxxx'
>>>

despite that had x* consumed just xxxx the whole string would have matched.

the-right-way-the-wrong-way-and-the-perl-way-ly y'rs  - tim





From robin at alldunn.com  Fri Oct 15 00:35:01 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:35:01 -0700
Subject: Python Compiler
References: <7u61r3$buh$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
Message-ID: <sayN3.300$mH5.23593215@news.randori.com>

> I'm trying to send a python prog to someone without python.  Is there a
> python compiler, so I can send them the .exe?
>

Check out Gordon's Installer utility at
http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html  With it you can create a
standalone executable (with a few support files) that you can send and they
will then be able to run your program.


--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!






From tbryan at python.net  Mon Oct 18 21:22:12 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 21:22:12 -0400
Subject: Can't build under Slackware
References: <380a7947@news.mdc.net>
Message-ID: <380BC7C4.1EECB238@python.net>

daniel wrote:
> 
> I've been trying to build Python 1.5.2
> under Slackware 3.3 using kernel 2.0.38
> but the build dies.

I don't know why you'd have a problem building
Python unless you're missing a module that you
specified in Modules/Setup. 

What error ends the build?

---Tom



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Wed Oct  6 11:01:14 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:01:14 GMT
Subject: How to use readline interactively?
In-Reply-To: <37FAA9F6.80EAE@mincom.com>
References: <37FAA9F6.80EAE@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <001e01bf100b$a25fb850$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> import sys
> while 1:
>     print "> ",
>     s = sys.stdin.readline()
>     if s[-1] == '\n': s = s[:-1]
>     if len(s) == 0: break
>     print "Hello " + s    

What about:

print "\rHello " + s

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From aahz at netcom.com  Mon Oct 25 02:08:05 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 06:08:05 GMT
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
References: <1271330231-4096426@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <7v0s45$8ve$1@nntp5.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <1271330231-4096426 at hypernet.com>,
Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>
>It's that damn Dutch degeneracy. Guido probably eats Grape 
>Nuts for breakfast.

Hey!  You dissin' mah cereal?
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Sun Oct  3 16:32:08 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 20:32:08 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7t8eg8$9o0$672@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://members.xoom.com/IaniSys/




From mxsvqv at gmx.de  Mon Oct 18 08:35:55 1999
From: mxsvqv at gmx.de (mxsvqv at gmx.de)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 13:35:55 +0100
Subject: meine neue homepage  4145
Message-ID: <380b061b.0@news.ivm.net>

http://www.kaiser-net-shop.de
cyrzphgfscpblklhvcfzzwhpdggvyyjqlmjjlzjdfdhsjshjxcmcwbdvqsrvchks




From spamfranke at bigfoot.de  Sun Oct 24 08:08:02 1999
From: spamfranke at bigfoot.de (Stefan Franke)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 12:08:02 GMT
Subject: What's wrong?
References: <7uu59c$p72$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <Pine.SOL.4.05.9910232303420.29102-100000@venus.radsci.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3812f5a3.3036076@news.btx.dtag.de>

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 23:06:25 -0700, Fuming Wang
<fuming at venus.radsci.uci.edu> wrote:

>
>Hi, following code snippet gave me a surpise. Could anyone tell me what's
>wrong?
>
This is a FAQ - see http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#6.25

Since function definitions in Python are statements, which are
executed by your scripts, the list object in your default argument -
list=[] - is created only once, and then shared between all instances.

>Thanks!
>Fuming Wang

You're welcome!
Stefan




From ted.drain at jpl.nasa.gov  Fri Oct  8 12:18:36 1999
From: ted.drain at jpl.nasa.gov (Ted Drain)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 09:18:36 -0700
Subject: Better python interactive prompt
Message-ID: <ted.drain-0810990918360001@mjordan.jpl.nasa.gov>

Hi all,
Has anyone written a hack (I mean feature addition) to the python
interactive prompt under UNIX?  I'm looking for features similar to the
ones present in the GNU readline library:

- Command history
- Command line editing
- etc, etc

I may try to write this myself, but it means parsing the lines somewhat to
handle the different indentation, prompting, etc.

Thanks
Ted

-- 
Ted Drain   Jet Propulsion Laboratory    Ted.Drain at jpl.nasa.gov



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Wed Oct 27 04:55:19 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:55:19 +0100
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <001401bf2058$ff152550$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>>>> And Windows NT by the looks of it. All I get from the program is:
>>>> "win32"

> The new upload (version 0.3.1) should fix this.

Yup. I now get:

Windows-NT-4.0

Any chance of this module going into the standard Python package.

BTW: You can add in detection for Minix as well. I should be able
to test this.

The canonical way is to check for the presence of the file:

/usr/include/minix/config.h

But you might be able to get information from uname as well.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Sun Oct 31 17:04:21 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 23:04:21 +0100
Subject: Listbox.. ACTIVE-item is the one selected previously..
Message-ID: <ksemebjifu.fsf@telelogic.se>

What have I now missed?? 

I want to have a listbox, and when the user clicks on one item in it,
he gets the value selected 'published' somewhere.. with the small
program included below.. If it is launched, and the user selects the
letters in order I would assume the result to be "abcde", but what I get is:
"aabcd", after the first selection, ACTIVE is lagged.. 

What have I missed?? (or am I just in need of coffee or sleep?)

        /Andy

--------------------

z=None
def click(event=None):
   global z
   print z.get(ACTIVE)
   
def test():
   global z
   frame=Frame(None)
   frame.pack()
   z=Listbox(frame)
   z.pack()
   z.bind("<Button-1>", click)
   for i in ("a", "b", "c", "d", "e"):
      z.insert(END, i)

   frame.mainloop()

test()




From jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au  Sat Oct 23 11:33:18 1999
From: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au (Jason Stokes)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:33:18 GMT
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
Message-ID: <2zkQ3.9170$P3.10169@ozemail.com.au>

Just a quick question; this comment in the Grail source code has me
perplexed:

        # TBD: this is a horrid hack used so that
        # mailtoAPI.mailto_access can get at the URL of the page that
        # the user has clicked off of. -baw

Is "TBD" a common abbreviation in source code?  Does it mean "To Be Done?"

-- 
Jason Stokes: jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au

"HTTP Error 204: No content? That applies to 99% of the web!"



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Wed Oct 27 21:07:50 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:07:50 +1000
Subject: Python / VSS automation
In-Reply-To: <f0NR3.15463$I_5.13717@dfw-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <000201bf20e0$db8bab30$0501a8c0@bobcat>

Yup!  Pythonwin actually has built-in support for VSS - if you attempt
to edit a readonly file, Pythonwin will check it out of VSS for you.
I also used Python to automate my release process using VSS - eg, it
checked no files were checked out and added a label to the projects.

Unfortunately (fortunately, really) I now use CVS for most of my
stuff, and have not yet integrated CVS with Pythonwin.

Mark.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Sasha Voynow
> Sent: Thursday, 28 October 1999 10:47
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Python / VSS automation
>
>
> Has anybody here used Python's COM support to automate
> Visual Source Safe (i.e. check-in, check-out, get etc.)?




From jbauer at rubic.com  Thu Oct  7 15:42:46 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 14:42:46 -0500
Subject: Python for PDAs?
References: <FJ8uG6.M1n@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <37FCF7B6.9C94C964@rubic.com>

Will Ware wrote:
> Are there any Python ports to run on PDAs? I'm thinking
> about getting a PDA and this would influence my decision.
> I'm aware of something called PyPsion for the Psion 5mx, is
> there anything else? The Palm Pilot is also appealing-looking.

We intend to use Python on the CE platform.  Check out
the following links:

  http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/ce/

  http://www.egroups.com/lists/python-ce/

 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings/demos/bauer/bauer.html

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Oct 11 05:04:27 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 09:04:27 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <000101bf137a$d88e3740$7fa2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <7ts96r$7uq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> [Martijn Faassen]
>> Everybody, even if they live in .cx, wherever this may be, that uses
>> Python knows Dutch. It's a cosmic conspiracy! :)

> [Greg Ewing]
>> Yeeks! This is quite worrying. If anyone ever finds out that
>> I don't, in fact, know Dutch, I may be kicked out of the
>> Python community! Better sign up for a crash course... or
>> get working on a Dutch-English translator in Python...

> No need, Greg -- Martijn is so keen to believe this delusion, that you need
> only supply him a plausible excuse to classify you as a native Dutch
> speaker. 

I never was so delusional as to believe you all were *native* Dutch speakers!
Anyway, this is a common trick of people who are in a conspiracy; they 
say something obviously ridiculous which I obviously don't believe, and then
as a consequence try to convince me there's no cosmic conspiracy at all.

> Even the timbot managed this sleight-of-tongue, and it doesn't
> speak *any* language ...

Yes, you only type them, right? (Note that this was the timbot
posing as a non-timbot. Recognizing the bot is easy once you know the trick)

> veel-geluk-ly y'rs  - tim

Argh! (muffled scream as men in white coats take him away)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Mon Oct  4 08:40:15 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 04 Oct 1999 08:40:15 -0400
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
In-Reply-To: "Malcolm Tredinnick"'s message of "Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:12:29 +1000"
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991004171229.A678@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <oqso3rti34.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

"Malcolm Tredinnick" <malcolmt at smart.net.au> writes:

> more or less 365.25 days (minus a little bit)

Let me add a tiny bit of noise :-).  It is more close to 365.2425, if I
remember correctly, and the last decimal may be wrong.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From jcosby at wolfenet.com  Thu Oct  7 20:58:42 1999
From: jcosby at wolfenet.com (Jon Cosby)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 17:58:42 -0700
Subject: Python as a first language
Message-ID: <7tjfk2$8o6$1@sparky.wolfe.net>

I've seen past references in this newsgroup to an article recommending
Python as a first language. Can anyone point me to this?

--
Jon Cosby

E-mail: jcosby at wolfenet.com
Web Site: http://www.wolfenet.com/~jcosby/






From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 14 05:10:12 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:10:12 +1300
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87puylf1fs.fsf@psyche.evansnet> <7tv9ro$l0k$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <38059DF4.53C25FF1@compaq.com>

henk_p at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> If I log out, I want the process to continue, so in some way it has to
> detach itself from the shell parent process.

Exiting of the parent process won't cause the child to die;
it will be inherited by the init process. (On BSD-influenced
unices, anyway - I'm not sure about pure SysV derivatives.)

Greg



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Mon Oct 25 01:08:17 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 01:08:17 -0400
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
In-Reply-To: "Tim Peters"'s message of "Sun, 24 Oct 1999 23:31:39 -0400"
References: <000101bf1e99$72c361e0$f12d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <vrr9ik58ou.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> ?crit:

>     Keyword arguments:
>     real -- the real part (default 0.0)
>     imag -- the imaginary part (default 0.0)

> That's certainly clear!

Yes, of course, when this is what you want to say.  But if you want to
write running prose in which you explain the relation between variables,
the tabular form does not apply very well.  No doubt that one might make
stunts to fit a description into tables, the same as I could have turned
this paragraph I'm writing into some kind of itemized list, if I really
had no choice but to do so.  Yet, you will most probably agree with me
that prose is better than tables for many purposes, and being forced into
tables is rather artificial.

> >     for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
> >         if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
> >             and function_name not in transparent_functions):
> >             name = os.path.basename(file_name)
> >             if name not in transparent_files:
> >                 return name, line_number

> <GUIDOQUOTE screaming_added_by="tim">
> [...] Emacs Python-mode does this right. [...]

The above was indeed indented by Emacs Python-mode.

> Some examples:

>         if width == 0 and height == 0 and \
>            color == 'red' and emphasis == 'strong' or \
>            highlight > 100:
>             raise ValueError, "sorry, you lose"

Yet, you just quoted:

> The preferred way of wrapping long lines is by using Python's implied line
> continuation inside parentheses, brackets and braces.  If necessary, you
> can add an extra pair of parentheses around an expression, but sometimes
> using a backslash looks better.

So, it seems here that backslashes look better, and that the preferred way
does not really apply above.  Since `if' is a rather frequent statement,
I'm not sure what to think. :-)

> But easier to remember that readability is the goal.

Indeed.  INDENT/DEDENT considerations, or explanations about Python logical
construction of single lines from physical lines, are a bit extraneous!

>     for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
>         if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<') and
>                 function_name not in transparent_functions):
>             name = os.path.basename(file_name)
>             ...
>     [and other examples]

Of course, they all look better, yet these imply fighting or defeating
Emacs mode to some extent.

> It's sheer coincidence in your example that the first non-whitespace
> character following the open paren was 4 columns to the right of the
> 'i' in "if", and I agree it doesn't read well.  So hit the spacebar a
> few times -- pymode won't hit you!

Somewhere else, Guido insists that we should not use extraneous whitespace
for lining up things (assignments given as examples), somewhat suggesting
that we should keep the spacing simple, and not invent spaces just for
the sake of building an overall look.  As I see it, there is some peeking
inconsistencies in these suggestions, which are sometimes strongly formulated
We could surely make religious debates trying to explain everything (we say
"ex?g?se" in French for that science which interprets religious texts :-).
My overall feeling is that the guide is not fully satisfactory as it stands.

This being said, we are surely free to do well, as you examplify many
times in your reply.  Yet, this weakens the Python style guide.  I used to
follow GNU standards for C code rather strictly, and the result was quite
acceptable all along (once accepted the position of braces, of course, as
some people just cannot stand them, Linus being one well known example).
We just have no choice than be more loose with the Python guide, and it's
a bit sad for utter Piagetian-anal guys like me! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Tue Oct 26 13:39:26 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:39:26 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: os.execv() documentation woes...any help?
In-Reply-To: <7309F1998D14D3119DD80008C7C9CA80420567@GIBRALTAR>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910261737330.17640-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Gabe Newcomb wrote:
> I'm trying to find decent documentation on the execv() function in the os
> module. The online Python module help for this function is minimal:
> 
> execv (path, args) 

   This is a unixism! :) To use it run, e.g.:

execv ("c:\\bin\\myapp.exe", ["c:\\bin\\myapp.exe", "-f", "d:\\data\\file.txt"]) 

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.





From alumni_site3 at hotmail.com  Mon Oct 11 10:49:15 1999
From: alumni_site3 at hotmail.com (alumni_site3 at hotmail.com)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 07:49:15 -0700
Subject: Keep in touch.
Message-ID: <0b7de1649140ba9MATRIX3@matrix3>

Want to keep in touch with old friends from school? The Gradfinder website
is the perfect resource to do just that.

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the ability to hide your email address from public view. Grads from your
school will still be able to email you without your email being exposed.
There is also a message board you can use to help organize reunions. You
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There are currently over 100,000 schools listed from grade 1 to university
from 60 countries around the world.

This service is free so check it out!

This site can be found at:

http://www.gradfinder.com





From u970130 at studbo.hit.no  Thu Oct 14 20:51:38 1999
From: u970130 at studbo.hit.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 00:51:38 GMT
Subject: Test for plain files
Message-ID: <38067a0c.17243317@news.eunet.no>

Hi,

I need to know wether or not a file is a dir or a plain file. I`m
using os.walk to traverse directory-tree, and want to process only
plain files. How can I do this or what module can be used? 

I`ve allready looked into os.stat for info, but is there sort of a
os.stat.isdir() function available? 

Thanks.

Thomas Weholt



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 11 15:44:32 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:44:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: select() interruption by signal
In-Reply-To: <009901bf1418$8fdefef0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <01BF141E.81CF8AE0.spooky@dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk>
	<009901bf1418$8fdefef0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <14338.15904.369436.707284@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "FL" == Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

  FL> Robert Longstaff <spooky at dreamfish.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
  >> However I've found that this alarm signal, although being caught
  >> successfully by the handler, also interrupts the select() causing
  >> the app to bomb out:
  [traceback omitted]
  >> 
  >> Is this just a timing thing? Is the select() 'catching' the
  >> signal at the same time as the handler or is the signal 'hanging
  >> around' longer than it should?

When a user program is blocked on a system call* and catches a signal,
the system call is interrupted and, in Python, raises the exception
you saw.  So it's just a timing thing.  If the select had returned
sooner, it wouldn't have been interrupted.

(*) Actually, not every system call will be interrupted.  Some calls,
    like disk IO, are interrupted.

  >> Is there an option to get the select() to ignore signals or
  >> should I trap the exception (and throw it away)? I can't find any
  >> more information in the Python manual or man select. I'm using
  >> v1.5.1 on Linux.

I believe there are some nasty ways to do this for specific platforms,
but I'm not familiar with any of them.  Check out Stevens' Advanced
Programming in the Unix Environment (or hope that Donn Cave responds
:-) for some more detail.

I suppose its worth mentioning that the issue of interrupted system
calls comes up in some interesting places.  Although neither of these
papers are directly relevant to your particular problem, they do touch
on the issue:
    http://www.jwz.org/worse-is-better.html
    http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~bawden/ftp/pclsr.memo.gz

Jeremy



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 18 09:03:59 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:03:59 +0200
Subject: Anaconda
Message-ID: <19991018150359.A26882@optiplex.palga.uucp>

> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 13, in ?
>     import gettext
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/gettext.py", line 40 in ?
>     import os, string
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/string.py", line 480
>     return sign + '0'*(width-n) +

Hmm, does anyone know if there's useful information on anaconda?
I'd like to use their libraries for creating console windows.

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From quinn at lira.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Oct  2 22:48:38 1999
From: quinn at lira.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 02:48:38 GMT
Subject: (newbie) Array of dictionaries
References: <krH1N9kfUJRE66saKRbldgciktYP@4ax.com> <87k8p686mk.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de> <1ln2N3f+WAJBaGTZAc76Jo71bgzt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vdh12.u06.quinn@lira.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 12:29:39 -0700, Marty Brundage <brundage at aimnet.com> wrote:
>
>Yes, and it works for me.  I didn't think it would be this simple!  (I
>was looking for an explicit declaration, and got hung up on that
>issue.)
>
>Some replies have pointed out an explicit declaration syntax of
>
>a=[{},{},...]
>
>Which is only good for small fixed length arrays of dictionaries.  It
>seems odd that the general case does not require an explicit
>delaration.

In pythonworld, an explicit declaration existing at all would be odd (except
for "global").  "a = [{}, {}, ...]" is not a declaration at all, it creates an
array and some dicts (which happen to be empty) and binds them to "a", just
like if you said "a = 5".

If you want to append dicts to your list sequentially, then the append()
method is for you.  If, however, you want to insert a dict at any point
without having to generate all the elements in between, you might want to use
another dict:

a = {}
a[5] = {'foo': 'bar'} # dicts can be keyed by any immutable type

A lot of people coming from more static languages have this problem:
"I didn't think it would be this simple!"

And if that's the biggest problem you have, you'll be a fan in no time :)



From ivanlan at callware.com  Mon Oct  4 14:59:16 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 18:59:16 GMT
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org> <14328.59652.711031.469373@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <37F8F904.C4261EC8@callware.com>

Hi All--

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 

[bobbit]

> Sure.  Try:
> 
>     >>> list1=['a','b','c']
>     >>> list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']
>     >>> dict1={}
>     >>> for k, v in map(None, list1, list2):
>     ...   dict1[k]=v
>     ...
>     >>> print dict1
>     {'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc', 'a': 'aaa'}
> 
> It also does the None pad of list2 you asked about.  It will None pad list1
> as well, resulting in probably not what you want (the last element of list2
> being associated with the key None).
> 

This makes me wonder--why is there no canonical "dict()" built in
function?  We have "long()", "list()" and so on, but nothing like them
for dictionaries.  They all know what to do when fed improper input.

Probably, everyone is going to tell me it's too complex an issue, and
this is of course true to a degree.  Nonetheless, there ought to be a
straightforward enough way to construct a dictionary from a list, at the
very least, that it could be built in.

<list-in-garbage-out>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From shdr at uswest.net  Sun Oct 31 23:07:33 1999
From: shdr at uswest.net (shdr)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 21:07:33 -0700
Subject: Audio Mixer for win32
Message-ID: <sj8T3.2314$Pf3.129511@news.uswest.net>

I've been looking through all the python documentation I could find as well
as hundreds of other resources for a way to change the audio mixer levels in
python. I simply want to write a python script that would allow me to change
the mixer volumes. On a similar note I would also like to be able to record
from the mic or line-in inputs. If anyone has any experience or expertise to
share with me it would be much appreciated.

thanks,
alex..
grenaria at asu.edu






From darcy at vex.net  Sat Oct 23 05:44:18 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 09:44:18 GMT
Subject: Snippet request: Connecting to databases
References: <381074BC.63A2B8DB@hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <7us01i$h2r$2@hub.org>

Hans Nowak <ivnowa at hvision.nl> wrote:
> The request is kinda easy... I'm looking for snippets to connect to
> databases. Any OS goes, idem for database (SQL Server, Access, Oracle,

See the following to connect to PostgreSQL database from Python.

    http://www.druid.net/pygresql/

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From aaryn at Ag.Arizona.Edu  Mon Oct  4 14:02:43 1999
From: aaryn at Ag.Arizona.Edu (Aaryn Olsson)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 11:02:43 -0700
Subject: Finding Password
Message-ID: <37F8EBC3.7914EAB9@ag.arizona.edu>

This may seem like an ametuer questions, but I just started using
Mailman list serve.  We were trying to open a previous list and it says
that the password has been changed.  I was wondering if there was a way
to get the changed password, or if we are going to have to just delete
the list and start over.  Thank-you in advance for any responses.

Michael Rose
Ag Networking lab
University of Arizona




From eric at fruitcom.com  Sat Oct 30 05:31:56 1999
From: eric at fruitcom.com (Eric Smith)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 09:31:56 GMT
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line
References: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com> <87so2ttegm.fsf@slip166-72-251-9.ma.us.prserv.net>
Message-ID: <slrn81leo8.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>

gerglery at usa.net (greg andruk) posted in comp.lang.python on 
30 Oct 1999 04:55:37 -0400:
 > Eric Smith <eric at fruitcom.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > I am am a perl programmer looking at Python and would like to know whether
 > > it is possible on the command line to test algorithms like I do in perl
 > > thusly:
 > 
 > > perl -e '$r="de";if ($r eq "whatever" or "de") {print "a match\n"}
 > 
 > Nitpick: I don't think the above is testing what you think it's
 > testing; it will always print "a match" regardless of $r's value.
 > I'll assume you meant `...($r eq "whatever" or $r eq "de")...' there.
 > 
 > Anyway, Python's not especially amenable to one-liners.  Instead, it
 > has a really spiffy interactive mode you can leave running in a window
 > or spare console session that works like you probably wish `perl -d'
 > worked:
 > 
 > meowing:~$ pytest
 > Python 1.5.2+ (#2, Oct 25 1999, 05:27:05)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on linux2
 > Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
 > >>> r = 'de'
 > >>> r in ('whatever', 'de')
 > 1
 > >>> # and just for the heck of it...
 > ... r == 'whatever' or 'de'
 > 'de'
 > >>> 


-- 
Eric Smith
eric at fruitcom.com
www.fruitcom.com

unix perl - sailing to war in an Armada of nutshells.




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 15 11:07:24 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:07:24 +0100
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <7u7bph$hvt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <003701bf171e$fc797820$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Given Python's run-time typing and the ability to generate call stacks
> of line numbers and module names, I suspect there is a way to answer
> this question, but it has escaped my perusal of my books and the online
> documentation.  Help appreciated.

def foo():
    bar()
	
def bar():
    print "I was called by " + who_called_me()
	
def who_called_me():
    try:
        raise "Hack"
    except:
        return sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame.f_back.f_back.f_code.co_name

if __name__ == '__main__':
    foo()

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From hj at rdr-nl.com  Tue Oct 19 12:58:26 1999
From: hj at rdr-nl.com (Henk Jansen)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:58:26 GMT
Subject: interprocess on Windows?
Message-ID: <7ui7v9$it0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Forced to Windows (98), can I do interprocess communication with Python,
i.e. having two objects that communicate with each other? (like in
Linux).

Thanks,

Henk

--
----------------------------------------
-- Ir. Henk Jansen ---- hj at rdr-nl.com --
-- ----- http://www.rdr-nl.com ------ --
----------------------------------------


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From u970130 at studbo.hit.no  Sun Oct 10 22:18:31 1999
From: u970130 at studbo.hit.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 02:18:31 GMT
Subject: using string.splitfields
Message-ID: <3801483c.10251569@news.eunet.no>

Hi,

Just wondering how I could use more field-separators when I use the
string.splitfield method.

Example :

import string
s = "this.is+a!string"
sep = ".+!"

res = string.splitfields(s, sep)

The result should be 
[this, is, a ,string]

But it`s not. Why? Why?!

Thomas



From sparlin at openpro.org  Sun Oct 10 09:32:28 1999
From: sparlin at openpro.org (Sonny Parlin)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 09:32:28 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <m3puynwdcj.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>

"Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight at mindspring.com> writes:

> Or you could just do 
>   print open ('testfile.txt').read()
> 
> See, it's a one liner!  :-)  Similarly, you could simply replace the two
> lines in the for loop with the one statement:
>   print line[:-1]
> 

Ahh yes, I like the one liner!

> Python is frequently slightly slower than Perl.  However, you should
> note that at the very least the Python code is the same number of lines
> (or fewer using my version:), and doesn't have the silly unnamed
> variables or ludicrous use of file descriptors.  Python still rules. :)
>

That seems kind of odd (that Python would be more slower than Perl) they
are both scripting languages, and they are both coded in C underneath,
anymore on this?
 
Thanks for your help!

-Sonny
-- 
Sonny Parlin
sparlin at openpro.org
http://www.openpro.org
fingerprint = 45 FE 56 72 C2 04 CD 76  
		09 75 52 7A C6 7C 23 D2



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Sun Oct 24 12:30:41 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 12:30:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
References: <2zkQ3.9170$P3.10169@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <14355.13361.105554.204636@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "JS" == Jason Stokes <jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au> writes:

    JS> Is "TBD" a common abbreviation in source code?  Does it mean
    JS> "To Be Done?"

It is for that warped BAW guy!  Guido uses XXX to mark things that
should be addressed later (and you thought the Python Video connection
was just coincidence).  I picked up TBD (To Be Decided, or Determined,
or Done) from a previous employer, and sometimes use it when I'm
feeling more prudish.

-Barry



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 11 12:41:43 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:41:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
	<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "GE" == Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:

  GE> Also, to clarify Tim's rather waffly characterisation of when my
  GE> closures do or don't cause cycles, it's quite simple: they never
  GE> cause cycles unless you write code which makes them do so. This
  GE> is no worse than the situation with regard to cycles everywhere
  GE> else in the language.

I think this description is at least as waffly as Tim's :-).  It seems
to me that most of the interesting uses of lexical scoping necessarily
create cycles.  Is there a large class of uses that will not create
cycles? 

One of the prototypical uses of lexical scoping is functions like
these: 

def make_adder(num):
    def adder(x):
            global num
            return x + num
    return adder

In this case, adder maintains a reference to make_adder's
environment, and that environment maintains a reference to adder,
because adder was defined there.  So we have a cycle...

It seems odd to propose adding lexical scoping to Python, and then
tell people not to write code like make_adder.

Jeremy



From glen at starmedia.net  Sun Oct 31 07:06:02 1999
From: glen at starmedia.net (Glen Starchman)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 06:06:02 -0600
Subject: Porting fork() calls to NT
Message-ID: <381C310B.FF756AAE@starmedia.net>

I am trying to port a monolithic web application server that runs in
tandem with Apache on a Solaris box to NT running IIS. The application
makes generous use of os.fork(), which NT does not support. Obviously I
do not want to simply comment out the fork() calls in the port. However,
it seems to me, from the hard time I spent at MS,that using MTS might be
a solution. The idea is to let MTS handle the creation of child
processes and to basically run the original app as an MTS component
(modified to remove the forks,of course). 

Before I go down this path I would like to hear from other people that
have ported python code with os.fork() to NT... specifically code that
works with Apache and/or IIS. 

Any comments, suggestions, etc... are very much appreciated...

-- 
**************************************************
Glen Starchman -- Starmedia Network
e:glen at starmedia.net 
c:917.402.0497
p:212-791-5942
"I will never forget Japan.
It will remain inside me forever,
like a tapeworm."
***************************************************



From andy at robanal.demon.co.uk  Tue Oct  5 17:32:32 1999
From: andy at robanal.demon.co.uk (Andy Robinson)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 21:32:32 GMT
Subject: mxODBC and NT services
References: <7rp9jg$7sh$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7td8s1$5h0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <38006dcd.4547959@news.demon.co.uk>

joshzeidner at my-deja.com wrote:

>
>
>  Hi Damian,
>
>    Are you planning on using the WinNTServiceFramework class?  I am
>currently working with this making a custom internet server that
>provides a socket communication layer to an excel spreadsheet.
>
>    I have found the docs on the NT service module for python to be
>sparse.  Maybe we can trade info?
>
>    -josh z
>
Mark Hammond gave a talk on services at the Open Source conference in
August; the slides and an example service are at
http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/conferences/ora99/

It will also be fully documented in a book in a couple of months time.

Hope this helps,

Andy Robinson




From phd at phd.russ.ru  Fri Oct 22 11:31:00 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:31:00 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-Oopk8HdtcJVH@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221525430.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> I'm forced to do this:
> 
> C:\>python
> 
> >>> mycookie["PSG"]["path"] = "/docushare"
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "D:\OS2\PYTHON\LIB\UserDict.py", line 14, in __getitem__
>     def __getitem__(self, key): return self.data[key]
> KeyError: PSG
> 
> 	^^^ Error ^^^^
> 
> >>> mycookie["PSG"] = "PSG Cookie"
> >>> mycookie["PSG"]["path"]="/docushare"
> >>> print mycookie
> Set-Cookie: PSG="PSG Cookie"; Path=/docushare;
> 
> Can anyone confirm that this is proper behavior for this
> module?

   But of course. It is normal to Python. Python (nont Cookie.py) saw
mycookie["PSG"] in expression mycookie["PSG"]["path"] and tryed to find the
object. But the object isn't there.
   You certainly must add an object mycookie["PSG"] before setting its
properties.

> Also, in my informal testing, when I start messing with
> Cookie Attributes (i.e. Path, etc), the cookie isn't
> being restored properly...
> 
> Anyone have any hints, and/or examples of Cookie.py use?

----- create cookie -----
#! /usr/local/bin/python -O


def set_cookie():
   import time
   t = time.gmtime(time.time())
   t = (t[0] + 10,) + t[1:] # Add 10 years!

   import Cookie
   cookie = Cookie.Cookie()

   cookie["anketa_id"] = str(1024)
   cookie["anketa_id"]["expires"] = time.strftime("%a, %d-%b-%Y %T GMT", t)
   cookie["anketa_id"]["path"] = "/"

   print cookie

try:
   print "Content-type: text/html"
   set_cookie()
   print "Location: test_c.py"

except:
   print "Error..."
----- /create cookie -----


----- test cookie -----
#! /usr/local/bin/python -O


def get_cookie():
   import os, Cookie
   cookie = Cookie.Cookie(os.environ.get("HTTP_COOKIE"))
   c = cookie.output("Cookie: ")
   if c:
      print c
   else:
      print "Cookies not found"

try:
   print "Content-type: text/html"
   print
   get_cookie()

except:
   print "Error..."
----- /test cookie -----

> Is there any "preferences" in the python world on Cookie
> Modules?  (I.e. any better/worse/etc modules)

   It s excellent module, IMHO! Just use right way...

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From jim at interet.com  Tue Oct  5 08:27:05 1999
From: jim at interet.com (James C. Ahlstrom)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 08:27:05 -0400
Subject: Determining python installation prefix
References: <87k8p27enc.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <37F9EE99.997E055B@interet.com>

Dave Cole wrote:
> 
> I have some Python modules that I want to install via Makefile on a
> number of boxes.  On the Linux box, the installation prefix is /usr,
> whereas on Solaris and FreeBSD, the prefix is /usr/local.

Try looking at sys.executable.  It is the path to the
interpreter.  Also try sys.prefix.

Jim Ahlstrom



From guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US  Thu Oct  7 10:08:06 1999
From: guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 10:08:06 -0400
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 07 Oct 1999 14:40:34 BST."
             <002f01bf10c9$88180650$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> 
References: <002f01bf10c9$88180650$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> 
Message-ID: <199910071408.KAA10477@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

> > What embedding code?  I thought you were using IDLE.  Are you saying
> > that you are using IDLE from an embedding application?
> 
> Why not? It's useful for interactively testing inbuilt extension modules.
> These are built into the code and initialised before calling any Python
> scripts we run.

I'm not complaining that you do it, I'm just requesting that you make
this clear.  It's like calling tech support for a laptop -- the first
thing they ask you is if you have any 3rd party hardware installed.

> I would have like to embed PythonWin (the debgger is better, especially
> in the latest release), but it doesn't want to work. Perhaps this is
> because the embedding app isn't MFC. I'm not too sure about this one.

Probably.  IDLE's debugger will eventually match Pythonwin's though,
when I get back to it.  (Mark & I share code, so I don't want to
predict which one will be better in the long run.)

> > (It is always necessary if any 3rd party C code is involved when
> > reporting a Python problem; embedding counts as such :-)
> 
> I see. I thought, since the ability to do this was there, it would be
> okay to use it. :-)

Yes, but see before.

> > If so, why do you call setlocale(LC_ALL, "")?
> 
> The rest of the code relies on it. (e.g. to set the decimal point
> separator for internationalisation purposes.

OK.

> > There may be no good solution if your embedding application needs to
> > do that -- there are too many places in the Python runtime that expect
> > the locale to be C.
> 
> So how come it's okay to set the locale in Python. Surely this just calls
> the equivalent function in C.

Read the code.  It saves and restores the locale.

> Perhaps if I call setlocale(LC_ALL, "C") before I initialise Python, then
> call Python's setlocale() with the original locale before I run any scripts.

That would make the Python code honor the locale but your C code
would see the C locale.

> > I suppose this could be fixed by not using any of those, but (a) it's
> painful
> > to write your own atof(), %e, %f, %g formatter in a platform independent
> > manner with the best accuracy, (b) it seems such a waste of effort since
> the
> > C library has one, (c) finding and fixing all locale dependencies (there
> are
> > others!) in the Python source code is about as much fun as systematically
> > searching for Y2K bugs in a program of similar size.
> 
> This almost implies that Python's version of setlocale() does something
> completely different from the C version.

Yes.  Read _locale.c for details.

(Sorry the answer isn't better -- the problem is the locale model
imposed by the C standard, which doesn't support using different
locales easily.  It also doesn't support different locales in diffent
threads -- at least the standard is silent on the issue, and vendors'
implementations differ.  See Martin von Loewis' talk at an early
Python conference -- it's on python.org.)

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



From skodela at my-deja.com  Fri Oct  8 09:47:26 1999
From: skodela at my-deja.com (Sindh)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 13:47:26 GMT
Subject: Image manipulation under Python / Tk
Message-ID: <7tksla$j3n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Dear all

I just wonder how to show a image from python. I tried to make it
through canvas widget  of tk, hoping to put pixels on canvas. But Canvas
does not have a method to show  dots. Any thoughts.

Also anyone know about a decent spread sheet widget for the  python/tk.

Regards
sreekant

--
A man needs to sleep for 36 hours a day atleast.


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Before you buy.



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Fri Oct 22 10:57:51 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:57:51 GMT
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-Oopk8HdtcJVH@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>

I've been working with "Cookie.py" on a Windows NT Machine, 
and running into some hickups....

For example, I'm trying to use "Max-age", "Comment", and 
"Expires" in my cookies to allow them to be persistant.

Here's the "Docs":

|Each element of the Cookie also supports all of the RFC 2109
|Cookie attributes.  Here's an example which sets the Path
|attribute.
|
|  >>> C["joe"]["path"] = "/home/joe"

But, that doesn't work right in practice.
I'm forced to do this:

C:\>python

>>> mycookie["PSG"]["path"] = "/docushare"
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "D:\OS2\PYTHON\LIB\UserDict.py", line 14, in __getitem__
    def __getitem__(self, key): return self.data[key]
KeyError: PSG

	^^^ Error ^^^^

>>> mycookie["PSG"] = "PSG Cookie"
>>> mycookie["PSG"]["path"]="/docushare"
>>> print mycookie
Set-Cookie: PSG="PSG Cookie"; Path=/docushare;

Can anyone confirm that this is proper behavior for this
module?

Also, in my informal testing, when I start messing with
Cookie Attributes (i.e. Path, etc), the cookie isn't
being restored properly...

Anyone have any hints, and/or examples of Cookie.py use?

Is there any "preferences" in the python world on Cookie
Modules?  (I.e. any better/worse/etc modules)

		- Benjamin

====================================================
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====================================================
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From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Sat Oct  9 12:21:06 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 09 Oct 1999 18:21:06 +0200
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
References: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <y0joge8cxot.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

gopaliv at my-deja.com writes:

> I have two cgi scripts.  I need to invoke the other cgi script from
> the first cgi script.  How should I do this?
> 

Use urllib... For instance:

  from urllib import urlopen
  cgioutput = urlopen("http://something/something.cgi")

Quite simple, huh?

> Thanks
> Gopal

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Tue Oct 12 10:58:21 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:58:21 +0200
Subject: Scripting MS-Access from PythonCom
References: <01bf1429$aab0ee80$0d301bd4@bbix>
Message-ID: <38034C8D.963F5D33@appliedbiometrics.com>

Howdy,

I had a quick look into this.
Here a solution, not nice but *OK*.

BORGHI BRUNO wrote:
> 
> I'm writing a small app creating a MS-Access database from csv files, using
> OLE automation through Pythoncom.
> So far, so good. I can create a database, populate it, create computed
> reports, print them. Nice.
> There is one thing I still can't do: setting the margins in a report.
> 
> There is a property of reports named 'PrtMip' that is supposed to be used
> for that. MS-Access documentation says that PrtMip is a string packing a
> struct of 14 short integers.

Here is the problem: PrtMip is a structure. If you look into the demo
code of the MSAccess help, you see that they read and write it as some
fixed size string and transfer the data using LSet forth and back.
BTW: There are 14 long words, so 56 bytes is *ok*.
But VBA seems to allocate 16 bits for the strings internally.

> I can get the value of PrtMip, although report.PrtMip gives me a tuple of
> 56 integers, corresponding to the bytes of 14 long integers..
> But I don't know how to set a new value. I tried a tuple of 56 integers, of
> 14 integers. Doesn't work. I tried some variations about a string packing
> integers. Doesn't work either.

Yes, I tried it, the bytes are read in, but writing to the structure
gives always an error, and later on the system complains about too
few memory. I gues this is a limitation of PythonCom, which appears
to handle fixed string structures different than VBA expects? Mark?

> My questions are :
> 1/ Does anyone ever tried to set the margins of report in MS-Access through
> Pythoncom and could tell me how to achieve this ?
> 2/ I don't understand why report.PrtMip returns a tuple of 56 integers,
> rather than a tuple of 28 integers. Can someone explain ?

I guess this is an internal con(ver|fu)sion in Python's COM
interface, but here is a quick and not so dirty solution.

Access.Application.8 exports a "Run" method which is able to call an
arbitrary sub or function from Access. WHile I don't like to
recommend to use VBA, in this case it is a quick solution to write
a little module which provides a VBA proxy function for you.

The Python module wraps a little structure around a 14 element integer
list. It provides a read and write method to an opened Access report.
FOr the communication with Access, it creates some proxy functions
in VBA which transfer data as 14 word variant arrays.

I also managed to create the Access proxy on demand :-)

good luck - chris

----------------------------------- snip
----------------------------------
# PrtMip
# helper functions to access some special structures in MS Access 98
# CT 991012

import string

class PRTMIP:
    __members__ = string.split("""
        LeftMargin
        TopMargin
        RightMargin
        BotMargin
        DataOnly
        Width
        Height
        DefaultSize
        Columns
        ColumnSpacing
        RowSpacing
        ItemLayout
        FastPrint
        Datasheet
        """)
    
    def __init__(self):
        self.data = len(self.__members__)*[0]

    def __getattr__(self, key):
        if key == "data":
            return self.__dict__["data"]
        lis = self.__class__.__members__
        return self.data[lis.index(key)]

    def __setattr__(self, key, value):
        if key == "data":
            self.__dict__["data"] = value
            return
        lis = self.__class__.__members__
        self.data[lis.index(key)] = int(value)

    def display(self):
        data = self.data
        for attr in self.__class__.__members__:
            print "%s=%d" % (attr, getattr(self, attr))

    def read(self, accessobj, opened_reportno):
        """read data from a report. It must have been opened in design
mode"""
        autoload(accessobj)
        data = accessobj.Run("GetPrtMip", opened_reportno)
        self.data = list(data[0])

    def write(self, accessobj, opened_reportno):
        """write data to a report. It must have been opened in design
mode"""
        autoload(accessobj)
        accessobj.Run("SetPrtMip", opened_reportno, self.data)

# demo session

"""
>>> import win32com.client
>>> a=win32com.client.Dispatch("access.application.8")
>>> a.Visible=1
>>> a.OpenCurrentDatabase("d:/tmp/db1.mdb")
>>> a.DoCmd.OpenReport("ber",1)
>>> p = PRTMIP()
>>> p.read(a, 0)
>>> p.display()
LeftMargin=1500
TopMargin=1440
RightMargin=1440
BotMargin=1440
DataOnly=0
Width=14004
Height=384
DefaultSize=1
Columns=1
ColumnSpacing=360
RowSpacing=0
ItemLayout=1953
FastPrint=1
Datasheet=1
>>> p.LeftMargin = 1440 + 770
>>> p.write(a, 0)
"""

# Access module

access_module_glob = """
' these are there by default
' Option Compare Database
' Option Explicit

Type str_PRTMIP
    strGZF As String * 28 ' unicode
End Type

Type long_PRTMIP
    longGZF(14) As Long
End Type

Sub SetPrtMip(repno, array14)
    Dim buffer As long_PRTMIP, rebuff As str_PRTMIP, i As Integer
    For i = 0 To 14 - 1
        buffer.longGZF(i) = array14(i)
    Next
    LSet rebuff = buffer
    Reports(repno).PrtMip = rebuff.strGZF
End Sub

Function GetPrtMip(repno)
    Dim ret As str_PRTMIP, conv As long_PRTMIP
    ret.strGZF = Reports(repno).PrtMip
    LSet conv = ret
    GetPrtMip = conv.longGZF
End Function

Function I_have_been_loaded()
    I_have_been_loaded = 42
end Function
"""

# Auto-loader for Module
def autoload(accessobject):
    x = 0
    a = accessobject
    try:
        x = a.Run("I_have_been_loaded")[0]
    except: pass
    if x != 42:
        from win32com.client import constants
        a.RunCommand(constants.acCmdNewObjectModule)
        mod = a.Modules(len(a.Modules)-1)
        mod.AddFromString(access_module_glob)
        x = a.Run("I_have_been_loaded")
        if x != 42:
            raise ValueError
----------------------------------- snip
----------------------------------

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
     we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home



From rturpin at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 10:25:07 1999
From: rturpin at my-deja.com (rturpin at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 14:25:07 GMT
Subject: re TERRIBLE performance -- progress and request for more help
References: <000201bf0eef$532e9e80$f92d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7td1ng$ver$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

The following is a simplification of my original re.  (I have
omitted symbolic tags, etc.)

(lit1                       # match opening lit1
   ( \s+                    #   skip white space
   | (!=(lit2|lit3)[^\s"]+) #   skip string except lit2 or lit3
   | ("[^"]*")              #   skip any quoted string
   )*                       # After any number of above
   (lit2|lit3) [^\sc]+      # match lit2 or lit3 and target
   [^c]*                    # match anything except char c
   c                        # match closing c
)

Even though (!= ) is a zero-space recognizer, I had thought
it would be compiled into something fast, since it was
excluding potential string matches.  The following revision
solved the problem:

(lit1                       # match opening lit1
   ( \s+                    #   skip white space
   | [^\s"]+                #   skip string (see below)
   | ("[^"]*")              #   skip any quoted string
   )*?                      # After any number of above UNTIL
   (lit2|lit3) [^\sc]+      # match lit2 or lit3 and target
   [^c]*                    # match anything except char c
   c                        # match closing c
)

Seemingly, re is much smarter about compiling the minimizing
modifier ? than compiling the excluder (!= ).

Even though it is now so fast that my crude timing will not
detect speed-ups, I welcome any advice on writing this re to
be better.  Should I put ? after all the * and + in the above
expression?  Is use of the minimizing ? generally a good idea?

I am using this expression to process the inner target string
that follows lit2 or lit3:

  regexp.sub(substituteFunc, reallyBigText)

reallyBigText contains a lot of phrases of the form "lit1 .. c".
Only some of these contain lit2 or lit3.  One question I have is
whether it is better to let the regexp match ALL "lit1 .. c"
phrases, with the substituteFunc returning its input if there
is no contained lit2 or lit3, or whether I should do as above
and just match "lit1 .. c" phrases containing lit2 or lit3.  The
reason the latter MIGHT be slower is that the regexp (if dumb)
would try to match again at each character inside a phrase
"lit1 .. c" without lit2 or lit3.  Whereas if it matches this
phrase, it is forced to begin its search after the c.  Any
thoughts on this?

Russell



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From tneff at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 18 20:29:08 1999
From: tneff at my-deja.com (tneff at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 00:29:08 GMT
Subject: Zope via Apache ProxyPass
Message-ID: <7uge09$ber$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I recently tried setting up Zope's ZServer "behind" an Apache 1.3.9
installation by using the ProxyPass (and ProxyPassReverse) directives,
as follows:

  ProxyPass        /Zope/ http://my.site.com:8080/
  ProxyPassReverse /Zope/ http://my.site.com:8080/

and it seems to work.  The advantage to this is that Apache can continue
to "own" the port 80 HTTP server environment, and you can serve anything
non-Zope-ish without complicated redirects - but you're not trapped into
using the single threaded PCGI mechanism, which seems to be a
performance bottleneck and occasionally produces unexpected results.  In
fact, you still seem to get ZServer's multithreads if you have enough
Apache client processes allocated.

Has anyone else experimented with this?  Anything I should watch out
for?

--
Tom Neff


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From Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com  Sat Oct 30 07:47:53 1999
From: Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com (Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 11:47:53 GMT
Subject: gadfly install problem: "from sqlsem import Parse_Context" fails.
References: <7vb0bh$s9u$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7vc3kp$jv0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7velt9$dvv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In my haste I thought kwP was just the kwParsing files
and not gadfly proper.  I installed kwP to one directory,
the sundry *.py files to another directory, put both in
my path, and thus caused one sqlsem.py to hide the other.

All is well now! :)

In article <7vc3kp$jv0$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
   aaron_watters at my-deja.com wrote:
> Dunno really.  But there's no reason to download *.py files
> since either kwP.tgz, kwP.tar.gz, kwP.zip include all gadfly
> files.  You may have a truncated sqlsem.py file for some reason
> ...


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From andrew at andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk  Mon Oct 11 12:31:48 1999
From: andrew at andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk (Andrew Cooke)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:31:48 GMT
Subject: Bug Report + Fix: os.path.normpath
Message-ID: <7tt3dj$2l0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


Hi,

On NT using 1.5.2 I see the following:

import os.path
print os.path.normpath(r'.\\a\b')
\a\b

which looks wrong (I expect a\b, which is the output for r'.\a\b')

To fix this, change:
        elif comps[i] == '' and i > 0 and comps[i-1] <> '':
            del comps[i]
to
        elif comps[i] == '':
            del comps[i]

within normpath in Libs\ntpath.py (it's obvious where once you look at
the routine)

I can't work out what the check is for in the old version, as the
modified code seems to work OK for all cases I can think of - but I'm
worried it is there for a reason.

The same code appears in posixpath and so the same error will be seen on
Unix.

Cheers,

Andrew
http://www.andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk/index.html



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From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 10 10:43:42 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:43:42 +0200
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>  <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>  <slrn7vvjai.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <slrn7vvjn6.tue.thantos@brimstone.mecha> <380027E7.D0CC35EF@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <008201bf132d$da032b00$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net> wrote:
> > I could accept this solution (though I'd rather spell 'nonlocal' as
> > '=:' as Dylan does, as it certainly makes sense in context).
> 
> Who is Dylan?

www.dylan.org (python-food, yum, yum)

or perhaps they mean the guy who runs
comp.lang.dylan.  more info here:
http://www.functionalobjects.com/resources.html

</F>




From madonl at bigfoot.com  Thu Oct 28 15:34:11 1999
From: madonl at bigfoot.com (Louis Madon)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:34:11 -0400
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au> <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com> <3817D36A.1BA8DAE@bigfoot.com> <38184747.CFECCA94@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <3818A533.159F56BF@bigfoot.com>

Greg Ewing wrote:
> I'm a bit bothered by the idea that *adding* a new
> method could cause previously valid calls to become
> invalid. If I have only foo(A, B) and foo(AA, B)
> defined, then calling foo(AA, BB) is okay. But if
> I add a foo(A, BB), then all my existing foo(AA, BB)
> calls, anywhere in the program, suddenly become ambiguous.

This scenario is telling you something about your architecture: perhaps
you shouldn't be calling foo(AA, BB) or perhaps you should do some
refactoring of the class model or perhaps you need to add a specific
foo(AA, BB) method.  IMHO, this process helps to produce a better
architecture.

> 
> I worry that it will be difficult to reason about the
> behaviour of a program with MD

Without MD, programmers will invent adhoc workarounds to simulate it
(eg. explicit type tests or adding extra levels of indirection like in
the visitor pattern). Now lets say you've got to work on a 50kloc
program that was originally written by someone else, do you really think
that having such adhoc mechanisms sprinkled throughout the code makes
reasoning *easier*? I think the opposite is true; use of well defined
abstractions leads to easier to understand systems.

> because the information
> needed to determine which method a given call will
> invoke is spread out over many places, with no clear
> way of finding all of them. If I'm looking for the
> implementation of foo(A, B), will it be in the module
> defining A, or B? Or somewhere else entirely?
> What about foo(A, B, C, D, E)? It seems that I have
> a lot more possible places to look when I'm trying
> to find a piece of code.

I see the issue of finding where the various bits of code are as
separate to the notion of "reasoning about behaviour".  A decent code
browser should be able to automate this process for you.  In Harlequin
Dylan for example, the IDE lets you navigate through your code in a
variety of ways including looking up related methods. 

> I was thinking about it in the context of an interactive
> fiction authoring language. MD seems like an attractive idea
> there, because often a verb needs to be specialised in ways
> that depend equally much on all its arguments.

...
 
> Eventually I decided that what I really wanted was a set
> of pattern-matching clauses, like in functional languages.
> But for that to work it has to be clear what order the
> matches are tried in, which means that all the possible
> branches of an action really have to be listed together.
> That makes it difficult to have libraries of code which
> can be extended by the programmer.

Well your reasoning may well be sound here; MD is more expressive than
SD but that doesn't make it a solution for everything.  That's why I
find predicate dispatch so interesting, it generalises concepts like MD,
pattern matching, unification and others into a single elegant theory. 
Unfortunately, AFAIK, there is no language that implements it.

Louis.



From skip at mojam.com  Thu Oct 28 17:29:44 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:29:44 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Where can I find Python enthusiasts?
In-Reply-To: <9JEYOD6GVlcrZDyqHozfhabgj7tM@4ax.com>
References: <9JEYOD6GVlcrZDyqHozfhabgj7tM@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <14360.49224.481706.279251@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Bill> Should I be posting more explicit information about the job
    Bill> opportunity in this forum (assuming that is ok?), asking you about
    Bill> contract programmers, or wearing a trench coat and lurking about
    Bill> on street corners in Amsterdam and Reston waving handsful of cash?

Bill,

You might try checking out the newly created job board at

    http://www.python.org/Jobs.html

Send a blurb to webmaster at python.org and it should appear within a few days.
It's brand new, but over time it should get recognized by Pythonistas as the
place to check first for job opportunities.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...




From cgw at fnal.gov  Tue Oct  5 04:58:01 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:58:01 GMT
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.05.9910042051340.156-100000@david.ski.org>
References: <Pine.WNT.4.05.9910042051340.156-100000@david.ski.org>
Message-ID: <14329.48537.375223.530111@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

David Ascher writes:
 >
 > So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..

Why would this be such a terrible thing?  I'm not sure I see the
grounds for your shivering.

If it mattered, one could test the argument for negativity before
calling sqrt, or the result for reality afterwards.  Or wrap these
tests up into a real_sqrt() function...  Or define csqrt() to be the
complex square root and keep sqrt() the way it is (I like this less,
but it's more backward-compatible.  Or maybe just plain "backward").

I'm of the camp that just hates the fact that 1/2 != 1./2. (which
seems to be a holdover from earlier times).  I don't like it when the
behavior of mathematical operations depends on the types of the
arguments.  That's what casts and type-conversions are for, IMO.
 
 > BTW, it's "complices" (from the French for 'accomplice').  

Hmm, I spent 7 years in the Math Dept. at MIT and never once heard
that word.  Indices, matrices and hyperbolae, sure, but never anything
but "the complexes" when referring to that lovely
algebraically-complete number field obtained by adjoining a formal
square root of -1 to the reals.  Maybe if I'd been up the river at
Harvard instead of MIT I would have learned the proper Latin
formation....




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 24 08:07:20 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 08:07:20 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
Message-ID: <1271356405-2522084@hypernet.com>

[William Tanksley]

> >> Of course, I'm about to ask for multiple dispatch, but since
> >> everyone who even knows what multiple dispatch is already knew
> >> I was going to ask for it...  So I won't bother asking.

[John Skaller] 
> >	What do you want it to do? Any idea how it should work in
> >Python?
> 
> Multiple dispatch.  Hmm...
> 
> Okay, the type of OO you're familiar with is also known as single
> dispatch -- you take a message, a bunch of parameters, and a
> special parameter (called 'this' or 'self'), and you look up the
> meaning of the message in self's method table.
> 
> With multiple dispatch, OTOH, you take a message and a bunch of
> parameters, and you look up the meaning of the message in the
> message's parameter table.
 
It's called "multiple dispatch" because, I think, you're 
supposed to dispatch on both message and self/this.

In C++ or Java, this shows up as trying to resolve both an 
override and an overload at the same time. That is:

 <base_class1_ptr>->method(<base_class2_ptr>)

which you want handled by the appropriate

 DerivedClass1::method(DerivedClass2)

In C++ / Java, this means bouncing the message back and 
forth - 

 DerivedClass1::method(BaseClass2 *thing) 
 {
   thing->inversemethod(this);
 }

 DerivedClass2::inversemethod(DerivedClass1 *otherthing)
 {
   //now we have it resolved
 }

Unfortunately, this means creating scores of virtual methods 
with no purpose except allowing the compiler to find the trail.

But overriding is no problem in Python - the compiler never 
gets in the way. And overloading is impossible, so that's no 
problem either <wink>. If you want to avoid the if/elif 
statement, you could write BaseClass1's method as

 apply(dispatchdict[thing.__class__], ....)

and have methodTakingLarch, 
methodTakingSmallFuzzyThing, ... 

Or even 
 
 mthd = getattr(self, "methodTaking" + 
thing.__class__.__name__)

The real point being that before you ask for dual dispatch, 
you'd better ask for overloading first...

- Gordon



From tino at wildenhain.de  Tue Oct 12 14:31:16 1999
From: tino at wildenhain.de (Tino Wildenhain)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 20:31:16 +0200
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
References: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0joge8cxot.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <7tnvvs$mjd$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0jk8osd6m1.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <38037E74.73BE20BD@wildenhain.de>


"Magnus L. Hetland" wrote:
> 
> joshzeidner at my-deja.com writes:
> 
> >  Yeah but then he has to parse the HTML to get what he wants.  Not to
> > mention that you are needlessly overloading the web server.
> >
> 
> What do you mean? He asked how to call a cgi script from a cgi script
> - and that's what I do. What else could he have meant? What other
> output than HTML would you like from a cgi script?
> 
> >  its called DATA SCRAPING and it aint too much fun.
> 
> Bah - using re that's no problem.
double bah, cgi-scripts do not need to deliver HTML only. 
In fact they can return every datatype you want. plain-text,
images, whatever data. since CGI is 8-bit clean, you 
can even deliver pickled python-objects if you want.
(make sure you call them in a sandbox, you never know...)

Best regards

Tino Wildenhain



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  1 06:33:54 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:33:54 GMT
Subject: How buid _tkinter_d.pyd?
In-Reply-To: <7rn2hm$88v$1@newsource.ihug.co.nz>
References: <7rn2hm$88v$1@newsource.ihug.co.nz>
Message-ID: <000701bf0bf8$75f63d50$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> I build _tkinter.pyd and _tkinter_d.pyd in VC6, _tkinter_d.pyd 
> doesn't work, because the function  init_tkinter() should be
> name init_tkinter_d(), but I can't link it with library, I need
> your help if you know how to build _tkinter_d.pyd in right way?

Although the library has the _d extension, the init function does
not. It works like this:

If you are using python15.dll, and say "import _tkinter", it looks
for _tkinter.pyd (or .dll), then calls init_tkinter() inside.

If you are using python15_d.dll and say "import _tkinter", it looks
for _tkinter_d.pyd (or .dll), but still calls init_tkinter() inside.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From Jerry.Williams at Ingenix.com  Wed Oct  6 19:35:17 1999
From: Jerry.Williams at Ingenix.com (Jerry Williams)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 17:35:17 -0600
Subject: siomodule and Python1.5.2
Message-ID: <37FBDCB5.C805E926@Ingenix.com>

It looks like siomodule.zip has elapsedTimer.pyd in it which is looking
for python14.dll.
I was wondering if someone had fixed it to run with the python15.dll.
Also it would be nice if someone could add an example to the faq on how
to install it.
Like what files need to be where in the python directory tree and if
something needs to be tweeked
in the registry what key needs to be added.

So what do I need to do to make it work with 1.5.2 or do I have to go
back to python1.4 to use it?
I installed python1.4 to get the python14.dll and then installed
python1.5.2 but now I get the error:
>>> from serial import *
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "C:\Program Files\Python\Lib\serial.py", line 36, in ?
    from mstimer import MsTimer
  File "C:\Program Files\Python\Lib\mstimer.py", line 2, in ?
    import elapsedTimer
SystemError: _PyImport_FixupExtension: module elapsedTimer not loaded
>>>
Is this because I haven't put elapsedTimer in the windows registry?
Thanks for any help!




From skip at mojam.com  Sun Oct 10 02:28:50 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 01:28:50 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Resident Python Interpreter
In-Reply-To: <7to0nk$n8n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7to0nk$n8n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <14336.12834.490919.194451@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Josh> I was wondering if there is a way to have a resident python
    Josh> interpreter for CGI scripting similar to the Perl ISAPI extension
    Josh> for ACtiveState Perl.

Check out any or all of:

      Zope	 http://www.zope.org/
      Medusa	 http://www.nightmare.com/medusa/
      PyApache	 (search DejaNews)

There was also something posted recently, mod_psi I think.  Again, check
DejaNews.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 28 02:59:53 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 08:59:53 +0200
Subject: How to eliminate consol window in MS Windows
References: <3813a9be.579613@netnews.hinet.net> <3813D482.E71116AD@home.com> <VSoR3.171$Iv2.1507623@news.randori.com> <7v7897$cem$1@sunnews.cern.ch>
Message-ID: <020601bf2112$0a9d1d60$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Radovan Garabik <garabik at center.fmph.uniba.sk.spam> wrote:
> and what is worse, the program does not run in the background
> I'd really like to use 
> os.spawnv(os.P_NOWAIT, "program.pyw", ("program.pyw", args))
> but it does not work at all... am I missing something?
> (I tried with the whole path, still nothing....)
> (note: I know next to nothing about programming under MS windows.. I am
> trying to do a quick port of my unix script)

you could try something like:

file = r"\full\path\pythonw.exe"
os.spawnv(os.P_NOWAIT, file, (file, "program.pyw") + tuple(args))

note that spawnv doesn't scan the path, and that
you need to pass the name of the excutable as the
first item in the argument tuple.

the following sample script from the eff-bot guide
shows one way to locate the executable:

# File: os-spawn-example-2.py

import os
import string

def run(program, *args, **kw):
    # find executable
    mode = kw.get("mode", os.P_WAIT)
    for path in string.split(os.environ["PATH"], os.pathsep):
        file = os.path.join(path, program) + ".exe"
        try:
            return os.spawnv(mode, file, (file,) + args)
        except os.error:
            pass
    raise os.error, "cannot find executable"

run("python", "hello.py", mode=os.P_NOWAIT)
print "goodbye"

</F>

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




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct 12 19:25:55 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:25:55 GMT
Subject: Freeze for Windows NT?
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-Jzrrpdu6VYWK@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

Folks,

	I'm attempting to use Freeze under Windows NT, and I believe that I 
need
a recompiled version of Python?!?!?!?

	According to the readme, it says that I'll need a "statically" linked
version 
of the python executables.  I don't have the resources at work for a 
recompile,
does anyone have a statically linked version available (v1.52)?

	I find it a little strange that the main python.org doesn't (seem) to
have a freeze
compt. version ready for download, or that it's not available in the 
v1.52 windows
download......

			- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From jbauer at rubic.com  Fri Oct 22 12:38:18 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 11:38:18 -0500
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov> <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <381092FA.60E1F749@rubic.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> Some information about MSDOS, Amiga and Windows CE would also 
> be nice, BTW.
> 
> If all goes well, the module might be a good candidate for the
> standard distribution. It offers *much* more detailed information
> than sys.platform.

A worthy goal.
 
> I've uploaded a new version:
>     http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py
> To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.

It works on CE:

>>> platform.platform()
'wince'
>>> platform.system()
'wince'
>>> platform.node()
'Handheld_PC'

All other values return the null string, but it
should not be difficult to figure out: release, 
version, machine, and processor.  If you'll leave 
a slot open for 'wince' in your next release, I'm 
sure we can supply the code to compute these values.

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From davidopp at megsinet.net  Wed Oct  6 01:20:19 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 01:20:19 -0400
Subject: Do You Have a Powerful Computer, a few extra minutes,& Microsoft 
 Word?
References: <37FADAD9.AFFF8684@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <37FADC13.15566070@megsinet.net>

An afterthought ... it may be necessary to compress it with Winzip or
another such tool to make it compact enough to e-mail.


David Oppenheimer wrote:

> Dear Group,
>
> A Linux friend would like to view the Quick Python online draft but
> doesn't have Microsoft Word or a Word viewer.  He tells me he can read
> it if its in HTML.
>
> I would appreciate it if someone would download the book, save it in
> HTML, and send me the book in HTML.  I have Microsoft Word, but My
> Pentium 75 with 32 MB RAM is just not up to the task.  I have tried
> multiple times and it locks up about half way through.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Oppenheimer




From eric at fruitcom.com  Sat Oct 30 04:13:46 1999
From: eric at fruitcom.com (Eric Smith)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 08:13:46 GMT
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line
Message-ID: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>

Hi

I am am a perl programmer looking at Python and would like to know whether
it is possible on the command line to test algorithms like I do in perl
thusly:

perl -e '$r="de";if ($r eq "whatever" or "de") {print "a match\n"}


-- 
Eric Smith
eric at fruitcom.com
www.fruitcom.com




From skip at mojam.com  Fri Oct  1 11:59:07 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:59:07 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
In-Reply-To: <000701bf0bb9$def95240$322d153f@tim>
References: <14323.30395.394477.753318@dolphin.mojam.com>
	<000701bf0bb9$def95240$322d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <14324.55883.614652.812873@dolphin.mojam.com>

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

    Tim> I don't see how this relates to Douglas's idea, unless perhaps the
    Tim> two "shorter ones" can match only proper prefixes of strings
    Tim> matched by "the real regexp", and also one of the other.

Yes, I should have given example re's (parental guidance suggested):

First, the real thing:

    r"(?P<m>\s*(?P<date>\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?"
     "(?P<venue>[^,]+),"
     "(?P<city>[^,]+),"
     "(?P<state>[A-Za-z\s]+),"
     "(?P<time>[^,]+),"
     "(?P<info>.*))(?P<u>.*)"

Then, prefix 1:

    r"(?P<m>\s*(?P<date>\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?"
     "(?P<venue>[^,]+),"
     "(?P<city>[^,]+),"
     "(?P<state>[A-Za-z\s]+))"
     "(?P<u>.*)"

Then, prefix 2:

    r'(?P<m>\s*\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+,\s+[^,]+)(?P<u>.*)'

    Tim> Of course people will enter highly structured data incorrectly, and
    Tim> of course you want to help them get it straight.  Those are two
    Tim> reasons not to use regexps at all <0.1 wink>.  0.9 seriously!  I
    Tim> entered:

    Tim>     3/40 @ 7:30pm, Knitting Factory, New York, NY (with Doctor
    Tim>     Nerve/Meridian Arts Ensemble

Known problem.  I'd like to get rid of regular expressions altogether, but I
don't have a better general pattern matcher at present and fewer resources
to develop anything.  Consequently, I adapt what I have at hand.

    Tim> and it got rejected, without a clue as to why.  Error detection and
    Tim> recovery is a Real Pain even with a Real Parser; a mechanical trick
    Tim> like "report rightmost progress" isn't going to turn the infinitely
    Tim> feebler regexp gimmick into a solution.

That's because your pattern didn't match even the shortest pattern.  I had
to stop somewhere.  I suppose I could have added a few more re's.  With
Douglas's "return the matching prefix" suggestion I could have done it all
with one regular expression.

    Tim> What you have here is a classical "frame" problem: a number of
    Tim> information "slots" that need to be filled in.  You picked a rigid
    Tim> format to ease your own implementation, perhaps because you've been
    Tim> hoodwinked into believing that "a regexp" *should* be "the
    Tim> solution".  Well, it isn't.

Perhaps I asked for this by not presenting more background in my previous
message.  I adapted an existing solution that currently handles schedules
from a couple thousand different web pages and email submissions in a very
wide range of formats (I adapt to the format I find instead of asking them
to adapt to me).  In almost all cases, I am able to parse the input with a
slightly higher level notation:

    %{smonth}/%{days}/%{syear}\* %{st} %{venue}/%{city}%{?\(w/%{performer+}\)}%{?=%{time}=}%{?/%{info}}
 
The above "compiles" into a very messy regular expression that begins

    [0-9]+/[0-9]+([-,][0-9]+)*/[0-9]+\*\s+[A-Za-z.]+\s+[^/]+/[-'A-Za-z \t.]+...

Are regular expressions the best solution in the restricted environment I
first described?  Not likely.  In the broader environment I didn't
originally describe they work fairly well (and I'm the only one who has to
generate them).

Skip



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 22 14:12:08 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:12:08 -0400
Subject: Tkinter:  Doing <Expose> yourself
In-Reply-To: <19991022134050.A64954016@vislab.epa.gov>
References: <19991022134050.A64954016@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <19991022141208.A64956403@vislab.epa.gov>

Randall Hopper:
 |     A simple question I haven't found the answer to yet.  How can I tell
 |Tk to stop refreshing a widget's window; I want to take care of that.
 |   
 |     In particular, I have another X client (IBM Data Explorer) displaying
 |in a Tk widget's window.  Works fine, but I need to suppress the refresh
 |routine for the Tk widget so it doesn't toast the window contents that the
 |client just drew.  How?

The Tcl list archives reveal the answer:

    > Try setting the background of the frame or toplevel window to {}.
    > e.g.
    >       . configure -bg {}

Randall



From jam at quark.emich.edu  Tue Oct  5 03:21:54 1999
From: jam at quark.emich.edu (Jeff)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 03:21:54 -0400
Subject: simple IRC client
In-Reply-To: <7tadtf$goe$1@fyemf.fys.ntnu.no>
References: <qoNLpGAda193EwbZ@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <87g0zs78lh.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de> <7tadtf$goe$1@fyemf.fys.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <19991005032154.A27233@quark.emich.edu>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 02:34:23PM -0000, Steinar Knutsen wrote:
> In article <87g0zs78lh.fsf at ifm.uni-kiel.de>, Janko Hauser
> <hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de> wrote:
> 
> > [Talk, IRC, and similar
> >
> >If you find something else, a short notice would be fine... :-)
> 
> I wrote a simple server and client as a personal solution
> once I had the same kind of problem myself. It's available at
> ftp://starship.python.net/pub/crew/sk/snakkd.tar.gz
> -- 
> Steinar
> 

medusa has a chat server built in as well.. simple enough that a simple
'telnet' is all that is required to use it.

regards,
J
-- 
|| visit gfd <http://quark.newimage.com/> 
|| psa member #293 <http://www.python.org/> 
|| New Image Systems & Services, Inc. <http://www.newimage.com/>



From haskin at ptway.com  Sun Oct 10 23:30:15 1999
From: haskin at ptway.com (Brian Haskin)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 23:30:15 -0400
Subject: stdin, out of a spawnv process?
Message-ID: <380159C6.B74B054C@ptway.com>

Is there a way to write to the stdin and read from the stdout of a
process launched with os.spawnv()?

Brian Haskin
haskin at ptway.com



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Wed Oct  6 17:22:21 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 21:22:21 GMT
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vms3i.1al.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
References: <slrn7vms3i.1al.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <199910062121.WAA04166@axil.hvision.nl>

On 6 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 05:17:24 GMT, Hans Nowak wrote:
> 
> >> Thanks a lot, Hans.
> 
> >I don't really maintain the DOS version anymore, but I'll still try to
> >help and answer questions if I can.
> 
> Ah, okay.  I hadn't realized that -- the Downloads page still points to
> you first.  This probably ought to be changed.

No, what I mean is, I am not working on it anymore. Since some people 
still use DOS and want a Python for it, I decided to let Python-DX 
sit there, and I will keep it available in the future (although maybe 
not on the same page).

> I switched to the WPY version of DOS Python, and everything is fine.
> Although I am vaguely wondering what WPY has to do with DOS...  :)

Hey now... No need to use an inferior version... ;-) ;-)

Seriously, there's no reason why you shouldn't use Python-DX... 
Unless you don't like Unix-ish behavior; it's much closer to Unix 
Pythons than Python for Windows is. 


--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Python Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/
The Purple Kookaburra Forum: http://www.delphi.com/kookaburra/



From bill.barrington at turner.com  Tue Oct 12 17:52:18 1999
From: bill.barrington at turner.com (bill barrington)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:52:18 -0400
Subject: Creating Python Class Instances From C API
References: <38034BEA.173F2315@turner.com> <001301bf14c5$d153b4e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <3803AD91.779802CF@turner.com>

Fredrick,

    Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.  The only bit of trouble
I had was figuring out that I needed to set 'args' to NULL and use the
keyword dictionary parameter instead in the call to PyInstance_New, i.e.

PyObject *data = Py_BuildValue("{s:s}", "<name>", "<value>");

PyObject *object = PyInstance_New(class_name, NULL, data);

    It works great!  Thanks again.

Regards,

Bill


Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> bill barrington <bill.barrington at turner.com> wrote:
> >     I would like to create a python class instance using the python/C
> > API for eventual return back into "python space".  IOW, I want to
> > accomplish the equivalent of the following python code, but from within
> > an extension:
> >
> > instance = Class(<whatever>)
>
> start here:
> http://www.python.org/doc/current/api/object.html
>
> and then look at the cPickle.c source code
> (see find_class, Instance_New, load_inst, ...).
>
> </F>
>
> coming soon:
> http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm

--
Bill Barrington
CNN Interactive - http://cnn.com
bill.barrington at cnn.com
404 827-5572


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From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 19 11:50:57 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 01:50:57 +1000
Subject: Windows version  popen2.
In-Reply-To: <7u7hna$2bir$1@mail1.pvt.net>
Message-ID: <000201bf1a49$dea763b0$53001064@bobcat>

You should download the latest win32all package, and use the popen
family of functions define in the win32pipe module.

Mark.

> I'am begginer in programing in Python .I' have one
> Question.I'm , in windows
> in popen2 , error on os.fork. You have Windows Modifield
> version of module
> Popen2.




From dhubbard at badger.com  Tue Oct 19 20:38:17 1999
From: dhubbard at badger.com (Dave Hubbard)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:38:17 -0700
Subject: Need Python programmers, full-time or consultants
Message-ID: <380D0EF9.45CC@badger.com>

Badger Technology, Inc. (www.badger.com) has a product that is based on
python (OmniRemote).  Now that it is starting to sell like hotcakes, we
need people to program in a consulting and full-time basis.  Python is
used to adapt the OmniRemote to telecommunication and data
communications equipment for the purpose of monitoring and control.

The full-time Application Engineering job description is as follows:

- Script programming (Python & shell scripts) on Badger Network
Management products for adaptation to SONET, data, cellular, and
telephone networks.
- Data network planning and configuration.  Badger offers data
networking products in conjunction with Network Management.
- Installation supervision and occasional training of Badger products.
- Badger product configuration
- Some travel in the U.S. is required.

Please contact Roy Chestnut (Director of Technical Support ) at (888)
957-8600 ext. 639 or rac at badger.com. I can be reached at ext. 620 or
dhubbard at badger.com.

David Hubbard
Badger Technology, Inc.
VP, Sales & Marketing
dhubbard at badger.com
(408)957-8620



From dorland at lords.com  Sun Oct 31 14:39:07 1999
From: dorland at lords.com (Eric Dorland)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:39:07 GMT
Subject: Exceptions from callbacks
Message-ID: <381CA8E5.5D69E64@lords.com>

I'm writing a Python wrapper for a library. The library stores some
callbacks for some events, and with some glue code, get these to call
python functions. That's the easy part. Now since its the library these
callback and not Python per se, how do you pass an exception back to the
interpreter, because you can't return NULL from the callback. Do you
just set the exception, and Python will pick up on it?


-- 

Eric Dorland
dorland at lords.com



From andy at robanal.demon.co.uk  Fri Oct  1 07:40:56 1999
From: andy at robanal.demon.co.uk (andy at robanal.demon.co.uk)
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 99 11:40:56 GMT
Subject: Almost the first UK Python meeting
Message-ID: <mt2.0-7321-938778056@news.informatik.uni-bonn.de>

The second meeting of the UK Python User's Group
(that's a working title) will take place as follows:

Where:
	Princess Louise pub
	Bloomsbury
	208 High Holborn St.
	London
	0171-405-8816
	Holborn Station, Central/Picdadilly Lines
When:
	Monday 4th October, any time after 18:00

Dress Code:
	Try to look like a Python fan :-)

The first meeting was last Wednesday in Cambridge.

Any UK Python users are welcome to join the python-uk
mailing list at
http://starship.python.net/mailman/listinfo/python-uk

Regards,

Andy Robinson

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

<P><A HREF="http://starship.python.net/mailman/listinfo/python-uk">UK Python
Users Mailing List</A> - and the UK Python Users Group will meet on October
4th, any time after 18:00, at Princess Louise pub, Bloomsbury,
London.  (01-Oct-99)

-- 
----------- comp.lang.python.announce (moderated) ----------
Article Submission Address:  python-announce at python.org
Python Language Home Page:   http://www.python.org/
Python Quick Help Index:     http://www.python.org/Help.html
------------------------------------------------------------



From mona at eel.ucsd.edu  Fri Oct 29 19:56:23 1999
From: mona at eel.ucsd.edu (Mona Wong)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:56:23 -0700
Subject: Python/C
Message-ID: <9910291656.ZM20777@eel.ucsd.edu>

Hi:

	I'm starting a project where I'll be extending Python with C.  I have a
very beginner's question ...

	If I have an array I created in the Python interpreter, how can I
access that array in my imported C module?

Mona


-- 
==================================================================
Mona Wong
graphics / visualization programmer wanna-be & web fool-arounder
National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research
University of California, San Diego
http://www-ncmir.ucsd.edu/

"The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off"
				A Landmark instructor
==================================================================




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct 22 03:06:40 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:06:40 +0200
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library (ADDITIONAL INFO)
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com> <dozier-2110991645470001@pm4-s15.dial-up.abs.net> <99102116004802.00599@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <008a01bf1c5b$fea3c2d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Patrick Phalen <python-list at teleo.net> wrote:
> :: Also, be aware that the electronic version is WinBlows only. Fatbrain
> :: doesn't really make this clear up front (this is not Fredrick's fault).
> 
> Yeah, why is that? Just because of the installer? Jeesh ... that means
> switching to the dusty Windows machine every time I want to refer to
> it!! Ugh.

most likely; I thought they'd use adobe's new webbuy
stuff (acrobat 4.1), but it looks like they have their own
technology.  they claim to be working hard on mac and
unix versions, though (and they point this out on the
catalogue page).

(just speculating here, but this could mean that they're
simply waiting for Adobe to finish the 4.1 releases, which
will be available for all the usual Acrobat platforms)

so for now, I'm afraid prospective non-Windows customers
will have to see the eMatter thing as a distribution method
only: use a friend's computer to download it, print a copy,
and treat it as just another "pMatter" book.  the *contents*
itself is far from being Windows-only.  see:

    http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/ematter.htm

for some more background, from the author's perspective.

> Under Windows 95 and Acrobat Reader 3.0, I get a series of error
> messages:
> 
> "Could not find the Color Space named 'Cs8' "-- and others equally
> unenlightening. Anyone else experience this?

yes.  I'm afraid you have to update your reader.  my mistake --
I saw a note somewhere saying that documents rendered with
acrobat 4.0 would work in 3.0 as long as you didn't use any new
fancy features, and I was naive enough to believe that -- after
all, I was 100% sure that you'd need 4.1 to buy them anyway...

you'll find the new reader here:

    http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

> However, I'm thrilled by the book itself. Great job Frederick!

thanks!

for prospective readers, I suggest that you read Tanming
Fong's two reviews on the user review page:

http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/Reviews/ReviewsRetrieve.asp?isbn=EB00002582

pretty much sums it all up! ;-)

</F>

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




From tbryan at python.net  Tue Oct 26 19:45:01 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 19:45:01 -0400
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
References: <000101bf1eb5$2f56e140$052d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <38163CFD.D4A70BBD@python.net>

Tim Peters wrote:

> salvation-thru-whitespace-ly y'rs  - tim

Wow!  Can we make that Python's Official Motto?

who'll-lead-the-first-crusade'ly yours
---Tom



From mnot at mnot.net  Thu Oct 14 21:14:30 1999
From: mnot at mnot.net (Mark Nottingham)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:14:30 +1000
Subject: User classes for Int, etc?
Message-ID: <030201bf16aa$aa64d710$0301a8c0@mnot.net>

Are there any user template classes (like UserDict, UserList, etc) for Int,
String, and other basic data types? That would be, IMHO, way cool.

I've already implemented most of them in my application, but it would be
really nice if there was something I could subclass to catch everything...




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 14:43:26 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:43:26 GMT
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com>
Message-ID: <007f01bf0f61$ac3768a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Ian Clarke <clarkeia at logica.com> wrote:
> I have never liked regular expressions, they seem to come from the Perl
> school of programming (whose motto is "If nobody else `can understand my
> code, they can never fire me!").

> What if, instead of using '(hello)*' you could use 'multiple("hello")',
> and other such long-winded replacements.  Yes, this would prevent people
> from writing '(?P<m>\s*\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+,\s+[^,]+)(?P<u>.*' and then
> giggling with glee as their co-workers scratch their heads over what the
> hell this does, but that is a price I would be willing to pay.

check out ping's rxb.py module:

    http://www.lfw.org/python/

</F>

    "The only reason we keep our jobs is that we have done exactly
    what management has come to except: We commit to a schedule,
    work our butts off, miss the schedule, deliver junk, get chewed
    out, and iterate. They can fire us, but they can't replace us with
    anyone better, and they know it."
            -- Al Stevens, in Dr. Dobbs




From later_dude at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 21 08:53:38 1999
From: later_dude at my-deja.com (later_dude at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:53:38 GMT
Subject: Using xmlrpcserver
Message-ID: <7un2cd$un6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello,
	I downloaded the Python implementation of XML-RPC
yesterday. Maybe it's just that my Python programming skills are weak,
but I can't figure out how to extend the call method in xmlrpcserver
to call real methods. For example, I have a python method:

def hello(firstName, LastName):
	return "Hello",firstName,lastName

What code would I use so that the hello method is called when it is
asked for?

I appreciate any help you can give me.

later,
joseph

--
martinja at ice-works.com

All opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of
my employer unless otherwise noted.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl  Tue Oct 19 14:06:05 1999
From: rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl (Rene)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:06:05 +0200
Subject: mime email creation with attachment
References: <7ufjr0$bpt$1@hercules.tno.nl> <021b01bf1a14$8574ddc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <7uic1c$pjo$1@hercules.tno.nl>

Thanks a lot for al the help I receive.

I changed uuencode to base64, use rb now for opening the excel file, and
added mime-version and a to:, but still the files opens as a encoded ascii
document when I try to open it in Excel. I really have no idea what could be
wrong. I hope you do.

Thanks again,

Rene


This is the changed code:

import uu, base64
import sys
import StringIO
import MimeWriter
from smtplib import SMTP

# Mails the Diary Import file to the user in MIME format
# Based upon code by GVR
def mailFileToUser(_userName, _fileName):
       outputfp = StringIO.StringIO()
       w = MimeWriter.MimeWriter(outputfp)
       w.addheader("To", "rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl") # added this line
       w.addheader("subject", "Strip studie rapport")
       w.addheader("Mime-Version", "1.0")  # added this line
       w.flushheaders()
       w.startmultipartbody("mixed")
       subwriter = w.nextpart()
       f = subwriter.startbody('application/octet-stream;name="Strip.xls"')

       subwriter.addheader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "base64") # is now
base64
       subwriter.addheader("Content-Disposition",
'attachment;filename="Strip.xls"')
       subwriter.flushheaders()
       base64.encode(open('./test.xls', 'rb'),f)   # changed this part to rb
       w.lastpart()
       s = SMTP("a00677.pg.tno.nl")
       s.sendmail("rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl",
["rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl"],outputfp.getvalue())
       s.close()
       print outputfp.getvalue()
if __name__=='__main__':
       mailFileToUser('rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl', 'TestFile.out')


Fredrik Lundh heeft geschreven in bericht
<021b01bf1a14$8574ddc0$f29b12c2 at secret.pythonware.com>...
>Rene <rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl> wrote:
>> I try to automatically create an email message containing an attachment.
>> Untill now I created the following code, but the format it sends can't be
>> read by outlook 98 (it doesn't do uudecode, while it should be able to do
>> that).
>
>(fwiw, outlook express handles mails from this
>program just fine).
>
>to make it use base64 encoding, just change the
>content type to "base64", and use base64.encode
>instead of uu.encode.
>
>and make sure to add "mime-version", "to", and
>perhaps some other headers as well.
>
>(btw, XLS-files are not plain text files.  use "rb"
>when opening the file).
>
></F>
>
><!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the standard python library:
>http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
>-->
>
>
>





From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Sat Oct 23 05:59:05 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 09:59:05 GMT
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221525430.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-WCrVfFWPxQki@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com> <3dr9inteik.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-PQjd1iL6jQNb@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:51:47, akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. 
Kuchling) wrote:

> junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick) writes:
> > >    cookie["anketa_id"] = str(1024)
> > >    cookie["anketa_id"]["expires"] = time.strftime("%a, %d-%b-%Y %T GMT", t)
> > >    cookie["anketa_id"]["path"] = "/"
> > Why setup the cookie equaling a string w/length of 1024??
> 
> No, no; this is assigning the cookie a value of '1024'; str(x)
> converts the value of the variable 'x' to a string.  This presumably
> creates an internal object (amusingly called a Morsel) which holds the value.
> The second and third assignments then work as expected.

Sometimes I forget that Python uses a different function names
from pascal.

In that case, the code is doing exactly the same thing I am, at
work.

I'll have to dig a little deeper to see why I'm having trouble
with the cookie attributes.

<sigh>

			- Benjamin
====================================================
          (Remove "NoSpam" to Email me)
====================================================
Please feel free to copy any and or all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From mvanier at sith.bbb.caltech.edu  Mon Oct 11 18:11:48 1999
From: mvanier at sith.bbb.caltech.edu (Michael Vanier)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 15:11:48 -0700
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <jl7lktv97f.fsf@sith.bbb.caltech.edu>

nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca writes:
> On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 02:04:45PM -0700, Michael Vanier wrote:
> > GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.
> 
> It is easy for people to take statements like this in the wrong
> way.  It is interesting how much we take pop culture references
> for granted.  As someone who works in a culturally diverse
> environment, I have seen this type of confusion often.
> 
> For people who don't know, and Michael correct me if I'm wrong,
> this signature refers to a line from the classic movie "The Blues
> Brothers".  It is not meant to be taken literally.
> 
> 
>     Neil
> 

Right you are :-)  I didn't realize how obscure that was; maybe I should
think up a new signature.

Mike

--------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Vanier	mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.



From hostmaster at dsp.net  Sun Oct 10 20:11:14 1999
From: hostmaster at dsp.net (bub)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:11:14 -0700
Subject: DEVELOPMENT SERVER CO-LOCATION SPACE
Message-ID: <4V9M3.565$SC2.24868@nuq-read.news.verio.net>

DEVELOPMENT SERVER CO-LOCATION SPACE

I'll give you:
some space on our 19" industrial racks
Primary & secondary DNS
Multiple domain hosting
Domain name registration
3 IP addresses
10/100/gig switch or hub connectivity
(1) UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) unit
Level 3 or Verio backbone connectivity
2 email accounts
Monitor/keyboard/mouse
(1) dial-in account
24x7 access

$205 per mo per machine.

email: hostmaster at dsp.net





From kelley at bioreason.com  Thu Oct 28 18:05:50 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:05:50 -0600
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <3818C8BE.EA82BECA@bioreason.com>

Hans Nowak pointed out the following:
>Are you aware that this function is not a correct comparison function
> for sort? Or did I miss the point of your message entirely?

>As far as I know, the sorting is "broken" because your comparison
>returns 0 and 1, while sort expects a function that returns -1, 0, or
1.

It turns out that Python 1.5.1 can sort using return values of 0 and 1
while that behavior has been modified in Python 1.5.2.  Replacing "<"
with "-" works in both versions.  Seems it was a bug in the script that
had the desired behavior.

I actually have no idea where I picked the idiom up, but I got used to

list.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
and
list.sort(lambda x,y: x<y)

for increasing and decreasing sorts.  Thats what I get for playing the
interpreter.   I really have no excuse since I was with Andrew when he
wrote the mini-sorting how-to.


--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From jdriese at seanet.com  Fri Oct  8 06:55:21 1999
From: jdriese at seanet.com (Jim Driese)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 03:55:21 -0700
Subject: PyGreSQL difficulties
Message-ID: <37FDCD98.EF1D5917@seanet.com>

I'm new to Python and am trying to get the PyGreSQL module to work.  I
am running FreeBSD 3.3-STABLE and installed the Python-1.5.2 package and
PyGreSQL-2.4 port.  When I ran basics.py interactively (import basics),
I received the following message:

__________________________________________________________________
MODULE BASICS.PY : BASIC SQL COMMANDS TUTORIAL

This module is designed for being imported from python prompt

In order to run the samples included here, first create a connection
using :                        cnx = basics.DB(...)
then start the demo with:      basics.demo(cnx)
__________________________________________________________________

So, I typed:

cnx = basics.DB(...)

and received the following error message:

SyntaxError: invalid syntax

What am I supposed to enter for "..." and what do I need to do to get
the sample program to run?

TIA

Jim Driese








From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 24 09:22:11 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 13:22:11 GMT
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241145450.28901-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <slrn8161ru.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 11:49:11 +0000 (GMT), Oleg Broytmann
<phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:
>On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
>> > What if you and I would get a server whoose
>> httpdapy and PyApache both require you to load a 3rd-party apache
>> module so to use either of them, you need the cooperation of
>> the sysadmin.
>
>   But in abscense of both modules I can run my CGIs without modification.
>And you cannoy run you CGIs - they require httpdapy.

yes. this is an advantage of PyApache. that is why i speculated about
the usefulness of a httpapy cgi emulator (which would allow python cgi
programs to be run unmodified) later in my post.

>> it would probably be quite easy to write something that emulates
>> cgi's transparently. perhaps httpdapy would become more popular
>> if something like this was included with it...
>
>   I don't think so.

it would not be easy or it would not become more popular? :)

i don't know about the popularity, but the implementation
would seem pretty straightforward to me:
make your emulator a handler for .py scripts in a directory.
then the emulator script could execfile the python cgi-script
after hook_stdout and build_cgi_env, and voila.

>If you want to compare with mod_perl - there are two
>advatntages of mod_python - it is speed (not memory - mod_perl is still
>memory hog) and ability to dive into apache's internals. Both httpdapy and
>PyApache should be extended to process apache internal requests.

i agree.


  -- erno


-- 
"The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux
customers who need high speed connectivity to drive their
e-business," added Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM
Personal Systems Group. 



From helge at mdlink.de  Wed Oct 27 17:00:14 1999
From: helge at mdlink.de (Helge Hess)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:00:14 +0200
Subject: separate instances of modules
Message-ID: <381767DE.9AE670C@mdlink.de>

Hi,

I'm thinking about some integration issues between a C environment I use
and Python modules. It works like this, that one can extend the
environment by writing components in Python where each component is
assigned exactly one Python source file, that is, a module. Right now
such a file looks like:

MyComponent.py:

  import stuff;
  class MyComponentClass:
     def a(self):
           self.b = 5

When such a component is instantiated in the C environment, the source
is imported (via Py_Import) or reloaded and then an instance of the
MyComponentClass is made.

Since the source file contains always one such class (which doesn't need
to inherit) I wonder whether it's somehow possible to use the source
itself as the class. That is, I would like to write all the class stuff
directly in the source (as functions and module variables), like this:

   import stuff;
   b = 3;
   def a():
     b = 5;

This way it would be much more convenient. The problem I have right now
is that when I import a module, I always get the same instance which
isn't ok for me since I have multiple instances of one component
"class".

Does anybody know how to create multiple 'module' instances with
separate environments, eg:

  PyObject *c1 = Py_ImportAsNew("MyComponent.py");
  PyObject *c2 = Py_ImportAsNew("MyComponent.py");

?

Thankful for any suggestions,
  Helge



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 19 13:03:00 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 19:03:00 +0200
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <00eb01bf1a53$cde4b9b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:
> i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed, why are things like
> len() not member functions of list/tuples ?

hey, what makes you think len(obj) is less object-
oriented than obj.len() ?  it's just syntax, you know.

and except from a few builtin types, len actually
*is* a method, spelled __len__.  the len() function
is just there for your convenience...
    
also see:
http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#6.5

> ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
> those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
> operator seems peculiar.

"del" doesn't destroy an object, it removes
the name from the local namespace.

also see:
http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#4.17
http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#6.14

</F>

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




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 27 06:58:36 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:58:36 +0200
Subject: Queue.get_nowait() raises Empty when it's not...
References: <38160AB2.F355CBBB@ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <009001bf206a$38f70c00$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Stephen J. Turner <sjturner at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Of course, the documentation for the Queue module says as much, stating
> that Empty is "raised when non-blocking get() (or get_nowait()) is
> called on a Queue object which is empty *or locked* [emphasis mine]."
> 
> If I understand the implementation correctly, this indeterminate
> condition is because, in order to see if the queue is empty,
> get_nowait() tries to acquire (without waiting) the "empty" semaphore. 
> If the lock acquisition fails, it means that either:
> 
> - The queue is truly empty, since the last successful caller of
> get_nowait() to remove an item from the queue would have returned
> without releasing the "empty" semaphore.
> 
> - Another thread is also in the get_nowait() method and currently holds
> the "empty" semaphore.
> 
> This behavior poses a problem for an application of mine.  I have a set
> of tasks to be executed by a pool of worker threads.  The number of
> tasks is known at the time the application is run.  The main thread
> reads in each task from file, checks it for errors, then puts it on a
> work queue.  Once all tasks are validated and enqueued, the main thread
> then creates all of the worker threads (using the threading module) and
> exits.  Each worker thread continues to call get_nowait() until it sees
> the Empty exception, then exits.  Once all worker threads exit, the
> process itself exits.
> 
> The problem, then, is that if two or more worker threads call
> get_nowait() simultaneously, all but one will be thrown an Empty
> exception and so assume (erroneously) that they can leave.

easy way out: add a sentinel (typically None) to the queue
for each worker thread, and have the worker threads to
terminate when they read the sentinel value from the queue.

</F>

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




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 17 22:27:30 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 22:27:30 -0400
Subject: Syntax error - what's wrong?
In-Reply-To: <380A7EE0.2C2EB3C0@rubic.com>
Message-ID: <1271909598-12664162@hypernet.com>

Um, Jeff, that _is_ string.py, exactly as in my lib. Note that the 
traceback, however, is missing the trailing "s" on line 480. 
Strange.

Andre-John: You appear to have a bad RPM somehow. 
Python is a cinch to build on RedHat. I'd say go ahead and 
build it yourself.

> Andre-John Mas wrote:
> >  I have never programmed in Python before and need a quick
> >  crash course. I am installing Redhat Linux 6.1 and I am
> >  getting a Python related error.
> 
> Andre-John,
> 
> Your code worked when I pasted into to my editor
> and ran under Solaris 2.6, Python 1.5.2.
> 
> Here is a slightly different version which should
> accomplish the same goals:
> 
> def zfill(x, width):
>     fmt = "%%0%dd" % width
>     return fmt % int(x)
> 
> # optional test routine ...
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     for x, width in [(12, 3), (-3, 3), (1, 6), ('17', 4)]:
>         print "zfill(%s, %d) = %s" % \
>               (x, width, zfill(x, width))
> 
> I tend to prefer downloading Python source and
> compiling it, rather than rely on the Linux
> distributions -- they always seem to leave out 
> my favorite features. ;-)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jeff Bauer
> Rubicon Research
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



- Gordon



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Thu Oct 14 03:36:29 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:36:29 +0200
Subject: Reading files binary
Message-ID: <380587FD.6935ED53@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

I want to read a file and treat the data from it in a binary fashion. In
fact, I want to compute the running time and bitrate etc. of an
mp3-file, so if anybody has done this let me know. If not, I guess I`ll
have to do it myself, eventhough that`ll take forever.

I need to read a given number of bytes, check the no. x bit for a value,
check no. y bit etc. Is there a module for this or can it be done
python?

( Way back in eh ... August, when I was using Perl ... ehem ... there
was a module that fetched all data from a file, like title, artist and
the more tech stuff like bitrate and stuff. I hope there`ll be one like
this for Python soon. I need it bad. )

Sally ho!

Thomas




From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 10 22:16:15 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:16:15 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au>

Preston Landers wrote:

> And just because I like to start flame wars, I'll go ahead and add my
> own feature to the wishlist:  nested scopes / namespaces.  Is this a
> pipe dream

This is already implemented in Viperi. Works fine: there are
no problems with representation because it is using a functional
programming language with a garbage collector as the implementation
language. However, I do not use chained stack frames, and I do not
use Python's 'two scope with builtins hack' model; instead,
there is a single abstraction called an environment in which
lookup is done; the implementation uses a list of dictionaries,
amoung other things, to represent the 'display' (list of activation
records). [The 'globals' scope is near the bottom, builtins is at the
bottom]

In the second stage, fast loading is supported, using an indexed
array instead of a dictionary: CPython does this for functions,
whereas Viper does it for both nested functions and modules as well.
[I'm currently implementing this]. Inlining naturally fits into
this stage, in the first instance.

In the third stage, type inference will attempt to ascribe types to
the variables, and use some fixed ad hoc speedups to improve
interpreter speed even further.

Finally, the fourth stage converts client functions to built-in
functions, that is, compiled code (probably, machine code);
and binds the program down to an binary executable.

[It isn't clear yet whether to generate for the CPython object
model or not, but this has advantages such as performance
and compatibility that are hard to overlook, but will make
extensions like nested functions harder to support]

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Thu Oct 21 06:52:38 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:52:38 +0100
Subject: Speeding up Python
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
 <7ukvp4$16f@mail.psy.uva.nl>
 <0A7D1AD927575E9B.B0B35141D4C8672D.F415ED8B17CAA381@lp.airnews.net>
 <7um9l5$c99@mail.psy.uva.nl>
Message-ID: <xC5tjHA2BvD4EwXK@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <7um9l5$c99 at mail.psy.uva.nl>, Ionel Simionescu
<ionel at psy.uva.nl> writes
I recently converted a Matlab econometric model to python+NumPy. A
minimal C extension provided a speedup which made the whole thing
strictly comparable in speed to Matlab. There was a third party compiled
version which was much slower than python (I believe because it caused
the system to thrash).

The python version provides a deliverable excel addon without any
license and for good measure is used in a Zope installation. There were
very few nits in the Numeric code vs Matlab.

I would not consider Mathematica for serious numerical work it was too
slow last time I tried and absoultely horrible to extend in C.
-- 
Robin Becker



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Wed Oct 27 04:57:04 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:57:04 +1300
Subject: Questions about nested for's vs map
References: <38111CA1.D6896911@dicksonstreet.com>
Message-ID: <3816BE60.87DC32E7@compaq.com>

Felix Thibault wrote:
> 
> I've been trying to move from building the arbitrarily deeply nested
> for's to
> something using map, but so far I haven't gotten it to work. Is there a
> standard
> way to do this, or another, better way to do the same thing ?

Here is a set of recursive functions which achieves the same
result without the need to generate code:

def build(key_sequences):
    """Top level function to start everything off."""
    result = []
    build_dicts((), key_sequences, 0, result)
    return result
    
def build_dicts(keys_so_far, key_sequences, i, result):
    """Generate all combinations of items from key_sequences and,
       for each one, append the result of calling build_dict
       on it to result."""
    if i == len(key_sequences):
        result.append(build_dict(keys_so_far, 0))
    else:
        for key in key_sequences[i]:
            build_dicts(keys_so_far + (key,), key_sequences, i+1,
result)

def build_dict(keys, i):
    """Given a tuple of keys, generate nested sequence of
dictionaries."""
    if i == len(keys):
        return keys
    else:
        return {keys[i]: build_dict(keys, i+1)}

Hope that helps,
Greg



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Wed Oct 27 10:15:17 1999
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:15:17 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com> <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38170692.D6D438C3@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <006701bf2085$b1b45d30$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>

[I wrote about winmsd]
> Sounds interesting, but if it's not installed per default I guess
> it won't help much.

This should be investigated further....

> 
> Perhaps there are still other ways to find out the build and
> service pack information...
Not that I know of (and nothing documented in the MSDN,
except for GUI-programs or registry entries)

> 
> BTW, what does 'ver /r' output on WinNT ? On Win95 it does provide
> some more information than the plain 'ver'.
> 
C:\>ver

Windows NT Version 4.0

C:\>ver /r
The syntax of the command is incorrect.





From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Thu Oct 14 16:22:21 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 20:22:21 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news> <3805EDAE.888C6CEA@python.net>
Message-ID: <48D417D78B6851A2.730ECB4D2F62CB17.44015DEE1A82E1F5@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3805EDAE.888C6CEA at python.net>,
Thomas A. Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
>Ahmad Munif wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>about Tk and wxWindows.  In fact, someone once created a web page
>summarizing the many GUI toolkits/libraries for which there are 
>Python interfaces.  I'll try to dig up the URL for you.
<URL:http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/python_GUI.html>.
I maintain it spasmodically, that is, generally only when someone asks me a
question more pleasant to answer than the work I'm paid to do.
			.
			.
			.
>> i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build
>> my database application ?
'Depends on a lot of stuff.  What platforms do you target?  What kind of an
application is it (VB-style office-automation forms processing?  CAD?  ...?)
			.
			.
			.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Thu Oct  7 09:07:02 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 15:07:02 +0200
Subject: Is the server down or what?
Message-ID: <199910071303.OAA00375@axil.hvision.nl>

I wrote:


> Maybe we can exchange places. I got every message twice. 
> 
> Mailing list users: am I the only one who got them twice? Maybe there 
> has been a message about this which I've missed? I only recall one 
> about some renewal of python-list; it didn't say anything about this 
> extra service though. :)

Aw, I just reread that message about the mailing list and it says 
there could be a few duplicates. I guess that explains it. :) Sorry 
about polluting the newsgroup.


--Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct 13 18:34:36 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:34:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Executing a jpython script in another process
References: <38048d23.0@sahara.cablecat.com>
Message-ID: <14341.2300.394801.942260@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "CO" == Carlos Ors <cors at recercai.com> writes:

    CO> I'm working with Jpython 1.1 beta 3 I'm interested in
    CO> executing a jpython script in a new process so that a
    CO> System.exit(0) didn't close the main aplication.

    CO> I have a instance of PythonInterpreter named theInterp.
    CO> I do:
    CO>        PythonInterpreter theInterp= new PythonInterpreter()

    CO>       theInterp.exec("<my script code>")

    CO> I want to call the exec method making a new process and that
    CO> the main process get the results of the execution.

I don't think you can really do this without some kind of interprocess
communication.  System.exit() unconditionally terminates the JVM --
this is a Java thing that has nothing to do with JPython.  Or do you
mean Python's sys.exit()?

BTW, the best place to discuss JPython issues is
jpython-interest at python.org.  See

    http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/jpython-interest

for details about the mailing list.

-Barry



From emile at fenx.com  Sun Oct 24 18:06:49 1999
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 15:06:49 -0700
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
References: <oq904sc08y.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <063701bf1e6c$128d13c0$01ffffc0@worldnet.att.net>

How about :

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
            and function_name not in transparent_functions
            ):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            if name not in transparent_files:
                return name, line_number


At least here, the '):' is clear.



Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com
-------------------


----- Original Message -----
From: Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 1999 7:16 AM
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns


Hi, people.  I'm reasonably trying to follow Guido's style guide,
somewhat
helped in doing so by the nice Emacs Python mode.

The only thing that really rebukes me is the interdiction to use
capitals in
comments to mark non-terminals (or variables), as it does not get
accompanied
by a better suggestion, or at least, none yielding as much clarity.

The 4 columns indentation rule is quite acceptable on average, expect
when
I have things like, say:

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
            and function_name not in transparent_functions):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            if name not in transparent_files:
                return name, line_number

The pseudo-alignment of the `and' with `name' is rather ugly to my eyes.
It would be alleviated a bit by using `\' on the preceding line instead
of `(', but the style guide suggests that we favour '(', which looks
like a good thing.  Do some of you share my little irritation, here?
Would someone have developed some elegant and easy compromise?  I hardly
see one, but who knows, people sometimes have unexpectedly good ideas!
:-)

--
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard


--
http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list







From ivanlan at callware.com  Thu Oct 14 16:45:11 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:45:11 -0600
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim> <1272191608-925935@hypernet.com> <BFC4BD7FC2E91E18.A3BBBB0F98E42078.9A53827A5059DA00@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <380640D7.95BDDA3C@callware.com>

Hi ALl--

Cameron Laird wrote:
> 

[snip]
             .
>                         .
> Miss Manners for the next PyCon!  She
> could give a *great* invited address
> (Propriety and Object Orientation, that
> sort of thing), although I have no idea
> if she realizes it's in her.
>

If we got Miss Manners as the keynote speaker for the PyCon, I would
have a far better chance of getting my wife to come than I would if I
were keynote speaker.

I, for one, would love to hear what she has to say.

<not-THAT-spoon-you-dummy>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From felixt at dicksonstreet.com  Fri Oct 22 22:25:39 1999
From: felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 21:25:39 -0500
Subject: Questions about nested for's vs map
Message-ID: <38111CA1.D6896911@dicksonstreet.com>

I've been working on a subclass of UserDict that uses code
like the code at the end of this post to build a list of dictionaries
that I can use for profiling the subclass. I use it like this:

>>> for a in build(( ('conspiracy', 'top-secret','covert-action'),
('black helicopters', 'area 51', 'mk-ultra') )): print a

I build this code...
dlist = []
for key0 in ('conspiracy', 'top-secret', 'covert-action'):
    for key1 in ('black helicopters', 'area 51', 'mk-ultra'):
        d= {key0: {key1: (key0,key1,)}}
        dlist.append(d)

and this is my output
{'conspiracy': {'black helicopters': ('conspiracy', 'black
helicopters')}}
{'conspiracy': {'area 51': ('conspiracy', 'area 51')}}
{'conspiracy': {'mk-ultra': ('conspiracy', 'mk-ultra')}}
{'top-secret': {'black helicopters': ('top-secret', 'black
helicopters')}}
{'top-secret': {'area 51': ('top-secret', 'area 51')}}
{'top-secret': {'mk-ultra': ('top-secret', 'mk-ultra')}}
{'covert-action': {'black helicopters': ('covert-action', 'black
helicopters')}}
{'covert-action': {'area 51': ('covert-action', 'area 51')}}
{'covert-action': {'mk-ultra': ('covert-action', 'mk-ultra')}}
>>> :)

I've been trying to move from building the arbitrarily deeply nested
for's to
something using map, but so far I haven't gotten it to work. Is there a
standard
way to do this, or another, better way to do the same thing ?

Thanks in advance,
Felix

build2.py-----------------------------------------------------

import string

def build(tupe, mode='dict'):
    """build(TupleOfSequences, [mode]) - this function iterates over
    each sequence inside iterations of the lefter sequences of the tuple
to
    build a list of dictionaries,If themode 'tupe' is passed in the
(un-nested)
    dictionaries are made with tuple keys.
    """
    initcodel = ['dlist = []\n']
    tab = '    '
    loopcodel = []
    depth = len(tupe)
    indexes = range(depth)
    indextupes = tuple(indexes)
    def makeloop(index, tupe=tupe, tab=tab):
        return tab*index+'for key'+`index`+' in '+`tupe[index]`+':\n'
    loopcodel = map(makeloop, indexes)
    assigncodel= [( tab*depth+'d= '+'{key%s: '*depth ) % indextupes]
    if mode == 'dict':
        assigncodel.append(( '('+'key%s,'*depth+')'+'}'*depth+'\n' )
                           % indextupes)
    elif mode == 'tupe':
        assigncodel.append( '('+'key%s,'*depth+')'+'}\n' % indextupes )
    codelist = initcodel+loopcodel+assigncodel
    codelist.append(tab*depth+'dlist.append(d)\n')
    codestring = string.join(codelist, '')
    print 'I build this code...'
    print codestring
    print 'and this is my output'
    exec(codestring)
    return dlist





From luser at no.where  Wed Oct 13 18:20:27 1999
From: luser at no.where (Linux User)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:20:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: is there a record separator? RS
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000@crb.crb-web.com>

Is there anything similar to the configurable record separator that perl
and awk use?

Thanks,
Wayne




From ScherBi at BAM.com  Fri Oct 29 07:08:29 1999
From: ScherBi at BAM.com (ScherBi at BAM.com)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:08:29 -0400
Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
Message-ID: <3F8BA119B48AD11197470008C7A493CB98B621@HQOBGEX1>

http://starship.skyport.net/quick-ref1_51.html

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ron A. Zajac [mailto:zajac at nortelnetworks.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 6:28 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
> 
> 
> 
> Dearest, Darling Python Weenies,
> 
> I looked about http://www.python.org/ a bit, and also scouted 
> around on
> my O'Reilly "Programming Python" CD, but couldn't find a Quick Ref
> beyond 1.3.  I'm using 1.5; is there such an animal?
> 
> Thanx in advance!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From jsight at mindspring.com  Wed Oct 13 20:53:16 1999
From: jsight at mindspring.com (Jesse D. Sightler)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 17:53:16 -0700
Subject: JPython?
References: <3804e4c8$0$11278@news.execpc.com>
Message-ID: <3805297C.226CC2C8@mindspring.com>

Why not just go to http://www.jpython.org/ and try it?  Virtually the
entire Python standard library is available, and JPython is capable of
translating to Java bytecodes on the fly, or (via JPythonc) ahead of
time.  It's really quite cool.  :-)

Dan Star wrote:
> 
> Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a just-in-time
> compiler that translates python code to java byte-code so that the
> python code can run in a WEB browser that supports java?  If so, I would
> assume this places many restricitions on the Python language elements
> you can use.  Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its
> own language set?
> 
> --Dan

-- 
---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www.biddin.com/



From akhar at videotron.ca  Wed Oct 27 12:35:23 1999
From: akhar at videotron.ca (Akhar)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:35:23 -0400
Subject: python,openbsd and mysql
Message-ID: <%QFR3.1714$7I3.79675@weber.videotron.net>

I wanted to install the mysql module for python under openbsd but I get this
error every time I make altinstall:
/usr/libexec/ld.so: python: libmysqlclient.so.6.0: No such file or directory
*** Error code 1
Stop in /tmp/Pyhthon-1.5.2.
I changed the following in Setup.localI :
MySQL MySQLmodule.c -L/usr/local/lib/mysql/ -lmysqlclient \
-I/usr/local/include/mysql
someone told me to locate the file libmysqlclient.so.6.0 and to change the
path in the Makefile. But I am new to all this and do no know what part of
the make file I am supposed to change.

Thanx for any help.
Akhar






From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Sun Oct  3 09:14:05 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:14:05 +0100
Subject: simple IRC client
Message-ID: <qoNLpGAda193EwbZ@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

Has anyone implemented a simple IRC client suitable for a one on one
connection to my brother in Australia? His suggestion was from ChatSpace
and at 2.6Mb+netscape it's not really that easy to use. 

I have something called IRCaman in Tcl, but it's a bit flaky and less
than easy to set up as a script like chat_to_tim.py which is what I
would like.

I'm not a fan of chat as I have to pay the telephone bill and it's not
cheap here.
-- 
Robin Becker



From hniksic at srce.hr  Tue Oct  5 10:37:03 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 16:37:03 +0200
Subject: print longs
References: <Pine.WNT.4.05.9910042051340.156-100000@david.ski.org>
Message-ID: <87oged6fhs.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

David Ascher <da at ski.org> writes:

> So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..

What's wrong with that?  In Common Lisp, (sqrt -1) happily returns
#C(0.0 1.0), and I don't see it as a bad thing at all.



From emil at imf.au.dk  Fri Oct 15 09:15:56 1999
From: emil at imf.au.dk (Emil Hedevang Lohse)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:15:56 +0200
Subject: Python for HP-UX
References: <3805F2E8.64189D2@imf.au.dk>
Message-ID: <3807290C.50A4822D@imf.au.dk>

Thanks to all of you.

>From Emil



From bwinton at tor.dhs.org  Wed Oct  6 11:38:25 1999
From: bwinton at tor.dhs.org (Blake Winton)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 15:38:25 GMT
Subject: Do You Have a Powerful Computer, a few extra minutes,& Microsoft Word?
References: <37FADAD9.AFFF8684@megsinet.net> <37FADC13.15566070@megsinet.net> <9910052349430P.00641@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <slrn7vmrqi.99s.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 23:44:59 -0700, Patrick Phalen wrote:
>I'd imagine your "Linux friend" would probably prefer a tarball rather
>than a Winzip'd file, eh? ;-)

His "Linux friend" doesn't care.  I've got zip installed.  :)

>I'm making one. I'll send it to you. (I knew this Windows box would
>turn out to be good for *something* eventually.)

Thanks,
Blake.




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Oct  4 17:24:13 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 21:24:13 GMT
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 20)
References: <EC5158419350B090.6626105EB6EC65C9.75E9B9F7F2A580AD@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <361D828D8C4A1DB7.B2014CD75E380143.8300C24EFC157D44@lp.airnews.net>

In article <EC5158419350B090.6626105EB6EC65C9.75E9B9F7F2A580AD at lp.airnews.net>,
David Ascher  <da at ski.org> wrote:
>Our welcome to readers arriving by way of *Dr. Dobb's Journal*'s new
>sponsorship of Python-URL!
			.
			.
			.
Yes, yes, I recognize that today is 4 October, not the 20
September that appears in the Subject line.  This was the
traditional I-thought-*you*-tested-that last-minute glitch,
to help new readers feel comfortable.  The responsibility
is entirely mine, and I apologize for the thousands, if not
jillions, in packet costs this mistake has cost (do readers
still recognize that reference?).
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From ajmas at bigfoot.com  Sun Oct 17 21:15:12 1999
From: ajmas at bigfoot.com (Andre-John Mas)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 01:15:12 GMT
Subject: Syntax error - what's wrong?
Message-ID: <7udsaq$lll$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi,

 I have never programmed in Python before and need a quick crash
 course. I am installing Redhat Linux 6.1 and I am getting a Python
 related error. Could someone tell me what it wrong - I hoping this
 will be faster that waiting for a Redhat solution ;-)

 Everything you should need is below:

--- Error start

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 13, in ?
    import gettext
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/gettext.py", line 40 in ?
    import os, string
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/string.py", line 480
    return sign + '0'*(width-n) +
                                      ^
SyntaxError:  invalid syntax

--- Error end

--- Code segment start

# Zero-fill a number, e.g., (12, 3) --> '012' and (-3, 3) --> '-03'
# Decadent feature: the argument may be a string or a number
# (Use of this is deprecated; it should be a string as with ljust c.s.)
def zfill(x, width):
	"""zfill(x, width) -> string

	Pad a numeric string x with zeros on the left, to fill a field
	of the specified width.  The string x is never truncated.

	"""
	if type(x) == type(''): s = x
	else: s = `x`
	n = len(s)
	if n >= width: return s
	sign = ''
	if s[0] in ('-', '+'):
		sign, s = s[0], s[1:]
	return sign + '0'*(width-n) + s

--- Code segment start

A copy of the source file is available at:

ftp://ftp.eecs.umich.edu/pub/linux/redhat/redhat/redhat-6.1/i386/RedHat/
instimage/usr/lib/python1.5/

Andre
--
http://www.bigfoot.com/~ajmas/


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu  Tue Oct  5 01:52:02 1999
From: mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu (Michael Haggerty)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 01:52:02 -0400
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
Message-ID: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu>

Hi,

Sometimes I would like to write functions with arguments that are
REQUIRED to be passed as keyword arguments rather than positional
arguments.  For example, for the following function I might want the
second parameter to be passed as a keyword parameter:

    f(1, 2) # Exception
    f(1, variation=2) # OK

It is possible, though cumbersome, to enforce this requirement with
python by the use of **arguments:

    def f(x, **keyw):
        variation = keyw['variation'] # might throw confusing exception
	# test that no unwanted keyword arguments were passed:
	del keyw['variation']
	assert not keyw
        # ...

The more keyword arguments, the nastier (and these cases usually occur
when there are a large number of multiple keyword arguments).  It is
even less convenient if you want to supply default arguments.  I hope
you will all agree that it is unpleasant to have to resort to
*arguments or **arguments.

Why do I want to require keyword arguments?  Because I don't want the
order of the arguments to be part of the advertised interface to my
function.  The arguments may have no sensible ordering (for example, a
group of boolean options for which the defaults are usually used) and
thus their use as positional arguments would always be confusing.  Or
I might want to allow an indeterminate number of positional arguments,
followed by keyword arguments.

[Actually this idea arose from a real situation.  I wrote a function
with a bunch of arguments, which I intended to be passed as keyword
arguments.  A colleague called it with a bunch of positional
arguments.  Later I inserted more arguments, changing their order and
not thinking anything of it.  But suddenly my colleagues' code failed
in a non-obvious way.]

Could there be a more convenient way to enforce the keyword-argument
requirement?  Perhaps the rule that no named arguments may follow a
*argument (an asterisk argument, i.e., returning a list of all unused
positional arguments) could be replaced with the proviso that any
named arguments following a *argument MUST be passed as keyword
arguments.  Moreover, a `*' with no dummy variable name could be put
in a function signature to indicate that no more positional arguments
are allowed AND that all following arguments must be keyword
arguments:

    def f(x, *, variation):
        # same effect as above

Then keyword arguments could also easily be combined with
indeterminate numbers of positional arguments:

    def g(*x, color='red'):
        print x
        print color

    >>> g(1,2,3)
    (1, 2, 3)
    red
    >>> g(4,5,6, color='blue')
    (4, 5, 6)
    blue

(Without this change g() would have to be written with a **keyw
argument.)  This change would not break any existing code because it
is currently not allowed to include named arguments following an
*argument.

Maybe this is overkill for a feature of limited utility.  But I think
the occasional need to muck about with *arg and **keyw arguments is
one of the few tedious tasks in Python.  Similar to the new extended
calling syntax, this change would make that need rarer.

Reactions?

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu



From jdriese at seanet.com  Fri Oct  8 08:41:01 1999
From: jdriese at seanet.com (Jim Driese)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 05:41:01 -0700
Subject: PyGreSQL difficulties
References: <37FDCD98.EF1D5917@seanet.com>
Message-ID: <37FDE65C.135B381@seanet.com>

Jim Driese wrote:

> I'm new to Python and am trying to get the PyGreSQL module to work.  I
> am running FreeBSD 3.3-STABLE and installed the Python-1.5.2 package and
> PyGreSQL-2.4 port.  When I ran basics.py interactively (import basics),
> I received the following message:
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> MODULE BASICS.PY : BASIC SQL COMMANDS TUTORIAL
>
> This module is designed for being imported from python prompt
>
> In order to run the samples included here, first create a connection
> using :                        cnx = basics.DB(...)
> then start the demo with:      basics.demo(cnx)
> __________________________________________________________________
>
> So, I typed:
>
> cnx = basics.DB(...)
>
> and received the following error message:
>
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>
> What am I supposed to enter for "..." and what do I need to do to get
> the sample program to run?
>
> TIA
>
> Jim Driese

Okay, I figured out that "..." is the name of the database.   Here's a
sample session:

>>> cnx.query("create table cities (name text,population float8,altitude
int)");
>>> cnx.query("create table capitals (state varchar(2)) inherits
(cities)");
>>> cnx.query("create unique index on cities using btree (name)");
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
pg.error: ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "on"

So, table creation went ok but I was unable to create an index (I _can_ do
this under psql, however).  None of the sample programs had an index
example.  Does anybody know of a good online pygres reference?

TIA

Jim Driese












From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 19 11:50:47 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 01:50:47 +1000
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
In-Reply-To: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECGEKHFEAA.dirkl@home.com>
Message-ID: <000101bf1a49$ca036c60$53001064@bobcat>

Im not in a position to test this, but one of either:

for r in Request:
  print r

or:

i=1
while 1:
  try:
    r = Request.Item(i)
  except pythoncom.com_error:
    break

should work...

Mark.
-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Dirk Leas
Sent: Saturday, 16 October 1999 1:38
To: LS, Python
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)


I've installed PythonWin and am trying to do some python scripting w/n
ASP. If you know the form field by name, something like "name =
str(Request("name"))" works great. How do you access Request fields if
you don't know their name -- say you wanted to write a generic dump
script that would dump all the field names and values? Seems like
there would be a way to coerce the COM Request into some type of
python sequence. Anybody know the "secret racoon handshake"?

Thanks
D





From achrist at easystreet.com  Sun Oct 31 22:55:39 1999
From: achrist at easystreet.com (Al Christians)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:55:39 -0800
Subject: Contribution: nice floating point number formatting
References: <381a4316$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com>
Message-ID: <381D0F3B.4C96A2B5@easystreet.com>

One other option that is often(?) used when numbers are embedded in 
text is to include  the thousands separator only when the number is 
10,000 or more.  The eye doesn't need the comma to read four digits.
So we would write 1234.56 and 12,345.67.  This doesn't work for numbers 
arranged in columns. 


Al
   

"David S. Harrison" wrote:
> 
> Having written a bunch of scientific software, I am always amazed
> at how few languages have built in routines for displaying numbers
> nicely.  I was doing a little programming in Python and got surprised
> again.  I couldn't find any routines for displaying numbers to
> a significant number of digits and adding appropriate commas and
> spaces to long digit sequences.  Below is my attempt to write
> a nice number formatting routine for Python.  It is not particularly
> fast.  I suspect building the string by concatenation is responsible
> for much of its slowness.  Suggestions on how to improve the
> implementation will be gladly accepted.
> 
>                         David S. Harrison
>                         (daha at best.com)
> 
> # ---------------------- cut here --------------------------
> import math
> 
> # Returns a nicely formatted string for the floating point number
> # provided.  This number will be rounded to the supplied accuracy
> # and commas and spaces will be added.  I think every language should
> # do this for numbers.  Why don't they?  Here are some examples:
> # >>> print niceNum(123567.0, 1000)
> # 124,000
> # >>> print niceNum(5.3918e-07, 1e-10)
> # 0.000 000 539 2
> # This kind of thing is wonderful for producing tables for
> # human consumption.
> #
> def niceNum(num, precision):
>     """Returns a string representation for a floating point number
>     that is rounded to the given precision and displayed with
>     commas and spaces."""
>     accpow = math.floor(math.log10(precision))
>     if num < 0:
>         digits = int(math.fabs(num/pow(10,accpow)-0.5))
>     else:
>         digits = int(math.fabs(num/pow(10,accpow)+0.5))
>     result = ''
>     if digits > 0:
>         for i in range(0,accpow):
>             if (i % 3)==0 and i>0:
>                 result = '0,' + result
>             else:
>                 result = '0' + result
>         curpow = int(accpow)
>         while digits > 0:
>             adigit = chr((digits % 10) + ord('0'))
>             if (curpow % 3)==0 and curpow!=0 and len(result)>0:
>                 if curpow < 0:
>                     result = adigit + ' ' + result
>                 else:
>                     result = adigit + ',' + result
>             elif curpow==0 and len(result)>0:
>                 result = adigit + '.' + result
>             else:
>                 result = adigit + result
>             digits = digits/10
>             curpow = curpow + 1
>         for i in range(curpow,0):
>             if (i % 3)==0 and i!=0:
>                 result = '0 ' + result
>             else:
>                 result = '0' + result
>         if curpow <= 0:
>             result = "0." + result
>         if num < 0:
>             result = '-' + result
>     else:
>         result = "0"
>     return result



From geek+ at cmu.edu  Mon Oct  4 15:36:32 1999
From: geek+ at cmu.edu (Brian E Gallew)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 15:36:32 -0400
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org> <14328.59652.711031.469373@dolphin.mojam.com> <37F8F904.C4261EC8@callware.com>
Message-ID: <emacs-smtp-347-14329-448-20560@export.andrew.cmu.edu>

Then <ivanlan at callware.com> spoke up and said:
> This makes me wonder--why is there no canonical "dict()" built in
> function?  We have "long()", "list()" and so on, but nothing like them
> for dictionaries.  They all know what to do when fed improper input.

Because there is no obviously correct behaviour for such a function.
Two obvious cases:
a) dict(list1, list2) # What should it do if the lists aren't the same
size?
b) dict(list1) # Is list1 keys, values, or both?

-- 
=====================================================================
| JAVA must have been developed in the wilds of West Virginia.      |
| After all, why else would it support only single inheritance??    |
=====================================================================
| Finger geek at cmu.edu for my public key.                            |
=====================================================================
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From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Oct 26 06:15:14 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:15:14 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com>

Adrian Eyre wrote:
> 
> > Some things where I need some more help are:
> > [snip]
> 
> And Windows NT by the looks of it. All I get from the program is:
> "win32"

Hmm, you should be seing something like:

Windows-NT-4.00.xxx

Could you send me the output of typing "ver" at the command prompt
(this is the information the module uses on Windows NT) ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 24 08:38:04 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 08:38:04 -0400
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <EA4BCCBF98340313.E7B2447D778F2968.62055E04A84ECBEB@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <1271354562-2632983@hypernet.com>

[Cameron] 
>> Is there a profound and/or interesting     
>> reason Python doesn't provide the kinds 
>> of introspective features we're discus- 
>> sing here (a traceback, for example) 
>> without the detour through the land of 
>> exception-tossing? 
[Moshe]
> Yes.
> It is a reminder that IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE (sorry for shouting).  
> Introspecting into
> "static" stuff (like classes, methods, etc.) is
> /moderately/ ok (though it is usually more a sign the
> design was wrong). 
[Juergen A. Erhard]
> I strongly disagree here.  Introspection is
> surely not as evil as you make it to be.  

I don't think Moshe was saying introspection is evil. I'd put it 
this way: Python without double-underscore stuff is safe as 
Mommy's milk. Python with double-underscore stuff is riskier 
(tends to stack overflow unexpectedly), but still sanctioned, 
approved and so documented. But when you get into throwing 
exceptions so you can pull apart the traceback, you're on your 
own. This is implementation detail stuff, and if your code 
breaks under a new release, it's your problem, not Python's.

[Cameron]
> Interesting arguments.  There certainly seem to be
> plenty of respected people in the C++ world who believe run-time
> type information is valuable.  Do you, Mr. Zadka, generally
> suspect their designs are wrong?  I'm willing to consider that
> possibility.

Some C++ column I read recently said that the C++ 
committee members (who, of course, approved RTTI) were 
informally discussing this and could not find an example of 
RTTI usage that wasn't better done without RTTI.
    .

[Cameron]
> Enough of this abstraction.  Let's
> present concrete cases, and see whose
> position is "for-real".
> 
> Mr. Zadka, is your point that there's
> no place in the requirements specifica-
> tion of a user application for the
> kinds of information available through
> introspection?  This supposes Python
> is a language somewhat like Pascal or
> COBOL:  targeted for application writers,
> who can be protected from the obscurities
> debugger writers must negotiate.

That's Python without double-underscores.
 
> Even if we stick to userland applications,
> and deny Python a "systems" role, examples
> like Scheme show it's possible to have a
> healthy tradition of application-oriented
> idioms which rely on code-data dualities.
> I'm a tiny bit surprised, in fact, that
> Python programs "eval" as little as they
> do.  I'll conjecture, again, that there
> might be some deeper reason that this is
> so.  Generalized appeals to propriety,
> though, seem to me misplaced.

Eval isn't needed very often. Assuming (pretty safely, I think) 
that the unknown code in question follows at least some kind 
of expected interface, it is both safer, easier, and more 
comprehensible to do something like:

 mod = __import__(<unknown>)
 mod.doYourThing()

(and there are other, safer ways to do most of the other uses 
of eval).

> I can accept that object-orientation's
> traditions of polymorphism and so on are
> supposed to answer all the questions
> introspection answers.  I don't agree,
> but I understand the position.  Is that
> Python's story?  It's OO, and simply has
> no place for that dirty stuff, except in
> "debuggers"?  To me, that's at odds with
> docstrings, self-testing definitions,
> and other habits which Python justly
> boasts.

The major thing I see pulling apart tracebacks used for is 
answering "who called me". I tend to agree with Moshe here - 
it's either none of your business, or, if it _is_ your business, 
then require the caller to pass in that info. Otherwise, it's 
debugger-level stuff and doesn't belong in release code.

(Note that 1.5 added some stuff so that pulling apart 
tracebacks was no longer needed to get some kinds of info).

- Gordon



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Thu Oct  7 09:10:08 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 15:10:08 +0200
Subject: Is the server down or what?
References: <37FC84F9.F1C51C28@bibsyst.no> <37FC94B1.46DD7A0@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <37FC9BB0.C85C02E9@bibsyst.no>

> You seem tense.  Have you had too much coffee today?  The server is working
> fine from what I can tell.  First rule of newsgroups is to assume the error
> is on your end, i.e. user error or problems at your machine.

I know. I did check out stuff, but comp.lang.python seemed to be the only
newsgroup not responding. After I fired off this posting things started
working again. Don`t know why. Damn Netscape 4.7. If I`m tense it`s because I
know I`ll be working 10-15 hours today, and I`m tired allready. Wait a couple
of hours. By then I`ll be messed up on consentrated caffeine-pills, dizzy from
starvation and sexually frustrated because I don`t get laid as much as I`d
like to.  You see, life is complicated, and the little things gets to me
sometimes.

I`ll get back on the phone with my shrink now.

Thomas





From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Tue Oct  5 20:53:48 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:53:48 +1000
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vkrh5.6vp.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>; from Blake Winton on Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 09:21:28PM +0000
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> <7tdoc8$hno$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vkrh5.6vp.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>
Message-ID: <19991006105348.B700@Ridcully.home>

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 09:21:28PM +0000, Blake Winton wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:51:25 GMT, Preston Landers wrote:
[ ...random deletions... ]

> >> 'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.
> >
> >Isn't that what touch does?
> 
> Nope.  touch only changes the time if the file already exists...

I guess it depends on the version of touch you are using. By default,
the GNU version *does* create a file of zero length if it doesn't
previously exist. This is a documented faeture. If you don't want this
to happen, you must pass the -c or --no-create option.

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From x at x.x  Wed Oct 20 17:28:47 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 17:28:47 -0400
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
References: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no> <14349.40870.777064.518592@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <380E340F.935C8E84@x.x>

Charles G Waldman wrote:
> 
> Thomas Weholt writes:
> 
>  > I was thinking maybe I could use pickle and compress the pickled object
>  > too, before storing it into the database and save some space. Pickled
>  > objects also seem to have lots of repetitive data.
> 
> If you zlib-compress each pickled object, you're going to get some
> savings in space, due to "internal redundancy" (i.e. low entropy) in
> the objects themselves; but it seems to me that there is also
> redundancy *between* the objects; how to exploit this is not at all
> clear to me however.

That's right. .tar.gz is in the general case better than .gz.tar, which
is in essence what compressing pickled objects would be.

> It would be nifty if you could dynamically compress/uncompress the
> whole database file, e.g. using some kind of "compressed file system",
> but this presents difficultes - AFAIK there is some limited
> "compressed file system" support for Linux but it's read-only, due to
> the obvious difficulties of positioning and writing into the middle of
> an existing compressed block.  Also "mmap" support is tricky...

There may be something better; see below.
 
> I also want to point out that your database files may not be as big as
> you think they are.  Gdbm files are typically sparse files, that is,
> they don't take up as much space on disk as you would assume from "ls
> -l", because these files contain "holes".

Hmmm.. this is from the gdbm docs:

"Compatibility with standard dbm and ndbm.

GNU dbm files are not sparse. You can copy them with the UNIX cp command
and they will not expand in the copying process. "

You might be thinking of dbm. (When they say "expand", I believe they
mean occupy more disk blocks, although remain the same end-length.)
 
>  > Awaiting flames and harsh words of discouragement,
> 
> Sorry to dissapoint you!

Now this isn't a flame but an idea. What you really need to maintain a
compressed scalable fine-grained database is a way to determine not
whether but where to use the compressor. In other words, what you need
is like .tar.gz.tar -- but the shelving algorithm has a method to
decide where to put that .gz.

The design would have to acknowledge that whenever anything is changed
on the left (inner) side of the .gz, the whole section would have to
be repickled and compressed. The more related objects you put under
the compressor, though, the better chance you have of having a lower
entropy, and hence better compression. The shelver itself would make
that call.

The right side .tar is the part of the archive which components could
be changed easily; that corresponds well with the dbm-style database.
The left .tar would be more the way that pickle recurses down into
sub-objects, forming a packed byte stream. This size of this part
would be a compromise between being small, because it would have to
be rewritten with every change, but large enough to maintain a useful
compression ratio.

The shelver could have user configurable parameters that could
characterize the expected use of the database. For example, a
mostly read-only database, with infrequent non-performance-
critical writes, would be well-served by having the compressor
towards the outside. Conversely, a dynamic database that is always
changing, but space is less of an issue would be better configured
with the compressor towards the inside.



From tincho.NO at SPAM.crl.com  Sun Oct  3 16:46:37 1999
From: tincho.NO at SPAM.crl.com (Martin Bertolino)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 15:46:37 -0500
Subject: Unloading COM objects?
References: <7su90f$hm2@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <nlPJ3.4391$jf5.17363@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

The COM runtime exposes a function called 'CoFreeUnusedLibraries'. The
purpuse of the function is to check with the currently loaded modules if the
can be unloaded by calling the can 'CanUnloadNow' function. You can try
exporting and calling this function from pythin somehow.

Hope this helps

Martin

Robert <soundhack at geocities.com> wrote in message
news:7su90f$hm2 at senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU...
> Hi,
>  I've been fooling around with ATL and making COM automation objects to be
> scripted by python. However, each time I rebuild the COM dll, I have to
quit
> python
> because the file is being used (after a win32com.client.Dispatch call). Is
> there
> any way of unloading the COM object in python? I tried
> o=win32com.client.Dispatch("test.object"),
> o=None, with no success.
>
> Thanks
> Robert
>
>
>





From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Wed Oct 27 06:09:23 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:09:23 +1300
Subject: search (match) backward
References: <7v4c3h$19k$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3816CF53.DB623BAC@compaq.com>

mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote:
> 
> is there facility to get the match or search backward providing a start
> and end position?

There's nothing built-in as far as I know.

My first thought is to reverse both the string you're searching
and the thing you're searching for and search forwards.

If you're searching for a fixed string, this is straightforward.
If you're searching for an RE, it might be trickier.

This raises the interesting question of whether there is an
algorithm for reversing an RE (i.e. find an RE which matches
the reverse of the strings that the original RE matches).
Can it even be done in general? My intuition says yes, but
I can't think of a proof off the top of my head.

Greg



From da at ski.org  Tue Oct 19 16:18:35 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 13:18:35 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: <vrzoxfpdwp.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>

On 19 Oct 1999, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:

> "Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> ?crit:
> 
> > Jeffrey Friedl's book [...]
> 
> I do not buy much books, but thanks for the reference, and the explanations.

I don't buy many books either, but Jeffrey Friedl's book is IMO one of the
few that I own that I think are worth the price, even though its Python
knowledge is obsolete and I use regexps as sparingly as I possibly can. If
nothing else, it is proof that the human mind will delve obsessively into
arcane knowledge for no other reason than because it can.

--david






From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Wed Oct 13 04:17:48 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:17:48 +0100
Subject: Creating Python Class Instances From C API
In-Reply-To: <3803AD91.779802CF@turner.com>
Message-ID: <001d01bf1553$6facaec0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> PyObject *data = Py_BuildValue("{s:s}", "<name>", "<value>");
> PyObject *object = PyInstance_New(class_name, NULL, data);

If you check out the code in Modules/newmodule.c, you can even
create an instance of a class without calling its constructor.

This can be very handy for having an instance returned from
a different class, which can't be instantiated by the Python
programmer.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From echuck at usit.net  Sat Oct 16 22:14:47 1999
From: echuck at usit.net (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 22:14:47 -0400
Subject: Syntax highlighting for Ultra-Edit 32?
Message-ID: <38093117.B2C70B8D@usit.net>

Hi,

I'm using UltraEdit-32 for Windows to edit my Python scripts. Overall,
it's a fairly nice editor with lots of customization options that
allowed me to make it behave the way I think a text editor should.

It also has a feature for syntax highlighting and comes standard with
modules for Perl, C++, etc.

I was wondering if anyone had a Python syntax highlighting module for
UltraEdit?

-Chuck





From thomas at bibsyst.no  Wed Oct  6 02:57:28 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 08:57:28 +0200
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
References: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no> <7tdgdk$mmr@dfw-ixnews19.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <37FAF2D8.8F43623A@bibsyst.no>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <37F9BADF.8B3C4221 at bibsyst.no>,
> Thomas Weholt  <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
> >
> >I got a program were the user will search a database based on keywords.
> 
> I'd recommend using a real database for this.  Suggestions include MySQL
> and the Python-based gadfly.

How, in your opinion, does Berkley DB, using shelve/pickle-methods,
storing simple objects ( this got a little complicated, I mean the
available modules with the standard Python-distro.) , compare to MySQL
or any other DBMS when looking at speed, size and easy of operation? I
read somewhere that Gadfly is more appropriate when the data stored are
small. I`m talking about millions of records in my database. Maybe tens
of millions. ( No, I`m not kidding.) I`m scanning ALL files in my cd-rom
collection, and when I scan all clip-art, picture and source code cds,
that amounts to alot of data. Does Berkley DB cope with this, or do I
have to use something like MySQL? I`d like to avoid SQL and stay with
dictonary-like approaches, most preferrably the solutions provided with
the standard Python-package. I want to store simple objects, with few
attributes ( 20 or less, plain strings or numbers ) and very few methods
and fetch them by id, being a series of numbers like 321.321.32 ( =
cd_id.path_id.file_id ). The amount of objects will be huge, the objects
themselves small. The bottom-line being, do I have to look for something
else than Berkley DB????

And just for the record, I am using Linux. 

Thanks!

Best regards,
Thomas Weholt



From srenner at lycosmail.com  Tue Oct  5 10:30:45 1999
From: srenner at lycosmail.com (srenner at lycosmail.com)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 14:30:45 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <7td22n$vs4$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

 Just
> > like in our DNA, there are large pieces of software containing
unused
> > code. Nobody noticed it was no longer needed, so nobody bothered to
take
> > it out.
>
> With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key
no-bullshit
> person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example
of
> marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs
for
> a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)



Wait right there. The analogy between DNA and a "code" or a "blueprint"
is commonly made, but it's not a good analogy. Wittgenstein's "Zettel
#206" (not his numbering) is relevant. But Guido wasn't making that
analogy. He was comparing code which has parts that are never used to
DNA which contains sequences which are never transcribed into protein,
or introns. DNA as "code" for morphology or for an organism is nonsense,
but DNA sequences as code for amino acid sequences is perfectly
reasonable, and the intron/extron distinction makes a fine analogy. It's
unexpected instead of cliched, and it makes perfect sense, so Guido is
right and you are out of line.

sr
>
> No offense meant, really.  I was just a little surprised.
>
> Mike
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Mike Vanier	mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
> Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
> GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 11 08:16:38 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:16:38 +0200
Subject: smtplib: To,Cc,Bcc
In-Reply-To: <3801AA45.4756EA96@email.cz>
References: <3801AA45.4756EA96@email.cz>
Message-ID: <19991011141638.A11441@optiplex.palga.uucp>

outsider.007:
> Hi,
>  what send this mail:
> 
> To: people1 <to1 at email.com>, people2 <to2 at email.com>
> Cc:  people3 <cc1 at email.com>, people4 <cc2 at email.com>
> Bcc: people5 <bcc1 at email.com> people6 <bcc2 at email.cz>
> Subject: Subject Test
> 

You should include the headers in the message: the to_list is a list
of 6 addresses, and the Bcc's aren't included in the body.

you-can-also-send-without-the-recepients-in-the-headers-ly yrs Gerrit.



From x at x.x  Sat Oct  9 02:02:28 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 02:02:28 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>

Preston Landers wrote:
> 
> And just because I like to start flame wars, I'll go ahead and add my
> own feature to the wishlist:  nested scopes / namespaces.  Is this a
> pipe dream, or just too hard to implement given the internal structure
> of Python (which I'm not really familiar with.)  Maybe I'm just going
> about it all wrong, but it seems like much of my code would be cleaner
> given arbitrarily nested scopes.  I've discussed this with people
> before on c.l.python but never really got an explanation that made
> sense (to me) for the way it is now.

I too am for rethinking of the way that scopes are handled in Python.
But I'm not too sure what you mean by "arbitrarily nested" scopes.
Python is a bit different from other languages with scope rules
for at least two reasons: that there is no need to predeclare any
variables, and that functions are fully first-class.

Consider this function:

	def f(y):
		f1 = lambda y=y: y.foo
		f2 = lambda foo=y.foo: foo
		return (f1, f2)

Here the two functions that are returned do completely different
things. The first retrieves the current value of foo for the
object that was originally passed. The second always returns 
a constant, whatever value that foo had when the function was
called. If we could simply write:

		f3 = lambda : y.foo

the automatic scope nester would have to decide what you meant.
Kind of a stupid example, because usually you would want the
function that looked up the current value, although I actually
have had occasions where I needed the constant bird, and I was
kind of glad that Python made you spell it out.

Traditionally, scope would be resolved by chaining the local
scope (inside the lambda) to the next outer scope (f()'s 
locals). Python already does something similar to this, in the
way that an object chains from its own dir() to its class.
But that would be very tricky to do for functions, because
sub-functions are first class and can exist even when their
containing function has exited. If the sub-function chained
to the containing function's namespace, that would mean that
the whole stack frame would essentially have to be moved
to a "heap frame" and ref-counted and handled like an
independent object!

That seems a bit extreme. But anything short of that, and you
still have that barrier to cross (going from the containing
function's namespace to where the subfunction can pick it
up.) Being able to specify how that translation takes place
is very important for defining functions that can be used
somewhere other than where they were created (a very useful,
very cool feature of Python IMO.)



From sjoshi at ingr.com  Thu Oct  7 16:17:27 1999
From: sjoshi at ingr.com (sjoshi at ingr.com)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 20:17:27 GMT
Subject: Help! Can't do COM
Message-ID: <7tiv49$8bt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello All
  I'm trying to do a simple COM dispatch in Python but I keep getting
this error:
xlApp = Dispatch("Excel.Application")
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "E:\Python\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 70, in Dispatch
    IDispatch, userName = _GetGoodDispatchAndUserName
(IDispatch,userName,clsctx)
  File "E:\Python\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 67, in
_GetGoodDispatchAndUserName
    return (_GetGoodDispatch(IDispatch, clsctx), userName)
  File "E:\Python\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 58, in
_GetGoodDispatch
    IDispatch = pythoncom.CoCreateInstance(IDispatch, None, clsctx,
pythoncom.IID_IDispatch)
com_error: (-2147221005, 'Invalid class string', None, None)

CAn someone please tell me what I'm missing. I did do this before
the Dispatch, from win32com.client.dynamic import Dispatch

thanks
Sunit


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From flight at mathi.uni-heidelberg.de  Mon Oct 18 09:47:52 1999
From: flight at mathi.uni-heidelberg.de (flight at mathi.uni-heidelberg.de)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:47:52 +0200
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
In-Reply-To: <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>; from Michael Hudson on Mon, Oct 18, 1999 at 01:22:47PM +0100
References: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim> <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <19991018154752.A16714@testserv.mathi.uni-heidelberg.de>

This is a thing I noticed some time ago and was about to enter into the
Python Bug Database. It's been recorded in the Debian Bug Tracking system
since some time:

- Debian Bug#24605: python-base: signal handling problems
  (http://www.debian.org/Bugs/db/24/24605.html)
- Debian Bug#45929: python: ^C acts as ^D instead of raising a
  KeyboardInterrupt exception while working within the interactive interpreter.
  (http://www.debian.org/Bugs/db/45/45929.html)

I'll add a few more data points here for different Linux flavors, all of
them running on i386 machines:

(A) Debian GNU/Linux 2.1: python 1.5.1-7, libreadlineg2 2.1-12,
          libc6 2.0.7.19981211
(B) Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 like above, but running python 1.5.2-5slink-1.
(C) Debian potato: python 1.5.2-6, libreadlineg2 2.1-13.6,
          libc6 2.1.2-5
(D) SuSE Linux 6.1: python-1.5.1-44, libc-99.4.4-0, no readline module
          (Like Debian 2.1, SuSE 6.1 is running libc6 2.0.7)
(E) SuSE Linux 6.1: like above, but running Debian's python 1.5.2-6 package.


First test: "python" and pressing Control-C twice
-------------------------------------------------
On (C), python will be aborted after the first Control-C.

On (A), (B) and (D), "KeyboardInterrupt" after the first Control-C, no reaction 
at all after the second Control-C (Control-C won't work in this session
after the first).

On (E), nothing happens after the first Control-C, but if I press enter,
I get
  Traceback (innermost last):
    File "<stdin>", line 0, in ?
    KeyboardInterrupt
On the second and any subsequent Control-C, I get an "KeyboardInterrupt"
immediately.


Second test: like first, but after installing an empty, dummy readline.so
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
On (A), (D), I get a message
  Traceback (innermost last):
    File "<stdin>", line 0, in ?
    KeyboardInterrupt
after each Control-C, but only after pressing enter.

On (E), the same reaction as with the first test.

(B) and (C) now behave like (E), too.


python -c "raw_input()", ff, Control-C twice
--------------------------------------------
(A), (D): Back in shell after first Control-C, but only after I press enter:
ff
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  KeyboardInterrupt

(B), (C), (E): back in shell after second Control-C:
ffTraceback (innermost last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  KeyboardInterrupt


python -c "import readline; raw_input()", ff, Control-C twice
-------------------------------------------------------------
(A), (B), (C): back in shell

[not applicable for (D) and (E)]

>  
> > If Ctrl-C does kill the interpreter, it's a platform-specific bug.  Start
> > your exciting search by trying:
> > 
> > >>> import signal
> > >>> signal.default_int_handler()
> > 
> > Hoping for something like:
> > 
> > Traceback (innermost last):
> >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> > KeyboardInterrupt
> > >>>
> > 
> > and still in the interpreter shell.

Works like expected on all five configurations.

> 
> No, that all works. The execution is never getting to the handler. I
> can do this:
> 
> >>> import signal
> >>> def f():
> ...  print "hello"
> ...
> >>> signal.signal(signal.SIGINT,f)
> <built-in function default_int_handler>
> >>> ^C - and back we go to bash
> 
> I get the same behaviour if I use `kill' from another xterm, so it
> looks as if the signal's getting deleivered correctly.
> 
> possibly relavent info:
> 
> python 1.5.2 (both from redhat 6.1 & a fairly recent cvs)
> readline-2.2.1-5 (according rpm -q readline)
> 
> running under gdb yields different behaviour (oh good!) - hitting
> control-C drops you into __libc_read where the stack looks a bit like
> this:

gdb python, run and Control-C
-----------------------------

(A) and (B): Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
#0  0x400a2a44 in   ()
#1  0x40037810 in   ()
#2  0x400ff72a in rl_getc ()
#3  0x400ff6b5 in rl_read_key ()
#4  0x400ea760 in readline_internal_char ()
#5  0x400ea8a5 in readline_internal_char ()
#6  0x400ea8ed in readline_internal_char ()
#7  0x400ea4a0 in readline ()
#8  0x4000d2c9 in   ()
...
#17 0x804f31a in   ()
#18 0x804ed40 in main ()

(C): Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
#0  0x401471a4 in read () from /lib/libc.so.6
#1  0x40097ffc in __libc_internal_tsd_get () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#2  0x401b51a7 in rl_getc () from /lib/libreadline.so.2
#3  0x401b5152 in rl_read_key () from /lib/libreadline.so.2
#4  0x401a1e1b in readline_internal_char () from /lib/libreadline.so.2
#5  0x401a1f35 in readline_internal_char () from /lib/libreadline.so.2
#6  0x401a1f69 in readline_internal_char () from /lib/libreadline.so.2
#7  0x401a1b76 in readline () from /lib/libreadline.so.2
#8  0x40014554 in _init () from /usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload/readline.so
#9  0x4004eb71 in PyOS_Readline () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#10 0x40065c4a in PyTokenizer_Free () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#11 0x4006652a in PyTokenizer_Get () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#12 0x400503fb in PyParser_ParseFile () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#13 0x400502a5 in PyParser_ParseFile () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#14 0x4005a843 in PyRun_InteractiveOne () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#15 0x4005a743 in PyRun_InteractiveLoop () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#16 0x4005a67a in PyRun_AnyFile () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#17 0x4004b444 in Py_Main () from /usr/lib/libpython1.5.so.0.0
#18 0x8048724 in main ()
#19 0x400ce78a in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6


[gdb not available on (D) and (E)]

> #0  0x40113db4 in __libc_read () from /lib/libc.so.6
> #1  0x40052a7c in __DTOR_END__ () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
> #2  0x4002f422 in rl_getc () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
> #3  0x4002f3e2 in rl_read_key () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
> #4  0x40021aa5 in readline_internal_char () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
> #5  0x40021b7b in readline_internal_charloop () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
> #6  0x40021baa in readline_internal () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
> #7  0x40021888 in readline () from /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3
> #8  0x8085d85 in call_readline (prompt=0x811be9c ">>> ") at ./readline.c:288
> #9  0x8052689 in PyOS_Readline (prompt=0x811be9c ">>> ") at myreadline.c:148
> #10 0x805184b in tok_nextc (tok=0x8140e70) at tokenizer.c:216
> ...
> 
> single stepping a few times through source-absent libc files leaves me
> back at the Python interpreter's prompt.

Same behavior here.


No need to say that with the readline module loaded behavior for Control-C
(SIGINT) is different depending if you're on the Python command line or if
you're running a Python statement.


The problem is indeed related to the readline module, but then, it seems to
depend on libc6 as well! At least I get different effects with the same
Python version running on systems with a roughly identical libreadline, but
different libc6 versions.

	Gregor




From davidopp at megsinet.net  Wed Oct  6 12:13:49 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:13:49 -0400
Subject: Do You Have a Powerful Computer, a few extra minutes,& Microsoft 
 Word?
References: <37FADAD9.AFFF8684@megsinet.net> <37FADC13.15566070@megsinet.net> <9910052349430P.00641@quadra.teleo.net> <slrn7vmrqi.99s.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>
Message-ID: <37FB753D.B8C77FB4@megsinet.net>

Thanks to everyone for all of their input.  The task has been
accomplished.  Hope you don't mind me referring to you as my "Linux friend"
Blake ... lol.  Believe it or not, I never forgot your request, just got
very busy.  Finally gave up and enlisted the group's help cause my Packard
Hell computer sucks.

Sincerely,

David Oppenheimer

Blake Winton wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 23:44:59 -0700, Patrick Phalen wrote:
> >I'd imagine your "Linux friend" would probably prefer a tarball rather
> >than a Winzip'd file, eh? ;-)
>
> His "Linux friend" doesn't care.  I've got zip installed.  :)
>
> >I'm making one. I'll send it to you. (I knew this Windows box would
> >turn out to be good for *something* eventually.)
>
> Thanks,
> Blake.




From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 11 12:33:39 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:33:39 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
	<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
	<38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

I don't understand why you need the global declaration in g.  

    def f():
       x = 0
       def g():
          global x
          def h():
            global x
            x = 1

At compile time, you should know which scopes have local variables
named x and which have global declarations for x.  If g does not have
a local variable named x, then the global declaration in h can't
sensibly mean the local variable x in g's scope.

The requirement that there be a global declaration in every
intervening scope seems unnecessary and error-prone.  If you miss one
global statement, you get either weird behavior or exceptions.

This isn't exactly compatible with the current semantics for global,
but it would only cause problems for really obscure code, like this:

    x = 12
    def spam():
        x = 1
        def eggs():
            global x
            y = x - 2

Under current global semantics, the x in eggs would refer to the
global variable x with the value 12.  Under the new semantics, the x
in eggs would refer to the local variable x in spam with the value 1.
So it would break some code, but not very much; only code that uses
multiple nested functions that use the same name for local and global
variables. 

Jeremy





From hei at adtranzsig.de  Wed Oct 13 07:13:08 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:13:08 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de> <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <939885152.117641@news.adtranzsig.de>

Tim Eccles schrieb in Nachricht <38041E61.5936C196 at tile.demon.co.uk>...
>Hello Dirk-Ulrich
>
>How difficuly was it?

About 1 or 2 days(?) - didn't measure (actually it took me half a
year, workin on it 10 min a day, but not every day).  I know, this doesn't
help
you much...

>Is it just a matter of writing a correct MAKE
>file, or do we have to manipulate the source code.

no and yes, but you get it for free from me if you wait a little...

>
>The reason for the query is that we are thinking of embedding a Python
>engine within a BCB program, so we do not really want to use VC at all.

Me too. The BCB app is working for quite a while now, but still i'm stuck
to my old WINAPI-based app that contains a Python 1.4 because
i'm still seeking the perfect architecture for the new one...
Might take another 2 years
until i really start programming it. (The apps i write at home tend to be
a little like Cyc or Xanadu, i suppose. I mean the timescale, not the
goals.)

You don't have to wait for 2 years for my patch, though. Just a few hours
from now.  If it's still there.
--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net








From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 04:02:49 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:02:49 +1000
Subject: Fw: siomodule and Python1.5.2
Message-ID: <000801bf1488$2e33aeb0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

[Apols if this shows up twice - I think my ISP's news server is not
propagating correctly - original msgid is
<7theov$j6v$1 at m2.c2.telstra-mm.net.au>]

Jerry Williams wrote in message <37FBDCB5.C805E926 at Ingenix.com>...
>It looks like siomodule.zip has elapsedTimer.pyd in it which is
looking
>for python14.dll.
>I was wondering if someone had fixed it to run with the python15.dll.

Sure have!  It can be found at http://starship.python.net/crew/roger/

Mark.






From culliton at clark.net  Thu Oct  7 19:13:00 1999
From: culliton at clark.net (Tom Culliton)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 23:13:00 GMT
Subject: Nolan's question of the day: distributed servers?
References: <87btal3td5.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org> <slrn7vpvmc.k3a.philen@earn.aa.ans.net>
Message-ID: <0O9L3.1289$N64.37505@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

Many many moons ago I was involved with Marcus J. Ranum's U*Mud
experiments which were a step in the direction of a distributed
server.  You could actually "walk" through a doorway and end up on a
different server with all of your "stuff".  The object representation
was designed to be portably serialized for storage or transmission,
and let you set arbitary properties used by actions.  Very cool stuff
but not very practical in the long run, there were far to many
administrative headaches involved even with the very clean and
otherwise minimalist server environment that Marcus had developed.

In article <slrn7vpvmc.k3a.philen at earn.aa.ans.net>,
Phillip Lenhardt <philen at earn.aa.ans.net> wrote:
>In article <87btal3td5.fsf at ethereal.dhis.org>, Nolan Darilek wrote:
>>My current big project is a MUD server in Python. I have some
>>interesting ideas, only one of which I'll bore you all with. :) I
>>honestly don't know how Python will perform in this area. I'm not
>>aiming my code at lower-end processors though, so I'm not terribly
>>worried, but in order to alleviate some of this, I'm trying to either
>>use an existing object distribution scheme such as CORBA/ILU, or
>>*shudder* write my own. :)
>
>As I recall, the MUD FAQ has some good reasons why it is not worth
>the trouble to make a MUD distributed.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 06:57:19 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:57:19 GMT
Subject: More Python books coming...
References: <5lpuz483p4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tblr9$m09$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
Message-ID: <000901bf0f21$e6f904c0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Ed Hynes <ehynes at acm.org.nospam> wrote:
> Will links to these books be added to the PSA's online bookstore anytime
> soon?  (Want to get the most bang for the buck when buying them:^)

http://www.python.org/doc/Books.html
has links.

http://www.python.org/psa/bookstore/
doesn't, as you noticed...

</F>




From wesc at rocketmail.com  Wed Oct 20 17:25:43 1999
From: wesc at rocketmail.com (Wesley C.)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 21:25:43 GMT
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <000601bf12db$2759d640$072d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7ulc06$pmk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <000601bf12db$2759d640$072d153f at tim>,
  "Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> [Sonny Parlin]
> > I have a file of 1000 lines that I'm simply trying to read in and
display
> > using python. The code I have is here:
> >
> > #!/usr/bin/python
> >
> > file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
> > for line in file.readlines(): # read file
> >     s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
> >     print s #print string
> > file.close()


late reply here, but regarding files, there *are* multiple
ways to skin this cat.

sonny's first run at it:

file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
for line in file.readlines(): # read file
    s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
    print s #print string
file.close()

... opens the file, reads all the lines in, and prints
them one-at-a-time stripping the \n by slicing it.,
and the closing the file.

two things to note here that i didn't see in any of
the replies:

1) once f.readlines() completes, you can close the
   file right away instead of waiting (see below).

2) you can replace the stripping of \n and printing
   of 's' with a single line:  print s,
   the comma at the end means don't automatically add
   a \n... sorta like the Pascal write() and writeln()
   functions.

with those two (unrelated) changes, the program now
looks like:

file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
lines = file.readlines(): # read file
file.close()
for eachLine in lines: # process each line
   print eachLine,      #print string

however, it's just as valid to process the entire file
as a single string, as in sonny's final example with
some motivation by jesse:

file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
print file.read()
file.close()

print takes a string, and that's exactly what file.read()
does... it reads in the entire contents of the file into
a string object.  jesse's shorter 1-liner:

print open('testfile.txt').read()

...is fine too, although it's always a good idea to close
the file.  in this example, we've lost our file handle
and must wait for the garbage collector to cleanup after
us.  if the file is deleted while it is still opened, it
may still show up on a directory listing because the file
ref. count hasn't gone down to zero yet.


another way of doing it, which we haven't seen (probably
for good reason), is using file.readline():

file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
while 1:
    line = file.readline(): # read line
    if not line: break  # empty string if EOF
    print line,    # print line
file.close()

we could've also used "if line == '': break" to check for
EOF.  when i was a Python newbie, i thought, wait a minute,
what if i really had a blank line or empty string in my
text file?  wouldn't this break out of displaying my file
prematurely?

the answer is no, because i totally forgot about the
embedded \n in my file.  an empty string would actually be
read as "\n", so the check for EOF (if '\n' == '') would
fail and everything would work properly!  just something
to keep in mind!


> >
> > I think I have some unnecessary steps in that program, because here
is the
> > Perl equivalent:
> >
> > #!/usr/bin/perl
> >
> > open(FD, "testfile.txt");
> > while(<FD>) {
> >     print $_;
> > }
> > close(FD);
> >
> > The Perl example is smaller and runs a few milliseconds faster, so
could
> > someone please point out the deficiencies in my python script?
>
> Your Perl is much too wordy <wink>:
>
> open(F,"testfile.txt");print <F>;
>
> Others will respond with trivial simplifications to the Python code
too, but
> who cares?  Nobody wins a Fabulous Prize for saving a keystroke.
>
> gotta-save-3-just-to-qualify-ly y'rs  - tim


nope, no one cares, except that seeing different ways of
doing the same thing with some commentary might be useful
to newbies.

here's my shortened Perl version  ;-)   ...

open(F, "testfile.txt");
print while(<F>);
close(F);

hope this helps!

-wesley

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A computer never does what you want... only what you tell it."

Wesley C. <wesc at rocketmail.com>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 28 21:38:09 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:38:09 -0400
Subject: Destroying files
In-Reply-To: <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <1270962155-6437791@hypernet.com>

> Yes, I'm on Windows 95. No, deleting files does not remove them
> from your hard drive; They can be recovered by computer forensics
> experts or by nosey hacks. I'm putting my PC up for sale, and the
> thought is troubling.

How about opening a file, writing '\000'*1024 (and flushing) 
until it runs out of disk space, and then deleting it? A wizard 
might be able to get filenames out of the FAT, but I don't think 
there's be any data left.

- Gordon



From parkw at better.net  Thu Oct 28 06:57:55 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 06:57:55 -0400
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial>
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial>
Message-ID: <19991028065755.B10826@better.net>

On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 11:19:28AM +0200, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with some 
> cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep same 
> "last changed" time and more.
> 
> You can get it at http://buffy.acmecity.com/sanctum/195/dos2unix
> 
> It's in the public domain, so you can do with it whatever you want.

What's wrong with 'fromdos' and 'todos' avaiable in most Linux
distributions?  You can perform those features using shell.  Since your
target audience is Unix people, there is no need to reinvent wheel.




From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 11 12:07:28 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:07:28 +0200
Subject: Integers and Floats
Message-ID: <19991011180728.A14620@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hello,

I know there is a difference between integers and floats, but I think the
following is a little strange:

18:07:48:3/499:gerrit at gerrit:~$ python
Python 1.5.2 (#1, Aug  8 1999, 01:35:00)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs- on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> 131 / 4
32
>>> 4 * 32
128
>>> 131 / 4 * 4
128

I think the ouput of the first two statement is ok, but why can't python store
an integer and a float as the same thing? And is the conversion between an
integer and a float so big? Or are floats just slower? Do I have to do the
following:

>>> int(float(131) / 4 * 4)
131

Is that neccesary for this one?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From hank at prosysplus.com  Thu Oct 14 14:56:48 1999
From: hank at prosysplus.com (Hank Fay)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:56:48 -0400
Subject: JPython?
References: <199910132322.QAA11710@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <gIpN3.399$Mt5.12355@news2.jacksonville.net>

Jim,

    is there a visual application development environment, using the Java
API, that will work with JPython?

    tia,

Hank

--
http://www.prosysplus.com
Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> wrote in message
news:199910132322.QAA11710 at hermes.aspectdv.com...
> As a very active JPython user, here is my take on it.
>
> Yes, you can think of JPython as a mechanism
> that lets you run "Python" in a Web browser that supports
> Java.  You can also look at it as a mechanism for
> adding scripting capability to Java applications.
>
> But I think of it in a somewhat different way.
> JPython is a second implementation of Python
> that uses the Java VM instead of the Python
> runtime.  Why is this useful?  Because of the
> following tradeoffs.  In JPython you don't have
> access to Python C-based extension modules.
> Bad, obviously.  But you do have access to
> the basic core language structures and to
> any Python modules implemented completely
> in Python.  Neutral -- obviously you have this
> in standard Python as well.  But, the real kicker
> is this: with JPython you DO have complete
> access to ALL Java APIs.   Without having to
> do any work at all. No wrappers, no JNI, no CORBA
> no anything.   Instant availability.  All in the
> same JVM.
>
> I am in a situation where I need to develop
> huge applications and for various business
> and other reasons I am absolutely committed
> to using Java APIs (Swing for the UI, etc.).
>
> Without JPython, Java is the only real choice
> for programming the applications
> since doing wrappers to make all Java APIs
> available in Python is just not practical.
>
> With JPython, though, I can develop all of my
> applications using the Python language
> (as opposed to the C-Python implementation)
> and still make use of all the Java APIs.
>
> Personally, I believe the Java APIs are
> gaining enormous momentum for applications
> programming.  I think the ability to program
> in a high-level, dynamic language like Python
> while having seamless access to all of the Java
> APIs is a killer combination.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> At 03:00 PM 10/13/99 -0500, Dan Star wrote:
> >Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a just-in-time
> >compiler that translates python code to java byte-code so that the
> >python code can run in a WEB browser that supports java?  If so, I would
> >assume this places many restricitions on the Python language elements
> >you can use.  Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its
> >own language set?
> >
> >--Dan
> >
> >--
> >http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> >
>
>





From thomas at xs4all.nl  Fri Oct 29 04:47:56 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:47:56 +0200
Subject: Newbie:python equiv of c structures
In-Reply-To: <7vb7ue$avt$0@199.201.191.2>; from tmcdavid@yahoo.com on Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 04:31:10AM +0000
References: <7vb7ue$avt$0@199.201.191.2>
Message-ID: <19991029104756.E29354@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 04:31:10AM +0000, tom mcdavid wrote:

>     I am learning Python from a background of mostly FORTRAN and some
> c.  I know how use structures in c, what is the analogue in Python?
> I've got Lutz' book, but it doesn't speak to my
> old-dog-learning-new-tricks background.

Objects, really. C structs group data together, objects group data &
functions together. But if you insist on only having data, you can easily
create an object with only data, it's all in the eye of the beholder. Python
is however very different from FORTRAN and C, not in the small
technicalities or loop statements or even syntax, but in how you need to
think to program effectively. It'll take some experimenting before you're
comfortable with your new tricks.

For instance, if you want a struct so you can pass a ton of data to a
function by value instead of by reference, you're out of luck. all Python
objects, all arguments, everything is passed and called by reference. You
need to explicitly copy to avoid it. On the plus side, you dont need to
group something in a struct to pass it along, you can very easily pass any
kind of data in any form.

If you're looking for a 'struct' to be able to pass it to a C function that
expects it, you need the 'struct' module. You use it to create a 'binary
string' according to a specification. Not as easy to use as C structs, but
it generates a block of data that can be read in as a C struct.

And if you're looking for a 'struct' to group related data + flags + function
pointers, you want Objects. You want objects anyway, but you _really_ want
them now :)

The tutorial on http://www.python.org/doc is a good place to start learning
the new tricks, by the way.

All-of-python-is-structured'ly y'rs,

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Fri Oct  1 09:51:39 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 15:51:39 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
Message-ID: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hello,

almost all python meetings are currently in the USA. So that's
unavailable for all European people (except England, which has
it's own PUG already). And that while there are so much Dutch
people here! Wouldn't it be a nice idea to start a Dutch Python
Users Group, or a NederLandse Python Gebruikers Groep (NLPGG)?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
http://www.nl.linux.org/	All Dutch Linux documentation
http://linuxgames.nl.linux.org/	Games for Linux in Dutch (under construction)
http://www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit	Homepage and Discoverb (learning words program)



From skip at mojam.com  Wed Oct 13 06:21:42 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:21:42 -0500
Subject: crypt(3) confusion
Message-ID: <199910131021.FAA10144@dolphin.mojam.com>

I was reading the contact template examples page at

    ftp://www.networksolutions.com/templates/contact-template-examples.txt

in preparation for an update to my contact info.  For the auth info section
it gave an example encrypted password of "%.d!Hr3 at rm.Gh" which it said was
the encryption for the password "HELLO".  It said to use the crypt(3)
library function to generate the encrypted password.

Figuring I could call Python's crypt.crypt function to generate the
password, I tried:

    >>> import crypt
    >>> crypt.crypt("HELLO", "%.")
    '%.oskKrxF9sUk'

This was confusing (it not matching the example), so I tried it in C and
Perl and got the same result.  Then I checked the docs.  The crypt man page
and the documentation for Python's crypt module on my RedHat 5.2 systems
indicate the characters in the salt must be drawn from the set [a-zA-Z/.],
yet the example clearly used a salt of "%.".

Can I trust my eyes (and my crypt(3) function) or is there a problem with
Network Solutions' example?

Thx,

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Mon Oct 18 19:37:05 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 23:37:05 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <380B5582.F6C2CB09@callware.com> <m267041nir.fsf@netmeg.net>
Message-ID: <slrn80mtu6.1srv.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Mon, 18 Oct 1999 19:05:29 GMT, Les Schaffer bilang:
| Ivan said:
| 
| > Try my getargs module.  It's available at:
| 
| looks good, thanks.
| 
| i am very impressed with your documentation too. you are to be
| saluted.
| 
| btw: cool mayan glyphs and math on your web page.

Did you see his Four Noble Truths of Python page?
<http://www.pauahtun.org/4nobletruthsofpython.html>

the-flower-is-not-red,-the-willow-is-not-green,-and-python-
is-not-perl-ly yr's, Cliff


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Wed Oct 13 21:46:02 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:46:02 +1000
Subject: recursive copy in a directory tree?
In-Reply-To: <7u3agu$957@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <005b01bf15e5$dfe341d0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

> In article <7u39g2$ki5$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, yinger
> <ayinger1 at my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
> >  I am looking for a python util that *recursively* copies
> files from a
> >source directory tree to a target with wildcard syntax.
>
> os.path.walk() should get you mostly there.

Also check out the shutil module, and specifically the "copytree()"
function.

Mark.




From hniksic at srce.hr  Sun Oct 17 13:14:13 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:14:13 +0200
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <Pine.SOL2.3.96.SK.991017161248.2633F-100000@sun> <00a401bf189b$c80d3710$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <873dv9nc4a.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> but to make the code a bit more flexible, I'd change
> the execvp call to:
> 
> os.execvp(command, (command,) + tuple(args))
[...]
> (this allows the caller to use *any* kind of sequence, not just a
> list).

Thanks for the suggestion; I've now made that change.



From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Tue Oct  5 17:03:01 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 21:03:01 GMT
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vkkek.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
References: <slrn7vkkek.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <199910052101.WAA20613@axil.hvision.nl>

On 5 Oct 99, William Tanksley wrote:

> I just downloaded the DOS version of Python from Hans Nowak's page.
> Probalm is, there don't seem to be any docs or modules included -- it's
> just the .exe file.  Where do I get the .py modules which are supposed to
> go with it, and where do I install them?

Looks like a link is missing on my page. Try

http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/python-1.5-lib.arj

> Also, has someone compiled numPy for DOS?

I tried to, but for some reason it didn't go well. Python-DX does a 
few NumPy modules included; nothing spectacular though.


--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Python Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/
The Purple Kookaburra Forum: http://www.delphi.com/kookaburra/



From jklymak at apl.washington.edu  Thu Oct 21 01:05:52 1999
From: jklymak at apl.washington.edu (Jody M. Klymak)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 22:05:52 -0700
Subject: win32: cygwin modules?
Message-ID: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu>

Howdy all,

For some peverse reason I have decided to get my feet wet with python
by getting Piers Lauder's facemail package to work on NT.  After a
little fiddling some of it works, but I really want to get those
pretty X-Faces in there.  This requires building compface.c and
compfacemodule.c as Python modules.  

Has anyone built modules from c-source using cygwin (20.1 if it
matters) that work with python?  

I see from Mumit Khan's homepage that he can make cygwin dll's work
with Java, so I'm guessing its doable with python too.

Thanks for any help,

Jody

-- 
Jody Klymak                         APL/School of Oceanography,
Doctoral Candidate                  University of Washington
mailto:jklymak at apl.washington.edu   (206)-685-9080
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/jklymak/



From felixt at dicksonstreet.com  Fri Oct  8 23:48:02 1999
From: felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 03:48:02 GMT
Subject: Newbie question about __getattr__ and __setattr__
Message-ID: <1103_939440882@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>

I'm trying to learn Python by writing a gui for a
screen-saver program (xlock). To store the 
default settings I was using nested dictionaries,
and they seemed like they could be generally 
useful, so I ended up with this class:

from UserDict import UserDict

class Nester(UserDict):
    def __add__(self, other):
      sum =self.addentry(self.data, other)
      return Nester(sum)

    __radd__ = __add__
      

    def addentry(self, a, b):
        DualValueError =  "Dictionaries assign different values with same key"
        try:
            sum = a.copy()
            for key in b.keys():
                if sum.has_key(key) and sum[key] != b[key]:
                    sum[key] = [sum[key] , b[key]]
                    sum[key] = self.addentry(sum[key][0], sum[key][1])
                else:
                    sum[key] = b[key]
            return sum
        except AttributeError:
            raise DualValueError

which I use like this:

>>> import Dicky
>>> i =Dicky.Nester({'a': {'b': {'c': 'd'}}})
>>> i
{'a': {'b': {'c': 'd'}}}
>>> i = i+{'a':{'b':{'e':'f'}}}
>>> i
{'a': {'b': {'c': 'd', 'e': 'f'}}}
>>> 

I also wanted to be able to do this by assignment so I tried to
make a __setattr__ method, but if I do:

i[1][2][3] = 4

I get an exception from __getattr__. So my question is- Is there
a way to tell that __getattr__ is being called in an assignment, and not
to get a value, and is there a way to get all the keys and values at once?
Or is this a Bad Idea?

Thanks!

Felix



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 17 05:06:10 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 11:06:10 +0200
Subject: da ... while loop
References: <1272093334-1612528@hypernet.com> <7u8kln$imq$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <00ca01bf187e$de2e85c0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
> Then the alien space bats created the timbot, who started
> comp.lang.python, and that's how we've all arrived where we
> are now.

you mean timbat.  and camp.long.python.

</F>

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




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Oct  5 09:36:23 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 09:36:23 -0400
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
In-Reply-To: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <1272992670-25090234@hypernet.com>

Thomas Weholt wrote:

[snip]
> Something like this perhaps :
> 
> for word in sys.argv(1:):
>  words_dict[word] = dyna_list # the result from the dictonary
>  could be a
> lists or a string, containing entries later converted to a list
> 
> But here I need to create a new list-object for each keyword. I
> don`t know how many keywords the user has specified so this has
> to be dynamic. How can I create list-objects like this
> on-the-fly? Can I use a list of lists? It will probably not be
> integers used for entry-ids in the end, more likely strings, or
> lists if this is possible.

A list of lists would do fine.
 
> What I need is a way of making an intersection of this lists, so
> that only entries containing all keywords will be displayed. The
> final product should be a list to iterate, fetching the valid
> entries in another database.

Lots of possibilities. Here's a nice trick exploiting dictionaries:

>>> ml = [[1,2,3],[2,3,4],[1,2,5]]
>>> tmp = {}
>>> for l in ml:
	for x in l:
		z = tmp.get(x, [])
		z.append(1)
		tmp[x] = z
		
>>> rslt = []
>>> for k,v in tmp.items():
	if len(v) == len(ml):
		rslt.append(k)
			
>>> rslt
[2]



- Gordon



From jam at quark.emich.edu  Mon Oct  4 10:41:10 1999
From: jam at quark.emich.edu (Jeff)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 10:41:10 -0400
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 09:56:26AM -0400, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> Jeff <jam at quark.emich.edu> writes:
> 
> > I have need to write a firewall configuration script in python, and
> > one of my design goals is that python not act as just another /bin/bash
> > replacement.  what I'd like is a module that knows how to directly make
> > the ioctl calls described in the ipfw(4) man page (so I don't have to
> > resort to 'os.system("/sbin/ipchains -F")', which looks ugly).
> 
> I worked on about the same problem this weekend.  I still do not feel ready
> to dive into a C interface.  I did not want to repeatedly do `os.system',
> which would surely incurs a lot of overhead.  As a compromise, even if
> far from being a speed winner, I do the equivalent of "popening" `/bin/sh'
> and feeding it with the generated `ipfwadm' or `ipchains' commands, so at
> least, the shell is called only once, instead of once per command.  Still,
> the shell has to decode the command text that my Python script generates,
> and repeatedly fork the program: much less than ideal.
> 

I have implemented a similar thing for similar reasons, so I understand the
frustration factor with making something that looks and feels clean. what I
have is some simple functions that I can pass things too, but they are
nothing more than scaled-up '#define' type macros and not quite an 'api'.
heck.. I haven't even tested it yet ;)

> Enough problems with organising the chains, I told to myself, no need to
> tackle too many problems at once and drawn myself: I'll live with the slow
> speed in the meantime, and probably for a long while.  What I would love
> to have, however, is a Tkinter interface to drive all this, as my users
> are quite lost if they cannot "click easy", and I would like to give them
> the possibility to dig momentary tunnels without having to call me.
> 

I have a similar goal in mind, though I don't expect anyone to be able to
grok the code at first-- I'm more concerned with a common script to manage
the half-dozen machines I want to protect. primarily what I want to do is
not so much 'bullet proof' the machines, but simply try to keep the honest
people honest. this is a university-- to put up a firewall here would be
*asking* for more trouble than it's worth ;)

a Tk (or, actually, GTK) interface wouldn't be *that* hard to implement, and
redhat 6.0 has already done a little work in this regard-- you can use
linuxconf to set up simple firewalls, and I think it even lets you manage it
all remotely. you might want to check it out if you are mostly interested in
a point-and-click interface.

> I would like to seek some generality in my things, but I hardly see how.
> Things are so tuned to of our particular setup, that it seems to me that
> making things general enough to be exportable, sharable or publishable
> would require an effort which is inordinate with our real needs.  Moreover,
> to be fully honest, playing such games is far from being my preferred bag,
> anyway.  I still hardly accept that there are bad guys on this planet:
> this is really not the world I was hoping for in my youth :-).  Life would
> be *so* easier without them.  Good guys should kill all the bad guys! :-)
> 

"good will always triumph over evil, because evil is dumb" -- spaceballs.
that's a perfect world, though, so it's best to shoot for keeping the honest
people honest ;).. as for generality, I have some of that, but it's an
interface to 'os.system' not direct calls into the kernel. if anything it
keeps the code cleaner because it will be less likely to change across
kernel versions.

> > I am willing to work on the project, but I thought I saw *something*
> > whiz by on the mailing list regarding this same issue.
> 
> I do not clearly see how we could put our efforts in common, nor what I
> can bring which you would not already know, but yet, I'm open to fruitful
> collaboration, if it can be organised easily and time-economically! :-)
> 

well, I'll post the code I have so far.. use it if you can, just give credit
where credit is due, and please send patches back to me directly or post to
the list.. comments (including 'This code sucks, and here's some better code
to prove it") appreciated. 

perhaps trying to hook directly into the kernel is 'too much' for this
project, and we ought to run with the other approach instead. 

note that this code *does not* actually execute the 'ipchains' command, it
just echoes it to the screen. this is as much to protect the programmer from
mucking up his machines during the testing phase than anything else, and it
ought to be pretty easy to see what needs to be changed.

regards,
J

-- begin ipchains.py code --
import getopt

def run_command(args):
	buf = "/sbin/ipchains %s" % (args)
	print "run_command: buf='%s'" % (buf)
	return

def flush_all():
	return run_command("-F")


def set_policy(chain, policy):
	return run_command("-P %s %s" % (chain, policy))

def append_rule(chain, **kw):
	
	buf = "-A %s" % (chain)
	for k, v in kw.items():
		if k == "intf":
			buf = buf + " -i %s" % (v)
		if k == "src":
			buf = buf + " -s %s" % (v)
		if k == "dst":
			buf = buf + " -d %s" % (v)
		if k == "protocol":
			buf = buf + " -p %s" % (v)
		if k == "jump":
			buf = buf + " -j %s" % (v)
		if k == "log":
			if v == 1:
				buf = buf + " -l"

	return run_command(buf)

def main():
	_OPEN = 0
	flush_all()
	
	if _OPEN:
		set_policy("input", "ACCEPT")
		set_policy("output", "ACCEPT")
		set_policy("forward", "ACCEPT")
		append_rule("forward", intf="eth0", src="192.168.2.0/24", jump="MASQ")
		return

	set_policy("input", "DENY")
	set_policy("output", "ACCEPT")
	set_policy("forward", "DENY")

	append_rule("forward", intf="eth0", src="192.168.2.0/24",     jump="MASQ")

	append_rule("input",   intf="ppp0", dst="164.76.56.12/32 22", jump="ACCEPT")
	append_rule("input",   intf="eth0", src="192.168.2.0/24",     jump="ACCEPT")

	append_rule("output",  intf="eth0", src="192.168.2.0/24",     jump="ACCEPT")

if __name__ == "__main__":
	main()
-- end ipchains.py code --

-- 
|| visit gfd <http://quark.newimage.com/> 
|| psa member #293 <http://www.python.org/> 
|| New Image Systems & Services, Inc. <http://www.newimage.com/>



From jdriese at seanet.com  Sun Oct 10 23:52:20 1999
From: jdriese at seanet.com (Jim Driese)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 20:52:20 -0700
Subject: PyGreSQL difficulties (Sorry and thanks)
References: <37FDCD98.EF1D5917@seanet.com> <7tkp6b$1p72$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <38015EF4.BF1FE081@seanet.com>

I was somewhat embarrassed about a couple of recent posts I made which served
mostly to inform the Python community of my complete ignorance of SQL.
Anticipating flames, I logged on only to find three thoughtful responses to my
queries -- two via email.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond; I now
know enough about SQL to finish my program.

What a fine programming language Python is!  I used to be an avid Lisp programmer
but it doesn't show much promise for rapid prototyping and CGI programming.  While
I have made peace with Perl, its syntax still scares me.

Regards,

Jim Driese



"D'Arcy J.M. Cain" wrote:

> Jim Driese <jdriese at seanet.com> wrote:
> > I'm new to Python and am trying to get the PyGreSQL module to work

[deleted]

> Just so you know, the whole demo area has not received as much attention
> as it should so don't be too surprised if there are some rough edges
> here and there.
>
> > cnx = basics.DB(...)
>
> > [deleted]
>
> You need to replace the elipsis with whatever args you need to connect to
> a database.  See the README for details on the connect() call which takes
> the same arguments as the DB class.  The init function in DB just calls
> connect with the args given.  For example, if you are opening a database
> on the local machine with the name matching your login name then you can
> just use the following.
>
> cnx = basics.DB()
>
> More commonly you would name the database here.
>
> cnx = basics.DB('mytest')
>
> and finally, here is a more complicated example.
>
> cnx = basics.DB('mytest', 'db.otherdomain.com', user = 'guest', passwd = 'abc')
>
> --
> D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
> http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
> +1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct 28 06:27:51 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 10:27:51 GMT
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <000e01bf20e6$d7041880$c8a2143f@tim> <3817EA8D.6AC04CFE@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <7v98f7$mtu$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:
[snip]
> Since python doesn't provide encapsulation, (it is object
> based, not object oriented)

Not to start a flamewar, but I haven't seen this definition of 'object based'
before. I thought object based languages had classes with methods, but no
inheritance.

If encapsulation is the key for Real Object Orientedness (tm), then Smalltalk,
one of the prototypical object oriented languages, wouldn't be object oriented
either. Seems a bit odd.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Fri Oct  8 17:48:57 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 21:48:57 GMT
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
References: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tlos5$8ao$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


  Well you cannot just launch the script because it expects its input
values to be in the query string.  You can do an HTTP post command with
a socket and get the result values from the script.

  I think what you are doing is more complicated than you think... :)


  -josh z


 have two cgi scripts.  I need to invoke the other cgi script from
> the first cgi script.  How should I do this?
>
> Thanks
> Gopal
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Sat Oct  9 14:02:41 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 18:02:41 GMT
Subject: Invoke cgi from cgi script
References: <7tlarv$tm5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0joge8cxot.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <7tnvvs$mjd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


 Yeah but then he has to parse the HTML to get what he wants.  Not to
mention that you are needlessly overloading the web server.

 its called DATA SCRAPING and it aint too much fun.

  -josh z

>
> Use urllib... For instance:
>
>   from urllib import urlopen
>   cgioutput = urlopen("http://something/something.cgi")
>
> Quite simple, huh?
>
> > Thanks
> > Gopal
>
> --
>
>   Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
>   Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
>   Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From hoel at GermanLloyd.org  Tue Oct 19 09:55:47 1999
From: hoel at GermanLloyd.org (Berthold Hoellmann)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:55:47 +0200
Subject: WIN32 installer and PMW?
Message-ID: <380C7863.77E44F9B@GermanLloyd.org>

Hallo,

Is there a way to make WIN32 installer work with PMW?

How can I resilve the PMW dependencies during installer building?

Thanks

Berthold
-- 
email: hoel at GermanLloyd.org
   )
  (
C[_]  These opinions might be mine, but never those of my employer.



From hei at adtranzsig.de  Wed Oct 13 04:59:43 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:59:43 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF687@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <939805227.162580@news.adtranzsig.de>

Gaetan Corneau schrieb in Nachricht
<816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF687 at ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>...
>Instead of explaining how to do it, would it be possible just to put the
>BCB++ project file on Python.org? Unless you need to modify some source
>files, that would save people much trouble.

I needed to change a bunch of sources. For instance, there's
a label "finally" here and there; BCB chokes on that, thinking
it's a keyword, i had to rename it to "lfinally" and other
nasty little things. Especially nasty is: i wasn't able to
compile it as a DLL under BCB, so the Python is statically
linked into my apps.

And i suppose,
i could have done with less effort than i actually did
(discovered some #ifdefs on the way i could have used
if i knew they were there...)

So, actually, i think it needs a rework to become some
official distribution but i don't have the time at the moment.

I'm on the wrong machine now. In 12 hours from now, i'll tell you
what i can offer. In any case, i'll be giving the patch away
for free.


--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net






From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Sun Oct 31 11:04:04 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 17:04:04 +0100
Subject: Curses: Character in bottom right corner
Message-ID: <19991031170404.A18549@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hello,

can someone explain me why the following doesn't work:

--- *** ---
#!/usr/bin/python

import curses

def main(stdscr):
    maxy, maxx = stdscr.getmaxyx()
    stdscr.addstr(maxy-1, maxx-1, "s", curses.A_NORMAL)
    stdscr.refresh()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import curses, traceback
    try:
        stdscr=curses.initscr()
        curses.noecho()
        curses.cbreak()

        stdscr.keypad(1)
        main(stdscr)                    # Enter the main loop

        stdscr.keypad(0)
        curses.echo()
        curses.nocbreak()
        curses.endwin()                 # Terminate curses
    except:
        stdscr.keypad(0)
        curses.echo() ; curses.nocbreak()
        curses.endwin()
        traceback.print_exc()           # Print the exception
--- *** ---

I'm getting this error:

17:05:23:192/693:gerrit at gerrit:~/oefen/python/ncurses$ python test.py
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "test.py", line 18, in ?
    main(stdscr)                    # Enter the main loop
  File "test.py", line 7, in main
    stdscr.addstr(maxy-1, maxx-1, "s", curses.A_NORMAL)
error: [mv]waddstr() returned ERR

It seems that he thinks it falls of the screen, but if I make either x or
y smaller (not both!) it does work, so if I change line 7 to something like
follows, it works.

    stdscr.addstr(maxy-2, maxx-1, "s", curses.A_NORMAL)
    stdscr.addstr(maxy-1, maxx-2, "s", curses.A_NORMAL)

What am I doing wrong?

regards,
Gerrit.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:40:36 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:40:36 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim>

[Fran?ois Pinard, with a side-splitting <wink> robotussin-coff-cough
 tale]
> ...
> When I finally got the joke, I found it _so_ American-centric and _so_
> displaced, that it was not funny at all.  These people were imposing their
> non-sense on me, just for the narrow pleasure of laughing between
> themselves?

Well, yes -- much like the French Python pun you treated us to when you
first joined us <wink>.  Frankly, the world needs more of that -- and this
*is* a language named in honor of a British comedy troupe.

Which reminds me:  A zoo veterinarian developed a treatment to cure venereal
disease in large snakes. Why did he name it "a squared plus b squared equals
c squared"?

It was Python Gonorrhea Serum.

> I very vaguely remember that children do that at the start of adolescence.

at-our-age-we'll-be-doing-it-again-very-soon<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From nosleep at atl.mediaone.net  Fri Oct  1 22:17:35 1999
From: nosleep at atl.mediaone.net (Kristopher Johnson)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 02:17:35 GMT
Subject: Prizes for open-source Eiffel software
References: <7shbc4$3ka$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37F56B50.609D6F9E@atl.mediaone.net>

Hmm.  I'm new here, but could someone explain to me what this has
to do with Python?

(I know Eiffel is fairly cool, and I know Python is open source,
but...?)

- Kris



From boerdijk at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 10 08:50:09 1999
From: boerdijk at my-deja.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:50:09 GMT
Subject: Improved struct module
Message-ID: <7tq220$g1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi all,

I would like to make a case for replacing the current Python
struct module with an improved version of it. I think the
struct module contains very useful functionality, but the
interface functions (pack and unpack) are inconvenient
for a number of situations.

To fix the pack/unpack inconvenience, I have written an xstruct
module that extends the struct module with a new structdef
function to *define* packed binary data structures (similar to
C's struct keyword).

In short, this function works as follows:

1. You first create a structdef object that defines the layout
and the fields of a packed binary data structure.

>>> import xstruct
>>> Person = structdef(xstruct.big_endian, [
...   ("name", (xstruct.string, 12)),
...   ("age",  (xstruct.unsigned_short, 1))
... ])

2. Now you can create actual struct objects from this structdef
object and manipulate them as if they were regular Python class
objects.

>>> john = Person()
>>> john.name = "John Smith"
>>> john.age = 25
>>> john.age
25

3. To access the internal packed binary data buffer, you can
use the Python str() function or use the object's buffer
interface.

>>> str(s)
'John Smith\000\000\000\031'

>>> open("tmp", "w").write(john) # uses buffer interface
>>> open("tmp", "r").read()
'John Smith\000\000\000\031'

You can also (re-)create structure objects from binary buffers,
but that's explained in detail at:

http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html

>From this page, you can also download the source code and a
pre-built Windows DLL of the xstruct module so you can try
things out yourself. Please do and let me know  what you
think. If there is enough positive feedback, I would like
to see the xstruct module becoming part of the core Python
distribution, replacing the current struct module.

Cheers,

Robin
(mailto:boerdijk at my-deja.com)


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Wed Oct 20 14:09:48 1999
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 14:09:48 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <3dzoxd7vkj.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
> That it is.  Is that sufficient basis for buying a book?  I've been toying
> for two decades with writing a lengthy but edifying treatise revealing the
> most surprising floating-point numbers I have been privileged to know ...

This, unsurprisingly, reminds me of a quotation, though one dealing
with integers:

No, I wouldn't go as far as some of my fellow [mental] calculators and
indiscriminately welcome all numbers with open arms: not the horny-handed,
rough-and-tough bully 8 or the sinister 64 or the arrogant, smug,
self-satisfied 36. But I do admit to a very personal affection for the
ingenious, adventurous 26, the magic, versatile 7, the helpful 37, the
fatherly, reliable (if somewhat stodgy) 76...
    -- Hans Eberstark, from the introductory comment to Steven B. Smith's _The
       Great Mental Calculators_ (1983)

I've always wondered why he considered 37 helpful.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/

 



From dieter at handshake.de  Thu Oct 14 15:10:21 1999
From: dieter at handshake.de (Dieter Maurer)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 21:10:21 +0200
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
References: <37FCBD07.432A37B3@compaq.com> <1dzdbpt.1l2uj8zd79z9yN%w_keller@gmx.de> <38043F91.F3F36D5A@compaq.com> <006601bf1582$a22f3dc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <x7r9ixzrky.fsf@lindm.dm>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes on Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:55:38 +0200:
> afaik, Scriptics doesn't support Tk on Mac at
> this time.  (maybe the Tclers can verify this?)
A few day ago, I saw the announcement of Tcl/Tk 8.2.1 for the Mac
in "comp.lang.tcl".

It seems that some Tk features are extremely difficult to
implement on a Mac and therefore, I expect that not all problems
of earlier Tk versions are gone.

But the announcement shows that the Mac is not completely
abondoned.

- Dieter



From bill at hk.rfa.org  Wed Oct  6 07:32:31 1999
From: bill at hk.rfa.org (Bill Eldridge)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:32:31 +0800
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rocheste <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991005215226.A724@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <37FB334F.492B55DC@hk.rfa.org>

Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> def calc_leap_years(year):
>         if (year > 1900):
>                 return ((year - 1900) - 1)/4
>         else:
>                 return 0
> 
> Of course, you can reduce it to a single line if you make the
> assumption that the year will always be greater than 1900. And it
> probably isn't wonderful programming practice to return 0 if say
> year==1897 anyway (raise an exception?), but that is another issue.
> This should be a fair bit faster than looping through the years.

Researching this:
------------------------------
Years devisabl by 4 ARE leap years
Except years devisable by 100 are NOT leap years
Except years devisable by 400 which ARE leap years
Except years devisable by 4000 which are NOT leap years!
------------------------------
I thought there was a third rule in addition to %100 & %400 for
millenia.

def calc_leap_years(year):
        if (1900 < year < 2101):
                return (year - 1901)/4
	else if (2100 < year):
		return (year - 1901)/4 -(year-2001)/100 +
(date-2001)/400)-(date-2001)/4000
	else if year==1900:
                return 0
	else:
		return -1

Note that the most common cases come first in the if/else - move 1900 up
if that's
of interest.  Of course there were also seconds added to the clock
between 1900 and
now (and between 1970 and now), and these would have to be manually
added.

def leapyear(year):
	return ( (not (year % 4)) and (year % 100)) or ( (not (year % 400)) and
(year % 4000) ) )
        #temp = ((year % 4 == 0) and (year % 100 <>0)) or (year % 400 
== 0)
        #return temp



It's quite possible for speed that you would even make a dictionary for
1900-2101.

Then you have:

leapyears={1900:0,1901:0,1902:0,...2100:0,2101:1}
calcleapyears={1900:0,1901:0,1902:0...2100:49,2101:49}

def calc_leap_years(year):
	if calcleapyears.haskey(year):
		return leapyears[year]
	else if (2100 < year):
		return (year - 1901)/4 -(year-2001)/100 +
(date-2001)/400)-(date-2001)/4000
	else:
		return -1

def leapyear(year):
	if leapyears.haskey(year):
		return leapyears[year]
	else:
		return ( (not (year % 4)) and (year % 100)) or ( (not (year % 400))
and (year % 4000) ) )

or use a "try except" if that improves speed.  If you're sure you only
need years
1900-2101, you can skip the functions completely, and just use the
dictionaries in
your code instead of function calls.

------------------------------------------------------------------

# Move 1-time calculations out of functions
secs_per_day    = 86400.0	#24.0*60*60    # 86400
secs_per_year   = 31536000.0	#365.0 * secs_per_day
leapyear        = 1896          # (1880, 1884, 1888, 1892, 
1896, 1904, 1908)
secs_to_1970 = 2209161600.0	#  70.0*365*24*3600 + 19.0*24*3600	# 19, not
18, leap years

def timeserver_calculation():

	return long(time.time() + secs_to_1970)



--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at hk.rfa.org



From kevinslNOkeSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid  Mon Oct 11 17:57:28 1999
From: kevinslNOkeSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid (kevinsl)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:57:28 -0700
Subject: program to view raw http commands?
Message-ID: <1415c574.87f12267@usw-ex0101-005.remarq.com>

A few months ago I was using this excellent python script which acted
as an http proxy, but it would record all raw http commands and format
them into a nice html report.

I lost the name and url for it. Does anyone know what this script was
called and where to get it?

thanks much

Kevin


* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!




From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 10:35:02 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:35:02 -0400
Subject: Tkinter. Container Frame
In-Reply-To: <3819B780.7DB7B681@abo.fi>
References: <3819B780.7DB7B681@abo.fi>
Message-ID: <19991029103502.B106965628@vislab.epa.gov>

Sergio Palomo:
 |I have a frame that I would like to act as a container of several
 |Toplevel windows.
 |With the below code I get to embed a Toplevel window into the frame, but
 |it does not include the tipical border and the minimize, and maximize
 |window buttons.
 |
 |self.workarea=Frame(self, bd=2,  container=1)
 |self.workarea.pack(fill=BOTH,expand=YES)
 |
 |newwin=Toplevel(use=self.workarea.winfo_id())
 |
 |#contents of new window.....
 |
 |My question if is there any way to make the Toplevels "float" inside the
 |frame. Thank you!

Sounds like you want something like MDI windows from MS Windows. :-)

Check the comp.lang.tcl FAQ and archives for references to MDI.  

Realize that this probably won't port to X/UNIX.  Unlike MSWindows, X gives
you the flexibility to swap in whatever window manager you want.  So unless
there's some back-door communication with this window manager, a child X
client really doesn't know how to draw or implement the native window
manager's decorations.

You could try to do your own window management of top level windows to
approximate MDI, but there are limitations to what you can do (clipping one
with another, etc.).

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From dirkl at home.com  Fri Oct 15 11:38:20 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:38:20 -0700
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
Message-ID: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECGEKHFEAA.dirkl@home.com>

I've installed PythonWin and am trying to do some python scripting w/n ASP.
If you know the form field by name, something like "name =
str(Request("name"))" works great. How do you access Request fields if you
don't know their name -- say you wanted to write a generic dump script that
would dump all the field names and values? Seems like there would be a way
to coerce the COM Request into some type of python sequence. Anybody know
the "secret racoon handshake"?

Thanks
D


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From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 29 04:31:49 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:31:49 +0100
Subject: PythonWin Debugger
Message-ID: <000a01bf21e8$0b25d020$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

Why is it that I can run the PythonWin debugger under straight Python fine,
but if I run it in an embedded app, or from IDLE, I get:

    win32ui.GetMainFrame().HookCommand(HandleToolCommand, idPos)
win32ui: The frame does not exist

Is there any way around this?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From tony at lsl.co.uk  Tue Oct 19 04:53:17 1999
From: tony at lsl.co.uk (Tony J. Ibbs (Tibs))
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 09:53:17 +0100
Subject: Spread of mailman
Message-ID: <05a301bf1a0f$63f2c770$f0c809c0@lslp7o.lsl.co.uk>

I had a little shock this morning when I saw the traditional "change to
mailman" spread of messages in my inbox (you know, the "Welcome to ..."
where you're already a member of mailing list "...") - but not for a Python
related issue. Turns out the HPV (human powered vehicle) mailing lists are
converting to mailman - "market" penetration in action.

It's always neat to see connections between one's favourite things...

--
Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)      http://www.tibsnjoan.demon.co.uk/
Feet first with 5 wheels...
My views! Mine! Mine! (Unless Laser-Scan ask nicely to borrow them.)





From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Sun Oct 24 11:29:02 1999
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 17:29:02 +0200
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <005b01bf15e5$dfe341d0$0801a8c0@bobcat> <005c01bf15ee$1b131b60$042292cb@akha> <000901bf16d6$aa81a9e0$052292cb@akha> <26iO3.13814$D33.39970@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <y0jaep8ok01.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"the_wrights" <the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au> writes:

> 
> I'll put it up on starship when this week is over

Where is it?

<waiting expectantly>

> 
> cheers
> 
> chris wright

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 21:04:03 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 8 Oct 1999 01:04:03 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <37FDA132.61E1B9F9@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <7tjfu3$l8s$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> 
>> I don't know that the difference would be in the non-coding DNA, though.

> Seems plausible enough to me. Most of the basic building
> materials, metabolic processes, etc. are much the same from
> one species to another. It's the "control structures", however
> implemented, that are going to decide what shape the organism
> grows into. If the control structures turn out to reside in
> the non-transcripted DNA, it may well be true that most of the
> differences between species are in there.

I don't think it works like that. Genes (pieces of DNA) turn each other
on by being transcribed into proteins (who do the real work turning on
and off other genes). I think it's also possible for genes to be influenced
by RNA directly. These are control structures, along with the many complicated
enzym constructs you find in cells.

Morphogenesis, what shape a creature will grow into, happens through the same
process. It's still not completely understood, I think, but in some cells
genes are activated or turned off, making the cells behave differently, forming
a different tissue. This way structures grow.

They've identified genes in Drosophila (fruit fly) DNA that regular this
morphogenesis. By messing around with you can get flies that have legs in
the place of their eyes or other horrible things.

The trouble with junk DNA is that it doesn't seem to code for *any* active
RNA or protein in the cell. So it's unlikely junk DNA consists of
control structures.

Regards,

Martijn
- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Thu Oct 14 21:21:38 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 01:21:38 GMT
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
References: <007201bf1698$d42b97d0$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yUFyOKDyzVXw@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:06:59, "Mark Hammond" 
<mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:

> > 	1) It's "GPF's" (Aka Dr. Watson reports a error has occurred).
> 
> Damn!  The PyArg_ParseTuple format characters for this function need
> to be changed from "iiiiiiii" to "hhhhhhhh".

Sorry you *COMPLETELY* lost me there!

Can you elaborate a little bit more, and/or include a code example?

I was assuming you mean the equivalent of strpftime "%i" to
strpftime "%h", but there isn't a lowercase i available in there....

Integer to Hex????

I don't recall ever reading about a PyArg_ParseTuple routine, let 
alone
anything that I could pass to it....

But of course, I've missed things in the past, so.....

			- Benjamin
================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct  7 09:40:34 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 14:40:34 +0100
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
In-Reply-To: <199910071211.IAA10358@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <002f01bf10c9$88180650$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> In the embedding code, there is a call to setlocale(LC_ALL, "") before
>> Py_Initialise().

> What embedding code?  I thought you were using IDLE.  Are you saying
> that you are using IDLE from an embedding application?

Why not? It's useful for interactively testing inbuilt extension modules.
These are built into the code and initialised before calling any Python
scripts we run.

I would have like to embed PythonWin (the debgger is better, especially
in the latest release), but it doesn't want to work. Perhaps this is
because the embedding app isn't MFC. I'm not too sure about this one.


> (It is always necessary if any 3rd party C code is involved when
> reporting a Python problem; embedding counts as such :-)

I see. I thought, since the ability to do this was there, it would be
okay to use it. :-)


> If so, why do you call setlocale(LC_ALL, "")?

The rest of the code relies on it. (e.g. to set the decimal point
separator for internationalisation purposes.

> There may be no good solution if your embedding application needs to
> do that -- there are too many places in the Python runtime that expect
> the locale to be C.

So how come it's okay to set the locale in Python. Surely this just calls
the equivalent function in C.

Perhaps if I call setlocale(LC_ALL, "C") before I initialise Python, then
call Python's setlocale() with the original locale before I run any scripts.


> I suppose this could be fixed by not using any of those, but (a) it's
painful
> to write your own atof(), %e, %f, %g formatter in a platform independent
> manner with the best accuracy, (b) it seems such a waste of effort since
the
> C library has one, (c) finding and fixing all locale dependencies (there
are
> others!) in the Python source code is about as much fun as systematically
> searching for Y2K bugs in a program of similar size.

This almost implies that Python's version of setlocale() does something
completely different from the C version.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From danstar at execpc.com  Wed Oct 13 16:00:07 1999
From: danstar at execpc.com (Dan Star)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:00:07 -0500
Subject: JPython?
Message-ID: <3804e4c8$0$11278@news.execpc.com>

Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a just-in-time
compiler that translates python code to java byte-code so that the
python code can run in a WEB browser that supports java?  If so, I would
assume this places many restricitions on the Python language elements
you can use.  Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its
own language set?

--Dan



From jfarrell at mincom.com  Wed Oct 27 20:12:57 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:12:57 +1000
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com> <14358.6224.856497.573781@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> <3816AC57.28D9C8B@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <38179509.4746748D@mincom.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> "Barry A. Warsaw" wrote:
> >
> > Very neat:
> >
> > % jpython /tmp/platform.py
> > java1.2.1
> >
> > Probably sufficient (certainly appropriate) for the JPython platform,
> > since nothing else matters when you're running on Java right? :)
> 
> Well, there must be more infos lying around in the JRE :-)
> 
> Does the JRE provide some kind of uname interface which I could hook
> into a special platform.py function ? It would probably be interesting
> to have some information about JVM version and vendor.

I've attached an image of an inspection tool I happened to be running
which lists all Java system properties. You can get any value in the
right column by calling System.getProperty() with the string parameter
in the left column.

John
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From tim at tile.demon.co.uk  Wed Oct 13 01:53:37 1999
From: tim at tile.demon.co.uk (Tim Eccles)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:53:37 -0600
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de>
Message-ID: <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk>

Hello Dirk-Ulrich

How difficuly was it?  Is it just a matter of writing a correct MAKE
file, or do we have to manipulate the source code.  

The reason for the query is that we are thinking of embedding a Python
engine within a BCB program, so we do not really want to use VC at all.

--
Regards, 
Tim Eccles


Dirk-Ulrich Heise wrote:
> 
> simon_bacon at my-deja.com schrieb in Nachricht
> <7tqmtb$e1p$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>...
> >Has anyone compiled 1.5.2 with Borland compilers?  Preferably
> >with C++ Builder.
> 
> Yep.
> 
> --
> Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
> hei at adtranzsig.de
> dheise at debitel.net



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Fri Oct 22 09:49:07 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 14:49:07 +0100
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
References: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <m3hfjja4ks.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

rainer2207 at my-deja.com writes:

> I have a Python script which displays a form and has a hidden input. The
> relevant code part looks something like this:
> 
> print "<form method=\"post\" action=\"sendmsg.cgi\">"
> print "<textarea name=\"sndmsg\" rows=\"7\" cols=\"73\" nowrap>"
> print "</textarea>"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value="test">"
> print "<br>"
> print "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"Talk\">"
> print "</form>"
> 
> I was wondering how I could pass a variable using the hidden field. That
> is I'd like to do something like this:
> 
> test = "Hello"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"

I know nothing about CGI, but try:

print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=\"%s\">"%test

and then maybe go to www.python.org and read the tutorial there?

HTH,
Michael



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 11 10:01:45 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:01:45 +0100
Subject: how to monitor method calls
In-Reply-To: <7tsns3$pjj$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000901bf13f1$271e81a0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Is there a 'hook' into python to intercept all method calls?

See docs for sys.settrace, and/or read source for bdb.py in Lib directory
of distribution.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Oct 27 05:07:31 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:07:31 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001401bf2058$ff152550$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <3816C0D3.F5439844@lemburg.com>

Adrian Eyre wrote:
> 
> >>>> And Windows NT by the looks of it. All I get from the program is:
> >>>> "win32"
> 
> > The new upload (version 0.3.1) should fix this.
> 
> Yup. I now get:
> 
> Windows-NT-4.0
> 
> Any chance of this module going into the standard Python package.
> 
> BTW: You can add in detection for Minix as well. I should be able
> to test this.
> 
> The canonical way is to check for the presence of the file:
> 
> /usr/include/minix/config.h
> 
> But you might be able to get information from uname as well.

Could you send me the output of platform.py when run on Minix ?
Plus perhaps the result of calling platform.uname() and
platform.architecture(). Both can be found in the latest version
of platform.py (0.3.2):

	http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    65 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 14 19:06:59 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:06:59 +1000
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
In-Reply-To: <7u55gb$vkq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <007201bf1698$d42b97d0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

> 	1) It's "GPF's" (Aka Dr. Watson reports a error has occurred).

Damn!  The PyArg_ParseTuple format characters for this function need
to be changed from "iiiiiiii" to "hhhhhhhh".

Mark.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 02:58:05 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 08:58:05 +0200
Subject: recursive copy in a directory tree?
References: <7u39g2$ki5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <00ad01bf1611$77a4fe20$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

yinger <ayinger1 at my-deja.com> wrote:
>   I am looking for a python util that *recursively* copies files from a
> source directory tree to a target with wildcard syntax.
> 
>   In other words, something like
> 
>      recurcopy('source','target','*.html')
> 
> that would copy all html files in the source directory tree to the
> target directory tree (creating any missing directories in the target
> as it goes along).
> 
>   I have to use something that is relatively platform independent, so
> I'm stuck with using the os, shutil, and glob modules.

you forgot about "find":

# from http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm

import errno, find, os, shutil

SOURCE = "./samples"
TARGET = "/tmp"

PATTERN = "*.txt"

source = os.path.normpath(SOURCE)

for file in find.find(PATTERN, source):
    target = TARGET + os.path.normpath(file)[len(source):]
    try:
        print file, "..."
        shutil.copyfile(file, target)
    except IOError, (errcode, message):
        if errcode == errno.ENOENT:
            # create directory and try again
            os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(target))
            shutil.copyfile(file, target)
        else:
            raise

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Wed Oct 27 05:50:35 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 09:50:35 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7v6htb$g5s$120@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From stuartcw at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 24 08:57:23 1999
From: stuartcw at my-deja.com (Stuart Woodward)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 12:57:23 GMT
Subject: PalmPython
Message-ID: <7uuvnk$9ks$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Does anyone know where is PalmPython these days? I did a Google search
and all the links to it seemed broken as did the one from the Modules
page on python.org.

Thanks in Advance!

Stuart


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 14 05:01:35 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:01:35 +1300
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <3802F1F7.C6BD5BE2@compaq.com> <5lu2nw576n.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <38059BEF.20C08E68@compaq.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> The magic may easily be
> triggered at the wrong moment -- e.g. the debugger may be looking at
> your stack frame, and depending on whether it copies the object it
> pulls out of your stack frame into a local variable before looking at
> it or not, it will see either a function or the magic object.

You have a point there. This shows up a deficiency in my
implementation that I hadn't noticed before.

The *intention* was that the local_function -> closure
transformation should only occur in one context, that is,
when the local variable is referred to by name in the
function or a function defined within it.

To implement this properly, the compiler should keep track
in its symbol table of which local variables were created
by def statements, and emit a closure-creating opcode after 
each operation which loads one of them.

This would require some major reorganisations of the
compiler, since the symbol table would have to encompass
the lexically enclosing environments of the function being
compiled, not just its own locals.

If such a reorganisation were undertaken, it would have
other benefits as well. It would completely solve the
speed problem, since loading of non-functions would not
be affected at all. It would also enable access to
intermediate-level variables in constant time, since the
compiler would know at which lexical level each variable
resides.

Incidentally, there is an analogous problem with the
function->method transformation: it is impossible to have
a class variable which holds a function. If you assign
a function to a class attribute and read it back again,
you get either an unbound_method or a bound_method (depending
on whether you fetch it through the class or an instance).
This piece of "magic" frequently trips people up.

One final note: I never intended that the existence of
local_function objects should be hidden from users. If
implemented, the mechanism would have to be clearly
explained in the manual, just like tbe bound_method
mechanism is now.

One final final note: I agree that this is a hack which
should not be necessary. If you're ever trying to choose
between implementing garbage collection or lexical closures
first, please go for garbage collection!

> Note that this is also one of the reasons why I'm feeling uneasy with
> the stackless Python patch set ... it uses a magic object

I wouldn't reject the whole idea of a stackless interpreter
on the basis of that implementation, though. I suspect the
author used a special object because it got the job done with
minimal changes to the existing code. There are other ways to
signal to the interpreter what is to be done next.

> (another reason is that it can't be
> done in JPython so it can't be made a part of the language standard)

Has supporting JPython become an official guiding principle
behind mainstream Python development? That may turn out to be
somewhat restrictive in the long term.

Greg



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 22 12:30:40 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:30:40 -0400
Subject: distutils installation fails in WinNT; sys.exec_prefix empty
In-Reply-To: <7uq176$3sr$1@eve.enteract.com>
Message-ID: <1271513408-3912969@hypernet.com>

Fred Yankowski wrote:

> I just downloaded Distutils-0.1.tar.gz (which might be better
> named Distutils-0.1.tgz to accommodate WinZip), expanded it, and
> tried installing it by running 'python -v setup.py install'.  It
> ran OK for a while, then took an exception in _init_nt() in
> sysconfig.py, apparently because sys.exec_prefix (and sys.prefix,
> for that matter) are both set to '' on my system.

Just a data point: my NT 4 SP 4 yields:
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] 
on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, 
Amsterdam
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'D:\\Programs\\Python'
>>> sys.exec_prefix
'D:\\Programs\\Python'
>>>

That's from a binary install.

- Gordon



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 15 06:16:47 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:16:47 +0200
Subject: Sort List
References: <7u5v55$ivo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <3806FF0F.7F15DB37@lemburg.com>

sorot at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> I'm the newbie of Python. I wonder that is there any function for
> sorting list alphabetically? And is there any function to get the date
> and time of OS?

a. list = [1,3,4]
   list.sort()

b. import time
   print time.localtime(time.time())

See the Python docs for more details.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    77 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From xtian_the_great at hotmail.com  Sun Oct 31 20:04:24 1999
From: xtian_the_great at hotmail.com (Xtian Muirhead)
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 14:04:24 +1300
Subject: Changing cursors...
References: <1270748767-19272684@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <7vip0u$a76bh$1@titan.xtra.co.nz>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote in message
news:1270748767-19272684 at hypernet.com...
> Xtian Muirhead writes:
> >
> > I've been having a play with Tkinter, and I've ported across a
> > program that I wrote while learning VB, but I've had one problem.
> > There's one step that has a chunk of processing which takes a few
> > seconds to complete. In the old program, I changed the cursor to
> > an hourglass at the start, and reset when the program finished.
> > Trying to do the same in the new version doesn't seem to work:
>
> [snip]
>
> No Tk expert, but as I recall, this is a general problem with Tk.
> Even murkier: I think Tk schedules the cursor-change which
> means, of course, that it doesn't happen until too late. (Java's
> AWT had/has? the same problem but even worse - it would
> get confused and leave the cursor in the wrong state).
>
> The work-around that I saw wasn't, to my mind, worth the
> effort, and I decided to be satisfied with the button remaining
> depressed. But perhaps the eff-bot has a more elegant
> solution.
>

Hmmm. I tried changing the call to update_idletasks() to update()
(having read eff-bot's warning not to use it in callback events for
fear of producing race conditions), and it works. Maybe it's only OK
because I've disabled the button which invokes the callback, so we
don't get any contention? (Ooh, it looks like I can double click the
button before it disables. Probably that could do something nasty in
a more interesting application.) So I guess it's not the best plan,
but it'll do for this one.

Anyway, thanks for the answer, even if it was a "Yup, that's a problem
alright".

(Actually, that's a relatively comforting response. I'd hate
to be caught asking a "Read the documentation, second page, third
sentence"-response-getting question. And there's gotta be a better
way to have been putting that. Darn.)

Have a day!
Xtian

xtian at regurgitator.zzn.com

"I'd rather be rich than stupid."







From da at ski.org  Tue Oct 26 17:28:47 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:28:47 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Subject: [JPython] dir and java classes
In-Reply-To: <14358.5566.792900.94308@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910261419180.254-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

BAW> Okay, so what can you do to get the information you want?
BAW> Well, it isn't really that difficult to write your own dir()
BAW> function that, given an instance traversed into the instance's
BAW> class to find method and attribute names.  For completeness you
BAW> probably want to cruise the entire class hierarchy (but maybe
BAW> not).

BAW> So the issue is, why doesn't dir() do this by default?  

I think that it's a very real question.  The purpose of dir() is fairly
ill-defined.  It makes sense for modules and builtin objects in CPython,
but it's quite inconsistent as soon as classes and instances are brought
in.  It's currenty quite hard to explain to novices, mostly because

 1) they need it the most, especially when learning about the language
    in interactive mode, and

 2) understanding what dir() does currently requires a fairly deep
    understanding of the various kinds of objects, certainly deeper than
    should be required (IMHO).

If it were up to me, dir() would return all the things that I can do a
getattr with, with the exclusion of all the names which start with an
underscore.  That's a rule which I can explain in two minutes and
leverages on the other distinction between 'first class' and 'not first
class' attributes in Python (see 'from ... import *', pseudo-private
variables, reserved method names, etc.).

Making a new version of dir() for my own purposes does not work when I'm
teaching "Python", not "David's Python".

--david






From parkw at better.net  Sun Oct 24 15:30:04 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 15:30:04 -0400
Subject: Python on Minix
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023175216.1863B-100000@general4.asu.edu>
References: <19991023200038.A12447@better.net> <Pine.GSO.3.96.991023175216.1863B-100000@general4.asu.edu>
Message-ID: <19991024153004.A13962@better.net>

On Sat, Oct 23, 1999 at 05:57:16PM -0700, sri at asu.edu wrote:
> i just tried 'CC=cc AR=... ./configure' and i still
> get error messages such as 'here file: not found' and
> 'grep: bad regular expression' and 'regex: nexted +?-
> regular expression'. so maybe the grep and sed on
> minix2.0.0 are at fault.
> the compelling reasons is that i have only minix installed on
> my laptop, and even minix makes it kinda slow!
> 
> sriram thaiyar
> 
> 
> > 
> > 1.  Environment variables must come before command:
> > 	CC=cc AR=... ./configure
> >     per instruction.
> > 
> > 2.  Is there a compelling reason for running Minix?  Why not Linux?

Go to a bookstore, and get Linux CD.  There are many distributions out
there --- Slackware, Debian, Redhat, Suse, Caldera, and others.  I run
Slackware-4.0, and Python-1.52 compiles cleanly out of the box with
    ./configure
    make
    make install

Since you already run Minix, moving upto Linux would be no problem.  I
suspect that problems you are encountering come from old or "abridged"
version of various utilities.  At least, that what I remember when I was
playing with Minix.

	Yours truly,
	William Park



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:24:01 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:24:01 -0400
Subject: compile.py does not work on WinNT system
In-Reply-To: <37F9FD7E.4CB7E1E9@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <000a01bf0fba$ff75b0e0$cf2d153f@tim>

[Berthold Hoellmann]
> I try to port a little extension module I've written to WinNT. I thought
> it would be a good idea to use compile.py from
> http://starship.python.net:9673/crew/da/Code/compile/, but all I get
> running "python compile.py" is:
> ...
>   File "compile.py", line 755, in __init__
>     print getattr(self, 'noexport', None)
> TypeError: getattr requires exactly 2 arguments; 3 given
>
> What's going wrong here?

Which version of Python are you running?  3-argument getattr is new in
1.5.2.

upgrade-or-die<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From daniels at mindspring.com  Sat Oct  2 15:15:16 1999
From: daniels at mindspring.com (Alan Daniels)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 19:15:16 GMT
Subject: A Python color syntax file for VIM
Message-ID: <slrn7vcmuh.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain>

An invitation to everybody:

My favorite text editor is VIM (the One True Editor), and I've always
noticed that the default syntax highlighting for Python is sort of
Spartan, in that it colors strings and keywords, and thats about it.
So, I've cooked up a new one with a few more features:

- Highlights the builtin Exceptions and functions.
- Highlights the prefab class methods(__init__, __del__, etc).
- Shows 'self' as a keyword, since so many people use it that way.
- Shows the escapes in non-raw strings ("\142", "\r", "\n", etc).
- Shows the various number types (ints, floats, exp).
- Flags constructs that Perl or C programmers might use when
  forgetting they're in Python, such as ++.

This is just a test of better syntax highlighting, and I haven't yet
talked to the existing maintainer, so I wanted to invite fellow
VIM/Python users to try it out and suggest any improvements or
additons. For example, I'm thinking of making it version-aware so that
'buffer' is a built-in function in Python 1.52, but not 1.51.

Its available at:
	www.mindspring.com/~daniels/vim/python.vim

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

-- 
=======================
Alan Daniels
daniels at mindspring.com
daniels at cc.gatech.edu



From ENONMELOSPAMMATEguidi at sssup.it  Wed Oct 20 05:49:52 1999
From: ENONMELOSPAMMATEguidi at sssup.it (Marco Guidi)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 11:49:52 +0200
Subject: Newbie need help
Message-ID: <380D9040.745B21F8@sssup.it>

I've a very silly problem, but I'm not able to solve it.

I have a directory called Zope/lib/python/App and
a directory called Zope/lib/python/DocumentTemplate.

In the former there's a Common.py file, among the others.
In the latter there's a DocumentTemplate.py file.

I enter the Zope/lib/python directory and run python.
I do the following:

[www at link python]$ python
Python 1.5.1 (#1, Sep  3 1998, 22:51:17)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import DocumentTemplate
>>> import Common
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named Common
>>> dir (DocumentTemplate)
['DT_HTML', 'DT_Return', 'DT_String', 'DT_Util', 'DT_Var',
'DocumentTemplate', 'ExtensionClass', 'File', 'HTML', 'HTMLDefault',
'HTMLFile', 'String', 'VSEval', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__',
'__name__', '__path__', '__version__', 'html_quote',
'pDocumentTemplate',
'ts_regex']
>>>

Why did I get the error

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named Common ?

and Why could I import DocumentTemplate correctly ?

Which is the correct way for importing a file residing in
some directory different from the one from wich I run python
(and different from Extensions or other predefined directories) ?

In the Python tutorial dowloaded from www.python.org I found no
infos about this.

Thank you in advance.

Marco Guidi.




From thomas at bibsyst.no  Sat Oct 16 13:03:22 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 19:03:22 +0200
Subject: Shelve-problems
Message-ID: <3808AFDA.AFC49560@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

I try to do something like :

>>>import shelve
>>>db = shelve.open('2')
>>> db['1'] = 'test'

And quit python, restart it and this happens when I try to read the data
back in :

>>> import shelve
>>> db = shelve.open('2')
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 152, in open
    return DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 142, in __init__
    Shelf.__init__(self, anydbm.open(filename, flag))
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/anydbm.py", line 83, in open
    raise error, "db type could not be determined"
anydbm.error: db type could not be determined
>>> 

Why?!

I am using Linux Suse 6.2. Could I ( my Linux distro.) be missing
something??

Thomas Weholt



From muniff at yahoo.com  Thu Oct 14 10:43:01 1999
From: muniff at yahoo.com (Ahmad Munif)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:43:01 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
Message-ID: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>

i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table widget,notebook 
widget, etc).
PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.

i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build 
my database application ?



From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 15 13:59:29 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:59:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Test for plain files
In-Reply-To: <38067a0c.17243317@news.eunet.no>
References: <38067a0c.17243317@news.eunet.no>
Message-ID: <14343.27521.658688.221962@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Thomas Weholt writes:
 > I`ve allready looked into os.stat for info, but is there sort of a
 > os.stat.isdir() function available? 

Thomas,
  Try os.path.isdir().
  You can look in the general index for the name you'd expect the
function to have, and it will link to the right place in the
documentation.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 13 12:12:36 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:12:36 GMT
Subject: Off-topic Internet Question
References: <38029546.C0F6FABF@altavista.net>
Message-ID: <7u2b16$thj$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Greetings Geraldo,

Yes, it is certainly possible.

My program Pagecast does this exact thing.  Essentially, it fills out a
web form and hits the send button, and analyzes the results.

You can look at it as an example if you like.  Go to
http://askpreston.com/projects/pagecast/ to download it.  Depending on
which version you get, you'll want to look at the file submitengine.py
or servers/generic.py (the latter in the case of the 2.0 alpha
versions.)

The 2.0 alpha versions use the standard python httplib library and
handles proxies just fine.  You may find it an instructive example.
FYI it's licensed under the GPL.

yours,

---Preston

In article <38029546.C0F6FABF at altavista.net>,
  Geraldo Lopes <precisa at altavista.net> wrote:
> Is it possible a Python script fill a internet page with arbitrary
> values, simulate the send button and get the results ?
>
> Is it possible with Python ? What Do I need to know to make this ?
--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 22 13:40:50 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:40:50 -0400
Subject: Tkinter:  Doing <Expose> yourself
Message-ID: <19991022134050.A64954016@vislab.epa.gov>

     A simple question I haven't found the answer to yet.  How can I tell
Tk to stop refreshing a widget's window; I want to take care of that.
   
     In particular, I have another X client (IBM Data Explorer) displaying
in a Tk widget's window.  Works fine, but I need to suppress the refresh
routine for the Tk widget so it doesn't toast the window contents that the
client just drew.  How?

     Or do I need to create my own X window (unbeknownst to Tk)?

Thanks,

Randall


-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 28 05:23:41 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:23:41 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com> <14358.6224.856497.573781@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> <3816AC57.28D9C8B@lemburg.com> <38179509.4746748D@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <3818161D.6B946CEE@lemburg.com>

John Farrell wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> > "Barry A. Warsaw" wrote:
> > >
> > > Very neat:
> > >
> > > % jpython /tmp/platform.py
> > > java1.2.1
> > >
> > > Probably sufficient (certainly appropriate) for the JPython platform,
> > > since nothing else matters when you're running on Java right? :)
> >
> > Well, there must be more infos lying around in the JRE :-)
> >
> > Does the JRE provide some kind of uname interface which I could hook
> > into a special platform.py function ? It would probably be interesting
> > to have some information about JVM version and vendor.
> 
> I've attached an image of an inspection tool I happened to be running
> which lists all Java system properties. You can get any value in the
> right column by calling System.getProperty() with the string parameter
> in the left column.
> 
> John
> 
>  [Image]

Do I have to import anything special to get the System symbol into
the current namespace or is System a builtin in JPython ? E.g.
would

def java_vendor():
   return System.getProperty('java.vendor')

work out of the box on JPython ? (Don't have a working jpython
installation here at the moment to test this myself.)

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    64 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From mtifvk at rec.uk  Fri Oct  8 11:59:14 1999
From: mtifvk at rec.uk (mtifvk at rec.uk)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 17:59:14 +0200 
Subject: Important issue !  710   [1/2]
Message-ID: <04B596965534D31196710000F81EA08901E7D9B9@news.tesoro.it>



If you feel, that you are absolutely happy, totally satisfied with your accomplishments and your energy 
level is on the top, please, disregard this mail......

....Otherwise, you may want to spend a few minutes reading the attached letter and find something 
that could be very helpful to you !


lqfrnmteczqejpstjldzi




From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 28 19:25:54 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:25:54 +1000
Subject: class name lookup
In-Reply-To: <3818D679.A1CAC933@c2i.net>
Message-ID: <002801bf219b$c975a0c0$0501a8c0@bobcat>

> I'm wondering if there is any better way to look up a class 
> name at run
> time than what I've come up with this far. I wan't to retrieve the
> instance class name from within base class.

Sure is:

>     print 'class name = ', str(self)   # or repr(self)
Change this to"
      print 'class name = ', self.__class__.__name__

Mark.




From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Wed Oct 27 19:00:00 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 12:00:00 +1300
Subject: from (some module) import *
References: <38172D03.2CF4CAE5@cfdrc.com>
Message-ID: <c75ogdkif4f.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Ed <elb at cfdrc.com> writes:

> I'm new to Python, I hope I'm not trying to do the wrong thing here, but
> pls correct me if I am:
> 
> I want to prompt for a module name, then import it.  How do I make the
> module name in the "from" or "import" operators a variable?  I was
> trying
> 
> print "enter the file name"
> filename = raw_input()
> from filename import *
> 
> This "module" I'm hoping to import contains only a list, Data = [...],
> and I have lots of such modules to process - each with different values
> in the Data list - and it changes all the time.  I thought I could
> change my script to prompt for the file/module name rather than edit the
> script each time I wanted to process a different file/module.

This function will do what you want:


def importhack(name):
    mod = __import__(name)
    g = globals()
    for var in dir(mod):
        if var[0] != '_':
            g[var] = getattr(mod, var)


Whether or not you actually want to do this is another question.  I
would guess that it is probably a bad idea, but could be useful
anyway.

--
Tim Evans




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Oct 19 10:34:55 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:34:55 -0400
Subject: WIN32 installer and PMW?
In-Reply-To: <380C7863.77E44F9B@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <1271779553-20486979@hypernet.com>

Berthold Hoellmann writes:
> 
> Is there a way to make WIN32 installer work with PMW?
> 
> How can I resilve the PMW dependencies during installer building?

Fortunately, PMW comes with it's own "freeze" like utility that 
locates the proper version of PMW, and squeezes it all into 
one script. See bundlepmw.py in your PMW's bin directory.

and-thus-GregM's-life-is-spared-<wink>-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl  Mon Oct 18 13:00:48 1999
From: rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl (Rene)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 19:00:48 +0200
Subject: mime email creation with attachment
Message-ID: <7ufjr0$bpt$1@hercules.tno.nl>

Dear all,

I try to automatically create an email message containing an attachment.
Untill now I created the following code, but the format it sends can't be
read by outlook 98 (it doesn't do uudecode, while it should be able to do
that).
Is there something wrong with my code (I am just a newbie) or is it
something with outlook?

Thanks in advance,
Rene

My code:
import uu, base64
import sys
import StringIO
import MimeWriter
from smtplib import SMTP

# Mails the report file to the user in MIME format
# Based upon code by GVR
def mailFileToUser(_userName, _fileName):
       outputfp = StringIO.StringIO()
       w = MimeWriter.MimeWriter(outputfp)
       w.addheader("subject", "Strip studie rapport")
       w.flushheaders()
       w.startmultipartbody("mixed")
       subwriter = w.nextpart()
       f = subwriter.startbody('application/octet-stream;name="Strip.xls"')

       subwriter.addheader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "uuencode")
       subwriter.addheader("Content-Disposition",
'attachment;filename="Strip.xls"')
       subwriter.flushheaders()
       uu.encode(open('./test.xls', 'r'),f)
       w.lastpart()
       s = SMTP("a00677.pg.tno.nl")
       s.sendmail("rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl",
["rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl"],outputfp.getvalue())
       s.close()
       print outputfp.getvalue()
if __name__=='__main__':
       mailFileToUser('rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl', 'TestFile.out')






From sparlin at openpro.org  Sun Oct 10 01:20:36 1999
From: sparlin at openpro.org (sparlin at openpro.org)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 05:20:36 GMT
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <7tp7mu$g19$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

> #!/usr/bin/python
>
> file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
> for line in file.readlines(): # read file
>     s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
>     print s #print string
> file.close()
>

Never mind, I found my answer...

#!/usr/bin/perl

file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
print file.read()
file.close()


-Sonny


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From ernesto at toyster.com  Thu Oct 21 13:47:29 1999
From: ernesto at toyster.com (Ernesto =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9?= Antunes de Oliveira)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:47:29 -0200
Subject: (no subject)
Message-ID: <380F51B1.F2B710F4@toyster.com>

 



From brundage at aimnet.com  Sat Oct  2 15:29:39 1999
From: brundage at aimnet.com (Marty Brundage)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 12:29:39 -0700
Subject: (newbie) Array of dictionaries
References: <krH1N9kfUJRE66saKRbldgciktYP@4ax.com> <87k8p686mk.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>
Message-ID: <1ln2N3f+WAJBaGTZAc76Jo71bgzt@4ax.com>

Yes, and it works for me.  I didn't think it would be this simple!  (I
was looking for an explicit declaration, and got hung up on that
issue.)

Some replies have pointed out an explicit declaration syntax of

a=[{},{},...]

Which is only good for small fixed length arrays of dictionaries.  It
seems odd that the general case does not require an explicit
delaration.

Thanks to all who replied.


Marty


Janko Hauser <hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de> wrote:

>Perhaps I do not understand right, or you have a syntax problem in
>your tests.
>
>>>> a=[]
>>>> a.append({'key1':'hello','key2':' world'})
>>>> a.append({'key1':'another ','key2':'world'})
>>>> a[0]['key1']
>'hello'
>>>> a[1]['key1']
>'another '
>>>> 
>
>So this looks equivilant to 'dict[n][<key>]', but is this what you
>want?
>
>HTH
>
>__Janko




From quinn at seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Oct 18 16:54:55 1999
From: quinn at seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 20:54:55 GMT
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
References: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim> <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk> <19991018154752.A16714@testserv.mathi.uni-heidelberg.de>
Message-ID: <slrn80n2a1.5cr.quinn@seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:47:52 +0200, flight at mathi.uni-heidelberg.de
<flight at mathi.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:
>This is a thing I noticed some time ago and was about to enter into the
>Python Bug Database. It's been recorded in the Debian Bug Tracking system
>since some time:
>
>- Debian Bug#24605: python-base: signal handling problems
>  (http://www.debian.org/Bugs/db/24/24605.html)
>- Debian Bug#45929: python: ^C acts as ^D instead of raising a
>  KeyboardInterrupt exception while working within the interactive interpreter.
>  (http://www.debian.org/Bugs/db/45/45929.html)
>
>I'll add a few more data points here for different Linux flavors, all of
>them running on i386 machines:
>
>(A) Debian GNU/Linux 2.1: python 1.5.1-7, libreadlineg2 2.1-12,
>          libc6 2.0.7.19981211
>(B) Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 like above, but running python 1.5.2-5slink-1.
>(C) Debian potato: python 1.5.2-6, libreadlineg2 2.1-13.6,
>          libc6 2.1.2-5
>(D) SuSE Linux 6.1: python-1.5.1-44, libc-99.4.4-0, no readline module
>          (Like Debian 2.1, SuSE 6.1 is running libc6 2.0.7)
>(E) SuSE Linux 6.1: like above, but running Debian's python 1.5.2-6 package.

Here's a data point for Irix6:
If you hit ^C at the >>> prompt with readline loaded (python 1.5), python
stops responding.  Further ^Cs do nothing, in fact the only way I've found
to get out is to kill from another shell or hit ^z kill %.



From stephen.allison at cenes.co.uk  Fri Oct  8 06:18:52 1999
From: stephen.allison at cenes.co.uk (stephen.allison at cenes.co.uk)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 10:18:52 GMT
Subject: Beginner asks question about Python on Linux
Message-ID: <7tkge6$asd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello all,

I have a, probably fairly trivial, question about using Python on Linux
(and probably Unix too).  I'm quite new to both, so apologies if it's a
really stupid question.

I'm writing some scripts to do some general administation tasks, and
need to get the output of a shell command into Python easily.  For
example I have a bit of code like this:

os.system("ps aux|grep someProcess > pids.temp")

I then proceed to open the pids.temp file, read the lines and then go
on to do stuff with the processes (readline, splitfields, look through
the list for the PIDs, execute further system commands (usually
'kill')), and then delete the pids.temp file.  What I want to know is
if there is a way of getting the output of the grep straight into
Python, so I won't have to use a temporary file.  I have since learned
about killing all processes of a given name, so it's a bit academic,
but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it's possible to do
this, using either Python cleverness or some shell commands I'm not
aware of.

Thanks for any help,

Steve


--
Steve Allison
Doesn't read deja news mail


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com  Thu Oct 21 14:49:28 1999
From: jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com (John W. Stevens)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:49:28 -0600
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <380F6038.23FBBC@basho.fc.hp.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> Which message would that be?  I have no objection to richer loop constructs,
> so that's not *my* message <wink>.  As the resident Hoary Corporate
> Apologist, my only message is that It's All In The Archives, and the chance
> of anything changing here in Python1 is zero.  The only thing that ever got
> close to having a fighting chance (largely thanks to introducing no new
> keywords) was the "and while" statement; and that committed hypergeneralized
> suicide when it got expanded to the truly eccentric "and if" stmt.  This is
> why Guido so rarely has to squash a suggestion <0.5 wink>.

It does seem, however, as if the whole thing could be resolved by doing:

1) Introduce the loop keyword.
2) Put an (optional) condition on break (and continue as well, if you
wished).

So you could write:

loop:
    break not <condition>
    <statments>

Would be similar to a while.

loop:
    <statements>
    break <condition>

Would be your do while, and:

loop:
    <statements>
    break <condition>
    <statements>

Would be something we've all done, but up to now, never had a really
good
way of expressing in most languages.

If the concept of two kinds of break: optional and mandatory is a
sticking
point, I suppose something like breakon, or breakif could be added, but
for the life of me, I can't see why an optional condition on break would
be a problem.

'Course, you'd have to get used to writing your conditions so that they
were true for exiting on break, but that wouldn't be to hard, would it?

I-am-going-to-scream-if-I-see-one-more-hyphen'ly yours,

John S.
============

If I spoke for HP --- there probably wouldn't BE an HP!

John Stevens
john_stevens at fc.hp.com



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Sat Oct 23 14:10:29 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:10:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
In-Reply-To: <7ur95o$bk8$1@news.wave.co.nz>
References: <7ur95o$bk8$1@news.wave.co.nz>
Message-ID: <14353.64021.355821.69433@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

Python does not have nested scopes.  Each function looks in two
environments for name bindings -- its locals and its globals.  The
fact that the funcion in question is nested inside another function is
ignored in Python.  This implies a requirement that all recursive
functions be defined at the top level.  (In most Python code, all
functions are defined at the top level.)

And before you ask :-) -- You could spend the rest of the weekend
reading old threads about whether this should be changed.  If you're
interested check out DejaNews or the archives at Python.org.

Jeremy




From jeffrey at digicool.com  Thu Oct 14 17:13:38 1999
From: jeffrey at digicool.com (Jeffrey P Shell)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:13:38 -0400
Subject: Looping redux. was: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <slrn80ab5q.27c.thantos@brimstone.mecha> <38054ECC.C0505DA6@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <7u5gm6$ml7$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>

> Therefore, I propose the following:
>
> thefuture: if version == python2 goto thefuture

Thanks to Futurama and a childhood spent in Commodore 64 BASIC, whenever I
think of Goto, I'll kindly remember this plaque in a robot church in
Futurama:

10 SIN
20 GOTO HELL

:)

Funniest tootin' thing my geek child side of me ever did see.

Thank gods that child grew up to be bitter and distrustful of technology





From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct  4 12:27:23 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (prestonlanders at my-deja.com)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 16:27:23 GMT
Subject: newbie question int to string conversion
References: <m3emfegwg3.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <7takgp$7q1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Anders,

This might be what you want.  you can change the line new_item = None
to change the value for exceptional items.  and/or you can change the
if: line to raise an exception for a bad value, your choice.  My way is
more efficient but puts off dealing with exceptional items until
later.

hope this helps.

yours,

---Preston


import re

mylist = ["1", "2", "3f", "foo", "4"]

def string_list_to_int_list(string_list):
    return_list = []
    for item in string_list:
        new_item = None  # default value for invalid items
        if not re.search("\D", item):
            new_item = int(item)
        return_list.append(new_item)
    return return_list

print "Original list was %s" % repr(mylist)
print "Converted list is %s" % repr(string_list_to_int_list(mylist))



In article <m3emfegwg3.fsf at localhost.localdomain>,
  Anders olme <olme at ebox.tninet.se> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I'm tryinig to convert a list of strings to integer.
> The problem is that not all elements are numbers some of them
contains letters
> Is there any easy way to determine is a strings contains illegal
charaters?
> Now I only get exceptions and I think a exceptionshandler is a bit
overkill
> for my needs.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From sragsdale at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 21:06:13 1999
From: sragsdale at my-deja.com (sragsdale at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 01:06:13 GMT
Subject: Tkinter: Scrollable buttons
Message-ID: <7te79t$rja$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I've got a big panel full of buttons and such, and I need to add a
scroll bar so that I can move up and down the list.  The following code
will construct something that _looks_ good, but the scrollbar won't
actually do anything.  Any idea what's wrong?

#######################################################
#!/usr/local/bin/python

from Tkinter import *

class App(Frame):
    def __init__(self,parent):
        Frame.__init__(self,parent)
        self.pack(expand=YES,fill=BOTH)

        items = Canvas(self)
        items.pack(anchor=N, expand=YES, fill=BOTH)

        scroll = Scrollbar(items)
        scroll.config(command=items.yview, relief=SUNKEN)
        scroll.pack(side=RIGHT, fill=Y)

        items.config(yscrollcommand=scroll.set, relief=SUNKEN)

        for i in range(1,100):
            b = Button(items,text=str(i))
            b.pack()

myapp = App(None)
myapp.mainloop()


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From thomas at xs4all.nl  Mon Oct  4 09:34:17 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 15:34:17 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
In-Reply-To: <19991004145855.A29393@optiplex.palga.uucp>
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl> <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl> <19991004145855.A29393@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <19991004153416.B28556@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 02:58:55PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:

> > I can host a site and a mailing list ( + other assorted things) -- it would
> > sit nicely next to the Amsterdam Perl Mongers site ;) (www.amsterdam.pm.org)
> > I'd just need a hostname/domain and a name for the list... anyone have
> > something creative in mind ? :)

> What kind of system is that?

The webserver'd be some dual-p2/p3 running BSDI 4.0.1. the mailinglist would
be run by our (XS4ALL) mailinglist-servers, currently one machine but
planned to grow behind the scenes. The performance wouldn't be a problem, in
any case.

> We might can also host it at nl.linux.org, if my system administrator
> agrees. The address would be python.nl.linux.org or
> nlpug.nl.linux.org or something. The server runs Linux + Apache + Zmailer (MTA)
> + Majordomo + MySQL + python 1.5.2...

We dont run any user-accessable servers under linux (uid problem) so if
anyone prefers linux it'll have to be nl.linux.org.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De  Thu Oct 21 10:26:50 1999
From: Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De (Andreas Rozek)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:26:50 +0200
Subject: Q: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr
Message-ID: <380F22AA.5EF2D410@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>

Hello!

This might be a silly question - but I could not find an answer in the
Python FaQ - for that reason it might be worth asking:

is there any possibility to launch an external program (without repla-
cing the current process - i.e., no os.exec* call alone) and catch the
stdin, stderr and stdout IO streams (the latter also renders spawn and
fork together with exec* unusable)?

A platform-independent solution  would be preferrable - however,  it's
more important for me to get it for Windows 98!

Thanks in advance for your effort!

-- 

Andreas Rozek
Rechenzentrum Universitaet Stuttgart       ******   **   **   *****
Kommunikationssysteme/BelWue-Entwicklung   **   **  **   **  **
Allmandring 3a                             **   **  **   **  **
D-70550 Stuttgart                          ******   **   **   *****
                                           ***      **   **       **
Telefon: ++49 (711) 685-4514               ** **    **   **       **
Telefax: ++49 (711) 678-8363               **   **   *****   ****** 
E-Mail:  Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De



From no at spam.net  Sun Oct 24 01:36:54 1999
From: no at spam.net (Tom Vrankar)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 05:36:54 GMT
Subject: [Tkinter] Drag & drop
References: <199910201305.OAA19676@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <WVwQ3.75$iL.19465@news.goodnet.com>

Enjoy.

							twv@


#!/usr/local/bin/python

import sys, os, string, time
import Tkinter
tk =Tkinter

# A Python example of drag and drop functionality within a single Tk widget.
# The trick is in the bindings and event handler functions.
# Tom Vrankar twv at ici.net

# empirical events between dropee and target, as determined from Tk 8.0
# down.
# leave.
# up, leave, enter.

class CanvasDnD (tk.Frame):
  def __init__ (self, master):
    self.master =master
    self.loc =self.dragged =0
    tk.Frame.__init__ (self, master)
    canvas =tk.Canvas (self, width =256, height =256,
      relief =tk.RIDGE, background ="white", borderwidth =1)
    self.defaultcolor =canvas.itemcget (canvas.create_text (30, 25,
      font =("Helvetica", 14), text ="Item 1", tags ="DnD"), "fill")
    canvas.create_text (75, 75,
      font =("Helvetica", 14), text ="Item 2", tags ="DnD")
    canvas.create_text (125, 125,
      font =("Helvetica", 14), text ="Item 3", tags ="DnD")
    canvas.create_text (175, 175,
      font =("Helvetica", 14), text ="Item 4", tags ="DnD")
    canvas.create_text (225, 225,
      font =("Helvetica", 14), text ="Item 5", tags ="DnD")
    canvas.pack (expand =1, fill =tk.BOTH)
    canvas.tag_bind ("DnD", "<ButtonPress-1>", self.down)
    canvas.tag_bind ("DnD", "<ButtonRelease-1>", self.chkup)
    canvas.tag_bind ("DnD", "<Enter>", self.enter)
    canvas.tag_bind ("DnD", "<Leave>", self.leave)

  def down (self, event):
    print "Click on %s" %event.widget.itemcget (tk.CURRENT, "text")
    self.loc =1
    self.dragged =0
    event.widget.bind ("<Motion>", self.motion)

  def motion (self, event):
    root.config (cursor ="exchange")
    event.widget.itemconfigure (tk.CURRENT, fill ="blue")
    event.widget.unbind ("<Motion>")
  
  def leave (self, event):
    self.loc =0

  def enter (self, event):
    self.loc =1
    if self.dragged ==event.time:
      self.up (event)

  def chkup (self, event):
    root.config (cursor ="")
    self.target =event.widget.find_withtag (tk.CURRENT)
    event.widget.itemconfigure (tk.CURRENT, fill =self.defaultcolor)
    if self.loc: # is button released in same widget as pressed?
      self.up (event)
    else:
      self.dragged =event.time

  def up (self, event):
    event.widget.unbind ("<Motion>")
    if (self.target ==event.widget.find_withtag (tk.CURRENT)):
      print "Select %s" %event.widget.itemcget (tk.CURRENT, "text")
    else:
      event.widget.itemconfigure (tk.CURRENT, fill ="blue")
      self.master.update()
      time.sleep (.1)
      print "%s Drag-N-Dropped onto %s" \
        %(event.widget.itemcget (self.target, "text"),
	  event.widget.itemcget (tk.CURRENT, "text"))
      event.widget.itemconfigure (tk.CURRENT, fill =self.defaultcolor)

root =tk.Tk()
root.title ("Drag-N-Drop Demo")
CanvasDnD (root).pack()
root.mainloop()





In article <199910201305.OAA19676 at axil.hvision.nl>, apocalyptica at hvision.nl 
says...
>
>
>Hello,
>
>Does anyone have a drag & drop example for my snippets page? I am 
>aware of the Tkinter demos in the Python distribution, but that's not 
>really what I'm looking for. What I would like to see is something 
>with, say, two labels, and the possibility to drag one label to the 
>other, after which the text of the 'target' label changes. In other 
>words, I need a way to determine where an object was dropped on. 
>Haven't seen such an example so far, but maybe I just didn't search 
>hard enough...
>
>TIA,
>
>--Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)
>Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
>Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/
>
>

-- 
                         ---------------------------------
                                               Tom Vrankar
                                            twv at ici.net
                                 http://home.ici.net/~twv/
                                         Rhode Island, USA




From da at ski.org  Tue Oct  5 13:11:59 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 17:11:59 GMT
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <14329.48537.375223.530111@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
References: <14329.48537.375223.530111@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910051007400.301-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Charles G Waldman wrote:

> David Ascher writes:
>  >
>  > So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..
> 
> Why would this be such a terrible thing?  I'm not sure I see the
> grounds for your shivering.

Most of the folks I teach Python to have never heard of complex numbers,
and they're not especially in a rush to learn about them.  They'd *have
to* if they ever used sqrt and had some weird complex numbers propagate
through their code (as a result of a missed bug).

> I'm of the camp that just hates the fact that 1/2 != 1./2. (which

Absolutely.  That, IMHO, is a different problem.  Complex numbers are
different because they are so foreign to most users of Python, and having
them spring out of nowhere would raise lots of eyebrows.  I can just
imagine Guido and his 12-year olds...

BTW, is "0" a special kind of number?  How about "0.0"? <5.005 wink>

>  > BTW, it's "complices" (from the French for 'accomplice').  
> 
> Hmm, I spent 7 years in the Math Dept. at MIT and never once heard
> that word.  Indices, matrices and hyperbolae, sure, but never anything
> but "the complexes" when referring to that lovely
> algebraically-complete number field obtained by adjoining a formal
> square root of -1 to the reals.  Maybe if I'd been up the river at
> Harvard instead of MIT I would have learned the proper Latin
> formation....

Sigh.  T'was a joke.

(I'll tell you my other MIT/Harvard joke at IPC8 if you're there).

went-to-neither-ly' yrs, david




From fuming at venus.radsci.uci.edu  Sun Oct 24 02:06:25 1999
From: fuming at venus.radsci.uci.edu (Fuming Wang)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 23:06:25 -0700
Subject: What's wrong?
In-Reply-To: <7uu59c$p72$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7uu59c$p72$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.05.9910232303420.29102-100000@venus.radsci.uci.edu>

Hi, following code snippet gave me a surpise. Could anyone tell me what's
wrong?

>>> class A:
...     def __init__(self, list=[]):
...          self._list = list
... 
>>> a = A()
>>> a._list
[]
>>> b = A()
>>> b._list
[]
>>> a == b
0
>>> a is b 
0
>>> a._list.append(4)
>>> a._list
[4]
>>> b._list
[4]
>>> 


Thanks!
Fuming Wang





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Oct 20 08:48:02 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:48:02 -0400
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
In-Reply-To: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <1271699565-25298933@hypernet.com>

Thomas Weholt writes:

> I was thinking maybe I could use pickle and compress the pickled
> object too, before storing it into the database and save some
> space. Pickled objects also seem to have lots of repetitive data.
> 
> Now my question is :
> 
> 1. has this been tested and found ineffective in relation to a)
> speed of decompression or b) size of objects not big enough to
> gain any significant size advantage by compression 2. if not
> tested, why? Maybe a subclass of pickle could implement
> compression and decompression of objects?
> 
> Since these scripts are to be run on 400Mhz computers and the
> number of items will not exceed 20-30, objects being relativly
> small, how will the speed be? Any clues??

I regularly use zlib on marshalled data. Works dandy, but for 
small objects (say 100 bytes or so), the zlib'ed version will 
actually be larger. The more data you compress in one shot, 
the better the compression ratio.

- Gordon



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Wed Oct 20 17:39:46 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 17:39:46 -0400
Subject: Is tuple unpacking incompatible with `map'?
In-Reply-To: "Gordon McMillan"'s message of "Wed, 20 Oct 1999 14:58:57 -0400"
References: <1271677306-26638075@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <vrd7u91zkt.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

"Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> ?crit:

> >>> def postsort((key, item)):
> ... 	return item

Of course, you are so right!  This is exactly what I was looking for.

> Tuple unpacking is not quite as automatic as you are assuming:

The real problem is that I was kind of sleeping awake, my question was
probably a kind of intellectual snore.  Sorry for my noise...  And thanks!

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Oct 25 18:06:34 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:06:34 -0400
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
In-Reply-To: <199910251940.MAA22041@hermes.aspectdv.com>
References: <024b01bf1ac3$235c7530$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <1271234053-9881480@hypernet.com>

[Jim Althoff]
> Where can one find out more info on
> "hasinterface" and "as_sequence"?

[the eff-bot]
> >    def len(obj):
> >        if hasinterface(obj, as_sequence):
> >            return obj.sequence_length()
> >        if hasinterface(obj, as_mapping):
> >            return obj.mapping_length()
> >        raise TypeError, "len() of unsized object"
> >
> >which, for my non-purist eyes, surely looks as if
> >Python treats "obj" as an arbitrary object.

Didn't you snip the bit about it being psuedo-code?

What the eff-bot is alluding to is a call in the abstract level of 
the C API, which checks whether the type-as-sequence slot in 
the type object is non-NULL. For C types implementing the 
sequence methods, this works. Unfortunately, a Python class 
emulating a sequence will fail this check.

The types SIG was very actively debating this and similar 
topics, until someone posted some code implementing an 
interface protocol. All subsequent attempts at reviving the SIG 
have failed miserably.

and-the-pathologist-who-did-the-autopsy-died-too-ly y'rs


- Gordon



From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Oct 26 05:45:18 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 11:45:18 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
Message-ID: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com>

Last week I started to write a small module for more convenient and
portable access to information about the platform on which Python
is running.

Many people have helped and provided lots of information
about the various Python compatible platforms out there... thanks
everybody :-)

Some things where I need some more help are:
? support for Linux distributions other than redhat, suse, debian, mandrake
? better support for WindowsCE (Jeff Bauer is working on this one)
? support for MacOS (not the X Server version; JvR is working on it)
? support for Amiga, MS DOS and maybe VMS
? a way to find out the true system names and versions on
  MacOS X Server and Solaris (they both use different names
  at the OS level, e.g. SunOS 5.5 instead of Solaris 2.5)

New features:
? system alias support, e.g. SunOS can be reported as
  Solaris

Here is the latest version of that module:

        http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From thantos at brimstone.mecha  Wed Oct 13 21:06:31 1999
From: thantos at brimstone.mecha (Alexander Williams)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 01:06:31 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn80ab5q.27c.thantos@brimstone.mecha>

On 14 Oct 1999 00:11:55 GMT, Joshua Marcus <josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
>What is the %$*&@#!@ rationale behind not including a do...while control 
>structure in Python?
>
>I know you can simply work around it, e.g:
>
>line = "foo"
>while input != "":
>    line = fp.readline()
>    process(line)
>
>... but why must I do this every time?  Am I missing something?

Yes, you're missing three things:

  1) That initalization line should be "line = fp.readline()"
  2) "input" should be "line" in the while check.
  3) Python is designed to minimize the syntactic sugar poured in the
gas-tank of your coding; "do ... while" truly is only a syntactic
abstraction for an initialized while loop (as my professor was kind
enough to teach us long ago in a basics of CompSci class; in fact most
control structures reduce to one or two axiomatic ones).  Its not that
much more typing, the test is very clearly marked at the top of the
structure, and we have the benefit of a single, consistant means of
presenting the loop rather than thirteen varying ones.

-- 
Alexander Williams (thantos at gw.total-web.net)
"In the end ... Oblivion Always Wins."



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 18 11:44:45 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:44:45 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Adding info to Python Buglist
References: <3808C151.1D877904@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <14347.16494.705942.950514@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "JT" == Jason Trowbridge <ratman at nmt.edu> writes:

    JT> I filed a bug in Python's buglist, and have further
    JT> information available.  However, I can't seem to add a reply
    JT> as a guest.  Is there any way I can add more information to
    JT> the ticket as a guest, or do I have to get an account?  If I
    JT> need an account, how do I go about getting it?

I don't think you can directly -- this is a Jitterbug issue
unfortunately.  Getting an account at this point isn't very feasible.
I agree this is a nasty shortcoming.

You can add to the bug report indirectly through email though.  I'm
not 100% sure about the magic headers, but if you got an email
containing the original bug report, just follow up to that.
Otherwise, I /think/ if you send an email to bugs-py at python.org and
include the string PR#XXX where XXX is the bug number, Jitterbug will
attach this to the original report.

Give it a try and see what happens!

-Barry



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Fri Oct  8 07:31:14 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 00:31:14 +1300
Subject: List vs. Tuple
References: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu> <14332.49922.193896.867738@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <37FDD602.4FFCDBF1@compaq.com>

Charles G Waldman wrote:
> 
> Parentheses
> are (unfortunately, IMO) overloaded, being both tuple-delimiters and
> the standard grouping operator

That statement is somewhat misleading -- parentheses actually
have NOTHING to do with tuple creation. You can do

  t1 = 1, 2, 3
  t2 = 4,

and get tuples. It's the commas, not the parentheses, which
make a tuple constructor. Keep that in mind and you won't get
confused as much.

You'll-still-get-confused-just-for-different-reasons,
Greg



From tommy at artech.se  Wed Oct 13 13:28:42 1999
From: tommy at artech.se (tommy)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 19:28:42 +0200
Subject: HTTP or/and HTTPS server in Python!
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013192705.16210D-100000@butler.artech.se>

Hi!

I wounder if someone have wrote a HTTP or even a HTTPS server in Python?

I know that client side of HTTP and HTTPS is avaiable in Python, but how
about the servers?

Yes know about modules for useing Python from apache. But I need to use
Python standard alone for this. 

SOme1 who have any good suggestions for me?

Thanks

Kind regards

//Tommy







From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Oct 11 17:10:51 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:10:51 +0200
Subject: using string.splitfields
References: <3801483c.10251569@news.eunet.no> <013d01bf1423$1a340190$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <3802525B.E534AFB9@lemburg.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Thomas Weholt <u970130 at studbo.hit.no> wrote:
> > Just wondering how I could use more field-separators when I use the
> > string.splitfield method.
> 
> you can't.  string.split can only
> deal with a single separator.
> 
> (string.splitfield is obsolete, btw.
> use string.split instead).
> 
> in this case, you can use
> re.split instead:
> 
> import re
> print re.split("[.+!]", "this.is+a!string")
> ## ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string']
> 
> </F>
> 
> coming soon:
> http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm

Or check out setsplit() in mxTextTools (see Python Pages below).

>>> import TextTools
>>> print TextTools.setsplit("this.is+a!string",TextTools.set(".+!"))
['this', 'is', 'a', 'string']

It's *much* faster than the re approach in case you care.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    81 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From dirkl at home.com  Mon Oct 25 17:00:17 1999
From: dirkl at home.com (Dirk Leas)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:00:17 -0700
Subject: Freeze w/ 1.52 + GCC
In-Reply-To: <199910251120.HAA01847@python.org>
Message-ID: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECGEJLFGAA.dirkl@home.com>

Can I freeze with GCC instead of VC++?

TIA,
Dirk




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct  7 09:25:52 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 14:25:52 +0100
Subject: Dupes
Message-ID: <002e01bf10c7$7a1b77a0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

Now that the mailing list has been moved, I'm getting dupes of every
message. Is everyone expected to unsubscribe from the old list?
Shouldn't this have been done automatically?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 31 04:51:59 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:51:59 +0100
Subject: XML-RPC and Pickle.....
References: <381BB57A.E8AD1AD6@home.com>
Message-ID: <003f01bf2385$944e3880$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Edward Muller <edwardam at home.com> wrote:
> I am trying to unpickle and object on another machine after bieng sent
> via xml-rpc.....and I get the following error:
> xmlrpclib.Fault: <Fault 1: 'exceptions.SystemError:Failed to import
> class foo from module __main__'>

just guessing here, but it looks like the someObject
class is defined in your main program (at the client
end), and that you're not using the same script as
the main program on the server end.

solution: move the class definition to a separate
module, and make sure that module is present on
both ends of the connection.

</F>

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




From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Fri Oct  1 14:10:50 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 18:10:50 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7t2tfa$4e5$183@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From phd at phd.russ.ru  Thu Oct 28 10:07:43 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:07:43 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: urllib.urlencode small improvement
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910281402400.881-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

Hello!

   Currently urllib.urlencode takes dictionary {"x": "y", "u": "v"} and
produces encoded string as "x=y&u=v". But wat if I want to repeat some
keys: "x=y1&x=y2&u=v"? I cannot pass this to urlencode using dictionaries!

   The following patch adds the feature to urlencode: either dict or a list
(or tuple) of pairs (lists or tuples) can be passed to urlencode:

--- urllib.py-orig	Thu Apr 15 14:44:08 1999
+++ urllib.py	Thu Oct 28 18:01:22 1999
@@ -914,9 +914,15 @@
     else:
         return quote(s, safe)
 
-def urlencode(dict):
+
+dictType = type({})
+
+# obj must be either dict or list of tuples [(k1, v1), (k2, v2), ...] or list of lists [[k1, v1], [k2, v2], ...]
+def urlencode(obj):
      l = []
-     for k, v in dict.items():
+     if type(obj) == dictType:
+         obj = obj.items()
+     for k, v in obj:
          k = quote_plus(str(k))
          v = quote_plus(str(v))
          l.append(k + '=' + v)

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From towen at nw.com.au  Sun Oct  3 03:55:41 1999
From: towen at nw.com.au (Todd Owen)
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 15:55:41 +0800
Subject: for faq?: multithreaded curses getch()
Message-ID: <37F70BFD.2EC25E1A@nw.com.au>

hi ho,

I just found a solution to a problem that bugged me for a while.  I'm
sure a unix system programmer would have thought of this pretty soon,
but if someone maintaining the faq sees this, maybe they'll think it's
worth adding a sentence to question 4.74 (about getting keypresses),
since it sure would have helped me.

I'm writing a threaded python app which uses the curses module.  I was
having trouble because in one place, one thread was waiting on a getch()
while another wanted to acquire the global interpretter lock.  getch()
doesn't release the GIL (and it would be non-trivial to make it
thread-friendly methinks, since libcurses isn't to begin with??)

To get the getch thread to block without holding the GIL, the solution I
found was to do a select on stdin, as described in...
a faq-oriented summary :)...!
Hint for using curses module with threads: to wait for a keypress
without blocking other threads, try inserting a
"select.select([sys.stdin], [], [])" call before the call to getch().

maybe this will help someone.
Todd.

(PS I'm still looking for panelmodule!)



From fredp at multimania.com.nospam  Fri Oct  1 04:07:54 1999
From: fredp at multimania.com.nospam (Fred Pacquier)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 08:07:54 GMT
Subject: YA-Newbie: Progress (but still baffled by deepcopy/pickle issues...:)
References: <8E48C2767PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <8E5062134PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <37F433BB.CC11F8AB@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <8E526A561PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148>

greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing) said :

>> # in Card __init__:
>>                 if ... : self.src = 0  # store an index instead of
>>                 bitmap ref. else : self.src = 1
>> # in Stack showrow():
>>             srcDC.SelectObject(CardFaces[self.Cards[row].src])
>> This seems to work flawlessly, although I don't understand why.
>
>Sounds like when you use references to the bitmaps, deepcopy is
>trying to copy the bitmap objects and screwing up somehow.

Maybe, yes. I have a hunch it may be a problem in the wxWindows/wxPython 
interface, in which case it's probably hard to find.

-- 
YAFAP : http://www.multimania.com/fredp/



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 24 15:23:34 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 15:23:34 -0400
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
In-Reply-To: <14355.13361.105554.204636@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <1271330231-4096426@hypernet.com>

> >>>>> "JS" == Jason Stokes <jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au> writes:
> 
>     JS> Is "TBD" a common abbreviation in source code?  Does it
>     mean JS> "To Be Done?"
[Barry] 
> It is for that warped BAW guy!  Guido uses XXX to mark things
> that should be addressed later (and you thought the Python Video
> connection was just coincidence).  I picked up TBD (To Be
> Decided, or Determined, or Done) from a previous employer, and
> sometimes use it when I'm feeling more prudish.

It's that damn Dutch degeneracy. Guido probably eats Grape 
Nuts for breakfast.

the-only-XXX-cereal-in-the-US-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From kain at twilight.  Tue Oct 19 15:14:39 1999
From: kain at twilight. (Scott Barron)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 19:14:39 GMT
Subject: Any DNS Modules?
Message-ID: <7uifuv$g1d$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>

Has anyone created a module to do raw DNS queries and the like?
For example, I'd like to be able to query a nameserver of my
choice, not necessarily the one used by my system.  I'd also like
it to be portable.  If nobody has done this, I may take on the task.
Any thoughts, tips?

Scott



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 28 19:51:57 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:51:57 -0400
Subject: fastcgi and python
In-Reply-To: <3818D1B2.B8B77E22@hp.com>
Message-ID: <1270968529-6054384@hypernet.com>

Sunil Tripathy wrote:

>   I am trying use python for fastcgi applications on Windows NT.
>   I
> downloaded fastcgi development kit from www.fastcgi.com and also
> I downloaded the python/c api fastcgiappmodule from
> http://www.digicool.com/releases/fcgi/. When I try to build the
> fastapp.dll using MSVC++ 6.0, this is the error message I get.
> D:\fcgiappmodule.c(505) : error C2099: initializer is not a
> constant. 
[typeobject snipped]
> I would appreciate if anyone could help me to resolve the
> problem. in place of  PyObject_HEAD_INIT(&PyType_Type) i tried to
> use 0, 0, 1, NULL, 0, and I initialized Fcgietype.ob_type =
> &PyType_Type; in the initfcgiapp function. This seems to work as
> for as the compilation problem is concerned but this does not do
> anything

Yes it does. It fixes the compilation problem. (Your other 
option is to tell MSVC to compile it as C++, in which case it 
doesn't complain.)

> (i feel it exits when I invoke fcgiapp.Accept() method) 
> when I import the module fcgiapp in my python program. 

That's a different problem, and it requires a much better 
description.

one-at-a-time-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Tue Oct  5 15:30:29 1999
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 19:30:29 GMT
Subject: DOS Python
Message-ID: <slrn7vkkek.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

I just downloaded the DOS version of Python from Hans Nowak's page.
Probalm is, there don't seem to be any docs or modules included -- it's
just the .exe file.  Where do I get the .py modules which are supposed to
go with it, and where do I install them?

Also, has someone compiled numPy for DOS?

This is for a hardware test, BTW, which is why I'm stuck with DOS.

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From nickb at earth.ox.ac.uk  Fri Oct 29 06:22:03 1999
From: nickb at earth.ox.ac.uk (Nick Belshaw)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:22:03 +0100
Subject: Shelve problem in 1.5.2
Message-ID: <3819754A.267CFD27@earth.ox.ac.uk>

I have searched through old messages on python.org and couldn't find an
answer to this so if anyone can help......

I have just upgraded from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 on a Linux/RedHat(now 6.1)
system and my shelve module is behaving strangely. It fails to open old
files and if I open and close a new file it is happy but as soon as I
try to open the newly created file it fails also...

--------------------------------------------
>>> import shelve
>>> q = shelve.open('floop)
>>> q['q']='help'
>>> q.close()
>>> z = shelve.open('floop)
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 152, in open
    return DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag)
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 142, in __init__
    Shelf.__init__(self, anydbm.open(filename, flag))
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/anydbm.py", line 85, in open
    raise error, "db type could not be determined"
anydbm.error: db type could not be determined
--------------------------------------
Looking at the source it seems that whichdb.py is returning a null
string which implies that shelve is not writing a magic number to the
file on closing.

Thats as far as I got - I suppose I am missing something obvious so if
someone could help I would be very grateful.

cheers
Nick/Oxford





From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct 12 19:22:21 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:22:21 GMT
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
References: <000a01bf1488$912fcd00$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-V4kXdYk4kUGX@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

> The latter is clearly the only reasonable alternative.  Win95 and 98
> can't do this, but they are "personal" OS'.  WinNT can restrict this.
> If other OS' can't restrict this feature, blame the OS, not Python!
> 
> FWIW, win32api.SetSystemTime() can do this on Windows...

Thank you Mark!

Exactly the hint I needed! 

			- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From frehe491 at student.liu.se  Wed Oct  6 10:07:49 1999
From: frehe491 at student.liu.se (Fredrik Henbjork)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 16:07:49 +0200
Subject: websucker.py versus password-protected web tree
References: <87k8p0bqqx.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>
Message-ID: <37FB57B5.41C6@student.liu.se>

John van der Koijk wrote:
> 
> Dear readers,
> 
> I'm out of luck trying to mirror a certain web-tree which is protected
> by a password-username combination. Don't know how the protocol works
> and when I use a browser I get something like this:
> 
>         Name                    Last modified       Size  Description
>   __________________________________________________________________________
> 
>  [DIR]  Parent Directory        01-Oct-1999 12:26      -
>  [TXT]  Test.htm                03-Oct-1999 14:29     1k
>  [DIR]  demo/                   05-Oct-1999 19:21      -
>  [TXT]  download.htm            05-Oct-1999 20:14     3k
>  [   ]  es_demo.exe             03-Oct-1999 16:18   3.6M
>  [DIR]  full/                   05-Oct-1999 19:44      -
>  [DIR]  limited/                05-Oct-1999 20:04      -
>      _________________________________________________________________
> 
> - I know the username and password ;-)
> 
> Websucker seems unable to cope with this and I can't find relevant
> references in the urllib docs. Any pointers? Should I alter the URL?
> 
> Greetings,
> --
> John van der Koijk.
> --
> TNO Institute of Industrial Technology
> 
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Say you have the following:
site url: www.deadparrot.org
username: sirrobin
password: brave
file: spam.txt
To access the file use:
sirrobin:brave at www.deadparrot.org/spam.txt
as the url. For exampel in Netscape you would write:
http://sirrobin:brave at www.deadparrot.org/spam.txt
There may also be other ways to do it websucker.py
but since I haven't used the module I can't tell
for sure.

-- 
Fredrik Henbjork

Email: frehe491 at student.liu.se
WWW: http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 14 06:21:44 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:21:44 +0200
Subject: importing
References: <38032A40.521784A6@daimi.au.dk>
Message-ID: <3805AEB8.9CC49D68@lemburg.com>

Peter Posselt Vestergaard wrote:
> 
> Hi
> How do I import a library file which isn't placed in the same directory
> as the python-file and neither in a directory in my path???
> I've made my own library file called pythonlib.py and if I places it in
> the same directory as my program and writes 'import pythonlib' in the
> beginning of my programfile it works fine, but I can't figure out how to
> find it elsewhere.
> Furthermore: How do I access the functions in my library then I've
> included it from somewhere not in the same directory? Will it still be
> enough just to write pythonlib.function()???
> I've tried the solutions in the manual pages, but I can't make it work.

See the docs on the builtin __import__ function for details.

pythonlib = __import__('/my/python/code/pythonlib',globals(),locals())

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    78 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From harri.pasanen at trema.com  Tue Oct  5 11:32:09 1999
From: harri.pasanen at trema.com (harri.pasanen at trema.com)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 15:32:09 GMT
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
Message-ID: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello,

I made some effort to track down a python module that could be used as
unix diff.  Currently I'm in fact popen'ing diff itself, but for I'd
like to have a self-contained utility.

I'm not comparing big files, so a Python only solution will probably be
fast enough.

Failing a ready solution, can someone perhaps point me to a description
of the algorithm, so I could implement it myself.

Thanks,

Harri





Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From wtanksle at ieng9.ucsd.edu  Tue Oct 12 23:35:40 1999
From: wtanksle at ieng9.ucsd.edu (William Tanksley)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 20:35:40 -0700
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <199910080832.JAA29686@axil.hvision.nl>; from Hans Nowak on Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 10:36:57AM +0200
References: <7tiu4o$12k@ieng9.ucsd.edu> <199910080832.JAA29686@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <19991012203540.A8986@ieng9.ucsd.edu>

On Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 10:36:57AM +0200, Hans Nowak wrote:
> On 7 Oct 99, at 13:00, William Tanksley wrote:
> > >> Great.  I'll do that right away, if I can find an .arj extractor.
> > >> Speaking of which, is there any particular reason why you used .zip for
> > >> the executable and .arj for the (required) libraries?

> > >That's more for hysterical raisins; I wrote a script which packs a 
> > >directory and all its subdirectories in an arj file; I did not manage 
> > >to do so for zip files (back then, that is :).
> > pkzip -ad ?  It's part of the zip command set.
> I suppose so; I never liked pkzip much, I preferred other (often more 
> obscure) archivers like rar, ace, and jar. :)

Well, that makes sense to me :).  I still prefer PC Geos to Windows.

> > But anyhow, this still isn't working for me, and I'm slamming up against
> > a nasty deadline.  The problem is that I have to run this under pure DOS,
> > and I _must_ call an external program.  When I do "import os" under wpy,
> > it tells me that there's no such module.
> > The PythonDX library has long file names, which aren't supported under DOS.

> If you unpack them with arj, the name should be sliced off to 8.3 
> format. Not the ugly tilde notation, mind you; exceptions.py will 
> become exceptio.py rather than except~1.py. You should be able to do 
> 'import exceptions' and it still finds them. (It should, anyway)

> Don't forget to set your PYTHONPATH variable correctly, of course, 
> and since this is DOS, setting the PYTHONCASEOK variable will help a 
> lot too. In fact, if you have a file called OS.PY in DOS (rather than 
> os.py), Python might not find it unless you do a SET PYTHONCASEOK=1. 
> The Python source is Unix-based and making it work correctly on a 
> case-insensitive, 8.3-filename based OS takes a few tricks. 

Ah, that's another thing I was about to ask.  Excellent.  Thank you again.

> > arj appears to have two options for truncating the long file names.  Which
> > of them should I use?

> Hmmz, I just do arj x archive.arj -y and it doesn't ask me any 
> questions... 

Odd.  It refused to do anything for me until I set the -hf2 option.  However,
once I did that (and answered 'yes' to the first obnoxious question), it
worked great.

Almost.  Okay, I just tried setting those environment variables, and it
seems to work, but it still prints a warning message -- "Built-in
exception class not found: EnvironmentError.  Library mismatch?"

I have to suspect that the library file you pointed me to and the one you
meant to point me two are different, especially since we report completely
different behaviors for ARJ.

At least it seems to work -- I've gotten my program mostly running.

> > >> Okay, this will clearly take some more work.  It seems that the arj
> > >> program doesn't support long file names, but the arj archive includes
> > >> them.  (How'd you manage that?)

> > >Oh it does, if you have the right version. Here's one:
> > >http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/Arj.exe
> > >I believe this link *is* on my site somewhere. :-)

> > Not that I could find.  You don't suppose that you could zip the archive up,
> > do you?

> I could use WinZip. ;-) 
 
Not too bad of an idea.  infoZip is also nice.  If you're actually going to
do this (not that you HAVE to, after all it's not like I'm paying you) might
you consider zipping the executable and the library together?

> > I'm in a world of hurt.  I hope someone can fix this!
 
> Aww... I'll see what I can do...
 
Thanks!  And thanks to some work with IDLE, I was able to develop most of
the functionality I needed (that is, the part that didn't require a DOS
environment to merely run).  Of course, now I'm addicted to IDLE.  Oh well.

This is a really great group.  Thanks, Hans.

> --Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)




From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Sat Oct  2 20:51:50 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 02 Oct 1999 20:51:50 -0400
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com> <7t5ffa$1h6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se> <37f7564e.33979028@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <5lvh8p6zbt.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan) writes:

> I'm currently needing the module for a project that will run on a
> Linux machine and unfortunately Linux does appear to support the
> System-V approach.  There is no I_SENDFD or I_RECVFD in the ioctl()
> man page.  I have found two example code URLs so far and both use the
> socketpair() call which isn't in the Python socket module.  So I'm
> assuming my only option is to write a C module to do this?  If I can
> get it done it might be a nice compliment to my only other C module
> appropriately named hello_world. ;-)

My guess is that those examples use socketpair() because it's
convenient, not because it's necessary.  I would guess that creating a
server AF_UNIX socket in the parent and a client AF_UNIX socket in the
child, connecting the latter to the former, would allow you to do the
same thing.  You might even be able to do this between unrelated
processes.  Of course, this is pure speculation...

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



From MSteed at altiris.com  Wed Oct 27 16:56:04 1999
From: MSteed at altiris.com (Mike Steed)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:56:04 -0600
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
Message-ID: <65118AEEFF5AD3118E8300508B124877073C4D@webmail.altiris.com>

> From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal at lemburg.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 10:31 AM
> To: Thomas Heller
> Cc: python-list
> Subject: Re: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
> [snip]
> > is complete. I did not find a way to suppress this window.
> > Hope this helps,
> 
> Well it does, but I don't think weird windows popping up when
> calling a Python function is not really tolerable. Having the
> program write to a fixed filename is even less -- you'd write
> that file (which contains private data I suppose) into the
> current dir which could be just about anywhere...
> 
> Perhaps some of the win32 wizards out there could help out 
> with a function that gets this data from the registry (either
> direct via MarkHs win32 package or indirect via "regedit") ?

I happen to have this information handy at the moment, which is a start.  On
NT 4.0, the magic key is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion.  It includes the version, build number, and service pack,
among other things.  If I remember correctly, similar information can be
found under Win95/98 under ...\Windows\CurrentVersion.

--
M.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 21 14:23:44 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:23:44 -0400
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
In-Reply-To: <380F3974.FE3C6310@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <1271593023-487654@hypernet.com>

[Marc-Andre]
> > > E.g. I'd like a function that returns 'Redhat6.1'/'SuSE6.2'
> > > or 'Win95'/'Win98'/'WinNT' or 'MacOS8'/'MacOS9' etc.

Windows NT:
 os.environ['OS'] yields "Windows_NT"
 os.environ['ComSpec'] yields the path to cmd.exe

In the registry, I find 
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion 
has items "CurrentVersion" ("4.0") and "CSDVersion" 
("Service Pack 4")

The ver command gets you "Windows NT Version 4.0".

- Gordon



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct  7 09:51:24 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 07 Oct 1999 09:51:24 -0400
Subject: Python Beginner Question!!!
References: <rvo96j9b8c18@corp.supernews.com> <37FC384E.1B630752@wildenhain.de>
Message-ID: <5lzoxv5ler.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Cm wrote:
> > I have never had any experience programming period, but I am
> > really anxious to learn.  I bought the book, O'Reilly's
> > "Programming Python", and began to read it, but I had no clue what
> > was going on.  Does anybody have a suggestion for a book about
> > beginning programming for someone who knows nothing about it.  I
> > need any help I can get.

Tino Wildenhain <tino at wildenhain.de> replied:

> I would recommend http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html
> Its good for beginners as they can get in touch with the language _and_
> the thoughts behind programming.
> You can read it online and/or print it out and store it under your
> pillow.

But even that tutorial is assuming you know what programming is.  For
an introduction to programming, using Python, try this:

<LI><A HREF="http://members.xoom.com/alan_gauld/tutor/tutindex.htm"
>Learning to Program</A><BR>An introduction to programming for those
who have never programmed before, by Alan Gauld.  It introduces
several programming languages but has a strong emphasis on Python.

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



From quinn at photo.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Oct 17 15:39:11 1999
From: quinn at photo.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:39:11 GMT
Subject: configure + Irix64 problem
Message-ID: <slrn80k9g0.fg6.quinn@photo.ugcs.caltech.edu>

When compiling python on an indigo2, I ran up against a little problem:
`uname -s` returns 'IRIX64', which means python looks for platform-specific
modules in plat-irix646 and doesn't find any, so imports of FCNTL etc. fail,
and you have to manually hack the config.status (or whatever) file to change
MACHDEP to irix6.

I'm not sure if the python library should acquire plat-irix646, or if
configure should be modified to read IRIX64 as IRIX, but the current
behaviour is probably a bug...



From nkpimp at forno.eg.net  Fri Oct 29 19:41:27 1999
From: nkpimp at forno.eg.net (nkpimp at forno.eg.net)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 23:41:27 GMT
Subject: New Search Engine  3901
Message-ID: <HgqS3.1153$oa2.8411@iad-read.news.verio.net>

Brand new search engine.
http://www.linkgrinder.com

Brand new search engine.
http://www.linkgrinder.com
lkunvrkombzzrbmlumyzrsvokgktnhllgxgedksjvnyegmwbrxgftdrxvpkylrqujvvoi




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct 28 04:51:31 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:51:31 +0100
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <3816C0D3.F5439844@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <002201bf2121$a12c5de0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Could you send me the output of platform.py when run on Minix ?
> Plus perhaps the result of calling platform.uname() and
> platform.architecture(). Both can be found in the latest version
> of platform.py (0.3.2):

uname -a returns:
Minix bart 2.0 2 i686
OS, node, OS version, OS patchlevel, processer

I assume that i686 is a P2 which is what I have.

Script returns:
Minix-2.0-i686-i386
OS, OS version, processor, OS architecture version

Minix has 2 versions, an i86 used for anything less than a 386, and an i386
version for a 386 or better.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Sat Oct  9 17:03:22 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 21:03:22 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7toaiq$s7c$390@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/apple/1030/




From nathan at islanddata.com  Mon Oct  4 12:03:02 1999
From: nathan at islanddata.com (Nathan Clegg)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 09:03:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: print longs
Message-ID: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com>

I'm trying to print some longs and can't seem to get what I want.  At
first I used "%ld" in a format string before running into trouble and then
learning that the 'l' is ignored.  I know using %s or any str() or repr()
solutions leaves me with an unwanted 'L' at the end.  Do I have to convert
to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?  Surely there is a decent
conversion for me here, but I can't seem to find it.  Any suggestions? 
Thanks!


----------------------------------
Nathan Clegg
 nathan at islanddata.com





From ovidiu at cup.hp.com  Thu Oct  7 12:42:10 1999
From: ovidiu at cup.hp.com (Ovidiu Predescu)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:42:10 -0700
Subject: ObjC / GNUstep? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:12:39 GMT."
             <E11Yqs5-0001l2-00@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> 
Message-ID: <199910071642.JAA30430@andromeda.cup.hp.com>

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:12:39 GMT, Bjoern.Giesler at stud.uni-karlsruhe.de wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> after turning away from all that stuff for a while, the recent developments
> on the GNUstep front (esp. the emergence of V0.6 "Dawn") have made me
> interested in ObjC/GNUstep again. I've browsed through the ObjC-SIG's mailing 
> list archives, and it looks like PyObjC 0.55 is the current version. I have
> a couple of problems with it, though:
> 
> 	o there is no Demo directory (as announced in the README)
> 	o I haven't managed to get anything AppKit-related running; the
> 	  program segfaults when creating a NSWindow.
> 
> Can anyone provide me with more information? The combination OpenStep /
> Python seems a natural one, and I'd really like to use it...

I don't know much about PyObjC but you may want to talk to Helge Hess
<helge at mdlink.de>, who implemented a Python glue for libFoundation, an OpenStep
Foundation-like library:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/7464/libFoundation/index.html

Building a glue on top of AppKit should not be a big problem.


Have fun,
Ovidiu

-- 
Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu at cup.hp.com>
http://andromeda.cup.hp.com/  (inside HP's firewall only)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/7464/





From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 14 06:06:43 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:06:43 +0200
Subject: Creating Python Class Instances From C API
References: <38034BEA.173F2315@turner.com>
Message-ID: <3805AB33.4B969272@lemburg.com>

bill barrington wrote:
> 
>     I would like to create a python class instance using the python/C
> API for eventual return back into "python space".  IOW, I want to
> accomplish the equivalent of the following python code, but from within
> an extension:
> 
> instance = Class(<whatever>)
> 
> ...and then return the newly created instance.
> 
>     Anyone know how to do this?

The trick is to get a reference to the class object and then
*call* it with your init parameters. It will then return an
instance just like in Python.

For code, see the examples Fredrik pointed you at.

Hope that helps,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    78 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From daniels at mindspring.com  Sun Oct  3 22:23:06 1999
From: daniels at mindspring.com (Alan Daniels)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 02:23:06 GMT
Subject: A Python color syntax file for VIM
References: <slrn7vcmuh.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain> <slrn7vfv03.v1c.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>
Message-ID: <slrn7vg4ce.f0.daniels@localhost.localdomain>

On Mon, 04 Oct 1999 00:59:39 GMT, the infinitely wise Neil Schemenauer
(nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca) spoke forth to us, saying...

[snip...]

Also, I forgot I was talking to the Author of the original syntax file. :=)

-- 
=======================
Alan Daniels
daniels at mindspring.com
daniels at cc.gatech.edu



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Mon Oct 18 10:06:12 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:06:12 -0400
Subject: Python's buffer interface
In-Reply-To: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BF38C2B@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
References: <19991015113444.A592708@vislab.epa.gov> <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BF38C2B@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
Message-ID: <19991018100612.A38327966@vislab.epa.gov>

Robin Boerdijk:
 |Randall Hopper:
 |
 |>      From a commentary I read, it looks very useful.  I'd like to learn
 |> more about the it -- in particular, how to write conforming C interfaces.
 |>
 |>      However, I didn't find any mention of this in the docs.  Did I miss
 |> something?  Or have the docs not caught up with it.
 |
 |>From previous discussions on this newsgroup, it appears that the buffer
 |interface is rather controversial and that may be the reason why it hasn't
 |been properly documented yet. My impression is that part of the
 |controversion comes from the confusion between the buffer *interface* and
 |buffer *objects*.

Thanks for detailed response!  Lots of good info in your post.

I'm frequently coming up with cases where I'd like to use Python to pass
large chunks of data (geometry lists, images, etc.) between different
subsystems without incurring copy overhead.  Rather than translating these
two subsystems' data formats inside the wrappers to glue them together,
passing the metadata through Python with a large canonical data buffer
in-tow seems to make more sense.

 | The buffer interface entry is a pointer to a structure of four
   functions:
 |
 | static PyBufferProcs string_as_buffer = {
 |   (getreadbufferproc)string_buffer_getreadbuf,
 |   (getwritebufferproc)string_buffer_getwritebuf,
 |   (getsegcountproc)string_buffer_getsegcount,
 |   (getcharbufferproc)string_buffer_getcharbuf,
 | };
...
 | PyTypeObject PyString_Type = {
...
 |   &string_as_buffer, /*tp_as_buffer*/
 | };

I think this answers my main question.  It appears you have to define a
full user-defined type in the C wrappers to yield a class that implements
the buffer interface.

I was hoping to be able to define a few methods on a wrapped C/C++ class
(e.g. like __getreadbuffer__, __setwritebuffer__, __getsegcount__) to have
an object that conforms the buffer interface.

Intuitively, I think it might be more flexible if the buffer interface was
defined at the Python level rather than the C level.  Then classes could
implement the buffer interface without a formal Python type definition in
C.  The wrappers could call up to get the "callable objects" in the buffer
interface and just use them.  If a buffer method was a reference to a C
function, it could be blazingly fast.  If it happened to be a Python
expression (callable object, lambda expression, etc.), it might be slower,
but it would still work.  Either way, no formal Python type definition in C
would be required.  And as a side benefit, you could define classes
implementing buffer interfaces in pure Python.

(What I'm leaning toward is something that is easily implemented in wrapper
generators like SWIG.  When generating wrappers for C code, SWIG doesn't
generate Python classes in C, but rather generates Python classes in
Python, handing off to C inside the Python class.)

Randall

--
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From mikael at isy.liu.se  Tue Oct 12 09:04:34 1999
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:04:34 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: importing
In-Reply-To: <38032A40.521784A6@daimi.au.dk>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991012150434.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 12-Oct-99 Peter Posselt Vestergaard wrote:
 >  Hi
 >  How do I import a library file which isn't placed in the same directory
 >  as the python-file and neither in a directory in my path???

My solution is the following, which I think is the correct one:

import sys
sys.path.append('yourpath')
import yourlibrary

Then at least I would be up and running.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    12-Oct-99
Time:    15:01:46

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
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From ehynes at acm.org.nospam  Mon Oct  4 21:55:54 1999
From: ehynes at acm.org.nospam (Ed Hynes)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 21:55:54 -0400
Subject: More Python books coming...
References: <5lpuz483p4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7tblr9$m09$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>

Will links to these books be added to the PSA's online bookstore anytime
soon?  (Want to get the most bang for the buck when buying them:^)







From jae at ilk.de  Sat Oct 30 20:22:20 1999
From: jae at ilk.de (Juergen A. Erhard)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 02:22:20 +0200
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
In-Reply-To: <14355.13361.105554.204636@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
	(bwarsaw@cnri.reston.va.us)
References: <2zkQ3.9170$P3.10169@ozemail.com.au> <14355.13361.105554.204636@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <31101999.2@sanctum.jae>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

>>>>> "JS" == Jason Stokes <jstok at bluedog.apana.org.au> writes:

    JS> Is "TBD" a common abbreviation in source code?  Does it mean
    JS> "To Be Done?"

    BAW> It is for that warped BAW guy!  Guido uses XXX to mark things
    BAW> that should be addressed later (and you thought the Python
    BAW> Video connection was just coincidence).  I picked up TBD (To
    BAW> Be Decided, or Determined, or Done) from a previous employer,
    BAW> and sometimes use it when I'm feeling more prudish.

The common (in GNU land at least) marker seems to be FIXME:

I tend to use that... and NOTE: for things of note, while PONDER: is
used for TBDecided ;-)

Bye, J

- -- 
J?rgen A. Erhard      eMail: jae at ilk.de      phone: (GERMANY) 0721 27326
         My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/~Juergen_Erhard
          George Herrimann's Krazy Kat (http://www.krazy.com)
         Win32 has many known work arounds. For example, Linux.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.0 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iEYEARECAAYFAjgbi7sACgkQN0B+CS56qs2xOQCfahIpAG4idZeFSUE4Z4+e/uFa
U74An1xb5G5JAWRyAgATG5pZDSIhcSfu
=VOOc
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From peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de  Mon Oct 18 18:00:37 1999
From: peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de (Peter Sommerfeld)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 00:00:37 +0200
Subject: Developing and testing modules live
References: <871zatfdbg.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <1dzw1sh.1c7noj7yg8ezaN%peter.sommerfeld@gmx.de>

Nolan Darilek <nolan at ethereal.dhis.org> wrote:

> When I develop modules, I prefer testing them immediately after I
> write each specific function. One solution I've tried is to run an
> instance of the Python interpreter in a shell buffer alongside my
> editting in another. When I import the module, test some
> functionality and modify the source file, I've discovered that del'ing
> and re-importing the module doesn't include the changes. For example,
> if I write:
> 
> print "Hello, world."
> 
> in test.py and import test, I receive the message. If I modify the
> message to just "Hello.", delete test and re-import it, it doesn't
> even print the message.
> 
> To me, deleting and re-importing seemed to be an intuitous way of
> reloading my changes, but I seem to be missing some important fact
> about how importing works. Granted, I can kill the interpreter and
> restart it, but this is a bit slower. Is there a way to quickly reread
> the module without restarting?

I usually have on top of my __main__ module this code:

def unload(*args):
    #
    from string import split, join
    from sys import modules
    #
    for name in args:
        for module in modules.keys():
            s = split(module, ".")
            if s[0] == name:
                s = join(s,".")
                del modules[s]

unload ("test1","test2")    # the modules of my current project
from test1 import *
from test2 import *

I don't need a second interpreter this way. It is assumed that the
unloaded modules aren't used by another part of the interpreter or
something will probably crash. Works well with MacIDE, probably on
Win/Unix too.

Hope this helps

Peter




From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 22:53:57 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:53:57 +1000
Subject: My missing posts
In-Reply-To: <7u0k1b$eae$1@ffx2nh3.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <002901bf1526$3263b900$0801a8c0@bobcat>

> Actually about a month ago, you sent me e-mail saying that
> you had posted
> code that would make it possible to use win32com without
> having to use the
> registry and that I could find it using DejaNews.  I was
> unable to find it
> (I thought because of my own incompetence) so if you have it handy
I'd
> appreciate a re-post.

Actually, the post I am referring to was about 6 months ago (which
still doesnt mean it made it :-(.  Here it is again:

Mark.
import win32api, imp, sys

def magic_import(modulename, filename):
	# win32 can find the DLL name.
	h = win32api.LoadLibrary(filename)
	found = win32api.GetModuleFileName(h)
	# Python can load the module
	mod = imp.load_module(modulename, None, found, ('.dll', 'rb',
imp.C_EXTENSION))
	# inject it into the global module list.
	sys.modules[modulename] = mod
	# And finally inject it into the namespace.
	globals()[modulename] = mod
	win32api.FreeLibrary(h)

try:
	import pywintypes
except ImportError:
	magic_import("pywintypes", "pywintypes15.dll")
try:
	import pythoncom
except ImportError:
	magic_import("pythoncom", "pythoncom15.dll")




From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Fri Oct 29 08:43:22 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:43:22 -0400
Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933D001@rimail03>

http://starship.python.net/quick-ref1_52.html


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ron A. Zajac [mailto:zajac at nortelnetworks.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 6:28 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
> 
> 
> 
> Dearest, Darling Python Weenies,
> 
> I looked about http://www.python.org/ a bit, and also scouted 
> around on
> my O'Reilly "Programming Python" CD, but couldn't find a Quick Ref
> beyond 1.3.  I'm using 1.5; is there such an animal?
> 
> Thanx in advance!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From thomas at xs4all.nl  Thu Oct 21 10:13:36 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:13:36 +0200
Subject: Newbie question: files..
In-Reply-To: <7ulc06$pmk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <000601bf12db$2759d640$072d153f@tim> <7ulc06$pmk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <19991021161335.A9043@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 09:25:43PM +0000, Wesley C. wrote:
> jesse's shorter 1-liner:
> 
> print open('testfile.txt').read()
> 
> ...is fine too, although it's always a good idea to close
> the file.  in this example, we've lost our file handle
> and must wait for the garbage collector to cleanup after
> us.  if the file is deleted while it is still opened, it
> may still show up on a directory listing because the file
> ref. count hasn't gone down to zero yet.

Actually, no, thank god it wont. Files on filesystems work remarkably like
python objects ;) A file as listed in a directory listing isn't actually a
file, it's a _reference_ to a file. Deleting a file only deletes the
reference to it, not necessarily the file itself. Once a file has no
references, its space gets reclaimed. However, you also create a (sort of)
reference to a file by open()ing it, so as long as you have it open, it wont
be reclaimed, even if it's deleted from the original directory. You can't
get it back, though, short of copying all the data while you still have it
open.

Actually, since linux 2.1.something, you can 'retrieve' a file that's been
deleted, but is still open by some process, by copying /proc/<pid>/fd/<fd>
to a new (or old) location. Note that you wont get any 'pending changes'
that haven't been written to disk yet, you get the file back exactly as if
it hadn't been deleted yet. If you insist on retrieving the file as it
'would have been' if you hadn't deleted it, and the program had finished,
you have to convince the program to flush it's buffers, but wait before
exiting. I dont think there is a 'relink' method yet, as /proc is supposed
to be a different filesystem.

For the curious:

Python 1.5.2+ (#4, Aug 25 1999, 08:17:00)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> file = open("/tmp/tmpfile",'r+')
>>> import os
>>> os.getpid()
19504

>>> file.readline()
'Our chief weapon is suprise! Suprise and fear!\012'

>>> file.readline()
'Our two weapons are Suprise and Fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope!\012'

>>> file.readline()
'Amongst our weaponry are such elements as suprise and fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope and nice red suits and oh bugger.\012'

>>> file.write("I didn't expect some kind of spanish inquisition!\n")
>>> 
Suspended

centurion:~ > cd /proc/19504/fd

centurion:/proc/19504/fd > ls -l

total 0
lrwx------   1 thomas   thomas         64 Oct 21 16:07 0 -> /dev/pts/15
lrwx------   1 thomas   thomas         64 Oct 21 16:07 1 -> /dev/pts/15
lrwx------   1 thomas   thomas         64 Oct 21 16:07 2 -> /dev/pts/15
lrwx------   1 thomas   thomas         64 Oct 21 16:07 3 -> /tmp/tmpfile

centurion:/proc/19504/fd > rm /tmp/tmpfile 
centurion:/proc/19504/fd > ls -l 3
lrwx------   1 thomas   thomas         64 Oct 21 16:07 3 -> /tmp/tmpfile (deleted)

centurion:/proc/19504/fd > cp 3 /tmp/tmpfile2
centurion:/proc/19504/fd > cat /tmp/tmpfile2
Our chief weapon is suprise! Suprise and fear!
Our two weapons are Suprise and Fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope!
Amongst our weaponry are such elements as suprise and fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope and nice red suits and oh bugger.

centurion:/proc/19504/fd > fg
python (wd: ~)
file.flush()
>>> 
Suspended

centurion:/proc/19504/fd > cp 3 /tmp/tmpfile2
centurion:/proc/19504/fd > cat /tmp/tmpfile2 
Our chief weapon is suprise! Suprise and fear!
Our two weapons are Suprise and Fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope!
Amongst our weaponry are such elements as suprise and fear and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope and nice red suits and oh bugger.
I didn't expect some kind of spanish inquisition!

toys-toys-toys'ly y'rs, 
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From darrell at dorb.com  Fri Oct 29 09:02:31 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:02:31 -0400
Subject: Destroying files
References: <7v9h4r$k33$1@sparky.wolfe.net> <19991028150103.A106850656@vislab.epa.gov> <000701bf21a5$cbf1b8c0$88129fce@wolfenet.com> <19991029074757.A106968704@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <0b6201bf220d$e603ef40$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

>Randall Hopper
> Safest bet is a reformat of your hard drive.

I think reformatting only destroys the linkage between blocks. The data
remains.

Write in 'C' for DOS something that will write to a file until the disk is
full. Boot into DOS from floppy delete everything and run your disk filler.
And reformat for good measure.

Repeat until paranoid concerns are diminished to acceptable levels.

--Darrell




From robert at leftfieldcorp.com  Thu Oct 28 18:54:59 1999
From: robert at leftfieldcorp.com (Robert Leftwich)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:54:59 +1000
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <199910281837.OAA04196@python.org>
Message-ID: <NDBBKOPFDEKGPDKEKFGMEEAGCKAA.robert@leftfieldcorp.com>

On my dual PII-350 running NT4+SP4 I get the following :

>>> RegQueryValueEx(keyNTCurVer,'CurrentType')
('Multiprocessor Free', 1)

Robert Leftwich



From brucehoult at pobox.com  Fri Oct 29 09:52:30 1999
From: brucehoult at pobox.com (Bruce Hoult)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 02:52:30 +1300
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990106480001@bruce.bgh> <381A5FE7.1EBECBE2@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <brucehoult-3010990252300001@bruce.bgh>

In article <381A5FE7.1EBECBE2 at bigfoot.com>, Louis Madon
<madonl at bigfoot.com> wrote:

> > I note that the ambiguity can arise *only* if some module that (directly
> > or indirectly) calls foo() also (directly or indirectly) depends on both
> > AA and BB.
> > 
> > For example, you suggested that maybe something in module X calls
> > something in module Y, passing it a BB.  Module Y creates an AA (which X
> > doesn't know about) and calls foo(AA, BB).  oops.  The only place that
> > this problem can be detected at compile-time is in module X, and then only
> > if the compiler knows that module Y imports both AA and foo EVEN IF IT
> > DOESN'T RE-EXPORT THEM.  This seems like a big ask.
> 
> I agree, but isn't that what runtime exceptions are for?

That's right, but some people seem to prefer to get told about potential
problems at compile time -- there is always a danger that the particular
case that causes the exception doesn't get exercised in testing but gets
hit in the field.


> >  If not then perhaps foo() is trying to do too much and
> > should be split up?  In particular, perhaps there should instead be a
> > bar(A) and baz(B) and just a single, generic, version of foo(A, B) that
> > calls bar(A) and baz(B) as part of its operation.  In which case the
> > implementator of AA should make a bar(AA) and the implementatior of BB
> > should make a baz(BB). And then all is sweetness and light :-)
> 
> You're not suggesting explicit type tests inside foo(A, B) are you? 

Aww, *maate*.  Strewth, I'm not suggesting any such thing as a type test.


> Thats precisely the kind of thing we need to get away from.  I could
> come along and define a new class AB that inherits from both A and B and
> all of a sudden your typecase is broken.

The only typecase is in the (compiler-generated) code for the generic
function itself.

When you define your class AB, you'll just need to define appropriate
bar(AB) and baz(AB) methods.

-- Bruce



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Fri Oct 15 19:18:58 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 23:18:58 GMT
Subject: re question
References: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <slrn80eur8.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <slrn80evol.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:26:50 -0700, Max M. Stalnaker bilang:
| I have the following code:
| 
|  def subset(self):
|   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
|   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]
| 
| Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
| stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
| single %.  The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags is
| just the way I tried and had sometime success.

Actually, ignore my last post. :)  There's a better way: use '.', which will
match any character, instead of '[^%]': 

>>> str=r"blah blah blah %%%important stuff to be extracted%%%more useless junk"
>>> import re
>>> group=re.search(r"%%%(.+)%%%", str)
>>> group.groups()
('important stuff to be extracted',)

-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Fri Oct 29 16:57:46 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 20:57:46 GMT
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk>
Message-ID: <7vd1oa$itk$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Ian Clarke <I.Clarke at strs.co.uk> wrote:
[quoted from the Ruby documention]
> Problems with Python are:

> * incomplete OOP 

This is vague without more elaboration. It's either the class/type 
difference they refer to later, or perhaps the lack of advanced
data hiding constructs (which I must say I don't miss).

Can't be interfaces, thought they'd be nice; I don't think they're 
part of the Genuine OOP (tm) concept.

> * Some data (numerical, list, dictionary, string, etc.) are not
> genuine   
>   object. 

They are real objects, they're just not real class instantiations. But they
behave like objects. The disadvantage is of course that they don't have classes
you can derive your own stuff from. In practice you don't do this a lot,
and in practice, there are classes like UserDict and UserList to take
care of this problem.

Still, this distinction doesn't feel clear, and it is something that people
want to address for Python 2.0.

> * Extension modules in C don't realize genuine objects. 

For certain values of the word 'object', this is true. :) The classless
objects (they have 'types' instead) are implemented in C, while the 
classy objects are generally implemented in Python. There are extension
systems muddle this difference, though. Personally I haven't worked 
with them, though I know Zope uses ExtensionClasses.

> * Tiresome self. are required when each access to instance variable 

Opinions differ on this one. The 'self.' prefix makes it very clear you
are dealing with a class variable. It also makes it clear that this is
actually exactly the same as an 'other.' prefix; the symmetry here is nice.

> * Functions are first class object (Of cource, we know it is not
> weak)    

If it's not a weakness, what's the problem? :)

>  del, len, etc. are not Object-Oriented. (There are __len__, etc. but
> ...) 

There's a good reason for the 'del'; it removes a variable from 
a namespace. Conceptually it works on the reference, not on the thing that
the reference refers to. Sort of like '=' for assignment, and we don't
complain about that one either. This is a FAQ.

len is a FAQ too; the idea is that the len() function is generic. Also that
it can be applied on object that don't have any methods.
But I'd agree one could argue about this one.

> * Ugly method calling for superclass 

Agreed. Though fairly simple and flexible. But something nicer (what?) would
be nicer.

> * No class method (module functions alternate it)

Python's strong namespace support and module functions almost make class 
methods unnecessary. (although this is helped by the fact that 'private'
data members (__foo) are not so commonly used in Python). Anyway, they'd
be nice to have, but it's certainly not terrible they're not there.
 
> * No way to automatically convert between long integer and small
> integer. 

I'll leave this to someone else. Is this a problem? A feature?

> * Because there is no genuine GC, memory leak occur often 

I'd say 'often' is an exaggaration, but of course GC is on lots of people's
wishlist for Python, so no argument here; this is a problem.

> * Writing extension modules is bothersome (some betterments in 1.5) 

People more experienced with this can comment on this. Using SWIG certainly 
isn't very difficult, though..

> * Tuple and list has overlap functionally (not serious) 

No, not serious. The distinction is sometimes useful.

> * Function objects are accepted as arguments, but iterators are more
> elegant. 

You can implement iterators in Python, though?
Better core level iterator support would be nice for Python 2.0, though 
(for instance for loops could use them).

> * After all, declarations are featured (global) 

Only if you want to change a global variable (which you're not supposed to
have lots of anyway, usually). If you want to use one it's no problem. But
agreed that the whole 'global' business is tricky.

> * Slower than Ruby (may be improved?) 

Quite possible' don't know. Benchmarks..

> I am still trying to download a copy of Ruby to look at it myself,
> however do people think these comments are justified?

Most of them have a point, but the problems caused by these things are
generally not big. Some of these problems are seen by others as advantages.
All in all, if this is the worst list of problems one can come up with
for Python..it could've done far worse. :)

Regards,

Martijn 
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From olme at ebox.tninet.se  Sat Oct  2 01:31:40 1999
From: olme at ebox.tninet.se (Anders olme)
Date: 02 Oct 1999 07:31:40 +0200
Subject: newbie question int to string conversion
Message-ID: <m3emfegwg3.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

Hello.

I'm tryinig to convert a list of strings to integer. 
The problem is that not all elements are numbers some of them contains letters 
Is there any easy way to determine is a strings contains illegal charaters?
Now I only get exceptions and I think a exceptionshandler is a bit overkill
for my needs.

-- 
//Anders Olme
//
//E-mail: olme at ebox.tninet.se



From jtt at hnc.com  Mon Oct 11 13:17:55 1999
From: jtt at hnc.com (James Turney)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:17:55 -0700
Subject: Example using the select module
Message-ID: <38021BC3.11FB6FE7@hnc.com>

Does anybody have and example using the select module with sockets.

Thanks in advance.






From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 26 07:09:38 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:09:38 +0200
Subject: help for embedded list
References: <7v4qr8$o46$1@news.vsnl.net.in>
Message-ID: <002901bf1fa2$9b804120$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

kirank at bom3.vsnl.net.in wrote:
> in python 1.5 (on Rh linux), I declared a declared a two dimensional
> list, more like array[8][8] in "C ".

strangely enough, you forgot to tell us how you
"declared" that list...  it's perfectly possible to
create lists that doesn't share sublists, but it's
easy to mess up.  see

http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#4.50

for more information.

(couldn't get through right now, but the following
mirror worked for me:

http://www.cwi.nl/www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#4.50

</F>

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




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Tue Oct  5 10:45:12 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 14:45:12 GMT
Subject: Circular refs
In-Reply-To: <000801bf0951$b5b67da0$18a0143f@tim>
References: <000801bf0951$b5b67da0$18a0143f@tim>
Message-ID: <001001bf0f40$3aa293c0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> I can dream up a million ways to kludge around this bug, but I
>> was referring to a 'fix' to the Python source code. How hard can
>> it be?

> It's unclear, but I can give you a lower bound:  in all the years
> people have been whining about how easy this is to "fix", nobody
> has managed to fix it.

How about this:

import types

class Noisy:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
        print "Created " + self.name
    def __del__(self):
        print "Destroyed " + self.name

# Only handles class instances (for now)
def mydel(obj, done = None):
    if done is None:
        done = []
    items = obj.__dict__.items()
    for key, value in items:
        if value in done:
            continue
        if type(value) != types.InstanceType:
            continue
        done.append(value)
        mydel(value, done[:])
        del obj.__dict__[key]

def main():
    a = Noisy("a")
    b = Noisy("b")
    a.b = b
    b.a = a
    mydel(a)
    del a
    mydel(b)
    del b
    print "End"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

If I can fix this in Python (admittedly for a limited set of
cases, but it should be easy enough to expand on), then why
not in C?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 08:02:50 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:02:50 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f@tim> <01d701bf1553$c1e459e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <19991014073742.A464002@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <00a801bf163c$0a4276c0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  |real programmers don't ;-)
> 
> Hehehe.  Very funny :-) 
> 
> SWIGing C interfaces IMO beats writing your own per-function/-type Py_*
> routines by a mile, in time and maintainability.  It's not perfect, but
> it's a big step up.

Sure, but I wasn't comparing SWIGged interfaces with hand-
crafted interfaces for large C API's.  I'm talking about a system
which uses a single 16k DLL to access major portions of the
Windows API, and uses a relatively small Python layer to
abstract away most of the complexity of that API.

In my book, that's about as cool as can be.

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From bgkloss at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 28 03:07:11 1999
From: bgkloss at my-deja.com (bgkloss at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 07:07:11 GMT
Subject: doesn't like / as a divide symbol
References: <7v8gnb$2d0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7v8smu$a9c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7v8gnb$2d0$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  battery841 at usa.net wrote:
> I am new to Python.  I am trying to write a program that will do a
> redundant math equation for my science class.  However, when I try to
> run the program, it gives me the following error:
>
>   File "saturated.py", line 20, in ?
>     PERCENT_SATURATED=SATURATION_ARRAY[count] / MEASURED_ARRAY[count]
> TypeError: bad operand type(s) for /
>
> I don't get what's wrong with that.  I believe that all my arrays are
> okay.  Any ideas?
Yes - it looks like one of the values is not a number

What results do you get if you just print SATURATION_ARRAY[count]
and MEASURED_ARRAY[count]?


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Oct 28 18:12:47 1999
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 18:12:47 -0400
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <3dvh7rb0dc.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>

Brian Kelley <kelley at bioreason.com> writes:
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]

Note that the function supplied to sort is supposed to only return 0 when 
x and y are equal, and return +/-1 depending on which value is larger.  
Try lambda x,y: cmp( len(x), len(y) ) instead.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
We must avoid duplication of effort, because that is being done by others.
    -- Arthur Mitchell



From philen at earn.aa.ans.net  Thu Oct  7 16:13:00 1999
From: philen at earn.aa.ans.net (Phillip Lenhardt)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 20:13:00 GMT
Subject: Nolan's question of the day: distributed servers?
References: <87btal3td5.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <slrn7vpvmc.k3a.philen@earn.aa.ans.net>

In article <87btal3td5.fsf at ethereal.dhis.org>, Nolan Darilek wrote:
>My current big project is a MUD server in Python. I have some
>interesting ideas, only one of which I'll bore you all with. :) I
>honestly don't know how Python will perform in this area. I'm not
>aiming my code at lower-end processors though, so I'm not terribly
>worried, but in order to alleviate some of this, I'm trying to either
>use an existing object distribution scheme such as CORBA/ILU, or
>*shudder* write my own. :)

As I recall, the MUD FAQ has some good reasons why it is not worth
the trouble to make a MUD distributed.



From mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI  Wed Oct 13 05:55:00 1999
From: mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI (Markus Stenberg)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 12:55:00 +0300
Subject: Has anyone tried Python->Dylan conversion?
Message-ID: <al84sfva8ln.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>

Just as food for thought ; apparently, even the free Dylan
(www.gwydiondylan.org) outperforms Python by order of magnitude, at least
in method calls and such.

To back my assertion: inefficient simple-prime-test code, checking 1000->1M:

C	0.26s user 0.00s system 82% cpu 0.314 total
Dylan	1.12s user 0.02s system 97% cpu 1.174 total
Perl	4.69s user 0.01s system 95% cpu 4.898 total
Python	8.33s user 0.04s system 96% cpu 8.677 total

Even by doing the classical recurse-monster lisp-like prime test, the Dylan
version was roughly 3 seconds.

At least simpler syntactic parts should compile fairly cleanly, I
think.. but I dislike Dylan's syntax itself, so main use would be just
producing Python->Dylan->C modules (which would, theoretically speaking, be
faster than original Python, or current Py2C modules).

-Markus

-- 
"The truth is out there."					-X-files
"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head."	-T.Pratchett



From nolan at ethereal.dhis.org  Thu Oct 14 00:55:19 1999
From: nolan at ethereal.dhis.org (Nolan Darilek)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 23:55:19 -0500
Subject: non-file-based web server?
Message-ID: <87hfjuwngo.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>

Wow, nice technical terminology in the subject line, no? :)

Out of curiousity, is there an HTTP server written in Python which
doesn't depend on files? Instead, what I'd like to do is to use
HTMLgen to generate dynamic content within the program, and serve
that via the web server.

My goal, in a nutshell, is to implement a simple package installer
which uses a web interface. Basically, the installer launches a web
server and either gives the user the URL to connect to, or launches a
specific web browser to view the page and start the
installation. Though I'm sure I could provide HTML with the package,
it'd be great if the pages could all originate within the install
script.



From nolan at ethereal.dhis.org  Wed Oct  6 23:47:51 1999
From: nolan at ethereal.dhis.org (Nolan Darilek)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 22:47:51 -0500
Subject: DOS Python
References: <slrn7vms3i.1al.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <199910062121.WAA04166@axil.hvision.nl>
Message-ID: <873dvnx254.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>

Just a completely random question:

How much of the standard Unixish features does the DOS version of
Python support? I don't use DOS, but it might be kinda neat to say
that my software runs on everything from DOS to Linux. And, if it
doesn't, no big deal; I'm merely curious if all of the standard
libraries, or at least a large subset, are supported.

Thanks.



From da at ski.org  Mon Oct  4 17:08:29 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 16:08:29 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 20)
Message-ID: <EC5158419350B090.6626105EB6EC65C9.75E9B9F7F2A580AD@lp.airnews.net>

Our welcome to readers arriving by way of *Dr. Dobb's Journal*'s new
sponsorship of Python-URL!

    Phil Hughes of *Linux Journal* interviews Guido.
        http://207.178.22.52/articles/conversations/005.html

    Guido procrastinates on the web and finds a whole slew of
    Python books which will soon hit your shelves:
        http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=530028166

    IBM's website features a nice introduction to Python:
        http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/python101.html

    ESR (a.k.a. Eric Raymond) mentions wanting to hack on Python
    1.6 as one of this top TODO items:
        http://slashdot.org/interviews/99/09/30/1418244.shtml

    DistUtils is getting there!  Thanks to Greg Ward's leadership,
    version 0.1 is released:
        http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/

    The German translation of the Python tutorial is finished:
        http://starship.python.net/crew/gherman/publications/tut-de/

    There's activity on the Python in Finance & Accounting mailing
    list, with various starts at useful modules:
        http://www.egroups.com/group/python-finance

    Skip Montanaro provides a tool to find variable names that hide
    builtin names.  Announcement and URL follow:
        http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=531134027
        http://www.musi-cal.com/~skip/python/hiding.py

    Michael Haggerty comes up with a cool trick that even Guido hadn't
    thought of to split the keys and values of a mapping in separate
    parallel lists:
        http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=530510248
        http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=530683849


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

      Python.org's Python Language Website is the center of Pythonia
          http://www.python.org

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

      Python Consortium emerges as an independent nexus of activity
          http://www.python.org/consortium

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

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

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

    Archive probing trick of the trade:
        http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=threaded&showsort=date&maxhits=100&groups=comp.lang.python


Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=~g%20comp.lang.python%20Python-URL%21


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
  http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/

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


-- The Python-URL! Team--

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

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct  1 12:39:38 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 12:39:38 -0400
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
In-Reply-To: <7t2l56$7uq@dfw-ixnews16.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <1273327276-4963219@hypernet.com>

Aahz wrote:
> Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> >
> >Error detection and recovery is a Real Pain even with a Real
> >Parser; a mechanical trick like "report rightmost progress"
> >isn't going to turn the infinitely feebler regexp gimmick into a
> >solution.
> 
> Okay, okay, you've mostly convinced me.  Now, here's the hard
> part: got any recommendations for a parsing book similar to the
> O'Reilly Regex book?  (By "similar", I mean a good combined
> tutorial/reference that's aimed at the ignorant but generally
> well-educated techie.  Two or three books that combine to that
> goal would be fine.)

General parsing books are rare (most focus on some obscure 
corner of a very large turf), and the "intro" ones usually hand 
hold you through building one according to the author's choice 
of tools without conveying any deeper understanding, or any 
idea how big the turf really is.

The "best" book is available at   
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/PTAPG.html
(thanks to Tim for this reference). This maps the turf very well, but you 
won't really learn "how".

For that, you'd do well to read John Aycock's paper from IPC7 and 
download his "Little Languages" framework. His design is very elegant - it 
makes it easy to understand the whole process, instead of following some 
cookbook rules and hoping for the best. It's definitely not a parser I'd care 
to embed in another app; but once you work out the rules, you could use 
one of the half dozen or so others that are around with some hope of 
success.

http://www.csr.uvic.ca/~aycock/python/

- Gordon



From skodela at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 29 10:15:16 1999
From: skodela at my-deja.com (Sindh)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:15:16 GMT
Subject: Python for game programming
Message-ID: <7vca5f$oug$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

 Hi folks

Does anyone know if there is a crossplatform library for game
programming with python.

Thanks
sreekant

--
A man needs to sleep for 36 hours a day atleast.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From dheise at debitel.net  Wed Oct 13 18:15:25 1999
From: dheise at debitel.net (Dirk Heise)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 23:15:25 +0100
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de> <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk> <939813231.529182@news.adtranzsig.de>
Message-ID: <01bf15bf$ef0e6ca0$LocalHost@dreadzone>


Dirk-Ulrich Heise <hei at adtranzsig.de> schrieb im Beitrag <939813231.529182 at news.adtranzsig.de>...
> You don't have to wait for 2 years for my patch, though. Just a few hours
> from now.  If it's still there.
> --

I just see my archived patch is still for Python 1.5.1.
Gotta get back to the other machine where i know i have it
updated to 1.5.2, gotta update that archive.
Sorry for the confusion, my split personalities start
causing me a severe headache. To make things worse, i also
treated the 1.5.2 with Christian Tismers Stackless so i gotta
separate his and my changes. (this happens when a dutch
programming language falls into the hands of the germans...)
If we're lucky, they don't interfere.

By the way, what's the actual Python version mankind actually uses?
I'm suffering a little information overload so i didn't 
keep track. Must be the age. (noch 34 Jahre bis zur Rente! Juhu!)
(34 years til retiring. Yahoo!)
 

Everythings under control. Give me another 12 hours.


Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net




From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 04:04:30 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:04:30 +1000
Subject: Disk access going mental with Pythonwin?
Message-ID: <000901bf1488$6a664be0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

[Apols if this shows up twice - I think my ISP's news server is not
propagating correctly - original msgid
is<7thfas$kam$1 at m2.c2.telstra-mm.net.au>]

Ummm - sheepishly, I admit that would be Pythonwin.  Pythonwin has a
feature that automatically detects if the file you are editing has
been modified externally.  This check is done in idle time, and each
time you move the
mouse (then stop moving it), Pythonwin enters its idle state.

I really should add a config option to control this, but currently it
is always turned on...

If you like, I could assist in hacking the .py files in Pythonwin to
disable this all together (basically, find  "def
_AddReloadIdleHandler(self):", comment out the single line, and add a
"pass" - probably in pywin\framework\editor\editor.py (but depends on
the pythonwin version)

Mark.

Dinu C. Gherman wrote in message
<37FBCB5A.D461E873 at darwin.in-berlin.de>...
>Hi,
>
>while editing a file sitting on a floppy disk using Pythonwin
>I just noticed that there is a disk access each time I move
>the mouse pointer (!) over any part of the Pythonwin window!
>






From python-list at teleo.net  Fri Oct 15 11:59:42 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:59:42 -0700
Subject: Nested if's
In-Reply-To: <19991015112051.22237.00000571@ng-fr1.aol.com>
References: <19991015112051.22237.00000571@ng-fr1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <99101509021900.03241@quadra.teleo.net>

[GeoJempty, on Fri, 15 Oct 1999]:
:: if digit > 0:
::   if digit = 5:
::     variable = variable + whatever

    if digit == 5:

*sound of GeoJempty smacking himself on the forehead* :)



From jfarrell at mincom.com  Tue Oct 12 19:05:01 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:05:01 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <939757160snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3803BE9D.7FD4D583@mincom.com>

Phil Hunt wrote:
> Another feature I would like is multi-line comments. Consider a
> paragraph of commented text under the present system; every time
> you want to add a few new lines to the comment you have to
> manually put in `#'s at the start of each new comment line, which I
> find irritating because it breaks the flow of what I am trying to
> explain.

Call me a newbie but what's wrong with inserting a string constant in
the middle of the code?

import dis

def test(x):
    x = x * x
    """Now take one off.
   
    We do this by using the subtract operator.
    """
    x = x - 1
    return x

print test(7)
print dis.dis(test)

If I comment out the string, I get one less byte code which is a
(redundant) SET_LINENO. If the compiler folded sequential SET_LINENOs,
the string would act just like a comment at run-time.

John



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Oct 27 12:30:41 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:30:41 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com> <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com> <00e601bf206b$c2c7b280$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38170692.D6D438C3@lemburg.com> <00f301bf2086$b4c43fd0$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook> <38171B4B.7CF798AF@lemburg.com> <006101bf2095$eac0c0e0$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>
Message-ID: <381728B1.48815843@lemburg.com>

Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> > Thomas Heller wrote:
> > >
> > > I searched the MSDN again,
> > > it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
> > > and installed by default.
> >
> > Sound even better ;-) (It doesn't seem to exist on Win95, so I'll
> > only use it for WinNT.)
> >
> > What command string would I have to pass to os.popen to get the output
> > (I only need the first few lines) without any windows popping up ?
> >
> That's were the problem (mentioned earlier) start. This is windows here,
> so do not expect for programs to write to stdout!
> 
> As I said before, winmsd writes its output to the file <hostname>.txt.
> AFAIK, you cannot pipe the output somewhere else, nor can you change the
> name of this file.
> 
> The following script demonstrates how to do it:
> 
>   import string, os, sys
>   hostname = string.strip (os.popen ("hostname && winmsd /s /f").read())
>   file = open (hostname + '.txt')
>   for i in range (12):
>     sys.stdout.write (file.readline())
> 
> The output on my system are:
> 
>   Microsoft Diagnostics Report For \\THOMASNOTEBOOK
>   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>   OS Version Report
>   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Microsoft (R) Windows NT (TM) Workstation
>   Version 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 4) x86 Uniprocessor Free
>   Registered Owner: Thomas Heller, ION-TOF GmbH
> 
> BUT: Be prepared to receive this in other languages!
> AND: winmsd displays a progress dialog window like this
> 
> +--------------------------+
> | Generating WinMSD report |
> |    +-------+             |
> |    | Cancel|             |
> +----+-------+-------------+
> 
> which closes automatically after the second or so, when the report
> is complete. I did not find a way to suppress this window.
> Hope this helps,

Well it does, but I don't think weird windows popping up when
calling a Python function is not really tolerable. Having the
program write to a fixed filename is even less -- you'd write
that file (which contains private data I suppose) into the
current dir which could be just about anywhere...

Perhaps some of the win32 wizards out there could help out 
with a function that gets this data from the registry (either
direct via MarkHs win32 package or indirect via "regedit") ?

Anyway, thanks for looking into this, Thomas.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    65 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Fri Oct 29 12:12:51 1999
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 11:12:51 -0500
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
References: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr>
Message-ID: <jtpuxydu2k.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

c.kotsokalis at noc.ntua.gr (Constantinos A. Kotsokalis) writes:
> This was forwarded to me. Anyone interested in coming face 2 face
> with Tom and Brent? :-) Don't ask me why I don't go, I'm far from
> being a Python expert (I'm trying, though).

        Alas, I'm in the same situation.  I'll certainly be at LISA
this year and attended the Python BoF at last year's, but I don't
think my year or so of Python and six or so years of Unix sysadmin --
writing PyKstat notwithstanding -- I don't think I can compete with
Tom's many years of Perl and Unix expertise.

> --- Begin Forwarded Message ---
> 
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:29:02 +1000
> From: Greg Rose <ggr at qualcomm.com>
> Subject: Python advocate needed for Perl/Python/Tcl bakeoff

        Hoping to provide moral support in Seattle...

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacia Lingvo    www.esperanto.org



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Mon Oct 18 10:35:35 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:35:35 -0400
Subject: configure + Irix64 problem
In-Reply-To: <slrn80k9g0.fg6.quinn@photo.ugcs.caltech.edu>
References: <slrn80k9g0.fg6.quinn@photo.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <19991018103535.A38338729@vislab.epa.gov>

Quinn Dunkan:
 |When compiling python on an indigo2, I ran up against a little problem:
 |`uname -s` returns 'IRIX64', which means python looks for platform-specific
 |modules in plat-irix646 and doesn't find any, so imports of FCNTL etc. fail,
 |and you have to manually hack the config.status (or whatever) file to change
 |MACHDEP to irix6.
 |
 |I'm not sure if the python library should acquire plat-irix646, or if
 |configure should be modified to read IRIX64 as IRIX, but the current
 |behaviour is probably a bug...

FWIW, Python configures, builds, installs, and runs fine here for IRIX64.
IRIX 6.5.5f with the SGI compiler.

If you want to override and build n32, this works:

    env SGI_ABI=-n32 configure ...

Randall



From davidh at progmatics.com.au  Thu Oct 21 23:10:30 1999
From: davidh at progmatics.com.au (David Hobley)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:10:30 +1000
Subject: Using CGI with POST
References: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9910202324180.6264-100000@kuarajy.infosys.com.ar>
Message-ID: <380FD5A6.AA2C47A4@progmatics.com.au>

Hello,

The form looks like this:

        <form method=GET
action="http://www.lineup.com.au/cgi-bin/search.cgi">

          <table align=center>
                <tr>
                  <td><input type=text name="terms" size=40></td>
                  <td><input type=submit value="Search!"></td>
                </tr>
          </table>
        </form>

I got the name wrong, I do look for "terms" in the cgi script.
There is only the one element posted.

Thanks.

PythonMaster wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
>         Could you give more information.
> 
>         There should be no difference between the POST and GET methods.
> 
>         What's the HTML for the FORM element? Are you 'posting' other
> elements than the one called name?
> 
> /B
> 
> On Thu, 21 Oct 1999, David Hobley wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > I just knocked up a simple cgi script. It works fine if I
> > use the GET method on the form. However, if I try and POST
> > it, the script just hangs until it times out.
> >
> > Is there any special magic to make this work?
> >
> > The script does:
> >
> > form = cgi.FieldStorage()
> >      form_ok = 0
> >      if form.has_key("name"):
> >          if form["name"].value != "":
> >              form_ok = 1
> > ...
> >
> > but it hangs on the call to cgi.FieldStorage()
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > --
> > Cheers,
> > david                                 davidh at progmatics.com.au
> >
> > Progmatics Pty Ltd - Architects of IT and Internet Solutions
> >
> > Level 8, 191 Clarence Street              Phone +61 2 9262 4933
> > Sydney NSW Australia                      Fax   +61 2 9262 4045
> > http://www.progmatics.com.au/
> >
> > --
> > http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> >

-- 
Cheers,
david                                 davidh at progmatics.com.au

Progmatics Pty Ltd - Architects of IT and Internet Solutions

Level 8, 191 Clarence Street              Phone +61 2 9262 4933
Sydney NSW Australia                      Fax   +61 2 9262 4045
http://www.progmatics.com.au/



From fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org  Mon Oct 18 14:28:03 1999
From: fw at deneb.cygnus.argh.org (Florian Weimer)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 20:28:03 +0200
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
References: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim> <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <87emesjzgs.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>

Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> writes:

> possibly relavent info:
> 
> python 1.5.2 (both from redhat 6.1 & a fairly recent cvs)
> readline-2.2.1-5 (according rpm -q readline)

No problem here with readline 2.1-13.6 (from Debian GNU/Linux potato).
I'm using the official 1.5.2 version of Python.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Oct 19 19:04:03 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 19:04:03 -0400
Subject: Language question
In-Reply-To: <380CE825.7676C6F3@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <1271749005-22324681@hypernet.com>

Brian Kelley writes:

> This question actually comes up due to accident (bug?)  Here is
> the scenario
> 
> class foo:
>       """insert foo here"""
> 
> def bar(foo):
>       """this should really be class bar(foo):  Insert bar
>       here"""
> 
> As far as python is concerned, this is prefectly legal except
> that the user of bar will probably get None for their troubles. 
> That is foobar = bar() is the same thing as foobar = None.

As will

def bar():
  #some long & painful calculation, but no return statement
 
> My question is, is there any real reason to allow this?  I.e.
> something cool and clever that I am not seeing?  Can I exploit
> this feature for nefarious deeds?  Inquiring minds want to know.

What's to disallow? There was a thread not long ago 
requesting differentiation of procedures and functions (yuck), 
and discussion of runtime checks of assigning the results of a 
function that has no results. That got a warmer reception, but 
not one I'd characterize as "excited".

Or are you talking about empty classes / functions? The 
former are very useful (giving attribute syntax to a dictionary); 
the latter might be used as a placeholder that is assigned to 
later.

- Gordon



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 22 10:45:24 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:45:24 -0400
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
In-Reply-To: <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com>
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov>

M.-A. Lemburg:
 |I just uploaded a new version that now uses a function based API.
 |This avoids the long import time due the module scanning binaries
 |or spawning shells. The location is the same as above and running
 |the script still prints the above text to stdout except that
 |the libc check is now only done on Linux systems ... 

 |... do *BSD and others have the problem of two different libc's ?

No, not that can be linked with by the same set of objects (for FreeBSD).

FreeBSD 3.x and later is ELF.  Folks sometimes install AOUT libs for old
progs they can't or don't want to rebuild, but that's not a problem.  Build
ELF, it links with ELF; build AOUT, it links with AOUT.

Randall



From tester89 at hotmail.com  Wed Oct 20 08:56:09 1999
From: tester89 at hotmail.com (tester89 at hotmail.com)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 12:56:09 GMT
Subject: unmimify or ...................
Message-ID: <7uke53$3i8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Does anyone know if a module exists that would take an email message
with or without attachments and create objects for each portion of the
message?

What i'm looking for is to parse an email message and have the contents
of the message available to me like:

message[0] (Headers)
message[1] (Body)
message[2] (Attachment 1)
message[3] (Attachment 2)

and so on. I don't want to have to recreate the wheel if it's already
been done. Can anyone help?

Thanks!

-Glen Collins


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Before you buy.



From tolot at utolot.toppoint.de  Wed Oct 27 23:51:06 1999
From: tolot at utolot.toppoint.de (Marc Christiansen)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 99 22:51:06 CDT
Subject: from (some module) import *
References: <38172D03.2CF4CAE5@cfdrc.com>
Message-ID: <tolot.099c@utolot.toppoint.de>

Ed elb at cfdrc.com wrote:
> I'm new to Python, I hope I'm not trying to do the wrong thing here, but
> pls correct me if I am:
> 
> I want to prompt for a module name, then import it.  How do I make the
> module name in the "from" or "import" operators a variable?  I was
> trying
> 
> print "enter the file name"
> filename = raw_input()
> from filename import *

try this: >>> exec "from "+filename+" import *"

exec-can-be-usefull-ly y'rs Marc
-- 
"Claims about the evils of cannabis have been exaggerated: The question now
 is not whether it should be legalised, but how and when."
                        http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980221/contents.html
PGP-Key fingerprint   EE 2E C1 06 D1 28 89 D2  F9 CE 35 7B F8 F4 42 52



From andrew at starmedia.net  Fri Oct 29 18:19:54 1999
From: andrew at starmedia.net (Andrew Csillag)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 18:19:54 -0400
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk> <7vd1oa$itk$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <381A1D8A.6493E814@starmedia.net>

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> > * No way to automatically convert between long integer and small
> > integer.
> 
> I'll leave this to someone else. Is this a problem? A feature?

I rarely have problems with this since you can do 1+1L and get 2L....

> > * Writing extension modules is bothersome (some betterments in 1.5)
> 
> People more experienced with this can comment on this. Using SWIG certainly
> isn't very difficult, though..

In my experience, unless ruby's extension interfaces is like tcl's which
while simple, isn't terribly powerful, Python's is simple enough (I've
been known for doing simple extension modules in about 3 minutes -- no
SWIG). But even complicated ones with SWIG aren't hard.  Actually, even
without SWIG it isn't really hard, just boring since most of it is
boilerplate.

> > * Function objects are accepted as arguments, but iterators are more
> > elegant.
> 
> You can implement iterators in Python, though?
> Better core level iterator support would be nice for Python 2.0, though
> (for instance for loops could use them).

I argue that simplicity is better than elegance most of the time, thus
function objects over iterators.  Besides who wants to make an iterator
when you just want to pass a function you already have?  Reminds me of
how you pass methods around in Java (make an instance of (usually) an
inner class that inherits from some interface that just calls the outer
class's method)... Grr...

> 
> > I am still trying to download a copy of Ruby to look at it myself,
> > however do people think these comments are justified?
> 
> Most of them have a point, but the problems caused by these things are
> generally not big. Some of these problems are seen by others as advantages.
> All in all, if this is the worst list of problems one can come up with
> for Python..it could've done far worse. :)

>From what I saw, it looks like they tried to mix python and perl by
sticking the python down the camel's throat and got camel puke.  You
have whitespace for indentation, but all the regexy crap and extraneous
?'s and $'s that make it ugly.

-lets-make-a-language-named-perl-so-we-can-cast-it-to-swine-ly yours,
Drew
-- 
import string,sys;t=string;f=t.index;j=t.join;print(lambda
s:j(map(lambda
x,s=s:x[:f(x,':')+2]+j(map(lambda y:'%02X'%ord(y),x[f(x,':')+2:]),'
'),map
(lambda i,s=s:("%04X: "%
i)+s[i:i+16],range(0,len(s),16))),'\n'))(open(sys.
argv[1]).read())



From Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com  Thu Oct 28 22:21:38 1999
From: Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com (Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 02:21:38 GMT
Subject: gadfly install problem: "from sqlsem import Parse_Context" fails.
Message-ID: <7vb0bh$s9u$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

After installing gadfly via
    (1) downloading individual *.py files from
            http://www.chordate.com/kwParsing/index.html
        (there does not seem to be a zipped package??),

    (2) downloading kwP from the same site, and

    (3) running "python gfinstall.py"

running the test "python gftest dbtest" gives me the following:

------begin------
testing

TABLE CREATES
create table frequents (drinker varchar, bar varchar, perweek integer)
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "gftest.py", line 721, in ?
    test(directory)
  File "gftest.py", line 19, in test
    curs.execute(x)
  File "gadfly.py", line 320, in execute
    from sqlsem import Parse_Context
ImportError: cannot import name Parse_Context
------end------

The same occurs with python and pythondx.  Suggestions?  If more
details of my operating environment are needed I will gladly
give.  Follow-ups by email please.

bryan.hann at pobox.com


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Before you buy.



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 28 04:41:33 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:41:33 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFED@rimail03>
Message-ID: <38180C3D.5526FFB6@lemburg.com>

"Betancourt, Josef" wrote:
> 
> I use the following code.  Its kludgy and I'm a Python newbie, but so far it
> works, so.....
> ...
>     if on98 :
>         program = os.popen(cmdl, 'r')
>     elif onNT :
>         program = os.popen('( ' + cmdl + ' ) 2>&1', 'r')
>     else:
>         program = os.popen('{ ' + cmdl + '; } 2>&1', 'r')
> ...

Is that how one can do redirection on Windows NT ? Would be interesting
to add in order to avoid silly notices being printed to stderr.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    64 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From duncan at rcp.co.uk  Fri Oct 22 05:47:56 1999
From: duncan at rcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 09:47:56 GMT
Subject: fastest string building?
References: <7uieee$nsa$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <8E676E2CCduncanrcpcouk@news.rmplc.co.uk>

prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers) wrote in 
<7uieee$nsa$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>:

>Just now, however, I decided to do a more indepth test with the Python
>profiler.  The results were surprising: method #1 above was fastest,
>followed closely by #3, and #2 lagged way back.  So, according to this
>test, s = part1 + part2 + partn seems to be the fastest way to build a
>string out of parts.
>
>Can someone look at my profiling script and see if I made any obvious
>errors?  Is behavior of strings already well-known?
>
>

Your strings are very short, so the actual copying takes an insignificant 
proportion of the time. Your method 2 needs to do a lot of extra work, 
looking up a global variable, calling a function etc.

Change the assignment to use longer strings in args:
        args = ("a"*1000, "b"*1000, "c"*1000, "d"*1000, "e"*1000)
and now on my machine method_3 beats method_1, with method_2 still last.

Now change the multiplier to 10000 (and reduce the number of times round 
the loop by a factor of 10) and method_1 comes last, method_3 still wins.

Finally change the definition of method_2 slightly to remove the global 
lookup:
def method_2(a, b, c, d, e, join=string.join):
    return join([a, b, c, d, e], "")

At last, with 10000 character strings the modified method_2 is the fastest.



From randall_burns_hp at my-deja.com  Thu Oct  7 01:53:55 1999
From: randall_burns_hp at my-deja.com (randall_burns_hp at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 05:53:55 GMT
Subject: Python E-commerce Development Positions
References: <mt2.0-30971-938673590@news.informatik.uni-bonn.de>
Message-ID: <7thche$3h2$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

HP's Open Services Operation in Cupertion, CA
has a variety software development positions
open for experienced programmers who would like to
work with Python(substantial prior object-oriented
development  experience  is necessary but this can be
with a language other than Python).

Our team is developing pilot applications for HP's Espeak
application framework(http://www.hp.com/go/espeak).

Please send your resume to: randall_burns at nonhp-am.exch.hp.com



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Before you buy.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct 22 07:43:17 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:43:17 +0200
Subject: Dictionary and List
References: <7upflt$m0n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <018b01bf1c82$a2aa28d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

sorot at my-deja.com wrote:
> I'm using python 1.5.1. While i'm writing the part of python script
> like this
> 
> ## Part of script ##
> my_list = []
> my_dict = {'a':'','b':[]}
> x = ['a','b','c','d']
> for i in range(0,len(x)):
>    my_dict['a'] = x[i]
>    my_list.append(my_dict)
> 
> print my_list
> ## end ##
> 
> The out put should be like
> my_list = [{'a':'a','b':[]},{'a':'b','b':[]},{'a':'c','b':[]},
> {'a':'d','b':[]}]

nope.  Python is all about references: since you're
using the *same* my_dict in all cases, the list will end
up with four references to my_dict.  not four distinct
dictionaries.

to get distinct copies, move the my_dict assignment
inside the loop, or use the copy module.

</F>

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




From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct  5 16:11:52 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 16:11:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Memory leak in JPython beta 2
References: <q5=wN479RJmAiseo=b6xMKnwEuhT@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <14330.23432.464380.623272@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "rhays" == <rhays at interaccess.com> writes:

    rhays> I run the following program for about 200+ iterations and
    rhays> see a pretty reasonable memory leak; after 800 passes, the
    rhays> leak is large.  Has anyone else seen this with the beta2
    rhays> version?  Does the new beta 3 version fix the (at least
    rhays> apparent) memory leak?  I'm running JDK 1.1.7 on HP-UX
    rhays> 10.20.

    rhays> This is a serious problem for us as we want to use JPython
    rhays> to translate XML formats for a large number of messages.

Most JVMs don't free memory associated with classes, even when
the classes are no longer reachable.  For this reason, the exec()
method in JPython leaks.  JimH has given me a patch which may fix the
problem, but I haven't had time to look at it in detail yet.

In the meantime, a simple rewrite of your Java class should alleviate
your memory leaks.  The key here is to create only one interpreter,
execfile your script, dig the function you're interested in out of it,
and then just call your function repeatedly.  Here's a rewrite which
illustrates the approach.

-------------------- snip snip --------------------interp.py
def execute(i):
    print 'execute(%d)' % i
    return
-------------------- snip snip --------------------jinterp.java
import org.python.core.*;
import org.python.util.PythonInterpreter;

class jinterp
{
    private static final int SLEEP_INTERVAL = 100;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String script = "interp.py";
        PythonInterpreter interp = new PythonInterpreter();
        interp.execfile(script);
        PyObject execfunc = interp.get("execute");
        Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
        for (int i=0; i < 100000; i++) {
            execfunc.__call__(new PyInteger(i));
            System.gc();
            long freemem = rt.freeMemory();
            long totalmem = rt.totalMemory();
            System.err.println("free: " + freemem + ", total: " + totalmem);
            try {
                Thread.sleep(SLEEP_INTERVAL);
            }
            catch (Exception e) {
            }
        }
    }
}
-------------------- snip snip --------------------

-Barry



From daniels at mindspring.com  Sun Oct  3 22:10:01 1999
From: daniels at mindspring.com (Alan Daniels)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 02:10:01 GMT
Subject: A Python color syntax file for VIM
References: <slrn7vcmuh.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain> <slrn7vfv03.v1c.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>
Message-ID: <slrn7vg3ju.f0.daniels@localhost.localdomain>

On Mon, 04 Oct 1999 00:59:39 GMT, the infinitely wise Neil Schemenauer
(nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca) spoke forth to us, saying...

[snip...]
>IMHO, your version highlights too much stuff.

Thank you, that's exactly the kind of feedback I'm interested in. :=)

I was considering wether or not to make the highlighting of standard
builtin functions (dir, len, etc) and class methods (__init__, etc)
optional or not. Or maybe optional as in you need to explicitly
*enable* it.

>One of the major changes in this version is that function and
>class names are highlighted.  This is consistent with emacs and
>IDLE.

Good, I like this.

>There is also support for highlighting numbers but it is disabled
>by default.  I feel this hurts readability rather than helping
>it.  Why are numbers in code so special that we have to make them
>a different color?  Lots of other syntax files do this so I guess
>some people must like it.

This is something I like, since data shows up differently than code,
but like everything in a syntax file, its a preference. I put my
syntax file out there so that others might find it useful, since it
does take a little experimentation to get a VIM syntax file working
correctly. I didn't have any intention of working towards making mine
the default for VIM unless I got a lot of positive feedback.

-- 
=======================
Alan Daniels
daniels at mindspring.com
daniels at cc.gatech.edu



From gregm at iname.com  Sat Oct 30 06:12:41 1999
From: gregm at iname.com (Greg McFarlane)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 20:12:41 +1000
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
In-Reply-To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=3Coq904sc08y=2Efsf=40titan=2Eprogiciels-bpi=2Eca=3E=3B_f?=
 =?iso-8859-1?Q?rom_Fran=E7ois_Pinard_on_24_Oct_1999_at_10=3A16=3A29AM?=
References: <oq904sc08y.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <19991030201241.56515@nms.otc.telstra.com.au>

On 24 Oct, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> The only thing that really rebukes me is the interdiction to use capitals in
> comments to mark non-terminals (or variables), as it does not get accompanied
> by a better suggestion, or at least, none yielding as much clarity.

Not sure what you mean here...

> The 4 columns indentation rule is quite acceptable on average, expect when
> I have things like, say:
> 
>     for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
>         if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
>             and function_name not in transparent_functions):
>             name = os.path.basename(file_name)
>             if name not in transparent_files:
>                 return name, line_number
> 
> The pseudo-alignment of the `and' with `name' is rather ugly to my eyes.
> It would be alleviated a bit by using `\' on the preceding line instead
> of `(', but the style guide suggests that we favour '(', which looks
> like a good thing.  Do some of you share my little irritation, here?
> Would someone have developed some elegant and easy compromise?  I hardly
> see one, but who knows, people sometimes have unexpectedly good ideas! :-)

I normally add an extra level of indentation to make the second line
of the if statement stand out:

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
                and function_name not in transparent_functions):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            if name not in transparent_files:
                return name, line_number

It stands out because this kind of indenting is otherwise illegal in
python:  "inconsistent dedent".

-- 
Greg McFarlane     INMS Telstra Australia     gregm at iname.com



From skip at mojam.com  Mon Oct 11 13:23:08 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:23:08 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Marking translatable strings
In-Reply-To: <14338.3253.395447.688829@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim>
	<37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com>
	<vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
	<m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
	<873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
	<001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
	<14338.3253.395447.688829@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <14338.7420.226290.477877@dolphin.mojam.com>

>>>>> "Barry" == Barry A Warsaw <bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

    Barry> The problem is string-prefix explosion: you'd have to also
    Barry> support tr'', rt'', and of course all the double, single-triple,
    Barry> and double-triple variants.  

I see no reason why a string can't either be translatable or raw, but not
both.

    Barry> Writing it _('translate') is, I think the best approach, and the
    Barry> one I plan to take when I (eventually) get time to
    Barry> internationalize Mailman.

How do you distinguish between a translatable string and a call to a
function named "_"?  If you say, "because we translate everything ahead of
time and eliminate the _() construct before execution", I'd suspect you lost
the ability to translate at run-time.  Slow or not, it seems like a
desirable capability in some situations.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From g.spat at tiscalinet.it  Mon Oct 11 17:33:39 1999
From: g.spat at tiscalinet.it (g.spat at tiscalinet.it)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:33:39 GMT
Subject: HELP!!! uploading files with Python
Message-ID: <38025757.1518450@news.tiscalinet.it>

Help, I need a little code sample. I'm a new user of Python and I'm
not able to resolve this problem:
I'm tryng to upload file(s), I did it yet with the FTP protocol and
now I would do the same using the HTTP one. 
I don't know if the FieldStorage class is better than the multiparse
method,
I have been tryng both ... unsuccessfully. 
Every kind of suggestions will be usefull.
Thanks




From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 17:17:03 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 17:17:03 -0400
Subject: Any DNS Modules?
References: <7uifuv$g1d$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>
Message-ID: <5l1zar59v4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

kain at twilight. (Scott Barron) writes:

> Has anyone created a module to do raw DNS queries and the like?
> For example, I'd like to be able to query a nameserver of my
> choice, not necessarily the one used by my system.  I'd also like
> it to be portable.  If nobody has done this, I may take on the task.
> Any thoughts, tips?

http://www.interlink.com.au/anthony/python/dns.tar.gz

This is based on the code in Demo/dns/ in the source tree.

The DNS package is listed on the Python website (follow the Modules
link in the top bar).  Does nobody use that?  Searching python.org
for DNS would also have brought this up.

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



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct  5 01:06:04 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 01:06:04 -0400
Subject: Why TERRIBLE performance of regular expressions in re module ?
In-Reply-To: <7tbrmi$5do$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000201bf0eef$532e9e80$f92d153f@tim>

[rturpin at my-deja.com]
> While debugging a CGI script, I came across the following
> strange behavior: a regular expression that seems to
> require exponential time to recognize a string.
> ...
> It doesn't take a genius to recognize this progression
> and decide not to proceed.  What puzzles me is this:
> regular expressions have a well-recognized EFFICIENT
> recognition algorithm: they are turned into state machines
> that perform LINEARLY on the length of the input string.

Python doesn't use that approach; neither does Perl, for that matter.  See
Jeffrey Friedl's book "Mastering Regular Expressions" (O'Reilly) for
details.  One hangup is that Python/Perl "regular expressions" aren't
regular -- tricks like backreferences and capturing parens go beyond what a
DFA can do.  Another hangup is that a linear-time DFA recognizer can take
exponential time to build.  A third hangup is that a DFA recognizer isn't
necessarily the fastest for a large class of regexps, although Perl is much
better than Python at exploiting the possibilities here (e.g., Perl can do a
fast Boyer-Moore search for a literal embedded substring that needs to
match, skipping-- at high speed --over vast stretches of input that can't
possibly match overall due to not containing a match for the embedded
literal).

> I don't think I am doing anything strange.  (Though I don't
> rule it out).

You probably have nested quantifiers ("+" and "*" thingies) that suffer
exponential ambiguity.  Post the regexp and someone may speed it up.  See
Friedl's book for a long and detailed course in what's needed.

> Has anyone seen this behavior,

Thousands.

> or does anyone have an explanation for it?

One or two <wink>.

yet-another-happy-regexp-user-ly y'rs  - tim





From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Oct 24 12:30:29 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 17:30:29 +0100
Subject: What's wrong?
References: <7uu59c$p72$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <Pine.SOL.4.05.9910232303420.29102-100000@venus.radsci.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <m3d7u4202i.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Fuming Wang <fuming at venus.radsci.uci.edu> writes:

> Hi, following code snippet gave me a surpise. Could anyone tell me what's
> wrong?
> 
> >>> class A:
> ...     def __init__(self, list=[]):
> ...          self._list = list
> ... 
> >>> a = A()
> >>> a._list
> []
> >>> b = A()
> >>> b._list
> []
> >>> a == b
> 0
> >>> a is b 
> 0
> >>> a._list.append(4)
> >>> a._list
> [4]
> >>> b._list
> [4]
> >>> 

Oh God, this one again.

Your example is a little more complicated than it needs to be to
illustrate the behaviour that's troubling you.

consider:

>>> def f(a,b=[]):
...  b.append(a)
...  return b
...
>>> f(2)
[2]
>>> f("f")
[2, 'f']
>>> f(f)
[2, 'f', <function f at 8118dd8>]

the point is that default arguments are only evaluated once, at
"compile" time, i.e. when the def statement is evaluated.

To do what you want to do, write code like this:

class A:
    def __init__(self,l=None):
        if l is None:
             self._list = []
        else:
             self._list = l

`list' is probably a poor choice for a variable name as it shadows the
name of a builtin function.

don't-worry-everyone-gets-bitten-by-this-at-least-once-ly y'rs
Michael



From darrell at dorb.com  Fri Oct 29 15:37:43 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:37:43 -0400
Subject: Regex problem with multiline matches
References: <19991029150848.A106981922@vislab.epa.gov> <14361.62318.90382.177379@dolphin.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <0e2601bf2245$126cef00$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

Or

>>> print re.compile( "(?s).*?b(.)").match( "aa\nbb" )
<re.MatchObject instance at 7ff780>

--Darrell
----- Original Message -----
From: Skip Montanaro <skip at mojam.com>
To: Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com>
Cc: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 3:20 PM
Subject: Re: Regex problem with multiline matches


>
>     >>>> print re.compile( "b(.)", re.M ).match( "aa\nbb" )
>     None
>
> Randall,
>
> The match method anchors the search at the beginning of the string.  Try
the
> search method instead:
>
>     >>> print re.compile( "b(.)", re.M ).search( "aa\nbb" )
>     <re.MatchObject instance at 8125338>
>
> Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
> skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
> 847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From parkw at better.net  Mon Oct 18 15:57:13 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:57:13 -0400
Subject: Can't build under Slackware
In-Reply-To: <380a7947@news.mdc.net>
References: <380a7947@news.mdc.net>
Message-ID: <19991018155713.A560@better.net>

On Sun, Oct 17, 1999 at 09:35:03PM -0500, daniel wrote:
> 
> I've been trying to build Python 1.5.2
> under Slackware 3.3 using kernel 2.0.38
> but the build dies.
> 
> I'm running gcc 2.7.2.
> 
> Is there a known problem with building
> on this setup?
> 
> -Daniel

Well, I used to have Slackware-3.3 (now, 4.0), and python compiled okey.
Did you use special options?  You have to provide more info here.

William




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:24:03 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:24:03 -0400
Subject: Why TERRIBLE performance of regular expressions in re module ?
In-Reply-To: <7tcvn2$ttc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000b01bf0fbb$00918120$cf2d153f@tim>

[Tim]
> .. Perl can do a fast Boyer-Moore search for a literal
> embedded substring that needs to match, skipping -- at
> high speed -- over vast stretches of input that can't
> possibly match overall due to not containing a match
> for the embedded literal.

[rturpin at my-deja.com]
> I was wondering if re's were optimized against embedded
> literal substrings.  I am surprised (1) that Perl's package
> is substantially better than Python's,

It's years older, and has the benefit of many more person-years of work.
Alas, everyone who has tried to disentangle it from Perl's guts has given
up; so only Perl gets to use it.  OTOH, regexps are central to Perl's
operation; in Python, they're just another gimmick in just another module.

> and (2) that Perl's package beats the Boyer-Moore algorithm for
> substring search.

Don't know what this one's about -- I said Perl can use Boyer-Moore, not
that it beats it.

> I had always thought the latter was pretty close to optimal.

Well, there are many dozens of exact string-search algorithms.  Which is
"best" depends crucially on the distribution of pattern and target strings.
In the absence of a characterization, "optimal" has no meaning.  B-M is
certainly *good* <wink>.

searchingly y'rs  - tim





From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Wed Oct 20 09:32:06 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:32:06 -0400
Subject: sys.exit() doesn't exit
In-Reply-To: <005301bf1afb$fc3a35d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <19991019145321.A46095201@vislab.epa.gov> <5l7lkj5af1.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <19991020084220.A46195476@vislab.epa.gov> <005301bf1afb$fc3a35d0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <19991020093206.A46197548@vislab.epa.gov>

Fredrik Lundh:
 |Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
 |> 
 |> The wrapped C code doesn't know about Python so propagating exceptions
 |> through it really isn't practical.  I guess the best I can do is propagate
 |> them across it.
 |> 
 |> Fortunately, in this particular C wrapper, there are only two C entry
 |> points inside which a Python callback might be invoked, so I can use
 |> static-wrapper-variable-hackery to record when exceptions occur,
...
 |
 |hint: use PyErr_Occurred() to figure out
 |if an error occurred down below...

Thank you!  That's just what I need.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From shayman at uniserve.com  Thu Oct 14 14:11:13 1999
From: shayman at uniserve.com (Fergus Hayman)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:11:13 -0700
Subject: Basics
Message-ID: <939924569.767039@neptune.uniserve.ca>

Hi  Not sure how to declare a string

    print " Hello , what is your name"
    name = raw_input()
    Eric
    print " Hello" , name
    if name = =Eric:                # This line is wrong , not sure of
string assignment ?
            print " Your a bloke"
    else:
            print " Are you kidding"

 Thanks






From mentifex at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 18 07:57:40 1999
From: mentifex at my-deja.com (Mentifex)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:57:40 GMT
Subject: Porting Mind.Forth to Python
Message-ID: <7uf1vh$dci$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Python Web links and a design for porting Mind.Forth AI are at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/python.html on the Web.
--
Forth is the lingua franca of AI, embedded NC and robotics.
For details on Mind.Forth and the public domain AI project,
see the ACM Sigplan Notices 33(12):25-31 (December 1998),
"Mind.Forth: Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and Forth."


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From S3091333 at student.anu.edu.au  Thu Oct 14 08:22:43 1999
From: S3091333 at student.anu.edu.au (Admin)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:22:43 +1000
Subject: macspeech module?
Message-ID: <3805CB0F.10470EFB@yahoo.com>

Spam detection software, running on the system "albatross.python.org", has
identified this incoming email as possible spam.  The original message
has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or label
similar future email.  If you have any questions, see
the administrator of that system for details.

Content preview:  Where can I find the Speech Channel objects for the Macspeech
   Module? They didn't come with the download I would really like to use them.
   GetPitch etc Please help Ben Jones [...] 

Content analysis details:   (5.2 points, 5.0 required)

 pts rule name              description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
 2.0 FH_DATE_IS_19XX        The date is not 19xx.
-0.0 NO_RELAYS              Informational: message was not relayed via SMTP
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-0.0 NO_RECEIVED            Informational: message has no Received headers


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Subject: macspeech module?
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From puter_programmer at yahoo.com  Sat Oct  2 02:54:23 1999
From: puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 06:54:23 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com>


I suppose I should clarify my request. :-)

What I want to do is to have a parent process spawn off a child
process which then waits for new file descriptor (socket) to come from
the parent.  The parent after it spawns several children will wait
listen on a socket for new connections which it will pass to one of
the child processes after the connection has been established.

My goal here is to make a Python based web server that will run on
more than one processor simultaniously.  I've already built one that
uses threading but unfortunately Python has a global interpreter lock
which keeps two threads from running at the same time on a
multi-processor machine.  So I need to go with a multi-process scheme
in order to take advantage of a multi-processor system but the problem
is that I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to pass a file
descriptor from one process ro another since the only sample code I
can find is written in C.

-Dan



On Fri, 1 Oct 1999 20:30:34 -0600, nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca wrote:

>On Sat, Oct 02, 1999 at 02:12:28AM +0000, Dan wrote:
>> Has anyone attempted to pass file descriptors from one process to
>> another under using Python on Linux?  I want to build a little web
>> server that accepts connections and hands them off to child processes
>> exactly like Apache does.
>
>I don't know too much about how apache works but fork works just
>fine with Python:
>
>>>> import os
>>>> f = open('foo', 'w')
>>>> if os.fork() == 0:
>...     print 'child', f.fileno()
>... else:
>...     print 'parent', f.fileno()
>... 
>parent 3
>child 3
>
>




From markil at gmx.de  Mon Oct 18 12:23:06 1999
From: markil at gmx.de (Stephane)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 18:23:06 +0200
Subject: Bug tracking tool in Python
Message-ID: <380B496A.F1C06055@gmx.de>

Hi,

does there exist a bug tracking tool/database written in
Python which is free. The only tool I know is bugzilla.
What about the bug lists at python.org?


Thanks

  Stephane



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 17:18:42 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:18:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>
References: <vrzoxfpdwp.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
	<Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>
Message-ID: <14348.57394.697161.702340@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "DA" == David Ascher <da at ski.org> writes:

  DA>                              If nothing else, it is proof that
  DA> the human mind will delve obsessively into arcane knowledge for
  DA> no other reason than because it can.

But you don't need to buy the Friedl book for that.  Remeber that
paper about the Mayan calendar at last year's conference?  
[Hi, Ivan :-).]

Jeremy



From x at x.x  Tue Oct 12 20:07:53 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 20:07:53 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <14338.4935.540522.984598@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
		<000501bf1414$b17e2940$ee2d153f@tim> <14338.15114.317626.752067@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3803CD59.9F35F98C@x.x>

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
>
> Ok.  I think I've got it now.  These are the read-only variant of
> closures, right?  So the following will not work?
> 
> def make_accumulator():
>     sum = 0
>     def accumulate(x):
>         sum = sum + x
>         return sum
>     return accumulate

Right. It won't do what you'd expect it to do. This is a problem
with the syntax of Python, rather than any particular method of
implementing closures. The problem is that because Python doesn't
require variables to declared before they are used, the statement
"sum = sum + x" doesn't specify in itself whether a new "sum"
variable is to be created in the innermost scope, or the "sum"
that's in the make_accumulator scope is to be modified. (Or,
for that matter, any scope beyond that.)

This "read-only-ness" really isn't specific to lexical scoping.
It's just the way Python has traditionally done business
whenever multiple namespaces are tied together. It's the
same sort of thing as in standard Python:

class c:
	x = 5

and if I give you an instance of c, you can read my 5 (from
the class namespace) but not modify it (because you always
modify your instance's namespace.) Hence, read-only.



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 11 08:20:14 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:20:14 +0200
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <7tivlu$ho0$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn7vpt2b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl> <slrn7vpu9b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl> <7tivlu$ho0$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <19991011142014.A11466@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hallo,

Martijn Faassen:
> Remco Gerlich <scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx> wrote:
> > Remco Gerlich <scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx> wrote:
> >> Wat IS dit? Klinkt ongelooflijk interessant. Heb je daar URLs over? :-)
> 
> > Sorry for the Dutch, this was meant as an email, was asking what
> > he was talking about and if he had an URL about it.
> 
> Everybody, even if they live in .cx, wherever this may be, that uses
> Python knows Dutch.

Ik geloof dat .cx net zo wordt gebruikt als .nu of .to.
I believe that .cx is being used like .nu or like .to.

Hmm, hoe staat het met die NLPUG?
Hmm, what about that NLPUG?

groeten,
Gerrit.



From brundage at aimnet.com  Sat Oct  2 03:44:09 1999
From: brundage at aimnet.com (Marty Brundage)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 00:44:09 -0700
Subject: (newbie) Array of dictionaries
Message-ID: <krH1N9kfUJRE66saKRbldgciktYP@4ax.com>

I'd like to use an array of dictionaries but can't find any examples
of how it might be done.  e.g. I need an array of n dictionaries which
for dict[n] might allow an element to be expressed as dict[n][<key>],
although since the brackets seem to be reserved for keys, this syntax
illegal.  When I declare a separate array dicts[] and assign the
dictionaries, I find (for the same reason) that keys then don't work
on the dictionaries in the array.

The only work around is too awkward:

1) generate dictionaries
2) assign them to array dict[n]
..later to retrieve a dictionary...
3) assign dict[n] to dictionary
4) retrieve values as dictionary[m] 

Aside from all the unnecessary data shuffling, it seems inelegant so I
hope I'm missing an obvious solution.

Marty



From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Mon Oct 11 13:06:33 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:06:33 +0200
Subject: ANN: XML Win32 Installer Update 0.5.2 991011
References: <00d101bf144b$a5a4b1c0$0b01010a@beetlejuice>
Message-ID: <38021918.8D10F35E@appliedbiometrics.com>

There is an updated version of the XML installer for Windows
package from October 11, 1999.

The recent CVS snapshot is covered.

Changes:
An older version is detected and removed after confirmation.
The DLL files are now installed into xml.parsers, no longer
into the DLLs directory.

Source files:
ftp://pns.cc/pub/xml/Wise.zip or
http://www.pns.cc/anonftp/pub/xml/Wise.zip

Executable binary installer:
ftp://pns.cc/pub/xml/PythonXML.EXE
http://www.pns.cc/anonftp/pub/xml/PythonXML.EXE

XML-maintainer: please update the Wise directory.

ciao - chris

Professional Net Service GmbH



From garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid  Fri Oct 15 06:20:54 1999
From: garabik at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk.invalid (Radovan Garabik)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 10:20:54 GMT
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87puylf1fs.fsf@psyche.evansnet>
Message-ID: <939986364.317422@cdwork.cvt.stuba.sk>

Carey Evans <c.evans at clear.net.nz> wrote:

 : --=-=-=

 : henk_p at my-deja.com writes:

 :> I want to run the python interpreter as a deamon process. So when
 :> I exit the shell it started from it keeps on running in the background.
 :> I know this is possible under unix by using the nohup command, but
 :> that is not a very nice solution.

 : You can write a daemon under Python just the same as in C.  The
 : attached module is a bit simplistic in places, but it *does* turn
 : itself into a daemon properly.  It also shows how easy it is to use
 : SocketServer, which I hadn't tried until a few minutes ago.


any chance of doing this portably? (i.e. I'd like to run daemon under unix
and windows)

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph.uniba.sk           |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!



From raymondjiaNOraSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid  Mon Oct  4 21:07:03 1999
From: raymondjiaNOraSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid (raymondjia)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:07:03 +1700
Subject: how to translate a virtual path to a physical path in a CGI script
Message-ID: <000b8d9b.daa24cc0@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>

Hi, all

Can anybody tell me how to translate a virtual path to a physical one
in a CGI script?  I browsed through the recent topics and couldn't find
the answer.  Basicly what I need is the equivalent of ASP's
Server.MapPath().

Is there any Python CGI FAQ page around?

TIA

Raymond



* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!




From znblrn at hetronet.com  Thu Oct 21 13:18:52 1999
From: znblrn at hetronet.com (znblrn at hetronet.com)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:18:52 -0700
Subject: Rudolph The Rednose Hooters Here
Message-ID: <67821AB23987D311ADB100A0241979E5396955@news.ykm.com>

THis IS it: The site where they talk about when you are 50 years old.

http://huizen.dds.nl/~jansen20




From ngps at madcap.dyn.ml.org  Sat Oct  2 04:21:39 1999
From: ngps at madcap.dyn.ml.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 2 Oct 99 08:21:39 GMT
Subject: Prizes for open-source Eiffel software
References: <7shbc4$3ka$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37F56B50.609D6F9E@atl.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <37f5c093.0@news.cyberway.com.sg>

According to Kristopher Johnson  <nosleep at atl.mediaone.net>:
> Hmm.  I'm new here, but could someone explain to me what this has
> to do with Python?

Cross-polut^H^Hlination of ideas?

It is interesting just to see what stuff other people do with their
favourite languages.

In fact, from following the links, I came across an Eiffel 
implementation of arbitrary-precision decimal numbers, which 
I've now ported to Python:

    http://www.post1.com/home/ngps/fin


Cheers.

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com>




From dfan at harmonixmusic.com  Fri Oct 15 09:37:34 1999
From: dfan at harmonixmusic.com (Dan Schmidt)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 09:37:34 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim> <19991014213412.A4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <wk3dvciw2p.fsf@turangalila.harmonixmusic.com>

Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> writes:

| Tim Peters:
|
| >     while 1:
| >         xxx
| >         yyy
| >         if not condition:
| >             break
| 
| Huh?
| Why don't use the following code:
| 
| while condition:
|     xxx
|     yyy
| 
| I don't understand the difference.

If the condition is false the first time, Tim's loop will execute once
and your loop will not execute any times.

-- 
Dan Schmidt | http://www2.thecia.net/users/dfan/



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 16:48:55 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 16:48:55 -0400
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
References: <380B8EB5.B03BB07A@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <5lg0z75b60.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu> writes:

> I am building an interactive Intel Assembly interpreter using Python. I
> am now needing to add the part where my binary code is taken, loaded
> into memory and executed. I've heard the only way of doing this is to
> use C.

I question what you've been told.  Python has perfectly fine built-in
tools for reading binary data from a file, e.g. the struct module and
the "rb" open mode.  Where is the need for using an extension?

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



From pygc at freemail.hu  Wed Oct  6 02:43:57 1999
From: pygc at freemail.hu (xr)
Date: 6 Oct 1999 06:43:57 -0000
Subject: ANN: Portable Garbage Collector For Python
Message-ID: <19991006064357.8195.qmail@freemail.c3.hu>

  WHAT IT IS

It is an experimental portable cooperative garbage collector for CPython 1.5.2.


  CURRENT STATUS

At the moment it is a developers only version.

Platforms that use the GNU configure script in their build process are
supported, for other platforms an update is needed to their build process.

Although the code should be fairly stable I do expect some bugs.


  FEATURES

Integrated into the build process (configure).

Can be called from Python code as sys.gc().

Can be used as a debugging tool to track down unreachable cycles.
In this case garbage objects are collected into the list sys.garbage
where they can be examined.

Can be used to [automatically] delete unreachable objects.

Selected types can keep the original reference counted behaviour although
deallocation of the objects might be delayed (usually only a little).

_tkinter is supported.

According to pybench-0.6 the modified interpreter is only about 30% slower 
than the original one built from py152.tgz.
After some optimization it can be (slightly?) faster.


  THINGS TO DO

Polish my English.

Write GOOD documentation that makes it possible to understand its internals.

Fix _tkinter: I expect some memory leaks there (have not tested thoroughly).

Add threading support (it should work, but it is not tested).

Update more modules.

Bring it up to date with the developer version in the CVS.


  HOW TO GET IT

The patch can be downloaded from the following URL:

    http://www.lib.bke.hu/~xr/pygc-0.1.tgz

The size of the file is approximately 50k.


  FEEDBACK

If you have ANY comments about the patch do not hesitate to write to the
address pygc at freemail.hu.

Bug reports are especially welcome.


  THANKS TO

the following people for their [mostly in]direct hints and ideas in 
the newsgroup.
    Aahz Maruch (aahz at netcom.com),
    Graham Matthews (graham at sloth.math.uga.edu),
    Greg Gritton (ggritton at ichips.intel.com),
    Guido van Rossum (guido at python.org),
    Samual M. Rushing (rushing at nightmare.com),
    Skip Montanaro (skip at calendar.com),
    Tim Peters (tim_one at email.msn.com),
    Vladimir Marangozov (Vladimir.Marangozov at inrialpes.fr),
    ??? (salvador at my-deja.com),
    and many more.




From jonathan at meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Oct 27 19:41:32 1999
From: jonathan at meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk (Jonathan)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 00:41:32 +0100
Subject: Learning to program
Message-ID: <7v82o9$c31$1@news4.svr.pol.co.uk>

A friend of mine wants to learn to program. Python seems one of the most
suitable languages to start with. I think the Lutz et al book is good at
explaining the language to a newcomer, but I'd also like to find an
accessible book that explains program design, clarity, debugging, data
structures, etc in a Python friendly way. Suggestions? ("Programming Pearls"
and "The Practice of Programming" are just too much book for my friend's
needs and experience right now.)

Jonathan Coupe







From Brian at digicool.com  Wed Oct 13 09:15:07 1999
From: Brian at digicool.com (Brian Lloyd)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:15:07 -0400
Subject: reverse function of id()
Message-ID: <613145F79272D211914B0020AFF6401914DCD3@gandalf.digicool.com>

> Is there a way to get the Python Object whose id is X...
> 
> ex :
> 
> myObject=MyClass()
> myId=id(myObject)
> myObject=None # See note
> ....
> <far away>
> ....
> myObject=FindObjectFromId(myID)
> ....
> 
> (Note : Please don't care about the ref count problems in my 
> example, I know
> that here myObject is released immediatly)
> 
> Thx !

This seems to be fraught with peril - in fact your example
demostrates exactly why :^) While I assume it would be easy
enough to write an extension module with a C method that 
takes an id and makes a PyObject pointer out of it and returns
it to Python, the example above demonstrates why this would
be dangerous. After you set myObject=None, your myID is now
meaningless, and you'd get a wild pointer back from the
FindObjectFromId method.

Just my 0.02...

Brian Lloyd        brian at digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909              
Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com 




From paul.robinson at quantisci.co.uk  Thu Oct 21 06:35:49 1999
From: paul.robinson at quantisci.co.uk (Paul Robinson)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:35:49 +0100
Subject: Debugger: PythonWin 127
Message-ID: <380EEC85.BFF74E8E@quantisci.co.uk>


O.K. I give up, in PythonWin build 127 how do you add a "Watch"...

I seem to have tried all the possibilities I can find (like clicking
buttons,  left clicking on stuff etc.)
All I have is a "Watch" window with <New Item> in it!

Help please,
	Paul



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 22 11:41:31 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:41:31 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com>

Randall Hopper wrote:
> 
> M.-A. Lemburg:
>  |I just uploaded a new version that now uses a function based API.
>  |This avoids the long import time due the module scanning binaries
>  |or spawning shells. The location is the same as above and running
>  |the script still prints the above text to stdout except that
>  |the libc check is now only done on Linux systems ...
> 
>  |... do *BSD and others have the problem of two different libc's ?
> 
> No, not that can be linked with by the same set of objects (for FreeBSD).
> 
> FreeBSD 3.x and later is ELF.  Folks sometimes install AOUT libs for old
> progs they can't or don't want to rebuild, but that's not a problem.  Build
> ELF, it links with ELF; build AOUT, it links with AOUT.

Thanks. So leaving the check out for FreeBSD is ok. What about other
nifty OSes like BeOS, NetBSD, the new BSD-based MacOS (can't remember the
name right now) ?

Some information about MSDOS, Amiga and Windows CE would also be nice,
BTW.

If all goes well, the module might be a good candidate for the
standard distribution. It offers *much* more detailed information
than sys.platform.

I've uploaded a new version:

        http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    70 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From jae at ilk.de  Fri Oct 22 11:13:05 1999
From: jae at ilk.de (Juergen A. Erhard)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:13:05 +0200
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017081520.9169B-100000@sundial> (message from
	Moshe Zadka on Sun, 17 Oct 1999 08:20:45 +0200 (IST))
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017081520.9169B-100000@sundial>
Message-ID: <22101999.3@sanctum.jae>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

>>>>> "Moshe" == Moshe Zadka <moshez at math.huji.ac.il> writes:

    Moshe> [Posted and CCed to author]
    Moshe> On 17 Oct 1999, Cameron Laird wrote:

    >> Is there a profound and/or interesting
    >> reason Python doesn't provide the kinds
    >> of introspective features we're discus-
    >> sing here (a traceback, for example)
    >> without the detour through the land of
    >> exception-tossing?

    Moshe> Yes. It is a reminder that IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE (sorry for
    Moshe> shouting).  Introspecting into "static" stuff (like
    Moshe> classes, methods, etc.) is /moderately/ ok (though it is
    Moshe> usually more a sign the design was wrong).

I strongly disagree here.  Introspection is surely not as evil as you
make it to be.  Objective-C, for example, has complete introspection
into the static side of things...

And "(though it is usually more a sign the design was wrong)" smacks
of quite a bit of arrogance on your part... just because you can't
think of a reason to use it doesn't mean it's wrong.  (Sorry for
getting personal... but it should be made clear that your comment is
*your* opinion only).

    Moshe> However, introspecting into /dynamic/ data should be
    Moshe> available (because the debugger needs it) but obscure
    Moshe> (because anyone doing this for the runtime of his program
    Moshe> is commiting a shooting offense). If someone needs this
    Moshe> information to debug his program, they should use the
    Moshe> debugger.

I also disagree, though not as strongly as above.  But again, just
because you don't see a need for this doesn't mean it can't be used in
a meaningful way.

My EUR 0.0.2 (heck, where's the euro-sign when you need one (and the
creation of a special symbol for that one *is* a shooting offence ;-))

Bye, J

- -- 
J?rgen A. Erhard      eMail: jae at ilk.de      phone: (GERMANY) 0721 27326
         My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/~Juergen_Erhard
        GIMP - Image Manipulation Program (http://www.gimp.org)
    Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -- raster at redhat.com
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From herzog at online.de  Sun Oct 31 18:11:48 1999
From: herzog at online.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 01 Nov 1999 00:11:48 +0100
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <c75aep1n5qq.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <87904konsk.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <m3aep0pwfc.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <8766znql9i.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-ID: <m33durktvv.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>

Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:

> Bernhard Herzog <herzog at online.de> writes:
> >
> > gs_command = ('gs -sDEVICE=ppmraw -r%(resolution)d -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -q'
> > 	      ' -sOutputFile=%(temp)s -g%(width)dx%(height)d'
>                              ^^^^^^^^ This is fine until you send this 
> stuff to stdout. Either Python doesn't realize that gs is ready OR gs
> doesn't send the correct exit code.
> > 	      ' -c %(offx)f %(offy)f translate'
> > 	      ' /oldshowpage /showpage load def /showpage \'{}\' def '
> > 	      ' -f%(filename)s -c oldshowpage quit')

Well, it also works for me with this version, where the gs output is
piped through pnminvert:

gs_command = ('gs -sDEVICE=ppmraw -r%(resolution)d -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -q'
	      ' -sOutputFile=- -g%(width)dx%(height)d'
	      ' -c %(offx)f %(offy)f translate'
	      ' /oldshowpage /showpage load def /showpage \'{}\' def '
	      ' -f%(filename)s -c oldshowpage quit | pnminvert > %(temp)s')

even a stripped down version that generates pbm instead of ppm works:

gs_command = ('gs -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r%(resolution)d -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -q'
	      ' -sOutputFile=- -g%(width)dx%(height)d'
	      ' %(filename)s quit.ps | pnminvert  > %(temp)s')

This second version only works if the inputfile executes showpage
exactly once. Could it be that your ps files have more than one page? In
that case piping the gs output through some pbm-filters behaves as you
describe, that is, the output file is created correctly but os.system
never finishes. Interestingly enough, when the same commandline is
execute in an xterm with bash, it seems to work properly and finishes.


-- 
Bernhard Herzog	  | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
herzog at online.de  | http://www.online.de/home/sketch/



From parkw at better.net  Thu Oct 28 11:48:50 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:48:50 -0400
Subject: linux install problem
In-Reply-To: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>
References: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>
Message-ID: <19991028114850.A11323@better.net>

On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 05:12:51PM +0200, root wrote:
> I'm running Mandrake RH 6.1.  I can't find the Modules/Setup file all
> the docs tell me to use to configure tkinter.  (my pen-ultimite goal is
> to run grail)  I rpm installed python 1.5.2 hoping this would solve
> things, no luck.  What can I do, or where can I find installation docs
> that address this problem???
> 
> David Minor
> dminor at actcom.co.il

If I remember, 'Setup' is copied from 'Setup.in'.  I think it's in the
README or INSTALL somewhere.  When I ran Grail some time ago on 486SX
with 16Meg RAM, but gave up because it was too slow.



From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Fri Oct  1 12:13:30 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 12:13:30 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: References vs copies w/ *x
In-Reply-To: <despamme.bstankie-0110990212010001@pub56k-29-72.dialup.umn.edu>
References: <despamme.bstankie-0110990212010001@pub56k-29-72.dialup.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <14324.56746.962411.814134@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "BZ" == Zamboo  <despamme.bstankie at eye.psych.umn.edu> writes:

  BZ> Hello, I have read through the Learning Python book and have
  BZ> found some peculiar behavior with the *x (repetition) command.
  BZ> Here is what I am doing and getting:

  >>> a=[1,2,3] 
  >>> b=[a[:]]*3 
  >>> b
  [[1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3]]
  >>> b[0][2]=10 
  >>> b
  [[1, 2, 10], [1, 2, 10], [1, 2, 10]]

  BZ> Notice that if I change one of the elements in b, it changes all
  BZ> of the elements.  I assume that the repetition is also
  BZ> referencing a memory location, but how can I force the
  BZ> repetition command to make copies?

Your analysis is correct.  The second line of Python code makes a
single copy of a -- "a[:]", puts it inside a list -- "[a[:]]", and
then repeats the contents of that list three times -- "[a[:]] * 3".
So the copy is happening before the repition.  

As far as I know, there is no way to use * on a list and make it mean
copy.  You'll need to use a slightly more verbose, and thus slightly
easier to understand, construct.  For example:

b = []
for i in range(3):
    b.append(a[:])

Jeremy



From agold1 at mediaone.net  Sun Oct 31 07:21:46 1999
From: agold1 at mediaone.net (Art Goldhammer)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 07:21:46 -0500
Subject: Tcl82.dll not found
References: <MbKS3.4152$IT5.272573@ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net> <7vg3hd$75q$1@newton.pacific.net.au>
Message-ID: <NwWS3.4286$IT5.283485@ndnws01.ne.mediaone.net>


----- Original Message -----
From: Kiyo Kelvin Lee <kiyolee*remove*@ctimail.com>

> You must use Tcl8.0.5 included in Python 1.5.2. It's somehow hard-linked
to
> use Tcl80.dll/Tk80.dll. Tcl8.0.5 and Tcl8.2 can coexist in a system. If
you
> really want to use Tcl82.dll/Tk82.dll, you have to recompile Python
> yourself.

Thanks. I tried installing Tcl8.0.5 in its own directory and putting it in
the path. Tkinter now works, and IDLE runs, which it didn't do before. But
when I exit IDLE I get a page fault in kernel32.dll from which there is no
escape but a hard reboot. Is this a Tcl conflict or a known problem with
IDLE? -- Art







From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Mon Oct 18 11:51:11 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:51:11 -0400
Subject: Reading blobs with MS ADO
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6DD@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Hello,

I have a problem reading data from an Oracle database because some table
store text in blobs. Here is the result o he "desc" command for one of the
offending tables:

Name                            Null?    Type
------------------------------- -------- ----
JOBACTIONID                     NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
JOBID                           NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
COMPINSTSRCNAME                          VARCHAR2(64)
COMPINSTDSTNAME                          VARCHAR2(64)
CLASSSRCNAME                             VARCHAR2(64)
CLASSDSTNAME                             VARCHAR2(64)
JOBSTATUS                       NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
ACTIONTYPE                      NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
JOBACTIONSTART                  NOT NULL DATE
JOBACTIONEND                             DATE
NOTE                                     LONG

The last field, NOTE, has LONG as type, but it is a blob.
When my script tries to access the "Value" property of a blob field, it
crashes:

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "d:/PythonScripts/Libs\SCADO.py", line 71, in LoadTableData
    Row[lower(Field.Name)] = Field.Value
  File "d:\apps\Python\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 394, in __getattr__
    raise pythoncom.com_error, details
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147217887, 'OLE error 0x80040e21', (0, 'Microsoft
OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers', 'Errors occurred', None, 0, -2147217887),
None)

Anyone knows how to deal with that?
Thanks,
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"




From jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com  Tue Oct 26 20:48:10 1999
From: jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com (John W. Stevens)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:48:10 -0600
Subject: Q: Shared python extension module calling another shared library?
References: <EqxQ3.80$iL.19750@news.goodnet.com>
Message-ID: <38164BC9.F6D16E0A@basho.fc.hp.com>

Tom Vrankar wrote:
> 
> I've finally tried to write a python extension module, just for practice. I
> understand the basics but am really not clear at all about which objects need
> me to call INCREF or DECREF, and which ones are already taken care of. I'll
> have to cruise the website some more to find a complete example.

INCREF and DECREF can be/should be called for specific reasons for all
objects.  The simplest way to explain it is to say: if you are storing a
reference to the object, INCREF the object.  When you remove or delete a
reference to an object, DECREF it.  I have a couple of C extension
modules that you could take a look at, if you want.  Two of 'em
implement container classes, so the proper use of
DECREF and INCREF is critical.  Send me an email if you want them.

> 
> But my first problem is linking libraries. I'm trying to write an extension
> module as a shared library on HP-UX using gcc that in turn calls another
> shared library that appears to be C++ based

Ouch!  A number of questions spring to mind: Did you export symbols from
all of your shared libraries?  How are you handling the name mangling
thing?  What kind of library structure are you tring to work with?

> My approach was to follow the cookbook as directed in the HTML documentation,
> using Misc/Modules.pre.in and Setup.in. A vanilla extension module worked fine
> (a function to return its arguments; yay!). I then wrote another to wrap the
> dfi. It calls dfi_version() in the shared dfi library -- which just returns a
> pointer to a string -- and added the gcc switches specified in Mentor's
> dfilink script for the default shared library. Although make returns
> successfully, import fails (but it's unhelpfully vague about what it doesn't
> like).

What does it say?


> I realize I don't completely understand all the nuances of shared libraries,
> particularly when I've got one calling another. And the dfi library uses a c++
> library that claims to override some of the standard C functions.

Whoa!  That may a problem.  The structure of your system, as well as the
visibility of the symbols in your libraries and the libraries you are
using is critical to figuring this out.

> Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to go about linking this mess
> together? Or how at least to debug whatever problem import has? Any help is
> appreciated.

Yeah.  More info on the structure, error messages, and symbol
import/export status is needed.  As a first hack at debugging this, you
might try coming up with a very simple C program that uses the shared
library functions to set up a test environment.  Look up and read, very
carefully, the shl_load function in the man pages.

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

If I spoke for HP --- there probably wouldn't BE an HP!

John Stevens
jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:24:05 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:24:05 -0400
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.991005080830.nathan@islanddata.com>
Message-ID: <000c01bf0fbb$01aed800$cf2d153f@tim>

[Nathan Clegg]
> But making %ld work the way it "should" wouldn't break anything.  It
> would treat ints as %d and longs as str(long)[:-1].  Anyone who
> chopped the string explicitly wouldn't be affected.  Surely this would
> be a simple fix and make everyone happy.

OK by me, although I'm not interested enough to write a patch.

If someone is, push harder:  make %d do this.  It already "chops the L" off
a long, but overflows if the long is "too long" to convert to int.  This is
bad, if for no other reason than that "too long to convert to int" is
platform-dependent.

you-won't-be-laughing-when-merced-is-in-your-toaster<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Oct 20 14:58:57 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 14:58:57 -0400
Subject: Is tuple unpacking incompatible with `map'?
In-Reply-To: <vrhfjl288b.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <1271677306-26638075@hypernet.com>

Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> Is it possible that tuple unpacking is not compatible with `map',
> or is there something I do not understand properly?  Here is a
> transcript.  This is with Python 1.5.2.
> 
> >>> def postsort(pair):
> ...	return pair[1]
> ... 
> >>> map(postsort, [(1, 'un'), (2, 'deux'), (3, 'trois')])
> ['un', 'deux', 'trois']
> >>> def postsort(key, item):
> ...	return item
> ... 
> >>> map(postsort, [(1, 'un'), (2, 'deux'), (3, 'trois')])
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: not enough arguments; expected 2, got 1
> >>>
> 
> Maybe `map' is trying to protect me against errors I'm not doing?
>  I would prefer to use tuple unpacking here, as it allows for
> cleaner writing.

Tuple unpacking is not quite as automatic as you are 
assuming:

>>> def postsort((key, item)):
... 	return item
... 
>>> map(postsort, [(1, 'un'), (2, 'deux'), (3, 'trois')])
['un', 'deux', 'trois']

cats-sank-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From mal at lemburg.com  Sun Oct 10 08:05:37 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:05:37 +0200
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org>
Message-ID: <38008111.2B6F0AD7@lemburg.com>

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> 
> I was wondering whether it is possible to convert two lists into one
> dictionary with one simple function: i.e., I've got a list of keys,
> and a list of values like this:
> 
> list1=['a','b','c']
> list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']
> 
> and I want do something easy and speedy to these two lists that
> will give me:
> 
> dict1={'a': 'aaa', 'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc'}
> 
> preferably with the proviso that if there aren't enough values in
> list2, the dictionary is padded out with Nones. Is there something
> built in, or do I have to loop trough list1 myself? I'm going to do
> this an awful lot of times.

mxTools (available via my Python Pages below) has a dict() function
which converts a sequence of tuples to a dictionary. It also has a
function for zipping (or transposing) two lists:

>>> import NewBuiltins # mxTools provides this
>>> list1=['a','b','c']
>>> list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']
>>> dict(tuples(list1,list2))
{'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc', 'a': 'aaa'}


-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    82 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From darcy at vex.net  Sun Oct 10 21:21:05 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 01:21:05 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
Message-ID: <7tre21$f0$1@hub.org>

Neel Krishnaswami <neelk at brick.cswv.com> wrote:
> Yes, Python 2.0 will be Perfect(tm). :) Other than that, only Guido 
> knows for sure. 

> Some of the more common requests are:

Here is an uncommon one.  I have already presented this to Guido but
he doesn't feel it should be added.  Perhaps a few more voices will
convince him to rethink it.  I know he isn't _violently_ opposed
because he originally added an earlier version and then backed it out.

crypt takes two parameters, the string to encrypt and the salt.  My
proposal is simply to make the second argument optional in which case
it generates a random salt.

Originally the mods I sent were flawed in that it seeded the RNG on init
of the module.  This was bad because it introduced a change to programs
that did not expect it.  That was the version that Guido backed out and
rightly so.

The corrected version I sent only seeds the RNG the first time it is
called without the second parameter.  That way the only time it happens
is if the programmer specifically expects it to happen.

I am also open to reasons why this is a bad idea.  I currently modify
cryptmodule.c whenever I install Python and have never seen a problem.
I use encryption often enough that not having to do extra work before
the call (or having to use a wrapper function) makes this worthwhile.

What do you think, sirs?

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Sat Oct 16 07:52:02 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 13:52:02 +0200
Subject: Python's buffer interface
References: <19991015113444.A592708@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BF38C2B@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:19991015113444.A592708 at vislab.epa.gov...
>      From a commentary I read, it looks very useful.  I'd like to learn
> more about the it -- in particular, how to write conforming C interfaces.
>
>      However, I didn't find any mention of this in the docs.  Did I miss
> something?  Or have the docs not caught up with it.

>From previous discussions on this newsgroup, it appears that the buffer
interface is rather controversial and that may be the reason why it hasn't
been properly documented yet. My impression is that part of the
controversion comes from the confusion between the buffer *interface* and
buffer *objects*.

Let me explain what I have understood of the buffer interface sofar and then
show its relation to buffer objects. After reading this, you will see that
using the buffer interface and an alternative implementation of buffer
objects, you could move data around in a very fast and memory friendly
manner. For example, if the buffer object were implemented as a "writable
string" (as I will explain later), you could implement part of a Web server
like this:

buf = buffer(1024) # 1K buffer
len = HtmlFile.readinto(buf)
while len:
    if len == 1024:
        HttpSocket.write(buf)
    else:
        HttpSocket.write(buf[0:len])
    len = HtmlFile.readinto(buf)

Regardless of the size of the HtmlFile, it will typically take only two
small memory allocations to copy the entire HtmlFile to the HttpSocket.

The buffer interface
--------------------

The buffer interface is a C level interface that has an entry in the
PyTypeObject structure of every object. As an example, here is the
PyTypeObject for strings:

PyTypeObject PyString_Type = {
  PyObject_HEAD_INIT(&PyType_Type)
  0,
  "string",
  sizeof(PyStringObject),
  sizeof(char),
  (destructor)string_dealloc, /*tp_dealloc*/
  (printfunc)string_print, /*tp_print*/
  0,  /*tp_getattr*/
  0,  /*tp_setattr*/
  (cmpfunc)string_compare, /*tp_compare*/
  (reprfunc)string_repr, /*tp_repr*/
  0,  /*tp_as_number*/
  &string_as_sequence, /*tp_as_sequence*/
  0,  /*tp_as_mapping*/
  (hashfunc)string_hash, /*tp_hash*/
  0,  /*tp_call*/
  0,  /*tp_str*/
  0,  /*tp_getattro*/
  0,  /*tp_setattro*/

/** Here is the buffer interface entry **/

  &string_as_buffer, /*tp_as_buffer*/

  Py_TPFLAGS_DEFAULT, /*tp_flags*/
  0,  /*tp_doc*/
};

The buffer interface entry is a pointer to a structure of four functions:

static PyBufferProcs string_as_buffer = {
  (getreadbufferproc)string_buffer_getreadbuf,
  (getwritebufferproc)string_buffer_getwritebuf,
  (getsegcountproc)string_buffer_getsegcount,
  (getcharbufferproc)string_buffer_getcharbuf,
};

These functions can be implemented to provide direct but controlled access
to the internal memory buffer(s) of the object.

* The getsegcountproc function should return the number of internal buffer
segments of the object. In the case of a string object (and probably most
other object as well), this is just 1.

* The getreadbufferproc function should return a pointer and the size of a
particular buffer segment from which data can be read. In case of a string
object, this function returns a pointer to and the length of the string.

* The getwritebufferproc function should return a pointer and the size of a
particual buffer segment into which data can be written. In case of a string
object, this function raises an exception because string objects are
supposed to be immutable.

* I am not sure in which cases the getcharbufferproc should be implemented
and what it should do then (maybe someone else can explain).

The purpose of the buffer interface is to allow other objects to directly
access the internal data buffer of objects. For example, the write method of
a file can directly write the data of any object that has a buffer interface
to a file.

static PyObject* file_write(f, args)
  PyFileObject *f;
  PyObject *args;
{
  char *s;
  int n;
  if (!PyArg_Parse(args, "s#", &s, &n))
   return NULL;
  fwrite(s, 1, n, f->f_fp);
  Py_INCREF(Py_None);
  return Py_None;
}

Although it seems like the argument must be a string, PyArg_Parse(args,
"s#", &s, &n) will actually check the tp_as_buffer entry of the argument. If
this entry is not NULL, then s and n are set through a call to the
getreadbufferproc of this entry. So, not only strings, but any object that
has a "readable" buffer interface can be written to a file using this single
write method.

Similarly, the readinto() method of a file can directly read data from a
file into an object that has a buffer interface.

static PyObject file_readinto(f, args)
 PyFileObject *f;
 PyObject *args;
{
 char *ptr;
 int ntodo, ndone;
 if (!PyArg_Parse(args, "w#", &ptr, &ntodo))
   return NULL;
 ndone = fread(ptr, 1, ntodo, f->f_fp);
 return PyInt_FromLong(ndone);
}

In this case, the PyArg_Parse(args, "w#", &ptr, &ntodo) checks the
tp_as_buffer entry of the argument. If this entry is not NULL, then ptr and
ntodo are set through a call to the getwritebufferproc of this entry. So,
any object that has a "writable" buffer interface can be written to a file
using this single readinto method.

A concrete example of an object that exposes both a "readable" and a
"writable" buffer interface can be found here:
http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html.

The buffer object
-----------------

If I understand correctly, the buffer object is not tightly related to the
buffer interface.  Let me explain the buffer object by means of your own
example:

>      Also, a bit of puzzlement after trying a brief test (adapted from a
> code snippet in the list archives):
>
>      Do buffer objects not have any methods?
>
>      ----------------------------------------------------------------
>      >>> import array
>      >>> a=array.array("b", range(ord('A'), ord('G')))
>      >>> print a
>      array('b', [65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70])
>      >>> b = buffer(a)
>      >>> print b
>      ABCDEF
>      >>> dir(b)
>      []
>      ----------------------------------------------------------------

Do you have any idea what is going on here? Well, it beats me. If you look
at the C sources, then a buffer object is an object that maintains a pointer
to a part of the memory buffer of another object. I don't know the exact use
of this is but I do know that it is very dangerous because that other object
may be destroyed without the buffer object knowing it.

I would like to see another implementation of a buffer object that acts as a
writable string. In essence, it is the same as a regular Python string,
except that it is mutable. It would also expose a writeable buffer
interface. I think this kind of object is what people would typically refer
to as a "buffer" anyway. See the example at the top of this post for an
example of how I would use it.

Robin.








From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Sun Oct 24 23:00:41 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 03:00:41 GMT
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov> <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com> <slrn811jtg.af8.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net> <38116D83.78817EF6@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <slrn817hta.f7.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:10:43 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg bilang:
| Note that I did not see the OS name or version anywhere in the
| output (something like Mac OS X Server 1.02). Is Rhapsody the
| code name for MacOS X Server ?

Something like that..Basically Apple's marketing department calls it
OS X Server but the os itself calls itself Rhapsody =)  Sort of like
how when you uname Solaris it says SunOS.


| > Btw, Python compiles right out of the box on OS X Server.  It's one of the
| > few un*x packages that I use that I DIDN'T have to patch.  Thanks, Guido! :)
| 
| Cool. Do all the tests run through fine ? Would be nice to add Mac OS X
| Server to the list of supported platforms for my apps :-)

Yes, the tests I tried work fine.  I haven't tried compiling curses or readline
or any of the other more complicated modules though.  I doubt they'll work
though (I can rarely get stuff to compile, much less run, on OS X).  Also,
building the shared libraries doesn't seem to work too well either; why, I'm
not sure yet..


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
-><-                        Shall she hear the lion's roar?



From robin at alldunn.com  Fri Oct  8 01:38:31 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 22:38:31 -0700
Subject: ANNOUNCE: wxPython 2.1.4
Message-ID: <003001bf114f$5d6aeb80$fa01a8c0@easystreet.com>

Hi All,

At long last wxPython 2.1.4 is completed!  You can get your copy at
http://alldunn.com/wxPython/

Some CVS troubles and other issues have delayed its release for much longer
than I intended, but I put the time to good use adding more features to
wxPython.  There are more new features than you can shake a stick at!  So
hold on to your hats and be prepared to be blown away...  (Yes, I'm quite
proud of this work! ;-)

Here are the release notes for 2.1.4:

----------------------------------------------------------------------


What's new in 2.1.4
--------------------

This release is NOT syncronized with a snapshot release of wxGTK or
wxMSW.  For MSW this isn't much of a problem since you can get the
binaries from the web site.  I've made an unofficial interim snapshot
of wxGTK as well as RPMs for RedHat 6.0.  For other platforms you'll
have to build wxGTK from CVS.  (See
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smart/wxwin/cvs.htm) To get the same
set of sources from CVS that I used, checkout using the wxPy-2-1-4 tag.

Now back to what's new...

Much more support for event-less callbacks and add-on modules.

Created add-on module with wxOGL classes.

Added wxWindow.GetChildren().  Be careful of this.  It returns a *copy*
of the list of the window's children.  While you are using the list if
anything changes in the real list (a child is deleted, etc.) then the
list you are holding will suddenly have window references to garbage
memory and your app will likely crash.  But if you are careful it works
great!

Added a bunch of new and missing methods to wxTreeCrtl.  The
SortChildren method is now supported, but currently only for the
default sort order.

Added typemaps for wxSize, wxPoint, wxRealPoint, and wxRect that allow
either the actual objects or Python sequence values to be used.  For
example, the following are equivallent:

    win = wxWindow(parent, size = wxSize(100, 100))
    win = wxWindow(parent, size = (100, 100))

Super-charged the wxHtml module.  You can now create your own tag
handlers and also have access to the parser and cell classes.  There
is a tag handler in the library at wxPython.lib.wxpTag that
understands the WXP tag and is able to place wxPython windows on HTML
pages.  See the demo for an example.

A bunch of the methods of wxMenuBar were previously ifdef'd out for
wxGTK.  Added them back in since the methods exist now.

Wrapped the wxHtmlHelpController and related classes.

Wrapped the C++ versions of wxSizer and friends.  The Python-only
versions are still in the library, but depreciated.  (You will get a
warning message if you try to use them, but the warning can be
disabled.) The usage of the C++ versions is slightly different, and
the functionality of wxBorderSizer is now part of wxBoxSizer.  I have
added a few methods to wxSizer to try and make the transition as
smooth as possible, I combined all Add methods into a single method
that handles all cases, added an AddMany method, etc.  One step I did
not take was to make the default value of flag in the Add method be
wxGROW.  This would have made it more backward compatible, but less
portable to and from wxWin C++ code.  Please see the docs and demo for
further details.

Added wxPyEvent and wxPyCommandEvent classes, derived from wxEvent and
wxCommandEvent.  Each of them has SetPyData and GetPyData methods that
accept or return a single Python object.  You can use these classes
directly or derive from them to create your own types of event objects
that can pass through the wxWindows event system without loosing their
Python parts (as long as they are stored with SetPyData.)  Stay tuned
for more info and examples in future releases.

Added wxPython.lib.grids as an example of how to derive a new sizer
from the C++ sizers.  In this module you will find wxGridSizer and
wxFlexGridSizer.  wxGridSizer arrainges its items in a grid in which
all the widths and heights are the same.  wxFlexgridSizer allows
different widths and heights, and you can also specify rows and/or
columns that are growable.  See the demo for a couple examples for how
to use them.

Added the wxValidator class, and created a class named wxPyValidator
that should be used for the base class of any Python validators.  See
the demo for an example.  Please note that you MUST implement a Clone
method in your validator classes because of the way some things work
in the underlying C++ library.  I did not add wxTextValidator because
of some issues of how it transfers data to and from a wxString, which
in wxPython is automatically translated to and from Python strings, so
there would never be a concrete wxString that would hang around long
enough for the validator to do its job.  On the other hand, it should
be real easy to duplicate the functionality of wxTextValidator in a
pure Python class derived from wxPyValidator.

I've finally added a feature that has been on my list for close to two
years!  Ever wondered what that zero is for when you create your app
object?  Well now you can leave it out or explicitly set it to a true
value.  This value now controls what is to be done with sys.stdout and
sys.stderr.  A false value leaves them alone, and a true value sets
them to an instance of wxPyOnDemandOutputWindow.  (On windows the
default is true, on unix platforms the default is false.)  This class
creates a frame containing a wxTextCtrl as soon as anything is written
to sys.stdout or sys.stderr.  If you close the window it will come
back again the next time something is written.  (You can call
app.RestoreStdio to turn this off.)  If you would rather that the stdio be
redirected to a file, you can provide a second parameter to your app
object's constructor that is a filename.  If you want to use your own
class instead of wxPyOnDemandOutputWindow you can either implement
RedirectStdio() in you app class or change the value of
wxApp.outputWindowClass like this:

    class MyApp(wxApp):
        outputWindowClass = MyClass

        def OnInit(self):
            frame = MyFrame()
            self.SetTopWindow(frame)
            return true

Please see the implementation of wxPyOnDemandOutputWindow and wxApp in
wx.py for more details.  A few words of caution:  if you are running
your app in a debugger, changing sys.stdout and sys.stderr is likely
to really screw things up.

Added wxCaret.  Unfortunately it's author has still not documented it
in the wxWindows docs...

Some new 3rd party contributions in wxPython.lib.  PyShell, in
shell.py is an interesting implementaion of an interactive Python
shell in wxWindows.  floatbar.py has a class derived from wxTooBar
that can sense mouse drags and then reparent itself into another
frame. Moving the new frame close to where it came from puts the tool
bar back into the original parent.  (Unfortunately there is currently
a bug in wxGTK's wxFrame.SetToolBar so the FloatBar has some
problems...)



--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!





From phd at phd.russ.ru  Sun Oct 24 08:16:53 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 12:16:53 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [Q] keeping *args and using it later
In-Reply-To: <7uur88$pm0$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241216060.29121-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, Joao Neto wrote:
>    nextTuple[0](nextTuple[1])

<UNTESTED>
   apply(nextTuple[0], nextTuple[1])
</UNTESTED>

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Oct 11 17:18:19 1999
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 21:18:19 GMT
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
References: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7ttk6r$ids$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com>:
| I'm trying to untar a large file from within a Python script.
| I'm calling tar like this:
|
| filename = "/tmp/data.tar.gz"
| status, result = commands.getstatusoutput("tar xzvf %s" % filename)
| if status:
|    print "error! tar said:\n%s" % result
| else:
|    # continue
|
| The problem is that every time I get an error status from tar, though
| tar seems to completely extract all files.  I get this as the last 2
| lines of output:
|
| gzip: stdout: Broken pipe
| tar: Child returned status 1
|
| If I try to perform this same operation from the command line, it works
| fine.  But if I try to do it in Python, I get this error status.  Has
| anybody seen anything like this?

I think there may be a bug in commands.getstatusoutput.  Here's what I
see in commands.py:

def getstatusoutput(cmd):
    """Return (status, output) of executing cmd in a shell."""
    import os
    pipe = os.popen('{ ' + cmd + '; } 2>&1', 'r')
    text = pipe.read()
    sts = pipe.close()
    if sts == None: sts = 0
    if text[-1:] == '\n': text = text[:-1]
    return sts, text
 
I suspect your problem may go away if you rewrite that function, changing
"text = pipe.read()"  to something like this:

    text = ''
    while 1:
        frag = pipe.read()
        if frag == '':
            break
        text = text + frag

Basically, you need this if your command is going to write more than once
to output.  The way it's written now, that read() catches the first output
and then closes the pipe, so the command will get a SIGPIPE the next time
it writes output.

I can't really explain why "gzip" is getting the SIGPIPE instead of tar,
unless maybe tar catches SIGPIPE.  GNU tar spawns a gzip command to
decompress its input, so if tar survives, it can do to gzip what you
just did to it.

	Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington
	donn at u.washington.edu



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 18 10:24:52 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:24:52 +0200
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
Message-ID: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

looks like this is going to be a busy week, bookwise.
david beazley's "python essential reference" is to be
released tomorrow, tim altom's "programming with
python" on wednesday, and there's a whole crop of
books to be released in the near future, including
books by ken macdonald, ivan van laningham, and
martin brown.

but I'm first!!! ;-)

I've sifted through my postings to this newsgroup,
and squeezed over 300 scripts into a 256-page vol-
ume.  most of the material is updated, and I've
added lots of new material in order to cover the
entire standard library.

you'll find the full announcement below.

as for my upcoming tkinter book, I'm now focussing
on getting that one through production.  watch my
status page for current info on that one.

anyway, hope you'll find this one useful!

</F>

--- actual announcement follows:

(the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
is now available from fatbrain.com.
 
Compiled from nearly 2,500 newsgroup postings by
Python veteran Fredrik Lundh, this book provides
sample scripts for all the standard modules in the
Python library.  This includes extensive coverage
of networking, file formats, data conversions, data
storage, threads and processes, and much more.

Initially, this book is available in electronic form
only, to be read on screen or printed for personal
use.  See the fatbrain site for more info.

For more information on the book itself, and where
to obtain it, see:

http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm

--- end




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct  3 03:06:17 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 03:06:17 -0400
Subject: Circular refs
In-Reply-To: <slrn7v5eh0.6i4.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
Message-ID: <000401bf0d6d$c9a826e0$a02d153f@tim>

[Tim]
> ...
> For example, Neel seems quite happy with his BDW patch -- it solves
> problems for him.  People running on sufficiently similar platforms may
> also find it useful.

[Neel Krishnaswami]
> While I would love to be able to claim to have patched Python to use
> the BDW garbage collector, I am about 98% sure that you actually mean
> Neil Schemenauer. (The 2% covers the possibility that Neil sneaked
> into my apartment and posted the patches from my box, thus cleverly
> fooling you into thinking that I did it.)

Well, we do have a mystery here!  The timbot is offline on weekends, and I
fill in for it as best I can.  Other possibilities include that you two
changed your names since the time timbot posted, or that there was another
of those pesky mail transport errors, or that "BDW" refers to something
other than what we're assuming it does.  The only thing I can be *sure* of
is that, if timbot generated "Neel", that's what it meant.  Although, for
the life of me, I have to agree with you that it sure *looks* like an error!
In cases like this, Occam's Razor suggests parallel universes.

vacuum-tube-technology-is-infallible-ly y'rs  - tim





From skodela at my-deja.com  Sat Oct 30 15:51:11 1999
From: skodela at my-deja.com (Sindh)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 19:51:11 GMT
Subject: Python for game programming
References: <7vca5f$oug$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7vfi7f$eg$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am actually looking for something like a graphics
library.?CrystalSpace???

Thanks in advance
sreekant
--
A man needs to sleep for 36 hours a day atleast.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From wtanksle at hawking.armored.net  Sun Oct 24 10:28:32 1999
From: wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 14:28:32 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <1271356405-2522084@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn816um9.dea.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>

On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 08:07:20 -0400, Gordon McMillan wrote:
>[William Tanksley]

>> >> Of course, I'm about to ask for multiple dispatch, but since
>> >> everyone who even knows what multiple dispatch is already knew
>> >> I was going to ask for it...  So I won't bother asking.

>[John Skaller] 
>> >	What do you want it to do? Any idea how it should work in
>> >Python?

>> Multiple dispatch.  Hmm...

>> Okay, the type of OO you're familiar with is also known as single
>> dispatch -- you take a message, a bunch of parameters, and a
>> special parameter (called 'this' or 'self'), and you look up the
>> meaning of the message in self's method table.

>> With multiple dispatch, OTOH, you take a message and a bunch of
>> parameters, and you look up the meaning of the message in the
>> message's parameter table.

>It's called "multiple dispatch" because, I think, you're 
>supposed to dispatch on both message and self/this.

Dear me, no.  I'm sorry I was unclear -- it's multiple dispatch because
you dispatch on every single parameter to the call, not just a special one
called 'this'.

>In C++ or Java, this shows up as trying to resolve both an 
>override and an overload at the same time. That is:

Nope -- although like using non-virtual functions in C++ to handle OO,
it's close so long as you don't ever inherit.

>Unfortunately, this means creating scores of virtual methods 
>with no purpose except allowing the compiler to find the trail.

No, it's just a different way of storing functions -- instead of storing
messages together with methods inside an object, you store the messages
globally and only the methods locally.

Of course, this is very different from how Python works now, so I actually
think it's not that good of an idea :-).  Python can be a good language
without having to use every good idea other language have -- that's what
Dylan is for.

>The real point being that before you ask for dual dispatch, 
>you'd better ask for overloading first...

Never!  Overloading is a certain way to break multiple dispatch.  MD can
handle everything overloading does, but it can also do it at runtime, the
way Python prefers to work.

Now, we WOULD need typed method declarations before we could use multiple
dispatch.

My judgement: not worth bothering.  It's really nice, but if I need it I
can always use CLOS.

>- Gordon

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Oct 22 16:34:00 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 22:34:00 +0200
Subject: Python timer
References: <7upp3m$sgd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <p6qiu3z5e4n.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

rainer2207 at my-deja.com writes:

> I would like to write a CGI script which automatically refreshes the
> HTML page it displays. I was wondering if there is a timer function and
> how it can be used.

The most simple thing to do is time.sleep; see the documentation of
the time module for details.

To implement the automatic refreshing, you could use either server
push (i.e. multipart/x-mixed-replace MIME type), or client-pull
(i.e. Refresh: HTTP response header). In the latter case, you don't
need a timer loop - the client will reload the document on its own.
See http://www.sfi.com.tw/~wong/tstpages/dynatst.htm for a brief
introduction.

Hope this helps,
Martin



From edwardam at home.com  Sun Oct 24 23:54:24 1999
From: edwardam at home.com (Edward Muller)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:54:24 GMT
Subject: How to eliminate consol window in MS Windows
References: <3813a9be.579613@netnews.hinet.net>
Message-ID: <3813D482.E71116AD@home.com>

"?|????????" wrote:

> I want to use wxPython to develop a GUI application in the
> Windows NT. The problem is when I double click the script
> file, a console window always appear. Can I execute the
> python program without this console window?
>
> ?|????????

try running it with pythonw, not python....




From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Wed Oct  6 07:29:28 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 13:29:28 +0200
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com> <007f01bf0f61$ac3768a0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <y0jvh8k3exz.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> Ian Clarke <clarkeia at logica.com> wrote:
> 
> check out ping's rxb.py module:
> 
>     http://www.lfw.org/python/

Nice ... except I don't understand why you need the welcome() and
banish() functions... Why not standard importing like other modules?
(Enlighten me, please... :)

> 
> </F>

--

  Magnus
  Lie                                     Please forward all spam to
  Hetland                                                uce at ftc.gov



From joeld at anisci.com  Thu Oct 14 16:33:22 1999
From: joeld at anisci.com (Joel Davis)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 13:33:22 PDT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim> <873dveynjm.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <38063FB7.F3BB88AC@anisci.com>

I totally agree.

I use while 1:  (and for(;;) in c) all the time. It seems like a really
good construct, however I always feel a little uneasy, like it is
abusing the language or something.. 

I wish there was some kind of "officially sanctioned" version of this,
that implied (or even enforced) that the loop was meant to be exited
with a break, somthing like 

loop:
   ...
   if (): 
      break
   ...
   if (): 
      break

This would have three big advantages:

1) It would be clearer as to what the programmer intends. while 1:
implies looping forever, something like loop: would imply that the loop
is intended to be exited by a break

2) the compiler could enforce (or warn) against loops without a break.

3) as you mention, this would get rid of the useless conditional test.

joel

Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> 
> "Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
> 
> >     while 1:
> >         xxx
> >         yyy
> >         if not condition:
> >             break
> 
> Actually, Python is full of `while 1' loops.  One gets used to them
> after a while (and my C loops with multiple exit points tend to have
> them too), but they're not really nice.  One wonders what's the point
> of having a condition in the while loop if you're not to use it.  :-)

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
                                              joeld at anisci.com



From phd at sun.med.ru  Wed Oct  6 09:55:52 1999
From: phd at sun.med.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 17:55:52 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: websucker.py versus password-protected web tree
In-Reply-To: <87k8p0bqqx.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL2.3.96.SK.991006175337.15949J-100000@sun>

On 6 Oct 1999, John van der Koijk wrote:
> 
> I'm out of luck trying to mirror a certain web-tree which is protected
> by a password-username combination. Don't know how the protocol works

> - I know the username and password ;-)
> 
> Websucker seems unable to cope with this and I can't find relevant
> references in the urllib docs. Any pointers? Should I alter the URL?

   urllib can cope with this - look for http_error_401. You may modify your
URLs to http://user:passwd at host/path.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct  4 11:01:11 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (prestonlanders at my-deja.com)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 15:01:11 GMT
Subject: Linux, Python, and pipes
Message-ID: <7taffc$3m1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Here's a question.  Pardon me if this is a FAQ (frequently answered
question.)

Anyone know what's up with pipes and Python on Linux?  It seems that
when trying to pipe the output of a Python program, the pipe does not
start flowing until the Python program exits.  For programs with long
running times and lots of log/debug output, that means you can't begin
to look at the output until the program terminates.

I've seen this on a variety of Linux systems (kernel 2.0 and 2.2) with
a variety of Python versions.

Any ideas?  I'd hate to go mucking around in the internals to see
what's going on.

thanks

---Preston


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From edlsoft at mindspring.com  Mon Oct 11 09:19:07 1999
From: edlsoft at mindspring.com (Burt Leavenworth)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:19:07 GMT
Subject: Suppressing console on Windows?
References: <7trona$v8$1@corolla.OntheNet.com.au>
Message-ID: <3801e3a3.10897435@news.mindspring.com>

On Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:19:04 +1000, "Brian Blackwell"
<blackers at netscape.net> wrote:

>My apologies if this is a FAQ, but is there a way to prevent the text
>console appearing when running a Tkinter-based Python script on Windows?
>
>Thanks in advance
>Brian Blackwell
>
>
One solution that works for me is the following:
Say your script is test.py
set up a batch file, say xtest.bat:
   @echo off
   python test.py

Go to Windows Explorer and right click on xtest.bat, click Properties,
select Program tab, select 'minimized' in Run: box, and check 'Close
on exit'
Then at the desktop, click Start, Run and type: c:xtest
The DOS box should not appear.

Burt




From dalke at bioreason.com  Thu Oct  7 13:23:38 1999
From: dalke at bioreason.com (Andrew Dalke)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 11:23:38 -0600
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca> <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <5lemf87888.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <37FCD71A.65E366AA@bioreason.com>

Guido said:
> I've never heard DNA references in marketing speak, I think.  In
> stupid Sci-Fi movies, yes.  But marketing?  Must be another
> cultural think I'm missing. :-)

You're in the wrong industry.  Take a look at, for example,
 http://www.pangeasystems.com/html/products_and_solutions.html
 http://www.mag.com/products/genemine.html
 http://www.netgenics.com/press_rel.html#gene codes
 http://www.neomorphic.com/Corporate.html

Plenty of DNA mixed in with marketing :)

						Andrew
						dalke at acm.org



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct  5 04:57:18 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:57:18 GMT
Subject: Intersection of multiple lists/list of lists
References: <37F9BADF.8B3C4221@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <009001bf0f0f$a2259000$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
> PS! How can I find info on what module returns what kind of info? I look
> into the os-module for info on what the stat-method returns, but I
> didn`t find the info anywhere. Then I looked at the stat-module, but
> that didn`t clear up anything either. I want to know how I can turn
> (432432,43242,4356,0,1,543643754,765474) stuff the stat-method returns
> into more readable text.

the library references points you to
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-stat.html

also see the time module.

</F>




From thomas at xs4all.nl  Mon Oct  4 08:15:08 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:15:08 +0200
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
In-Reply-To: <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl> <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 11:29:56AM +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:

<Dutch Python Users Group proposal snipped>

> Sounds like a good idea. I'm in. We should get the Dutch Zopers into this
> as well; we do have a Dutch Zope mailing list.
> So, now we need a website and mailing list. Anybody have any ideas?

I can host a site and a mailing list ( + other assorted things) -- it would
sit nicely next to the Amsterdam Perl Mongers site ;) (www.amsterdam.pm.org)
I'd just need a hostname/domain and a name for the list... anyone have
something creative in mind ? :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From hniksic at srce.hr  Tue Oct  5 10:46:10 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 16:46:10 +0200
Subject: print longs
References: <000501bf0ed3$0effd9c0$4da2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <87k8p16f2l.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

> It can't ever be changed in Python1.  Too much existing e.g.
>     str(long)[:-1]
> and
>     hex(long)[2:-1]
> code would silently break.

A solution that might work in Python1 without breaking the world could
be to make "%ld" behave as one would expect.  For instance, "%ld" %
10000000000000000000L would evaluate to the printed representation of
the big number, but without the L.

This should not break existing programs because currently the same
expression raises an exception.



From tbryan at python.net  Mon Oct 18 21:40:13 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 21:40:13 -0400
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
Message-ID: <380BCBFD.9CF46EFD@python.net>

Les Schaffer wrote:
> 
> just started using the getopt module. i was surprised to see it
> returns the options in list format rather than perl's (better)
> dictionary format.
> 
> i thought i read on c.l.p many moons ago about someone who had written
> an add-on to getopt to return a dict of options a la perl. but i found
> nothing in deja news for this.

Perhaps you're thinking of DPyGetOpt.

It provides features similar to those of Perl's
GetOpt::Long.  I really wish that something like
this were in the standard Python library.  I have 
no idea what it would take to get such a module 
added, but it's something that I *often* miss.

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/contrib/System/DPyGetOpt.py

It's pretty easy to use:

from DPyGetOpt import DPyGetOpt
import sys
optObject = DPyGetOpt(['foo|bar=s','baz','tim:i','peters'])
optObject.processArguments(sys.argv)
# Now, optObject.optionValues is a dict of option->value
# optObject.freeValues is the portion of argv unprocessed
# and optObject even has methods for querying the 
# option dictionary

is-it-too-late-to-make-the-python-1.5.3-release?-ly yours

---Tom

P.S.  I'm even willing to help recode an options module 
such as DPyGetOpt according to whatever specs are necessary
to get it into the library.



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Sun Oct 24 16:07:29 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 22:07:29 +0200
Subject: What's wrong?
References: <7uu59c$p72$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <Pine.SOL.4.05.9910232303420.29102-100000@venus.radsci.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <7uvotp$89m@mail.psy.uva.nl>

Fuming Wang <fuming at venus.radsci.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.SOL.4.05.9910232303420.29102-100000 at venus.radsci.uci.edu...
|
|
| >>> class A:
| ...     def __init__(self, list=[]):
| ...          self._list = list
| ...
| >>> a = A()
| >>> a._list
| []
| >>> b = A()
| >>> b._list
| []
| >>> a == b
| 0
| >>> a is b
| 0
| >>> a._list.append(4)
| >>> a._list
| [4]
| >>> b._list
| [4]
| >>>
|
|

The behavior you thought of may be achieved by a list replication:
...          self._list = list[:]

This, however, works for 1-level lists. For the deeper ones, you may wish to
use deepcopy from the copy module.

As a side note, such behavior as you reported is sometimes useful. For
example, implementing data that is shared by all instances of a class.

As a generic rule, keep in mind that assignemnt of mutable objects (those
which can be modified in place without losing identity) is really to give it
a (new) name within the current scope.

ionel





From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Sun Oct 31 11:09:34 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 17:09:34 +0100
Subject: Default curses module.
Message-ID: <19991031170934.A18715@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hello,

why isn't the newest cursesmodule, available at
http://andrich.net/python/selfmade.html#ncursesmodule, in the standard python
distribution?

I don't want all my users to have to recompile python for using my
colors-using program!

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From azverkan at yahoo.com  Thu Oct  7 23:32:33 1999
From: azverkan at yahoo.com (Brandon Ehle)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 23:32:33 -0400
Subject: XP STDOUT & STDERR Redirection
Message-ID: <37FD65D1.A707C180@yahoo.com>

Can someone come up with a good way that I can catch Python's STDOUT and
STDERR from a C/C++ program?

For the Cross Platform Crystal Space 3D Engine, I am using Python as the
underlying scripting language for accomplishing the equivalent of what
UnrealScript and Quake C does.

I need to be able to:
1) Dump debugging information to the engine's console
2) Display any Python errors / exceptions to the engine's console

The engine is written in C++, and it loads plugins via my Python wrapper
which includes Python via static linking.  I would like this to be as
cross platform and as "hack-less" as possible, so that we may easily
upgrade to version Python 1.6, etc, or allow us to use older versions of
Python that may run on a specific platform.

For those interested, the CrystalSpace project is
http://crystal.linuxgames.com/

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From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Mon Oct 18 19:17:46 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 23:17:46 GMT
Subject: Examples using curses module.
References: <19991018203242.A30860@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <slrn80msq0.1srv.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:32:42 +0200, Gerrit Holl bilang:
| Hello,
| 
| I need some examples using the curses module; can someone send me some?

<http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/perk.html>

and look at the file curswin.py, which is a (primitive) wrapper class for
creating and using curses windows.


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct  6 18:58:40 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 18:58:40 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CWI mailing lists have moved!
Message-ID: <14331.54304.245189.136558@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

To all readers of python-list at cwi.nl and python-announce-list at cwi.nl

We have finally moved all subscriptions on the two lists @cwi.nl to
the parallel lists @python.org.  These mailing lists are managed by
Mailman[1].  You should have gotten both a notification message and an
individual welcome message with your Mailman passwords.  Feel free to
visit the specified URL to edit your personal options.

Everyone who uses the email interface to the lists should send general
discussion messages to python-list at python.org.  Announcements can go
to python-announce at python.org [sic -see footnote 2].  The CWI
addresses will be aliased to these addresses come the next Dutch
morning (some folks who were on the CWI lists may see a few duplicates
for the next few hours -- sorry about that!).

The newsgroup gateways haven't changed, comp.lang.python and
comp.lang.python.announce still work as normal.

If you'd like to subscribe to the email lists please visit

  python-list
    http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

  python-announce-list
    http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list

Please let me know if you experience any problems.

Enjoy,
-Barry

[1] www.list.org

[2] Yes, you subscribe to python-announce-list but announcement
postings should go to python-announce at python.org.  That way, they get
properly forwarded to the c.l.py.a moderator.  Thanks!



From tgfuchs at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 20 03:22:38 1999
From: tgfuchs at my-deja.com (Thomas Fuchs)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 07:22:38 GMT
Subject: mime email creation with attachment
References: <7ufjr0$bpt$1@hercules.tno.nl> <021b01bf1a14$8574ddc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <7uic1c$pjo$1@hercules.tno.nl>
Message-ID: <7ujqjn$mv0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Move the startbody statement behind addheader

Thomas


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From herzog at online.de  Fri Oct 22 07:16:12 1999
From: herzog at online.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 13:16:12 +0200
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca> <87k8ogih25.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr> <14351.34493.930412.999462@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <vr1zao45iz.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <m3k8ofsl1f.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

> "Fred L. Drake, Jr." <fdrake at acm.org> ?crit:
> 
> > Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
> >  > But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into
> >  > another?  For example, is there some way by which a newly created
> >  > object could soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy
> >  > has already been registered?
> 
> > 	>>> class C: pass
> >         ...
> >         >>> c1 = C()
> >         >>> c2 = C()
> >         >>> c2.__dict__ = c1.__dict__
> >         >>> c1.foo = "bar"
> >         >>> c2.foo
> >         'bar'
> 
> Quite interesting.  So you are saying that the implementation of an instance
> is fully held in its __dict__?  That would be simple enough, then...

The only thing not held in __dict__ is its class and its id.

> >   Not to be used in real code!

I've always wondered what you might use this for. The only thing I came
up with is that you can use it swap two objects *in place*, which can be
handy if you can't change the objects that refer to them. So with code
like this:

	c.__dict__, d.__dict__ = d.__dict__, c.__dict__
	c.__class__, d.__class__ = d.__class__, c.__class__

you get them to kind of swap their bodies, but since they retain their
identity their finger prints stay the same, so to speak.

> Yet if you are right, this is exactly the functionality I was looking
> for. What else, then? I do agree that `self.__dict__ = some.__dict__'
> might look tinily odd within an `__init__' function, at least until I
> get used to it :-)

One problem with this is that you still have two different instances.
That they share their instance variables can lead to all kinds of
problems. For instance, if your class has a __del__ method that modifies
the instance variables you'll get problems because the two objects are
collected at different times and the second call to __del__ will likely
fail. Furthermore, after the first __del__ call your object might be in
an undefined state.

The sane approach is to use a factory function that maintains a cache of
instances as suggested by other posters.



-- 
Bernhard Herzog	  | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
herzog at online.de  | http://www.online.de/home/sketch/



From python-list at teleo.net  Thu Oct 21 18:53:10 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:53:10 -0700
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
In-Reply-To: <dozier-2110991645470001@pm4-s15.dial-up.abs.net>
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com> <dozier-2110991645470001@pm4-s15.dial-up.abs.net>
Message-ID: <99102116004802.00599@quadra.teleo.net>

[Bill Dozier, on Thu, 21 Oct 1999]:
:: In article <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0 at rubic.com>, Jeff Bauer <jbauer at rubic.com> wrote:
:: 
:: >One followup to Fredrik's announcement.  If you
:: >decide it purchase the material through FatBrain,
:: >set up your account *first*, and then place
:: >your order.  
:: 
:: Also, be aware that the electronic version is WinBlows only. Fatbrain
:: doesn't really make this clear up front (this is not Fredrick's fault).

Yeah, why is that? Just because of the installer? Jeesh ... that means
switching to the dusty Windows machine every time I want to refer to
it!! Ugh.

Hey Fatbrain -- PDF files are supposed to be cross-platform. Hello?

Under Windows 95 and Acrobat Reader 3.0, I get a series of error
messages:

"Could not find the Color Space named 'Cs8' "-- and others equally
unenlightening. Anyone else experience this?

However, I'm thrilled by the book itself. Great job Frederick!



From cfelling at iae.nl  Sun Oct 31 21:58:30 1999
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 1 Nov 1999 03:58:30 +0100
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-ID: <7vivkm$i8c$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>

Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
> Hi!
> How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try

> startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
> os.system(startexe)

> but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
> gets the final file written correctly.

I tried something like the above on my linux machine, and no problemo.
this is what I did:

import os
os.system('/usr/bin/gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 ' +\
          '-sOutputFile=- myfile.ps quit.ps | cat >/tmp/pipo')

Looking closer at your example i notice that your input file is encapsulated,
trying the above on a .eps file...
well this produces no output...
Unless I replace quit.ps with -c showpage quit
maybe pnmcut or pnmtotiff can't handle empty files?

hope this will get you on the right track.

-- 
groetjes, carel



From vdkoijk at wirehub.nl  Thu Oct  7 16:48:17 1999
From: vdkoijk at wirehub.nl (John van der Koijk)
Date: 07 Oct 1999 22:48:17 +0200
Subject: websucker.py versus password-protected web tree
References: <87k8p0bqqx.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl> <99100608533904.00964@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <86u2o2ew32.fsf@lori.home.nl>

"PP" == Patrick Phalen <python-list at teleo.net> writes:

    PP> [John van der Koijk, on Wed, 06 Oct 1999]:

    PP> I'm out of luck trying to mirror a certain web-tree which is protected
    PP> by a password-username combination. Don't know how the protocol works
    PP> and when I use a browser I get something like this:

    PP> Have you tried http://user:password at host.domain?

Yes.  It still gives me the cold shoulder:

Error  ('http error', 401, 'Authorization Required')

Thanks anyway! (I've solved the problem by using my bycycle to get it
on CD...)

Kind regards,
--
John van der Koijk.




From daniels at mindspring.com  Sat Oct  2 15:21:24 1999
From: daniels at mindspring.com (Alan Daniels)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 19:21:24 GMT
Subject: What GUI-lib to use
References: <37F1D710.47A82D23@bibsyst.no> <7st3i8$abd$1@essle.valdyas.org>
Message-ID: <slrn7vcna2.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain>

On 29 Sep 1999 15:18:00 +0200, the infinitely wise Boudewijn Rempt
(boud at rempt.xs4all.nl) spoke forth to us, saying...
>Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:

[snip...]
>You might take a look at vipyl, the PyKDE point-and-click programming
>environment, for a look of what the future could bring.

Do you have a reference for this? Nothing showed up Google...

-- 
=======================
Alan Daniels
daniels at mindspring.com
daniels at cc.gatech.edu



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 19 05:29:59 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:29:59 +0200
Subject: mime email creation with attachment
References: <7ufjr0$bpt$1@hercules.tno.nl>
Message-ID: <021b01bf1a14$8574ddc0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Rene <rj.nederhand at pg.tno.nl> wrote:
> I try to automatically create an email message containing an attachment.
> Untill now I created the following code, but the format it sends can't be
> read by outlook 98 (it doesn't do uudecode, while it should be able to do
> that).

(fwiw, outlook express handles mails from this
program just fine).

to make it use base64 encoding, just change the
content type to "base64", and use base64.encode
instead of uu.encode.

and make sure to add "mime-version", "to", and
perhaps some other headers as well.

(btw, XLS-files are not plain text files.  use "rb"
when opening the file).

</F>

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




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct 16 06:19:21 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 06:19:21 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <38059BEF.20C08E68@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <000501bf17bf$e991c4a0$3e2d153f@tim>

[Guido]
>> Note that this is also one of the reasons why I'm feeling uneasy
>> with the stackless Python patch set ... it uses a magic object

[Greg Ewing]
> I wouldn't reject the whole idea of a stackless interpreter
> on the basis of that implementation, though. I suspect the
> author used a special object because it got the job done with
> minimal changes to the existing code.

"Minimal changes" was indeed one of Christian's explicit goals.

>> (another reason is that it can't be done in JPython so it can't be
>> made a part of the language standard)

> Has supporting JPython become an official guiding principle
> behind mainstream Python development?

Obviously so -- although I don't see what an implementation technique has to
do with the language standard!  This needs clarification.

> That may turn out to be somewhat restrictive in the long term.

Unlikely.  Language designers-- like the rest of us --have two bottomless
bags of tricks:  one for justifying changes they like, and another for
squashing those they dislike.  JPython so far has had nothing but good
effects on CPython, restraining gratuitous fiddling, clarifying the intended
semantics, and increasing the pressure for assorted good things (like some
form of gc, healing the type/class split (which JPython is largely free of),
and adding methods to string objects).  If it ends up choking some idea from
Pluto (or Scheme -- same thing <wink>), we'll have to weigh that against all
the good that it's done.

moderation-in-a-moderate-number-of-things-ly y'rs  - tim





From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Oct 22 14:51:47 1999
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 14:51:47 -0400
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221525430.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-WCrVfFWPxQki@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3dr9inteik.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>

junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick) writes:
> >    cookie["anketa_id"] = str(1024)
> >    cookie["anketa_id"]["expires"] = time.strftime("%a, %d-%b-%Y %T GMT", t)
> >    cookie["anketa_id"]["path"] = "/"
> Why setup the cookie equaling a string w/length of 1024??

No, no; this is assigning the cookie a value of '1024'; str(x)
converts the value of the variable 'x' to a string.  This presumably
creates an internal object (amusingly called a Morsel) which holds the value.
The second and third assignments then work as expected.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there
is little else.
    -- Robertson Davies, _Marchbanks' Almanac_




From martinp at mincom.com  Mon Oct 25 01:59:19 1999
From: martinp at mincom.com (Martin Pool)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:59:19 +1000
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
Message-ID: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com>

(I think that subject keeps 3Com's lawyers happy. ;-)

Has anybody worked on porting the Python interpreter to these
handhelds?  

After thinking about it a little it seemed it should be possible to cut
Python back enough to fit into a fairly small amount of memory. 
PalmOS's single-threaded event loop probably that the interpreter stop
to process events every so often: I think this is possible, but I'm not
sure that it can be done easily from deep inside the Python stack.  So
it seemed that Python programs will ignore events unless they're
explicitly polling for them.

It seemed like starting from Stackless Python might be a profitable
alternative: in that case the interpreter can just be left suspended if
the OS wants to go and do something else.

Just wondering...

-- 
 /\\\  Mincom | Martin Pool          | martinp at mincom.com
// \\\        | Software Engineer    | Phone: +61 7 3303-3333
\\ ///        | Mincom Ltd.          | 
 \///         | Teneriffe, Brisbane  | Speaking for myself only



From jblazi at netsurf.de  Sun Oct 31 02:18:59 1999
From: jblazi at netsurf.de (Janos Blazi)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:18:59 +0100
Subject: raw_input
Message-ID: <bakersfield-7vgqhg/INN-2.2.1/beverage@broadway.news.is-europe.net>

When I start the following program from the IDLE under Windows NT, only the
first raw_input is handled and the program never gets to the second
raw_input.

But when I start it from the DOS prompt, everything works smothely.

Why is this so? Can somebody help me?

#============ program ===========
t1=raw_input('line1: ')
t2=raw_input('line2: ')
print t1,t2
#===============================





From jbenderl at olf.com  Fri Oct 29 17:54:59 1999
From: jbenderl at olf.com (Jason Benderly)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:54:59 -0400
Subject: author of sybasemodule
Message-ID: <381A17B3.46F2712B@olf.com>

Hi All,

Anybody know how to contact the talented individual who
wrote the sybasemodule module.  His old e-mail address
from 1994 is jredford at lehman.com.

I would like to contact him to thank him for some good work
and talk about some enhancements.

Thanks,

Jason




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Mon Oct  4 06:11:21 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 10:11:21 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-yGhqLdcFbBtD@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991004171229.A678@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-vpoi3F0ldhHZ@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Mon, 4 Oct 1999 07:12:29, "Malcolm Tredinnick" 
<malcolmt at smart.net.au> wrote:

> > 	The RFC states that "The time is the number of seconds since 00:00 @ 
> > 1900 Jan 1.

> > 	From my experimentation is GMTIME:
> > 
> > python MKTIME calcs				RFC 868
> > (Base 1970, Jan 1)		          (Base Jan 1, 1900)
> > Jan 1, 1970	- 18,000.0			2,208,988,800
> > Jan 1, 1976	- 189,320,400.0			2,398,291,200
> > Jan 1, 1980	- 3,155,550,800.0		2,524,521,600 (CORRECTION)
> 
> I assume there is a typo here, since the correct value for Jan 1, 1980
		(Fixed)

> > I don't see how python's Jan 1, 1980 calcuation can exceed the RFC's 
> > calculation, unless the
> > calculation is returning *NON-LINEAR* results, which doesn't make 
> > sense if it's the # of secs since
> > Jan xxxx.
> 
> I agree. I can't understand your Python numbers at all. There is a
> problem with your calculation routine (see below), but it shouldnt'
> give these non-linear results. I don't have access to Python on any
> sort of Windows box, so I can't verify the results you got there, but
> certainly nothing like that is happening under Linux for me.

Well, both Os/2 v1.52 & Win32 v1.52 return the same values, so I 
assume
that it's the same most platforms.

I simply:

>>> import time
>>> print time.gmtime(0)
(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 0)
>>> print time.mktime(1970, 1,1,0,0,0,3,1,0)
18000.0
>>> print time.mktime(1980, 1,1,0,0,0,3,1,0)
315550800.0
>>>

...etc....

> > Also, I can't duplicate the RFC 868 values if I manually perform the 
> > calculations.
> > 
> > My "big question", is simple:
> > 
> > 	Can anyone suggest a way to convert from pythons time.time() to the 
> > RFC date(s)?
> [... lots'o stuff deleted ...]
> 
> > import time
> > #
> > #       Constants
> > #
> > #secs_in_year    = 31536000      # 365*24*60*60
> > secs_in_year    = 365.1666666666667 * 24*60*60
>                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Huh?? Firstly, since 0.166666... = 1/6, this is saying that leap years occur
> every six years. On my side of the world at least, we try to have them
> every four years or so. :-)

I *AGREE*, but that's what I got when I reverse "engineered" the 
calculations from the RFC.
Which is why I'm starting to shake my head, and go, "Who thought this 
@#$@ thing up". >g<

         		2398291200
	-	2208988800
		-----------------
		  189302400
	/		     6
		  ----------------
			356 (1/6)

Which actually is the distribution of the time over the 6 years.... So
your right, but, when I 
tried the "common" year values (356, 355.4, 356 1/4) nothing was 
working to match
the RFC, so I tried to calculation a "match".

I suspect that it's a flaw in my formula..

> To conclude, here is a corrected version of the manual calculation
> code. 

Thanks, I'll shake it out and see how it works.

I'll be posting the final product in here...

> I have, in passing, fixed one other error, which is that to work
> out the number of seconds from the beginning of the year until the
> current day, you should use (Julian Day - 1), not just Julian Day.
> This code assumes a 1/1/1970 epoch - just add the appropriate big
> number is you want to work from 1/1/1900. :-)

> Malcolm Tredinnick

Thanks Malcolm, I've been hitting my head against the wall for a 
couple of days!

			- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From tbryan at python.net  Fri Oct 22 05:41:21 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 05:41:21 -0400
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com>
			<14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
			<380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com> <14350.64746.924876.255108@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <380F3590.2C56140C@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <38103141.8FF39335@python.net>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:

> > RedHat 6.0 looks exactly the same (except the path prefixes on the
> > right differ),
> >
> > Solaris output looks is also very similar:
> >         libX11.so.4 =>   /usr/lib/libX11.so.4
> >         libsocket.so.1 =>        /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1
> >         libnsl.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libnsl.so.1
> >         libdl.so.1 =>    /usr/lib/libdl.so.1
> >         libc.so.1 =>     /usr/lib/libc.so.1
> 
> Hmm, not quite :-) libc.so.1 -- that was a looong time ago ?! Seems
> that Redhat chose a different naming scheme here.

Notice that he was talking about *Solaris* when he gave that listing.
Red Hat looks like SuSE.  You can check it out on the Starship.

[tbryan at starship tbryan]$ ldd /usr/bin/python
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40004000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40007000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40014000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4002f000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00000000)



From cgw at fnal.gov  Thu Oct 21 05:37:47 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:37:47 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
In-Reply-To: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com>
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

M.-A. Lemburg writes:
 > Is it possible to examine a Python interpreter and check whether
 > it was compiled against libc5 or glibc2 (libc6) on Linux/*BSD/etc. ?
 > 
 > I'm currently using this hack, but would appreciate a more
 > elegant and portable solution:

 > def system_nm(progfile):
 >     try:
 > 	f = os.popen('nm %s' % progfile)
 >     except os.error:
 > 	return ''
 >     return f.read()

I would use "ldd" instead of "nm".  It's another hack, not much more
elegant, but a little more portable.  In particular it doesn't require 
that python was compiled -g.

I'm not sure how much the ldd output varies on different unices
(haven't tried this on BSD), but I think it should be pretty easy to
find a portable way search for the libc.so.* line in the output and
figure out the libc version.

This will fail if libc is linked statically, as far as I know this is
rarely done.  It's still less of a restriction than requiring python
to be built with debugging info.

It's still not exactly elegant but possibly a little more portable than 
what you were doing.





From geojempty at aol.com  Fri Oct 15 16:09:18 1999
From: geojempty at aol.com (GeoJempty)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 20:09:18 GMT
Subject: Nested if's
References: <19991015112051.22237.00000571@ng-fr1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <19991015160918.16804.00000073@ng-fr1.aol.com>

>I'm having a problem nesting if statements.  I'm defining a
>function, and my syntax checks fine, until I try the following:
>
>if digit > 0:
>  if digit = 5:
>    variable = variable + whatever
>
>In the context of a CGI program this causes an Internal server error,
>"premature end of script headers". 

Of course, digit == 5.  Thanks everybody!!  This friendly and helpful newsgroup
is ANOTHER reason for choosing Python instead of Perl.

Have a great weekend

George Jempty



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 28 08:53:27 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 01:53:27 +1300
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au> <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com> <3817D36A.1BA8DAE@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <38184747.CFECCA94@compaq.com>

Louis Madon wrote:
> 
> Neither, you should get a "message ambiguous" error

That's a reasonable answer. Although you still need some
set of rules for defining when a call is ambiguous or
not. I think I can sort of see what rule you're using
here, but it's not easy to state concisely.

I'm a bit bothered by the idea that *adding* a new
method could cause previously valid calls to become
invalid. If I have only foo(A, B) and foo(AA, B)
defined, then calling foo(AA, BB) is okay. But if
I add a foo(A, BB), then all my existing foo(AA, BB)
calls, anywhere in the program, suddenly become ambiguous.

I worry that it will be difficult to reason about the
behaviour of a program with MD, because the information
needed to determine which method a given call will
invoke is spread out over many places, with no clear
way of finding all of them. If I'm looking for the
implementation of foo(A, B), will it be in the module
defining A, or B? Or somewhere else entirely?
What about foo(A, B, C, D, E)? It seems that I have
a lot more possible places to look when I'm trying
to find a piece of code.

> But if the domain you need to model isn't naturally hierarchical you'll
> end up with redundancy in your class model

I know MI can be very handy, but it needs taming before
use. I know what needs to be done to MI to tame it, but
I haven't yet figured out how to similarly tame MD.
If I ever do, I may be more enthusiastic about it.

> Can you elaborate? I mean about MD + MI (Its ok, I'll keep a safe
> distance from you so feel free to self destruct while considering
> this

I was thinking about it in the context of an interactive
fiction authoring language. MD seems like an attractive idea
there, because often a verb needs to be specialised in ways
that depend equally much on all its arguments. 

For that application, it's not really acceptable to crash if the
user happens to do something the author didn't anticipate,
so I wanted to come up with a complete set of rules to
cover all possibilities. But it got far too complicated
to be useful in practice.

Eventually I decided that what I really wanted was a set
of pattern-matching clauses, like in functional languages.
But for that to work it has to be clear what order the
matches are tried in, which means that all the possible
branches of an action really have to be listed together.
That makes it difficult to have libraries of code which
can be extended by the programmer.

So I still haven't designed my killer IF language yet.
Maybe one day...

Greg



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Thu Oct 21 17:19:43 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:19:43 -0700
Subject: PythonWin rebuild problem
In-Reply-To: <380F21C9.F8CB84EC@munger.edu>
Message-ID: <004401bf1c09$fef95620$53001064@bobcat>

> Perhaps I need to install VC++ 6.0 with a different set of
> installation
> options.  Anybody know which options?

You must install with:
* MFC
* multi-threaded DLL libraries.
* Debug versions of both (tho from memory this is not an option - they
come with the above 2)

Mark.




From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Oct 23 04:10:43 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:10:43 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov> <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com> <slrn811jtg.af8.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <38116D83.78817EF6@lemburg.com>

Cliff Crawford wrote:
> 
> Pada Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:41:31 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg bilang:
> | Thanks. So leaving the check out for FreeBSD is ok. What about other
> | nifty OSes like BeOS, NetBSD, the new BSD-based MacOS (can't remember the
> | name right now) ?
> 
> Mac OS X Server.
> And it is NOT "nifty". :-P

Not ? I thought so... nice GUIs everywhere, real close to Unix, os.fork()
and all that jazz ;-)

> I ran your module on OS X v1.02, here's the output I got:
> 
> -----
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, 07/22/99, 20:33:35)  [GCC Apple DevKit-based CPP 5.0]
> on next5_3
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> import platform
> >>> platform.platform()
> uname: illegal option -- p
> usage: uname [-amnrsv]
> 'Rhapsody-5.5-Power_Macintosh'
> >>> platform.system()
> 'Rhapsody'
> >>> platform.node()
> 'amma'
> >>> platform.release()
> '5.5'
> >>> platform.machine()
> 'Power Macintosh'
> >>> platform.processor()
> ''
> >>> platform.version()
> 'Kernel Release 5.5: Fri Jul  2 13:10:26 PDT 1999;
> root(rcbuilder):Objects/kernel-154.14.obj~10/RELEASE_PPC Copyright (c)
> 1988-1995,1997-1999 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. '
> -----
> 
> What's the -p option to uname supposed to do anyway?  Print the processor
> name?  I think that's what the -m option is for.

Yes, but on some platforms -p gives the (real) processor name, not just
some common alias or processor group like -m does. I'll fix the
module to redirect stderr output to /dev/null.

Note that I did not see the OS name or version anywhere in the
output (something like Mac OS X Server 1.02). Is Rhapsody the
code name for MacOS X Server ?

> Btw, Python compiles right out of the box on OS X Server.  It's one of the
> few un*x packages that I use that I DIDN'T have to patch.  Thanks, Guido! :)

Cool. Do all the tests run through fine ? Would be nice to add Mac OS X
Server to the list of supported platforms for my apps :-)

Thanks for the feedback,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    69 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Fri Oct 15 09:54:15 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 15:54:15 +0200
Subject: Has anyone tried Python->Dylan conversion?
References: <al84sfva8ln.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <y0jzoxklofs.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Markus Stenberg <mstenber at cc.Helsinki.FI> writes:

> 
> Even by doing the classical recurse-monster lisp-like prime test, the Dylan
> version was roughly 3 seconds.
> 
> At least simpler syntactic parts should compile fairly cleanly, I
> think.. but I dislike Dylan's syntax itself, so main use would be just
> producing Python->Dylan->C modules (which would, theoretically speaking, be
> faster than original Python, or current Py2C modules).
> 

How about looking at the Dylan compiler and picking up some tricks,
maybe? (Don't know if it is possible, but then we wouldn't have to go
through the translation part... Although that would probably be much
less work...)

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Sat Oct 30 11:32:30 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:32:30 +0200
Subject: Curses: .newpad()?
Message-ID: <19991030173230.A9024@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hello,

in the Curses HOWTO, the following example is given:

----- * -----
pad = curses.newpad(100, 100)
#  These loops fill the pad with letters; this is
# explained in the next section
for y in range(0, 100):
    for x in range(0, 100):
        try: pad.addch(y,x, ord('a') + (x*x+y*y) % 26 )
except curses.error: pass

#  Displays a section of the pad in the middle of the screen
pad.refresh( 0,0, 5,5, 20,75)
----- *** -----

This doesn't work, because the curses module doesn't have a function called
newpad. First, I thought I was having problems because I hadn't downloaded the
version from http://andrich.net/python/selfmade.html#ncursesmodule, but I don't
see such a function in the source from that package. What's wrong?

By the way, if I try to compile this module, I'm getting the following error:

----- *** -----
make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/lib/python1.4/config/Makefile', needed by `sedscript'.  Stop.
----- *** -----

Oh, now I'm reading the Makefile (oh, so _there_ are the installation
instructions!), do I _really_ have to recompile the whole python distribution?

regards,
Gerrit.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 10 14:57:02 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:57:02 -0400
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
In-Reply-To: <1272601162-48639446@hypernet.com>
References: <37ff6cae.10207213@news.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <1272541430-52232301@hypernet.com>

Burt wrote:
> 
> > Trying to install Beta 03 (Installer_b_03.exe) causes an
> > illegal operation (invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL)
> > on my machine running Windows 98.

Thanks to Burt, Darrell and "SqueezeKey" for their 
responsiveness. You'd think I'd know by now that Windows 
can mangle the case of filenames in highly imaginative ways.

http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html now points 
to the right beta page, and rev a of the beta: 
Installer_b_03a.exe.

(GetModuleFileName returns the case-preserved name on NT, 
and all upper case on Win9x. Meanwhile, in updating my 
starship pages, Samba - probably Window's fault - lower 
cases all the names when I copy to my Linux box. Then, 
despite the fact that HTML is case-insensitive, links served 
from starship are case sensitive; so I frequently have to fix file 
names twice before they work!).


- Gordon



From hoel at GermanLloyd.org  Mon Oct 11 11:31:03 1999
From: hoel at GermanLloyd.org (Berthold Hoellmann)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:31:03 +0200
Subject: lazy function calling?
Message-ID: <380202B7.ADF0E803@GermanLloyd.org>

Hello,

I think I can remember a Python extension module, posted or announced
here a while ago, where it was possible to make functions callable lazy.
This means I could call a function spam just writing spam instead of
spam(). Was I just dreaming or is it real. And if it's real, where can I
get it :-)?

Thanks

Berthold
-- 
email: hoel at GermanLloyd.org
   )
  (
C[_]  These opinions might be mine, but never those of my employer.



From davidopp at megsinet.net  Thu Oct  7 08:40:18 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 08:40:18 -0400
Subject: Is the server down or what?
References: <37FC84F9.F1C51C28@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <37FC94B1.46DD7A0@megsinet.net>

Dear Thomas,

You seem tense.  Have you had too much coffee today?  The server is working
fine from what I can tell.  First rule of newsgroups is to assume the error
is on your end, i.e. user error or problems at your machine.

Good Luck,

David Oppenheimer

Thomas Weholt wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I`m not getting any goddamn articles in this newsgroup today. Are people
> asleep or is the server down or what?
>
> Thomas




From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 10:50:33 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 00:50:33 +1000
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <7u3ae3$fns@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <3809E239.D2AD3678@maxtal.com.au>

Joshua Marcus wrote:
> 
> Okay, I'm terribly embarassed.  My example was hasty and poorly chosen.
> I blame the heat of the moment.
> 
> In my initial example, I wanted to assume that one wanted to run the 'process'
> function at least once-- which is why the initial line couldn't be
> "line = fp.readline()".
> 
> But -- the "for line in fp.readlines():" is fine for many situations.
> Let's move away from this example.
> 
> There are, in fact, other situations in which one actually wants a
> "do...while" loop & one is forced to either repeat code or make a meaningless
> initial assignment.  

While this is true, just adding another hacked loop
construct isn't the answer. It will solve some problems,
and leave others. A more general solution is:

	loop: 
		code ..
		if ...: break
		code ..

However, even that isn't general enough, because
many loops have multiple exits. For example,
a search loop: there is no clean way to program
this using C style loops.

So an even more general construction is:

	loop:
		..
		breakto label1
		..
		breakto label2
	label1: ...
	label2: ...


This construction was invented by Knuth, except he put
the handlers at the top of the loop. A python
implementation is:

	try:
		while 1:
			.. raise Label1
			... raise Label1
	except Label1: ..
	except Label2:


-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From moonseeker at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 05:48:40 1999
From: moonseeker at my-deja.com (moonseeker at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:48:40 GMT
Subject: ODBC-module for OS/2?
Message-ID: <7upbto$jie$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi!

I'm playing around with DB2 UDB for the systems Win, OS/2 and Unix.
Is there a module I can use to connect to the UDB ODBC on all three
systems?
Has anyone build a ODBC module (maybe mxODBC?) for OS/2?

Mike


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 14 16:07:19 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:07:19 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <19991014213412.A4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <1272191608-925935@hypernet.com>

Gerrit Holl writes:

[Tim Peters]
> > ... The usual Python idiom
> > for:
> > 
> >     do {
> >         xxx;
> >         yyy;
> >     } while (condition);
> > 
> > is simply:
> > 
> >     while 1:
> >         xxx
> >         yyy
> >         if not condition:
> >             break
> 
> Huh?
> Why don't use the following code:
> 
> while condition:
>     xxx
>     yyy
> 
> I don't understand the difference.

At entry, condition is unknown.
 
> > The criminally insane sometimes write the last line instead as:
> > 
> >         if not condition: break
> > 
> > but putting it on separate lines (as God intended) is key to
> > making the idiom instantly (after you're used to it -- about
> > two days) recognizable for what it is.
> 
> I'll change my code. As far as I remember, this isn't mentioned
> in Guido's style guide; am I right?

Tim is exaggerating. This is about as naughty as using the 
wrong fork (ie, your typical American has a 50% chance of 
doing it right).

only-one-pitchfork-at-my-trough-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From loril at mmrd.com  Thu Oct 21 11:08:27 1999
From: loril at mmrd.com (loril at mmrd.com)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:08:27 -0400
Subject: re help
References: <7un7nr$2tt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <380F2C6B.25E15957@mmrd.com>

not exactly sure what you are asking but I would do something like:

someList = ["one", "two", "three"]

if not x in someList:
    # DO YOUR STUFF
else:
    print "ERROR: %s is in list"%x



mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote:

> how can I specify not to match strings like
>  donot match "one" | "two" | "three"
>
>   (one|two|three) could match any string as one or two or three
> but I want them not to matched at that position.
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
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From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Thu Oct  7 07:47:48 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 07 Oct 1999 07:47:48 -0400
Subject: Playing MIDI files
In-Reply-To: mdoering@comlineag.de's message of "Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:34:23 GMT"
References: <37fa603f.3064486@pumba.class.udg.mx>
Message-ID: <vrso3nmly3.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

mdoering at comlineag.de (Martin D?ring) writes:

> Is there a module to play midi-files from python?

If not, and unless someone else feels like taking this duty, I might try
to contribute.  It would be a good exercise for me to learn handling bits
and bytes within Python.

Not so long ago, someone in my family asked me to produce a cassette for some
special event, and despite I had only a few days to prepare it, I decided to
try the MIDI and sequencer route, instead of the perform and record approach,
a bit more usual to me.  This meant rushing, for things to be ready on time.

To verify the music, I needed a simple MIDI sequencer.  As I was much worried
about achieving real-time despite the Linux multi-processing environment, I
quickly studied what provisions were available in the kernel for guaranteed
services, and such.  I found many things, but loosing portability, not to
say the need of acquiring root privileges, did not please me much.

Maybe that for a quick test, perfection could just wait.  So, from the MIDI
specifications, I wrote an humble sequencer in C, to be run as an ordinary
user program.  I just added a bit of code so any delays induced by the system
were exactly compensated by playing subsequent notes a bit faster.  To my
own surprise and astonishment, it went admirably well.  Unless the system
gets very heavily loaded, you do not hear any stumbling in the music flow.
This told me that even if the ear is very sensitive to slight frequency
deviations, it seems surprisingly tolerant detecting asynchronicities at
the detail level, as long as the overall rythm is preserved.

Rewriting from C to Python surely means an appreciable slowdown, but since
the MIDI rendering from the C code was so bearable, even without unusual
system measures, I'm a bit curious to see how much we could torture the code
efficiency, speedwise, before starting to notice appreciable lags.  Once on
this track (sic!), why not even consider the `sched' module?  With some
care, we might get some unusually legible code for a MIDI sequencer! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Mon Oct 11 04:22:48 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:22:48 +1300
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn7vpt2b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl> <slrn7vpu9b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl> <7tivlu$ho0$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <38019E58.7D6E56BC@compaq.com>

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> Everybody, even if they live in .cx, wherever this may be, that uses
> Python knows Dutch. It's a cosmic conspiracy! :)

Yeeks! This is quite worrying. If anyone ever finds out that
I don't, in fact, know Dutch, I may be kicked out of the
Python community! Better sign up for a crash course... or
get working on a Dutch-English translator in Python...

Greg



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Oct 29 07:12:59 1999
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:12:59 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBKOPFDEKGPDKEKFGMEEAGCKAA.robert@leftfieldcorp.com> <38195937.F376E3A8@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <000b01bf21fe$8f02fa10$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>

>
> So it does refer to SMP... I wonder what the 'Free' in there means ;-)
>
Quote from MSDN:

The DDK provides two versions of the Windows NT operating system, called the
free build and the checked build. [...]

The free build of Windows NT is the retail version that end users buy. Free
binaries are built with full optimization and contain a minimal set of
debugging symbols, such as function entry points and global variables.

The checked build is shipped only with the DDK; it is used in debugging
drivers and other system code. Checked binaries provide error checking,
argument verification, and system debugging code not present in the free
binaries.


Thomas Heller
ION-TOF GmbH




From hniksic at srce.hr  Tue Oct  5 19:11:08 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 01:11:08 +0200
Subject: print longs
References: <14329.48537.375223.530111@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910051007400.301-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>
Message-ID: <87r9j9v1wz.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

David Ascher <da at ski.org> writes:

> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Charles G Waldman wrote:
> 
> > David Ascher writes:
> >  >
> >  > So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..
> > 
> > Why would this be such a terrible thing?  I'm not sure I see the
> > grounds for your shivering.
> 
> Most of the folks I teach Python to have never heard of complex
> numbers, and they're not especially in a rush to learn about them.

Then they shouldn't be evaluating sqrt(-1).  :-)

Seriously, how will somebody who has never heard (sic!) of complex
numbers care if some mathematical functions yield complex results?



From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Oct 29 10:24:46 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:24:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: linux install problem
In-Reply-To: <3818D01C.E1C40299@python.net>
References: <381867F3.961D690D@actcom.co.il>
	<19991028114850.A11323@better.net>
	<14360.37181.906077.809584@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<3818D01C.E1C40299@python.net>
Message-ID: <14361.44590.796241.816431@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Thomas A. Bryan writes:
 > Just for the sake of correctness of archives, I thought that I'd mention
 > that installing a tkinter RPM works (if it does) because the Python you 
 > installed from RPM was already configured to use Tkinter.  If it
 > weren't,
 > then you'd need to download the Python source, edit the Modules/Setup
 > file, and rebuild Python.

  That's right.

 > Actually, I recommend that you just make a Setup.local file (see the
 > docs)
 > so that you'll have all of your modifications to the Python build in one
 > place, separate from the normal Setup file.

  I agree.  It's also easier to copy over to a new version/build tree
that way!


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From algaba at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 31 07:35:53 1999
From: algaba at my-deja.com (Manuel Gutierrez Algaba)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 12:35:53 GMT
Subject: Problem with WebSucker and HTML-bot
Message-ID: <7vhd39$5or$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

 I've been downloading some web pages with WebSucker and HTML-bot
and both truncate the headings of html pages, and both corrupt gif
files and other binaries ( probably because they got truncated too).

Is this a bug ? Or is my ISP ?

I've noticed too that they can't download web's whose HTML servers
don't provide the length of the .html. Example, tripod.

Is there any solution ?
--
-------------
Manolo


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From ayinger1 at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 11 16:56:09 1999
From: ayinger1 at my-deja.com (yinger)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:56:09 GMT
Subject: How do I shell-out on Win32 systems with python?
Message-ID: <7ttit1$f4n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I know that on Unix systems you can use the commands  or the popen
modules.

What do I have to do to get the output from a command (like 'dir', or a
batch file) executed on a Win32 system?



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct  7 02:54:53 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 06:54:53 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca> <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <5lemf87888.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <00b301bf1090$e17eecb0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
> While we're on the subject: I still don't understand why a DNA
> reference is considered objectionable marketing speak by some.  I've
> never heard DNA references in marketing speak, I think.

http://www.microsoft.com/dna/

;-)

</F>




From I.Clarke at strs.co.uk  Fri Oct 29 11:27:22 1999
From: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk (Ian Clarke)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:27:22 +0100
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
Message-ID: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk>

Disclaimer out of the way, I was recently web surfing when I discovered
a link to a language called "Ruby" which seems to be similar to Python
in that it is a scripting language, and has good support for OO.  Ruby's
home on the web is at http://www.ruby-lang.org/.

The makers of the language have even done a comparison with Python.  In
it they make the following claims (the strange grammar is their's, not
mine):

Problems with Python are:

* incomplete OOP 
* Some data (numerical, list, dictionary, string, etc.) are not
genuine   
  object. 
* Extension modules in C don't realize genuine objects. 
* Tiresome self. are required when each access to instance variable 
* Functions are first class object (Of cource, we know it is not
weak)    
 del, len, etc. are not Object-Oriented. (There are __len__, etc. but
...) 
* Ugly method calling for superclass 
* No class method (module functions alternate it) 
* No way to automatically convert between long integer and small
integer. 
* Because there is no genuine GC, memory leak occur often 
* Writing extension modules is bothersome (some betterments in 1.5) 
* Tuple and list has overlap functionally (not serious) 
* Function objects are accepted as arguments, but iterators are more
elegant. 
* After all, declarations are featured (global) 
* Slower than Ruby (may be improved?) 

I am still trying to download a copy of Ruby to look at it myself,
however do people think these comments are justified?

Ian.

--
Ian Clarke                        Email: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk
Homepage: http://www.gnu.demon.co.uk/
Also see: http://freenet.on.openprojects.net/
"All we see and all we seem is but a dream within a dream"



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 15 11:34:44 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:34:44 -0400
Subject: Python's buffer interface
Message-ID: <19991015113444.A592708@vislab.epa.gov>

     From a commentary I read, it looks very useful.  I'd like to learn
more about the it -- in particular, how to write conforming C interfaces.

     However, I didn't find any mention of this in the docs.  Did I miss
something?  Or have the docs not caught up with it.

     Also, a bit of puzzlement after trying a brief test (adapted from a
code snippet in the list archives):

     Do buffer objects not have any methods?

     ----------------------------------------------------------------
     >>> import array
     >>> a=array.array("b", range(ord('A'), ord('G')))
     >>> print a
     array('b', [65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70])
     >>> b = buffer(a)
     >>> print b
     ABCDEF
     >>> dir(b)
     []
     ----------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like they know how to print themselves at least (repr/str?)

Randall




From bsb at baal.infodrom.north.de  Wed Oct  6 03:01:50 1999
From: bsb at baal.infodrom.north.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 09:01:50 +0200
Subject: Do You Have a Powerful Computer, a few extra minutes,& Microsoft Word?
In-Reply-To: David Oppenheimer's message of "Wed, 06 Oct 1999 01:15:06 -0400"
References: <37FADAD9.AFFF8684@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <873dvp3rc1.fsf@baal.winnegan.north.de>

David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net> writes:

> [1  <text/plain; us-ascii (7bit)>]
> Dear Group,
> 
> A Linux friend would like to view the Quick Python online draft but
> doesn't have Microsoft Word or a Word viewer.  He tells me he can read
> it if its in HTML.

Tell him to install StarOffice 5.1a it's available for free from Sun
Microsystem since they bought StarDivision (no more activation keys)
and can easily import M$ Word docs.  Sorry, don't have the URL handy
but there are a lot of search engines on the net :-)

> I would appreciate it if someone would download the book, save it in
> HTML, and send me the book in HTML.  I have Microsoft Word, but My
> Pentium 75 with 32 MB RAM is just not up to the task.  I have tried
> multiple times and it locks up about half way through.

> [2  <text/html; us-ascii (7bit)>]
<don quixote-hat>
	Why bother us with a 2nd copy of the above?
</don quixote-hat>

annoyed-by-html-mailers-ly yours
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at infodrom.north.de - http://www.north.de/~bsb/

################ http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/ ################



From hniksic at srce.hr  Sun Oct 31 22:50:14 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 01 Nov 1999 04:50:14 +0100
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk> <381CF400.6106@creo.com>
Message-ID: <87yaciyio9.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

Dale Nagata <dnagata at creo.com> writes:

> Ian Clarke wrote:
> > * No way to automatically convert between long integer and small
> > integer.
> 
> C:\>python
> Python 1.5.1 (#0, Oct 14 1998, 20:14:21) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> int(1L)
> 1
> >>> long(1)
> 1L

That doesn't look "automatically" to me.

>>> sys.maxint + 1
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
OverflowError: integer addition
>>> (long(sys.maxint) + 1) - 1
2147483647L

I've never seen Ruby so I don't know what it does, but in these cases
Lisp will do the right thing.  Example using CLISP:

[1]> (type-of most-positive-fixnum)
FIXNUM
[2]> (type-of (1+ most-positive-fixnum))
BIGNUM
[3]> (type-of (1- (1+ most-positive-fixnum)))
FIXNUM
[4]> (1+ 99999999999999999)
100000000000000000

In Lisp, you can use fixnums (Python ints) and bignums (Python longs)
interchangeably.  Which is a very nice feature.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:02:53 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:02:53 -0400
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
In-Reply-To: <87iu4ldb5e.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>
Message-ID: <000101bf0fb8$0bbb8120$cf2d153f@tim>

[Janko Hauser, points out the vastly underused <wink>
    Tools/scripts/ndiff.py
]
> It does not work with patch, but can be used to patch files with it's
> own output.

It's really got nothing to do with any kind of patching.  From ndiff's
output, either of the input files can be recovered exactly, but that's all.

I wrote ndiff.py over a number of years, to address a specific need:  when
passing out new revisions of plain text specs, there's a real need to
annotate what changed.  "Minimal edit distance" tools like diff do a bad job
at this, for several reasons:

1. They point out inter-line differences, but not intra-line.  If e.g. a "2"
changes to a "3" in some line of a spec, you want that clearly marked.  It's
not enough to print the two lines and say "OK, there's *some* difference
here, and *you* guess how many and where".

2. Their mechanical zeal for finding minimal diffs leads to
counter-intuitive synchronization.  There are a few examples of that in
ndiff's comments.  ndiff's output is meant to be read by humans, so strives
to "synch up" in the same way a human editor would do it.

3. Relatedly, minimal edits synch up on "junk" (typically blank lines or
whitespace) if that leads to a shorter overall diff.  But people have no
interest in junk that happens to match, and find it much easier to read a
diff report that synchs up only on "real stuff" -- even if that makes the
diff longer.

That said, ndiff.py would be easy to twist into producing diff-like output:
keep the SequenceMatcher class, and throw away most of the rest of the
module.  SequenceMatcher computes a list of {equal, replace, insert, delete}
"opcodes", and it's straightforward to convert that into any kind of output
you want.  Set the IS_LINE_JUNK vrbl to "lambda x: 0", and it will produce
smaller diffs, more like diff's, but with no claim to being minimal.

otoh-if-you-want-"diff"-output-there's-a-reasonable-case-to-be-
   made-for-using-diff<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From mikael at isy.liu.se  Mon Oct 18 08:12:03 1999
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:12:03 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: exec behaviour; Functions as instance members.
In-Reply-To: <380AFC5B.899379F9@ulb.ac.be>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991018141203.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 18-Oct-99 Michel NIZETTE wrote:
 >  1) Inside a function definition why doesn't
 >  
 >  exec "global i"
 >  exec "i = 1"
 >  
 >  set the global variable i to 1, although
 >  
 >  exec "global i\ni = 1"
 >  
 >  does ?

These things bugged me once, too.

>From Python Reference Manual, 6.12 The global statement

  Programmer's note: the global is a directive to the parser. It 
  applies only to code parsed at the same time as the global 
  statement. In particular, a global statement contained in an 
  exec statement does not affect the code block containing the 
  exec statement, and code contained in an exec statement is 
  unaffected by global statements in the code containing the exec 
  statement. 

In both your examples the global statement will not affect the 
code block containing your exec command(s). 

In the first example the two exec commands will be parsed
separately, and the first exec command will be useless as 
noted in the quotation above. The second command will set 
the local variable i.

In your second example the global declaration and the assignment
will be parsed together, and you will set the global variable i.
However, as I understand things, if you do 

  exec "global i\ni = 1"
  i = 2

you will have one global variable i with the value 1, and one 
local variable with the value 2.

 >  2) To define a function as a member of a class instance, is there a
 >  shorter way than introducing a temporary function name as in the
 >  following ?
 >  
 >  def Temp():
 >      # Code...
 >  ClassInst.Func = Temp
 >  del Temp

This one I will have to leave to the wizards.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    18-Oct-99
Time:    13:54:58

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
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From skip at mojam.com  Wed Oct  6 13:34:37 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:34:37 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: how to translate a virtual path to a physical path in a CGI script
In-Reply-To: <09920fb9.d5cb6bd6@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>
References: <000b8d9b.daa24cc0@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>
	<7tfept$lkc$1@news.kolumbus.fi>
	<09920fb9.d5cb6bd6@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com>
Message-ID: <14331.34861.43390.369768@dolphin.mojam.com>

    >> Currently I am running IIS, which provides PATH_INFO and
    >> PATH_TRANSLATED and so on.  So I have no problem getting to know the
    >> physical path for the script itself.  What I really need is a
    >> function that given *any* virtual path, it can translate it into a
    >> physical one.

    >> I managed to write a mappath() function yesterday, which substracts
    >> PATH_INFO from PATH_TRANSLATED to derive the document root, and join
    >> the given logial path to it.  This way is definitely not reliable, is
    >> it?

Unfortunately, no, it's not.  On Apache at least (and probably on other web
servers as well), you can define lots of mappings between virtual paths and
absolute paths within the same server.  I might have a DocumentRoot of
/www/server, alias /images to /www/images, and /cgi-bin to /www/cgi.  In a
CGI script with a PATH_TRANSLATED of /www/cgi/spam, there's no way to tell
that /images/guido.png will live in /www/images/guido.png instead of
/www/cgi/guido.png.  As the author of the script, you just sort of have to
know.

Given that, it may be possible to rummage around in the config file and
build a list of potential directories where files could be located, then try
locating the file using that list.  Still wouldn't be reliable unless you
were able to reliably parse the config file and eliminate all impossible
possibilities. 

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From mikael at isy.liu.se  Thu Oct  7 03:31:45 1999
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:31:45 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Do you use your laptop in the car?
In-Reply-To: <36440.1271715278@news-server.twcny.rr.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991007093145.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 07-Oct-99 informer wrote:
 >  <snip> the laptop Copilot 
 >  <snip> www.laptopcopilot.com 
 >  <snip> $49.95 
 >  <snip> 

This looks like something anyone with a toolbox can construct for ~$1.00,
don't you agree?

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    07-Oct-99
Time:    09:26:47

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 29 11:42:18 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:42:18 +0100
Subject: Produce .pyc without execution
In-Reply-To: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF739@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <001701bf2224$2e5a9a80$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> Is there a way to compile a module without executing it? Just check syntax
> and produce the .pyc file?

See Lib/compileall.py

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Mon Oct 11 12:34:22 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:34:22 +0100
Subject: lazy function calling?
References: <380202B7.ADF0E803@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <3MUMwAAOGhA4EwOG@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <380202B7.ADF0E803 at GermanLloyd.org>, Berthold Hoellmann <hoel at GermanLloyd.org> writes
>Hello,
>
>I think I can remember a Python extension module, posted or announced
>here a while ago, where it was possible to make functions callable lazy.
>This means I could call a function spam just writing spam instead of
>spam(). Was I just dreaming or is it real. And if it's real, where can I
>get it :-)?
>
>Thanks
>
>Berthold
From: Joe Bowbeer <joeb at go2net.com> displayed some stuff based on lazy streams I think his
python implementation of

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Abelson and Sussman
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

I saved this with some hacks to memoized things

#From: Joe Bowbeer <joeb at go2net.com>
#Fya.
#I was doing a little investigating with Python's lambda expressions and
#it looks like they are indeed powerful enough to create some of my
#favorite beasts: infinitely long streams [*].

#If we define a stream to be a 'pair' of the form (head, tail), where
#head is the first element and tail is a function that returns the rest
#of the stream (which is itself a stream), then we can define 'head' and
#'tail' functions in Python as follows:

def head(s): # return first element in stream
        return s and s[0]

def tail(s): # return remainder of stream
        return s and s[1] and s[1]()

#We create a new stream given a head element and a tail stream as
#follows:

s = (head, lambda : tail)

# I'd use a 'special form' or macro above if Python had them..

#Here are two more functions that operate on streams. (I'd implement
#these tail-recursively if it were more efficient.)

def nthStream(s, n): # return nth element of stream s
        while n > 0:
                s, n = tail(s), n-1
        return head(s)

def printStream(s, n): # print first n elements of stream s
        while n > 0:
                print head(s),
                s, n = tail(s), n-1
        print

def mapStream(f,s):
        return (apply(f,[head(s)]), lambda f=f, s=s: mapStream(f,tail(s)))

#Now things start to get interesting:

# print 10 from an infinite stream of ones
ones = (1, lambda : ones)
printStream(ones, 10)

def addStreams(si, sj): # add corres. elements of two streams
        if not si: return sj
        if not sj: return si
        tailsum = lambda ti=si, tj=sj : addStreams(tail(ti), tail(tj))
        return (head(si) + head(sj), tailsum)

# infinitely many integers
integers = (0, lambda : addStreams(ones, integers))
printStream(integers, 10)

# infinite stream of Fibonacci numbers
fibs = (0, lambda : (1, lambda : addStreams(tail(fibs), fibs)))
printStream(fibs, 10)

# Too bad 'int' can only represent a finite number of digits...

#Better performance can be achieved by memo-izing the functions that
#evaluate the tails. A simple Memo class can be defined as follows. It
#lazily evaluates the 'thunk' function and then memorizes the result:

class Memo: # memoized call-by-need thunk
        def __init__(self, thunk):
                self.result, self.thunk = None, thunk
        def eval(self):
                if self.thunk:
                        self.result, self.thunk = self.thunk(), None
                return self.result

#Memo-ized streams are created as follows:
s = (head, Memo(lambda : tail))

#And the tail function becomes:
def tail(s): # return remainder of stream
        return s and s[1] and s[1].eval()

def addStreams(si, sj): # add corres. elements of two streams
        if not si: return sj
        if not sj: return si
        return (head(si) + head(sj), Memo(lambda ti=si, tj=sj : addStreams(tail(ti), tail(tj))))

ones = (1, Memo(lambda : ones))
printStream(ones, 10)

# infinitely many integers
integers = (0, Memo(lambda : addStreams(ones, integers)))
printStream(integers, 10)

# infinite stream of Fibonacci numbers
fibs = (0, Memo(lambda : (1, Memo(lambda : addStreams(tail(fibs), fibs)))))
printStream(fibs, 10)

#----
#*SICP:

#       Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
#       Abelson and Sussman
#       http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

#----
#Joe Bowbeer

-- 
Robin Becker



From c.evans at clear.net.nz  Tue Oct 12 04:06:15 1999
From: c.evans at clear.net.nz (Carey Evans)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 21:06:15 +1300
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <87puylf1fs.fsf@psyche.evansnet>

henk_p at my-deja.com writes:

> I want to run the python interpreter as a deamon process. So when
> I exit the shell it started from it keeps on running in the background.
> I know this is possible under unix by using the nohup command, but
> that is not a very nice solution.

You can write a daemon under Python just the same as in C.  The
attached module is a bit simplistic in places, but it *does* turn
itself into a daemon properly.  It also shows how easy it is to use
SocketServer, which I hadn't tried until a few minutes ago.

If you run this program, it will put itself into the background, and
answer requests on port 2001 with the same answer as the normal
daytime server on port 13.

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-- 
	 Carey Evans  http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/c.evans/

	       "This is where your sanity gives in..."

From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Tue Oct 12 15:51:20 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:51:20 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>
		<3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com>
		<38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au> <14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au>

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> I don't understand why you need the global declaration in g.
> 
>     def f():
>        x = 0
>        def g():
>           global x
>           def h():
>             global x
>             x = 1
> 
> At compile time, you should know which scopes have local variables
> named x and which have global declarations for x.  If g does not have
> a local variable named x, then the global declaration in h can't
> sensibly mean the local variable x in g's scope.
>
	Sure it can!! This is standard Python:

	def q():
		global x
		x = 1

Here, there is no 'global' variable x, it is in fact created
by executing q. There is no way to 'know' which scope a nested
function's 'global' statement refers to without a convention.
The Python convention is 'module scope, always', which also
applies to all non-local variables on reading.

However, there is a new factor here I overlooked: a function
can gave a local variable that is NOT visible in the function,
not even in an 'exec': one which is local because it is declared
global in a function nested in it.

> The requirement that there be a global declaration in every
> intervening scope seems unnecessary and error-prone.  If you miss one
> global statement, you get either weird behavior or exceptions.

	You are right it may be error prone, but _something_ is necesary.
 
> This isn't exactly compatible with the current semantics for global,
> but it would only cause problems for really obscure code, like this:
> 
>     x = 12
>     def spam():
>         x = 1
>         def eggs():
>             global x
>             y = x - 2
> 
> Under current global semantics, the x in eggs would refer to the
> global variable x with the value 12.  Under the new semantics, the x
> in eggs would refer to the local variable x in spam with the value 1.
> So it would break some code, but not very much; only code that uses
> multiple nested functions that use the same name for local and global
> variables.

Your rule would only work if the variable was, in fact, created by the
enclosing function before it was used in the enclosed function.
This is contrary to the current rule, where the enclosing function
is taken as module scope.

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From darrell at dorb.com  Thu Oct 21 16:39:59 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:39:59 -0400
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <01ea01bf1c04$71fe2070$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

Try this search on deja.com

+python +singleton

##########################
class MySingleton:
    def __init__(self):
# Init the singleton
pass

# Instantiate once, overwriting the previous name binding.
MySingleton = MySingleton()

# Try to instantiate it again (this will give an error):
AnotherSingleton = MySingleton()

--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
##########################

http://linux.kreonet.re.kr/python/ftp/www.python.org/workshops/1997-10/proce
edings/savikko.html

#########################
Create a function that returns an instance of the class.  For example:

my_instance = None

def my_factory():
    global my_instance
    if my_instance is None:
        my_instance = MyClass()
    return my_instance

class MyClass:
    ....

Now, you have to make sure that all your users call the function instead of
the class.  One solution would be to rename the class (e.g. give it a '_'
prefix) and give the function the original name of the class.

This doesn't work when you plan to inherit from the class, but I find it
difficult to understand what the singleton pattern should mean when combined
with inheritance anyway -- do you want one instance per class or one total
for the program?

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



--Darrell
----- Original Message -----
From: Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 3:32 PM
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?


> Hi, people.  Here I am, with another question.
>
> In one program, I keep a registry of created objects into a dictionary.
> Objects register themselves through their __init__ method.  From outside
> the class, I check if a given object has already been created, so to avoid
> creating another one that would be too similar, kind of redundant.
>
> It would be neat if I could hide this check.  The ideal would be that the
> instantiating call returns an already existing similar object if it
exists,
> instead of a brand new one.  A simple trick is to not instantiate
directly,
> but through some service function that does the check, returning either
> the old object, or a brand new one.
>
> But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into another?
> For example, is there some way by which a newly created object could
> soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy has already been
> registered?  If one similar object is found, this newly created object
would
> immediately dismiss itself in favour of the previous one, and the genuine
> class instantiator would return the previous object.  Is that possible?
>
> --
> Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no  Fri Oct 29 13:22:28 1999
From: mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 19:22:28 +0200
Subject: Using stdin / stdout on Unix
References: <87zox48i2d.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au> <19991028150312.B106850656@vislab.epa.gov> <19991028150727.A106865003@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <y0jiu3qcca3.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> writes:

> Randall Hopper:
> 
> For a simpler, lower-level interface, also look at the popen, popen2, and
> popen3 APIs.

There's also a PyExpect somewhere...

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 11 18:03:53 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:03:53 -0400
Subject: P vs P speed (was RE: Newbie question: files..)
In-Reply-To: <87hfjyxnkr.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <000001bf1434$82178e60$f1a2143f@tim>

[Tim]
>> try-timing-a-program-with-bigints<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

[Hrvoje Niksic]
> Huh?

Python's long ints; Perl's Math::BigInt.  I first saw Python when working
for a company trying to design a 64-bit supercomputer, using software on
32-bit workstations.  I had been using Perl, very painfully and slowly, and
the very first Python alpha already ran circles around Perl (I'm talking
factors of 10 - 100 here) for these tasks.  I kept Perl for text-crunching,
but dropped it for everything else.

[Tim again]
> It [Python] isn't slower than Perl in my experience (the contrary) --
> but then I use Perl for the little bit of serious text-crunching and
> regexp-slinging that comes up in my work.  Perl put extraordinary effort
> into implementing those efficiently; outside of them, I find that Python
> is typically faster.

[Hrvoje again]
> How do you measure that?

Speed excites me, so I just estimate my heartrate <wink -- but what do you
*think*?!>.

> So far I haven't seen an example of Python code that would be faster
> than its Perl equivalent.

I'll attach the first one I tried today -- and the last one I intend to try
ever again <0.1 wink>.  No bigints, just objects, recursion and simple
integer and floating-point math.  I did not work at optimizing either
version, but put considerable effort into fiddling the code so that:

a) Python and Perl print the same stuff.

b) Perl doesn't yield any warnings when run with -w (although, at the end,
it prints a bunch of "deep recursion" warnings when run as described next).

To be as fair as possible, I used the stock Python 1.5.2 without -O, and
downloaded the latest Win32 Perl (ActivePerl build 520).

OTOH, to be as unfair as possible (to compensate for the usual unfairness we
see in the other direction <0.5 wink>), I wrote this first in idiomatic
Python and then translated it straightforwardly into Perl.

Run it with command-line argument 5000.  It should print:

0 appeared 284 times
1 appeared 315 times
2 appeared 333 times
3 appeared 278 times
4 appeared 326 times
5 appeared 316 times
6 appeared 298 times
7 appeared 313 times
8 appeared 307 times
9 appeared 321 times
10 appeared 330 times
11 appeared 334 times
12 appeared 298 times
13 appeared 338 times
14 appeared 284 times
15 appeared 325 times
saw 5000 in all

On my home platform (P5-166, 32Mb RAM, Win95), it takes about 20 seconds in
Perl and about 14 in Python.  Which, applying the usual benchmarking
chicanery, means "Python is 43% faster than Perl".

More, this is *typical* in my experience.  All the convolution in Perl's
internals costs time to execute, and Python's much cleaner implementation
translates to faster runtime.  Python gets a bad rap here because of one
thing:  Guido doesn't put "extraordinary effort" into optimizing *anything*
(it's a personality flaw <wink>), while Larry et alia did put extraordinary
effort into optimizing some common things (mostly related to
text-crunching).  Outside of its areas of special competence, Perl is not
fast.

followups-ignored-ly y'rs  - tim

Python version:

class Node:
    def __init__(self, val, left=None, right=None):
        self.val = val
        self.left = left
        self.right = right

class BinaryTree:
    def __init__(self):
        self.root = None

    def insert(self, val):
        root = self.root
        lastdir = None
        while root:
            lastroot = root
            if val <= root.val:
                lastdir = 'left'
                root = root.left
            else:
                lastdir = 'right'
                root = root.right
        new = Node(val)
        if lastdir is None:
            self.root = new
        elif lastdir == 'left':
            lastroot.left = new
        else:
            lastroot.right = new

    def inorder(self):
        result = []
        self.__helper(self.root, result)
        return result

    def __helper(self, root, result):
        if root is not None:
            self.__helper(root.left, result)
            result.append(root.val)
            self.__helper(root.right, result)

class Random:
    def __init__(self, seed=(1,2,3)):
        self.x, self.y, self.z = seed

    def get(self):
        x, y, z = self.x, self.y, self.z
        x = (171 * x) % 30269
        y = (172 * y) % 30307
        z = (170 * z) % 30323
        self.x, self.y, self.z = x, y, z
        w = (x/30269.0 + y/30307.0 + z/30323.0) % 1.0
        return int(w * 16)

def _test(n):
    generator = Random().get
    tree = BinaryTree()
    for i in xrange(n):
        tree.insert(generator())
    all = tree.inorder()
    last = -1
    totalcount = count = 0
    for x in all:
        if x == last:
            count = count + 1
        else:
            if count:
                print last, "appeared", count, "times"
                totalcount = totalcount + count
            last = x
            count = 1
    if count:
        print last, "appeared", count, "times"
        totalcount = totalcount + count
    print "saw", totalcount, "in all"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys
    _test(int(sys.argv[1]))

Perl version:

package Node;
sub new {
    my ($class, $val) = @_;
    return bless {"val" => $val, "left" => undef, "right" => undef}, $class;
}

package BinaryTree;
sub new {
    return bless {"root" => undef}, shift;
}

sub insert {
    my ($self, $val) = @_;
    my $root = $self->{root};
    my $lastdir = undef;
    while (defined $root) {
        $lastroot = $root;
        if ($val <= $root->{val}) {
            $lastdir = 'left';
            $root = $root->{left};
        }
        else {
            $lastdir = 'right';
            $root = $root->{right};
        }
    }
    my $newguy = new Node($val);
    if (!defined($lastdir)) {
        $self->{root} = $newguy;
    }
    elsif ($lastdir eq 'left') {
        $lastroot->{left} = $newguy;
    }
    else {
        $lastroot->{right} = $newguy;
    }
}

sub helper {
    my ($self, $root, $result) = @_;
    if (defined $root) {
        $self->helper($root->{left}, $result);
        push(@$result, $root->{val});
        $self->helper($root->{right}, $result);
    }
}

sub inorder {
    my $self = shift;
    my $result = [];
    $self->helper($self->{root}, $result);
    return $result;
}

package Random;
sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    return bless {"x" => 1, "y" => 2, "z" => 3}, $class;
}

sub get {
    my $self = shift;
    my ($x, $y, $z) = ($self->{x}, $self->{y}, $self->{z});
    $x = (171 * $x) % 30269;
    $y = (172 * $y) % 30307;
    $z = (170 * $z) % 30323;
    ($self->{x}, $self->{y}, $self->{z}) = ($x, $y, $z);
    # Perl doesn't do something sensible with float % float, so fake it by
    # hand.
    my $w = $x/30269.0 + $y/30307.0 + $z/30323.0;
    $w -= int $w;
    return int($w * 16);
}

package main;
sub _test {
    my $n = shift;
    my $generator = new Random;
    my $tree = new BinaryTree;
    foreach (1 .. $n) {
        $tree->insert($generator->get());
    }
    my $all = $tree->inorder();
    my $last = -1;
    my ($totalcount, $count) = (0, 0);
    foreach (@$all) {
        if ($_ == $last) {
            ++$count;
        }
        else {
            if ($count) {
                print "$last appeared $count times\n";
                $totalcount += $count;
            }
            $last = $_;
            $count = 1;
        }
    }
    if ($count) {
        print "$last appeared $count times\n";
        $totalcount += $count;
    }
    print "saw $totalcount in all\n";
}

_test($ARGV[0]);





From skip at mojam.com  Mon Oct  4 13:51:00 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 12:51:00 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
In-Reply-To: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org>
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org>
Message-ID: <14328.59652.711031.469373@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Boudewijn> I was wondering whether it is possible to convert two lists
    Boudewijn> into one dictionary with one simple function: i.e., I've got
    Boudewijn> a list of keys, and a list of values like this:

    Boudewijn> list1=['a','b','c']
    Boudewijn> list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']

    Boudewijn> and I want do something easy and speedy to these two lists
    Boudewijn> that will give me:

    Boudewijn> dict1={'a': 'aaa', 'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc'}

Sure.  Try:

    >>> list1=['a','b','c']
    >>> list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']
    >>> dict1={}
    >>> for k, v in map(None, list1, list2):
    ...   dict1[k]=v
    ... 
    >>> print dict1
    {'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc', 'a': 'aaa'}

It also does the None pad of list2 you asked about.  It will None pad list1
as well, resulting in probably not what you want (the last element of list2
being associated with the key None).

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From jima at aspectdv.com  Tue Oct 19 15:27:59 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:27:59 -0700
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
In-Reply-To: <00eb01bf1a53$cde4b9b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <199910191923.MAA00522@hermes.aspectdv.com>

At 07:03 PM 10/19/99 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:
>> i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed, why are things like
>> len() not member functions of list/tuples ?
>
>hey, what makes you think len(obj) is less object-
>oriented than obj.len() ?  it's just syntax, you know.
>

But it IS less consistent syntax with not much advantage
("del" is a different story).  So it would be very nice if
I could write aList.len() if I prefer that to len(aList).


>and except from a few builtin types, len actually
>*is* a method, spelled __len__.  the len() function
>is just there for your convenience...
>    
>also see:
>http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#6.5
>
>> ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
>> those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
>> operator seems peculiar.
>
>"del" doesn't destroy an object, it removes
>the name from the local namespace.
>
>also see:
>http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#4.17
>http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#6.14
>
></F>
>
><!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the standard python library:
>http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
>-->
>
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From bogus@does.not.exist.com  Sat Oct 23 04:56:28 1999
From: bogus@does.not.exist.com ()
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 04:56:28 -0400
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
Message-ID: <7ursu2$laa$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>

Hello.
Has anyone used httpdapy for a processing-intensive Web site? If so, do you
find it reliable?  I plan to use it instead of PyApache for creating
database-backed web applications. I would love to hear about others'
experiences with it. Thanks in advance.

---- Sarino





From DWEBER1 at austin.rr.com  Wed Oct  6 21:47:52 1999
From: DWEBER1 at austin.rr.com (Daniel Weber)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 01:47:52 GMT
Subject: binary file reading in python
Message-ID: <37FBFC5B.FE883E51@austin.rr.com>

I've been mulling over a project to edit/view/search binary recipe files
for a production tool multi-platform (OS/2, VMS, NT, linux) and was
condidering using python.  However, the recipe files themselves are
stored in binary format which I would have to read in and parse.  I"ve
gone through my python books but have found no reference to reading in
binary files or any functions to deal with fixed size binary data types
like unsigned short, int and so on.  I know that I could write C code to
interface to python but that would mitigate the advantage of writing it
in python at all.  Are these type of read possible?




From nils.svangard at abc.se  Sun Oct  3 12:52:28 1999
From: nils.svangard at abc.se (Nils Svangaard)
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 16:52:28 GMT
Subject: Directory select dialog box?
References: <Arcturax-0210992302520001@ppp41.pm2.midd-oh.siscom.net> <mark.938950413@declan>
Message-ID: <19991003.16522800@alcyone.septentrio.net>


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 10/3/99, 12:33:33 PM, mark at chem.uwa.edu.au (Mark C Favas) wrote 
regarding Re: Directory select dialog box?:


> Arcturax at no_spam.siscom.net (Arcturax) writes:

> >I have a question
> >regarding bringing up a dialog box that will allow selection of just 
a
> >directory, not a file.

> >I need one that will work under both Windows NT and Unix and would 
prefer
> >the version that brings up the standard dialogs for either system 
like the
> >tkopenandsave dialogs do.  I heard there was a patch for this, but 
cannot
> >find it after spending two days of hard net searching and deja-news
> >searching.

> I, too, would be interested in one that brings up the standard dialogs 
for
> either system. I have one based on the Pmw widget set, but it has its 
own look
> and feel. If this would suit your purpose, mail me and I'll send it to 
you.

I'm as well looking for this, please let me know if you find anything 
interesting.

-- Nils






From tbryan at python.net  Tue Oct 26 20:02:07 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:02:07 -0400
Subject: linux idle
References: <3815FD36.F43DFECF@mail.medscape.com> <3815AF3A.ED305218@pdx.oneworld.com> <38161666.E32CF47D@mail.medscape.com>
Message-ID: <381640FF.54951072@python.net>

Wayne wrote:
> 
> I did the same thing (as root) and it's still not working.
> "rpm -U python-... "says python is already installed (-i is the same)
> "rpm -q python-..." says python is not installed (-e is the same)
> "locate idle" shows a /Tools/idle/ directory
> "find / -name "idle*" doesn't (neither does ls)
> 
> How are you starting idle?

If you're still having trouble, send me 
mail at 

tbryan
@
starship.python.net

and I'll walk you through it.

I-still-prefer-emacs-and-pymode-ly yours
---Tom



From aahz at netcom.com  Mon Oct  4 19:20:21 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 23:20:21 GMT
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 20)
References: <EC5158419350B090.6626105EB6EC65C9.75E9B9F7F2A580AD@lp.airnews.net> <361D828D8C4A1DB7.B2014CD75E380143.8300C24EFC157D44@lp.airnews.net> <19991004155928.B18440@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <7tbcnl$len@dfw-ixnews17.ix.netcom.com>

In article <19991004155928.B18440 at acs.ucalgary.ca>,
 <nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca> wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 09:24:13PM +0000, Cameron Laird wrote:
>>
>> I apologize for the thousands, if not jillions, in packet
>> costs this mistake has cost (do readers still recognize that
>> reference?).
>
>rn.  It was the first newreader I ever used.  Kids these days have
>it so easy.  Thanks for making me feel like an old-timer.

Well, except for the nitpick that it's actually Pnews that did that.
And my copy of Pnews (linked to trn) still does.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Wed Oct 20 06:44:41 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:44:41 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
In-Reply-To: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910201041470.5417-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Thomas Weholt wrote:
> 1. has this been tested and found ineffective in relation to a) speed of
> decompression or b) size of objects not big enough to gain any
> significant size advantage by compression
> 2. if not tested, why? Maybe a subclass of pickle could implement
> compression and decompression of objects?

   Few days ago someone called Ty Sarna implemented CompressedStorage for
Zope (www.zope.org). (S)He took exactly this approach - compress pickled
data. As Zope database could be large, I think (s)he did consider this
approach as efficient even for a number of objects. Not every object
compressed - some small pickles are left as is.
   For more information/code search Zope mailing lists.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Thu Oct 21 01:52:03 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 07:52:03 +0200
Subject: Speeding up Python
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <7ukvp4$16f@mail.psy.uva.nl> <0A7D1AD927575E9B.B0B35141D4C8672D.F415ED8B17CAA381@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <7um9l5$c99@mail.psy.uva.nl>

| >If you are bound to the use of quite unusual data structures, which make
| >difficult vectorization, then you may need to use Python for prototyping
| >only. However, no widely used math package or language can help you
better
| >in such a case.
| .
| Now *that* surprises me.  Maybe I've misunderstood
| what you've written here; do you truly prefer Python
| to Mathematica and Matlab for, say, magnetohydrody-
| namic or relativistic gravitational field solutions?
| Now this has me thinking ... we've certainly compared
| "scripting languages" often enough.  It's past time
| to make explicit how well Mathematica and NumPy do
| common engineering calculations.  The first thing I
| realize in thinking about this is that I'd write
| quite differently in the two; object orientation
| really does make a difference.
| --


When writing I had in mind original problems, that is ones for which there
is no crystalized formalism/implementation/library support. Thus, I wanted
to emphasize the suitability of Python for design.

For traditional problems I would strongly recommend the use of the language
which offer the best libraries for your problem, overseeing (at least in
part) the pure language issues. What matters more is the problem to solve.

I did not mean to compare Python to Mathematica. Mathematica is powerful and
nice as a language and has a tremendous library suppport. However, I dislike
highly the mess where you are thrown in when it comes to debugging, and the
fact you are completely bound to their world - no natural way out to other
languages, commercial products, etc.

Indeed, Python helps for a 'different' frame set. However, I guess the
reason for this is not as much in the language itself, as it is in the
freedom you are given. Making programming almost natural speaking and
easilly capturing complex language constructs, Pythons frees one from the
hassle of observing lots of rules, and thus allows him to become more
creative. But this is just a matter of releasing a potential. Positive
effects show up if the potential exists. One can write ugly code in Python
equally easy. And I am afraid most will do so. Just wait for Python to go
high with the 'public' and see then. Actually I am afraid this will happen
real soon.

ionel









From petrilli at digicool.com  Fri Oct 29 13:23:42 1999
From: petrilli at digicool.com (Christopher Petrilli)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:23:42 -0400
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
References: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr>
Message-ID: <B43F505E.226C%petrilli@digicool.com>

in article slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis at ajax.noc.ntua.gr, Constantinos A.
Kotsokalis at c.kotsokalis at noc.ntua.gr wrote on 10/29/99 11:36 AM:

> This was forwarded to me. Anyone interested in coming face 2 face
> with Tom and Brent? :-) Don't ask me why I don't go, I'm far from
> being a Python expert (I'm trying, though).

I think Tim Peters is the correct foil to Tom Christiansen :-0

Chris




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct  7 06:31:44 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:31:44 GMT
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
In-Reply-To: <199910061805.OAA09376@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <199910061805.OAA09376@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <002b01bf10af$27123890$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> I'm not sure how well Python copes with this generally, but
>> changing my locale so that the thousands sep and decimals sep
>> (normally ',' , '.') are reversed ('.' , ',') causes a problem
>> in Tkinter, and therfore IDLE.

> Hm, that's odd.  Python is supposed to ignore the locale when you use
> atof(); the locale module exports a version of atof() that honors the
> locale after you call locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "").
Even if setlocale() was not called through the Python wrapper?

> What platform are you on?
Win32

> It seems that perhaps the Tcl version you
> are using calls setlocale() on that platform?
In the embedding code, there is a call to setlocale(LC_ALL, "") before
Py_Initialise().

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From pierre at saiph.com  Sat Oct 30 02:04:10 1999
From: pierre at saiph.com (Pierre Imbaud)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 07:04:10 +0100
Subject: How to control app from Python?
References: <38160DD8.5C695E09@theriver.com>
Message-ID: <381A8A5A.C94398BD@saiph.com>

Andy Fox wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to use Python to control another (non Python) app.  Ideally, I
> would like to start the other app, then tell it to do a few things, then
> stop it.
> 
> I've done some experimenting with os.system() and os.popen().  It is
> remarkably easy to start an app, but not so easy to stop it.
> 
> I've found some really interesting looking functions in the win32pipe
> module, but I'm at a loss how to use them.  For example, there's a
> 'popen' 'popen2' 'popen3' and 'popen4.'  There must be a reason for
> having four apparently similar functions.
> 
> I'm using 1.5.2 on a Windows NT box.  I've been swimming around in
> documentation for the last few days, and doing some experimenting, but
> could use some guidance.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> --
> Andy Fox
I did this a few times, with no difficulty, but on UNIX! might be quite
different on windows...
python library essentially wraps C libraries and system calls. So
whatever U do, first wonder how U wud like it done in C or C++, and then
use python to do it.
The main point in your case seems to be: how carefull the app U launch
is to what U will tell it?
 - the app will take the time to read a stream: just open a pipe to it
(there is a function launching an app with pipe open to it).
 - the app is event driven: U need to send it signal, then.
-- 
Pierre Imbaud <pierre at saiph.com>
12 Rue des Bosquets 91480 Quincy Sous S?nart France
Tel:  01 69 00 94 57 Fax 79 65



From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Mon Oct  4 13:26:00 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 17:26:00 GMT
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
Message-ID: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org>

I was wondering whether it is possible to convert two lists into one
dictionary with one simple function: i.e., I've got a list of keys,
and a list of values like this:

list1=['a','b','c']
list2=['aaa','bbb','ccc']

and I want do something easy and speedy to these two lists that
will give me:

dict1={'a': 'aaa', 'b': 'bbb', 'c': 'ccc'}

preferably with the proviso that if there aren't enough values in 
list2, the dictionary is padded out with Nones. Is there something
built in, or do I have to loop trough list1 myself? I'm going to do
this an awful lot of times.

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From aahz at netcom.com  Wed Oct 13 21:08:19 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 01:08:19 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u374b$8lm$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <7u3ae3$fns@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>

In article <7u374b$8lm$1 at netnews.upenn.edu>,
Joshua Marcus <josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>What is the %$*&@#!@ rationale behind not including a do...while control 
>structure in Python?
>
>I know you can simply work around it, e.g:
>
>line = "foo"
>while input != "":
>    line = fp.readline()
>    process(line)

What you really want is 

for line in fp.readlines() :
   process ( line )

There's the little matter that readlines() sucks the entire file into
memory, but it's great if you can live with that overhead.  There's also
a pending task to make it optionally "lazy", but that probably won't
happen until 2.0.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From Alessandro.Bottoni at think3.com  Wed Oct 27 06:43:35 1999
From: Alessandro.Bottoni at think3.com (Alessandro Bottoni)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:43:35 +0200
Subject: Wpy and COM samples/demos/tutorials/how-tos?
Message-ID: <6D8A17398E28D3119F860090274DD7DB064345@pces.cadlab.it>

I'm starting to write a few small programs (for in-house use only) that will
have to communicate with a few COM servers (like MSIE) and will have to have
a Windows-compliant GUI. For this task, I'm using Visual Basic 6.0 but, as
you can understand, I would like to use Python instead...

I saw that there are Wpy (an MFC-based GUI library) and a COM interface for
Python, so I'm looking around for samples, demos, tutorials, etc...
everything that can add up to the documentation and sample code that I got
with the Python distribution...

Any suggestion? Any URL to visit?

Thanks.

--------------------------------
Alessandro Bottoni
(Alessandro.Bottoni at Think3.com)
(abottoni at yahoo.com)
Web Programmer
Think3 inc.
(www.think3.com)




From phd at phd.russ.ru  Mon Oct 25 06:07:05 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:07:05 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Piddle and Graphite?
In-Reply-To: <940844436.170387213@news>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910251006320.2713-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Jim Meier wrote:
> A while ago, I was using a pair of packages called Piddle and Graphite to do
[skip]
> What fate have these two modules suffered? Change of name? Or something more
> sinister?

   Why not just check their homepage: http://www.strout.net/python/

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From python-list at teleo.net  Wed Oct  6 02:44:59 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 23:44:59 -0700
Subject: Do You Have a Powerful Computer, a few extra minutes,& Microsoft Word?
In-Reply-To: <37FADC13.15566070@megsinet.net>
References: <37FADAD9.AFFF8684@megsinet.net> <37FADC13.15566070@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <9910052349430P.00641@quadra.teleo.net>

I'd imagine your "Linux friend" would probably prefer a tarball rather
than a Winzip'd file, eh? ;-)

I'm making one. I'll send it to you. (I knew this Windows box would
turn out to be good for *something* eventually.)

[David Oppenheimer, on Tue, 05 Oct 1999]:
:: An afterthought ... it may be necessary to compress it with Winzip or
:: another such tool to make it compact enough to e-mail.
:: 
:: 
:: David Oppenheimer wrote:
:: 
:: > Dear Group,
:: >
:: > A Linux friend would like to view the Quick Python online draft but
:: > doesn't have Microsoft Word or a Word viewer.  He tells me he can read
:: > it if its in HTML.
:: >
:: > I would appreciate it if someone would download the book, save it in
:: > HTML, and send me the book in HTML.  I have Microsoft Word, but My
:: > Pentium 75 with 32 MB RAM is just not up to the task.  I have tried
:: > multiple times and it locks up about half way through.
:: >
:: > Thanks,
:: >
:: > David Oppenheimer
:: 
:: 
:: -- 
:: http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From darcy at vex.net  Sat Oct 23 05:42:58 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 09:42:58 GMT
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
References: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7urvv2$h2r$1@hub.org>

rainer2207 at my-deja.com wrote:
> I have a Python script which displays a form and has a hidden input. The
> relevant code part looks something like this:

> print "<form method=\"post\" action=\"sendmsg.cgi\">"
> print "<textarea name=\"sndmsg\" rows=\"7\" cols=\"73\" nowrap>"
> print "</textarea>"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value="test">"
> print "<br>"
> print "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"Talk\">"
> print "</form>"

Use the features of the language.  Python has a triple quote that can
make your programs look a lot cleaner.  This is especially nice if you
do a lot of CGI programming.  Here is how I would write the above (sort
of - I put all my keywords in caps)

print """<form method="post" action="sendmsg.cgi">
    <textarea name="sndmsg" rows="7" cols="73" nowrap>
    </textarea>
    <input type="HIDDEN" name="username"  value="test">
    <br>
    <input type="submit" value="Talk">
    </form>"""

> test = "Hello"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"

Others have pointed out the '%' operator.  It also works with triple
quoted strings.  Here's the above with your variable string.

print """<form method="post" action="sendmsg.cgi">
    <textarea name="sndmsg" rows="7" cols="73" nowrap>
    </textarea>
    <input type="HIDDEN" name="username"  value="%s">
    <br>
    <input type="submit" value="Talk">
    </form>""" % test

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From aahz at netcom.com  Mon Oct 11 10:46:54 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 14:46:54 GMT
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <000001bf1379$f17c77e0$7fa2143f@tim> <87hfjyxnkr.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <7tst8u$hoh@dfw-ixnews13.ix.netcom.com>

In article <87hfjyxnkr.fsf at pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>,
Hrvoje Niksic  <hniksic at srce.hr> wrote:
>"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
>
>> It isn't slower than Perl in my experience (the contrary) -- but then I use
>> Perl for the little bit of serious text-crunching and regexp-slinging that
>> comes up in my work.  Perl put extraordinary effort into implementing those
>> efficiently; outside of them, I find that Python is typically
>> faster.
>
>How do you measure that?  So far I haven't seen an example of Python
>code that would be faster than its Perl equivalent.
>
>> try-timing-a-program-with-bigints<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>Huh?

Try writing a program that computes 1000! (factorial) in Perl.  It's a
three-liner in Python, and probably runs faster, too.  Floating point
doesn't count, either.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 10:21:08 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 16:21:08 +0200
Subject: unmimify or ...................
Message-ID: <00c801bf1b06$5b1acce0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

I wrote:
> this code merely prints the subpart bodies; use uu,
> base64, or quopri to decode them

or easier:

mimetools.decode(instream, outstream, encoding)

(which, despite what the eff-bot thought, should
work just fine also on computers that doesn't
happen to have sed, uudecode, mmencode, and
a few other unix commands. oh well...)

</F>

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




From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Mon Oct 25 18:56:01 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 08:56:01 +1000
Subject: Python/Tkinter _and_ COM on win32 platform?
In-Reply-To: <87aep7id9f.fsf@baal.winnegan.north.de>
Message-ID: <000801bf1f3c$1c4dc1e0$0501a8c0@bobcat>

> My problem is, I have no clue on COM programming. As far as I
> understand, my Python program has to register as a COM server
> providing methods to be called from Delphi.
>
> In the standard libs I found no mention of COM while pythonwin
doesn't
> support Tkinter.

You need the win32all package for COM support, hence no reference in
the core Python documentation - its not in the Python core.

Pythonwin doesnt support Tkinter (or more correctly, Tkinter doesnt
support Pythonwin :-) but that is not relevant to COM - they are quite
seperate.

However, you will have a significant problem getting Delphi to use a
Python GUI.  For one thing, Delphi is almost certainly going to have
the same problem as Pythonwin - Tkinter uses a very non-standard event
loop that is likely to be problematic - eg, Pythonwin can use used
from VB and I guess Delphi (eg, the debugger works fine in these
environments)  Hence my comment that Tkinter doesnt support Pythonwin,
rather than the other way around.

The second problem is that to embed a GUI COM object in Delphi or VB,
you need to conform to the "ActiveX Control" specifications.  Python
does not yet support this part of COM - it very nearly does - the
problem is that ActiveX controls are very complicated, and I havent
had time (nor the inclination, truth be told) to get a sample Python
ActiveX control together.

> I hope there is a way without writing an extension module, that
might
> become a major problem without a C compiler for the win32 platform.

As I mention above about Tkinter and a non-standard event loop, I
think there are other technical reasons why you will have problems.
IIRC, some of the free C++ compilers available are starting to get
good results, so MSVC may not be required these days...

Mark.




From cgw at fnal.gov  Tue Oct  5 09:17:19 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 13:17:19 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
	<14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
	<FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>
	<001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Fredrik Lundh writes:
 > 
 >     2. since there's no possible chance that an
 >     evolutionary process would leave junk in
 >     there, Darwin was obviously wrong.

I realize that this posting is in jest, but I can't help replying to
it anyhow, to make the observation that if the DNA sequences in
question are never translated into proteins, then there is simply no
pressure of natural selection acting either for or against the
propagation of these sequences; that is, since they represent neither
an advantage or a disadvantage to their host organism, the most likely
outcome is that they simply continue to be propagated, mostly
unchanged.  Again, the analogy with code is relevant: if there is a
section of your program that is never called, it doesn't matter if the
code therein is good or completely bug-ridden; if your only criterion
for gauging the quality of programs is their runtime behavior, rather
than a critical examination of the source-code, there will simply
never be any reason to excise the unused portions.  It seems to me
(but I am not a biologist!) that it would be extremely unlikely, that
without a "Divine Planner", DNA strands would evolve in a way so as to
be devoid of "Junk" sections.... that's just asking too much, to ask
not just for a molecule that "does the job" of carrying the genetic
information, but that does it with 100% efficiency.  There's not
sufficient selective pressure for the DNA to be forced to be efficient
(as opposed to, for example, the sunlight-collecting efficiency of a
leaf, where efficiency matters).  The code-bases are small, molecules
are cheap, and there's plenty of room for some extra unused bits in
there.

Of course, that's (supposed to be) the difference between Evolution
and Engineering; in Natural Selection, only runtime behavior matters,
but in our field, there's (supposed to be) an omniscient designer
critically examining the code.  But, given some of the code I've seen
over the years, I start to wonder sometimes...




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct  7 12:14:20 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 17:14:20 +0100
Subject: execv family...
In-Reply-To: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF676@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <003701bf10df$03468d50$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> os.execv("python.exe", ["spawner.py", "spawned.py"])

IIRC, you want os.execvp, which uses the PATH environment
variable.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From hei at adtranzsig.de  Thu Oct 14 10:35:31 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:35:31 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de> <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk> <939813231.529182@news.adtranzsig.de>
Message-ID: <939911758.972827@news.adtranzsig.de>

Sorry for the triple posting.
Don't know what's wrong with the News server here.

Finally i managed to grab all the pieces from different
versions, so here we go:

I collected everything necessary to patch a Python 1.5.2b1
to make it compile under Borland C++ builder 3 (platform
Win32 only, for those who don't know), plus a
little demo app. To be used like Christian Tismers
StackLess Python : you copy it into your source distribution
tree.

The patch is a 90 K winzipped file, but unfortunately  i don't have a place
on the Web.
If someone wants to host it, please mail me.
If someone wants to have it e-mailed, please mail me as well.

To mention Stackless one more time: My set of patched files
and Christian's set do not interfere. My app cooperates fine
with Stackless 0.3.

Though the included example app doesn't use PIL, the pil sources
are part of my Borland builder project file. They compiled
fine unter Borland builder without a patch.

So much for what this is about. I would be very glad if someone
would take the effort and update my patch so it's up to date to
Python 1.5.2. As i mentioned, i stopped at 1.5.2b1. In any
case, sign up if you want it.

--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net







From mdoering at comlineag.de  Tue Oct  5 16:34:23 1999
From: mdoering at comlineag.de (Martin Döring)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:34:23 GMT
Subject: Playing MIDI files
Message-ID: <37fa603f.3064486@pumba.class.udg.mx>

Hi!

Is there a module to play midi-files from python?

Martin Doering
 
Martin Doering (mailto:mdoering at comlineag.de)

      :|/\/\/\/\|:    Beware of the breeze
      :|\/\/\/\/|:    of air when I squeeze



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 13 04:20:05 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:20:05 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <01d701bf1553$c1e459e0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:

> > Another reason for providing the buffer interface is to facilitate writing
> > extension modules for C APIs that make heavily use of C structs. The most
> > notorious example I know is the MQI interface of IBMs MQSeries. I think it
> > defines more than 20 C structs, all of which I can define in
> > Python now and still interact nicely with the Python MQI extension module
> > written in C.
> 
> Haven't heard of this, but don't people use SWIG anymore <0.7 wink>?

real programmers don't ;-)

    http://www.nightmare.com/~rushing/dynwin/index.html

(uses Sam's calldll and npstruct modules to access every
little corner of windows without any custom win32 inter-
faces)

(and uiTookit/win32 uses a similar approach, of course)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From sca at isogmbh.de  Fri Oct 15 07:11:34 1999
From: sca at isogmbh.de (Chris...)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:11:34 +0200
Subject: Sort List
References: <7u5v55$ivo$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3806FF0F.7F15DB37@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <38070BE6.DA52998B@isogmbh.de>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:

> sorot at my-deja.com wrote:
> >
> > I'm the newbie of Python. I wonder that is there any function for
> > sorting list alphabetically? And is there any function to get the date
> > and time of OS?
>
> a. list = [1,3,4]
>    list.sort()

  But avoid the variable name 'list', since list is a predefined function
for constructing lists and it cannot be used after the above definition.
>>> list('abc')
['a', 'b', 'c']

bye
  Chris...




From scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx  Thu Oct  7 15:54:19 1999
From: scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 19:54:19 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn7vpt2b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn7vpu9b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl>

Remco Gerlich <scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx> wrote:
> Wat IS dit? Klinkt ongelooflijk interessant. Heb je daar URLs over? :-)

Sorry for the Dutch, this was meant as an email, was asking what
he was talking about and if he had an URL about it.

-- 
Remco Gerlich,  scarblac at pino.selwerd.cx
"This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the
 overall pluggandisp can be glorked from context"  (David Moser)



From bsb at baal.infodrom.north.de  Wed Oct  6 13:29:00 1999
From: bsb at baal.infodrom.north.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 19:29:00 +0200
Subject: Funny Names (was Re: Just like in our DNA...)
In-Reply-To: David Oppenheimer's message of "Wed, 06 Oct 1999 12:19:15 -0400"
References: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim> <oq7ll0k3fw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <87puys35vi.fsf_-_@baal.winnegan.north.de> <37FB7682.91CEF851@megsinet.net>
Message-ID: <87670k2yar.fsf@baal.winnegan.north.de>

David Oppenheimer <davidopp at megsinet.net> writes:

> Just a little side note Siggy.  The URL in your signature line
> contains a comma after the www instead of a period (or dot).
> Thought you'd like to know.

Thanks alot, I must admit that's a typical typo of mine resulting in
way too many syntax errors; I really should buy a bigger Monitor.

> Yes I do actually visit some of those URL's just to see what people
> think is so important about their site.

Nothing really important to this group so far apart from a link to the
local Linux fair you find in the bottom line of my signature too.
 ... and it's only in german.

[...]

Thanks
  Siggy
-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at infodrom.north.de - http://www.north.de/~bsb/

===============> http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/ <===============



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 05:16:16 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:16:16 +0200
Subject: Reading files binary
References: <380587FD.6935ED53@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <019101bf1624$c6e7b190$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
> I want to read a file and treat the data from it in a binary fashion. In
> fact, I want to compute the running time and bitrate etc. of an
> mp3-file, so if anybody has done this let me know. If not, I guess I`ll
> have to do it myself, eventhough that`ll take forever.
> 
> I need to read a given number of bytes, check the no. x bit for a value,
> check no. y bit etc. Is there a module for this or can it be done
> python?

here's one:
http://csl.cse.ucsc.edu/~ben/python/

PST-0.2 is likely to have similar capabilities
(at least tag reading).

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From tbryan at python.net  Thu Oct 14 10:50:22 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:50:22 -0400
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <3805EDAE.888C6CEA@python.net>

Ahmad Munif wrote:
> 
> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table 
> widget,notebook widget, etc).
> PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.

I don't know much about PyGtk.  Using PyQt is just like using Qt 
from C++.  Thus, you can basically use your Python reference and 
the standard Qt docs.  Of course, if you don't know C++ and have 
never used Qt before, you might find it difficult to produce anything
useful at first.

I've also heard good things about wxWindows (sp?).  I'm sure someone
will
pop up with a URL.  Otherwise, just look for comp.lang.python posts
about Tk and wxWindows.  In fact, someone once created a web page
summarizing the many GUI toolkits/libraries for which there are 
Python interfaces.  I'll try to dig up the URL for you.

> i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build
> my database application ?

Whichever one helps you create the app quickly and robustly. ;)

---Tom



From ilya at glas.net  Wed Oct 13 02:13:55 1999
From: ilya at glas.net (ilya at glas.net)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 06:13:55 GMT
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python SNMP module
Message-ID: <7u17v3$n5l$1@news.glas.net>

Hi,

I've written a simple (and incomplete) SNMP V1 manager class. Currently
it holds BER encoders/decoders and a few transport methods. Only Get-Request
is supported (no problem to add other request types, though). No MIB
parser yet.

However, it is written entirely in Python and it works.

I hope this module may be helpful to Python community as a starting point
for developing a more sophisticated solution.

The package is available at ftp://ftp.glas.net/~ilya/tools/pysnmp.tar.gz

I'm interested in bug reports & fixes, suggestions and improvements. Please,
please send your feedback to <ilya at glas.net>.

Thanks,
ilya



From andrew.markebo at telelogic.se  Fri Oct 29 17:02:34 1999
From: andrew.markebo at telelogic.se (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 23:02:34 +0200
Subject: Doing network traffic in the 'background' from Tkinter app??
References: <kspuxy62ub.fsf@telelogic.se> <19991029085829.A106971705@vislab.epa.gov>
Message-ID: <ksu2n95191.fsf@telelogic.se>

/ Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:
| [...] 
| I can't tell exactly what you're doing from your description, but check
| out Tk's fileevent callback:

Bingo, Thanx!

Basically what I want is to give the user the possibilty to mess
around with my application while it fetches data from THE internet(TM)

Darn, it seems to be Unix only... fungus.. I would like my application
to run on windows also..

        /Andy



From aahz at netcom.com  Wed Oct 13 11:42:58 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 15:42:58 GMT
Subject: Off-topic Internet Question
References: <38029546.C0F6FABF@altavista.net> <3804977B.86446175@strs.co.uk>
Message-ID: <7u29a2$27o@dfw-ixnews21.ix.netcom.com>

In article <3804977B.86446175 at strs.co.uk>,
Ian Clarke  <I.Clarke at strs.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Yes, it can be done.  The Python script will need to pretend that it is
>a web browser and submit the form information as a "cgi" request to the
>web server on which the internet page resides.  It can do this by
>opening a TCP socket to the web server.  You should read up on the HTTP
>protocol (specifically the section on CGI) (and using sockets in
>Python).  You will need to determine whether the web page in question
>uses CGI GET or CGI POST.  CGI GET is easier to implement as you just
>request a page appending the parameters to the end of the URL.  CGI POST
>is a little more involved.

No, it isn't, if you're using urllib:

   urllib.urlopen('http://www.foo.com/script', 'bar=baz')
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From pereira at research.att.com  Thu Oct 21 23:50:30 1999
From: pereira at research.att.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 03:50:30 GMT
Subject: Language detection module?
References: <380F1AE7.3466A879@darwin.in-berlin.de> <slrn80v4cb.49r.thantos@chancel.org>
Message-ID: <211019992350304779%pereira@research.att.com>

In article <slrn80v4cb.49r.thantos at chancel.org>, Alexander Williams
<thantos at chancel.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:53:43 +0200, Dinu C. Gherman
> <gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de> wrote:
> 
> >is there anything already like a function that I can pass an
> >arbitrary string and it will tell me wether it is written in
> >English, French, German, etc.? 
> 
> The method you use below is part of what I call the 'fast, dumb and
> happy' method of algorithms.  :)  (No shame there, I use it all the
> time.)  It takes careful crafting, but its algorithmically simple.  If
> you want something a bit more robust ...
> 
> Take a 2 - 6 character sliding window, then snip the file into bits.
> Don't worry about capitalization or punctuation, take the document
> raw.  Extract these Ngrams and create a sort of vector of them, each
> Ngram valued with its occurances.  Repeat for a large corpus of
> documents in different languages.  Now, begin clustering the documents
> based on the nearness of other documents in Ngrammatic space.  You'll
> find all the documents of a given language tend to hang together (not
> the least reason for which is that they tend to use the same phrases
> other languages don't).  As a side effect, you'll likely cluster
> documents about similar subjects together, but don't mind that right
> now.  :)
The standard way of doing this doesn't involve clustering, which is
hard, provided that you have training samples for each target language.
>From the training sample for language L, one builds a "language model"
M[L] that estimates the probability M[L](S) of any string S according
to the language. Given a test string T, guess its language to be the L
such that M[L](T) is highest. One can build language models in many
ways, but most of the simple ones involve n-gram statistics. There are
certain subtleties on how to deal with test strings containing n-grams
not found the training sample for some language. For details, consult

@book{Bell+Cleary+Witten:90,
   author =    {Timothy C. Bell and John G. Cleary and Ian H. Witten},
   title =     {Text Compression},
   publisher = {Prentice Hall},
   address = {Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey},
   year =      1990,
}

@book{Manning+Schuetze:99,
   author =    {Christopher D. Manning and Hinrich Sch\"{u}tze},
   title =     {Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing},
   publisher = {{MIT} Press},
   year =      1999,
   address =   {Cambridge, Massachusetts},
}

-- F



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct 16 06:19:24 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 06:19:24 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <19991014213412.A4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <000601bf17bf$eb2499a0$3e2d153f@tim>

[Tim]
>> The usual Python idiom for:
>>
>>     do {
>>         xxx;
>>         yyy;
>>     } while (condition);
>>
>> is simply:
>>
>>     while 1:
>>         xxx
>>         yyy
>>         if not condition:
>>             break

[Gerrit Holl]
> Huh?
> Why don't use the following code:
>
> while condition:
>     xxx
>     yyy
>
> I don't understand the difference.

Then let's see whether your parents do!  Even if they don't program, you may
be amazed at how quickly they grasp the essential difference between these
code snippets:

    while gerrit.feels_like_doing_chores();
        gerrit.do_a_chore()

versus

    while 1:
        gerrit.do_a_chore()
        if not gerrit.feels_like_doing_chores():
            break

There's always at least one more chore to be done, so both snippets are
correct.  The difference-- if you execute these loops once daily --is about
365 chores per year <wink>.

There are two common reasons for putting a loop exit somewhere other than
the top, but one reason is much better than the other:

1) You *can't* compute the exit condition at the top; e.g., here you can't
know whether all the lines in the file have been read before you try to read
another one:

    lines = 0
    f = open(somefile)
    while 1:
        if f.readline():
            lines = lines + 1
        else:
            break

2) You *know* the exit condition will be false the first time through the
loop, and it's expensive (or just humiliating <wink>) to check it; e.g.,

    while 1:
        gerrit.do_a_chore()
        if parents.say_ok_after_begging_for_an_hour_to_be_excused(gerrit):
            break

Since #2 is an efficiency trick, and for correctness relies on *knowing*
that the exit condition will be false at the top of the loop, it's not
something to get into the habit of doing (with computers, what you "know" is
eventually wrong -- and if you're wrong only one time in a million, you'll
be wrong hundreds of times every second <wink>).

Here's a story that will bore you to tears:  the FORTRAN language has a loop
construct that looks like

    do i = 1, 10
        print *, i
    enddo

That loop goes around 10 times, like the Python

    for i in range(1, 11):
        print i

Now when FORTRAN was first designed, they forgot to define what happens if
the first number is larger than the second, as in

    do i = 10, 1
        etc

Because it's a tiny bit cheaper (in machine code, on most machine
architectures) to put the "is the loop done yet?" test at the bottom of a
loop than at the top, IBM implemented FORTRAN loops that way, and that meant
*all* loops executed their bodies at least once -- even when the first
number was larger than the second.

Almost everyone else implemented FORTRAN loops the sane way; that is, to
skip the loop body entirely when the first number is larger than the second.

As consequences:  FORTRAN programs were not portable between IBM's and other
machines; grownups wasted many months yelling at each other in FORTRAN
committee meetings trying to repair this mess years later (and the Fortran
77 standard eventually said IBM's way was wrong); and unfortunate compiler
writers (like me <wink>) had to explain this over and over again to angry
IBM users, and implement ridiculous compiler options to make reasonable
compilers act like IBM's.

So that's what you cause when you put a loop exit at the bottom just to save
a nanosecond <wink>.

>> The criminally insane sometimes write the last line instead as:
>>
>>         if not condition: break
>>
>> but putting it on separate lines (as God intended) is key to making the
>> idiom instantly (after you're used to it -- about two days) recognizable
>> for what it is.

> I'll change my code. As far as I remember, this isn't mentioned in Guido's
> style guide; am I right?

There's an old saying on comp.lang.python <ahem>:  "If you meet Guido on the
Internet, kill him".  The rules in Guido's style guide are some of the
habits he believes make his code more readable, reliable, and easier to
change over time.  It's a good start, but it's not exhaustive, and in the
end you have to invent Gerrit's style guide based on what *you've* found
effective.  Which way do you find more readable?  Which way makes it easier
to find the loop exits three months later?  Is there some reason that
finding a loop's exits three months later may be especially valuable?  Or is
it just a waste of time?  You don't get any points for guessing Guido's
answers.  To be fair, you don't get any points for finding your own answers
either.  But at least their your answers then, instead of a guess about
somebody else's <wink>.

anyone-says-different-is-criminally-insane-ly y'rs  - tim





From mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu  Wed Oct  6 02:18:56 1999
From: mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu (Michael Vanier)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 23:18:56 -0700
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> 	<14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> 	<FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com> 	<001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <14329.64095.348126.484533@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <u7905hscr3.fsf@ebi.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <jlaepxt3jj.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>

Philip Lijnzaad <lijnzaad at ebi.ac.uk> writes:

> > It seems to me
> > (but I am not a biologist!) that it would be extremely unlikely, that
> > without a "Divine Planner", DNA strands would evolve in a way so as to
> > be devoid of "Junk" sections.... that's just asking too much, to ask
> > not just for a molecule that "does the job" of carrying the genetic
> > information, but that does it with 100% efficiency.  There's not
> > sufficient selective pressure for the DNA to be forced to be efficient
> > (as opposed to, for example, the sunlight-collecting efficiency of a
> > leaf, where efficiency matters).  The code-bases are small, molecules
> > are cheap, and there's plenty of room for some extra unused bits in
> > there.
> 
> I'm not going into religuous debates here, but current understanding is that
> this is very achievable. For small bacteria and especially viruses, the junk
> is very costly indeed, and getting rid it offers a selective advantage (and
> they they have little or no junk DNA). 
> 
> What's more (and this I think is exceeddingly interesting and has been
> pointed out many times before): some viruses (I thnk phiX 174 is one) have
> double coding. To explain: each triplet of nucleotides (DNA building blocks;
> there are 4 different ones) translates to one amino acid (protein building
> blocks; of these there are 20 different ones). Now 4x4x4 gives 64 different
> triplets, coding (with a lot of redundancy) for 20 differnt amino acids. This
> is called the genetic code, and there are largely the same throughout all the
> kingdoms (there are a few variations, but let's gloss over that) Now to
> translate DNA into protein, it is critical that you now where the triplets
> start; CGT TTG AAC CCC specifies a differnt piece of protein than 
>     [C] GTT TGA ACC [CC], which is exactly the same DNA but the translation
> was started shifted one nucleotide to the right. In most cases, this protein
> is just nonsense, but some viruses actually make use of this: they use the
> same stretch of DNA to specify different stretches of protein, basically
> exploiting the redundancy in the genetic code. Very cool, and I've been told
> that in the early days of computing and especially games programming, similar
> tricks with the instructino sets of of early microprocessors were done.
> 

It's also important to realize that bacteria and viruses have much tighter
space constraints than eukaryotic (e.g. mammalian) cells, which are much
larger and have *much* more DNA.  In the latter case, there may be little
or no advantage to getting rid of all untranscribed (I dislike the term
"junk") DNA.  In fact, given the way that chromosomes cross over at meiosis
(to produce sperm or eggs), it may be advantageous to have some
untranscribed DNA between transcribed regions, so that crossovers recombine
existing genes without disrupting them.  There may also be structural
reasons for having untranscribed DNA as well.  In fact, it may be important
to have particular AT/GC ratios in untranscribed DNA even if the particular
sequence is of little importance, because this ratio may affect how easy it
is to uncoil the DNA prior to RNA transcription.  And there may be other
uses for untranscribed DNA as well -- who knows?

But back to python... :-)

Mike

--------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Vanier	mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.



From phil at river-bank.demon.co.uk  Mon Oct 11 17:04:38 1999
From: phil at river-bank.demon.co.uk (Phil Thompson)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:04:38 +0100
Subject: Pythoning of C++ objects
References: <10715.991010@amv.tsk.ru>
Message-ID: <939676188.424789519@news.demon.co.uk>

On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Mikhail Astafiev wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>My problem is as follows:
>
>There is a C++ data processing class library. I have to write Python
>extension allowing to manipulate C++ objects and call their methods
>from Python. I don't want to use CXX - I want to write something more
>lightweight.
>
>Could anybody point/send some example/documentation/comments on
>porting C++ classes to Python?

Another alternative is SIP which is used to generate the PyQt/PyKDE bindings.  I
wrote it because I didn't think SWIG was really up to it for C++.  SIP
supports abstract classes, virtual functions, access to protected functions. 
You can find it at http://www.river-bank.demon.co.uk/software.

The only problem is that I haven't got round to documenting it yet (although
that's not stopped others using it).  The PyQt/PyKDE specifications are good
working examples.

Phil



From emil at imf.au.dk  Thu Oct 14 11:12:40 1999
From: emil at imf.au.dk (Emil Hedevang Lohse)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:12:40 +0200
Subject: Python for HP-UX
Message-ID: <3805F2E8.64189D2@imf.au.dk>

I have a simple request: Python for HP-UX.

I have downloaded the sourcecode and tried to compile it but it will not work.
So is it possible that anyone out there could email the compiled Python??

>From Emil
emil at imf.au.dk



From culliton at clark.net  Thu Oct 14 23:37:28 1999
From: culliton at clark.net (Tom Culliton)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 03:37:28 GMT
Subject: is there a record separator? RS
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910131819020.14981-100000@crb.crb-web.com> <EddN3.908$9%5.19289@dfw-read.news.verio.net> <87ln9574wv.fsf@banet.net>
Message-ID: <YjxN3.1379$9%5.28842@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

In article <87ln9574wv.fsf at banet.net>, greg andruk  <meowing at banet.net> wrote:
>Tom Culliton <culliton at clark.net> wrote:
>
>> Sort answer, No, although it's been a long standing TODO item.  Guido
>> even agreeded to it in principle but the volunteer (who shall remain
>> nameless) got sidetracked and never delivered the patch. 8-(  (Mea
>> culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...)
>
>Well, it annoyed me enough that I gave it a try, and think it might
>actually be working right.  Daring folks may want to give this a try:
>
> <URL:http://members.xoom.com/meowing/python/fileobj.tar.gz>
>
>These are intended to work with the released 1.5.2 sources.  I put
>together the changes as replacment copies of fileobject.c and
>fileobject.h, so that the diff-challenged can experiment too.  Save
>the original fileobject.*, copy in these ones, fire up make and cross
>your fingers.
>
>Doc changes are included; briefly, file objects get a new separator
>attribute, and the read and readine methods now take an optional
>second argument which if true will trim separators.
>
>I believe this is consistent with what TODO number 4.11 discusses; if
>it turns out to be acceptable I can send it in as a proper patch
>against the CVS tree.

Fabulous!

Thats the first part of the job done.  Another thing that made it a
biggish task was the intent that it be supported for all the standard
file like objects, such as StringIO, cStringIO, etc, I remember there
being about a half dozen.  If you're interested you can used deja-news
to dig up the original discussion with the details.  To put words in
Guido's mouth, my impression was that it would have to be uniformly
available to be acceptable.



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Fri Oct 22 20:53:12 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 23 Oct 1999 00:53:12 GMT
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov> <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <slrn811jtg.af8.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:41:31 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg bilang:
| Thanks. So leaving the check out for FreeBSD is ok. What about other
| nifty OSes like BeOS, NetBSD, the new BSD-based MacOS (can't remember the
| name right now) ?

Mac OS X Server.
And it is NOT "nifty". :-P
I ran your module on OS X v1.02, here's the output I got:

-----
Python 1.5.2 (#1, 07/22/99, 20:33:35)  [GCC Apple DevKit-based CPP 5.0]
on next5_3
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import platform      
>>> platform.platform()
uname: illegal option -- p
usage: uname [-amnrsv]
'Rhapsody-5.5-Power_Macintosh'
>>> platform.system()
'Rhapsody'
>>> platform.node()
'amma'
>>> platform.release()
'5.5'
>>> platform.machine()
'Power Macintosh'
>>> platform.processor()
''
>>> platform.version()
'Kernel Release 5.5: Fri Jul  2 13:10:26 PDT 1999;
root(rcbuilder):Objects/kernel-154.14.obj~10/RELEASE_PPC Copyright (c)
1988-1995,1997-1999 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. '
-----

What's the -p option to uname supposed to do anyway?  Print the processor
name?  I think that's what the -m option is for.

Btw, Python compiles right out of the box on OS X Server.  It's one of the
few un*x packages that I use that I DIDN'T have to patch.  Thanks, Guido! :)


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Fri Oct 15 21:33:43 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 16 Oct 1999 01:33:43 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <1272093334-1612528@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <7u8kln$imq$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>> Eh?  Weren't the people on the Mayflower from Britain?

> Well, Martijn undoubtedly meant the Mayflour, which wasn't a 
> ship but a windmill that got picked up in particularly stiff 
> breeze and landed in Plymouth. Michigan, that is. The miller 
> and his wife, being Dutch, had no idea what had happened. 
> They tried raising tulips, but that didn't work, so they started 
> building dikes. Later, of course, they merged with Buick. But 
> you can still hear the sound of wooden shoes when attempting 
> to accelerate one up a steep hill.

Cool, what's the point of departure for this timeline? Whoops, wrong
newsgroup, I thought this was soc.history.what-if 

Actually see my other reply in this thread. I should say something about
Python instead, though. I feel ashamed. :)

> anything-else-you-wanted-to-know?-ly y'rs

I like your story much better than the real history!

And as an intern at Buick, Guido worked on a way to script this MP3 player 
for cars they were developing. He hacked up this single purpose scripting
language which he called Python. A mechanic called Tim Peters, who was 
always looking for ways to twist things into functions nowhere near their
original purpose (at Buick, he was responsible for the invention of
the Information Superhighway), tried to advocate the use of Guido's hack
as a general programming language. And strangely enough, people believed him
and started using it. They should've stuck to Perl. Then the alien
space bats created the timbot, who started comp.lang.python, and that's
how we've all arrived where we are now.

for-more-on-the-bats-read-soc.history.what-if-ly yours,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 18 03:26:32 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 03:26:32 -0400
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
In-Reply-To: <m37lklivs8.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim>

[Michael Hudson]
> Something I noticed but never got around to moaning about around the
> time of the transition from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2 was that now hitting Ctrl-C
> at the interpreter prompt tends to dump me out to the shell.

"Tends"?  I hope you can make a bolder claim than that <wink>.

If Ctrl-C does kill the interpreter, it's a platform-specific bug.  Start
your exciting search by trying:

>>> import signal
>>> signal.default_int_handler()

Hoping for something like:

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
KeyboardInterrupt
>>>

and still in the interpreter shell.

always-knew-the-bytecodehacks-would-kill-you<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From battery841 at usa.net  Wed Oct 27 23:42:35 1999
From: battery841 at usa.net (battery841 at usa.net)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 03:42:35 GMT
Subject: doesn't like / as a divide symbol
Message-ID: <7v8gnb$2d0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am new to Python.  I am trying to write a program that will do a
redundant math equation for my science class.  However, when I try to
run the program, it gives me the following error:

  File "saturated.py", line 20, in ?
    PERCENT_SATURATED=SATURATION_ARRAY[count] / MEASURED_ARRAY[count]
TypeError: bad operand type(s) for /

I don't get what's wrong with that.  I believe that all my arrays are
okay.  Any ideas?


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Oct 27 05:27:08 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:27:08 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com> <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com> <38161667.950EE8A9@callware.com>
Message-ID: <3816C56C.C72FF1C1@lemburg.com>

Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
> 
> > The new upload (version 0.3.1) should fix this. If not, please try
> > to adapt the RE in system_ver() to make it correctly parse the
> > string and send me the diffs. Thanks.
> 
> Windows-NT-4.0
> 
> Looks good to me.  Thanks!

Cool. BTW, is there any way (other than using the registry) to find
out the patch level of WinNT, e.g. something like "Windows NT 4.0 with
SP4" ? Since this information seems vital on WinNT I think it should
be included in the version string.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    65 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From cfelling at iae.nl  Mon Oct 18 17:56:23 1999
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 23:56:23 +0200
Subject: Read one key press.
References: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <7ug527$116$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>

Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> wrote:
> if I have the following program:

> key = raw_input("press a key: ")
> if key == 'a':
>     print "you pressed 'a'"
> elif key == '^['
>     print "you pressed escape"

> it doesn't work. Well, it works but it itsn't what I'm looking for. I want
> ONE key input. Can this me done easyly?

as you are running linux it sure can be done:) though not as easily as
in Windows. For a better understanding try reading the libc info pages,
menu "Low-Level Terminal Interface". You can find the example I recoded
in python in its submenu "Noncanon Example". Also have a look at the
termios module.


import termios, TERMIOS, sys

fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
def getch():
    saved_attributes = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
    try:
        attributes = termios.tcgetattr(fd)            #get a fresh copy!
        attributes[3] = attributes[3] & ~(TERMIOS.ICANON | TERMIOS.ECHO)
        attributes[6][TERMIOS.VMIN] = 1
        attributes[6][TERMIOS.VTIME] = 0
        termios.tcsetattr(fd, TERMIOS.TCSANOW, attributes)

        a = sys.stdin.read(1)
    finally:            #be sure to reset the attributes no matter what!
        termios.tcsetattr(fd, TERMIOS.TCSANOW, saved_attributes)
    return a
    
-- 
groetjes, carel



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 31 03:28:18 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 03:28:18 -0500
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
In-Reply-To: bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu's message of "28 Oct 1999 20:09:54 GMT"
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial> <19991028065755.B10826@better.net> <y0jogdjcshq.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no> <slrn81hbci.g.bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>
Message-ID: <oqvh7oszml.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Bernhard Reiter) writes:
> Magnus L. Hetland <mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no> wrote:
> >William Park <parkw at better.net> writes:
> >> Moshe Zadka wrote:

> >> > I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with some
> >> > cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep same
> >> > "last changed" time and more.

> >> What's wrong with 'fromdos' and 'todos' [...]
> >Or dos2unix/unix2dos [...]
> Hey, what about "recode"? :)

philh at vision25.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt) writes:

> I'm a "tr" man, myself.

I also do `tr' in cases `recode' is not handily available.  By default,
`recode' protects timestamps when recoding a set of files over themselves,
but it does not recurse into directories.  To change CR-LF into LF for a
whole project, I guess that `find -type f | xargs recode /cl' would do.
To go from LF into CR-LF, I would use `find -type f | xargs recode ../cl'.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 16:12:35 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:12:35 +0200
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <7u3fm2$tto$1@netnews.upenn.edu> <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim> <19991014213412.A4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <01b601bf1680$9b9c7410$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com> wrote:
> >     while 1:
> >         xxx
> >         yyy
> >         if not condition:
> >             break
> 
> Huh?
> Why don't use the following code:
> 
> while condition:
>     xxx
>     yyy
> 
> I don't understand the difference.

consider:

while 1:
    xxx
    condition = yyy
    zzz
    if not condition:
        break

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From Vladimir.Marangozov at inrialpes.fr  Mon Oct 25 10:01:32 1999
From: Vladimir.Marangozov at inrialpes.fr (Vladimir Marangozov)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:01:32 +0100
Subject: Q: Shared python extension module calling another shared library?
References: <EqxQ3.80$iL.19750@news.goodnet.com>
Message-ID: <381462BC.20FD1C93@inrialpes.fr>

Tom Vrankar wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to go about linking
> this mess together? Or how at least to debug whatever problem import
> has? Any help is
> appreciated.
> 

I don't know the details on HP-UX, but you can check Deja News for
some insights. I wrote some general comments on shared libraries
( http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=441757213 ) and somebody has
volunteered at the time to write a HOWTO. Don't know what happened
since then.

You'd probably get more help by providing a more specific problem
description. From your message, it's unclear whether you have a
programming error, a dyn linking error, or a conceptual error.

-- 
       Vladimir MARANGOZOV          | Vladimir.Marangozov at inrialpes.fr
http://sirac.inrialpes.fr/~marangoz | tel:(+33-4)76615277 fax:76615252



From email  Sun Oct 17 22:35:03 1999
From: email (daniel)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 21:35:03 -0500
Subject: Can't build under Slackware
Message-ID: <380a7947@news.mdc.net>

I've been trying to build Python 1.5.2
under Slackware 3.3 using kernel 2.0.38
but the build dies.

I'm running gcc 2.7.2.

Is there a known problem with building
on this setup?

-Daniel




From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Tue Oct  5 12:31:48 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:31:48 +0200
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7td7s2$45ok$1@uvaix7e1.comp.UVic.CA>
Message-ID: <37FA27F4.7D5D9584@darwin.in-berlin.de>

John Aycock wrote:
> 
> Here's some references to get you started:
> 
> W. Miller & E. W. Myers.  A File Comparison Program.  _Software 
> -- Practice and Experience_ 15(11), November 1985, pp. 1025-1040.

My previous posting about the (very experimental) alignment
module is actually based on a more recent pairwise alignment
alorithm of Gene Myers et al., too (1988).

Regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman

................................................................
"An average of more than 15 % of adults in 12 industrialized 
countries are functionally illiterate; in Ireland, the United 
Kingdom and the United States, the rates are over 20 %."

  (The State of the World's Children 1999,
   UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/sowc99)



From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Fri Oct 15 10:51:37 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:51:37 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000001bf15fc$3397ee00$ba2d153f@tim><0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB2650@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com> <14342.11715.902925.758156@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEF9010@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

Jeremy Hylton <jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote in message
news:14342.11715.902925.758156 at bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us...
> >>>>> "RB" == Robin Boerdijk <robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com> writes:
>
>   RB> I do want to come back on the buffer interface though. I think I
>   RB> have no alternative for using it. How else can I encapsulate a C
>   RB> API function that expects a pre-allocated buffer as a parameter.
>
>   RB> For example, how could I encapsulate the following C function:
>
>   RB>     int GetMessageFromQueue(void* buffer, int bufsize);
>
>   RB> where buffer is an application supplied buffer of size
>   RB> bufsize. The function will return the part of the buffer
>   RB> actually filled. The only one who knows what a reasonable size
>   RB> of the buffer is is the application programmer (who is
>   RB> programming in Python).
>
> This sounds a lot like the recv method on sockets.
>
> The C API to recv is:
>
>      ssize_t recv(int socket, void *buffer, size_t length,
>           int flags);
>
> The Python program calls the recv method on a socket and passes a
> buffer size (call the arg buflen).
>
> The C implementation of the recv method is pretty simple:
> 1. Allocate a string of size buflen.

I would like to prevent this extra memory allocation. If I call
the recv() function a lot of times, I would like to be able to reuse a
pre-allocated buffer to spare me a large number of memory allocations. A
writable string object with a buffer interface would allow me to do just
that.

Robin







From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Oct  4 07:29:56 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 11:29:56 GMT
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 03:51:39PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:

>> almost all python meetings are currently in the USA. So that's
>> unavailable for all European people (except England, which has
>> it's own PUG already). And that while there are so much Dutch
>> people here! Wouldn't it be a nice idea to start a Dutch Python
>> Users Group, or a NederLandse Python Gebruikers Groep (NLPGG)?

> I'd be all for it. If there are enough Dutch folx actually, like, living in
> the Old Country ;-)

Sounds like a good idea. I'm in. We should get the Dutch Zopers into this
as well; we do have a Dutch Zope mailing list.

So, now we need a website and mailing list. Anybody have any ideas?

Regards,

Martijn




From gterum at c2i.net  Sat Oct 30 15:32:37 1999
From: gterum at c2i.net (Geir Bjarte Terum)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 19:32:37 GMT
Subject: Optimization
Message-ID: <381B479B.6C73707E@c2i.net>

Will statements like this be optimized away using the -o program switch?

if __debug__:
  <statements>  # Dead code in optimized version.

Is there any way to define similar *variables* for other purposes?
If not, as a workaround, will the following work?

__myflag__ = __debug__  # Set to 1 if always to be supported.

if __myflag__:
  <statements>  # Dead code in non-flagged version.

Regards
- gb -




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Fri Oct 22 01:51:21 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 01:51:21 -0400
Subject: [slightly off-topic] programmable speech recognition software
In-Reply-To: <380e3730.35917151@news.btx.dtag.de>
Message-ID: <000001bf1c51$78160160$352d153f@tim>

[Stefan Franke]
> I'm looking for the appropriate SR software to build a part of a room
> installation

What is "a room installation"?

>. The task differs somewhat from the usual "dictate into word"
applications:

Bad sign <0.1 wink>.

> In the recorded audio stream should be recognized as many words as
> possible - speaker independent and in German! (I can hear you shudder)

Speaker-independent is hard.  From a recording is hard.  If people aren't
speaking into a high-quality microphone, it's very hard.  If it's not
intentional speech (i.e., if people don't know they're talking to a
computer -- they're just chatting), it's very hard.  The good news is that
German is easy (compared to the rest of this).

> In unclear cases - there will probably be lots of them - the closest
> interpretations would be OK.

I doubt you can do this yourself and get acceptable results with any
available SR software.  It's an extremely difficult problem.  Taking
software designed for close-talking microphone, speaker-dependent, "dictate
into word" applications, and trying to apply it to a radically harder task,
is like hoping (say) Perl can be used to get real work done <wink>.  The
closest Dragon Systems gets is described at:

    http://www.dragonsys.com/products/audiomining/index.html

Note that there's no product mentioned there -- Dragon has appropriate
technology, and that's what the page talks about.  This is so bleeding edge
there are no pre-packaged applications for sale.  Dragon would be happy to
build one for you, though, in return for an insignificant percentage of
Germany's gross national product <wink>.

> Therefore completeness and correctness don't have the highest priority
> in this case.
>
> The application is supposed to run on a Win 9x machine. Direct
> accessibility from Python would be super, otherwise possible via
> COM/SAPI from M$, admittedly I don't know anything about its
> capableness.
> I read the postings about NatLink in c.l.p,

Dragon's NaturallySpeaking includes a SAPI server accessed via COM, and a
Python binding to that is the core of what Joel Gould's (NatSpeak's original
architect, BTW!) NatLink offers.  AFAIK, it is the only Python interface
available to any SR software:

    http://www.synapseadaptive.com/joel/natlink.htm

> but in absence of a demo version of NatSpeak I cannot tell anything about
> its suitability, so I would be pleased to hear some opinions of this
group's
> numerous SR experts!

Sorry not to be more encouraging, Stefan -- you may be able to tell that I
don't work for the marketing dept <wink>.  Seriously, NatSpeak works very
well for its intended purposes, but your purposes are far from those in
several crucial respects.  If you want to play with SR on MS systems to "get
a feel for it", visit the little-known:

    http://www.microsoft.com/IIT/

You can download a free SR engine and development kit (note that this is for
hard-core Windows developers; there's nothing of use to end users there).

if-machines-could-understand-speech-god-wouldn't-have-felt-compelled-
    to-create-humans-ly y'rs  - tim


PS:  I don't speak for Dragon Systems.  If they thought you thought I did,
they'd probably die laughing.





From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Tue Oct 12 19:20:37 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:20:37 GMT
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991006021336.B28582@quark.emich.edu> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991006120322.A29048@quark.emich.edu>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-ojIuNNCQWFi4@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999 16:03:22, Jeff <jam at quark.emich.edu> wrote:

> my suggestion would be to implement the server in python, but leave the
> client side to existing code, and then you won't have to worry about how to
> do it.

Would be nice, but I haven't found anything that seems to match
the RFC in the client side.  Most of the NTP clients that I have found
"require" UDP implementation, and I've just written the TCPIP.  I 
haven't messed
around with figure out UDP implementations at this time.

> > Honestly though, I think it's a semi long term gap that probably should be
> > filled.  At least on a platform by platform basis.  After all STRPTIME
> > isn't supported everywhere, why should TIME or DATE (or whatever they get
> > called).

> in my opinion facilities to set the date and time in a cross platform manner
> would be a non-trivial excercise and a security violation of the machine. I
> wouldn't want the average university student to walk up to a win32 machine
> with pythonwin installed and be able to muck about with the date and time of
> a machine with the simplicity of a function call-- at the least, a 'trick'
> ought to be required (like using 'os.system' or a custom C extension) just
> to keep things from getting out of hand. 

And anyone under Windows NT can already do that by opening a "DOS
window", or "Run Program" Dialog and access DATE & TIME that way.

Honestly, just about every other programing language I can think
of has some manner to set the date & time.  This isn't a accusation
just a statement of fact.

> client software that uses the NTP protocol to set the date and time have
> already been written for win32 and various other platforms, and a rewrite of
> said clients in python would have limited value for the reasons we have been
> discussing for the last several days-- it's a tricky topic.

Most of the clients, as said above, seem to use UDP, and not straight 
TCPIP.

> the server side, on the other hand, is clean and elegant in python, and
> ought to perform quite well, especially if replaced with something like
> medusa as a server framework. 

I'm hoping to handle that next.... But I've been side tracked with 
other projects
at work, including a "proxy bouncer".

> in terms of filling a gap by implementing some sort of 'setclock' function
> in the core python library, rest assured that guido and the other
> maintainers have put many many many hours into these issues (python wasn't
> born yesterday), and if there was a clean way to do it, they probably would
> have done it by now.

Or just never thought about it.  After all, how many programs actually
use "SET" 
date & time functions??? Not many.

> have you made any other changes to the server code since you posted it?
> would you be willing to repost or put it up on a web page someplace so
> everyone can get the benefit of your experience?

I will in a bit, probably this next weekend, but I'm working on a few 
other projects
in the meantime....

		- Benjamin

================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 29 16:57:49 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:57:49 -0400
Subject: self-registering objects?
In-Reply-To: <7vcu4u$592@mail.psy.uva.nl>
Message-ID: <1270892576-10622819@hypernet.com>

Ionel Simionescu writes:
> 
> I would like objects of a certain class to be able of registering
> themselves in a global dictionary, __register__, possibly upon
> __init__.
> 
> __register__ should contain associatins such as:
> 
> { 'ID': <__main__.certain_class instance at ####> }
> 
> Unfortunately, the naive:
> 
> def __init__(self, etc.):
>     global __register__
>     self.ID = 'instance1'
>     __register__[self.ID] = self
> 
> Does NOT work.
> 
> The object that I find in the __register__ under the given ID is
> apparently just the bare bones of the class and gets none of the
> changes incured to the instance after registration.
> 
> It's is not a problem if I register the object "from outside",
> but I would like to understand what's going on...

So would I!

--------------------------------------------
__register__ = {}

class A:
    def __init__(self, arg):
        __register__[id(self)] = self
        self.arg = arg

a1 = A(1)
a2 = A(2)

for a in __register__.values():
    print `a`, a.arg
------------------------------------------------------
When run, outputs:
<__main__.A instance at 7fb880> 2
<__main__.A instance at 7fb7f0> 1
>>>

In fact, __init__ is run after the instance construction is 
complete, so whatever is going wrong is _not_ what you think 
is going wrong!

(BTW: you don't need global on __register__, because you are 
not changing the binding, you are mutating the object).

- Gordon



From skip at mojam.com  Wed Oct  6 15:11:12 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:11:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se>
References: <37FB97B4.F3A1660@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu>
	<XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <14331.40656.938988.515817@dolphin.mojam.com>

>>>>> "Mikael" == Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> writes:

    Mikael> On 06-Oct-99 Tom Loredo wrote:
    >> ... it is now believed that at least some of this DNA serves a
    >> critical function in determining under what situations various bits
    >> of coding DNA are expressed---chemicals bond to upstream noncoding
    >> DNA and trigger the transcription of the coding parts.  As already
    >> noted in the

    Mikael> So, they are case-clauses... :)

Probably more efficient than a series of if-elif-else clauses!

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx  Tue Oct 19 18:43:18 1999
From: scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 22:43:18 GMT
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
References: <380B8EB5.B03BB07A@nmt.edu> <5lg0z75b60.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <slrn80pstl.a1k.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
> Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu> writes:
> 
> > I am building an interactive Intel Assembly interpreter using Python. I
> > am now needing to add the part where my binary code is taken, loaded
> > into memory and executed. I've heard the only way of doing this is to
> > use C.
> 
> I question what you've been told.  Python has perfectly fine built-in
> tools for reading binary data from a file, e.g. the struct module and
> the "rb" open mode.  Where is the need for using an extension?

I think the problem isn't loading it into memory (his Assembly 
Interpreter probably generates it itself), but rather actually
executing the binary code from memory.


-- 
Remco Gerlich,  scarblac at pino.selwerd.cx
"This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the
 overall pluggandisp can be glorked from context"  (David Moser)



From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 24 14:25:19 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 18:25:19 GMT
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241351350.29582-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <slrn816bip.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net> <ltiu3wpt8f.fsf@asfast.com>
Message-ID: <slrn816jka.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On 24 Oct 1999 13:24:16 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> wrote:
>I've been reading this thread with interest.  In general, I like the
>fact that httpdapy re-uses the same interpreter similarly to the way
>that mod_perl does it, and for the types of applications I write, that
>indeed is quite worthwhile.  I'd rather have that capability and then
>do my own forks and execs when I really want to, than to be running
>under the constraint where I could never re-use an existing
>interpreter, as in PyApache.  And since I have a private site where I
>do all the programming, API compatibiluty with CGI is not important to
>me.

yes. any big python program is too slow with cgi. there are
other solutions to this than httpdapy.
some time ago i used bobo and pcgi. bobo is now a part
of zope, but iirc they still package it separately,
under the name ZPublisher. it isn't cgi-compatible either,
it works like

class Quux:
	def mymethod(self, foo, bar). ...
quux = quux()
and then you call it with an url, like
http://somewhere/bobo/quux/mymethod?foo=4&bar=barney. it's pretty
neat.


then therre is fastcgi, which is a general mechanism for
this, there is a fastcgi module for apache, and then
there are fastcgi modules for eg perl and python. i
think there is a c library too. see http://www.fastcgi.com

i just found an interesting python fastcgi page:
http://www.suxers.de/python/fcgi.htm

quote:
      The wrapper was written to use Robin Dunn?s fcgi.py module in a
      multi-threaded Python program. The idea is to have one single
      persistent Python server that handles all requests.  Instead of
      serializing all requests this wrapper spawns a new thread for
      every incoming request.

>And since we're discussing httpdapy, I'd also like to raise a related
>issue: I have never been able to get httpdapy to properly install
>under my particular Apache server set-up.  I'm wondering if there's
>anyone who has been able to get httpdapy up and running under the
>following configuration:
>
>  Python 1.5.2
>  Apache 1.3.9 with the following modules:
>    mod_perl 1.21 (non-DSO)
>    php4 (DSO)
>

i had troubles too, and ended up downgading my apache. no idea what the
problem is - apache segfaulted when trying to invoke httpdapi.

this occurred under the debian gnu/linux unstable version
(potato). it works fine with stable.


   -- erno

-- 
"The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux
customers who need high speed connectivity to drive their
e-business," added Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM
Personal Systems Group. 



From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Tue Oct  5 15:27:55 1999
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 19:27:55 GMT
Subject: print longs
References: <000301bf0ef1$c1ba9140$f92d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <slrn7vkk9r.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 01:23:28 -0400, Tim Peters wrote:

>sqrt(4) is utterly vanilla, and it's computer-centric nonsense that the
>"+0j" somehow makes 4 not 4.  This all ties into a principled reason for 1/2
>to return 0.5, of course -- or some other internal equivalent that doesn't
>suffer silent catastrophic loss of information.  These "different rules for
>different numbers", like tagging long ints with "L", don't make much sense
>to people.

I'd like that too.  Only keep floats out of it if possible -- Lisp had the
right idea there.  I think 1/2 should return 1/2 unless otherwise coerced.

ABC worked that way, IIRC.

>a-sister-made-me-memorize-that-once<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

'bots have sisters?

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 02:48:00 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 08:48:00 +0200
Subject: non-file-based web server?
References: <87hfjuwngo.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <008901bf1610$0fa20f30$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Nolan Darilek <nolan at ethereal.dhis.org> wrote:
> Out of curiousity, is there an HTTP server written in Python which
> doesn't depend on files? Instead, what I'd like to do is to use
> HTMLgen to generate dynamic content within the program, and serve
> that via the web server.

isn't that what Zope is all about?

    www.zope.org

otherwise, start here:

    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-BaseHTTPServer.html

or here:

    http://www.nightmare.com/medusa
    (better, but not free for commercial use)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm





From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Thu Oct 28 14:02:25 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 18:02:25 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7va33h$t5$637@nslave2.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From hniksic at srce.hr  Sun Oct 10 16:25:41 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 22:25:41 +0200
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com> <m3puynwdcj.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <004301bf1326$a3dd0840$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <m3iu4f2nz2.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>
Message-ID: <87g0zjj73u.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

Sonny Parlin <sparlin at openpro.org> writes:

> WOW, now that's interesting! I never would have guessed something like
> that. Are you saying that perl code such as:
> 
> while(<FD>) {
>   print "$_\n";
> }
> 
> could be faster than low level C code such as:
> 
> while ((c = read (fd, buf, BUF_SIZE)) > 0)
> 	write (1, buf, c);

No way that can be true.  What Fredrik likely meant was that the Perl
code can be quicker than:

char buf[SIZE];
while (fgets (buf, sizeof buf, stdin))
  printf ("%s", buf);

...because fgets is atrociously slow.

> Not sure about that, or do you mean using C file pointers
> (i.e. stdio, as opposed to lower level methods (i.e. unistd/fcntl
> which is what my C example shows above))? I just tried those two
> pieces of code measuring time with /bin/time and the C version was
> consistently faster than the perl version...

Unless you are using extremely large files, /bin/time is not a good
way to measure the difference, because it also times Perl startup.

> Please keep in mind that I'm pretty ignorant to how Perl (or python
> for that matter) is implemented under the hood.

You probably don't want to know about Perl.  :-)  Python, on the other
hand, is very clean and very slow.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 12 06:36:07 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:36:07 +0200
Subject: program to view raw http commands?
References: <1415c574.87f12267@usw-ex0101-005.remarq.com>
Message-ID: <00f001bf149d$9845b770$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

kevinsl <kevinslNOkeSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
> A few months ago I was using this excellent python script which acted
> as an http proxy, but it would record all raw http commands and format
> them into a nice html report.
> 
> I lost the name and url for it. Does anyone know what this script was
> called and where to get it?

perhaps it was this one:
http://www.cyberclip.com/webdebug/

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From chriss at dnastar.com  Tue Oct 19 16:24:38 1999
From: chriss at dnastar.com (Chris)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:24:38 -0500
Subject: interprocess on Windows?
References: <7ui7v9$it0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <chriss-1910991524380001@chris-mac.dnastar.com>

In article <7ui7v9$it0$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, Henk Jansen <hj at rdr-nl.com> wrote:

>Forced to Windows (98), can I do interprocess communication with Python,
>i.e. having two objects that communicate with each other? (like in
>Linux).

If you want python objects in different processes to invoke each other's
methods, it sounds like you need an Object Request Broker (Perhaps your
Linix installation has one of these (Orbix?) i'm not aware of any raw UNIX
facillities that would offer process to process Python method invacotion).

One large, complex but free and powerful solution is xerow parc's ILU
<http://www.parc.xerox.com/ILU/> i've been pleased with the alpha's versions
I used to conect a CGI to anonther process.

-- 
Christopher Stern
DNAStar
1228 South Park
Madison,  WI 53715, USA
ph: 608.258.7420 ext. 25
fax: 608.258.7439



From hniksic at srce.hr  Sun Oct 17 13:17:04 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:17:04 +0200
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <Pine.GSO.4.20.9910171633480.2777-100000@sun>
Message-ID: <87yad1lxf3.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

Oleg Broytmann <phd at sun.med.ru> writes:

> On Sun, 17 Oct 1999, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> > Oleg Broytmann <phd at sun.med.ru> wrote:
> > > On 17 Oct 1999, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> > > > def rwpopen(input, command, args=[]):
> > >                               ^^^^^^^
> > >    There was well-know problem with passing mutable object as a default.
> > > Not sure if it was fixed in recent versions of Python...
> > 
> > well, that's only a problem if you modify the object
> > inside the function...
> 
> Sooner or later you forget about it and modify args and what?

No, I don't.  It's not generally nice to make destructive
modifications on sequences a function passes as an argument, so I
don't do that with ARGS, regardless of the default value.

> :) No, I better will avoid this completely until Python fixes it.

Your choice, not mine.

> > (and no, it hasn't been fixed.  I doubt it can be fixed without
> > breaking stuff).
> 
>    Mmm??? Are there a line of code that *relies* on that misfeature?

But of course.  A misfeature to you is a feature to someone else.



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct  4 12:37:22 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (prestonlanders at my-deja.com)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 16:37:22 GMT
Subject: Linux, Python, and pipes
References: <7taffc$3m1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tah0r$gq0$1@fyemf.fys.ntnu.no> <7takt1$85i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7tal40$88n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

This is the answer I was looking for.

A big thanks to all who replied.

---Preston

In article <7takt1$85i$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  srenner at lycosmail.com wrote:
>
>
> sys.stdout.flush()
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From cfelling at iae.nl  Wed Oct  6 18:21:35 1999
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 00:21:35 +0200
Subject: How to use readline interactively?
References: <37FAA9F6.80EAE@mincom.com> <37FA8BF4.37B06774@python.net>
Message-ID: <7tgi1f$1u0$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>

Thomas A. Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
> John Farrell wrote:
>> 
>> import sys
>> while 1:
>>     print "> ",
>>     s = sys.stdin.readline()
>>     if s[-1] == '\n': s = s[:-1]
>>     if len(s) == 0: break
>>     print "Hello " + s
>> 
>> What's wrong with it is that there is always a spare space 
>> at the beginning of the first line of output after the prompt:
>> 
>> I want to get rid of that space before Hello.

> You could use sys.stdout.write() in one or both places.

you could also reset the flag that controls this behaviour right after it
has been set by the print statement upon dealing with the trailing comma.

e.g. print "> ",
     sys.stdout.softspace = 0

or you could use a different input scheme with its buildin prompt support
and proper treatment of EOF as a bonus (raises an exception that is:) like:

     s = raw_input("> ")

and as an extra bonus this gets rid of that ugly "\n" thing for you too.


> P.S. I'm sure you're just posting a code fragement, but I 
> used EOF to get out of the while loop (like any good Python 
> programmer :), and the code snippet died with an uncaught 
> IndexError exception.

an uncaught EofError would be more familiair to you then:)

-- 
groetjes, carel



From jdonner0 at earthlink.net  Sun Oct 10 00:44:37 1999
From: jdonner0 at earthlink.net (JDonner)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:44:37 -0400
Subject: Win98 IDLE misbehaves with Tkinter tutorial code
Message-ID: <380019B5.EE5710E6@earthlink.net>

Hi,

  The latest standard IDLE
(installed from the python.org windows py152.exe, with Tcl/Tk):
"
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
"

fails to return from this, the first hello world example in the 
pythonware tkinter tutorial:

from Tkinter import *
root = Tk()
w = Label(root, text="Hello, world!")
w.pack()
root.mainloop()

Ie it shows the window, & the close button works & 
the dialog goes away but IDLE acts like the program is still 
running, ie no new prompt shows up.  Is this something wrong with 
my configuration, perhaps?  It works as it should from the plain 
command line.  

Now when I installed the first time I had a more recent version 
of Tcl/Tk but since then I've cleaned both Tcl/Tk & Python 
out completely & reinstalled both purely from the py152.exe, 
but that hasn't changed anything.  

In this second tutorial tkinter example, run from both IDLE & 
the plain command line, the quit button causes the prompt 
>>> to return, but the window stays up!  Here's the 2nd example:

from Tkinter import *
class App:
  def __init__(self, master):
    frame = Frame(master)
    frame.pack()
    self.button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red",
command=frame.quit)
    self.button.pack(side=LEFT)
    self.hi_there = Button(frame, text="Hello", command=self.say_hi)
    self.hi_there.pack(side=LEFT)

  def say_hi(self):
    print "hi there, everyone!"

root = Tk()
app = App(root)
root.mainloop()


thanks for any help,

JDonner




From phd at phd.russ.ru  Tue Oct 19 11:12:35 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:12:35 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Speeding up Python
In-Reply-To: <19991019105344.00876.00000475@ng-bj1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910191510020.32336-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On 19 Oct 1999, TToommLL wrote:
> I read that Industrial Light And Magic is using Python, but I don't see how
> that is possible.  I need to do some heavy floating point and math.sin() number
> crunching  but find that Python takes 40 times as long as C++.  I tried JPython
> thinking that it would gain the speed of the JIT but it's about 30 times as
> long as using Java.  I wonder if I'm missing something.  Any suggestions?

   Do low-level stuff in low-level languages, and high-level stuff in high
lavael languages.

   Do number crunching in C, compile your code into a python module using
compiler optimisation, link with optimised (both in terms of algorithms and
compiler) math library.
   And glue all your modules together with Python!

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From precisa at altavista.net  Mon Oct 11 21:56:22 1999
From: precisa at altavista.net (Geraldo Lopes)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:56:22 -0300
Subject: Off-topic Internet Question
Message-ID: <38029546.C0F6FABF@altavista.net>

Is it possible a Python script fill a internet page with arbitrary
values, simulate the send button and get the results ?

Is it possible with Python ? What Do I need to know to make this ?

Thanks (a lot) in advance

Geraldo Lopes de Souza





From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Mon Oct  4 17:04:41 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 21:04:41 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7tb4p9$6if$395@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://members.tripod.com/IaniProject/




From felixt at dicksonstreet.com  Tue Oct 12 01:40:45 1999
From: felixt at dicksonstreet.com (Felix Thibault)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 05:40:45 GMT
Subject: Newbie question about __getattr__ and __setattr__
References: <1103_939440882@ns1.dicksonstreet.com> <37FED196.AD791AC5@x.x>
Message-ID: <1103_939706845@ns1.dicksonstreet.com>

On Sat, 09 Oct 1999 01:24:38 -0400, Eric Jacobs <x at x.x> wrote:
> 
> A couple of things going on here. First, you want to deal with
> __getitem__ and __setitem__ -- those deal with the [] subscript
> operator -- rather than __getattr__ and __setattr__ that deal
> with the . attribute operator.
> 
> The syntax that you want to write the assignment is supported
> by the interpreter by default; you don't need to change 
> anything for that. The only catch is that the first two layers
> of dictionaries need to exist beforehand. So if you had
> 
>    i = {1: {2: {}}}
>    i[1][2][3] = 4
>  
> then i would be {1: {2: {3: 4}}} as you'd expect.
[snip]
> So if you want that assignment to work when the sub-
> dictionaries aren't predefined, you can have your
> __getitem__ always create new dictionaries. That's
> fairly simple, just add a method:
> 
> 	def __getitem__(s, k):
> 		if k not in s.keys():
> 			s[k] = Nester({})
> 		return s.data[k]
> 
> Be sure to mention the s.data[k] and not just s[k], or
> you'll end up in an infinite loop. Here, if the key is not
> found, we generate a new custom Nester object, so that it
> works for more than one level. In fact, because there's no
> limit placed here, this will work for any number of nested 
> levels:
> i['a']['b']['c']['d']['e'][...
> 
> The disadvantage is that reading a missing value will
> result in a new empty dictionary being created and returned!
> So unless you want to be really careful and write a clean-
> up routine which can handle this, you're going to have a
> bunch of extra empty dictionaries floating around. You will
> also never get KeyError with this simple method.

So I would need to, for example, make a function that checks
the value of a key and deletes it and raises a KeyError if it's {}, and
then call that function after every read ?



> 
> It seems that the parser would know whether a compound
> construct like i[1][2][3] is going to be an l-value or
> r-value, and could emit a different code that could be
> passed on to __getitem__ (BINARY_SUBSCRL, maybe, means
> that this expression is intended to be an l-value.) It
> would be difficult to make this change in a compatible
> way. It's a thought..
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> 

Thanks!



From fredp at multimania.com.nospam  Sun Oct  3 16:26:22 1999
From: fredp at multimania.com.nospam (Fred Pacquier)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 20:26:22 GMT
Subject: YA-Newbie: Progress (but still baffled by deepcopy/pickle issues...:)
References: <8E48C2767PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <8E5062134PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <37F433BB.CC11F8AB@compaq.com> <8E526A561PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <37F68660.8536BA0F@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <8E54E3B80PaCmAnRDLM@195.25.5.250>

greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz said :

>> Maybe, yes. I have a hunch it may be a problem in the wxWindows/wxPython
>> interface, in which case it's probably hard to find.
>
>In any case, since you don't want the bitmaps to be
>copied by deepcopy, referring to them indirectly is
>the correct thing to do.

Thanks for the confirmation. This method does indeed work without problems, 
and I guess it also will when I get to the 'pickle' part again...

>Alternatively, don't use deepcopy at all, and write your
>own custom copier that copies just what you want. I
>usually prefer to steer clear of deepcopy because of
>its propensity for copying too much.

With the new version I now know exactly what is being duplicating, so it 
won't be necessary this time, but it's certainly worth keeping in mind for 
the future. This experience made me realize that by including a reference to 
a wxWindows/Python object in mine, I actually had no idea what sort of things 
were being copied, or to what level. And maybe it's better that I didn't 
know... :-)

-- 
YAFAP : http://www.multimania.com/fredp/



From jim at bruer.org  Thu Oct 14 20:45:56 1999
From: jim at bruer.org (Jim Bruer)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:45:56 -0400
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp> <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> <7u5da5$pp2$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <7u5l55$boh$1@nntp4.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <38067944.D6558D95@bruer.org>

Aahz Maruch wrote:

> In article <7u5da5$pp2$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> Donn Cave  <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> >Quoth Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com>:
> >| Aahz Maruch:
> >[re how to insert comma delimiters]
> >
> >|> delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
> >|>
> >|> That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
> >|> you'll come across better ways.
> >|
> >| Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has (already finished
> >| Learning python, and I'm waiting for Programming TkInter with Python now),
> >| but I don't know a better way than this?
> >
> >He may have gauged better than I the original poster's zeal for
> >discovering things on his own, but I was surprised no one mentioned
> >string.join'ing a list of fields in one step.  It's what I consider
> >the normal approach to this common task.  Easier on the eyes, probably
> >faster if there are more than a couple of fields.
>
> Oh, I agree -- but the original poster didn't say anything about a list
> of fields....
> --

Thank you all for your suggestions. I'm impressed with Python and now this
friendly, helpful group.
I will ultimately use my program to delimit files of up to 1.0 million records,
each line composed of 1560 characters to be delimited into 230 fields.





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Thu Oct 28 14:21:23 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 20:21:23 +0200
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au>
 <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au>
 <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
 <380CCCC0.359B7E76@maxtal.com.au>
 <slrn814a1g.4f5.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>
 <3816C0ED.D6D4EE90@compaq.com> <3817D36A.1BA8DAE@bigfoot.com>
 <38184747.CFECCA94@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <p6qpuxzwdlo.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com> writes:

> > Neither, you should get a "message ambiguous" error
> 
> That's a reasonable answer. Although you still need some
> set of rules for defining when a call is ambiguous or
> not. I think I can sort of see what rule you're using
> here, but it's not easy to state concisely.

You can phrase the requirement two different ways: Given a the
half-ordered set of signatures (sig a is 'more derived' than sig b if
all arguments are 'more derived'), there is a sufficient static
requirement:

   The set of signatures must form a lattice.

(i.e. even though it is only a half order, for each pair (a,b) of
signatures that don't compare, there must be a third signature c,
with c 'more derived' than a and c 'more derived' than b).

Alternatively, you could phrase it as a dynamic condition (which would
be more Python-like): Given an invocation, there is a set of candidate
signatures (so that the actual argument types are 'more derived' than
the paramter types of each candidate). The invocation is ambiguous if
this set of candidates is not a lattice.

Hope this helps,
Martin



From skip at mojam.com  Tue Oct  5 11:08:37 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:08:37 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <87oged6fhs.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
References: <Pine.WNT.4.05.9910042051340.156-100000@david.ski.org>
	<87oged6fhs.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <14330.5237.275970.189717@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Hrvoje> David Ascher <da at ski.org> writes:
    >> So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..

    Hrvoje> What's wrong with that?  In Common Lisp, (sqrt -1) happily returns
    Hrvoje> #C(0.0 1.0), and I don't see it as a bad thing at all.

Can't we get the behavior David described with

    import cmath
    math = cmath

or

    from cmath import *

?  I thought the reason that cmath was written (and kept distinct from math)
was so that existing code that expected math.sqrt(-1) to raise OverflowError
didn't suddenly begin "working".

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 29 10:37:06 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:37:06 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBKOPFDEKGPDKEKFGMEEAGCKAA.robert@leftfieldcorp.com> <38195937.F376E3A8@lemburg.com> <000b01bf21fe$8f02fa10$4500a8c0@thomasnotebook>
Message-ID: <3819B112.9FF0178F@lemburg.com>

Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> >
> > So it does refer to SMP... I wonder what the 'Free' in there means ;-)
> >
> Quote from MSDN:
> 
> The DDK provides two versions of the Windows NT operating system, called the
> free build and the checked build. [...]
> 
> The free build of Windows NT is the retail version that end users buy. Free
> binaries are built with full optimization and contain a minimal set of
> debugging symbols, such as function entry points and global variables.
> 
> The checked build is shipped only with the DDK; it is used in debugging
> drivers and other system code. Checked binaries provide error checking,
> argument verification, and system debugging code not present in the free
> binaries.

That's interesting... so 'Free' refers to 'free of debugging
code'.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    63 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From sdyer7073 at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 24 01:26:06 1999
From: sdyer7073 at my-deja.com (Shawn Dyer)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 05:26:06 GMT
Subject: Bad IE 4.01 Content-type headers
Message-ID: <7uu59c$p72$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am running into the occasional problem with IE 4.01 sending a
content-type header of the form where the content-type is
repeated seperated by commas:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/x-www-form-urlencoded

instead of the more usual:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded

The cgi module chokes on this (it does not parse out stdin). It happens
about 0.5% of the time, but I eventually need to address the problem. Is
this allowable in the HTTP specs, or is it simply garbage generated by
IE? Since IE 4.01 seems to be the browser shipped with Win98, the cgi
module may need to address this eventually. My current idea is to modify
the cgi module to deal with this situation. Has anyone else encountered
this or found a solution.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From krnylund at io.yok.utu.fi  Sun Oct 17 14:01:06 1999
From: krnylund at io.yok.utu.fi (Kristian Nylund)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:01:06 +0300
Subject: A question
Message-ID: <19991017210106.A1008@io.yok.utu.fi>

Hello

Could someone tell me an easy way to do  
something like "for i in `ls *.txt`..." 
in python?

Thanks,

Kristian



From alex at somewhere.round.here  Sun Oct 24 12:58:15 1999
From: alex at somewhere.round.here (Alex)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 12:58:15 -0400
Subject: [Q] keeping *args and using it later
References: <7uur88$pm0$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <etd4sfgr908.fsf@w20-575-111.mit.edu>

Use the apply command, as in apply(nextTuple[0],nextTuple[1])

Alex.



From mikle at amv.tsk.ru  Sun Oct 10 06:09:44 1999
From: mikle at amv.tsk.ru (Mikhail Astafiev)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:09:44 +0700
Subject: Pythoning of C++ objects
Message-ID: <10715.991010@amv.tsk.ru>

Hi folks,

My problem is as follows:

There is a C++ data processing class library. I have to write Python
extension allowing to manipulate C++ objects and call their methods
from Python. I don't want to use CXX - I want to write something more
lightweight.

Could anybody point/send some example/documentation/comments on
porting C++ classes to Python?

Any help greatly appreciated!!

TIA, Mikhail.





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Oct 11 08:27:49 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:27:49 -0400
Subject: Filehandling/processing in Python
In-Reply-To: <38019C24.FB1DE12A@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <1272478381-56024662@hypernet.com>

Thomas Weholt asks:

> It seems like file-handling, ie. more than reading lines in a
> plain-text file, is done by 3rd-party modules in Python. I`ve
> looked into os.stat-module, but I`d like know what
> methods/functions are available, and most importantly, how to
> handle the returned values. Isn`t there somebody who has worked
> on this earlier, like made a ls/dir-like command that lists out
> files and modification time, size, type ( file or dir ) etc?
> 
> Most of my scripts dive into folders and process them
> recursively, so this is rather important to me, but my Python
> books ( Learning Python, Programming Python and Internet
> Programming with Python ) don`t seem to go beyond the old
> input.readline() stuff.

You probably have an older version of the docs, where this 
stuff is hard to find. What you're looking for is all available 
under os and os.path (particularly os.path.walk for recursive 
handling of directories). Unless you have the current docs, this 
is under "posix" and "posixpath".

- Gordon



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Tue Oct 19 15:09:19 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:09:19 -0400
Subject: Control-C on Unix misbehaviour?
In-Reply-To: <slrn80n2a1.5cr.quinn@seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu>
References: <000101bf193a$1a2fc8c0$842d153f@tim> <m3emesdfjc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk> <19991018154752.A16714@testserv.mathi.uni-heidelberg.de> <slrn80n2a1.5cr.quinn@seniti.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <19991019150919.A46095978@vislab.epa.gov>

Quinn Dunkan:
 |Here's a data point for Irix6:
 |If you hit ^C at the >>> prompt with readline loaded (python 1.5), python
 |stops responding.  Further ^Cs do nothing, in fact the only way I've found
 |to get out is to kill from another shell or hit ^z kill %.

Possibly due to an the old Python (1.5) or an old readline.  No problems
here on IRIX 6 with Python 1.5.2 and readline 4.

   > uname -a
   IRIX64 ethyl 6.5 07151439 IP27

   > python
   Python 1.5.2 (#3, Jul  8 1999, 11:01:48) [C] on irix646-n32
   Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
   >>> 
   KeyboardInterrupt
   >>> 
   KeyboardInterrupt
   >>> 
   KeyboardInterrupt
   >>> print "Yep, still alive." 
   Yep, still alive.
   >>>  

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From simon_bacon at my-deja.com  Sun Oct 10 14:46:06 1999
From: simon_bacon at my-deja.com (simon_bacon at my-deja.com)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 18:46:06 GMT
Subject: Borland compilation
Message-ID: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Has anyone compiled 1.5.2 with Borland compilers?  Preferably
with C++ Builder.

I know that this is a relatively frequently asked question, but
AFAIK it remains unanswered.

Thanks, Simon.

PS. If anyone should reply anonymously to me at
      simon at tile dot demon dot co dot uk
    I can summarise the responses for the group.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aahz at netcom.com  Fri Oct  8 10:17:09 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 8 Oct 1999 14:17:09 GMT
Subject: List vs. Tuple
References: <000401bf1177$3d7d3760$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <7tkud5$mch@dfw-ixnews17.ix.netcom.com>

In article <000401bf1177$3d7d3760$3acbd9c2 at peridot.optichrome.com>,
Adrian Eyre <a.eyre at optichrome.com> wrote:
>> It's the commas, not the parentheses, which make a tuple
>> constructor.
>
>If this is the case, I wonder why the parentheses are present
>on the default repr() of a tuple?

Because __repr__ is supposed to be a cut'n'paste representation such
that dropping it into code will work.  There are many places in Python
where you need the parentheses to disambiguate the tuple creation.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Tue Oct  5 12:27:13 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:27:13 +0200
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <37FA26E1.7B5FB53@darwin.in-berlin.de>

harri.pasanen at trema.com wrote:
> 
> I made some effort to track down a python module that could be used as
> unix diff.  Currently I'm in fact popen'ing diff itself, but for I'd
> like to have a self-contained utility.
> 
> I'm not comparing big files, so a Python only solution will probably be
> fast enough.
> 
> Failing a ready solution, can someone perhaps point me to a description
> of the algorithm, so I could implement it myself.


Try this:

  http://starship.python.net/crew/gherman/potpurri/align/

and keep in mind that it's pretty rough, unoptimised, 
badly documented and so on... But the examples might
give you an idea if you can use it as a diff in your
own context...

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman

................................................................
"An average of more than 15 % of adults in 12 industrialized 
countries are functionally illiterate; in Ireland, the United 
Kingdom and the United States, the rates are over 20 %."

  (The State of the World's Children 1999,
   UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/sowc99)



From madonl at bigfoot.com  Fri Oct 29 20:55:57 1999
From: madonl at bigfoot.com (Louis Madon)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 20:55:57 -0400
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 
 preliminary features?))
Message-ID: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com>

[I'm cross-posting this to comp.lang.dylan as I think the Dylaners' may
be able to cast more light on this and/or correct any short-comings in
my thinking] 


In the beginning Greg Ewing wrote:

> Suppose AA is a subclass of A, and BB is a subclass of B,
> and there are methods defined for the combinations
> foo(A, B), foo(AA, B) and foo(A, BB).
> 
> Now, if you make a call with the combination foo(AA, BB),
> which method should get called?


Several people said its "ambiguous".


Then Amit Patel wrote:

> I don't know I'm calling foo(AA, BB).  All I know is that I have an "A
> like" object and a "B like" object (Python examples: file-like object
> and sequence).  I then call foo on these two arguments, and the system
> complains.
> 
> Therefore it can't be my fault when the foo(AA, BB) call fails.
> 
> My caller (1) doesn't know I'm calling foo (after all, why should he
> know the implementation details of my class?), and (2) only gave me
> one of the two arguments, and therefore is unaware of the combination
> that is about to take place.
> 
> Therefore it can't be my caller's fault when foo(AA, BB) fails.
> 
> When defining foo(AA, B), the author of AA may not know about foo(A,
> BB), so it can't be AA's fault if the call fails.
> 
> When defining foo(A, BB), the author of BB may not know about foo(AA,
> B), so it can't be BB's fault if the call fails.
> 
> Everyone wrote "correct" code but when it's put together it fails.


Ok, so the crux of your argument appears to be:

Combining pretested libraries can introduce new cases to a multimethod
for which there is no applicable/unambiguous handler

- therefore -

multiple dispatch is a bad idea.   




I think this can be visualised like so:

1st authors'   2nd authors'       combined 
    view           view             view

       B           B    BB          B    BB
    A  .        A  .    .        A  .    .
    AA .                         AA .


(Note: '.' indicates we have a method foo defined for that pair of
arguments)

So each author covered all possible cases from their point of view.  Yet
when we combine the libraries a hole appears in the resulting matrix for
foo(AA, BB).  Now until you combined those libraries there was no way a
foo(AA, BB) call could have arisen.  But after you do, and you start
using AA's and BB's together for the first time you suddenly find that
this method 'foo' throws an exception.  Perhaps your new code didn't
even call foo directly, perhaps it was called indirectly in some deeply
nested function within one of the *pretested* libraries.  You object and
ask how can this possibly be considered a good paradigm?  

The answer is that libraries of multimethods can export *abstract*
functionality.  A multimethod is not a concrete method, it is a higher
level abstraction that defines an operation conceptually. A multimethod
and its implementing method(s) are somewhat analogous to an abstract
interface and its concrete realization(s).

So a multimethod is a conceptual operation but the full generality of
that concept has not neccesarily been implemented.  The system however
(either at compile time or at run time) will always tell you when you
try to invoke unimplemented functionality.

So we could have a 'copy' operation that copies anything to anything, an
'add' operation that adds anything to anything and a 'find' operation
that finds anything in anything using anything as comparison criteria. 
Now we obviously can't implement such operations in totality, but we can
implement a few concrete cases to cover whats needed initially.  As
needs grow, implementation for more cases can be added, but the
interface stays the same.  This has a number of advantages :-

(a) The number of interfaces a programmer must learn is smaller since
procedures can be specified in terms of generalised operations. Say we
need to copy a over b, then use copy(a, b).  Once you know it then you
know the procedure for copying (cf. 'cp' command in unix - one command,
many types of objects). 

(b) Corollary to (a) - The number of interfaces a programmer must create
is smaller, since often the extra  functionality needed will naturally
belong within existing multimethods. Adding new methods to a multimethod
does not require invasive editing of some monolithic procedure nor even
modifying existing class definitions.  Therefore you should be able to
add the new method(s) even if the multimethod is partly implemented in a
library you don't control.   

(c) Its easier to create truly reusable code. By defining a process in
terms of multimethods you are describing the 'essence' of that process
since you don't have to bind it directly to concrete types or make
unneccesary assumptions about the types being operated upon. So for
example, { a = read(src) write(log, a) return a } is a generalised
procedure for reading some kind of data (from some sort of source
object), writing that data to some kind of log and then returning that
data (a logging read).  As more methods are added to the read and write
multimethods to handle more concrete types, this increased know-how
automatically flows on to all such procedures.  This also implies looser
coupling / greater adaptability.    



In a related post on a numeric library example, Amit Patel said:

> Taken separately, each module is great.  It defines the new type's
> interaction with the built in numeric types.
>
> But together, who defines what it means to do complex+rational?  There
> are gaps in the dispatch table.  If gaps lead to coercions, who
> decides if complex can be coerced to rational or if rational can be
> coerced to complex?
>
> With multiple dispatch it seems like you can't combine independently
> written modules without writing some "glue".  The person using the
> modules may not be qualified to make those decisions.  :-(

If their code required (directly or indirectly) the ability to add
complex with rational then it has to be provided.  Multimethods don't
call up functionality randomly, it gets called up because its needed. 
If they were not using multiple dispatch, they would still need to write
the "glue", but they wouldn't have a well defined slot to put the new
functionality into.
 

Louis.



From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Oct 26 16:55:54 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:55:54 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <001001bf1f9a$a51c1950$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <38157F32.1C0958DA@lemburg.com> <3815C805.D0B4F762@callware.com>
Message-ID: <3816155A.67431E95@lemburg.com>

Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
> 
> Hi All---
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> >
> > Adrian Eyre wrote:
> > >
> > > > Some things where I need some more help are:
> > > > [snip]
> > >
> > > And Windows NT by the looks of it. All I get from the program is:
> > > "win32"
> 
> This is all I see, to.  I'm running NT 4.0 Workstation, SP5.
> 
> >
> > Hmm, you should be seing something like:
> >
> > Windows-NT-4.00.xxx
> >
> > Could you send me the output of typing "ver" at the command prompt
> > (this is the information the module uses on Windows NT) ?
> >
> 
> Windows NT Version 4.0

Ah, now I get it: the RE used to parse the "ver" output is wrong --
it only looks for numerical release numbers.

The new upload (version 0.3.1) should fix this. If not, please try
to adapt the RE in system_ver() to make it correctly parse the
string and send me the diffs. Thanks.

        http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    66 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct 16 06:19:16 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 06:19:16 -0400
Subject: re question
In-Reply-To: <T_MN3.7082$E_1.368473@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>
Message-ID: <000401bf17bf$e79a3a60$3e2d153f@tim>

[Max M. Stalnaker]
> I have the following code:
>
>  def subset(self):
>   group=re.search(r"%%%([^%]+)%%%",self.data)
>   self.data=group.groups(0)[0]

Easier to access group.group(1) directly.

> Essentially, I get a html page, change some tags to %%% and extract the
> stuff between.  But the way I do it above fails if the stuff between has a
> single %.

This is much like trying to match a Python triple-quoted string with a
regexp.  Try this:

sucker = re.compile(r"""
    %%%
    (
        [^%]*
        (?: % (?! %%)  # take a % if not followed immediately by %%
            [^%]*
        )*
    )
    %%%
""", re.VERBOSE)

matches = re.findall(sucker, data)

That yields a list of all the guts.

> The main goal is to extract the stuff.  The changing the tags is just
> the way I tried and had sometime success.
>
> Maybe there is a better way to do this.

Regular expressions are overkill here.  The above can be done quicker and
easier via string.find:

i = 0
matches = []
while 1:
    i = string.find(data, "%%%", i)   # find opening %%%
    if i < 0:
        break
    j = string.find(data, "%%%", i+3) # find next %%%
    if j < 0:
        break
    matches.append(data[i+3:j])       # take the stuff between them
    i = j+3                           # resume where this one ended

> ...
> My current idea is to construct a single character sentinel out
> of something greater than chr(128) and use that.  This will probably
> work in this application, but I feel like I am missing something.

Regexps are good at lexical classification but suck for parsing -- wrong
tool for the job.  Rule of thumb:  as soon as you write a regexp that fails
to work correctly, drop the idea -- you'll end up never using regexps at all
<wink>.  Really, trick-based parsing rarely works correctly, unless you're a
bot and have enough spare cycles to try all possible tricks.

If you're going to be in the business of parsing HTML, take some time to
learn how to use the htmllib module.  It works -- and when it doesn't
<wink>, you can just file a bug report.

regexps-are-to-html-as-regexps-are-to-raising-children-ly y'rs  - tim





From arcege at shore.net  Tue Oct  5 10:49:45 1999
From: arcege at shore.net (Michael P. Reilly)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 14:49:45 GMT
Subject: lineno and filename in exceptions
References: <37F75C62.F4824BE8@gmx.de>
Message-ID: <deoK3.36$Q11.6568@news.shore.net>

Udo Gleich <Udo.Gleich at gmx.de> wrote:
: Hi,

: I would like to catch syntax errors and other errors in script
: files and open an editor at the right line number.

: If I catch a syntax error the exeption has the attributes lineno and
: filename. This information is not included e.g. in attribute errors
: name errors.

The exception traceback object contains this information (indirectly).
The traceback module has an "extract_tb" function which returns a list
of tuples containing the information you want (filename, lineno,
functname, line_contents).  You need to import sys and traceback before
the exception is raised.

  import sys, traceback
  def return_exception_file_info():
    tb = sys.exc_info()[2]
    last_frame = traceback.extract_tb(tb)[-1]
    filename, lineno, funct, contents = last_frame
    return (filename, lineno)

The list contains the location inside each frame where the exception
was raised (which came be more useful than just the filename and lineno
of the originating code).

For example:
  ...
  def f():
    g
  def e():
    f()

  try:
    e()
  except:
    print traceback.extract_tb(sys.exc_info()[2])
[('trace.py', 11, '?', 'e()'), ('trace.py', 8, 'e', 'f()'), ('trace.py',
6, 'f', 'g')]

It would be good to read up on the "traceback" module:
<URL: http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-traceback.html>

  -Arcege




From darcy at vex.net  Wed Oct 20 11:58:55 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 15:58:55 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu> <14348.40578.648039.972783@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <7uifot$nsi$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net> <14349.49358.407167.675972@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7ukoru$2o19$1@hub.org>

Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
> Aahz Maruch writes:
>  > Depends whether you allow "-v 1" or "-v1".
>   Since the current behavior of getopt is to allow both, I'd be
> inclined to keep it that way.  There are lots of applications that
> already allow both (Python & otherwise; I don't think it's original
> behavior with getopt), I'm inclined to allow both rather than just
> one, and wouldn't want optional arguments to screw that up.

It is possible to add optional arguments without messing up regular
use.  You just have to put restrictions on the use of flags that
take optional arguments but that's fine in an extension anyway.  See
my getopt C program at http://www.druid.net/~darcy/files/getarg.c for
an example of this in action.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From tbryan at python.net  Fri Oct 15 19:51:13 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 19:51:13 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <1272093334-1612528@hypernet.com> <7u8kln$imq$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3807BDF1.DFBAE054@python.net>

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Then the alien space bats created the timbot, who 
> started comp.lang.python, and that's
> how we've all arrived where we are now.
> 
> for-more-on-the-bats-read-soc.history.what-if-ly yours,

Oh?  I thought the space bats were just the ones 
who introduced the space-eating nano-viruses into
unsuspecting Python programmers' code. 

time-to-kill-the-thread-before-it-really-gets-off-topic-ly yours
---Tom



From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 17:02:30 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 17:02:30 -0400
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <199910191923.MAA00522@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <5laepf5ajd.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> writes:

> At 07:03 PM 10/19/99 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> >hey, what makes you think len(obj) is less object-
> >oriented than obj.len() ?  it's just syntax, you know.
> 
> But it IS less consistent syntax with not much advantage
> ("del" is a different story).  So it would be very nice if
> I could write aList.len() if I prefer that to len(aList).

I think of len() and other builtin functions as a special operators,
like + or ~ or not.  Using len(x) tells the reader more than using
x.len() -- len(x) is guaranteed to return an int and enforces that x
is a sequence; x.len() on the other hand cannot make such a guarantee:

class MyObject:
   def len(self): return "Spanish Inquisition"

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



From davidopp at megsinet.net  Sun Oct 10 01:45:12 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 01:45:12 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>  <slrn7vtq0q.qq9.thantos@brimstone.mecha>  <slrn7vvjai.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <slrn7vvjn6.tue.thantos@brimstone.mecha>
Message-ID: <380027E7.D0CC35EF@megsinet.net>


Alexander Williams wrote:

> On 9 Oct 1999 22:35:29 GMT, Neel Krishnaswami <neelk at brick.cswv.com> wrote:
> >IMO it's not quite as elegant as the Scheme version, but the difference
> >is small enough to be a matter of taste.
>
> I could accept this solution (though I'd rather spell 'nonlocal' as
> '=:' as Dylan does, as it certainly makes sense in context).

Who is Dylan?

>
>
> --
> Alexander Williams (thantos at gw.total-web.net)
> "In the end ... Oblivion Always Wins."




From claudius at catlover.com  Fri Oct 29 12:15:36 1999
From: claudius at catlover.com (claudius at catlover.com)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:15:36 GMT
Subject: Python for game programming
References: <7vca5f$oug$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7vccvb$ip9$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <IKjS3.2722$Ec1.45819@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>

zzz at NO-MAIL.com says:
>On Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:15:16 GMT, Sindh <skodela at my-deja.com> wrote:
>>Does anyone know if there is a crossplatform library for game
>>programming with python.
>
>Probably not you were looking for (you don't mention what kind of game),
>but there are a few things listed here that might be of interest (a couple
>of MUD/MOO systems, and the aging pyRPG project to make a 3D RPG engine):

For one MOO-based MUD, see MOOP at http://www.accessoft.com/moop (previously
called "POO").  It has some interesting core features that may be useful for
game programming.



From kelley at bioreason.com  Wed Oct 20 11:45:19 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:45:19 -0600
Subject: Language question
References: <000501bf1a98$08a75b40$252d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <380DE38E.7E7CFC4@bioreason.com>

Tim Peters wrote:

> [Brian Kelley]
> > This question actually comes up due to accident (bug?)  Here is
> > the scenario
> >
> > class foo:
> >       """insert foo here"""
> >
> > def bar(foo):
> >       """this should really be class bar(foo):  Insert bar
> >       here"""
> >
> > As far as python is concerned, this is prefectly legal except
> > that the user of bar will probably get None for their troubles.
> > That is foobar = bar() is the same thing as foobar = None.
> >
> > My question is, is there any real reason to allow this? ...
>
> [Gordon McMillan]
> > What's to disallow? ...
>
> After several readings, I believe Brian objects to Python allowing him to
> reuse the name of a class as a formal argument name, in a context where
> "class" in place of "def" would have been legal.  That is, he would like
> Python to ignore what he typed and infer his intent <wink>.
>
> wouldn't-we-all-ly y'rs  - tim

Pretty much... there are many times when I want compilers to do what I want,
not what I say.   When I wrote this example I obviously forgot the symantics
between functions and classes.  What I was suprised by was that all of the
class symantics were accepted by the function.  In this contrived example:

class bar:
    def __init__(self):
        self.a = 1

def foo(bar):
    def __init__(self):
        self.b = 1

    def __len__(self):
        return len(self.b)

I believe this example makes it clearer.  I have no problem with allowing by
the way as it shows the power of python. I guess my current question is
would-py-lint-catch-this-cause-it-took-me-an-hour?

--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From parkw at better.net  Sat Oct 30 06:33:17 1999
From: parkw at better.net (William Park)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 06:33:17 -0400
Subject: Contribution: nice floating point number formatting
In-Reply-To: <381a4316$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com>
References: <381a4316$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com>
Message-ID: <19991030063317.A16991@better.net>

On Sat, Oct 30, 1999 at 01:00:06AM +0000, David S. Harrison wrote:
> # Returns a nicely formatted string for the floating point number
> # provided.  This number will be rounded to the supplied accuracy
> # and commas and spaces will be added.  I think every language should
> # do this for numbers.  Why don't they?  Here are some examples:
> # >>> print niceNum(123567.0, 1000)
> # 124,000
> # >>> print niceNum(5.3918e-07, 1e-10)
> # 0.000 000 539 2
> # This kind of thing is wonderful for producing tables for
> # human consumption.

It may be good for human eye, but it creates havoc when piped to another
program.



From shouldbe at message.com  Wed Oct 27 15:09:21 1999
From: shouldbe at message.com (Arinte)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:09:21 -0500
Subject: Forcing a import.
Message-ID: <7v7esm$p4q$1@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>

I have a app that embeds python.  I run the .py files with PyRun_AnyFile()
right now, I was trying to so if there was a way I could force them to
import my c methods.  I tried a PyRun_SimpleString before I do the anyfile
call, but that did seen to work, because I got an attribute error.  Is a
forced import that isn't written in the *.py possible.





From schorsch at schorsch.com  Wed Oct 20 04:01:42 1999
From: schorsch at schorsch.com (Georg Mischler)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:01:42 GMT
Subject: Spread of mailman
References: <05a301bf1a0f$63f2c770$f0c809c0@lslp7o.lsl.co.uk>
Message-ID: <7ujst0$o8g$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Tony J. Ibbs wrote:
> ... Turns out
> the HPV (human powered vehicle) mailing lists are converting
> to mailman - "market" penetration in action.
>
> It's always neat to see connections between one's favourite things...


As usual, there's a dark side to it. By now, a significant
portion of the spam I get at least claims to have been sent
by mailman...


Have fun!

-schorsch

--
Georg Mischler  --  simulation developper  --  schorsch at schorsch.com
+schorsch.com+  --  lighting design tools  --  http://www.schorsch.com/


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Fri Oct 29 12:45:49 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:45:49 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: WebCrawler ?
In-Reply-To: <slrn81jpei.5c0.thor@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910291645060.13194-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On 29 Oct 1999, Manuel Gutierrez Algaba wrote:
> Anyone knows about any good python application that is able to 
> take all the contents of a web site and putting it into a file ?

   WebSucker. I think it is in the distribution.
   Or at least you can tweak it to put content to files.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From jand at easics.be  Tue Oct  5 11:05:35 1999
From: jand at easics.be (Jan Decaluwe)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 17:05:35 +0200
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com>
Message-ID: <37FA13BF.EC29ABFD@easics.be>

Ian Clarke wrote:
> 
> I have never liked regular expressions, they seem to come from the Perl
> school of programming (whose motto is "If nobody else `can understand my
> code, they can never fire me!").  Of course, it is not actually the
> regular expressions themselves that annoy me, it is the language they
> are written in.
> 
> What if, instead of using '(hello)*' you could use 'multiple("hello")',
> and other such long-winded replacements. 

That would be so nice that it has been done: take a look
at the source of python's standard tokenize.py module.

-- 
Jan Decaluwe	       Easics              
Design Manager         System-on-Chip design services  
+32-16-395 600	       Interleuvenlaan 86, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
mailto:jand at easics.be  http://www.easics.com



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Tue Oct 12 04:03:44 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 21:03:44 +1300
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <3802EB60.F535B961@compaq.com>

skaller wrote:
> 
> You do not need to make any decision. Just use the current 'global'
> declaration, this is what Viperi does.

That's a decision in itself, since it extends the
meaning of "global" in one of at least two different
ways.

My purpose in implementing the patch was to demonstrate
how lexical scoping could be done without introducing
intolerable memory management problems. If Guido ever
decides to adopt it, I'm happy to leave it up to him
to pick one of the several possible nonlocal declaration
syntaxes.

If I get another burst of enthusiasm I might implement
one of them myself. My personal inclination is to require
declaration of all variables, but I get the feeling that
would be just a bit too radical for many Pythoneers to
swallow...

Greg



From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Sat Oct  9 19:00:14 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 10 Oct 1999 12:00:14 +1300
Subject: Beginner asks question about Python on Linux
References: <000501bf117b$fc6dd810$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <c75oge8uold.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

"Adrian Eyre" <a.eyre at optichrome.com> writes:

> > os.system("ps aux|grep someProcess > pids.temp")
> 
> Try:
> f = os.popen("ps aux|grep " + someProcessStr)
> l = f.readlines()
> f.close()
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
> Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
> Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
> Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
> http://www.optichrome.com 
> --------------------------------------------

The pipe to grep is slightly unnecessary, you could just use python to 
filter the lines.  Try this:

=============== ps.py ===============
#!/usr/bin/python

import os
import string

def pids(program):
    '''Return a list of process ids for all processes that are running
    "program".  Relies on a particular output format for ps a little
    too much.'''

    result = []
    f = os.popen('ps aux', 'r')
    for l in f.readlines():
        fields = string.split(l)
        if fields[10] == program:
            result.append(int(fields[1]))
    return result

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print pids('gnome-terminal')
==============================

$ ./ps.py
[18910, 18925]

--
Tim Evans



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 26 18:47:05 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:47:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [JPython] dir and java classes
References: <14358.5566.792900.94308@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<199910262217.PAA16707@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <14358.12137.719156.762469@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "JA" == Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> writes:

    JA> To further compound the teaching problem, dir() is
    JA> inconsistent between Python and JPython.  So when trying to
    JA> teach someone JPython, I always advise them to install Python
    JA> just so that they can use the "more fully loaded" dir() of
    JA> Python to help in their learning process.  Not pretty.

This will be fixed for JPython, for those attributes and objects that
make sense.  Some attributes on some objects have no equivalent in
JPython, and those will not show up with dir() -- they'll also raise
AttributeErrors if you try to access them.

-Barry



From jp.cazeaux at systus.com  Fri Oct  8 11:23:16 1999
From: jp.cazeaux at systus.com (Jean Pierre Cazeaux)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 17:23:16 +0200
Subject: Beginner's question : Embedding Python - problem with PyRun_SimpleString
Message-ID: <7tl22s$kn7$1@news.nctech.fr>

I have searched into the documentation available on Python's Website without
finding any answer to my question.
So may be one of you can help me :
Trying to embed Python into a C++ application, I followed the
recommendations found in the tutorial:
Basically :
#include <python.h>
Py_Initialize();
status = PyRun_SimpleString( myCmdLine);

I tried this with : myCmdLine = "a = 5" ;
and got a status equal to -1 !!!

What's wrong with what I did ?
How can I get the result of the command ?
How can I get information about the raised exception ?


Thanks for your help.

Jean-Pierre.






From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 28 03:46:10 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:46:10 +1300
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <7v44mc$ol$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>
Message-ID: <3817FF42.250F5A62@compaq.com>

For a while now, when programming in C/C++, I've been using
an argument parser written by an acquaintance some years
ago, that has an API I rather like. You call it thus:

   scanargs(switches, flags)

where switches and flags are sets of characters. The
flags are options which take an argument, and the
switches are ones that don't.

After that, you find out how many times option c occurred 
using

   argcount(c)

and, if it is a flag, the argument associated with
the i'th occurrence using

   argstring(c, i)

It's reasonably flexible. You can use argcount(c)
where c is a switch to find out how many times it
was repeated, and the ordering of multiple occurrences
of an option with an argument is preserved. The
only thing you can't tell is the relative ordering
of different options.

Implementing a Python version of this is left as a
trivial exercise for the reader.

Greg



From neelk at brick.cswv.com  Mon Oct 18 21:11:29 1999
From: neelk at brick.cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 01:11:29 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk> <14347.27708.339677.706483@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>  <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910182000250.23836-100000@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <slrn80njqh.4n6.neelk@brick.cswv.com>

Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Jeremy Hylton wrote:
>> 
>> Suggestion for an interesting project if you don't have anything else
>> to do:  A Python compiler written in Python.  For starters, it could
>> just generate Python bytecode.  But it would seem much easier to do
>> analysis of Python code if we didn't have to muck with any C code to
>> do it.
>
>2) I really don't get on with parsing & high level semantic
>analysis. I've never poured much effort into it, but I certainly
>don't have any natural flair for it. [...] But your idea is
>definitely a nice one. I think I'm more suited to backends, me.

If you don't feel like parsing (and who does, really?), you can 
use the parser module to generate ASTs to munch on. 


Neel



From sorot at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 14 21:14:22 1999
From: sorot at my-deja.com (sorot at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 01:14:22 GMT
Subject: Sort List
Message-ID: <7u5v55$ivo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I'm the newbie of Python. I wonder that is there any function for
sorting list alphabetically? And is there any function to get the date
and time of OS?

Thanks

Sorot P.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From fredp at multimania.com.nospam  Wed Oct 13 04:54:31 1999
From: fredp at multimania.com.nospam (Fred Pacquier)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 08:54:31 GMT
Subject: French pun on Python! :-)
References: <oqaeqqxkkw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <8E416950BPaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <38036B92.EA69F110@netscape.com>
Message-ID: <8E5E6C41DPaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148>

morganea at bellatlantic.net (Michel Orengo) said :


>The paradise island for Python programmers is, then, St lucia in the
>Caribbeans where "Gros Piton" and "Petit Piton" are the symbols of the
>island.
>Wanna do offshore programming? ;-)

No problemo :)
You even have quite a choice, because most volcanic isles, in the Carribean 
or the Indian/Pacific, that are or have been French territory, have "Piton" 
something-or-other :-)

-- 
YAFAP : http://www.multimania.com/fredp/



From avaj8 at a1freenet.co.uk  Wed Oct  6 03:09:14 1999
From: avaj8 at a1freenet.co.uk (N)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 07:09:14 GMT
Subject: How to lookup on RMS indexed files in Open VMS ?
Message-ID: <37faf48a.914420@news.mcmail.com>

Hi Python gurus 

Is there a solution for reading RMS indexed files in Open VMS ?
More particularly how to do the lookup on them - on particular keys?
Otherwise reading them sequentially is of little use to me...

Thanks in advance

Nick



From bwinton at tor.dhs.org  Tue Oct  5 17:21:28 1999
From: bwinton at tor.dhs.org (Blake Winton)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 21:21:28 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> <7tdoc8$hno$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn7vkrh5.6vp.bwinton@tor.dhs.org>

On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:51:25 GMT, Preston Landers wrote:
>In article <7tdie6$cq1 at dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>,
>  aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:
>
>> I haven't really looked at your code, but I needed to mention that
>> 'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.
>
>Isn't that what touch does?

Nope.  touch only changes the time if the file already exists...

Later,
Blake.

-- 
One Will.  One Dream.  One Truth.  One Destiny.  One Love.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct 24 23:31:39 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 23:31:39 -0400
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
In-Reply-To: <oq904sc08y.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <000101bf1e99$72c361e0$f12d153f@tim>

[Fran?ois Pinard]
> ... I'm reasonably trying to follow Guido's style guide,

    http://www.python.org/doc/essays/styleguide.html

> somewhat helped in doing so by the nice Emacs Python mode.
>
> The only thing that really rebukes me is the interdiction to use
> capitals in comments to mark non-terminals (or variables), as it
> does not get accompanied by a better suggestion, or at least, none
> yielding as much clarity.

<GUIDOQUOTE>
It is best to list each argument on a separate line, with two dashes
separating the name from the description, like this:

def complex(real=0.0, imag=0.0):
    """Form a complex number.

    Keyword arguments:
    real -- the real part (default 0.0)
    imag -- the imaginary part (default 0.0)

    """
    if imag == 0.0 and real == 0.0: return complex_zero
    ...
</GUIDOQUOTE>

That's certainly clear!  The first line of the docstring doesn't help,
though.  This has begun to matter (to me, and hence it should now matter to
everyone <wink>) in the current CVS versions of IDLE and PythonWin, where
Mark Hammond's calltips extension pops up a little window containing the
first line of the docstring as you're typing a function/method call.  I've
been playing with simply repeating the arglist in the docstring's first
line, as in

def complex(real=0.0, imag=0.0):
    """real=0., imag=0. -> return a complex number.

    Keyword arg "real" (default 0.) gives the real part of the result.
    Keyword arg "imag" (default 0.) gives the imaginary part of the result.
    """

    if imag == 0.0 and real == 0.0: return complex_zero
    ...

This is working out kinda OK; for methods I omit mentioning the "self"
argument; horizontal space is precious in that first line, though, and it's
already irksome in cases like e.g.

def divide(numerator, denominator):
    """numerator, denominator -> return numerator divided by denominator."""
    ...

> The 4 columns indentation rule is quite acceptable on average, expect when
> I have things like, say:
>
>     for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
>         if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<')
>             and function_name not in transparent_functions):
>             name = os.path.basename(file_name)
>             if name not in transparent_files:
>                 return name, line_number

Ah!  You read what Guido wrote but not what he meant:  to think like Guido
here is to think like the Python parser, and to the latter the indentation
of a continued line is irrelevant (it generates neither INDENT nor DEDENT
tokens, so, despite what you *see* <wink>, isn't really indentation at all).

<GUIDOQUOTE screaming_added_by="tim">
The preferred way of wrapping long lines is by using Python's implied line
continuation inside parentheses, brackets and braces. If necessary, you can
add an extra pair of parentheses around an expression, but sometimes using a
backslash looks better. MAKE SURE TO INDENT THE CONTINUED LINE
APPROPRIATELY. Emacs Python-mode does this right. Some examples:

class Rectangle(Blob):

    def __init__(self, width, height,
                 color='black', emphasis=None, highlight=0):
        if width == 0 and height == 0 and \
           color == 'red' and emphasis == 'strong' or \
           highlight > 100:
            raise ValueError, "sorry, you lose"
        if width == 0 and height == 0 and (color == 'red' or
                                           emphasis is None):
            raise ValueError, "I don't think so"
        Blob.__init__(self, widt, height,
                      color, emphasis, highlight)
</GUIDOQUOTE>

There is no case in the above where a continued line follows the "4-column
indent" rule; that rule doesn't apply because-- again, from the True Python
View --a continued line is not (despite mundane appearances) indented at
all.

As to what virtual <wink> indentation *is* "appropriate" for a continued
line, the appeal to pymode is normative but unhelpful:  pymode's indentation
heuristics are complex.  For the most part, they're faithfully mimicked in
the current CVS version of IDLE, so if you want to reverse-engineer them
from Python code instead of elisp, IDLE is the place to look.

But easier to remember that readability is the goal.  I'd write your example
as

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<') and
                function_name not in transparent_functions):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            ...

or

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if function_name[0] not in ('_', '<') and \
              function_name not in transparent_functions:
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            ...

or

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (function_name[0] not in ('_', '<') and
            function_name not in transparent_functions
           ):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            ...

or

    for file_name, line_number, function_name, python_text in frames:
        if (    function_name[0] not in ('_', '<') and
                function_name not in transparent_functions):
            name = os.path.basename(file_name)
            ...

or whatever looks good at the moment, depending on the day's drug of choice
<wink>.

pymode and (the current CVS) IDLE *suggest* your original indentation *not*
because of the 4-column indent rule, but because when a line is continued by
virtue of an unclosed bracketing structure ([], () or {}), it tries to line
it up with the first non-whitespace character following the open bracket of
the closest-containing unclosed bracketing structure.  For example, all the
indents here are what pymode/IDLE/PythonWin suggest:

if (      blah1 and
          blah2 and
          blah3):
    xxx

It's sheer coincidence in your example that the first non-whitespace
character following the open paren was 4 columns to the right of the 'i' in
"if", and I agree it doesn't read well.  So hit the spacebar a few times --
pymode won't hit you!

even-if-guido-would-like-it-to<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim





From landauer at apple.com  Fri Oct 29 15:21:32 1999
From: landauer at apple.com (Doug Landauer)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:21:32 -0700
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk>
Message-ID: <landauer-2910991221320001@landauer.apple.com>

> Problems with Python are:
>
> * Tiresome self. are required when each access to instance variable 

Not tiresome.  I find the requirement of "self." to be
very beneficial whenever *reading* code.  It clarifies the
distinction between local variable vs class instance.
A definite keeper for 2.0.


> * Ugly method calling for superclass

Ugly is one opinion.

> * No way to automatically convert between long integer and
>      small integer.

Another strong benefit of python.  Automatic conversions are
almost always completely evil.  In  C++, for example.


> * Because there is no genuine GC, memory leak occur often 

Hmmm.  "often"?  I've never personally seen one in any of
my python.


> * Function objects are accepted as arguments, but iterators
>     are more elegant.

Hey, scheme might be considered more elegant, too.  But it does
*not* follow that programs written in scheme are more elegant.


> * After all, declarations are featured (global)

This one requires a lot more explanation.  Anyone know what the
intended meaning of this point is?



> ... do people think these comments are justified?

Maybe some of the other ones might be.
-- 
    Doug Landauer        landauer at apple.com (work)
                         landauer at scruznet.com (not-work)



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 13 13:52:16 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 17:52:16 GMT
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
References: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7ttk6r$ids$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <5loge456a9.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7u2gsa$2a0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <5loge456a9.fsf at eric.cnri.reston.va.us>,
  Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:

> My guess as to why he's getting the error that he's getting is that
> tar somehow stops reading the gzip output before gzip is done.  Maybe
> the rest of the tar output (if there's any) would be a clue.

There was no additional output from tar.  I used the verbose flag, and
it printed that it untarred' all the files, then it printed the message
about recieving exit code of 1 from gzip.

I don't know what the problem is.  Frankly I'm not overly worried about
it at this point; I was able to work around it.

Thanks to both who responded to my original msg.

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From skiani at alum.mit.edu  Mon Oct 18 20:52:59 1999
From: skiani at alum.mit.edu (sep)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 00:52:59 GMT
Subject: newbieq: IDLE 0.4 question
Message-ID: <7ugfd8$c9q$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi, how do I tell the Python Shell to reload a module after I edit it?
I do a save in the editor then import module in the shell and the old
one is still in memory. del module seems to delete it but then import
module and the old one is there. I know I'm missing something here. I'm
on NT.

thanks,
--
Sepehr (Sep) Kiani
************************************
skiani at alum.mit.edu
http://pergatory.mit.edu/skiani


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gdw at ninz.not.org.nz  Sat Oct 23 23:52:51 1999
From: gdw at ninz.not.org.nz (Glyn Webster)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 03:52:51 GMT
Subject: Recusive function inside a function can't find itself.
References: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIOEMJCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>
Message-ID: <7uu0ib$9sv$1@news.wave.co.nz>

In article <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIIOEMJCAAA.mcfletch at vrtelecom.com>, "Mike Fletcher" <mcfletch at vrtelecom.com> wrote:
>Another approach:
>
>def x( r,b,g ):
>        def y( r,b,g, recurse ):
>                a,b,c = dosomething(r,b,g)
>                return recurse( a,b,c, recurse )
>        return y( r,b,g, y)
>
>Which is not really pretty (unless you're a devoted fan of 
>continuation passing I suppose), but should work :) .  Enjoy,
>Mike

Ah! The inner function is just another local variable of 
the outer function, so I'd have to pass it into the 
inner function's scope though its argument list, just like 
I did with all the others.  (I won't though. I'm going to 
make the inner function global like I'm being told to
before things get too silly :-)

--
(Remove the negation from my address to reply by email.)
"ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe."



From wware-nospam at world.std.com  Thu Oct  7 13:40:52 1999
From: wware-nospam at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 17:40:52 GMT
Subject: Python for PDAs?
Message-ID: <FJ8uG6.M1n@world.std.com>

Are there any Python ports to run on PDAs? I'm thinking
about getting a PDA and this would influence my decision.
I'm aware of something called PyPsion for the Psion 5mx, is
there anything else? The Palm Pilot is also appealing-looking.
-- 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Resistance is futile. Capacitance is efficacious.
Will Ware	email:    wware @ world.std.com



From pf at artcom0.north.de  Mon Oct 18 13:00:17 1999
From: pf at artcom0.north.de (Peter Funk)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 19:00:17 +0200
Subject: integrating SocketServer with Tkinter Event-Loop
Message-ID: <7ufjn1$ajn$1@artcom0.north.de>

I want to write a Python application with a Tkinter based GUI which
serves incoming requests using a SocketServer in the same process at the
same time.  I am trying to use the standard lib module 'asyncore' for 
this purpose.  Here is short outline of my code (as a working example):
-------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/env python
import SocketServer, asyncore

class AsyncTCPServer(asyncore.dispatcher):
    def __init__(self, host_port, handler, *args, **kw):
        self.socket_server = SocketServer.TCPServer(host_port, handler)
        asyncore.dispatcher.__init__(self, self.socket_server.socket)
    def handle_read(self):
        self.socket_server.handle_request()
        
if __name__ == "__main__":
    import SimpleHTTPServer
    server = AsyncTCPServer(('', 8080), SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler)
    # 
    import Tkinter; Tk = Tkinter; del Tkinter
    class NanoGUI(Tk.Tk):
	def __init__(self):
	    Tk.Tk.__init__(self)
	    Tk.Button(self, text="Quit server", command=self.quit).pack()
	    self.socket_poll()
	def socket_poll(self):
	    asyncore.poll(timeout=0.0)
	    self.after(100, self.socket_poll)

    gui = NanoGUI()
    gui.mainloop()
-------------------------------
The tricky part is the 'socket_poll' method, which does some kind of
"macro" busy waiting, while the GUI is idle. 

I would like to here your comments about this solution.

With kind regards, Peter Funk
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260
office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)



From robin at alldunn.com  Sat Oct 23 14:36:17 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 11:36:17 -0700
Subject: Interpreter lock
Message-ID: <004b01bf1d85$7f4caad0$fa01a8c0@easystreet.com>

If the API docs mention several times that if a thread already has aquired
the global interpreter lock and attepts to do so again that a dealock will
happen.  I now know for a fact that this is true!


Is there a way to find out from the API if a given thread (via its
PyThreadState structure) has the interpreter lock already?

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!





From nhead at houbits.com  Wed Oct 20 03:33:08 1999
From: nhead at houbits.com (Nigel Head)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:33:08 +0200
Subject: BSD3 - virtual server - dyld.h not found [Q]
References: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9910181536400.1100-100000@kuarajy.infosys.com.ar>
Message-ID: <380D7033.E3A76F2B@houbits.com>

This appeared for me somewhere in the move from 151 to 152!

While I never located the root cause of this, I did find a workaround - I had
to edit the configure script to remove the offending items. It didn't seem to
be sufficient to edit the generated config.h -- there must be some further,
hidden, interdependencies! I didn't spend time chasing that though ...

If you want a copy of the hacked up configure script mail me. You may also
want to think carefully about the prefix business if you intend this to
execute in the "virtual" mode of the iServer and not just from your telnet
access ('cos of the chroot).

N.




From edwardam at home.com  Sun Oct 31 13:42:32 1999
From: edwardam at home.com (Edward Muller)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 18:42:32 GMT
Subject: HTMLParser
Message-ID: <381C8DAB.511386A0@home.com>

Does anyone have any sample code for the htmllib/HTMLParser library?




From ratman at nmt.edu  Sat Oct 16 14:17:54 1999
From: ratman at nmt.edu (Jason Trowbridge)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 12:17:54 -0600
Subject: Adding info to Python Buglist
Message-ID: <3808C151.1D877904@nmt.edu>

I filed a bug in Python's buglist, and have further information
available.  However, I can't seem to add a reply as a guest.  Is there
any way I can add more information to the ticket as a guest, or do I
have to get an account?  If I need an account, how do I go about getting
it?

Anyway, below is the additional information that needs to go into bug
#110.
-----
Seems like it's the '====' which is generating the problem.  According
to a relevant RFC that I just found (rfc1521, section 5.2), '====' is
not a valid set of characters in a base64 encoded string.  It is the
ending marker than uu(de/en)code uses to detect the end of the file
(oops).

Still, binascii ought to generate an intelligent exception rather than
doing a SystemError.  I should have a fix in a bit.

	Jason Trowbridge
	ratman at nmt.edu



From dalke at bioreason.com  Fri Oct 15 16:13:31 1999
From: dalke at bioreason.com (Andrew Dalke)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:13:31 -0600
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <003701bf171e$fc797820$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <38078AEB.82797F13@bioreason.com>

Adrian Eyre" <a.eyre at optichrome.com> said:
> def who_called_me():
>     try:
>         raise "Hack"
>     except:
>         return sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame.f_back.f_back.f_code.co_name

May I suggest using

def who_called_me():
    try:
        raise "Hack"
    except "Hack":
        return sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame.f_back.f_back.f_code.co_name

?

  There is a slight chance that someone might hit ^C in between
the try/except.  Since ^C gets turned into an exception, your
code will effectively ignore it, which isn't the right behaviour.

						Andrew Dalke
						dalke at acm.org



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Tue Oct 12 14:16:13 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:16:13 -0400
Subject: MYOBJ->ob_type->tp_name - in a C extension?
Message-ID: <19991012141613.A247896@vislab.epa.gov>

     Poking around inside of a Python object has me wondering if there
isn't a better way.

    PyErr_Format( PyExc_TypeError, 
                  "argument 'host': expected None or string, %s found",
                  $source == Py_None ? "None" : $source->ob_type->tp_name );
                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Darned if I can find the query interface though.

Thanks,

Randall



From anantk at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 28 14:56:47 1999
From: anantk at my-deja.com (anantk at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 18:56:47 GMT
Subject: WinNT, python and cygwin
Message-ID: <7va69d$9b8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi,

I have python and cygwin installed on my winNT box. Can anyone tell me
how I can call sh scripts from python?


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 13 09:53:10 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:53:10 +0200
Subject: PythonCOM - xmlRPC
References: <7u213c$ldv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <005c01bf1582$4a20f970$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

k_mcdermott at my-deja.com wrote:
> I have been trying to get the xmlRPC COM client to work in Python.
> 
> I keep getting a Unable to create ActiveX component returned from the
> xmlRPC object that I create.
> 
> I know very little about how the PythonCOM works, so if anybody has any
> suggestions...

any reason why you cannot just use Python's
own xml-rpc implementation instead?

    http://www.pythonware.com/products/xmlrpc/

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From puter_programmer at yahoo.com  Sat Oct  2 14:49:57 1999
From: puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan)
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 18:49:57 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com> <53AAE190BE36E29B.0AC297CC417A0869.91E94CE7C2606CFD@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <37f64fe4.32336905@news.supernews.com>

On 2 Oct 1999 15:17:53 GMT, tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver)
wrote:

>
>In article <37f5aa20.6716735 at news.supernews.com>,
>Dan <puter_programmer at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>I suppose I should clarify my request. :-)
>>
>>What I want to do is to have a parent process spawn off a child
>>process which then waits for new file descriptor (socket) to come from
>>the parent.  The parent after it spawns several children will wait
>>listen on a socket for new connections which it will pass to one of
>>the child processes after the connection has been established.
>>
>>My goal here is to make a Python based web server that will run on
>>more than one processor simultaniously.  I've already built one that
>>uses threading but unfortunately Python has a global interpreter lock
>>which keeps two threads from running at the same time on a
>>multi-processor machine.  So I need to go with a multi-process scheme
>>in order to take advantage of a multi-processor system but the problem
>>is that I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to pass a file
>>descriptor from one process ro another since the only sample code I
>>can find is written in C.
>
>The bible for this kind of stuff is W. S. Stevens'
>_Unix_Network_Programming_.  Volume 1 of the second edition, section 27.9,
>has exactly the kind of setup you describe.  The mechanism used is quite
>arcane:  essentially, the two processes use a Unix-domain socket to pass
>the descriptor via sendmsg() / recvmsg();  exact details depend on the
>actual kernel used.


Actually, I have Stevens' "Advanced Programming in the Unix
Environment" here (the other two are on their way) and it has a
chapter regarding the process too.  I've read it but unfortunately I'm
just getting started in C.  The most C I've done so far is to write a
hello world extension module for Python. ;-)

There is also a usenet posting that probably has a more specific
example of how to do it under Linux than any of Stevens' books.
http://x26.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=443099042

Judging from this I am assuming that it's not possible with pure
Python code since socketpair() is not available under Python. Is there
any paticular reason this function was not included in the Python
socket library?

>From the sounds of it my only option is to turn my hello_world module
into a fdpass module myself.  I don't suppose I'll be re-inventing the
wheel here will I? ;-)

-Dan





From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Wed Oct 13 14:33:47 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:33:47 -0400
Subject: <Tkinter bug> winfo_visualsavailable
Message-ID: <19991013143347.A366949@vislab.epa.gov>

     It appears that winfo_visualsavailable isn't prepared to get back hex
values for visual IDs (which is what comes up from Tk).

     ( Python 1.5.2, tcl/tk8.0.4 )

Randall


> python
Python 1.5.2 (#3, Jul  8 1999, 11:01:48) [C] on irix646-n32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam

>>> import Tkinter

>>> root = Tkinter.Tk()

>>> root.tk.call('winfo', 'visualsavailable', root._w, 'includeids')
'{pseudocolor 2 0x20} {pseudocolor 2 0x21} {pseudocolor 4 0x22} {pseudocolor 4 0x23} {truecolor 4 0x24} {pseudocolor 8 0x25} {staticcolor 8 0x26} {truecolor 8 0x27} {pseudocolor 12 0x28} {pseudocolor 12 0x29} {pseudocolor 12 0x2a} {pseudocolor 12 0x2b} {truecolor 12 0x2c} {truecolor 12 0x2d} {truecolor 24 0x2e} {truecolor 24 0x2f} {directcolor 24 0x30} {truecolor 24 0x31}'

>>> print root.winfo_visualsavailable( includeids=1 )
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/home/rhh/software/python-1.5.2/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 428, in winfo_visualsavailable
    return map(parseitem, data)
  File "/home/rhh/software/python-1.5.2/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 427, in parseitem
    return x[:1] + tuple(map(getint, x[1:]))
ValueError: invalid literal for int(): 0x20

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct 21 11:38:50 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:38:50 +0100
Subject: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr
In-Reply-To: <380F22AA.5EF2D410@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>
Message-ID: <000501bf1bda$5f6ea350$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> is there any possibility to launch an external program (without repla-
> cing the current process - i.e., no os.exec* call alone) and catch the
> stdin, stderr and stdout IO streams (the latter also renders spawn and
> fork together with exec* unusable)?
The closest to this would be os.popen() This doesn't allow you to trap
stderr as far as I am aware.

> A platform-independent solution  would be preferrable - however,  it's
> more important for me to get it for Windows 98!
This should work on Unix and Windows.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From bjorn at roguewave.com  Wed Oct 20 00:22:54 1999
From: bjorn at roguewave.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:22:54 -0600
Subject: Python startup performance ?
Message-ID: <51C9F3C392D0D111A15600A0C99E64A9AF55C4@localhost>

Hmmm... On my linux box I only see Python taking four times more time (I
removed the \n from the Python source code to make the programs compatible).

-- bjorn


> -----Original Message-----
> From: adsharma at home.com.nospam [mailto:adsharma at home.com.nospam]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 10:10 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Python startup performance ?
> 
> 
> Not a big deal - but would be helpful when executing a large number
> of python scripts over and over again.
> 
> 	-Arun
> 
> $ time -p perl -e 'print "hello world\n"'
> hello world
> real 0.01
> user 0.01
> sys 0.00
> $ time -p python -c 'print "hello world\n"'
> hello world
>  
> real 0.93
> user 0.05
> sys 0.05     
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct  3 17:01:15 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:01:15 -0400
Subject: Matching templates against a tree - any ideas?
In-Reply-To: <938124141snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <000301bf0de2$6f7e9580$812d153f@tim>

[Phil Hunt]
> People say Earley parsing is slow, but my experience is that it is
> fast enough. My Parrot program uses a modified version of John
> Aycock's framework (the modifications slow it down, by remembering
> the line and column numbers of the start of each token), and it
> can read in a 150 line input file, parse it, process it, generate code
> from it, and save the results to disk, in 1.5 seconds. (This is
> on a cheapish PC with a 300 MHz AMD K6-2 processor).
>
> I guess it depends on the grammar you are parsing.

It's "slow" compared to the best methods known for restricted grammars,
whether in an expected-case sense or worst-case.  It *can* take time cubic
in the length of the input, and consume memory quadratic in that length.
The best methods known for suitably friendly grammars (like, say, Python's
or C's) take worst-case=expected-case linear time in the length of the
input, and require constant working space regardless of input length.  The
generality of the Earley algorithm also requires use of fancier supporting
data structures, which even if all else were equal would take longer to
create and manipulate.  Write it all in Python, and use re's NFA regexps for
tokenization, and, ya, it's s-l-o-w <wink>.  That's relative to what's
possible.

100 lines a second is fine for infrequent processing of small files.  If,
like MikeF, you're parsing multiple megabytes routinely, or even if you're
just running a compiler, it would be intolerably slow.

just-another-tradeoff-ly y'rs  - tim





From peter.stoehr at weihenstephan.org  Sat Oct 30 18:26:33 1999
From: peter.stoehr at weihenstephan.org (Dr. Peter Stoehr)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 00:26:33 +0200
Subject: vector?
References: <9910291655.ZM20772@eel.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <381B7099.A3B111B2@weihenstephan.org>

Hi Mona,

some days ago someone posted such a package.
You might find it using www.deja.com

    Greetings from Erding/Bavaria/Germany/Europe/Earth
        Peter
Mona Wong wrote:
> 
> Hi:
> 
>         I am new to python ... I'm sure you've heard that too many times before
> ...
> 
>         Anyway, to make vectors using python, is there a module or should I
> just make it out of arrays?
> 
>         I searched the archive but didn't see any info related to vectors.
> 
>         Thanks, in advance, for your help.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Mona
> 
> --
> ==================================================================
> Mona Wong
> graphics / visualization programmer wanna-be & web fool-arounder
> National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research
> University of California, San Diego
> http://www-ncmir.ucsd.edu/
> 
> "The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off"
>                                 A Landmark instructor
> ==================================================================

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Dr. Peter Stoehr --- Teisenbergweg 6 --- 85435 Erding --- 08122/47232
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
		I'm the terror that flaps through the night



From pphalen at teleo.net  Wed Oct 20 18:45:52 1999
From: pphalen at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:45:52 -0700
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: <vr904x1z40.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
References: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim> <3dzoxd7vkj.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us> <vr904x1z40.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <99102015440605.04931@quadra.teleo.net>

[Fran?ois Pinard, on Wed, 20 Oct 1999]:
:: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling) writes:
:: 
:: > I've always wondered why he considered 37 helpful.
:: 
:: Because it is a factor of any number made up by repeating any single digit
:: some multiple of three times?  (v.g. 111, 222222, 333333333, 444444444444)

Fran?ois,

I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed your recent contributions to this
list! I'm going to choose to imagine that you arrived at the answer
above by pure intuition. It of course reminds one of the famous story
told by G. H. Hardy:

Hardy went to visit Ramanujan in the hospital and remarked that his
taxicab had had a particularly dull number: 1729.

Ramanujan immediately remarked, "Oh no, Hardy. It is a very interesting
number indeed. It is the least number that can be written as the sum of
two squares in two different ways."




From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Wed Oct  6 13:16:41 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 6 Oct 1999 17:16:41 GMT
Subject: Database Tutorials, How-Tos etc.
References: <37FAFE16.8C6ACE16@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <7tg05p$e2$1@essle.valdyas.org>

Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
> Hi,

> Was wondering if there are any database tutorials available online,
> especially using the bundled databases that comes with Python. I would
> be great to see some simple examples, but not as complex as Gadfly. Why
> isn`t there a How-To on this?

Well, it's not a tutorial, but a very, very simple example (and I don't
know how good it is - I expect I've made several floaters), is available
from my homepage - it's Kura the linguistcs database. I've almost finished
a complete redesign of the database access code, which will replace the
current MySQL dependent system, but that's not available yet. Plan to
finish that part tonight...

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From rpm1 at frontiernet.net  Sat Oct  2 00:03:04 1999
From: rpm1 at frontiernet.net (RPM1)
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 00:03:04 -0400
Subject: Help: PythonCE stdin?
Message-ID: <7t40f3$1n46$1@node17.cwnet.frontiernet.net>

    Anybody know how to get input into Python CE?

    - stdin is closed.
    - command line parameters don't seem to work.

    Has anyone figured this out yet?

        - Patrick M.






From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 19 19:54:55 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 23:54:55 GMT
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <vrzoxfpdwp.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org> <14348.57394.697161.702340@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <380CE2FD.D110548C@callware.com>
Message-ID: <7uj0cf$mc9$1@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <380CE2FD.D110548C at callware.com>,
Ivan Van Laningham  <ivanlan at callware.com> wrote:
>
>I'm not obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive
>obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive
>obsessive.
>
><no-time-for-witticisms-in-total-panic-mode>-ly y'rs,

Yeah, like, when are you getting the next chapter to me?  ;-)
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 13 18:48:35 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:48:35 GMT
Subject: Text/Cursor User Interface with Python (me too)
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se>
Message-ID: <7u327v$fkt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Sorry for the "me too" post, but I've also been looking for the same
thing Tommy is.

I just need a simple (to use) Python module to write full-screen text
mode apps.

I've found the ncurses wrapper floating around on the net to be, well,
inadequate.

An ideal module would make it very easy to create applications in the
style of the old Norton Utilities on DOS -- full color and mouse
support if desired.  But really, a basic menu system with pop-up
dialogs would be nice enough.

Please don't make me write this module. ;-)

thanks,

---Preston

In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000 at butler.artech.se>,
  tommy <tommy at artech.se> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> Someone who know any good module for Python to easy write Text/Cursor
> Interfaces???
>
> I like it to have support for widget like:
>
> - scrollboxs
> - dialog box
> - input box
> - menu
> - lists
>
> Shoule be used to make textbased UI for applications end I dosen't
like to
> spend time on wroting the UI more like to spend time to write the
> applications instand.
>
> Thanks Tommy
>
> Kind regards
>
> //Tommy
>
> NorthSea Consulting
>
>

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Thu Oct  7 07:33:13 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 13:33:13 +0200
Subject: Is the server down or what?
Message-ID: <37FC84F9.F1C51C28@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

I`m not getting any goddamn articles in this newsgroup today. Are people
asleep or is the server down or what?

Thomas




From jbauer at rubic.com  Mon Oct 18 21:13:59 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:13:59 -0500
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
> is now available from fatbrain.com.

One followup to Fredrik's announcement.  If you
decide it purchase the material through FatBrain,
set up your account *first*, and then place
your order.  I tried a one-time order, and the
system got me locked out.  It's obviously *not*
written in Python. ;-)  The FatBrain people are
helpful and responsive, so I have no major
complaints.  I'm looking forward to reading 
Fredrik's current (and future) endeavors.  Maybe 
one day I'll figure out that zfill is already 
included in the Standard Library. ;-)

Nostalgia Trip:  At the October '97 conference
in San Jose, I drove Andrew Kuchling, Konrad
Hinsen, and Christian Tismer(?) out to the
"Computer Literacy Bookstore".  That was the
original name for what is now "FatBrain."

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 15:58:18 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:58:18 +0200
Subject: Who maintains Tkinter?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910111331540.24886-100000@moogle.tcct.nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <013c01bf1423$1a0f6290$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

SysProg - Nathan Paul Simons <enigma at nmt.edu> wrote:
> A few months ago, i attempted to get some answers to a question
> about a bug with tkinter.  i received no reply.  Therefore, i would like
> to know who maintains tkinter so that i could contact them directly.

try the official bug submission form:
http://www.python.org/python-bugs?newbug=1

or, perhaps better in this case, go directly to
the patch submission guidelines:
http://www.python.org/1.5/patch.html

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm





From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 12:32:57 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:32:57 GMT
Subject: Unix diff algorithm in Python anyone?
References: <7td5lp$2oc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7td97o$5m4$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7td5lp$2oc$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  harri.pasanen at trema.com wrote:

> I made some effort to track down a python module that could be used as
> unix diff.  Currently I'm in fact popen'ing diff itself, but for I'd
> like to have a self-contained utility.

Harri,

I'm not quite sure why opening a channel to Unix diff isn't going to
work for you.  Do you absolutely need a cross-platform solution?  There
is probably a diff availible for most computers.

Why reimplement it from scratch?  While not extraordinarily complex, a
lot of thought and debugging has gone into GNU diff. Why not leverage
that work?

status, result = commands.getstatusoutput("diff %s %s" % (file1, file2))

has worked fine for me.

It might be a good idea to build a Python *wrapper* around a command-
line diff, one that would handle diff options and so on intelligently,
maybe also interface with patch.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't waste time re-writing diff in
Python.  I'm sure some people would beg to differ.

yours,

---Preston


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Sat Oct 23 08:28:41 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 12:28:41 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
In-Reply-To: <7ursu2$laa$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910231227050.9916-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, it was written:

> Hello.
> Has anyone used httpdapy for a processing-intensive Web site? If so, do you
> find it reliable?  I plan to use it instead of PyApache for creating
> database-backed web applications. I would love to hear about others'
> experiences with it. Thanks in advance.

   I use PyApache (not httpdapy) on a lot of commercial projects. It is
very good small, fast and reliable thingie!

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From alrice at swcp.com  Fri Oct 15 00:08:59 1999
From: alrice at swcp.com (Alex Rice)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 22:08:59 -0600
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <m3wvspz2n8.fsf@monsoon.swcp.com>

muniff at yahoo.com (Ahmad Munif) writes:

> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table
> widget,notebook widget, etc).  PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets,
> but poor of documentation.
>  i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to
> build my database application ?

Take a look at JPython as well: it gives you direct access to JFC and
Swing, Java's GUI libs. Great stuff!

Alex





From kain at twilight.  Mon Oct 18 13:51:23 1999
From: kain at twilight. (Scott Barron)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 17:51:23 GMT
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
References: <002701bf196e$81144730$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <7ufmmr$6f9$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>

I've been using os.path.isfile (file) to do something similar.  Works well
for me.

-Scott

In article <002701bf196e$81144730$3acbd9c2 at peridot.optichrome.com>, 
Adrian Eyre wrote:
>> I would like to check for the existance of a file before I attempt an open
>> and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way to do this.  I would like
>> to tell the user that the file he specified doesn't exist.  Is there a way
>> to do this or do I need to catch the exception and deal with it that way?
>
>What's wrong with:
>
>try:
>	f=open("afile", "r")
>except IOError, val:
>	print "Could not read file: " + val[1]
>
>--------------------------------------------
>Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
>Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
>Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
>Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
>http://www.optichrome.com
>--------------------------------------------
>
>
>



From dfenyes at flash.net  Wed Oct 13 22:08:26 1999
From: dfenyes at flash.net (David Fenyes)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 02:08:26 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <slrn7vvh66.4cj.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <939757160snz@vision25.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <m3yad8uhlq.fsf@c34680-a.grlnd1.tx.home.com>

    Phil> Another feature I would like is multi-line
    Phil> comments. Consider a paragraph of commented text under the
    Phil> present system; every time you want to add a few new lines
    Phil> to the comment you have to manually put in `#'s at the start
    Phil> of each new comment line, which I find irritating because it
    Phil> breaks the flow of what I am trying to explain.

Any good editor (such as emacs) should automatically wrap the line
you're typing, add a new comment marker, and indent the text to the
proper place.  The problem with multi-line comments is that they don't
nest well, amplifying the annoyance of commenting/uncommenting a group
of lines.


-- 
David Fenyes  --  dfenyes at home.com



From peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de  Fri Oct 29 20:34:07 1999
From: peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de (Peter Sommerfeld)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 02:34:07 +0200
Subject: Accessing class variables
In-Reply-To: <1270883107-11192393@hypernet.com>
References: <v04003a00b43fd15b4372@[195.180.62.154]>
Message-ID: <v04003a02b43fec4a9b67@[195.180.62.136]>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>Peter Sommerfeld writes:
>> Sorry folks, I'm confused. What's that ?
>[code snipped]
>> I can access class variables via the instance ?
>> Bug, new feature or even an old one and I'm crazy ?
>
>No, no, not even but not odd, old,
>
>and-probably-ly y'rs
>
>- Gordon

Obviously, I'm getting old ...
(and should read the manuals more carefully)

thanx

- Peter






From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Wed Oct  6 09:52:50 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 15:52:50 +0200
Subject: How do loose the /012
References: <7tdm4k$gmd$1@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <y0jso3o38b1.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"Steve Hunter" <Steve at HOSYS.com> writes:

> This code is suppose to take an ascii file made up of sentences and create a
> file in the form of..by example..
> 1 sentence one.
> 2 sentence two
> etc...
> 
> the code is  below and the input/output below that.....appreciate the fix
> that makes
> this work.

Try to use string.replace (or translate) to change line breaks into
spaces (or empty strings).

--

  Magnus
  Lie                                     Please forward all spam to
  Hetland                                                uce at ftc.gov



From ljz at asfast.com  Sun Oct 24 13:24:16 1999
From: ljz at asfast.com (Lloyd Zusman)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 13:24:16 -0400
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241351350.29582-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <slrn816bip.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>
Message-ID: <ltiu3wpt8f.fsf@asfast.com>

erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela) writes:

> On Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:52:13 +0000 (GMT), Oleg Broytmann
> <phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:
> >On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
> >> >> it would probably be quite easy to write something that emulates
> >> >> cgi's transparently. perhaps httpdapy would become more popular
> >> >> if something like this was included with it...
> >> >
> >> >   I don't think so.
> >> 
> >> it would not be easy or it would not become more popular? :)
> >
> >   It wouldn't be much more popular, IMHO.
> 
> a lot of people seem to like mod_perl, and i think many its users like
> it precisely because of its speed. and the only way to speed is keeping
> the same interpreter around.
> 
> maybe there is some other reason for the unpopularity of httpdapy
> than cgi-incompatibility, as suprisingly few people seem to use
> it. (or perhaps all its users are just very very quiet :) )

I've been reading this thread with interest.  In general, I like the
fact that httpdapy re-uses the same interpreter similarly to the way
that mod_perl does it, and for the types of applications I write, that
indeed is quite worthwhile.  I'd rather have that capability and then
do my own forks and execs when I really want to, than to be running
under the constraint where I could never re-use an existing
interpreter, as in PyApache.  And since I have a private site where I
do all the programming, API compatibiluty with CGI is not important to
me.

But YMMV.

And since we're discussing httpdapy, I'd also like to raise a related
issue: I have never been able to get httpdapy to properly install
under my particular Apache server set-up.  I'm wondering if there's
anyone who has been able to get httpdapy up and running under the
following configuration:

  Python 1.5.2
  Apache 1.3.9 with the following modules:
    mod_perl 1.21 (non-DSO)
    php4 (DSO)

I don't recall the specific error(s) I got, since it was a while since
the last time I tried this.  I seem to recall that the installation
procedure itself went OK, but the Apache server failed to start when
httpdapy was included.  I'll try the installation again in a while if
anyone wants to see the specific error(s).  In the mean time, does
anyone have any experience getting httpdapy working under a
configuration like mine?


And one more related question: does anyone know if httpdapy and
PyApache can co-exist within the same Apache server?
  

> [ ... ]

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz at asfast.com



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Fri Oct  8 09:55:03 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 09:55:03 -0400
Subject: Marking translatable strings
In-Reply-To: "Fredrik Lundh"'s message of "Sat, 9 Oct 1999 14:53:11 +0200"
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim> <37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com> <vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de> <873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org> <001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> > What about a t'translated string literal', like r'raw string'?

> is it really that hard to write, say,
> T('translated string literal') ?

Nothing is really hard to write.  But since translatable strings are meant
to be rather ubiquitous in Python programs, the real point is making as
much easy to read as possible, that is, quite legible and very unobtrusive.

I know it looks very nit-picky, but since this is meant to become just
part of the life of those caring about internationalisation (quite a few
by now), any slight increase in legibility will be a big win over time.
For example, comparing:

  T('translated string literal')
  _('translated string literal')

it seems to me that the second form is less cluttered than the first.

But the main problem with the writing above is that is has to mean something
which gets executed, we consider that `T' or `_' is some translating
function.  In practice, it significantly occurs that we need to mark
strings as translatable, without translating them right away, sometimes
in contexts where a function call would not be syntactically correct.

So, even if we can use special function calls as extra hints to "mark"
their string argument, there are other contexts where the strings themselves
need to be "marked" more intimately within the Python language.  How the
interpreter might be involved, or not, into dynamically translating such
strings, without using explicit translating functions like `T' or `_',
might be the subject of thought and debates, as they are many approaches for
doing it.  Besides, none would work anyway if Guido does not get interested.


On a related, but different topic, there is something which is little known,
but that might be of interest to those who would like to read `.mo' files
(compiled PO files) directly in Python, without going through `gettext'.
When we designed the `.mo' file format for GNU, I insisted that `msgfmt'
sorts the strings in lexicographical order of `msgid' (untranslated) strings,
even if `gettext' does not need it.  The goal was to help scripting languages
that could not easily use the precise double hashing algorithm of `gettext',
by making possible to just binary search in the compiled file.

Also worth noting and little known, Ulrich has released a snapshot of
`gettext' which is not encumbered by the GPL, for the Danish UUG or Danish
national standardisation groups, I do not remember exactly.  The precise
double hashing is part of this special release, and the algorithm did not
change since, so far that I know.  This could be useful if Python proper
was to provide string translation services independently of `gettext'.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From john at ipro.com  Fri Oct 22 02:20:58 1999
From: john at ipro.com (John Jensen)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 23:20:58 -0700
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
In-Reply-To: <1271699565-25298933@hypernet.com>
References: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <199910220623.XAA14144@farad.ipro.com>

On 20 Oct 99, at 8:48, Gordon McMillan said:

> I regularly use zlib on marshalled data. Works dandy, but for 
> small objects (say 100 bytes or so), the zlib'ed version will 
> actually be larger. The more data you compress in one shot, 
> the better the compression ratio.

For some of our work we create what we term "dbgz" files -- compressed 
marshalled objects.  Often these objects are hundreds of megabytes in 
size (we deal with LOTS of data).  I've found it to be a reasonably 
fast, simple, portable solution for this type of problem.

John
-- 
John Jensen     john at ipro.com   http://www.ipro.com
Research Manager, Internet Profiles Corporation



From mcicogni at siosistemi.it  Mon Oct 11 05:56:25 1999
From: mcicogni at siosistemi.it (Mauro Cicognini)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:56:25 +0200
Subject: Anyone have success w/STRPTIME???
References: <19991009210517156.AAA238.255@mailout1.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3801B449.D2B9380F@siosistemi.it>

Benjamin Schollnick wrote:

> On Fri, 08 Oct 1999 15:51:48 +0200, Mauro Cicognini wrote:
>
> >Ben, strptime() is not supported under Windows. It does say so in the
> >docs. :(
>
> I must of missed that...
>
> >If you're interested, I've written a str2time() which I'm pretty much
> >satisfacted with, that does some nice RE processing and a couple crude
> >hacks to get what I want in a Python format. It extracts a date from
> >many general-format strings; if you need to, changing the RE will allow
> >you to parse even more formats. I can send you the source if you wish.
> >
> >Also, a coworker of mine has found a strptime() written in Python (which
> >will work on Windows, too) that does all that the standard strptime()
> >does, and more.
>
> I'd certainly appreciate it if you could send me yours.  If your coworker
> wouldn't mind, I certainly would like to see the strptime replacement,
> so that I can keep the program "general" python compliant.
>
>                         - Benjamin

My source is attached.
The stuff to parse month names is really crude, a better way would be to use
python's 'local' module but I have no time now. I have translated all the
comments, I hope I haven't broken something in the attempt, in case please
fix it, it shouldn't be too difficult.

I noticed on the newsgroup appeared the link to the pure Python strptime(),
so it's best to follow that.

Mauro



-------------- next part --------------

def str2time(d):
	"""
	This function attempts to convert a date expressed in various manners
	in UNIX format (no. of seconds from 1 jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT).

	The general format must contain at least day and month, as follows:
	Day: 1 or 2 digits.
	Month: 1 or 2 digits or at least 3 letters of the name.
	Year: 2 to 4 digits. Optional: if missing the current year is assumed.
	Elements in the date can be separated by '-', '/', '.' or
	by an indefinite number of blanks.
	
	A time figure may be present (even without an explicit year figure).
	If present, it must be separated for the date by at least a blank.
	
	Hours: 1 or 2 digits.
	Minutes: 2 digits.
	Seconds: 2 digits. Optional.
	Elements inside time can be separated by '.' or ':'.
	
	Special formats:
	 - "yesterday": obviously returns yesterday's date
	 - "today": obviously returns today's date
	 - "tomorrow": obviously returns tomorrow's date
	 - A number preceded by '+' or '-': returns the date of the day that comes
	   so many days before (if preceded by '-') or after (if preceded by '-')
	   today, e.g. '+5' means 5 days in the future; '-2' is the day before yesterday;
	   '+2' is the day after tomorrow; etc. For generality, '0' (the digit zero) = today.

	The RE that does most of the work is hereafter commented.
	
	(				# start date section
	    (?P<dy>\d{1,2})		    # dy=day, 1 or 2 digits
	    ([-/.]|\s+)			    # separators: '-', '/', '.' or blanks
	    (?P<mo>\d{1,2}|[a-zA-Z]{3,})    # mo=month, 1 or 2 digits, or an alpha string
	    (				    # start year section, optional
	        ([-/.]|\s+)			# separators: '-', '/', '.' or blanks
	        (?P<yr>\d{2,4}		        # yr=year, 2 to 4 digits
	           (?=\s+|$))		            # "lookahead", blanks or end
	    )?					# end year section
	)				# end date section
	(				# start hour section, optional
	    \s+				    # separators: one or more blanks
	    (?P<hr>\d{1,2})		    # hr=hours, 1 or 2 digits
	    [.:]			    # separators: '.' or ':'
	    (?P<mn>\d{2})		    # mn=minutes, 2 digits
	    (				    # start seconds section, optional
	        [.:]			        # separators: '.' o ':'
	        (?P<sc>\d{2})		        # sc=seconds, 2 digits
	    )?				    # end seconds section
	)?				# end time section
	"""
	
	if d == '':
		return (None)
		
	if d == 'today' or d == '0':
		return (time.time())
	elif d == 'yesterday':
		return (time.time() - 86400)
	elif d == 'tomorrow':
		return (time.time() + 86400)
	elif d[0] == '+' or d[0] == '-':
		try:
			nd = int(d)
		except ValueError:
			return (None)
		return (time.time() + 86400*nd)
	else:
		p = re.compile("((?P<dy>\d{1,2})([-/.]|\s+)(?P<mo>\d{1,2}|[a-zA-Z]{3,})"	# giorno e mese
		               "(([-/.]|\s+)(?P<yr>\d{2,4}(?=\s+|$)))?)"			# anno opzionale
		               "(\s+(?P<hr>\d{1,2})[.:](?P<mn>\d{2})([.:](?P<sc>\d{2}))?)?")	# ore, minuti e secondi (opz.)
		m = p.match(d)
		if m:
			giorno,meseboh,anno,ore,min,sec = m.group("dy","mo","yr","hr","mn","sc")

			if not anno:
				anno = time.localtime(time.time())[0]
			if not ore: ore = 0
			if not min: min = 0
			if not sec: sec = 0
			
			try:
				mese = int(meseboh)
			except ValueError:
				try:
					mese = {'jan':1,'feb':2,'mar':3,'apr':4,'may':5,'jun':6,'jul':7,'aug':8,'sep':9,'oct':10,'nov':11,'dec':12}[meseboh[:3]]
				except KeyError:
					return (None)
		else:
			return (None)
		try:
			return (time.mktime(int(anno),int(mese),int(giorno), int(ore),int(min),int(sec), 0,0,-1))
		except ValueError:
			return (None)
		except OverflowError:
			return (None)
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From sumir at nac.net  Sat Oct 16 21:22:41 1999
From: sumir at nac.net (sumir)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:22:41 -0400
Subject: Printing with PythonWin
References: <JURN3.273$VY5.7192@newsfeed.avtel.net>
Message-ID: <380924E1.78605AC4@nac.net>

I just tried your code and I have no problem.  The OK button works for
me.
Running PythonWin 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12)[MSC 32 bit (Intel)]
on win32
Windows 95

Phil Mayes wrote:

> I'm trying to print using PythonWin, and when I do:
>     import win32ui
>     win32ui.CreatePrintDialog(1538).DoModal()
>
> the OK button is inactive, maybe because MFC communicates via a
> PRINTDLG structure for which there seems to be no PythonWin support.
>
> There -is- documentation for a useful-looking PyCPrintInfo object
> which:
>   "Encapsulates an MFC CPrintInfo class, its member CPrintDialog
>   class, and the PRINTDLG structure member of the CPrintDialog."
>
> but I can't find any way to create one, and the source for the
> member functions isn't linked in with the std PythonWin modules.
>
> Have I overlooked something, or am I entering (da-da-da-dum)
> the development zone?
>
> [More background: I'm not using CView, the text to print is in a
> RICHEDIT control.]
>
> TIA,  Phil
>
> Phil Mayes    pmayes AT olivebr DOT com




From z3penguin at z3penguin.com  Thu Oct 14 21:58:23 1999
From: z3penguin at z3penguin.com (Paul)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:58:23 -0400
Subject: Python Compiler
Message-ID: <7u61r3$buh$1@autumn.news.rcn.net>

I'm trying to send a python prog to someone without python.  Is there a
python compiler, so I can send them the .exe?

-Z3Penguin





From skip at mojam.com  Tue Oct  5 11:45:29 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:45:29 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: re TERRIBLE performance -- progress and request for more help
In-Reply-To: <7td1ng$ver$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <000201bf0eef$532e9e80$f92d153f@tim>
	<7td1ng$ver$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <14330.7449.309229.173270@dolphin.mojam.com>

    russell> The following is a simplification of my original re.  (I have
    russell> omitted symbolic tags, etc.)

    russell> (lit1                       # match opening lit1
    russell>    ( \s+                    #   skip white space
    russell>    | (!=(lit2|lit3)[^\s"]+) #   skip string except lit2 or lit3
    russell>    | ("[^"]*")              #   skip any quoted string
    russell>    )*                       # After any number of above
    russell>    (lit2|lit3) [^\sc]+      # match lit2 or lit3 and target
    russell>    [^c]*                    # match anything except char c
    russell>    c                        # match closing c
    russell> )

    russell> Even though (!= ) is a zero-space recognizer, I had thought it
    russell> would be compiled into something fast, since it was excluding
    russell> potential string matches.  The following revision solved the
    russell> problem:

I don't recognize the (!=...) as being valid re syntax.  In reviewing the re 
syntax page I saw:

    (?=...) 
	  Matches if ... matches next, but doesn't consume any of the
	  string. This is called a lookahead assertion. For example,
	  "Isaac (?=Asimov)" will match 'Isaac ' only if it's followed by
	  'Asimov'. 

    (?!...) 
	  Matches if ... doesn't match next. This is a negative lookahead
	  assertion. For example, "Isaac (?!Asimov)" will match 'Isaac '
	  only if it's not followed by 'Asimov'.

Did your message just contain a transcription error or is that the way you
had it coded in your application?  Or did I miss something reading

    http://www.python.org/doc/lib/re-syntax.html




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Thu Oct 14 00:57:20 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 00:57:20 -0400
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
In-Reply-To: <005c01bf15ee$1b131b60$042292cb@akha>
Message-ID: <000101bf1600$98d6faa0$ba2d153f@tim>

[Jon Fernquest]
> ...
> What is the best glue strategy for a scripting language like Python
> to use with Prolog, a language for which there is a lot of outstanding
> code but which is difficult to integrate into systems written with
> imperative languages?

If a system lacks both a sensible command-line interface (stdin -> stdout)
and a C (or Fortran, or Forth, or ...) API, Python (along with Tcl, Perl,
Lua, Guile, and anything else of this ilk) is out of luck.  You can't script
something that refuses to be scripted -- although it's easier in Python than
in anything else <wink>.

> ...
> Isn't a better approach to have a Warren machine built right into the
> scripting language as an extension so that Prolog code could be embedded
> right into scripts? (Note: There are Warren machines written in C++ out
> there in the public domain.)

Indeed -- then you have a scriptable engine.  Go to it!

> I've tried rewriting Prolog code in imperative languages, but that's a
> losing battle..... with it's unification and backtracking capabilities
> Prolog is still the best tool out there for a wide range of problems.
>
> The problem is, *it needs a glue language more than the languages that
> already have a glue language* like C, C++, Java...
>
> What to do?

Wrap your Warren machine C++ engine in a Python extension module, or try to
get the world interested in a brand new PrologScript language <0.9 wink>.

"self-contained-universe"-languages-are-as-productive-as-
    black-holes-ly y'rs  - tim





From danstar at execpc.com  Wed Oct 13 19:19:12 1999
From: danstar at execpc.com (Dan Star)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:19:12 -0500
Subject: JPython?
References: <3804e4c8$0$11278@news.execpc.com> <14341.1357.499750.980655@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <38051371$0$79680@news.execpc.com>

Thanks for the clarification.

--Dan


"Barry A. Warsaw" wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "DS" == Dan Star <danstar at execpc.com> writes:
> 
>     DS> Let me see if I am understanding what JPython is.  Is it a
>     DS> just-in-time compiler that translates python code to java
>     DS> byte-code so that the python code can run in a WEB browser
>     DS> that supports java?
> 
> Sort of.  Yes, part of what it does is translate Python source code to
> Java bytecode, dynamically loading said bytecode into your JVM, and
> executing it.  It isn't limited to a browser, and in fact works well
> with most 1.1 and 1.2 JVMs (modulo your favorite JIT bugs).
> 
>     DS> If so, I would assume this places many restricitions on the
>     DS> Python language elements you can use.
> 
> Actually it doesn't.  I think it's a testament to JimH that JPython
> implements very nearly the same language spec that CPython does.  For
> a mostly up-to-date comparison, please see
> 
>     http://www.jpython.org/docs/differences.html
> 
> Most of these are IMO mostly below the radar of the average Python
> hacker.  The most significant difference is in the libraries.
> Anything that's written in pure Python should work the same in both
> implementations.  CPython of course has a host of built-in modules
> implemented in C.  Some of these have been ported to Java and are
> available in JPython, but not all (contributions welcome!).  Of course
> JPython has access to the vast array of Java libraries, which CPython
> does not.
> 
>     DS> Or is JPython a seperate implementation of Python with its own
>     DS> language set?
> 
> JPython is a completely separate implementation, but it should feel
> very natural to any Python programmer.  It is interesting how this
> second implementation helps to delineate exactly what is part of
> the Python language definition, and what are implementation details.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> -Barry



From senn at maya.com  Mon Oct 25 16:33:25 1999
From: senn at maya.com (Jeff Senn)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 16:33:25 -0400
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: "Adrian Eyre"'s message of "Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:36:06 +0100"
References: <000101bf1ec3$fac1e3d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <wkogdn18q2.fsf@SNIPE.maya.com>

Adrian Eyre <a.eyre at optichrome.com> writes:

> > I don't think Moshe was saying introspection is evil. I'd put it 
> > this way: Python without double-underscore stuff is safe as 
> > Mommy's milk.
> 
> Not quite:
> 
> l = []
> m = []
> l.append(l)
> m.append(m)
> l == m

Good point!

But we can solve *that* problem (and also eliminate the debate about
whether we need GC) by simply making assignments in Python "copy-on-write".

[ tongue planted 0.85-ly in cheek. ]

...though I do wonder how much of (the non-double-underscored) Python
code written would run under that assumption.... (It *would* be a step
further toward a language easier for non-programmers to grasp.)

-- 
-Jas
-----------------------------------------------------------  / / |  / \ / /|
Jeff Senn          412-488-2900 voice    MAYA Design Group  /|/| |-/ o | /-| 
Chief Technologist 412-488-2940 fax   2100 Wharton Street  / | | |/    |/  |
Head of R&D        senn at maya.com    Pittsburgh, PA 15203   Taming Complexity
                                                          http://www.maya.com/




From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Mon Oct 18 11:51:23 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:51:23 +0200
Subject: Read one key press.
Message-ID: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Hi,

if I have the following program:

key = raw_input("press a key: ")
if key == 'a':
    print "you pressed 'a'"
elif key == '^['
    print "you pressed escape"

it doesn't work. Well, it works but it itsn't what I'm looking for. I want
ONE key input. Can this me done easyly?

If not, I think there should come a function or a module readkey() with some
constants like ESCAPE, CONTROL, NUMLOCK, ARROW_UP or TAB.

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From bitz.nospam at bitdance.com  Fri Oct 29 18:12:33 1999
From: bitz.nospam at bitdance.com (R. David Murray)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:12:33 GMT
Subject: dynamic modules, bsdi, and zope
Message-ID: <381b179f.486594382@news.giganews.com>

I wrote:
>I'm trying to install zope under BSDI 4.0 and Python 1.5.2.  At first
>I could not get it to compile.  I got many many error messages about
>undefined references.  The Zope FAQ talked about modifying the

Thomas Wouters helped me out with this by working through the
differences between his BSDI 4.0.1 setup and mine.  He eventually
figured out that I needed to recompile Python with dynamic modules
enabled.  But to do that I needed a little voodo, which he provided:

LDSHARED=       gcc -shared
CCSHARED=       -fpic
LINKFORSHARED=  -Xlinker -export-dynamic

I don't know what these do.  I'm also not sure where they really
belong, but what worked for me was sticking them in 
Modules/Makefile.  Of course, I had to re-insert them on every
recompile, but it did work.  These entries were correctly copied
into <pythonlibpath>/config/Makefile, and then the Zope
compile went to completion, producing a functioning Zope.
Thanks again Thomas!
 
--RDM

PS: Hopefully someone who really understands what's
going on here can fix configure (or whatever) so this
will work out of the box...



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Mon Oct 18 10:47:13 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 16:47:13 +0200
Subject: multi-level break
References: <1271935461-11108476@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <y0jiu44lo9a.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> writes:

> Toby Kelsey wrote:
> 
> > At the moment I am setting and checking flag variables to emulate
> > this, which I find tedious and ugly.  Am I missing a better
> > idiom?
> 
> Some people abuse exceptions for this.

In some cases you could also abuse (or use) "return"...

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From hochberg at psn.net  Thu Oct  7 10:58:33 1999
From: hochberg at psn.net (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 08:58:33 -0600
Subject: List vs. Tuple
References: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <ap3L3.10857$L4.778024@typ12.nn.bcandid.com>

Matthew Hirsch wrote in message <37FCC0C4.DF34352F at cornell.edu>...
>Can someone explain to me why if there is only a string in a list/tuple
>they behave differently when looped through.  For example,
>
>>>> list=['abcd']
>>>> tuple=('abcd')
[SNIP]

The cause of your confusion is that 'tuple' is not a tuple, instead it is
just a parenthesized expression. In order to differentiate tuples from
parenthesized expressions a trailing comma is required in the singleton
tuple case.

('abcd',) # is a tuple while
('abcd') # is not

It might be clearer if you consider the following:

notATuple = (2+3) # is the scalar 5
isATuple = (2+3,) # is the tuple (5,)

Hope that helps clear things up,

-tim





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Oct 31 07:54:37 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 07:54:37 -0500
Subject: hasattr(obj, attr) overloading?
In-Reply-To: <7cOS3.4888$Ec1.78104@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <1270748764-19272878@hypernet.com>

claudius writes:

> Is there a way to overload the hasattr method (by default it
> calls __getattr__ and checks for an exception.  However, my
> __getattr__ can be a heavy hit that I'd rather avoid for hasattr
> calls.)

So you are computing attributes?

What would you have hasattr do - return "True, well False, but 
don't worry about it" <0.5 wink>?

The easiest thing to do is compute the attribute in __getattr__ 
and assign it to self before returning it. That way subsequent 
calls won't even go through __getattr__.
 


- Gordon



From matz at netlab.co.jp  Sun Oct 31 22:04:52 1999
From: matz at netlab.co.jp (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 01 Nov 1999 12:04:52 +0900
Subject: Comparison between Python and "Ruby"
References: <3819BCDA.AC4FD4CA@strs.co.uk>
Message-ID: <87k8o2x67f.fsf@ev.netlab.co.jp>

Hi,

Ian Clarke <I.Clarke at strs.co.uk> writes:

|Problems with Python are:

They are intended to be differences, not problems, OK?

Python is good enough to satisfy many, but some (including me, the
designer of the Ruby language) perfer Ruby.  TMTOWTDI.

						matz.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct  8 08:32:40 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 08:32:40 -0400
Subject: Make Stand Alone W32 Installer Crash with tk
In-Reply-To: <01bf1183$a1637120$0e41c3d1@Cyberus.cyberus.ca>
Message-ID: <1272737292-40451070@hypernet.com>

Gordon Williams wrote,
> 
> I have been trying to get Gordon McMillan's and Thomas Heller's
> win32 installer to work properly to make a stand alone .exe which
> uses tk. 

> During making the stand alone with builder.py the following
> occurs:  Traceback (innermost last):
...
>   File "E:\Program
>   Files\Python\Installer_b_03b\install\create\Builder.py",
> line 105, in buildTCLTKsupport
>     tcllib = os.environ['TCL_LIBRARY']

That's the fallback - tcl/tk supports using environment 
variables for non-standard installations.

> The Builder.log shows:
> <snip>
...
>  found tcl80.dll
>  lib not found: tcl80.dll dependency of  found tk80.dll
>  lib not found: tk80.dll dependency of  found python15.dll
>  lib not found: python15.dll dependency of  found MSVCRT.dll


That says that these dlls are not on your PATH. I'm afraid I 
don't emulate the entire search path for dlls; it's different 
between NT & Win9x. To make matters worse, it appears that 
one of the Win9xen has a case-preserving environment, and 
some of the variables needed to determine where your system 
directory is have changed names between versions.

The first step is to find the dlls, which means adding their 
directory to your PATH.

Next comes finding the tcl and tk libs. If they're not ../lib/tclxx 
and ../lib/tkxx relative to where the tclxx.dll is, then you'll need 
to set TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY in your environment 
(pointing to those directories).

And, to nitpick, it didn't crash - it told you what went wrong 
and it quit. Wait till you get the "non-sliceable object" crash! 
(But hurry up, I've fixed that in the version I'm working on...).

- Gordon



From claudius at catlover.com  Fri Oct 29 18:13:37 1999
From: claudius at catlover.com (claudius at catlover.com)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:13:37 GMT
Subject: jdbc support in native Python?
Message-ID: <l_oS3.3122$Ec1.49148@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>

Anyone know of (or interested in producting) a native JDBC interface in Python?



From garry at research.att.com  Mon Oct 11 14:22:00 1999
From: garry at research.att.com (Garrett G. Hodgson)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:22:00 GMT
Subject: Beginner asks question about Python on Linux
References: <7tkge6$asd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <38022AC8.57B92FBB@research.att.com>

stephen.allison at cenes.co.uk wrote:

> I'm writing some scripts to do some general administation tasks, and
> need to get the output of a shell command into Python easily. 
try this:

from commands import getstatusoutput

stat, output = getstatusoutput( 'ps aux|grep someProcess' )

output will have stdout and stderr from the command,
and stat will have process status

-- 
Garry Hodgson			"Hey, mister, can ya tell me,
garry at sage.att.com		where a man might find a bed?"
Software Innovation Services	He just grinned and shook my hand,
AT&T Labs			"No", was all he said.



From reic0024 at ub.d.umn.edu  Mon Oct 25 09:24:12 1999
From: reic0024 at ub.d.umn.edu (Aaron J Reichow)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:24:12 -0500
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
In-Reply-To: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com>
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SO4.4.02.9910250821480.4679-100000@ub.d.umn.edu>

> Has anybody worked on porting the Python interpreter to these
> handhelds?  

I recall reading on the uClinux mailing list that a company had been
working on a bytecode interpreter for Python.  No URL or anything, but if
want to dig through the archives, you could find the email address.

There's also Deeply Embeeded Python, which has already been skimmed down
quite a bit, but perhaps too much for the Pilot. <shrug>

Aaron




From kelley at bioreason.com  Tue Oct 19 17:52:38 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:52:38 -0600
Subject: Language question
Message-ID: <380CE825.7676C6F3@bioreason.com>

This question actually comes up due to accident (bug?)  Here is the
scenario

class foo:
      """insert foo here"""

def bar(foo):
      """this should really be class bar(foo):  Insert bar here"""

As far as python is concerned, this is prefectly legal except that the
user of bar will probably get None for their troubles.  That is foobar =
bar() is the same thing as foobar = None.

My question is, is there any real reason to allow this?  I.e. something
cool and clever that I am not seeing?  Can I exploit this feature for
nefarious deeds?  Inquiring minds want to know.


--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From michelorengo at netscape.com  Tue Oct 12 13:10:20 1999
From: michelorengo at netscape.com (Michel Orengo)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:10:20 GMT
Subject: French pun on Python! :-)
References: <oqaeqqxkkw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <8E416950BPaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148>
Message-ID: <38036B92.EA69F110@netscape.com>


Fred Pacquier wrote:

> pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (Fran?ois Pinard) said :
>
> >Hi, people.
> >While introducing Python to a few friends, I noticed they tend to
> >naturally use `je Pythonne', `nous Pythonnons', etc. as an easy pun on
> >the word Python. I think that English people pronounce `pie-ton', while
> >French people say `pea-to[n]' (said faster, with the `n' silent).  This
> >has the same sounds as for the word `piton'.  A `piton' is a familiar
> >word to design any mechanical device on which someone pushes, like an
> >electrical button, or often, one of the keys of a computer keyboard.
> >So, `je pitonne', `nous pitonnons', etc. already became a familiar way
> >to express any soft computer hacking. I thought this might amuse some of
> >you.
>
> At least for this one it does :-)
> Note that this is idiomatic of "canadian" French -- on this side of the
> pond uses of 'piton' tend to me more restrictive (apart from slang
> variants). A 'piton' is essentially one of two things : either a very
> sharp, pointy moutain summit (like a peak), or the metal pikes that
> climbers drive into rock or ice to fasten their security ropes (the verb
> form, 'pitonner', explicitely refers to this latter activity). Either
> way, I find this neologism ('to python') has interesting implications for
> the language and its users (climbing higher, being secure, driving nails
> home, etc... :-))
>
> --
> YAFAP : http://www.multimania.com/fredp/

The paradise island for Python programmers is, then, St lucia in the
Caribbeans where "Gros Piton" and "Petit Piton" are the symbols of the
island.
Wanna do offshore programming? ;-)

Michel




From alrice at swcp.com  Sun Oct 10 01:37:17 1999
From: alrice at swcp.com (Alex Rice)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 23:37:17 -0600
Subject: JPython, getting started Q.
References: <37FFD3D9.865046F8@swcp.com>
Message-ID: <3800260D.D938AE9E@swcp.com>

Still don't know why createImage(x,y) doesn't work in the init() method. But it
works fine when I call it elsewhere, like in update(). Strang!

Here is the code I came up with for a double buffered applet. Maybe this would
be good to include in the demo applets that come with JPython?



#!/usr/bin/env jpython

from java import applet, awt, lang

class DoubleBufferedApplet(applet.Applet, lang.Runnable):

    """ This class illustrates the use of JPython to create a
    double-buffered (no flicker) Java Applet. Note that from Python's
    point of view, DoubleBufferedApplet uses multiple inheritance, but
    from Java's point of view, it is just single inheritance, since
    Runnable is actually an Interface.
    """
    
    def init(self):
        applet.Applet.init(self)
        self.tip = '"JPython is quite nice, really!" said the Wumpus.'
        self.bgColor=awt.Color.black
        self.fgColor=awt.Color.cyan
        self.ypos = 0
        self.thread = None
        self.imageBuffer = None
        self.requestFocus()
        self.start()

    def run(self):
        while(1):
            self.ypos=self.ypos + 1
            if(self.ypos > self.getBounds().height-12):
               self.ypos = 0
            self.repaint()
            try:
                lang.Thread.sleep(50)
            except:
                pass

    def start(self):
        if not self.thread:
            self.thread = lang.Thread(self)
            self.thread.start()

    def stop(self):
        if self.thread:
            self.thread.stop()
            self.thread = None
            
    def paint(self, g):
        r = self.getBounds()
        g.setColor(self.bgColor);
	g.fillRect(0, 0, r.width, r.height);
        g.setColor(self.fgColor);
        g.drawString(self.tip, 20, self.ypos)

    def update(self, g):
        r = self.getBounds()
        if((not self.imageBuffer) or \
           (self.imageBuffer.getWidth(self) != r.width) or \
           (self.imageBuffer.getHeight(self) != r.height)):
            self.imageBuffer = self.createImage(r.width, r.height)
        self.paint(self.imageBuffer.getGraphics())
        g.drawImage(self.imageBuffer, 0, 0, self)
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    import pawt
    pawt.test(DoubleBufferedApplet(), size=(500, 120))



From jam at quark.emich.edu  Wed Oct  6 12:03:22 1999
From: jam at quark.emich.edu (Jeff)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:03:22 -0400
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991006021336.B28582@quark.emich.edu> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <19991006120322.A29048@quark.emich.edu>

On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 09:28:43AM +0000, Benjamin Schollnick wrote:
> 
> It's kinda a little pointless to run a time client and then have to
> manually set the time, you sort of loose the "millisecond" timing >weak
> grin<.
> 

ok, ok, you caught me being utterly sarcastic again ;)

my suggestion would be to implement the server in python, but leave the
client side to existing code, and then you won't have to worry about how to
do it.

> I am prepared to deal with this, I can have the client use the Sys module
> and make a system shell call to DATE & TIME, which will work under both
> OS/2 & Windows.
> 

> It's annoying, but I can work around it for said platforms.  *nix, and
> everything else are out of luck, since I don't know how to set their 
> clock, but........ That's what modifying the source if for.
> 

ack! I hope yer joking. ;)

I would advise *against* this type of approach to the problem, *especially*
when talking about a generic client like this.

> Honestly though, I think it's a semi long term gap that probably should be
> filled.  At least on a platform by platform basis.  After all STRPTIME
> isn't supported everywhere, why should TIME or DATE (or whatever they get
> called).
> 
> 			- Benjamin
> 

in my opinion facilities to set the date and time in a cross platform manner
would be a non-trivial excercise and a security violation of the machine. I
wouldn't want the average university student to walk up to a win32 machine
with pythonwin installed and be able to muck about with the date and time of
a machine with the simplicity of a function call-- at the least, a 'trick'
ought to be required (like using 'os.system' or a custom C extension) just
to keep things from getting out of hand. 

client software that uses the NTP protocol to set the date and time have
already been written for win32 and various other platforms, and a rewrite of
said clients in python would have limited value for the reasons we have been
discussing for the last several days-- it's a tricky topic.

the server side, on the other hand, is clean and elegant in python, and
ought to perform quite well, especially if replaced with something like
medusa as a server framework. 

in terms of filling a gap by implementing some sort of 'setclock' function
in the core python library, rest assured that guido and the other
maintainers have put many many many hours into these issues (python wasn't
born yesterday), and if there was a clean way to do it, they probably would
have done it by now.

I don't want to discourage your work-- if you can get something hacked up
that fills your requirements, by all means go for it.. but once things start
to get sticky after hacking away on something for a while, it sometimes
helps to step away from the current design and try something else--
including existing software.

have you made any other changes to the server code since you posted it?
would you be willing to repost or put it up on a web page someplace so
everyone can get the benefit of your experience?

regards,
J
-- 
|| visit gfd <http://quark.newimage.com/> 
|| psa member #293 <http://www.python.org/> 
|| New Image Systems & Services, Inc. <http://www.newimage.com/>



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct 10 19:54:52 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 19:54:52 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <38019E58.7D6E56BC@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <000101bf137a$d88e3740$7fa2143f@tim>

[Martijn Faassen]
> Everybody, even if they live in .cx, wherever this may be, that uses
> Python knows Dutch. It's a cosmic conspiracy! :)

[Greg Ewing]
> Yeeks! This is quite worrying. If anyone ever finds out that
> I don't, in fact, know Dutch, I may be kicked out of the
> Python community! Better sign up for a crash course... or
> get working on a Dutch-English translator in Python...

No need, Greg -- Martijn is so keen to believe this delusion, that you need
only supply him a plausible excuse to classify you as a native Dutch
speaker.  Even the timbot managed this sleight-of-tongue, and it doesn't
speak *any* language ...

veel-geluk-ly y'rs  - tim





From phd at phd.russ.ru  Fri Oct 22 07:40:33 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 11:40:33 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Dictionary and List
In-Reply-To: <7upflt$m0n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221139400.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 sorot at my-deja.com wrote:
> for i in range(0,len(x)):
>    my_dict['a'] = x[i]
>    my_list.append(my_dict)
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

   You are appending my_dict again and again, without resetting its
content.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct  6 01:03:01 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 01:03:01 -0400
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
In-Reply-To: <y0jyadh345q.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <000401bf0fb8$1050e7c0$cf2d153f@tim>

[Tim]
>      raise ValueError("dict(seq1, seq2): seq2 must be at least "
>                       "as long as seq1")

[Magnus L. Hetland]
> Why?

Because it's probably an error when it occurs.

> Why not pad with None?

Because it's probably an error when it occurs.

None-padding was a mistake for "map", and there's no reason to believe it's
a better idea here.  If your *intent* is to fill up the tail with None,
that's easy to spell explicitly.

> I think it would be worse if len(seq2)>len(seq1) - because you
> couldn't pad the keys with Nones...

None is a valid key.  If you're going to adopt half a bad idea, go all the
way <0.5 wink>.

else-the-spurned-orphan-will-murder-us-in-our-sleep-ly y'rs  - tim





From mehta at mama.indstate.edu  Wed Oct 20 17:08:37 1999
From: mehta at mama.indstate.edu (mehta at mama.indstate.edu)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 21:08:37 GMT
Subject: perl re to regex for emacs
References: <7uj9lf$b56$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7ulb09$os3$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I did work out perl style re.  Now is there a utility which will
convert this re to emacs style re?


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu  Mon Oct  4 19:39:29 1999
From: mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu (Michael Vanier)
Date: 04 Oct 1999 16:39:29 -0700
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
Message-ID: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>

Here's a quote from Guido in a recent interview
(http://207.178.22.52/articles/conversations/005.html):

> The tools will give them a lot of hand holding, a lot of insight into the
> existing code and will help them get an idea of what the consequences of
> changes would be. That is, you can say, ``Okay, now I have this code and
> I think I want to make this change. You tell me where this variable is
> used elsewhere in the program--what the dependencies are, what code is
> using this function. Maybe this function isn't being used at all!'' Just
> like in our DNA, there are large pieces of software containing unused
> code. Nobody noticed it was no longer needed, so nobody bothered to take
> it out.

With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs for
a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)

No offense meant, really.  I was just a little surprised.

Mike

--------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Vanier	mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.



From thantos at chancel.org  Sat Oct 30 09:17:17 1999
From: thantos at chancel.org (Alexander Williams)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 13:17:17 GMT
Subject: rstrip
References: <381A7208.D53BB0E0@wjk.mv.com>
Message-ID: <slrn81ls29.qpo.thantos@chancel.org>

On Sat, 30 Oct 1999 00:20:25 -0400, William King <wjk at wjk.mv.com> wrote:
>#used rstrip(x) to eliminate leading tabs (whitespace)

Your problem is conceptual; rstrip() will /only/ strip whitespace rto
the /right/ of the text.  Thus, by definition, it will never strip
leading text.  QED.

-- 
Alexander Williams (thantos at gw.total-web.net)
"In the end ... Oblivion Always Wins."



From robin at alldunn.com  Thu Oct 28 20:48:04 1999
From: robin at alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 17:48:04 -0700
Subject: 1.5 Quick Reference?
References: <3818CDDE.CF68E8BD@nortelnetworks.com>
Message-ID: <M96S3.633$Iv2.19792068@news.randori.com>

>
> I looked about http://www.python.org/ a bit, and also scouted around on
> my O'Reilly "Programming Python" CD, but couldn't find a Quick Ref
> beyond 1.3.  I'm using 1.5; is there such an animal?
>
> Thanx in advance!
>


It's at http://starship.python.net/quick-ref1_52.html


--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com
http://AllDunn.com/robin/
http://AllDunn.com/wxPython/  Check it out!






From cgw at fnal.gov  Thu Oct 21 07:45:46 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 13:45:46 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
In-Reply-To: <380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com>
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com>
	<14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
	<380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <14350.64746.924876.255108@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

M.-A. Lemburg writes:
 > 
 > What does the output of ldd look like for glibc and libc on other
 > platforms (e.g. Redhat, *BSD, etc.) ? On SuSE 6.2 Linux I get:
 > 
 >         libX11.so.6 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40014000)
 >         libdl.so.1 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libdl.so.1 (0x400b5000)
 >         libm.so.5 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libm.so.5 (0x400b8000)
 >         libc.so.5 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libc.so.5 (0x400c1000)
 > 
 > for a program linked against libc5 and
 > 
 >         libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40021000)
 >         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
 > 
 > for one linked against libc6 (glibc). 

RedHat 6.0 looks exactly the same (except the path prefixes on the
right differ), 

Solaris output looks is also very similar:
        libX11.so.4 =>   /usr/lib/libX11.so.4
        libsocket.so.1 =>        /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1
        libnsl.so.1 =>   /usr/lib/libnsl.so.1
        libdl.so.1 =>    /usr/lib/libdl.so.1
        libc.so.1 =>     /usr/lib/libc.so.1
        libXext.so.0 =>  /usr/openwin/lib/libXext.so.0
        libmp.so.2 =>    /usr/lib/libmp.so.2

Don't have access to BSD at the moment, and the Irix box I tried seems 
to not have an `ldd' command. :-(   There's probably some Irix
equivalent, or maybe just a configuration problem on the machine I
tried, but I don't have time to go digging around right now.

 > Note that I can't deduce the glibc version from the above output.

Why not? You can clearly tell if you're getting libc.so.5 or
libc.so.6.  Do you need more information than that?



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Sun Oct 17 09:02:18 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 23:02:18 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim> <3801A8C9.37E0FC62@compaq.com> <38014B6D.46EF05E9@maxtal.com.au> <14338.4451.892934.802157@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <38039138.43AF8EB3@maxtal.com.au> <14339.41837.609410.864634@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <5lr9j056ud.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3809C8DA.69998A23@maxtal.com.au>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Regarding the use of 'global' in combination with nested scopes:
> I have always been in favor or *not* providing a way to assign to
> variables at the intermediate levels.  That is, you can *use*
> variables from intermediate levels, but you can't *set* them.  The
> 'global' statement will set the variable at the module-global level.

	Actually, I'd be in favour of getting rid of 'global'
altogether now. It is no longer necessary, now python
has classes ...

> Motivation: I agree that it is useful to reference variables in the
> surrounding scope.  But if you start modifying them, you're abusing
> the nested scope mechanism to hold mutable state; it's much clearer
> to define a class for this purpose.
> 
> In particular, I think that allowing
> 
>         def f():
>                 sum = 0
>                 def accumulate(x):
>                         global sum
>                         sum = sum+x
>                 ...code using accumulate()...
>                 return sum
> 
> tends to create obfuscated code.

	I would not dispute this.  I think the
problem when doing this to a module, however,
is WORSE because function stack frames are
transient, whereas a module lives forever.

	The resolution to the module level
has another problem in Viper: there is no single module level.
In particular, a normal module is NOT the bottom level,
the bottom level is actually 'builtins'. Module
environments get chained together like function
stack frames, so the lookup works. [There is a possibl
extension to nested modules, which I have resisted 
play with yet :-]

	The problem is that there is no way to detect, 
in a chain of linked environments, which one is the 'module'
level: they're ALL represented by a common abstraction.

	[Of course, each environment knows it
has a particular type, and so 'function environments'
know to check for the list of globals when doing
an assignment: they just delegate to the parent
environment .. which is why my implementation
requires multiple global statements if you want to
actually reach module level from a deeply nested
function definition]

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From aahz at netcom.com  Wed Oct 13 21:09:50 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 01:09:50 GMT
Subject: recursive copy in a directory tree?
References: <7u39g2$ki5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7u3agu$957@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>

In article <7u39g2$ki5$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, yinger  <ayinger1 at my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>  I am looking for a python util that *recursively* copies files from a
>source directory tree to a target with wildcard syntax.

os.path.walk() should get you mostly there.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From tre17 at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Oct 14 18:26:10 1999
From: tre17 at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Timothy R Evans)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 11:26:10 +1300
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news>
Message-ID: <c759055efzx.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

muniff at yahoo.com (Ahmad Munif) writes:

> i think Tkinter is good, but lack of widgets (i need table widget,notebook 
> widget, etc).
> PyGtk and PyQt have complete widgets, but poor of documentation.
> 
> i am really confused. what should i do now , which one the best to build 
> my database application ?

The pygtk module is reasonably easy to use.  You can work out a lot
from reading C programs, the C documentation, the gtk module source
and some python examples.  The mapping from the C functions to python
methods is straightforward.

Having never used Qt I'm not really qualified to recommend GTK over
Qt, but I'll do it anyway: GTK is really good, use it!

Seriously, maybe you should have a look at both of them and get back
to us on which one you think is better.

--
Tim Evans





From shdr at uswest.net  Sun Oct 31 23:01:55 1999
From: shdr at uswest.net (shdr)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 21:01:55 -0700
Subject: Audio Mixer for Win32
Message-ID: <rj8T3.2313$Pf3.129511@news.uswest.net>

Hi, I've just started trying to figure out all of the win32api calls in
python but no I haven't been able to find any references to changing the
audio mixer settings. All I want to be able to do is have a python script
that changes the volume levels under Windows NT. On a similar note, I'd like
to be able to record off of line-in with python. If anyone has any
experience or expertise to share with me I would be very greatful...

thanks,
alex..
grenaria at asu.edu






From jfarrell at mincom.com  Wed Oct 13 19:31:43 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:31:43 +1000
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org>
Message-ID: <3805165F.6C00B49@mincom.com>

Jim Bruer wrote:
> I've made it through the first 3 chapters of, Learning Python and
> various online tutorials. With some excitement I'm trying to write my
> FIRST program which will read a text file and comma delimit it, so it
> can be read into a database table. I can read and write the file (line
> by line) ok, but:
> 
> How do you insert a delimiter into a string at a given position?
> 
> Tried "f.insert(i,x)" then realized this is for mutable sequences.This
> is so stupid I'm embarrassed to ask.

Jim, once you've got the values to be separated into an array, you
can use string.join to put commas between them. Does that help?

--- csv.py ---
import string

def csv(filename):
    lines = open(filename).readlines()
    for line in lines:
        fields = string.split(line)
        print string.join(fields, ',')

csv('csv.py')
------

John



From darcy at vex.net  Thu Oct 28 08:07:11 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 12:07:11 GMT
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia> <381599b1.89775720@news.oh.verio.com> <38162C4F.EB030755@mindspring.com> <7v8tdo$al7$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7v9e9f$f53$1@hub.org>

bgkloss at my-deja.com wrote:

>> > Nope, no flames.   I have to agree with you - it kills me that I
> can't find a
>> > place to run Python CGI.
>>
>> Er, why not just use http://www.pair.com/ ?  Their hosting quality is
>> quite good, and they DO support Python.
>>
>> Unfortunately no Zope yet, though.  :(
> Also try Hurricane Electric - http://www.he.com - they don't install
> python by default, but you have a shell account and can install it if
> you like.  Haven't tried Zope yet, I'm afraid

Vex.Net (http://www.vex.net/) offers shell access and has Python, PyApache
and Zope installed.  I haven't had a chance to work with Zope myself but
if you are familiar with it I am sure we can get it configured for you.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From zawrotny at sb.fsu.edu  Tue Oct 19 12:19:15 1999
From: zawrotny at sb.fsu.edu (Michael Zawrotny)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:19:15 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu>

One way out of that trap (at least with the other p-lang's package
for options is to allow an optional integer argument whose
default is one for the -v flag.


Mike

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:50:57 -0400 (EDT), "Fred L. Drake, Jr."
<fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
>Les Schaffer writes:
> > ahhh, okay. hadnt thought about that one. i usually dont write stuff
> > that needs that kinda thing. on the other hand, what would be wrong
> > with coding -v3 (verbose level 3)? seems easier to me somehow...
>
>Les,
>  There's certainly nothing wrong with that, except that simply -v for 
>verbose becomes impossible.  Using yet another option seems like
>overkill from a UI perspective (too many options to explain).





From fdrake at acm.org  Wed Oct 20 09:17:02 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:17:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
In-Reply-To: <7uifot$nsi$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu>
	<14348.40578.648039.972783@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<7uifot$nsi$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <14349.49358.407167.675972@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Aahz Maruch writes:
 > Depends whether you allow "-v 1" or "-v1".

Aahz,
  Since the current behavior of getopt is to allow both, I'd be
inclined to keep it that way.  There are lots of applications that
already allow both (Python & otherwise; I don't think it's original
behavior with getopt), I'm inclined to allow both rather than just
one, and wouldn't want optional arguments to screw that up.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 28 21:38:09 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:38:09 -0400
Subject: Checking file attributes
In-Reply-To: <7vadn3$f9j$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <1270962156-6437688@hypernet.com>

mdperry_26 at my-deja.com writes:

> Is there an easy way in python to return the file attributes of a
> file in NT(i.e. hidden, system, archive, etc.).  I have been
> poking around the os.stat module and can return some file
> information but it doesn't look like you can derive any
> information about the attribute bits.  Any suggestions?

You want win32file.GetFileAttributes() which is part of Mark 
Hammond's Win32 extensions. Follow the Windows link from 
python.org's main page.
 


- Gordon



From ratman at nmt.edu  Mon Oct 18 18:11:23 1999
From: ratman at nmt.edu (Jason Trowbridge)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:11:23 -0600
Subject: Adding info to Python Buglist
References: <3808C151.1D877904@nmt.edu> <38092227.A4E0B20A@nmt.edu> <87ogdyn3e6.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <380B9B0B.F7A7DD21@nmt.edu>

Thanks for pointing me to the newer RFC.  Everyone *please* disregard
the previous patch.  I jumped the gun a bit.

I've rewritten my code to fit according to RFC 2045.  I also tightened
the code a bit & changed a few things.  I've included the new patch with
this file.  I'm going to submit the patch to the buglist.  Please
comment on it.

Here's how to apply the patch in this message:
 1) Go into your Python source directory & go into the Modules/
directory.
 2) Make sure you have an unmodified Python 1.5.2 binascii.c file.
    (Hint: "Jason Trowbridge" is not in the file ;)
 3) Type: patch -N binascii.c binascii.patch
 4) Recompile.


Current behavior of the modified binascii.c:
  --Invalid characters are ignored, instead of possibly
	being remapped to a valid base64 character
  --Invalid pad sequences generate binascii.Error
	exception (args = 'Invalid pad sequence')
  --The pad character indicates an end of encoded input.

>From my previous patch:
  --Fixed my find_valid() function
  --Renamed find_valid() to binascii_find_valid() to prevent
	symbol conflicts (oops)
  --Valid pad sequence indicates end of encoded input instead
	of being treated like a truncated quad

	Jason Trowbridge
	ratman at nmt.edu

Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> 
> Jason Trowbridge <ratman at nmt.edu> writes:
> 
> > *The RFC I'm talking about is RFC 1521.
> 
> Please note that rfc1521 has been obsoleted by rfc2045 *years* ago.
> Base64 encoding is described in section 6.8.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure if ignoring invalid pad sequences is a good idea.
> rfc2045 explicitly says that characters out of the base64 alphabet are
> to be ignored.  However, illegal padding is not mentioned.
> 
> I think it makes sense to raise an exception in that case.
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From sean.cason at prodigy.net  Sat Oct  2 08:40:13 1999
From: sean.cason at prodigy.net (Sean)
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 08:40:13 -0400
Subject: ping script
Message-ID: <7t699k$3p1m$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>

I am a newbie to python. Any ideas on how to create a script to ping a class
c block and maybe resolve the names to DNS.

                    Thanks





From tim_one at email.msn.com  Tue Oct 19 21:46:59 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:46:59 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>
Message-ID: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim>

[David Ascher]
> I don't buy many books either, but Jeffrey Friedl's book ["Mastering
> Regular Expressions"] is IMO one of the few that I own that I think
> are worth the price,

You and/or Fran?ois may want to invest in a library card <wink>.

> even though its Python knowledge is obsolete and I use regexps as
> sparingly as I possibly can.

Use them for everything!  Then I won't have to field so many regexp
questions <0.9 wink>.

> If nothing else, it is proof that the human mind will delve obsessively
> into arcane knowledge for no other reason than because it can.

That it is.  Is that sufficient basis for buying a book?  I've been toying
for two decades with writing a lengthy but edifying treatise revealing the
most surprising floating-point numbers I have been privileged to know (if
you thought 0.1 was a mystery wrapped in an enigima, you haven't yet lived),
but have thus far held back for fear of starving to death.  Your response
gives me fresh hope!

obsession-is-not-its-own-reward-ly y'rs  - tim





From rmeegan at murl.com  Tue Oct  5 15:24:40 1999
From: rmeegan at murl.com (Robert Meegan)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 14:24:40 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Python Mind Reading
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910051418200.386-100000@robert.polytopic.com>

It's no longer *just* Guido's time machine that makes Python so
powerful ...

I was having a conversation at lunch today with one of my distinguished
colleagues regarding the possibility of writing a diff function in Python.
Upon returning to my desk, I find an entire thread on the topic neatly
laid out.

With support like that, why would anyone want to code in anything else?

Your most unworthy servant,

--- Robert


Robert Meegan

Murl.com - 
Because it's not just your data, it's your life.




From bsb at baal.infodrom.north.de  Wed Oct  6 10:45:21 1999
From: bsb at baal.infodrom.north.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 16:45:21 +0200
Subject: Funny Names (was Re: Just like in our DNA...)
In-Reply-To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard's message of "06 Oct 1999
 09:45:55 -0400"
References: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim> <oq7ll0k3fw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <87puys35vi.fsf_-_@baal.winnegan.north.de>

Hi,

I really don't want to take part in that silly DNA thread, hence the
change in subject.

Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

[...]

> You would not believe the number of times I did have to type this stupid
> `robotussin' program name over the years, having not much clue from time
> to time how I should exactly spell it.  The usual English dictionaries
> and textbooks I consult would not give a clue.

Don't cry too much, if you don't like to type that word there alway is
`alias' or if that's not available write a simple wrapper script.

Maybe there are  associations in french I don't know of? In german
"Tussi" is a quite despective(? despektierlich in german) slang word
for "young woman". I'd always take identifiers from a foreign language 
with a grain of salt.

> In an international community of free software developers, we try to use
> a reasonable level of English, and it is a real pleasure that people are
> impeccable, on the average.  And if it gets difficult, there is no problem
> if the difficulty brings with it some bits of culture, literature, movies,
> theatre; this is all good, nice, and very welcome.  But when the difficulty
> gets reduced to a local-centric commercial trademark for some insignificant
> drug, by all the hell tell me, which kind of culture is that...

Take it easy Fran?ois, you're living in an - at least partially -
english speaking country :) so your odds at grok-ing those jokes stand
a lot better than mine.

As a non-native english speaker I always find it amusing to
learn from associations like this about the culture of the creator.
Aren't the US the marketing hype country per se? (No pun intended).

CU
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at infodrom.north.de - http://www,north.de/~bsb/

===============> http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/ <===============



From holland at voicenet.com  Sun Oct 31 20:08:25 1999
From: holland at voicenet.com (holland at voicenet.com)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 20:08:25 -0500
Subject: newbie has ftp question
Message-ID: <MK5T3.1323$no.13631@news3.voicenet.com>

When using ftplib.py on a linux box I am unable to establish a connection
with the host after establishing a connection with ppp dial-up.

The error I get is:
...
...
ftplib.py
line 117 in connect
self.sock.connect(self.host,self.port)
socket error: host not found

When I try the same code on a windows box it works fine.
Any help would be appreciated.

JIm










From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Thu Oct 14 15:37:27 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:37:27 +0200
Subject: delimiting text file??
In-Reply-To: <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>
References: <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Aahz Maruch:
> In article <3804F889.30739C22 at bruer.org>, Jim Bruer  <jim at bruer.org> wrote:
> >
> >I've made it through the first 3 chapters of, Learning Python and
> >various online tutorials. With some excitement I'm trying to write my
> >FIRST program which will read a text file and comma delimit it, so it
> >can be read into a database table. I can read and write the file (line
> >by line) ok, but:
> >
> >How do you insert a delimiter into a string at a given position?
> >
> >Tried "f.insert(i,x)" then realized this is for mutable sequences.This
> >is so stupid I'm embarrassed to ask.
> 
> delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
> 
> That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
> you'll come across better ways.

Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has (already finished
Learning python, and I'm waiting for Programming TkInter with Python now),
but I don't know a better way than this?

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 08:19:09 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:19:09 -0400
Subject: eff-bot Python book ... revisited
In-Reply-To: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>
References: <7va9hf$ngi$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>
Message-ID: <19991029081909.B106968704@vislab.epa.gov>

Scott Barron:
 |
 |I must say this is an excellent book for the price. 

Sounds interesting.  So I thought I'd look into it...

 |I had a bit of trouble connecting to the registration server and it took
 |me about 45 minutes before I could actually open the book.  Of course, I
 |dislike the fact that I can only open the file on one machine

The eMatter pages indicate that you get a Word [uggh] or PDF file as a
download after contacting the server.  Couldn't this be pulled across to
the preferred OS?

Or is this really an electronic-only book (proprietary format or viewing
server).  Hope not.  Won't jump onto the RocketBook/eBook bandwagon for the
same reason.

-- 
Randall Hopper
aa8vb at yahoo.com



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 17 07:44:16 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 13:44:16 +0200
Subject: Shelve-problems
References: <3808AFDA.AFC49560@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <002b01bf1894$f222b310$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Thomas Weholt <thomas at bibsyst.no> wrote:
> I try to do something like :
> 
> >>>import shelve
> >>>db = shelve.open('2')
> >>> db['1'] = 'test'
> 
> And quit python, restart it and this happens when I try to read the data
> back in :
> 
> >>> import shelve
> >>> db = shelve.open('2')
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 152, in open
>     return DbfilenameShelf(filename, flag)
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/shelve.py", line 142, in __init__
>     Shelf.__init__(self, anydbm.open(filename, flag))
>   File "/usr/lib/python1.5/anydbm.py", line 83, in open
>     raise error, "db type could not be determined"
> anydbm.error: db type could not be determined
> >>> 
> 
> Why?!

not sure -- two possible causes comes to mind:

1) you didn't close the database.  I have a vague
memory that one of the database drivers won't
properly flush changes to the file if you don't
(cannot remember which one, though).

2) you don't have any database handlers on your
machine, so Python falls back to the "dumbdbm"
driver.  and while "anydbm" can fall back on the
"dumbdbm" module when creating a database, it
fails to recognize it when you reopen it...

(guess someone should fix "whichdb"...)

one way around this is to use shelve with an
explicit database, like this:

import shelve
import gdbm

def gdbm_shelve(filename, flag="c"):
    return shelve.Shelf(gdbm.open(filename, flag))

db = gdbm_shelve("dbfile")

(taken from the eff-bot library guide, see below).

</F>

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




From aahz at netcom.com  Mon Oct 11 15:29:43 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 19:29:43 GMT
Subject: using string.splitfields
References: <3801483c.10251569@news.eunet.no>
Message-ID: <7ttdr7$l4i@dfw-ixnews16.ix.netcom.com>

In article <3801483c.10251569 at news.eunet.no>,
Thomas Weholt <u970130 at studbo.hit.no> wrote:
>
>Just wondering how I could use more field-separators when I use the
>string.splitfield method.

Use re.split()
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From srenner at lycosmail.com  Wed Oct  6 14:39:44 1999
From: srenner at lycosmail.com (srenner at lycosmail.com)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 18:39:44 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <000e01bf0fbd$508b3840$cf2d153f@tim> <oq7ll0k3fw.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <7tg51e$6vv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: ANOTHER EXCERPT

Honey, when we get to the party, I want you to . . . No, he's just from
Quebec -- he's very touchy. No, I'm just asking you to be careful what
you say, he's very easily offended. Just -- no humor, ok? Just for
tonight? He thinks people are laughing at his expense . . . No, that's
just it, he thinks he does know English. What? That's a low blow. This
has nothing to do with your mother. . .

sr


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aahz at netcom.com  Fri Oct  1 11:48:54 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 15:48:54 GMT
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
References: <000701bf0bb9$def95240$322d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7t2l56$7uq@dfw-ixnews16.ix.netcom.com>

In article <000701bf0bb9$def95240$322d153f at tim>,
Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
>
>Error detection and recovery is a Real Pain even with a Real Parser; a
>mechanical trick like "report rightmost progress" isn't going to turn
>the infinitely feebler regexp gimmick into a solution.

Okay, okay, you've mostly convinced me.  Now, here's the hard part: got
any recommendations for a parsing book similar to the O'Reilly Regex
book?  (By "similar", I mean a good combined tutorial/reference that's
aimed at the ignorant but generally well-educated techie.  Two or three
books that combine to that goal would be fine.)
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From evan at tokenexchange.com  Wed Oct  6 15:41:16 1999
From: evan at tokenexchange.com (Evan Simpson)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:41:16 -0500
Subject: Requiring arguments to be passed as keyword arguments
References: <xj0zoxyjqwt.fsf@cyclone.harvard.edu> <8E56B031Cduncanrcpcouk@news.rmplc.co.uk>
Message-ID: <aDNK3.28$Ae3.64125@news-dal.corridex.com>

Less of a kludge, but longer and slower:

def _fkw_f(a, b, kw1, kw2=3):
  # kw1 and kw2 are forced-keyword.
  print a, b, kw1, kw2

def f(a, b=1, **kw):
  # Fixed-arg default values must live here
  return apply(_fkw_f, (a, b,), kw)

>>> f('a')
...TypeError: not enough arguments; expected 3, got 2
>>> f('a', 'b', 'kw1')
...TypeError: too many arguments; expected 2, got 3
>>> f('a', 'b', kw1='kw1')
a b kw1 3
>>> f('a', 'b', kw1='kw1', kw2='kw2')
a b kw1 kw2
>>> f('a', 'b', kw1='kw1', zoob=7)
...TypeError: unexpected keyword argument: zoob

As for Wish #2, how about

def f([args] ; [initialized locals]): [suite]

as in:

def f(a, b=2, **kws;
         split, join, x=mm.getx()):
  pass
  # split, join, and x are initialized locals.
  # split and join are shorthand for 'split=split' and 'join=join'
  # initializing values are evaluated the same way as default values.

Basically, this would act on local variables like

def f(a, b=2, split=split, join=join, x=mm.getx(), **kws): pass

but look like this to callers:

def f(a, b=2, **kws): pass

Duncan Booth <duncan at rcp.co.uk> wrote ...
> mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu (Michael Haggerty) wrote...
>
> >Sometimes I would like to write functions with arguments that are
> >REQUIRED to be passed as keyword arguments rather than positional
> >arguments.  For example, for the following function I might want the
> >second parameter to be passed as a keyword parameter:
> >
> >    f(1, 2) # Exception
> >    f(1, variation=2) # OK
> >
>
> This is a kludge, but you can avoid accidental positional arguments if you
> stick in a tuple argument:
> >>> def f(x, (donotuse,)=(None,), variation=57):
> Wish list #1: A non-kludge way of doing this.
> Wish list #2: A way to specify a default argument that cannot be changed
> when called.
>





From mikael at isy.liu.se  Wed Oct  6 14:59:30 1999
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 20:59:30 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <37FB97B4.F3A1660@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 06-Oct-99 Tom Loredo wrote:
 >  code into proteins.  However, according to this talk, it is now
 >  believed that at least some of this DNA serves a critical function
 >  in determining under what situations various bits of coding DNA
 >  are expressed---chemicals bond to upstream noncoding DNA and trigger
 >  the transcription of the coding parts.  As already noted in the
 >  thread, lower organisms tend to have a much higher ratio of
 >  coding to noncoding DNA; but this may have more to do with them
 >  being simpler (single cells rather than multicellular with different
 >  cells needing to express different coding genes) and thus not
 >  needing the extra control function of the noncoding DNA.

So, they are case-clauses... :)

This discussion certainly has evolved... 

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    06-Oct-99
Time:    20:50:06

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From aahz at netcom.com  Sun Oct 17 15:22:26 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:22:26 GMT
Subject: multi-level break
References: <1271935461-11108476@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <7ud7li$qc0$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <1271935461-11108476 at hypernet.com>,
Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>Toby Kelsey wrote:
>
>> At the moment I am setting and checking flag variables to emulate
>> this, which I find tedious and ugly.  Am I missing a better
>> idiom?
>
>Some people abuse exceptions for this.

Hey!  I resemble that!
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From hniksic at srce.hr  Sun Oct 17 13:20:54 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:20:54 +0200
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <871zauoltg.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr> <c75emeu3fiw.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <87u2nplx8p.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Tim Evans" <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

> Looks good.  Could this also be done using threads?

Probably.  But this wouldn't work on machines without threading
support, and the task is just too basic to *require* threads.

I don't buy threads as a buzzword -- I believe my particular problem
is solved much more naturally using an helper process.  The additional
process touches very little data and modifies none, so COW should make
it inexpensive.  My timings show that this is indeed the case.

> create two threads, one for reading and the other for writing.  Then
> you can pass strings to the writing thread and get back the buffered
> result from the reading thread.  This allows interactive
> communication without the danger of deadlocks.

I think deadlocks can occur as long as there is the writing and
reading thread/process depend on each other.



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 19:45:21 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:45:21 +1000
Subject: Disk access going mental with Pythonwin?
In-Reply-To: <7tvis8$s7c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <001701bf150b$d93d73d0$0801a8c0@bobcat>

>    You could have the test done only at application activation time
as
> that is normally the only time a changed file will appear.

Actually, the text editor I use (PFE) does exactly this, and often
misses a change.  I really can't say exactly when, but I guess it
would be when I start a CVS or other operation, then switch back
waiting for it to complete.

So as my experience with an editor that did exactly that wasnt great,
I decided for the idle time option.  On NT I could even use the File
Change notification APIs, but that starts to get ugly handling
differences in the OS'.

I really dont think it is a huge problem - Pythonwin has been doing
that for quite some time now (build 123 or even earlier) and it has
only been noticed now that someone is editing a file on a floppy.
Another alternative would be to check if the file is on removable
media, and dont bother checking them.

> Or maybe
> have a choice of (no | activation | idle) detection.

That is probably the best actually...

>    The next version of SciTE will have a load on activate option.

Make sure you only do it if the loaded file is clean :-)

Mark.




From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 24 17:23:16 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 21:23:16 GMT
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241351350.29582-100000@fep132.fep.ru> <slrn816bip.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net> <ltiu3wpt8f.fsf@asfast.com> <slrn816jka.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net> <ltaep8pmku.fsf@asfast.com>
Message-ID: <slrn816u20.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On 24 Oct 1999 15:48:01 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> wrote:
>Unless there's something I'm missing about the FastCGI installation,
>this isn't very fast at all ... ???

i haven't tried it myself. i got interested after reading your
post and thought to try it out, but then i noticed it's
not free.

[about httpdapy]
>I can't get it to work under RedHat Linux version 5.0 with my own
>compilations of Python and Apache, which work just fine without
>httpdapy.

hrm. have you asked the httpdapy author? i know i haven't :)
(was in too much hurry when it broke, just downgraded without
thinking)

  -- erno

-- 
"The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux
customers who need high speed connectivity to drive their
e-business," added Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM
Personal Systems Group. 



From dave.hatton at mail.com  Sat Oct  9 19:50:15 1999
From: dave.hatton at mail.com (dave hatton)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 00:50:15 +0100
Subject: opening a file to read under windows
Message-ID: <7tokcq$lab$1@uranium.btinternet.com>

Help!

This is driving me mad!

How should I open a text file for reading under windows? (98 in this case)

Every thing I try results in an error message which shows the filename
correctly but with "\\" between each element not "\"

I'm using "fd = open(filename, 'r')" where filename="c:\dir\file.txt"

Thanks

Daveh







From dkuhlman at netcom.com  Wed Oct 27 17:52:25 1999
From: dkuhlman at netcom.com (G. David Kuhlman)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 21:52:25 GMT
Subject: Forcing a import.
References: <7v7esm$p4q$1@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <7v7s6p$39b$1@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>

Arinte (shouldbe at message.com) wrote:
> I have a app that embeds python.  I run the .py files with PyRun_AnyFile()
> right now, I was trying to so if there was a way I could force them to
> import my c methods.  I tried a PyRun_SimpleString before I do the anyfile
> call, but that did seen to work, because I got an attribute error.  Is a
> forced import that isn't written in the *.py possible.
> 
> 

Don't forget to initialize the your module:

    initMyModule();
    result = PyRun_SimpleString("import MyModule");

Then you might try to read in the file and run it as a string:

    char * aScript;
    /* Do something to read the file contents into aScript. */
    result = PyRun_SimpleString(aScript);

I'm pretty sure that this is effectively what I do, and it works.

See section 1.4 of "Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter"
in the standard documentation for more info on initializing
extension modules.

Hope this helps.

By the way, what is the difference between:

    PyRun_AnyFile() vs. PyRun_SimpleFile() vs. PyRun_File(), and
    PyRun_String() vs. PyRun_SimpleString()? 

How do I decide between these?

I always use the "Simple" version.  If I'm doing OK, maybe I don't
need to know.

  - Dave

  - Dave



From wtanksle at hawking.armored.net  Sun Oct 17 15:25:24 1999
From: wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 19:25:24 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>  <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <slrn80l1cu.h2v.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>

On Sun, 17 Oct 1999 22:47:49 +1000, skaller wrote:

>lookup fails in Viper, lookup continues for a method in the type object
>of the object. For the standard Python types, including integers,
>the type object I'm using is a class. So you can write:

>	(1).abs()

This is totally orthogonal to your post, but I'm just curious: I like how
Dylan allows one to write the first argument of a function either as a
distinguished or ordinary paramter -- that is, "abs(1)" is the same as
"(1).abs()".

Can we do the same with Viper?

If so, can we also write function definitions with the same functionality,
as:

def self.__add__(addend)...

Of course, I'm about to ask for multiple dispatch, but since everyone who
even knows what multiple dispatch is already knew I was going to ask for
it...  So I won't bother asking.

(Or did Guido use his time machine to clip my request out of this post?
If so, help me foil this conspiracy by igniting the debate about multiple
dispatch!)

my-old-server-is-<fnord>down-ly y'rs,
-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From herzog at online.de  Sat Oct 30 13:53:27 1999
From: herzog at online.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 19:53:27 +0200
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <c75aep1n5qq.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <87904konsk.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>
Message-ID: <m3aep0pwfc.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>

Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:

> > Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> > 
> > > Hi!
> > > How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try
> > > 
> > > startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
> > > os.system(startexe)
> > > 
> > > but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
> > > gets the final file written correctly.

The first thing I do when I have problems with os.system() is to check
whether the command works properly when run in an interactive shell.
Have you tried that?

FWIW, I use the code below in Sketch to render preview images for
embedded eps files. Apart from some postscript trickery to make sure the
contents of the BoundingBox are positioned correctly and that showpage
is executed exactly once, the only difference I can see in my code is
that I use -c quit instead of quit.ps.

To make sure that piping the output through some ppm-utility isn't the
problem, I've just checked it by piping it through pnminvert and it
worked as expected.

gs_command = ('gs -sDEVICE=ppmraw -r%(resolution)d -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -q'
	      ' -sOutputFile=%(temp)s -g%(width)dx%(height)d'
	      ' -c %(offx)f %(offy)f translate'
	      ' /oldshowpage /showpage load def /showpage \'{}\' def '
	      ' -f%(filename)s -c oldshowpage quit')

def render_preview(filename, startx, starty, width, height, resolution = None):
    import tempfile
    temp = tempfile.mktemp()

    try:
        if resolution is None:
            resolution = config.preferences.eps_preview_resolution
        factor = resolution / 72.0
        width = int(math.ceil(width * factor))
        height = int(math.ceil(height * factor))
	offx = -startx
	offy = -starty
	os.system(gs_command % locals())

	image = Image.open(temp)
	image.load()
	return image
    finally:
	try:
	    os.unlink(temp)
	except:
	    pass



-- 
Bernhard Herzog	  | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
herzog at online.de  | http://www.online.de/home/sketch/



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Fri Oct 29 16:13:46 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 20:13:46 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7vcv5q$nhg$965@nslave2.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://www.homestead.com/iani/files/index.htm




From aahz at netcom.com  Wed Oct 13 16:54:06 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 20:54:06 GMT
Subject: Cisco config?
Message-ID: <7u2rhe$j3s@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com>

I've found Gconfig, but my searching hasn't turned up anything for
automated configuration of a Cisco router (a la "expect").  Any
pointers?
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 26 17:08:32 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:08:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <14358.6224.856497.573781@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

Very neat:

% jpython /tmp/platform.py
java1.2.1

Probably sufficient (certainly appropriate) for the JPython platform,
since nothing else matters when you're running on Java right? :)

-Barry



From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Wed Oct  6 20:44:02 1999
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 00:44:02 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Wed, 06 Oct 1999 20:59:30 +0200 (MET DST), Mikael Olofsson wrote:
>On 06-Oct-99 Tom Loredo wrote:

> >  code into proteins.  However, according to this talk, it is now
> >  believed that at least some of this DNA serves a critical function
> >  in determining under what situations various bits of coding DNA
> >  are expressed---chemicals bond to upstream noncoding DNA and trigger
> >  the transcription of the coding parts.  As already noted in the
> >  thread, lower organisms tend to have a much higher ratio of
> >  coding to noncoding DNA; but this may have more to do with them
> >  being simpler (single cells rather than multicellular with different
> >  cells needing to express different coding genes) and thus not
> >  needing the extra control function of the noncoding DNA.

>So, they are case-clauses... :)

I thought that had been determined a while ago -- it's the explanation I'm
familiar with, in my non-specialist position.  In fact, one source I saw
(I have no recollection at all where) claimed that most of our coding DNA
is similar to most other species, and only the noncoding DNA is really
different.

Seems kinda far-fetched, but there you have it.

>This discussion certainly has evolved... 

I disagree -- it's clearly been intelligently designed.  Hmm, kinda brings
a new meaning to the NG name "talk.origins", doesn't it?  Perhaps we
should have "talk.origins.talk" to clarify.

>/Mikael

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu  Tue Oct 19 01:29:33 1999
From: bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 05:29:33 GMT
Subject: ANN: Canadian Daily Climate Data CD reader module v990829 released
Message-ID: <slrn80o0dr.asr.bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>

[As comp.lang.python.announce takes sooooo long, here my annoucement.]


Ever wanted to read a huge pile of data from the Canadian Daily Climate
CDs to run some batch analysis?  The supplied programs on that CD only
allow you to extract it in certain ways or browse it on the screen.

It took me a day or two even with the format description to decode that
binary format. And now I try to make sure that nobody needs to do that
again and release my hack as free software (GPL).

The program is only useful, if you have bought one of the CDs published
by Environment Canada. It might also serve as an example of how to use
the python struct module. It is not very well documented. Details at:

	http://www.uwm.edu/~bernhard/canadian_climate_cdformat/

Bernhard Reiter bernhard at ffii.org


       <P><A HREF="http://http://www.uwm.edu/~bernhard/canadian_climate_cdformat/index.en.html">Canadian Daily Climate CD Python module v990829</A> 
- Free Python module hack to extract a lot data from the proprietory 
"Canadian Daily Climate CDs", published by the Canadian Meterological Center.  

-- 
Research Assistant, Geog Dept UM-Milwaukee, USA.    (www.uwm.edu/~bernhard)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure              (ffii.org)
Intevation GmbH 



From fdrake at acm.org  Wed Oct 20 13:43:20 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 13:43:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
In-Reply-To: <7ukoru$2o19$1@hub.org>
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu>
	<14348.40578.648039.972783@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<7uifot$nsi$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>
	<14349.49358.407167.675972@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<7ukoru$2o19$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <14349.65336.600265.684267@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
 >   Since the current behavior of getopt is to allow both, I'd be
 > inclined to keep it that way.  There are lots of applications that
 > already allow both (Python & otherwise; I don't think it's original
 > behavior with getopt), I'm inclined to allow both rather than just
 > one, and wouldn't want optional arguments to screw that up.

D'Arcy J.M. Cain writes:
 > It is possible to add optional arguments without messing up regular
 > use.  You just have to put restrictions on the use of flags that
 > take optional arguments but that's fine in an extension anyway.  See

  Perhaps it's not enough of a problem; I'm thinking of the case where 
the applications command-line UI is "extended" by making a required
value optional.  What was once:

      myprog -f value

would no longer work if the value for -f became optional and required
a syntax change.  Humans can (sometimes) be re-trained to type things
the new way.  Getting humans to grep through hundreds of scripts that
may contain the offending syntax is harder. ;)  (Hint: "grep
'myprog.*-f' *.sh" isn't even close to good enough!)
  Breakage is evil, don't make it too easy!


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From jlj at cfdrc.com  Wed Oct 27 13:22:48 1999
From: jlj at cfdrc.com (Lyle Johnson)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:22:48 GMT
Subject: Getting A LOT of errors from python source (header files)
References: <2KAR3.13191$7G2.79311@news1.online.no>
Message-ID: <38173466.993148@192.77.87.74>

Are you sure it's picking up the correct version of the "config.h"
header file? These error message seem to indicate that the compiler is
seeing the function prototypes without arguments, which would mean
that the Py_PROTO macro is defined incorrectly, which eventually gets
us back to the definitions in "config.h"...

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:39:37 +0200, "Egeland" <egelando at online.no>
wrote:

>When compiling my app, which embedds python1.5.2, using MSVC6.0, I compile
>against the
>Python sources. These errros leave me clueless. Any help ?
>
>
>Anders Moe
>
><file>(91) : error C2660: 'PySys_SetArgv' : function does not take 2
>parameters
><file>(122) : error C2660: 'PyRun_SimpleFile' : function does not take 2
>parameters
><file>(134) : error C2660: 'Py_Exit' : function does not take 1 parameters
><file>(168) : error C2660: 'PyArg_ParseTuple' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(185) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(186) : error C2660: 'Py_BuildValue' : function does not take 2
>parameters
><file>(187) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(193) : error C2197: 'void (__cdecl *)(void)' : too many actual
>parameters
><file>(194) : error C2197: 'void (__cdecl *)(void)' : too many actual
>parameters
><file>(211) : error C2660: 'Py_BuildValue' : function does not take 2
>parameters
><file>(223) : error C2660: 'PyArg_ParseTuple' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(232) : error C2660: 'Py_BuildValue' : function does not take 2
>parameters
><file>(238) : error C2660: 'PyInt_FromLong' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(251) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(254) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(257) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(273) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(274) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(275) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(281) : error C2660: 'PyInt_FromLong' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(282) : error C2660: 'PyTuple_New' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(283) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(283) : error C2660: 'PyTuple_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(284) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(284) : error C2660: 'PyTuple_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(286) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(301) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(302) : error C2660: 'PyInt_FromLong' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(303) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(305) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(306) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(307) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(309) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(310) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(311) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(314) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(315) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(316) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(318) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(319) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(320) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(322) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(323) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(324) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(326) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(327) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(328) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(330) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(331) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(332) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(334) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(335) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(336) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(338) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(339) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(340) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(342) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(343) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(344) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(346) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(347) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(348) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(350) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(351) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(352) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(354) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(355) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(356) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(358) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(359) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(360) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(362) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(363) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(364) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(366) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(367) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(368) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(370) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(371) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(372) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(374) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(375) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(376) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(378) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(379) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(380) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(382) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(383) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(384) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(386) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(387) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(388) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(390) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(391) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(392) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(394) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(395) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(396) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(399) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(400) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
>parameters
><file>(401) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
>parameters
><file>(401) : fatal error C1003: error count exceeds 100; stopping
>compilation
>cadActHand.cxx
>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(70) :
>warning C4005: 'va_start' : macro redefinition
>        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(58) :
>see previous definition of 'va_start'
>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(72) :
>warning C4005: 'va_end' : macro redefinition
>        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(60) :
>see previous definition of 'va_end'
>cadActwin.cxx
>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(70) :
>warning C4005: 'va_start' : macro redefinition
>        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(58) :
>see previous definition of 'va_start'
>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(72) :
>warning C4005: 'va_end' : macro redefinition
>        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(60) :
>see previous definition of 'va_end'
>cadAlpha.cxx
>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(70) :
>warning C4005: 'va_start' : macro redefinition
>        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(58) :
>see previous definition of 'va_start'
>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(72) :
>warning C4005: 'va_end' : macro redefinition
>
>




From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct  5 16:21:56 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 16:21:56 -0400
Subject: More Python books coming...
References: <5lpuz483p4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tblr9$m09$2@autumn.news.rcn.net>
Message-ID: <5lk8p17e3f.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

"Ed Hynes" <ehynes at acm.org.nospam> writes:

> Will links to these books be added to the PSA's online bookstore anytime
> soon?  (Want to get the most bang for the buck when buying them:^)

I just added the German book to the doc/Books.html page and also to
the German section of doc/NonEnglish.html.

Many people don't seem to understand how this works: if you want
something to be posted on the Python.org website, don't post a
question to the newsgroup, send an email (preferably with suggested
HTML or at least text and links) to webmaster at python.org, or whoever
is listed in the left margin for the particular page.  (For the
psa/bookstore/ pages, that's Andrew Kuchling <amk1 at bigfoot.com>.)

The more you leave to the imagination of the webmaster, the less
likely it is to happen.

And always mention the URL (and subsection, where relevant) of the
page where you want it to appear!!!

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



From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct 26 12:50:38 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 10:50:38 -0600
Subject: An article on Python in practice
References: <19991026133227.A601@Ridcully.home> <02b301bf1fd0$730be040$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3815DBDE.96D8FF4A@callware.com>

Hi All--

Darrell wrote:
> 
> Had to build gvim with python support for NT
> If there's interest I can post it somewhere.
> 

Why?  gvim.org provides pre-built 95/98/NT executables already.

> --Darrell
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolmt at smart.net.au>
> To: <python-list at python.org>
> Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 11:32 PM
> Subject: An article on Python in practice
> 
> > Just saw this article over at LinuxPlanet:
> > http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/1132/1/
> >

This link doesn't work for me.

<kvetch-kvetch-kvetch>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From mlinnen at usa.net  Tue Oct 19 00:22:44 1999
From: mlinnen at usa.net (Mike Linnen)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 04:22:44 GMT
Subject: Can't build under Slackware
References: <380a7947@news.mdc.net>
Message-ID: <omSO3.12076$pL5.27063@news.rdc1.az.home.com>

Did you execute the config program?

<email (daniel)> wrote in message news:380a7947 at news.mdc.net...
>
> I've been trying to build Python 1.5.2
> under Slackware 3.3 using kernel 2.0.38
> but the build dies.
>
> I'm running gcc 2.7.2.
>
> Is there a known problem with building
> on this setup?
>
> -Daniel
>





From Udo.Gleich at gmx.de  Sun Oct  3 09:38:42 1999
From: Udo.Gleich at gmx.de (Udo Gleich)
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 15:38:42 +0200
Subject: lineno and filename in exceptions
Message-ID: <37F75C62.F4824BE8@gmx.de>

Hi,

I would like to catch syntax errors and other errors in script
files and open an editor at the right line number.

If I catch a syntax error the exeption has the attributes lineno and
filename. This information is not included e.g. in attribute errors
name errors.

Example:

--- script.py ------------------------------------------------------

print a

--- another_script.py ----------------------------------------------

try:
    execfile("script.py")
except Exception, argument:
    print argument.__class__.__name__
    print argument.__dict__
    try:
	print argument.lineno
	print argument.filename
    except:
	pass

--------------------------------------------------------------------

If I execute another_script.py I get

NameError
{'args': ('a',)}
Line number:

If I execute script.py I get

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "script.py", line 1, in ?
    print a
NameError: a

If I put a syntax error in script.py  (pr int a) I get something like

SyntaxError
{'filename': 'script.py',
 'lineno': 1,
 'args': ('invalid syntax', ('script.py', 1, 6, 'pr int a\012')),
 'offset': 6,
 'text': 'pr int a\012',
 'msg': 'invalid syntax'}
Line number: 1
File name: script.py

Question: Is there a way to get line number and file name in errors
other than SyntaxError?

Thank you,

Udo



From darcy at vex.net  Sat Oct  9 06:44:19 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 10:44:19 GMT
Subject: More PyGreSQL questions
References: <37FE7E42.81445455@gte.net>
Message-ID: <7tn6a2$15qv$1@hub.org>

Harry Tanovich <harryt at gte.net> wrote:
> I just skimmed over the source AND I'm pretty unfamiliar with
> postgresql, but how hard would it be to re-do PyGreSQL so that:

The next version of PyGreSQL (with DB-API 2.0) is going to start being
worked on.  You should join the mailing list if you have suggestions
on changes.

> a) query results aren't strings but binary values that map directly to
> python types

Not sure what you mean by this.  It currently does check the type and
only falls back to string if there is no good Python object type to
convert to.  It converts to integers and floats as necessary.

> b) cursors are used to fetch just as many rows as you want from the
> database

I believe this will be required for DB-API anyway.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Oct 11 14:48:55 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:48:55 +0200
Subject: Integers and Floats
References: <19991011180728.A14620@optiplex.palga.uucp> <7tt39c$irm@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <00a501bf1419$46076190$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote:
> (The other option is to implement a Rational class -- there may even be
> one already.)

sure is: see /Demo/classes/Rat.py in the
source distribution.

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From darcy at vex.net  Sat Oct  9 06:52:13 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 9 Oct 1999 10:52:13 GMT
Subject: Exec statement problem
References: <37FEDE3E.8BD45788@scds.co.za>
Message-ID: <7tn6ot$15qv$2@hub.org>

maxsbox <maxsbox at scds.co.za> wrote:
> I have been trying to pass a variable to a query statement.

> The statement exec: appears to be the answer, however I cannot get it to
> work

> wrote the following:

> def art2(db, z):
>     y = 'db.query("SELECT * FROM artisan WHERE name = \''
>     y = y+z
>     y = y+ '\'")'
>     print y    # prints correct string
>     exec y    # gives fault message

> db is the connected data base
> z is the required variable, in this case 'Nico"
> Also tried a few variations of the exec statement with the same result

Why exec?  Just build your query statement and pass it to the query
method directly.

def art2(db, z):
    query = """SELECT * FROM artisan WHERE name = '%s'""" % z
	print query
	db.query(query)

Or this.

def art2(db, z):
	db.query("""SELECT * FROM artisan WHERE name = '%s'""" % z)

You can get quite creative with your queries.  I certainly do.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 31 17:55:52 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 17:55:52 -0500
Subject: Fuzzy thoughts / needs about class derivation / nesting
Message-ID: <oqu2n7qgw7.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

Hi.  I guess it is better to share some quick fuzzy thoughts now, than
wait forever, or almost, before presenting a cathedralistic suggestion.

Python is the first language in which I feel comfortable enough to explore
OO concepts, which concepts I never liked so much before: I always found
the concepts a bit "buzzwordy", and usually easy to simulate by other means
in the languages I used.  Scheme was comfortable for exploring closures,
continuations (and laziness).  My only real use of continuations was to
implement backtracking matchers, and I did not have that need yet in Python.
I presume that threads could be used for the simplest cases of continuations,
but I'm not sure there is an easy Python paradigm for the ability of using
a given continuation more than once.

I did find closures often useful.  In Python, closures could be simulated
enough for my needs through function within instances, like in that piece
of code (much simplified):


def editor(*rules):
    return Editor(rules).proper

class Editor:

    def __init__(self, rules):
        self.rules = []
        for delete, insert in rules:
            self.rules.append((re.compile(delete), insert))
        # And other optimisations.

    def proper(self, lines):
        for counter in range(len(lines)):
            if not self.rules:
                break
            # Code to apply edition rules and remove them after match.
        return lines


I just call `editor' many times and save the returned function into various
lists, for later usage, after sorting and other massaging.  This is much
more heavy to write than in Scheme, it forces kind of over-documentation
of closures: but this is quite acceptable when we want to discipline usages.

We could somewhat simulate instantiated classes with functions in Scheme,
if we go functional all over, but it is less clear to me how we could
really implement classes, at least within a single evaluation environment.
There is a lot of relation between generic functions, closures, classes and
instances, and the expressibility of some concepts with the remaining others,
it will take a good while before everything becomes limpid in my mind :-).


On another topic, I recently missed much the capability of somewhat nesting
classes, instead of deriving them.  In Python, one overrides class functions,
and function nesting has to be artificially expressed.  Here is an excerpt
of an actual example, but it repeats dozens of times in my things, so far:


class Action:

    def __init__(self):
        # Some code to begin initialisation.

    def complete_init(self):
        # Some code to end initialisation.


class File_Action(Action):

    def __init__(self, name):
        Action.__init__(self)
        # Some code for more specific initialisation.


class Modify(File_Action):

    def __init__(self, name, filter, cleanup, install):
        File_Action.__init__(self, name)
        # Some code for even more specific initialisation.


class Copy(Modify):

    def __init__(self, source, name, install):
        Modify.__init__(self, name, None, None, install)
        # Some code for ultimate initialisation.
        self.complete_init()


Having to use `self.complete_init' in leaves classes, and not in intermediate
classes, is not very elegant.  I could provide dummy intermediates, but
would most probably eliminate them on sight when later rereading the code.
What I miss, here, is some kind of "inner" statement, like in Simula-67,
which has been copied in a few other languages since.  If I could write:


class Action:

    def __init__(self):
        # Some code to begin initialisation.
        inner
        # Some code to end initialisation.


and be done without defining or calling `self.complete_init', I would be
happier (whatever the syntax is).  The difficulty, of course, is that
it would break the pure override semantics of function definitions in
sub-classes.  Following what `ad-do-it' does for advice functions in Emacs,
it would also be fun if `inner' could be use more than once.  For example:


class Action:

    def __init__(self):
        # Some code to begin initialisation.
        try:
            inner
        except:
            # Some code to establish a more robust evaluation context.
            inner
        # Some code to end initialisation.


Of course, it would be nice if "inner" was also usable in intermediate
classes, and was a mere no-operation in leaves.  I hardly see, using
current Python paradigms, how one could express the above `try-except'
structures for nested initialisation in derived classes, without writing
code which would be quickly clumsy.  The best I can think of is splitting
many functions into a _first, _inner and _last components, with control
explicitly flowing back and forth between sub-classes and super-classes.
Not very neat.  It would be more fun if Guido could invent some elegant
and simpler structuring device addressing the real need behind the above
fuzzy suggestions.  Since we often see `Python 2.0' in subject threads in
this list, maybe the time is proper to try expressing such needs.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard





From da at ski.org  Wed Oct  6 16:05:07 1999
From: da at ski.org (da at ski.org)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 20:05:07 GMT
Subject: compile.py does not work on WinNT system
References: <000a01bf0fba$ff75b0e0$cf2d153f@tim> <37FAFE36.CE742C8D@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <7tga18$b7u$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

> What happened here. Is the compile.py docstring not valid anymore?
>

Hmm, it's possible -- I haven't updated the docstring
as well as I should have.  I'm unable to do any debugging
right now, but will check out your specific command and
see what's what.

--david ascher


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Thu Oct 14 15:39:46 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:39:46 +0200
Subject: Text/Cursor User Interface with Python
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se>
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013213605.18459A-100000@butler.artech.se>
Message-ID: <19991014213946.C4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>

tommy:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Someone who know any good module for Python to easy write Text/Cursor
> Interfaces???
> 
> I like it to have support for widget like:
> 
> - scrollboxs
> - dialog box
> - input box
> - menu
> - lists
> 
> Shoule be used to make textbased UI for applications end I dosen't like to
> spend time on wroting the UI more like to spend time to write the
> applications instand.

I think there does exist some dialog.py module, behaves like the unix dialog
command (actually, it's a how-do-you-call-that-in-English for it).

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From john.michelsen at gte.net  Fri Oct  8 00:04:36 1999
From: john.michelsen at gte.net (John Michelsen)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 04:04:36 GMT
Subject: Playing MIDI files
References: <37fa603f.3064486@pumba.class.udg.mx>
Message-ID: <o3eL3.2662$7p6.39841@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>

Here's something that works on windows if you have any program
that plays a midi when you double click on it. Works for mp3s and wavs
too.  There's probably some system call on unix that does the same thing.

import sys

def play_soundfile(filename):
    if sys.platform == 'win32':
        import win32api
        win32api.ShellExecute(0, "open", filename, None, "", 0)
    else:
        print "some unix commands here to play a sound file"

Martin D?ring <mdoering at comlineag.de> wrote in message
news:37fa603f.3064486 at pumba.class.udg.mx...
> Hi!
>
> Is there a module to play midi-files from python?
>
> Martin Doering
>
> Martin Doering (mailto:mdoering at comlineag.de)
>
>       :|/\/\/\/\|:    Beware of the breeze
>       :|\/\/\/\/|:    of air when I squeeze





From sorot at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 06:52:45 1999
From: sorot at my-deja.com (sorot at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:52:45 GMT
Subject: Dictionary and List
Message-ID: <7upflt$m0n$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I'm using python 1.5.1. While i'm writing the part of python script
like this

## Part of script ##
my_list = []
my_dict = {'a':'','b':[]}
x = ['a','b','c','d']
for i in range(0,len(x)):
   my_dict['a'] = x[i]
   my_list.append(my_dict)

print my_list
## end ##

The out put should be like
my_list = [{'a':'a','b':[]},{'a':'b','b':[]},{'a':'c','b':[]},
{'a':'d','b':[]}]

But i got output
my_list = [{'a':'d','b':[]},{'a':'d','b':[]},{'a':'d','b':[]},
{'a':'d','b':[]}]

Or did i program anything wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Sorot P.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 22 06:36:58 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:36:58 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org>
Message-ID: <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com>

Ok, here is my current version of the platform.py module. I would
appreciate any hints to make it recognize even more platforms,
distributions, OSes, etc.

Especially some code for MacOS would be nice.

	http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script. It will
then print something like:
	Linux-2.2.10-i586-SuSE-6.2-i386
or
	Windows-95-4.00.950

Have fun,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    70 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From edlsoft at mindspring.com  Sat Oct  9 12:27:33 1999
From: edlsoft at mindspring.com (Burt Leavenworth)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 16:27:33 GMT
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
References: <1272710597-42056950@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <37ff6cae.10207213@news.mindspring.com>

On Fri, 8 Oct 1999 15:57:36 -0400, "Gordon McMillan"
<gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:

>A new beta (03) of the Win32 Installer package is available on 
>starship:
>
>http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/beta03.html
>
>This release incorporates Thomas Heller's changes: 
>executables now act much more like frozen apps in that 
>almost all(*) of the Python modules and scripts are run / 
>imported directly from the exe.
>
>(*)exceptions.pyc is the sole exception.
>
>In fact, almost the whole package has been rewritten. Among 
>the enhancements:
> - full support for packages & subpackages
> - ability to tell the installer to search odd places for your 
>modules
> - a framework for incorporating extensions with odd packaging 
>/ installation requirements
> - better status reporting
> - more debugging aids
> - many more configurations and options available.
>
>Read all about it at 
>http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/beta03.html.
>
>The prior beta (02) is now promoted to release.
>
>Background:
> The Win32 Installer is a sort of compilerless Freeze - a way 
>of distributing Python apps with all the required support built 
>in. It also understands binary resources (.dlls and .pyds) and 
>can package up arbitrary files that your app might require.
>
>Python-style license.
>
>Contact: gmcm at hypernet.com
>
><P><A 
>HREF="http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html">
>Win32 Installer release 02 / beta 03</A> A compiler-less way 
>of distributing Python apps on Windows. (8-Oct-99)
>
>
>- Gordon
>
Trying to install Beta 03 (Installer_b_03.exe) causes an illegal
operation
(invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL) on my machine running
Windows
98.

Burt Leavenworth





From jlj at cfdrc.com  Tue Oct  5 09:43:01 1999
From: jlj at cfdrc.com (Lyle Johnson)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 13:43:01 GMT
Subject: Anyone have success w/STRPTIME???
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-R7GdiTzGgOlL@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <008f01bf0f0f$a209f1b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-GDXmZdeHXsHW@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <37f9ff84.59606639@192.77.87.74>

There's a "pure Python" implementation of strptime available, which
works for Windows (and presumably OS/2 as well):

	http://www.fukt.hk-r.se/~flognat/hacks/

Lyle

On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 09:59:15 GMT, junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com
(Benjamin Schollnick) wrote:

>On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 08:54:34, "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> 
>wrote:
>
>> Benjamin Schollnick <junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>> > Can anyone point me in the right direction, re: STRPTIME?
>> > 
>> > To my knowledge the strptime function(s) are correct below,
>> > yet under both OS/2 & Win NT, I am getting a attribute error.
>> 
>> http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-time.html
>> says:
>> 
>>     strptime (string[, format])
>> 
>>     Parse a string representing a time according to
>>     a format. /.../ This function may not be defined
>>     on all platforms.
>> 
>> dir(time) will show you if it's defined on your
>> platform (it's not available on Windows)
>
>Great... That explains windows... But why doesn't it work
>under Os/2?
>
>>>> import time
>>>> dir(time)
>['__doc__', '__name__', 'accept2dyear', 'altzone', 'asctime', 'clock',
>'ctime',
>'daylight', 'gmtime', 'localtime', 'mktime', 'sleep', 'strftime', 
>'strptime', 't
>ime', 'timezone', 'tzname']				 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>I'll double check under Windows NT, but I believe you are right
>in regards to not being available there.
>
>		- Benjamin
>================================
>Please feel free to copy any and or
>all of this sig.
>A little something for spam bots:
>
>root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
>abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1
>
>Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
>Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
>Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
>Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
>Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
>consumerline at ftc.gov
>fccinfo at fcc.gov
>ssegal at fcc.gov
>




From Michael.Scharf at gmx.de  Mon Oct  4 19:58:40 1999
From: Michael.Scharf at gmx.de (Michael Scharf)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 23:58:40 GMT
Subject: More Python books coming...
References: <5lpuz483p4.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7tbev9$sco$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <5lpuz483p4.fsf at eric.cnri.reston.va.us>,
  Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:

> I did a search for Python on Amazon.com and found several new Python
> books that are likely to hit the shelves soon.  Here's the list:

And here is one (in german) that already hit the shelves!
(I announce it also in May: http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=481305564)

It would be great, if this book would also appear at
http://www.python.org/doc/Books.html

My short description:
 http://starship.python.net/crew/scharf/Programmieren-mit-Python.html

 Authors: Tobias Himstedt and Klaus M=E4nzel
 Title: Mit Python programmieren
 Subtitle: Einfuehrung und Anwendung skriptorientierter Programmierung
 Pages: 271
 Prize: DM 68 (about $38)
 ISBN: 3920993853 (http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3920993853)
 Publisher: dpunkt.verlag (http://www.dpunkt.de)


Michael
--
     ''''\     Michael Scharf
    ` c-@@     TakeFive Software
    `    >     http://www.TakeFive.com
     \_ V      mailto:Michael_Scharf at TakeFive.co.at


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From gutier at intergate.bc.ca  Thu Oct 21 03:26:38 1999
From: gutier at intergate.bc.ca (Gerald Gutierrez)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 00:26:38 -0700
Subject: Linux / Numerical Python compilation problems
Message-ID: <m3904xgonl.fsf@intergate.bc.ca>

Hi all.

I'm trying to compile Numerical Python from LLNL on my Linux-Mandrake
6.1 / Intel machine.

I can compile the Numeric module just fine, however when I try to
compile the Graphics module so I can use the plotting facilities, I
get compile errors about missing header files such as arrayobject.h,
hlevel.h and dispas.h.

It turns out that some of these header files are from the Numeric
module (e.g. arrayobject.h). The Numeric module is already installed
properly but it seems the Graphics module makefile is not include the
actual "numeric" directory where the header files are. I've included
the step of the make process where the error occurs below.

Other header files like hlevel.h don't exist anywhere on my computer.

I know NumPy can be compiled on a Linux box; I've seen RPMs for
it. How do I solve these compile problems?


Thanks for any help anyone can give.

Please forward replies to gutier at intergate.bc.ca.




gcc -fpic -I/usr/local/lib/yorick/1.4/h -g -O2
-I/z/bin/../opt/python-1.5.2/include/python1.5
-I/z/bin/../opt/python-1.5.2/include/python1.5 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c
./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c

./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:75: arrayobject.h: No such file or directory
./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:76: hlevel.h: No such file or directory
./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:78: dispas.h: No such file or directory
./Gist/Src/gistCmodule.c:88: warning: `PyFPE_END_PROTECT' redefined
/z/bin/../opt/python-1.5.2/include/python1.5/pyfpe.h:169: warning:
this is the location of the previous definition
make: *** [gistCmodule.o] Error 1



















From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Thu Oct 21 16:22:43 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 21:22:43 +0100
Subject: Could an object delegate itself into another?
References: <oqr9io4ihm.fsf@jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <m3puy8a2gc.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?= <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Hi, people.  Here I am, with another question.
> 
> In one program, I keep a registry of created objects into a dictionary.
> Objects register themselves through their __init__ method.  From outside
> the class, I check if a given object has already been created, so to avoid
> creating another one that would be too similar, kind of redundant.
> 
> It would be neat if I could hide this check.  The ideal would be that the
> instantiating call returns an already existing similar object if it exists,
> instead of a brand new one.  A simple trick is to not instantiate directly,
> but through some service function that does the check, returning either
> the old object, or a brand new one.
> 
> But yet, I wonder.  Could an object really delegates itself into another?
> For example, is there some way by which a newly created object could
> soon check, probably within __init__, if a similar copy has already been
> registered?  If one similar object is found, this newly created object would
> immediately dismiss itself in favour of the previous one, and the genuine
> class instantiator would return the previous object.  Is that possible?

Not 100% sure I understand your problem. I seem to be having trouble
thinking of ways of explaining what I actually want to say here, so
let's just have an example:

class _Class:
    def __init__(self,i):
        self.i = i
    def __repr__(self):
        return "hello, i'm number " + `self.i`

_cache = {}

def Class(i):
    if not _cache.has_key(i):
         _cache[i] = _Class(i)
    return _cache[i]

a = Class(1)
b = Class(2)
c = Class(1)

print "a", a, id(a)
print "b", b, id(b)
print "c", c, id(c)

yields:

a hello, i'm number 1 135367104
b hello, i'm number 2 135369136
c hello, i'm number 1 135367104

The point is that you think you're calling a class constructor when
you execute

a = Class(1)

but you're not. Who's going to know?

Also I think it's cleaner to have the caching mechanism outside of the
class itself. You need to be on the lookout for cycles when doing this
sort of stuff, and if the instance has a reference to the cache which
has a reference to the instance, that's a cycle.

You could probably whip up a class that encapsulates caching, lets
see:

class Cacher:
    def __init__(self,klass):
        self.klass = klass
        self.cache = {}
    def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if not self.cache.has_key((args,kwargs)):
             self.cache[(args,kwargs)] = apply(self.klass, args, kwargs)
        return self.cache[(args,kwargs)]

then:

Class = Cacher(_Class) # _Class from above...

but frankly, the first version is hardly a major trauma to write and
will perform better in space and time, so I'd go with that.

do-you-think-this-is-snippet-material-Hans?-ly y'rs Michael



From tommy at ilm.com  Tue Oct 26 17:46:53 1999
From: tommy at ilm.com (My Name is Robert Paulson)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:46:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Python Job @ Industrial Light & Magic
Message-ID: <14358.8347.488255.256931@falfa.lucasdigital.com>

Hi All,

Barry added this announcement to the Python Job Board @
http://www.python.org/Jobs.html yesterday.

------------%< snip %<----------------------%< snip %<------------

For over two decades, Industrial Light & Magic has set the standard
for visual effects, creating some of the most stunning images in the
history of film. Now at the forefront of the digital revolution, ILM
continues to break new ground in visual effects. Founded in 1975 by
George Lucas, ILM is the leading effects facility in the world having
played a key role in 8 of the top 10 worldwide box office hits of all
time, winning 14 Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and 14
Technical Achievement Awards.

Located in San Rafael, California, just north of San Francisco, ILM is
a division of Lucas Digital Ltd. LLC, which also includes Skywalker
Sound. Formed in 1993, Lucas Digital Ltd. LLC is dedicated to serving
the digital needs of the entertainment industry for visual effects and
audio post-production.

Currently ILM is seeking a Python-savvy Script Programmer to work in
our Production Software Department. For more information visit
http://www.ilm.com.

Look for the "Scripts Programmer Job #111-00" under "ILM Production
Engineering".



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Tue Oct 19 10:14:20 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 16:14:20 +0200
Subject: SWIG trouble...
Message-ID: <y0jbt9vl9oj.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

I'm just having some trouble making SWIG work properly, and I wondered
if maybe it was a standard problem... I've compiled it, and it runs
and generates wrappers etc., but when I import the resulting modules
in Python, I get stuff like:

>>> dir(example)
['__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'cvar', '\200\242 ', '\320&
\034\320\006 \034\322\002 \014\200\242`']
>>> 

And if I try to access some of the functions I've written, they are
not accessible (which seems natural, given the dir above...)

The installation passed all the tests ...

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From sekter at mail.matav.hu  Thu Oct 28 06:09:59 1999
From: sekter at mail.matav.hu (sekter)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 12:09:59 +0200
Subject: Newbie question
Message-ID: <000d01bf212c$97e5ca40$029f38c3@geometria.hu>

Ma?tre Soubi <soubies at ese-metz.fr> wrote in message
news:<7v7c0b$1r3$1 at news.univ-metz.fr>...
> I am a French student, and I'm gathering information for a project I have
to
> conduct...
> I am currently pondering the possibility that I use Zope as an intranet
> server, but I need some information in order to know if it is worth
learning
> the Python language from scratch.

Yes, it is extremly worth

> I need to write an application that would take all forms of documents
(.doc,
> .xls, etc...), then send it to Zope to be published on the intranet, and
> keep a trace of the date somewhere.

Zope supports WebDAV, and if your users use Windows(I suppose:-) this can be
done by drag&drop.

> This application should be as easy to use and as user-friendly as
possible,
> since most of its users won't know much about computers.
> I plan to make an icon, to which you would drag your document, and then
all
> the conversions and the publishing would be done  automatically.
> Do you know if it is possible, and if it is, how hard is it?
> Is Python the language I should use for such a task?

Of course yes.
Arpad Kiss





From martinp at mincom.com  Tue Oct 19 01:00:33 1999
From: martinp at mincom.com (Martin Pool)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:00:33 +1000
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000701bf17bf$ee71efe0$3e2d153f@tim> <slrn80kkc1.1r1o.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <380BFAF1.116FB21E@mincom.com>

Cliff Crawford wrote:
> I always liked BEGIN...WHILE...REPEAT in Forth.  I guess the Python version
> would look like:
> 
>   begin:
>     x=f.readline()
>   while x:
>     print x
> 
> The point being, you check the condition in the middle of the loop, instead
> of at the beginning or the end.

At least the structure of 

  while 1:
    x = f.readline()
    if not x: break
    print x

is the same.  So it's really just a matter of whether we want a larger,
more specific syntax, or a smaller syntax that relies a little more on
people using idioms.

--
Martin

"Don't confuse excellence, which is achievable, with perfection, which
is elusive." -- Anon



From nikolai at micon.no  Wed Oct 20 18:17:10 1999
From: nikolai at micon.no (Nikolai Kirsebom)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 00:17:10 +0200
Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
References: <NBBBKMMANMGEEBHPJJECAEGCFFAA.dirkl@home.com>
Message-ID: <c8rP3.7757$7G2.44299@news1.online.no>

I don't know if I fully understand your question, but I've written a
'generic python class' which processes the Request and puts/retreives
objects in a database (all processed on ASP pages).

I use the QueryString member-method of the Request object together with
string split:

Something like:

rq = string.split(Request.QueryString(), "&")
...
for par in rq:
   token, val = string.split(par,"=")
   self.__dict__[token] = val
db = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Connection")
db.Open(self.Dsn)
rs = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Recordset")
s = "select * from %s where Id=%d" % (self.Table, self.Attr["Id"])
rs.Open(s, db, adOpenDynamic, adLockOptimistic, adCmdText)
for a in self.Attr.keys():
   rs.Fields(a).Value = self.Attr(a)
rs.Update()
rs.Close()
db.Close()
...

The method 'Attr' of course just tries to fetch the value from object's
dictionary.


Note that you probably have to make use of the urllib module on the string.

Hope this helps.

Nikolai


Dirk Leas wrote in message ...
>Thanks for the response..
>
>I tried the first approach  and got the following is the response: "This
>object does not support enumeration". In the second approach, "r" comes
back
>as None. I tested both with IIS and PWS.
>
>Where can I go to dig deeper into this?
>
>Thx,
>D
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Hammond [mailto:mhammond at skippinet.com.au]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 8:51 AM
>To: 'LS, Python'
>Subject: RE: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
>
>
>Im not in a position to test this, but one of either:
>
>for r in Request:
>  print r
>
>i=1
>while 1:
>  try:
>    r = Request.Item(i)
>  except pythoncom.com_error:
>    break
>
>should work...
>
>Mark.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: python-list-admin at python.org
>[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Dirk Leas
>Sent: Saturday, 16 October 1999 1:38
>To: LS, Python
>Subject: Convert ASP Request to sequence (PythonWin)
>
>
>I've installed PythonWin and am trying to do some python scripting w/n
>ASP. If you know the form field by name, something like "name =
>str(Request("name"))" works great. How do you access Request fields if
>you don't know their name -- say you wanted to write a generic dump
>script that would dump all the field names and values? Seems like
>there would be a way to coerce the COM Request into some type of
>python sequence. Anybody know the "secret racoon handshake"?
>
>Thanks
>D
>
>
>
>
>





From aahz at netcom.com  Sun Oct 17 01:32:05 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 17 Oct 1999 05:32:05 GMT
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
References: <1271991668-7727673@hypernet.com> <874sfqefx0.fsf@slip-32-101-160-199.ma.us.prserv.net>
Message-ID: <7ubn0l$15o$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <874sfqefx0.fsf at slip-32-101-160-199.ma.us.prserv.net>,
greg andruk  <meowing at banet.net> wrote:
>In nnmh:python, Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>> greg andruk wrote:
>>> In nnmh:python, Bill Rodgers <Bill at nospam.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I would like to check for the existance of a file before I
>>>> attempt an open and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a
>>>> way to do this.
>>> 
>>> os.stat() will do the job.
>
>>>>> os.stat('kablooie')
>> Traceback (innermost last):
>>   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
>> OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'kablooie'
>>>>> 
>
>Right, it throws an exception, just what was asked for.  And on
>success, the permissions and file/dir/etc. status are available.

Actually, Bill wrote confusingly, but his intention was to ask for a
method that *doesn't* throw an exception (the "and" combined "open" and
"exception"; it wasn't a sentence separator).  Isn't English fun?
Gordon gave the right answer.

(Not your fault, I thought that's what he meant the first read, too.)
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From sekter at mail.matav.hu  Sat Oct  9 16:03:45 1999
From: sekter at mail.matav.hu (Arpad Kiss)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 22:03:45 +0200
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process
References: <37FF5655.F6A0B896@ionet.net>
Message-ID: <004401bf1291$654f0aa0$010101c1@home>

What about xml-rpc?
Arpad

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Steven H. Rogers <shrogers at ionet.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 1999 4:51 PM
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process


> Given a Java application and a Zope webserver (may or may not be running
> on the same machine):  What would be a good way to set up a
> communications link between the two?  
> 
> Some tools that come to mind are HTTP, ILU, XML.  Has anyone done
> anything like this and/or care to comment?
> 
> -- Steve
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From jsight at mindspring.com  Thu Oct 28 18:56:59 1999
From: jsight at mindspring.com (Jesse D. Sightler)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:56:59 -0700
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia> <381599b1.89775720@news.oh.verio.com> <38162C4F.EB030755@mindspring.com> <7v8tdo$al7$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7v9e9f$f53$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <3818D4BB.9648CB6C@mindspring.com>

"D'Arcy J.M. Cain" wrote:
> 
> bgkloss at my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> >> > Nope, no flames.   I have to agree with you - it kills me that I
> > can't find a
> >> > place to run Python CGI.
> >>
> >> Er, why not just use http://www.pair.com/ ?  Their hosting quality is
> >> quite good, and they DO support Python.
> >>
> >> Unfortunately no Zope yet, though.  :(
> > Also try Hurricane Electric - http://www.he.com - they don't install
> > python by default, but you have a shell account and can install it if
> > you like.  Haven't tried Zope yet, I'm afraid
> 
> Vex.Net (http://www.vex.net/) offers shell access and has Python, PyApache
> and Zope installed.  I haven't had a chance to work with Zope myself but
> if you are familiar with it I am sure we can get it configured for you.

Good pricing and support for Zope?  I'm pretty impressed.  Perhaps you
should consider adding yourself to the Zope Hosting Sites list at
http://www.zope.org so that others looking for such support will be able
to find you?

---------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www.biddin.com/



From godzilla at netmeg.net  Tue Oct 19 11:38:27 1999
From: godzilla at netmeg.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:38:27 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net>

fred drake said:

> something to consider is options which may be repeated; often we
> write code for which --verbose (or -v)

ahhh, okay. hadnt thought about that one. i usually dont write stuff
that needs that kinda thing. on the other hand, what would be wrong
with coding -v3 (verbose level 3)? seems easier to me somehow...

>   (No, I'm not saying a better approach isn't desirable or
>   warranted, just trying to point out one of the issues.)

thanks. i figured getopt was designed the way it was for a reason, and 
wanted to hear what they were. still, i personally will veer towards
the getargs or similar py modules for my own stuff....

les schaffer



From czjity at YoDanet.com  Thu Oct 21 15:45:46 1999
From: czjity at YoDanet.com (czjity at YoDanet.com)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:45:46 -0700
Subject: Sharon Stone goes SPREADWIDE
Message-ID: <67821AB23987D311ADB100A0241979E53DADC2@news.ykm.com>

Answers all your questions (if you know what i mean)

http://www.sports.tmfweb.nl/






From viktor at dtek.chalmers.se  Sat Oct  2 13:30:18 1999
From: viktor at dtek.chalmers.se (Viktor Fougstedt)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 17:30:18 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <7t5ffa$1h6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se>

puter_programmer at yahoo.com (Dan) writes:



>I suppose I should clarify my request. :-)

>What I want to do is to have a parent process spawn off a child
>process which then waits for new file descriptor (socket) to come from
>the parent.  The parent after it spawns several children will wait
>listen on a socket for new connections which it will pass to one of
>the child processes after the connection has been established.


Depending on the UNIX flavour you use, the passing of open
filedescriptors is done in different ways. On most System-V-based
systems, such as Solaris, sending an open fildescriptor in regular
C-programs requires you to have an open STREAM between the two
processes (a pipe will do fine most of the time). You then ioctl()
this stream with a I_SENDFD in the sender end and a I_RECVFD in the
receiver end, and your filedescriptor will be passed.

I do not know if you can use the fcntl.ioctl() call in Python to do
the same thing, but my guess is it should work (if you are on a
machine whose UNIX dialect supports the I_SENDFD/I_RECVFD ioctls, that
is. Check your local ioctl() manpage). A quick glance at the Python
interpreter's source-code seems to indicate that this _should_ work,
but I'm not certain.

I suppose the best thing would be to actually try it. :-) IPC in UNIX
isn't exactly a breeze to get working properly, and sending
open fildescriptors between otherwise unrelated processes is not the
easiest form of IPC there is, either.

If I get the time tonight, I'll give it a shot and see if I can make
it work.


/Viktor...

-- 
--|     Viktor Fougstedt, system administrator at dtek.chalmers.se     |--
--|                http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~viktor/                |--
--| ...soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. /Tom Lehrer |--



From zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de  Sun Oct 31 16:21:29 1999
From: zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Gregor Zych)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 22:21:29 +0100
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <c75aep1n5qq.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <87904konsk.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <m3aep0pwfc.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
Message-ID: <8766znql9i.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>

Bernhard Herzog <herzog at online.de> writes:

> Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> 
> > > Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> > > 
> > > > Hi!
> > > > How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try
> > > > 
> > > > startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
> > > > os.system(startexe)
> > > > 
> > > > but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
> > > > gets the final file written correctly.
> 
> The first thing I do when I have problems with os.system() is to check
> whether the command works properly when run in an interactive shell.
> Have you tried that?
Yes.
> FWIW, I use the code below in Sketch to render preview images for
> embedded eps files. Apart from some postscript trickery to make sure the
> contents of the BoundingBox are positioned correctly and that showpage
> is executed exactly once, the only difference I can see in my code is
> that I use -c quit instead of quit.ps.
No difference.
> 
> To make sure that piping the output through some ppm-utility isn't the
> problem, I've just checked it by piping it through pnminvert and it
> worked as expected.
> 
> gs_command = ('gs -sDEVICE=ppmraw -r%(resolution)d -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -q'
> 	      ' -sOutputFile=%(temp)s -g%(width)dx%(height)d'
                             ^^^^^^^^ This is fine until you send this 
stuff to stdout. Either Python doesn't realize that gs is ready OR gs
doesn't send the correct exit code.
> 	      ' -c %(offx)f %(offy)f translate'
> 	      ' /oldshowpage /showpage load def /showpage \'{}\' def '
> 	      ' -f%(filename)s -c oldshowpage quit')
-- deleted -----

> 
> -- 
> Bernhard Herzog	  | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
> herzog at online.de  | http://www.online.de/home/sketch/
Ciao
	Gregor



From gerglery at usa.net  Sat Oct 30 04:55:37 1999
From: gerglery at usa.net (greg andruk)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 04:55:37 -0400
Subject: multiline prototyping on command line
References: <slrn81la5n.2fh.eric@plum.fruitcom.com>
Message-ID: <87so2ttegm.fsf@slip166-72-251-9.ma.us.prserv.net>

Eric Smith <eric at fruitcom.com> wrote:

> I am am a perl programmer looking at Python and would like to know whether
> it is possible on the command line to test algorithms like I do in perl
> thusly:

> perl -e '$r="de";if ($r eq "whatever" or "de") {print "a match\n"}

Nitpick: I don't think the above is testing what you think it's
testing; it will always print "a match" regardless of $r's value.
I'll assume you meant `...($r eq "whatever" or $r eq "de")...' there.

Anyway, Python's not especially amenable to one-liners.  Instead, it
has a really spiffy interactive mode you can leave running in a window
or spare console session that works like you probably wish `perl -d'
worked:

meowing:~$ pytest
Python 1.5.2+ (#2, Oct 25 1999, 05:27:05)  [GCC 2.7.2.3] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> r = 'de'
>>> r in ('whatever', 'de')
1
>>> # and just for the heck of it...
... r == 'whatever' or 'de'
'de'
>>> 



From jima at aspectdv.com  Fri Oct 15 18:51:54 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:51:54 -0700
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <38078AEB.82797F13@bioreason.com>
References: <003701bf171e$fc797820$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <199910152247.PAA14699@hermes.aspectdv.com>

Just out of curiosity,

My understanding is that exceptions
are compared by reference and not
by value (is this correct?).

So does

>>>try:
>>>  raise: "Hack"
>>>except "Hack"

only work by happenstance because the standard 
Python implementation keeps a reusable list
of literals (guessing) or because there is something
formal in the language that says it must work?

Thanks,

Jim



At 02:13 PM 10/15/99 -0600, Andrew Dalke wrote:

. . .
>
>May I suggest using
>
>def who_called_me():
>    try:
>        raise "Hack"
>    except "Hack":
>        return sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame.f_back.f_back.f_code.co_name
>
>?
>
>  There is a slight chance that someone might hit ^C in between
>the try/except.  Since ^C gets turned into an exception, your
>code will effectively ignore it, which isn't the right behaviour.
>
>						Andrew Dalke
>						dalke at acm.org
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From sean.cason at prodigy.net  Sun Oct  3 12:37:11 1999
From: sean.cason at prodigy.net (Sean)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 12:37:11 -0400
Subject: ADSI Access
Message-ID: <7t9bim$2ufe$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>

Can Python access Win2K's ADSI?





From maxsbox at scds.co.za  Sat Oct  9 02:18:39 1999
From: maxsbox at scds.co.za (maxsbox)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 08:18:39 +0200
Subject: Exec statement problem
Message-ID: <37FEDE3E.8BD45788@scds.co.za>

I have been trying to pass a variable to a query statement.

The statement exec: appears to be the answer, however I cannot get it to
work

wrote the following:

def art2(db, z):
    y = 'db.query("SELECT * FROM artisan WHERE name = \''
    y = y+z
    y = y+ '\'")'
    print y    # prints correct string
    exec y    # gives fault message

db is the connected data base
z is the required variable, in this case 'Nico"
Also tried a few variations of the exec statement with the same result

If someone can help with the correct syntax I will be most appreciative,
the docs are a bit terse on the subject.  The ability to create such a
search on the fly is fundamental to my wish to use pygresql.

Regards

Max Wood




From ratman at nmt.edu  Sat Oct 16 21:11:03 1999
From: ratman at nmt.edu (Jason Trowbridge)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 19:11:03 -0600
Subject: Adding info to Python Buglist
References: <3808C151.1D877904@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <38092227.A4E0B20A@nmt.edu>

I've located the problem.  It's a bug in the "binascii.c" module.

The binascii base64 decoding function assumes that, for every pad
character ('='), there is one less byte present in the output.  There
are only two valid quad sequences with the pad symbol: 'XXX=' and
'XX=='. Using the binascii assumption with '====', 4 characters are
removed from a string with 3 characters.  _PyString_Resize() is called
without checking whether the calling argument is a positive, and odd
behavior can follow.

The RFC* says that invalid sequences and characters should be ignored. 
This includes invalid pad sequences and invalid characters.  The
"binascii.c" file that I got for Python 1.5.2 does not ignore valid
characters or invalid pad sequences.  Characters are masked with 0x7f;
the binary value 0xc1 is mapped to the letter 'A' in this case.

I've fixed the problem in my copy of Python, and have included the patch
to "Modules/binascii.c" with this message.  To apply the patch:

  1) Go into the directory containing source code for Python 1.5.2.
  2) Go into the Modules directory.
  3) Apply the patch: patch -N binascii.c binascii.patch
  4) Recompile.

*The RFC I'm talking about is RFC 1521.  Section 5.2 details base64
encoding.

	Jason Trowbridge
	ratman at nmt.edu
-------------- next part --------------
diff -Naur older/Modules/binascii.c newer/Modules/binascii.c
--- older/Modules/binascii.c	Sat Oct 16 18:44:21 1999
+++ newer/Modules/binascii.c	Sat Oct 16 18:49:46 1999
@@ -75,6 +75,21 @@
 ** Jack Jansen, CWI, July 1995.
 */
 
+/*  I don't know about the other encodings, but base64 is detailed in the MIME
+ *  RFC.  Take a look at Section 5.2 of RFC 1521 at
+ *  http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1521.html for details on what's valid
+ *  and what's not.
+ *
+ *  Fixed a bug in base64 decoding involving illegal pad sequences.  Illegal
+ *  pad sequences would actually shorten the result string.  If there were
+ *  too many illegal pad sequences, the string could end up with a negative
+ *  length, resulting in Bad Things.
+ *
+ *  Fixed a bug where illegal characters could be remapped into legal
+ *  characters (instead of being ignored).
+ * 
+ *  --Jason Trowbridge
+ */
 
 #include "Python.h"
 
@@ -328,6 +343,29 @@
 	return rv;
 }
 
+
+int find_valid( char *s, int slen, int num )
+{
+	/* Finds & returns the (num+1)th valid character for base64, or -1 if none. */
+
+	int ret = -1, tmp;
+	unsigned char c, b64val;
+
+	while ((slen > 0) && (ret == -1)) {
+		c = *s;
+		b64val = table_a2b_base64[c & 0x7f];
+		if ( ((c <= 0x7f) && (b64val != (unsigned char)-1)) ) {
+			num--;
+			if (num == 0)
+				ret = *s;
+		}
+
+		s++;
+		slen--;
+	}
+	return ret;
+}
+
 static char doc_a2b_base64[] = "(ascii) -> bin. Decode a line of base64 data";
 
 static PyObject *
@@ -339,9 +377,10 @@
 	int leftbits = 0;
 	unsigned char this_ch;
 	unsigned int leftchar = 0;
-	int npad = 0;
+	int npadfills = 0;
 	PyObject *rv;
 	int ascii_len, bin_len;
+	int quad_pos = 0;
 	
 	if ( !PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "t#", &ascii_data, &ascii_len) )
 		return NULL;
@@ -353,37 +392,54 @@
 		return NULL;
 	bin_data = (unsigned char *)PyString_AsString(rv);
 	bin_len = 0;
-	for( ; ascii_len > 0 ; ascii_len--, ascii_data++ ) {
-		/* Skip some punctuation */
-		this_ch = (*ascii_data & 0x7f);
-		if ( this_ch == '\r' || this_ch == '\n' || this_ch == ' ' )
+
+	for( ; ascii_len > 0 ; ascii_len--, ascii_data++) {
+		this_ch = *ascii_data;
+
+		if (this_ch > 0x7f || this_ch == '\r' || this_ch == '\n' || this_ch == ' ')
 			continue;
-		
-		if ( this_ch == BASE64_PAD )
-			npad++;
-		this_ch = table_a2b_base64[(*ascii_data) & 0x7f];
-		if ( this_ch == (unsigned char) -1 ) continue;
+
+		if (this_ch == BASE64_PAD) {  // Ignore invalid pad sequences
+			if ( (quad_pos < 2) || 
+					 (quad_pos == 2) && (find_valid(ascii_data, ascii_len, 1) != '=') ) {
+				continue;
+			} else {
+				npadfills = 4 - quad_pos;
+			}
+		}
+
+		this_ch = table_a2b_base64[*ascii_data];
+		if ( this_ch == (unsigned char) -1 )
+			continue;
+
 		/*
 		** Shift it in on the low end, and see if there's
 		** a byte ready for output.
 		*/
+		quad_pos = (quad_pos + 1) & 0x03;
 		leftchar = (leftchar << 6) | (this_ch);
 		leftbits += 6;
+
 		if ( leftbits >= 8 ) {
 			leftbits -= 8;
-			*bin_data++ = (leftchar >> leftbits) & 0xff;
+			
+			if (npadfills == 0) {
+				*bin_data++ = (leftchar >> leftbits) & 0xff;
+				bin_len++;
+			} else {
+				npadfills--;
+			}
+
 			leftchar &= ((1 << leftbits) - 1);
-			bin_len++;
 		}
-	}
-	/* Check that no bits are left */
-	if ( leftbits ) {
+ 	}
+
+	if (leftbits != 0) {
 		PyErr_SetString(Error, "Incorrect padding");
 		Py_DECREF(rv);
 		return NULL;
 	}
-	/* and remove any padding */
-	bin_len -= npad;
+
 	/* and set string size correctly */
 	_PyString_Resize(&rv, bin_len);
 	return rv;

From hj_ka at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 12 18:01:45 1999
From: hj_ka at my-deja.com (hj_ka at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 22:01:45 GMT
Subject: zope: system variables?
Message-ID: <7u0b42$g0c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hi,

Sorry, I am not sure whether I posted the message
correctly, I apologize if this message appears twice.

I am starting to play with Zope. And I see some
pre-defined variables like

standard_html_header
BASE2
URL1
title
standard_html_footer

etc. Where can I find documentation for all the
pre-defined variables?

regards,

HJ


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Wed Oct 13 02:37:46 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 02:37:46 -0400
Subject: Improved struct module
In-Reply-To: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BE09107@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>
Message-ID: <000301bf1545$76b71560$ed2d153f@tim>

[Tim, asks why the xstruct extension
    http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html
 is written in C
]

[Robin Boerdijk]
> There are a number of reasons for implementing the xstruct module in C as
> opposed to implementing it as a Python wrapper around the current struct
> module.
>
> 1. Implementing it as a Python wrapper would be horribly inefficient and
> not as simple as you seem to think. To randomly change the value of a
field
> somewhere in the middle of a packed binary data buffer, I would have to do
> something like:
>  ... [code to randomly change the value of a field somewhere in the middle
>       of a binary string] ...

But that's not a reasonable implementation -- the data only needs to be in
packed form when it's made externally visible; e.g., Just van Rossum's
sstruct module got toward a similar end by slinging ordinary class instance
dicts:

     http://starship.python.net/crew/just/code/sstruct.py

Mutations are faster that way, despite being written in Python.  Just pays
for a regular struct.pack() at the end (and/or struct.unpack() at the
start), though.

> I also feel that the xstruct's interface is the more natural interface for
> low-level access to packed binary data structures.

People will argue that both ways (the usual "wordy vs concise" and "two
steps vs one step" arguments), but I don't see that the spelling of the
interface bears one way or the other on the choice of implementation
language.

> I'm pretty sure that most people currently using the pack/unpack interface
> would not have done so if they had a more structured interface like
xstruct
> provides (see another follow-up to your reply).

Just's sstruct.py has been around for about a year, but isn't mentioned
much.  I can't help but draw an analogy to Ka-Ping Yee's "nice but wordy"
regexp wrapper -- the wordier approaches have their fans (among which I
sometimes appear <wink>), but in a world overwhelmingly filled with 4-member
structs and 15-character regexps, most people vote for
concise-despite-cryptic one-step approaches most of the time.

So I disagree on this one:  given a choice, most people would continue to
use the gibberish format strings.  Wordier interfaces are wonderful when
things get complicated, though, and it's good to have a choice.

It would help if you beefed up the docs.  For example, none of the module's
magic constants are documented (whether for layout, field type or "flags");
doc strings are generally absent; and objects of type structdef and
structobject respond to dir() by returning an empty list.  Because of this,
you really have to be an expert in the use of the current struct module to
approach the xstruct module, and there's no way to figure it out except by
reading the implementation code.

> 2. The xstruct objects support the new buffer interface of Python 1.5.2.
> This makes it possible to read and write data directly from a
> file or socket into and out of a packed memory buffer. All we have to do
> is to add support for the buffer interface to other low level modules like
> cStringIO and socket (files already do !!) and we would have a perfect set
> of seemlessly fitting, complementary packages. How could I achieve this in
> native Python ?

You could not at present, although it's not clear that's a bad thing.  The
buffer interface has had a troubled history, and it's unclear whether it
will survive.  The confusions surrounding it largely account for why it's
almost wholly undocumented, and not yet widely implemented even internally.
It's not ready for prime time (e.g., it's easy to crash the interpreter with
the little that's already there, staying within pure Python).

If it becomes fully supported, ways to get at it from within Python will tag
along (note that there's already a builtin "buffer()" function -- that's the
hook).

> Another reason for providing the buffer interface is to facilitate writing
> extension modules for C APIs that make heavily use of C structs. The most
> notorious example I know is the MQI interface of IBMs MQSeries. I think it
> defines more than 20 C structs, all of which I can define in
> Python now and still interact nicely with the Python MQI extension module
> written in C.

Haven't heard of this, but don't people use SWIG anymore <0.7 wink>?

mucking-with-raw-c-structs-is-a-thing-to-avoid-ly y'rs  - tim





From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct  9 17:31:55 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 17:31:55 -0400
Subject: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000a01bf129d$b59e9e60$b32d153f@tim>

[Preston Landers]
> ...
> By the way, is there a function equivilent to the following in the
> standard Python module library?
>
> def unquote(s):
>     """Remove any enclosing quotes around a string."""
>     if (s[:1] == "'" and s[-1:] == "'") or \
>        (s[:1] == '"' and s[-1:] == '"'):
>         return s[1:-1]
>     else:
>         return s

No.  Did you intend for it to transform "'" and '"' into empty strings?
Even if not, still no.  Even worse, think of any string transformation at
random, and chances are there's no std function for doing that one either
<wink>.

Note that it's a little easier to write this one via e.g.

    if s[:1] == "'" == s[-1:] or ...

or

    if s and s[0] == s[-1] and s[0] in "\"'":

guido-supplied-addition-we-can-add-42-ourselves-ly y'rs  - tim





From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Fri Oct 29 18:28:58 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 29 Oct 1999 23:28:58 +0100
Subject: self-registering objects?
References: <7vcu4u$592@mail.psy.uva.nl>
Message-ID: <m3puxx7qdx.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

"Ionel Simionescu" <ionel at psy.uva.nl> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I would like objects of a certain class to be able of registering themselves
> in a global dictionary, __register__, possibly upon __init__.
> 
> __register__ should contain associatins such as:
> 
> { 'ID': <__main__.certain_class instance at ####> }
> 
> Unfortunately, the naive:

"the naive" works more often than you'd think in Python (that's one of
the great things about it).

> def __init__(self, etc.):
>     global __register__
>     self.ID = 'instance1'
>     __register__[self.ID] = self
> 
> Does NOT work.
> 
> The object that I find in the __register__ under the given ID is apparently
> just the bare bones of the class and gets none of the changes incured to the
> instance after registration.

Really? That's odd. Can you post the code that's misbehaving, that's
always much more helpful; what you have above looks to me if it should
work.
 
> It's is not a problem if I register the object "from outside",
> but I would like to understand what's going on...

So would I... you've stirred my curiosity.

more-code-please-ly y'rs
Michael




From tjs at longford.cs.monash.edu.au  Wed Oct 13 00:28:49 1999
From: tjs at longford.cs.monash.edu.au (Toby J Sargeant)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:28:49 +1000
Subject: problem with python 1.5.2 compiled with -DPy_DEBUG
In-Reply-To: <19991013135942.A4258@longford.cs.monash.edu.au>; from Toby J Sargeant on Wed, Oct 13, 1999 at 01:59:42PM +1000
References: <19991013135942.A4258@longford.cs.monash.edu.au>
Message-ID: <19991013142849.B4258@longford.cs.monash.edu.au>

I should also include the following:

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 13 1999, 14:15:09)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs- on linux2

Linux ephedra 2.2.7 #2 Thu May 6 14:10:35 EST 1999 i686 unknown

(Redhat 6.0)

glibc-2.1.1



From davidopp at megsinet.net  Wed Oct  6 01:15:06 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 01:15:06 -0400
Subject: Do You Have a Powerful Computer, a few extra minutes,& Microsoft Word?
Message-ID: <37FADAD9.AFFF8684@megsinet.net>

Dear Group,

A Linux friend would like to view the Quick Python online draft but
doesn't have Microsoft Word or a Word viewer.  He tells me he can read
it if its in HTML.

I would appreciate it if someone would download the book, save it in
HTML, and send me the book in HTML.  I have Microsoft Word, but My
Pentium 75 with 32 MB RAM is just not up to the task.  I have tried
multiple times and it locks up about half way through.

Thanks,

David Oppenheimer
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/19991006/e61273ca/attachment.html>

From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Oct  7 16:26:38 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 20:26:38 GMT
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <XFMail.991006205930.mikael@isy.liu.se> <slrn7vnr6h.250.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <5l670j70fz.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7tiqdc$lau$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn7vpt2b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl> <slrn7vpu9b.jua.scarblac-spamtrap@flits104-37.flits.rug.nl>
Message-ID: <7tivlu$ho0$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Remco Gerlich <scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx> wrote:
> Remco Gerlich <scarblac-spamtrap at pino.selwerd.cx> wrote:
>> Wat IS dit? Klinkt ongelooflijk interessant. Heb je daar URLs over? :-)

> Sorry for the Dutch, this was meant as an email, was asking what
> he was talking about and if he had an URL about it.

Everybody, even if they live in .cx, wherever this may be, that uses
Python knows Dutch. It's a cosmic conspiracy! :) No URLs, but you should
check out Tierra, which does have web pages. Being lazy, I'll just
point out someone else mentioned an URL earlier in the thread. :)

I should convert the paper I wrote about to the web. I shudder about releasing
my C++ sources though; it's not amazingly well designed...

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From aaryn at Ag.Arizona.Edu  Mon Oct  4 18:31:15 1999
From: aaryn at Ag.Arizona.Edu (Aaryn Olsson)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 15:31:15 -0700 (MST)
Subject: password problem
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910041527590.1518-100000@Ag.Arizona.Edu>

Dear mailman users,

I am owner of a list on ag.arizona.edu and cannot remember the password.
How do I get the password?  The list I'm trying to regain access to is at 
http://ag.arizona.edu/mailman/admindb/aaryntest.

Aaryn Olsson




From mjackson at wc.eso.mc.xerox.com  Mon Oct 25 00:05:03 1999
From: mjackson at wc.eso.mc.xerox.com (Mark Jackson)
Date: 25 Oct 1999 04:05:03 GMT
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
References: <000101bf1e99$72c361e0$f12d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7v0ktf$4gj$1@news.wrc.xerox.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:
> That's certainly clear!  The first line of the docstring doesn't help,
> though.  This has begun to matter (to me, and hence it should now matter to
> everyone <wink>) in the current CVS versions of IDLE and PythonWin, where
> Mark Hammond's calltips extension pops up a little window containing the
> first line of the docstring as you're typing a function/method call.  I've
> been playing with simply repeating the arglist in the docstring's first
> line, as in
> 
> def complex(real=0.0, imag=0.0):
>     """real=0., imag=0. -> return a complex number.
> 
>     Keyword arg "real" (default 0.) gives the real part of the result.
>     Keyword arg "imag" (default 0.) gives the imaginary part of the result.
>     """

IIRC there's a stricture in the Style Guide against repeating arglists
in doc strings.  It's certainly ugly, since when one looks at the code
the information is now present twice (possibly once right and once
wrong).  Surely the Right Thing is for calltips (and any other tool
that displays docstrings) to autogenerate the calling syntax from the
func_code?

-- 
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
	Kids, thinking about theories is no way to get an education!
				- God-Man (Ruben Bolling)





From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct  7 10:29:45 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:29:45 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Dupes
References: <002e01bf10c7$7a1b77a0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <14332.44633.274682.563117@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "AE" == Adrian Eyre <a.eyre at optichrome.com> writes:

    AE> Now that the mailing list has been moved, I'm getting dupes of
    AE> every message.

You were probably subscribed to the old list at CWI.  Re-read the
announcement carefully.
    
    AE> Is everyone expected to unsubscribe from the
    AE> old list?

No.
    
    AE> Shouldn't this have been done automatically?

Yes.  Just the hazards of coordinating things across the Atlantic.
Should be all fixed by today.

-Barry



From x at x.x  Thu Oct 28 18:27:18 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 18:27:18 -0400
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <3815782E.FC516671@lemburg.com> <14358.6224.856497.573781@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> <3816AC57.28D9C8B@lemburg.com> <38179509.4746748D@mincom.com> <3818161D.6B946CEE@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3818CDC6.A7854F75@x.x>

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
> Do I have to import anything special to get the System symbol into
> the current namespace or is System a builtin in JPython ? E.g.
> would
> 
> def java_vendor():
>    return System.getProperty('java.vendor')
> 
> work out of the box on JPython ? (Don't have a working jpython
> installation here at the moment to test this myself.)

Just the way you'd expect to have to do it in Python,
using import:

def java_vendor():
  from java.lang import System
  return System.getProperty("java.vendor")

Aren't controlled namespaces wonderful? :)



From harryt at gte.net  Mon Oct 11 08:17:06 1999
From: harryt at gte.net (Harry Tanovich)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:17:06 GMT
Subject: More PyGreSQL questions
References: <37FE7E42.81445455@gte.net> <7tn6a2$15qv$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <3801D71D.CCFB71E3@gte.net>

"D'Arcy J.M. Cain" wrote:

> Harry Tanovich <harryt at gte.net> wrote:
> > I just skimmed over the source AND I'm pretty unfamiliar with
> > postgresql, but how hard would it be to re-do PyGreSQL so that:
>
> The next version of PyGreSQL (with DB-API 2.0) is going to start being
> worked on.  You should join the mailing list if you have suggestions
> on changes.
>

Thanks, I just did.

>
> > a) query results aren't strings but binary values that map directly to
> > python types
>
> Not sure what you mean by this.  It currently does check the type and
> only falls back to string if there is no good Python object type to
> convert to.  It converts to integers and floats as necessary.
>

line 1023 of the pgmodule.c that I've got has the first of a few strtod
calls.

>
> > b) cursors are used to fetch just as many rows as you want from the
> > database
>
> I believe this will be required for DB-API anyway.

Cool.

Thanks.

>
>
> --
> D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
> http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
> +1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.




From bvqesu at heal.com  Mon Oct 11 16:54:26 1999
From: bvqesu at heal.com (bvqesu at heal.com)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 20:54:26 GMT
Subject: you can do it  2804
Message-ID: <939675266.406945@news.thyssen.com>

gdryypkpybtnorznpvyttpeewompnbxtzinziersvtrqrtkotnmhtwkzutbkulosmrhnnmbvzwqvwyqizemtgzmmwsrffmhq






From josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu  Thu Oct 14 01:36:00 1999
From: josh at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Joshua Marcus)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 05:36:00 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7u3q40$1jo$1@netnews.upenn.edu>

Tim Peters (tim_one at email.msn.com) [illuminates the unenlightened]:
:     while 1:
:         xxx
:         yyy
:         if not condition:
:             break

ah-ha!  While it does immediately seem wordy, this does seem like a 
perfectly good idiom.  I'm half-convinced.

Still, what's the rejoinder to the following proposal?

do while condition:
    xxxx
    yyyy

or just

do condition:
   xxxx
   yyyy

...where the do while combo or simply do indicates that the loop should
be executed at least once.  Sure, it would be potentially *more* crisp 
if Python syntax used closing phrases-- but just because do...while's aren't 
ideal with whitespace bracketing doesn't mean that they should be 
... sniff ...rejected entirely.

i-suppose-now-would-be-a-bad-time-to-case-for-case-ly y'rs,
--j



From donn at u.washington.edu  Fri Oct 15 12:34:19 1999
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 16:34:19 GMT
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <38059DF4.53C25FF1@compaq.com> <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87puylf1fs.fsf@psyche.evansnet> <7tv9ro$l0k$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7u7l2b$o0m$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at compaq.com>:
| henk_p at my-deja.com wrote:
|> 
|> If I log out, I want the process to continue, so in some way it has to
|> detach itself from the shell parent process.
|
| Exiting of the parent process won't cause the child to die;
| it will be inherited by the init process. (On BSD-influenced
| unices, anyway - I'm not sure about pure SysV derivatives.)

I think he's looking out for a terminal driver issue.  The terminal
driver works with terminal driver process groups, and when it gets
a disconnect it arranges for a SIGHUP to be delivered to process groups
currently associated with that terminal.  Hence the mania for cutting
a daemon loose from its ``controlling terminal'', via obscure and
not too portable ioctls (specifically TIOCNOTTY, issued to the current
controlling terminal device, '/dev/tty'.)

Sometimes a shell will get into the act and deliver SIGHUP signals
to its background jobs on logout.  Hence the common practice
of a fork() where the parent exits right away and the child continues,
losing the background job.

It's also common practice to close all open file descriptors, prior
to the TIOCNOTTY step.  That may be essential for the TIOCNOTTY, but
probably is just resource deallocation lest some inode or device be
kept around indefinitely because the daemon happened to inherit it.
Of course Stevens' book on UNIX programming is going to cover these
matters in much more authoritative way, I probably have half of it wrong.

	Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington
	donn at u.washington.edu



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Oct 22 12:53:31 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:53:31 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name (platform.py)
References: <199910212239.IAA31097@piglet.dstc.edu.au> <slrn80v8m2.cof.bgdarnel@bgdarnel.dhis.org> <38103E4A.6AB21DAD@lemburg.com> <381058C7.7BBE3C7F@lemburg.com> <19991022104524.A64947452@vislab.epa.gov> <381085AB.8CEEA44A@lemburg.com> <381092FA.60E1F749@rubic.com>
Message-ID: <3810968B.F30FCE68@lemburg.com>

Jeff Bauer wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> > Some information about MSDOS, Amiga and Windows CE would also
> > be nice, BTW.
> >
> > If all goes well, the module might be a good candidate for the
> > standard distribution. It offers *much* more detailed information
> > than sys.platform.
> 
> A worthy goal.
> 
> > I've uploaded a new version:
> >     http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py
> > To see if it works on your platform, simply run the script.
> 
> It works on CE:
> 
> >>> platform.platform()
> 'wince'
> >>> platform.system()
> 'wince'
> >>> platform.node()
> 'Handheld_PC'
> 
> All other values return the null string, but it
> should not be difficult to figure out: release,
> version, machine, and processor.  If you'll leave
> a slot open for 'wince' in your next release, I'm
> sure we can supply the code to compute these values.

I've just uploaded a new version with 'wince' in the
supported versions for system_ver(). Could you try it ?

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    70 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From mcfletch at vrtelecom.com  Wed Oct 13 22:57:12 1999
From: mcfletch at vrtelecom.com (Mike Fletcher)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:57:12 -0400
Subject: recursive copy in a directory tree?
In-Reply-To: <7u39g2$ki5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAPHEKGOBIHCBLIICELOCAAA.mcfletch@vrtelecom.com>

This class has fairly primitive support for only copying newer files,
gathers a list of all directory/files before copying, so you could pop up a
window allowing the user to review the proposed copy set, allows for
filtering both directories and files (i.e. you can skip subdirectories by
glob specification), and allows you to specify a different copy function, in
case you need something more advanced/funky.  Since the whole thing is a
class, and has been broken down into a large number of methods, in theory,
you could create subclasses to do whatever you like.

This is not a good example of python programming. It is released into the
public domain to corrupt the minds of others, with no guarantee of fitness,
applicability, stability etc. Use at your own risk! It is not high-quality
code.  It does almost no error checking. It is considered extremely
dangerous, potentially armed, and should be shot on sight. Citizens are
warned not to attempt to approach it, but should instead, call their local
FBI headquarters (found in phone book under Brother, Big) and barricade
their hard drives.  I do not think I'm likely to fix anything in here (I
just wrote it in response to this question, don't have much use for it
myself), so feel free to tinker.

A committed programmer would likely want to add some sort of command-line
interface as well, but I'm too lazy :-P .

Enjoy yourself,
Mike

8<______________________________ copydirectory.py ___________
import glob, os, shutil, stat, string
class CopyDirectory:
	def __init__ (self, source, destination, pattern="*", directorypattern =
"*",
				  overwriteolder=1, copyfile = shutil.copyfile):
		self.sourcedirectory = source
		self.destinationdirectory = destination
		self.pattern = pattern
		self.directorypattern = directorypattern
		self.overwriteolder = overwriteolder
		self.directorylist = []
		self.filelist = []
		self.copyfile = copyfile
	def process (self):
		print "Gathering file list"
		self.walk ()
		print "Building directory tree and copying files"
		self.go ()
	def walk (self):
		'''
		Gather the list of directories and files to copy
		'''
		os.path.walk(self.sourcedirectory, self._copydir, self )
	def go (self):
		'''
		Perform the primary function of copying a directory
		given an already constructed directory and file list
		(generally created by walk)
		'''
		for directory in self.directorylist:
			# following is built in to this class
			self.copydirectory (directory)
		for source, destination in self.filelist:
			print "%s --> %s"%(source, destination)
			# following is an argument to the constructor
			self.copyfile (source, destination)
	def _copydir( self, arg, directory, files):
		'''
		Perform copying for a particular directory
		'''
		#print directory
		# collect files, use files if we have '*' pattern
		workingfiles = self._files (directory, files)
		# filter subdirectories, modifies files in-place
		self._subdirectories (directory, files)
		destinationdirectory = self._directorysetup( directory )
		# should provide option for not overwriting files
		# possibly with date checks etc.
		# For extra marks, just collect this information
		# and return a list of copies to be made,
		# so the user can review before copying.
		# Do the copying
		#print workingfiles
		for file in workingfiles:
			source = os.path.join( directory, file)
			destination = os.path.join( destinationdirectory, file)
			if self.overwriteolder and os.path.exists( destination):
				if os.stat( source )[stat.ST_MTIME] >
os.stat( destination )[stat.ST_MTIME]:
					# we don't care if it's older, or it is older (hopefully)
					self.filelist.append( (source, destination) )
				else:
					print "skip %s (source not newer)"%(source)
			else:
				self.filelist.append( (source, destination) )
	def _subdirectories ( self, directory, default):
		'''
		Filters the list of subdirectories which will be copied
		'''
		# following modifies which directories are copied
		# does so by modifying file list in place (see os.path.walk)
		if self.directorypattern != "*":
			default[:] = glob.glob( os.path.join( directory, self.directorypattern) )
	def _files( self, directory, default):
		'''
		create the filtered list of files
		'''
		def dirfilter( values,directory=directory):
			result = []
			for value in values:
				if not os.path.isdir( os.path.join( directory, value)):
					result.append( value)
			return result
		# following is for local processing
		if self.pattern != "*":
			return dirfilter( glob.glob( os.path.join( directory, self.pattern) ) )
		else:
			return dirfilter( default )
	def _directorysetup (self,directory):
		'''
		Ensure that the destination directory is available
		build it if it is not
		'''
		#print "setup directory", directory
		# should make this manipulation more robust
		# currently assumes all sorts of things :(
		prefix = os.path.commonprefix( (self.sourcedirectory, directory) )
		extendeddirectory = directory[len(prefix):]
		# get rid of preceding /, so won't be interpreted as root
		if extendeddirectory and extendeddirectory [0] == os.sep:
			extendeddirectory = extendeddirectory[1:]
		destinationdirectory = os.path.join (self.destinationdirectory,
extendeddirectory)
		#print "  destinationdirectory", destinationdirectory
		self.directorylist.append( destinationdirectory)
		return destinationdirectory
	def copydirectory(self, directory):
		'''
		Called after tree building,
		creates needed directories
		'''
		# create directory if not already there
		#if not os.path.exists( directory ):
		try:
			os.mkdir( directory )
			print "made directory", directory
		except os.error:
			pass






From x at x.x  Wed Oct 27 22:22:31 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:22:31 -0400
Subject: separate instances of modules
References: <381767DE.9AE670C@mdlink.de>
Message-ID: <3817B367.1702F011@x.x>

Helge Hess wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm thinking about some integration issues between a C environment I use
> and Python modules. It works like this, that one can extend the
> environment by writing components in Python where each component is
> assigned exactly one Python source file, that is, a module. Right now
> such a file looks like:
> 
> MyComponent.py:
> 
>   import stuff;
>   class MyComponentClass:
>      def a(self):
>            self.b = 5
> 
> When such a component is instantiated in the C environment, the source
> is imported (via Py_Import) or reloaded and then an instance of the
> MyComponentClass is made.
> 
> Since the source file contains always one such class (which doesn't need
> to inherit) I wonder whether it's somehow possible to use the source
> itself as the class. That is, I would like to write all the class stuff
> directly in the source (as functions and module variables), like this:
> 
>    import stuff;
>    b = 3;
>    def a():
>      b = 5;

Two things you could change in that model. First, in order for
the function to be a method of a class, it would need to take at least
one argument (the self argument), even if you never end up using that
argument. The second problem is that the assignment b = 5 refers to
a variable local to the function, and not the instance. The easiest
way to rewrite this is using the familiar self.var syntax:

    import stuff;
    b = 3;
    def a(self):
      self.b = 5;

That's pretty easy to do, if you don't mind the newmodule: (call
the above test.py)

Python 1.5.1 (#0, Apr 13 1998, 20:22:04) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import test
>>> import new
>>> c = new.classobj("classname", (), test.__dict__)
>>> x = c()
>>> x.b
3
>>> x.a()
>>> x.b
5
>>>

But you may be thinking of using global variables as actual
instance variables, as in

    import stuff;
    b = 3;
    def a():
      global b
      b = 5;

The problem is that global variables come out of a dictionary
that's a property of function objects (func_globals), and not
from instances that happen to include those functions. So in
order to emulate that effect, you're going to have to create
new function objects with the instance dictionary as their
func_globals.

Still interested? This is a serious hack. I don't recommend
it. It will bypass the class wrapper and set func_globals
manually. It will also eliminate the need to have a self
argument.

Python 1.5.1 (#0, Apr 13 1998, 20:22:04) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import test, new, types
>>> c = new.classobj("classname", (), test.__dict__)
>>> def fixfuncglobals(s, c):
...     for k, v in c.__dict__.items():
...             if type(v) != types.FunctionType:
...                     continue
...             s.__dict__[k] = new.function(v.func_code, s.__dict__, 
...			v.func_name, (v.func_defaults or ()))
...
>>> x = c()
>>> fixfuncglobals(x, c)
>>> y = c()
>>> fixfuncglobals(y, c)
>>> x.b
3
>>> y.b
3
>>> x.a()
>>> x.b
5
>>> y.b
3
>>> y.a()
>>> x.b
5
>>> y.b
5
>>> x.a
<function a at 7941b0>

^ Notice how Python considers the methods to be normal functions
rather than methods. This is because I assigned the new function
objects directly to the instance object rather than the class
object. It eliminates the need for the self argument.

You could wrap up the fixfuncglobals function into the class
constructor using a metaclass or a C extension.



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Sun Oct 24 09:52:13 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 13:52:13 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
In-Reply-To: <slrn8161ru.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241351350.29582-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
> >> it would probably be quite easy to write something that emulates
> >> cgi's transparently. perhaps httpdapy would become more popular
> >> if something like this was included with it...
> >
> >   I don't think so.
> 
> it would not be easy or it would not become more popular? :)

   It wouldn't be much more popular, IMHO.

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From rhbdib at eggman-network.hypermart.net  Wed Oct 13 22:00:18 1999
From: rhbdib at eggman-network.hypermart.net (rhbdib at eggman-network.hypermart.net)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 02:00:18 GMT
Subject: Stop others from using your computer!!!  3847
Message-ID: <SOaN3.14583$a23.3320@news.rdc1.il.home.com>

That's right....stop others from using your computer now!
Desktop Blocker will password protect your Windows system so that nobody except for you will be able to access your desktop.
Keep that co-worker off your computer, keep the babysitter off the Internet, and keep the wife from discovering your "collection"(you shouldn't be looking at that stuff anyway).
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Take a couple seconds to view our SCREENSHOT:
http://www.eggman.net/software/dbss.htm
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olndkewdmuubxitofbhilyoqkpkbhvmvcenvdgbnujghqrdelgznxjwemqprcowbrxqkqev




From jfarrell at mincom.com  Tue Oct  5 21:46:30 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 11:46:30 +1000
Subject: How to use readline interactively?
Message-ID: <37FAA9F6.80EAE@mincom.com>

Hi everybody! I have some code like this which implements a simple command
loop:

import sys
while 1:
    print "> ",
    s = sys.stdin.readline()
    if s[-1] == '\n': s = s[:-1]
    if len(s) == 0: break
    print "Hello " + s    

What's wrong with it is that there is always a spare space at the beginning
of the first line of output after the prompt:

> Fred
 Hello Fred
>

I want to get rid of that space before Hello. This must be a common
problem, but it doesn't seem to be in the FAQ. Thanks for any advice.
BTW, I can't remember why I am not using raw_input(), there was a good
reason at the time. Thanks,

John



From root at baal.hk.rfa.org  Thu Oct  7 08:06:36 1999
From: root at baal.hk.rfa.org (root)
Date: 7 Oct 1999 12:06:36 GMT
Subject: Puzzled with Time Server conversion problems?
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-je02DMeZ1Q8w@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991005215226.A724@Ridcully.home> <37FB334F.492B55DC@hk.rfa.org> <7tfiu9$1u5h$1@hub.org>
Message-ID: <7ti2cc$l4s$1@salome.rfa.org>

D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at vex.net> wrote:
>> Except years devisable by 4000 which are NOT leap years!
>> ------------------------------
> Nope.  There is no such 4000 rule.  It's a myth.  If you believe
> otherwise, please provide references.  This is one of those perenial

Hey, I saw it on the internet - what more proof do I need?

>> I thought there was a third rule in addition to %100 & %400 for
>> millenia.

> No.  However, the 400 rule special cases 2000.  Perhaps that's what
> you were thinking of.

Nope, I was thinking exactly of the 4000 year leap-year
cult myth.  At that moment, all of us will be levitated
off the earth to go sunbathing on a hidden asteroid
circling Venus.  That's on the internet to, or soon
will be.
-- 
--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at hk.rfa.org




From posselt at daimi.au.dk  Tue Oct 12 08:32:00 1999
From: posselt at daimi.au.dk (Peter Posselt Vestergaard)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:32:00 +0200
Subject: importing
Message-ID: <38032A40.521784A6@daimi.au.dk>

Hi
How do I import a library file which isn't placed in the same directory
as the python-file and neither in a directory in my path???
I've made my own library file called pythonlib.py and if I places it in
the same directory as my program and writes 'import pythonlib' in the
beginning of my programfile it works fine, but I can't figure out how to
find it elsewhere.
Furthermore: How do I access the functions in my library then I've
included it from somewhere not in the same directory? Will it still be
enough just to write pythonlib.function()??? 
I've tried the solutions in the manual pages, but I can't make it work.
Best regards
Peter Posselt Vestergaard



From jfarrell at mincom.com  Wed Oct 13 19:40:00 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:40:00 +1000
Subject: JPython?
References: <199910132322.QAA11710@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <38051850.15BDDCFC@mincom.com>

Jim Althoff wrote:
> But, the real kicker
> is this: with JPython you DO have complete
> access to ALL Java APIs.   Without having to
> do any work at all. No wrappers, no JNI, no CORBA
> no anything.   Instant availability.  All in the
> same JVM.

I agree. We are writing a large distributed object system in Java.
Traditionally connecting to the system to get data out has been by writing
a pretty complicated Java program. However with JPython I can write Python
code to access any part of the system. I have a few wrappers to turn things
into dictionaries, but once they are included I can write 10 line programs
which do useful stuff. That's just AWESOME.

John



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Mon Oct 11 12:13:41 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:13:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Marking translatable strings
References: <000101bf00cf$801bd080$d12d153f@tim>
	<37F129FD.3D4D652@compaq.com>
	<vrn1u6ea2p.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
	<m3670uc86o.fsf@greebo.nodomain.de>
	<873dvkx570.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>
	<001a01bf1255$41f2bb10$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<oqbtaa2c08.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>
Message-ID: <14338.3253.395447.688829@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

    >> What about a t'translated string literal', like r'raw string'?

The problem is string-prefix explosion: you'd have to also support
tr'', rt'', and of course all the double, single-triple, and
double-triple variants.  Uck.  Plus, it would require changes to
Python which means it'll be a long while before you ever see this in
common enough use.

Writing it _('translate') is, I think the best approach, and the one I
plan to take when I (eventually) get time to internationalize Mailman.

    pinard> Also worth noting and little known, Ulrich has released a
    pinard> snapshot of `gettext' which is not encumbered by the GPL,
    pinard> for the Danish UUG or Danish national standardisation
    pinard> groups, I do not remember exactly.  The precise double
    pinard> hashing is part of this special release, and the algorithm
    pinard> did not change since, so far that I know.  This could be
    pinard> useful if Python proper was to provide string translation
    pinard> services independently of `gettext'.

Cool, that's good to know!
-Barry



From erik at email.cz  Mon Oct 11 05:13:41 1999
From: erik at email.cz (outsider.007)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:13:41 +0100
Subject: smtplib: To,Cc,Bcc
Message-ID: <3801AA45.4756EA96@email.cz>

Hi,
 what send this mail:

To: people1 <to1 at email.com>, people2 <to2 at email.com>
Cc:  people3 <cc1 at email.com>, people4 <cc2 at email.com>
Bcc: people5 <bcc1 at email.com> people6 <bcc2 at email.cz>
Subject: Subject Test


Thanks
  outsider.007




From phd at sun.med.ru  Wed Oct 13 03:31:08 1999
From: phd at sun.med.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:31:08 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: zope: system variables?
In-Reply-To: <7u0b42$g0c$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL2.3.96.SK.991013113034.28943G-100000@sun>

On Tue, 12 Oct 1999 hj_ka at my-deja.com wrote:
> I am starting to play with Zope. And I see some
> pre-defined variables like
[skip]
> etc. Where can I find documentation for all the
> pre-defined variables?

   www.zope.org

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From j.walter at q-bus.de  Fri Oct 29 11:41:59 1999
From: j.walter at q-bus.de (Jan Walter)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:41:59 +0200
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Blender export scripts (Python)
Message-ID: <3819C047.32E779D6@q-bus.de>

Hi,

At http://www.q-bus.de/Blender you can find a web page from which you
can download several Python scripts to export to following renderers
within Blender (http://www.blender.nl):

Panorama  (http://www.gnu.org/software/panorama/panorama.html)
Povray    (http://www.povray.org)
Radiance  (http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html)
RenderMan (http://www.renderman.org, http://www.bmrt.org)

I try to compare this renderers and any comments are welcome ...

Cheers,

Jan



From jasbahr at NOSPAM.origin.ea.com  Wed Oct 27 16:21:57 1999
From: jasbahr at NOSPAM.origin.ea.com (Jason Asbahr)
Date: 27 Oct 1999 15:21:57 -0500
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia> <381599b1.89775720@news.oh.verio.com> <38162C4F.EB030755@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <m3r9igeeqi.fsf@death.origin.ea.com>

"Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight at mindspring.com> writes:
> Er, why not just use http://www.pair.com/ ?  Their hosting quality is
> quite good, and they DO support Python.
> 
> Unfortunately no Zope yet, though.  :(

Not yet, but if enough of us ask...  :-)  

Another thumbs up for Pair.com.

-- 
Jason L. Asbahr
Origin Systems, Inc.
jasbahr(@)origin.ea.com



From vraven101 at hotmail.com  Fri Oct  8 03:29:51 1999
From: vraven101 at hotmail.com (john smith)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 00:29:51 -0700
Subject: Is it possible to make a *.py a *.exe
Message-ID: <xNjL3.1778$oq.11211@newsfeed.slurp.net>

Is there anyway to compile a python scrypt and include all the imported
modules?If so how is it possible.
Thank you





From olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr  Wed Oct 13 06:34:41 1999
From: olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr (Olivier Deckmyn)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:34:41 +0200
Subject: reverse function of id()
Message-ID: <7u1n9o$rqf$1@feed.teaser.fr>

Hi !

Is there a way to get the Python Object whose id is X...

ex :

myObject=MyClass()
myId=id(myObject)
myObject=None # See note
....
<far away>
....
myObject=FindObjectFromId(myID)
....

(Note : Please don't care about the ref count problems in my example, I know
that here myObject is released immediatly)

Thx !










From darrell at dorb.com  Mon Oct 18 22:24:57 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 22:24:57 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <vrzoxg159l.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <068c01bf19d9$235abcd0$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

At the risk of showing my ignorance, this makes sense to me.
[.0-9]+[a-z]? matched, so there was no need to find a match on the right
hand side ???

>>> re.match('parted-([.0-9]+-pre[0-9]+)', entry).group(1)
'0.0.8-pre1'
>>> re.match('parted-([.0-9]+[a-z]?|[.0-9]+-pre[0-9]+)', entry).group(1)
'0.0.8'


--Darrell
----- Original Message -----
From: Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 9:57 PM
Subject: `re' difficulty?


> Hi, people.  I got a strangety, here, on this machine running Python
1.5.1.
> (This is the machine where the TP repository is kept, I'm not really the
> guy installing software on it.)  Here is what I got:
>
> >>> entry = 'parted-0.0.8-pre1/po/parted.pot'
> >>> re.match('parted-([.0-9]+[a-z]?|[.0-9]+-b[0-9]+|[.0-9]+-pre[0-9]+)',
entry).group(1)
> '0.0.8'
> >>> re.match('parted-([.0-9]+-b[0-9]+|[.0-9]+-pre[0-9]+|[.0-9]+[a-z]?)',
entry).group(1)
> '0.0.8-pre1'
>
> As you may see, between parentheses, the second line has A|B|C, while
> the third has B|C|A.  Since the results are not equivalent, I presume the
> longest match does not apply here, as it was usual for me so far, whenever
> regular expressions are concerned.
>
> May I guess this is all implemented with backtracking, with the first
> matching alternative shadowing the remaining alternatives?  Isn't that
> commiting Python to a behaviour prohibiting later optimisations?  Or is
> the exact behaviour just undefined?  What's the story? :-)
>
> --
> Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From cors at recercai.com  Tue Oct  5 11:07:24 1999
From: cors at recercai.com (Carlos Ors)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 17:07:24 +0200
Subject: About JPython security
Message-ID: <37f9c01b.0@sahara.cablecat.com>

Hi!:
I'm current working with JPython 1.1 beta 2.
I'm interesting in forbid the access to a java class for security questions.
How can I make that a user cannot use a determinate java class.

                                           Thank you in advance.

                                                                     thanks.





From phd at phd.russ.ru  Wed Oct 20 06:10:40 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:10:40 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Newbie need help
In-Reply-To: <380D9040.745B21F8@sssup.it>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910201008170.5417-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Marco Guidi wrote:
> Why did I get the error
> 
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> ImportError: No module named Common ?
> 
> and Why could I import DocumentTemplate correctly ?

   Because DocumentTemplate is a Package, and App is not. You should read
python docs on packaging.

> Which is the correct way for importing a file residing in
> some directory different from the one from wich I run python
> (and different from Extensions or other predefined directories) ?

   Using builtin function __import__

> In the Python tutorial dowloaded from www.python.org I found no
> infos about this.

   As you are trying to do more descent things, you need more descent docs.
The python tutorial is what it is - just entry-level tutorial. There are
more docs on www.python.org/doc

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From dyliu at ms1.hinet.net  Sun Oct 24 20:58:50 1999
From: dyliu at ms1.hinet.net (¥|²´ªº¤ýÂÎ)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:58:50 GMT
Subject: How to eliminate consol window in MS Windows
Message-ID: <3813a9be.579613@netnews.hinet.net>

Spam detection software, running on the system "albatross.python.org", has
identified this incoming email as possible spam.  The original message
has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or label
similar future email.  If you have any questions, see
the administrator of that system for details.

Content preview:  I want to use wxPython to develop a GUI application in the
   Windows NT. The problem is when I double click the script file, a console
   window always appear. Can I execute the python program without this console
   window? [...] 

Content analysis details:   (6.0 points, 5.0 required)

 pts rule name              description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
 2.0 FH_DATE_IS_19XX        The date is not 19xx.
 4.0 FROM_ILLEGAL_CHARS     From: has too many raw illegal characters
-0.0 NO_RELAYS              Informational: message was not relayed via SMTP
-0.0 NO_RECEIVED            Informational: message has no Received headers


-------------- next part --------------
An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: dyliu at ms1.hinet.net (?|????????)
Subject: How to eliminate consol window in MS Windows
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:58:50 GMT
Size: 924
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/19991025/9cec96bd/attachment.mht>

From meh9 at cornell.edu  Thu Oct  7 12:10:01 1999
From: meh9 at cornell.edu (Matthew Hirsch)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 12:10:01 -0400
Subject: List vs. Tuple
References: <37FCC0C4.DF34352F@cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <37FCC5D8.6D49522E@cornell.edu>

Thanks guys.  It makes sense now.

Matthew Hirsch wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Can someone explain to me why if there is only a string in a list/tuple
> they behave differently when looped through.  For example,
>
> >>> list=['abcd']
> >>> tuple=('abcd')
> >>> for x in list:
> ...     print x
> ...
> abcd
> >>> for x in tuple:
> ...     print x
> ...
> a
> b
> c
> d
> >>>
>
> Shouldn't the second loop also print 'abcd'?
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Matt




From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Sat Oct 30 03:30:04 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 09:30:04 +0200
Subject: Python/C
References: <9910291656.ZM20777@eel.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0C3B8CBA@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

Mona Wong <mona at eel.ucsd.edu> wrote in message
news:9910291656.ZM20777 at eel.ucsd.edu...
> Hi:
>
> I'm starting a project where I'll be extending Python with C.  I have a
> very beginner's question ...
>
> If I have an array I created in the Python interpreter, how can I
> access that array in my imported C module?
>
> Mona

Are you talking about an array or a list ? For a list, you can say something
like:

/* untested !! */

static PyObject* f(PyObject* self, PyObject* args)
{
  PyObject* list;
  int i;

  if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "O!", &PyList_Type, &list))
    return NULL;

  i = 0;
  while (i < PyList_Size(list))
  {
    PyObject* element = PyList_GetItem(list, i);
    /* do something with element */
    i++;
  }

  Py_INCREF(Py_None);
  return Py_None;
}

Robin





From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Oct 16 07:30:45 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 13:30:45 +0200
Subject: Executing binaries...?
References: <y0joge0ln5e.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <380861E5.920ED539@lemburg.com>

"Magnus L. Hetland" wrote:
> 
> Is there any way to execute python binaries with something like
> execfile (giving it a special environment as a dict)? The only way I
> can thing of is using execfile that imports another file (which is
> compiled)... Is there any other way?

def execpyc(filename,globals=None,locals=None):

    """ Execute a byte compiled file filename in globals, locals 
    """
    import marshal
    f = open(filename,'rb')
    f.read(8) # skip header (id check omitted)
    code = marshal.load(f)
    exec code in globals,locals
 

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    76 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From godzilla at netmeg.net  Tue Oct 19 08:36:35 1999
From: godzilla at netmeg.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:36:35 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net>

Markus said:

> Looks like C heritage to me. IMNSHO order-oriented parsing of
> options is Pure Evil(tm) and I consider Perl (for once) to do the
> Right Thing.

well, now that i think about it, i never wrote apps with command line
args in numerous quantities before, till i started writing perl
scripts years ago. so i guess in my case the Right Thing is simply
'thats the way i always done it'.

still, after /F's comment this morning, i had to strain my brain too
hard to try and imagine (creating) an app where arg order
mattered. all i could think of was tar -- and if i had written that
one myself, i'd like to think i would have ........

les schaffer



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Fri Oct  1 00:08:27 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 16:08:27 +1200
Subject: YA-Newbie: Progress (but still baffled by deepcopy/pickle 
 issues...:)
References: <8E48C2767PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148> <8E5062134PaCmAnRDLM@161.48.81.148>
Message-ID: <37F433BB.CC11F8AB@compaq.com>

Fred Pacquier wrote:

> # in Card __init__:
>                 if ... : self.src = 0  # store an index instead of bitmap ref.
>                 else : self.src = 1

> # in Stack showrow():
>             srcDC.SelectObject(CardFaces[self.Cards[row].src])

> This seems to work flawlessly, although I don't understand why.

Sounds like when you use references to the bitmaps, deepcopy is
trying to copy the bitmap objects and screwing up somehow.

Greg



From mdlatham at mail1.scottsboro.org  Fri Oct 22 23:49:08 1999
From: mdlatham at mail1.scottsboro.org (Bubba)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 03:49:08 GMT
Subject: serial port access question
Message-ID: <38123003.478687745@news.usenetserver.com>

i've got a handheld scanner that stores up to 500 records at a time.
I'd like to set up a python application to store values that it gets
from a serial port, reads into an array, then massage the data for
passing on to oracle. I understand everything but the serial port
access with python. Any help greatly appreciated.





From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Thu Oct 14 16:01:11 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:01:11 +0200
Subject: Python for HP-UX
References: <3805F2E8.64189D2@imf.au.dk>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB796C@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

If you can live with Python 1.5.1, check out http://hpux.tn.tudelft.nl
(surprised to see that Python 1.5.2 has not turned up there yet)

Robin.

Emil Hedevang Lohse <emil at imf.au.dk> wrote in message
news:3805F2E8.64189D2 at imf.au.dk...
> I have a simple request: Python for HP-UX.
>
> I have downloaded the sourcecode and tried to compile it but it will not
work.
> So is it possible that anyone out there could email the compiled Python??
>
> From Emil
> emil at imf.au.dk





From mdperry_26 at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 28 17:03:34 1999
From: mdperry_26 at my-deja.com (mdperry_26 at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:03:34 GMT
Subject: Checking file attributes
Message-ID: <7vadn3$f9j$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Is there an easy way in python to return the file attributes of a file
in NT(i.e. hidden, system, archive, etc.).  I have been poking around
the os.stat module and can return some file information but it doesn't
look like you can derive any information about the attribute bits.  Any
suggestions?

(If not I will have to go to plan b which is call attrib /s in dos and
pipe the contents to a file for parsing.  It could get very ugly).

Thanks.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US  Wed Oct  6 14:05:29 1999
From: guido at CNRI.Reston.VA.US (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:05:29 -0400
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
References: <001901bf0ff4$72fc2fb0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
Message-ID: <199910061805.OAA09376@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

> I'm not sure how well Python copes with this generally, but
> changing my locale so that the thousands sep and decimals sep
> (normally ',' , '.') are reversed ('.' , ',') causes a problem
> in Tkinter, and therfore IDLE.
> 
> But, for some reason, only in embedded code, not Python run from
> the commandline. Perhaps by default it ignores locale info.
> 
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Tools\idle\idle.py", line 2, in ?
>     import PyShell
>   File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Tools\idle\PyShell.py", line 12, in ?
>     from Tkinter import *
>   File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 19, in ?
>     TkVersion = _string.atof(_tkinter.TK_VERSION)
> ValueError: invalid literal for atof(): 8.0
> 
> Any suggestions?

Hm, that's odd.  Python is supposed to ignore the locale when you use
atof(); the locale module exports a version of atof() that honors the
locale after you call locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "").

What platform are you on?  It seems that perhaps the Tcl version you
are using calls setlocale() on that platform?

I cannot reproduce this (on Solaris 2.7).

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



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct  9 16:58:47 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 16:58:47 -0400
Subject: OO Details
In-Reply-To: <37FF842F.BA011E3D@home.com>
Message-ID: <000001bf1299$14d40a00$b32d153f@tim>

[Dirk Leas]
> I was looking through the language reference (www.python.org) and was
> unable to find details about how the OO features work. Specifically, I'm
> wondering how ambiguous methods are resolved in multiple inheritance

Section 3.2 of the Python (not Library) Reference Manual.  The index is very
useful for this; e.g., look under "attribute, class" or "attribute, class
instance" or "class, attribute" or "class instance, attribute" or ... it's
hard not to find it <wink>.

The short answer is a depth-first "left to right" search.

> and stuff like that.

Sorry, too vague to guess what that means.

> Where are some good detail references?

Among the language and library and tutorial manuals, it's all there already.
The FAQ contains many glosses.  If something turns out not to be specified,
ask here, and someone will make up a convincing-sounding answer as if it
were obvious <wink>.

e.g.-nothing-is-said-about-floating-point-behavior-ly y'rs  - tim





From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct 27 10:18:25 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:18:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: How to stop zlib from killing python
References: <3.0.6.32.19991026142450.007f0640@mail.in-gen.net>
	<14358.6562.720032.193923@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <14359.2481.832020.526273@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "JH" == Jeremy Hylton <jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

    JH> 1. Add the directory that contains libz.so (presumably
    JH> /home/me/lib) to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.
    JH> In bash: # export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/me/lib

I missed the beginning of this thread, so I don't know what platform
you're on, but if Solaris, you should try adding a -R flag with the
same path as your -L flag.

-Barry



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 22 04:59:14 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:59:14 +0100
Subject: urgent problems with win32 debug build
In-Reply-To: <7up55q$66i$1@tron.sci.fi>
Message-ID: <000701bf1c6b$b6d3de80$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> ImportError: no module named xxxx

Due to big problems with mixing runtime DLLs, it has now been decreed,
that all debug extension modules (dll/pyd) must have an _d suffix, as
bad things happen when you mix MSVCRT/MSVCRTD. Make sure that for
module "spam", the files are named:

Debug: spam_d.dll or spam_d.pyd
Release: spam.dll or spam.pyd

This _d convention doen NOT apply to the init function. Both versions
should have an initspam() function.

Yup. This one caught me out too... :-)

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From moshez at math.huji.ac.il  Thu Oct 28 05:19:28 1999
From: moshez at math.huji.ac.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 11:19:28 +0200 (IST)
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial>

Hi!

I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with some 
cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep same 
"last changed" time and more.

You can get it at http://buffy.acmecity.com/sanctum/195/dos2unix

It's in the public domain, so you can do with it whatever you want.

--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka at geocities.com>. 
INTERNET: Learn what you know.
Share what you don't.




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 10:32:16 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 15:32:16 +0100
Subject: BUG: classobject.c
Message-ID: <000901bf1199$eb17b090$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

3 lines starting at 1554:
		funcname = PyObject_GetAttrString(func,"__name__");
		if (funcname == NULL)
			PyErr_Clear();

should be (perhaps - not sure if this will leak or not):
		funcname = PyObject_GetAttrString(func,"__name__");
		if (funcname == NULL)
			PyErr_Clear();
		else
			Py_INCREF(funcname);

or else - line 1562:
	Py_XDECREF(funcname);

causes an free'd memory read (fname) at line 1567:
	if (self == NULL)
		sprintf(buf, "<unbound method %.100s.%.100s>", fcname, fname);

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From emile at fenx.com  Wed Oct  6 23:27:06 1999
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 20:27:06 -0700
Subject: print longs
References: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com> <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com> <37F98517.DD12EF2F@ans.com.au> <5GkK3.21$y51.4731@news.direcpc.com> <37FBDE72.8BEA5E0@ans.com.au>
Message-ID: <fzUK3.41$hI3.9992@news.direcpc.com>

Sorry about that... I cut and paste from IDLE, and that first line was
originally entered as :
>>> print 9876543219876541L
then I up-arrowed, edited, entered, etc...  ;-)


BTW, wouldn't it be convenient if Traceback also printed sys.version?

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com
-------------------


Clement <clement at ans.com.au> wrote in message
news:37FBDE72.8BEA5E0 at ans.com.au...
> What OS are you using?  In my Redhat 6/Python 1.5.2, I have this,
>
> >>> print '%d' % 9876543219876541L
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> OverflowError: long int too long to convert
>
> >>> print '%d' % 987654321L
> 987654321
>
> Emile van Sebille wrote:
> >
> > Did I miss something?
> >
> > >>> print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
> > 987654321987654321L
> > >>> print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
> > Traceback (innermost last):
> >   File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in ?
> >     print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
> > OverflowError: long int too long to convert
> > >>>
> >
> > --
> >
> > Emile van Sebille
> > emile at fenx.com
> > -------------------
> >
> > Clement <clement at ans.com.au> wrote in message
> > news:37F98517.DD12EF2F at ans.com.au...
> > > Try '%d'
> > >
> > > Greg Ewing wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Nathan Clegg wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Do I have to convert
> > > > > to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this
> > > > is a pain as well, but Guido doesn't seem to be
> > > > among them, so we're stuck with this for the time
> > > > being.
> > > >
> > > > Greg
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Clement
>
> --
>
> Regards
>
> Clement





From I.Clarke at strs.co.uk  Thu Oct 14 06:35:31 1999
From: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk (Ian Clarke)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:35:31 +0100
Subject: HTTP or/and HTTPS server in Python!
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991013192705.16210D-100000@butler.artech.se> <011c01bf15cb$21cbc510$010101c1@home>
Message-ID: <3805B1F3.5FC6FBDC@strs.co.uk>

> Yes, there are some implementations:
> -SimpleHTTPServer.py in the standard distribution,
> -Medusa,
> -ZServer(this is based on Medusa)

Be warned that Medusa has a somewhat restrictive license if you wish to
use it commercially, ZServer doesn't though.

Ian.

--
Ian Clarke                        Email: I.Clarke at strs.co.uk
Homepage: http://www.gnu.demon.co.uk/
Also see: http://freenet.on.openprojects.net/
"All we see and all we seem is but a dream within a dream"



From winkjj at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 11:01:32 1999
From: winkjj at my-deja.com (winkjj at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:01:32 GMT
Subject: DCOM servers in Python... how?
References: <380DEF98.F09757A8@bart.nl>
Message-ID: <7upu89$ev$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <380DEF98.F09757A8 at bart.nl>,
  Richard Smol <rsmol at bart.nl> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> For a research project here I want to be able to prototype DCOM-
servers
> quickly. For this I am of course thinking of Python!
>
> Now I don't know that much about DCOM. I have been roaming through the
> Pythonwin COM documentation and wonder if it all also holds true for
> DCOM. The only DCOM example program I saw was for a client though.
What
> is the easiest way to implement a DCOM server then?
>
> Thanks in advance...
>
> Greetz,
>
> RS
>

Hi Richard,

I just spend a day trying to get DCOM setup for some stuff I am working
on.  As it turns out, the security thing can bite you depending on the
operating system you are using.  If you are NT across the board, then
you should not have any major problems.  But, if you wish use a mixture
of NT and 95/98, then the security issue gets muddy.  In fact, for my
particular configuration, I couldn't get DCOM to work AT ALL from a 98
to NT machine.  This had to do with issues in my particular setup (you
can get is working), but the point is that the security models are
different between NT and 95/98, so depending on the setup, it could get
challenging.

So, I switched to the python implementation of CORBA and I am happy as
a peach now... :)


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Wed Oct 27 10:05:57 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:05:57 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [JPython] dir and java classes
References: <14358.5566.792900.94308@goon.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<199910262217.PAA16707@hermes.aspectdv.com>
	<199910262341.QAA21103@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <14359.1733.431577.532031@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "JA" == Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> writes:

    JA> That makes sense.  func_code, for example, seems to be
    JA> available for JPython methods but not for Java methods, I
    JA> guess.

Right.
-Barry



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Wed Oct 20 04:57:34 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:57:34 +0200
Subject: Matlab -> Python
References: <380C5017.9852E40@tx.technion.ac.il>
Message-ID: <7uk04u$qri@mail.psy.uva.nl>

Matti Picus <matti at tx.technion.ac.il> wrote in message
news:380C5017.9852E40 at tx.technion.ac.il...
| Anyone translating matlab syntax to python? Any tutorials on the common
| pitfalls or how to get started
|


I do not translate, using both I might help.

If you can find C/C++ versions of your algorithms, then you will get
automated help from SWIG.

I do not know of a tool for automating / assisting with the Matlab -> Python
translation. If you consider implementing one, you may get a lot of help
from the Python compiler compiler packages, such as kwParsing, or the
regular expressions module.

One may consider two aspects:
1. The general language translation issues, that is regarding
syntax/semantics.
2. Specific functionality, that is numeric library, data visualization and
GUI building functions.

1.
In regard with syntax and semantics, there are significant differences:
- MATLAB always passes matrices by value. In Python, you are in control:
while you normally pass a reference, you can also pass a copy.
- The organization of software elements is quite different. MATLAB basically
does everything with functions. Since version 5, they introduces a mechanism
for overloading, which they call object-orientation. In Python, you will
find the OO concepts implemented more fully and intuitively.

IMO, given this difference, one may do better to re-think the design of
programs before translating.

2.
The Numeric package provides Python with fast array-oriented processing.
The raw speed which may be achieved is very good. In my experience,
Python/Numeric code will run 3-4 times faster than the equivalent MATLAB
code.
However, there are some problems:
- while Matlab is matrix-centric, Numeric is ARRAY-centric. Arrays are not
matrices and it takes a day or two to get used with Numeric's ways. However,
once the click happened you'll be happy again. After one more week you'll be
even happier.
- Numeric's documentation is terse, rather Pythonish and written for
experienced programmers rather than casual users. I'd call it a quick
reference if I'd have time to write a better one. Ask for help.
- the library is limited to rather basic functions. You get full control of
multi-dimensional arrays, some often used math for them but not much else.

Visualization is not very well supported. However, you will find interfaces
to Gnuplot and a number of native packages.  If you need specialized
graphics tightly integrated with your application, chances are that you will
have to get your hands dirty with low-level implementation code.

GUI building is well supported but rather isolated from the visualization
functions.

---------

In my experience, Python offers a larger conceptual pallete and fits much
more naturally with the design of algorithms which need both numeric speed
and elaborated data structures.


I will try to help further if any more specific question.

ionel


-----
Note:
For references to all the names mentioned above, go to http://www.python.org
and do a simple search. Results will pop-up right away.









From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Mon Oct 18 08:45:04 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 08:45:04 -0400
Subject: COM object Type
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6D7@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Hello,

I would like to know what is the type of a COM object. What module do I have
to import to have this type handy?

Thanks,
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"




From tre17 at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Fri Oct  1 18:16:39 1999
From: tre17 at pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Timothy R Evans)
Date: 02 Oct 1999 11:16:39 +1300
Subject: How Can I do vi-like substitutions?
References: <7t10nc$97k$1@thoth.cts.com>
Message-ID: <c75k8p63ewo.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

mhuster_AT at hotmail_DOT.com (Michel Huster) writes:

> I want to do some complex replace inside python. I am used to vi power like:
> 
> s/\([0-9]*\) at \([0-9]*\)/\2 AT \1/
> 
> which will change
> 1234 at 5678
> into
> 5678 AT 1234
> 
> I can only find re.sub(expr, repl, count) but this does not 'remember' the
> saves matches between arguments.
> 
> Help!
> ?Ayudame!
> 
> Michael Huster
> mhuster_AT at hotmail_DOT.com
> 
> (remove _AT and _DOT to reply)

import re
re.sub(r'([0-9]*) at ([0-9]*)', r'\2 AT \1', '1234 at 5678')
'5678 AT 1234'

works or me, make sure you use r'' strings to avoid \1 and \2 being
interpreted as characters.  For more information check to library
reference for the re module:

...
If repl is a string, any backslash escapes in it are processed. That
is, "\n" is converted to a single newline character, "\r" is converted
to a linefeed, and so forth.  Unknown escapes such as "\j" are left
alone.  Backreferences, such as "\6", are replaced with the substring
matched by group 6 in the pattern.
...

--
Tim Evans



From stidolph at origin.ea.com  Thu Oct  7 12:18:38 1999
From: stidolph at origin.ea.com (Stidolph, David)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:18:38 -0500 
Subject: List vs. Tuple
Message-ID: <11A17AA2B9EAD111BCEA00A0C9B41793034AAE09@molach.origin.ea.com>

try

tuple = ('abcd',)

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Hirsch [mailto:meh9 at cornell.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 1999 10:48 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: List vs. Tuple


Hi All,

Can someone explain to me why if there is only a string in a list/tuple
they behave differently when looped through.  For example,

>>> list=['abcd']
>>> tuple=('abcd')
>>> for x in list:
...     print x
...
abcd
>>> for x in tuple:
...     print x
...
a
b
c
d
>>>

Shouldn't the second loop also print 'abcd'?

Thanks for your help,
Matt


-- 
http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From jima at aspectdv.com  Mon Oct 25 18:23:48 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:23:48 -0700
Subject: Testing for sequence types
In-Reply-To: <1271234053-9881480@hypernet.com>
References: <199910251940.MAA22041@hermes.aspectdv.com>
 <024b01bf1ac3$235c7530$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <199910252218.PAA01438@hermes.aspectdv.com>

Thanks for the clarification and interesting
info on past discussions.

So then, for testing Python classes (as opposed
to just C extension classes) is

hasattr(anObject,"get_item")

considered good form for testing "sequence-ness"?

Or is there a more preferred idiom?

Thanks,

Jim


At 06:06 PM 10/25/99 -0400, Gordon McMillan wrote:
>[Jim Althoff]
>> Where can one find out more info on
>> "hasinterface" and "as_sequence"?
>
>[the eff-bot]
>> >    def len(obj):
>> >        if hasinterface(obj, as_sequence):
>> >            return obj.sequence_length()
>> >        if hasinterface(obj, as_mapping):
>> >            return obj.mapping_length()
>> >        raise TypeError, "len() of unsized object"
>> >
>> >which, for my non-purist eyes, surely looks as if
>> >Python treats "obj" as an arbitrary object.
>
>Didn't you snip the bit about it being psuedo-code?
>
>What the eff-bot is alluding to is a call in the abstract level of 
>the C API, which checks whether the type-as-sequence slot in 
>the type object is non-NULL. For C types implementing the 
>sequence methods, this works. Unfortunately, a Python class 
>emulating a sequence will fail this check.
>
>The types SIG was very actively debating this and similar 
>topics, until someone posted some code implementing an 
>interface protocol. All subsequent attempts at reviving the SIG 
>have failed miserably.
>
>and-the-pathologist-who-did-the-autopsy-died-too-ly y'rs
>
>
>- Gordon
> 



From ngkaboon at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 26 23:50:48 1999
From: ngkaboon at my-deja.com (ngkaboon at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 03:50:48 GMT
Subject: Python and PythOz
References: <7v44sc$rur$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0j7lkanst0.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <7v5sqn$5pk$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <y0j7lkanst0.fsf at vier.idi.ntnu.no>,
  mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland) wrote:
> Henk Jansen <hj at rdr-nl.com> writes:
>
> > I wondered if there've (ever) been ideas to extend Python with
> > logic-like features such as available in the programming
language/system
> > Oz/Mozart; or alternatively, to build a system with such
functionality
> > on top of Python. Included features would be:
>
> [...]
>
> This sounds great... You're not the first one to want
> logic-programming features available in Python... Swig'ing GNU Prolog
> has been mentioned, as has a simple logic-programming framework
> implemented in python... (Which I haven't seen yet... still waiting :)
>
> I would really like something like this too... I love the logic
> programming paradigm for some very limited applications - but hate
> making big programs in Prolog... So having a logic engine available in
> Python would be wonderful... <sigh>
>

I just finished a school project on a Scripting Approach to Constraint
Programmning. I did not use Python but I used Tcl. Since
SWIG (http://www.swig.org) was used, I think I should be able to
port it to Python somehow. Currently the engine is running a wee bit
slow but the functionality is almost there. I had some help from
the Oz folks in reusing some of their propagator code.

It is a single process model (no threads), allow logic variables
and posting of propagators (read it as more like ILOG constraint
programming library than like a language). Programmable searches
like Oz. I would see the syntax as distant from Prolog. In short,
Scripting language + CP(FD) features.

Borning and colleagues also has a linear solver,Cassowary, (which
included using Python) for graphics drawing and such.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/constraints/cassowary/
(That's of course not the same school of Constraint Programming as
in Oz)

My project is far from release (It's ongoing work). It runs roughly 10
times slower than  Mozart.
And yes, if anyone is at least a tiny bit interested, pls look at
my project presentation slides...
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~ngkaboon/figaro/present2/index.htm

If anyone is interested in doing the porting of this project
of Tcl to Python, pls contact me directly.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From x at x.x  Fri Oct 15 23:07:56 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 23:07:56 -0400
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
References: <3807B4D0.127E7261@prescod.net>
Message-ID: <3807EC0C.2AC894F5@x.x>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Okay, I'm an idiot. On a couple of different occaisions I have needed to
> do some CGI prototoyping and I have found CGIServer. "Cool", I say. Then
> I try to get it working on Windows, changing things here and there until
> I realize (at "fork") that its hopeless. The experience is so annoying
> that I erase it from my brain until the next time. (or perhaps it isn't
> frustrating ENOUGH).

Actually, I've compiled Python using the Cygnus Win32 library and have
gotten os.fork() and other unix-like functions to work that way. The
library provides emulation of POSIX semantics; very little change to
the source code is necessary to use it.

In fact, Cygnus will compile as a generic Unix for the Python
distribution straight off. The only difficulty I had was when I wanted
to add support for Win32 .pyd's, etc. This required a lot of tweaking
of posixmodule.c and importdl.c, mostly because the ifdef's are keyed
on MS_WIN32 and relied on MS-specific extensions.

Has anyone else gotten Python to work on Cygnus?



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Thu Oct 21 18:05:56 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 18:05:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Problem with JPython and jre jdk1.1.8
References: <380FAD56.23B9EF27@hccnet.nl>
Message-ID: <14351.36420.739624.920728@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "JS" == J Spies <j.spies at hccnet.nl> writes:

    JS> As an oldtime ABC-Python fan I like the development of
    JS> JPython.  At work we use Java!

Cool!  BTW, the best place to ask JPython questions is
jpython-interest at python.org.

    JS> I'm trying JPython11beta3 with jdk1.1.8 on Windows NT and
    JS> Windows 95.

I've had several reports of problems with JDK1.1.8 on Windows.  I just
sucked down 1.1.8 on Sparc/Solaris to see if it fixed a problem with
BigInteger.modPow() -- it doesn't -- but 1.1.8 seems pass all the
other JPython test cases.  On Windows, so far I've only tested Suns
1.2.x and MS's 1.1.4 JVMs and both seem to work fine.

See <http://www.jpython.org/platform.html> for my latest information
about compatibility.  My next step is to check out IBM's 1.1 JVM for
Linux.

-Barry



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Oct 15 19:25:15 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 19:25:15 -0400
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <slrn80erat.387.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>
Message-ID: <1272093334-1612528@hypernet.com>

> Pada 14 Oct 1999 23:10:17 GMT, Martijn Faassen bilang:
> | Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
> | > If Python were Puritan, you wouldn't have for loops. Any loop
> | > can be coded as | [snip] | > The fact that "for" exists and
> "while" takes a condition (and | > both take an "else" clause) is
> symptomatic of the | > insidious Dutch tendency to
> permissiveness. | | Which is why those Mayflower people left the
> Netherlands for North | America way back when. Too permissive. :)
> | | it's-okay-to-call-us-insidious-ly yours,
> 
> Eh?  Weren't the people on the Mayflower from Britain?
> 
> trying-to-remember-the-story-of-thanksgiving-from-his-youth-ly
> yrs, Cliff

Well, Martijn undoubtedly meant the Mayflour, which wasn't a 
ship but a windmill that got picked up in particularly stiff 
breeze and landed in Plymouth. Michigan, that is. The miller 
and his wife, being Dutch, had no idea what had happened. 
They tried raising tulips, but that didn't work, so they started 
building dikes. Later, of course, they merged with Buick. But 
you can still hear the sound of wooden shoes when attempting 
to accelerate one up a steep hill.

anything-else-you-wanted-to-know?-ly y'rs

- Gordon



From aahz at netcom.com  Mon Oct 11 12:29:32 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 16:29:32 GMT
Subject: Integers and Floats
References: <19991011180728.A14620@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <7tt39c$irm@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>

In article <19991011180728.A14620 at optiplex.palga.uucp>,
Gerrit Holl  <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
>
>I know there is a difference between integers and floats, but I think the
>following is a little strange:
>
>18:07:48:3/499:gerrit at gerrit:~$ python
>Python 1.5.2 (#1, Aug  8 1999, 01:35:00)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs- on linux2
>Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>>> 131 / 4
>32
>>>> 4 * 32
>128
>>>> 131 / 4 * 4
>128
>
>I think the ouput of the first two statement is ok, but why can't python store
>an integer and a float as the same thing? And is the conversion between an
>integer and a float so big? Or are floats just slower? Do I have to do the
>following:

The problem is that floats involve loss of precision.  If speed is not
absolutely essential, I would suggest going to Python longs and doing
all multiplication before division.  131*4/4 gives the correct result.

(The other option is to implement a Rational class -- there may even be
one already.)

But, yeah, you could just force everything to float -- just don't be
surprised when you get an answer like "9.00000000001".
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 28 04:38:46 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:38:46 +0200
Subject: mktime and tupples
References: <3817CF66.8128A13F@qut.edu.au>
Message-ID: <38180B96.BC435C06@lemburg.com>

Rico Albanese wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I am writing a web application and I am trying to get a string which
> represents a date (eg. 16071999) and generate from this the
> corresponding Unix Time in secs from Epoch.  So with the following code
> I am trying to generate a tuple which is suitable to pass to
> time.mktime() as a parameter.  I have imported all of the required
> modules but the following code bombs out at the line "thetime=...".  Are
> the variables y, m, d strings? How do I create a tuple (ie. variable
> "atime" below) so that it is a valid parameter for time.mktime()?  Here
> is my code :
> 
> yr=re.search('[0-9]{1,4}$',c_date)  #pull year from 16071999 eg. 1999
> dymnth=re.search('^[0-9]{1,4}',c_date)  #pull out day/month from
> 16071999 eg. 1607
> daymonth=dymnth.group()
> dy=re.search('^[0-9]{1,2}',daymonth)  #pull out day from 16071999 eg. 16
> 
> mnth=re.search('[0-9]{1,2}$',daymonth)  #pull out month from 16071999
> eg. 07
> y=yr.group()
> m=mnth.group()
> d=dy.group()
> atime=(y,m,d,0,0,0,0,0,0)
> thetime=time.mktime(atime)

How about using time.strptime() instead ?

thetime = time.strptime('16071999','%d%m%Y')

You'll find more on date/time with Python in:

	http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/mxDateTime.html

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    64 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Fri Oct 15 19:15:57 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 00:15:57 +0100
Subject: _tkinter & tcl8.2.1
Message-ID: <nmdoqCAtW7B4EwmT@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

I am trying to get tkinter to compile with tcl8.2.1 under win32. I have
applied a minor change that was recommended in clp, but have a number of
externals still missing. Anyone had any success with this combo?
-- 
Robin Becker



From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Wed Oct  6 14:54:02 1999
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 13:54:02 -0500
Subject: module namespace / free software question
Message-ID: <jt1zb8tj5h.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

        I'm not sure the subject line is quite right, but I wasn't
sure how to fit this question onto a single line...

        Since discovering Python, I've written a few generally useful
tools (to Unix sysadmins anyway), and I try to make them public.  In
particular, PyKstat gets grabbed from by web page fairly regularly.

        In the process of writing all this software, I've accumulated
libraries to handle common things I do.  In particular, I have a few
standard classes -- ultimately derived from "Programming Python" -- to
handle GUI goo.

        My philosophical question: should I distribute these GUI
libraries separately, though I suspect strongly they're not terribly
general, or should I ship them off with every application I make
available?  At this point I'm almost tempted to create a package 'wsa'
(my initials) which everyone who wants my software has to install
first.  This seems a little roundabout.

        Or, am I being to paranoid about namespace pollution?  I'd
rather not stomp over site-packages without some expectation that I'm
not going to interfere with future code.

        [I just got distutils. I'm thrilled people are working on
this... it's the only feature I miss from that other P language.] 

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacia Lingvo    www.esperanto.org



From greg.ewing at compaq.com  Thu Oct 28 03:36:17 1999
From: greg.ewing at compaq.com (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:36:17 +1300
Subject: help for embedded list
References: <7v4qr8$o46$1@news.vsnl.net.in>
Message-ID: <3817FCF1.2191288F@compaq.com>

kirank at bom3.vsnl.net.in wrote:
> 
> why does this happen ? I want only the first element in row 0,column 0
> to change.How can i achieve this ?

You don't show how you created the array, but you've
obviously created an outer list containing several
references to the same inner list. You need to create
a new inner list for each row of the array, e.g.

   grid = []
   for i in range(8):
      grid.append(range(8))

Keep in mind that in Python an assignment statement
only assigns a *reference* to whatever object the
right hand side denotes -- it never copies an object
or creates a new object.

Greg



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Mon Oct 18 19:53:39 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 23:53:39 GMT
Subject: Read one key press.
References: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp> <002a01bf1989$f68d42d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <19991018201908.B29979@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <slrn80mut9.1srv.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:19:08 +0200, Gerrit Holl bilang:
| Hmm. I think curses is the module I need, but I can't find documentation

<http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-curses.html>
<http://www.python.org/doc/howto/curses/curses.html>

You can also read the various curses man pages, and translate the C function
calls to python (which is what I had to do before they had the module docs
on the python website...)

there's-a-reason-why-it's-called-"curses"-ly yr's, Cliff


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From phd at phd.russ.ru  Sun Oct 24 06:40:24 1999
From: phd at phd.russ.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:40:24 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
In-Reply-To: <slrn815lav.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910241036160.28274-100000@fep132.fep.ru>

On 24 Oct 1999, Erno Kuusela wrote:
> hmm, are you using PyApache (instead of vanilla CGI) because
> of speed?
> 
> i did some benchmarking a while back, and found PyApache to be
> about as dog slow as CGI. i supposed this is because PyApache
> creates a new interpreter & imports all modules for each
> request. it's not the fork()ing that's slow with cgi, it's the
> userspace initialization of the cgi program...

   Not only because of speed, but also because of resources - Apache does
not need to fork off CGI, and this is big advantage for busy server.

> httpdapy seems to be very fast, (10-100x faster than CGI or PyApache in

   But it is too incompatible. It requires to write its own modules, where
PyApache just run standard CGIs. What if you and I would get a server whoose
sysadmin wouldn't not allow to use these modules? My CGIs will run just fine
under standard python interpreter, what about httpdapy CGIs?

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann      Foundation for Effective Policies      phd at phd.russ.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From jbenderl at olf.com  Mon Oct 11 11:14:45 1999
From: jbenderl at olf.com (Jason Benderly)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:14:45 -0400
Subject: HTMLgen 2.2 is torturing me!!
Message-ID: <3801FEE4.296AD896@olf.com>

Hi All,

The following code works perfectly in HTMLgen 2.1 but does not work with
2.2.  Instead of giving
me a table with labels and inputs,  it just gives me a 1 row, 3 column
table that is green, blue, green.
Anybody know wassup?

Thanks,

Jason




import HTMLgen

doc = HTMLgen.SimpleDocument(title="Contacts")

myform = HTMLgen.Form(
        name="The Form",
        cgi="file:/sally1/work/py/action.sh"
        )

table = HTMLgen.Table(
        tabletitle="Contact",

border=4,width=500,cell_align="right",body_color=("blue","green"))

doc.append(myform)

myform.append(table)

FirstName = HTMLgen.Input(
        type="TEXT",
        name="FirstName",
        value="",
        size=20
        )

LastName = HTMLgen.Input(
        type="TEXT",
        name="LastName",
        value="",
        size=20
        )

Address = HTMLgen.Input(
        type="TEXT",
        name="Address",
        value="",
        size=20
        )

table.body=[]

table.body.append(("First Name ", FirstName))

table.body.append(("Last Name ", LastName))

table.body.append(("Address ", Address))

doc.write("/tmp/tst.html)





From tim_one at email.msn.com  Thu Oct  7 20:14:40 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 20:14:40 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: <7tiomh$dqk$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <000501bf1122$1d039ec0$8a2d153f@tim>

[Martijn Faassen, on humor internationalization]
> ...
> I remember asking someone back in '91 what the word 'slang' meant, and
> even more amusingly, I recall myself asking "What does 'getting laid'
> mean?" :)

Ha ha!  That's funny.

> It's an enjoyable experience to me too. I've seen references in lpmud
> source to Swedish words. I've also been exposed to quite a bit of
> Finnish culture through online experiences. Etc, etc.

But that isn't funny -- it's only funny if it's a language I know.

if-only-all-the-world-were-exactly-like-me-me-me-ly y'rs  - tim





From erno at iki.fi  Sun Oct 24 05:48:19 1999
From: erno at iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 09:48:19 GMT
Subject: Is httpdapy ready for primetime?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910231227050.9916-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <slrn815lav.2ac.erno@fun77.kivikko.hoas.net>

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 12:28:41 +0000 (GMT), Oleg Broytmann
<phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:

>   I use PyApache (not httpdapy) on a lot of commercial projects. It is
>very good small, fast and reliable thingie!

hmm, are you using PyApache (instead of vanilla CGI) because
of speed?

i did some benchmarking a while back, and found PyApache to be
about as dog slow as CGI. i supposed this is because PyApache
creates a new interpreter & imports all modules for each
request. it's not the fork()ing that's slow with cgi, it's the
userspace initialization of the cgi program...

httpdapy seems to be very fast, (10-100x faster than CGI or PyApache in
my experience) as it preserves the same python interpreter accross
http requests.

or perhaps PyApache has moved to the directin of httpdapy since
i last tried it out?

  -- erno

-- 
"The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux
customers who need high speed connectivity to drive their
e-business," added Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM
Personal Systems Group. 



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Oct  4 15:53:19 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Oct 1999 19:53:19 GMT
Subject: Dutch PUG (Python Users Group)
References: <19991001155139.A27619@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991001163901.C5069@xs4all.nl> <7ta33k$i8q$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <19991004141507.A28556@xs4all.nl> <19991004145855.A29393@optiplex.palga.uucp> <19991004153416.B28556@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <7tb0jf$pj6$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 02:58:55PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:

[discussions of webservers snipped]

As long as it runs Zope. :)

No-really-ly yours,

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Oct  5 22:03:13 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 22:03:13 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
In-Reply-To: nascheme@enme.ucalgary.ca's message of "Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:46:40 -0600"
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net> <jlbtadtt76.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <19991005184640.C3305@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <oq7ll1455q.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca writes:

> On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 02:04:45PM -0700, Michael Vanier wrote:
> > GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.

> For people who don't know, and Michael correct me if I'm wrong, this
> signature refers to a line from the classic movie "The Blues Brothers".
> It is not meant to be taken literally.

We have to be careful about cryptic humour, when on an international planet.
It goes both ways: we should avoid jokes which are very "locale", and we
should have an open mind towards what we do not understand.

Yet, sometimes, people exaggerate.  Let me tell you a little tale.  Some of
you might have known (and suffered) the "robotussin" tool, which was meant
to reformat BSD-type GNU binaries in COFF-only environments and kernels,
long before BFD was invented.  It took me years before I learned, by pure
chance, that `Robitussin' was the name of an American drug meant to heal
coughing people.  I had absolutely no chance to relate "robotussin" as being
a pun on the drug name.  I guessed the word was probably describing a small
robot, and found the name long and meaningless.  It was not evident either,
to the non-American in me, that "cough" and "COFF" were pronounced alike.

When I finally got the joke, I found it _so_ American-centric and _so_
displaced, that it was not funny at all.  These people were imposing their
non-sense on me, just for the narrow pleasure of laughing between themselves?
I very vaguely remember that children do that at the start of adolescence.
This humour was rather immature, and in my feeling, not very respectful.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From tbryan at python.net  Thu Oct 14 16:33:38 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:33:38 -0400
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <38063E22.1B0D42BA@python.net>

Gerrit Holl wrote:
> 
> Aahz Maruch:
> > In article <3804F889.30739C22 at bruer.org>, Jim Bruer  <jim at bruer.org> wrote:
> >
> > >How do you insert a delimiter into a string at a given position?
> > >
> > >Tried "f.insert(i,x)" then realized this is for mutable sequences.This
> > >is so stupid I'm embarrassed to ask.
> >
> > delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
> >
> > That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
> > you'll come across better ways.
> 
> Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has (already finished
> Learning python, and I'm waiting for Programming TkInter with Python now),
> but I don't know a better way than this?

The problem is that
 string[:x] + ',' + string[x:]
creates at least two temporary objects (string[:x] and string[x:])
and just to add in this one character.  It's a decent way to insert 
one character into a string, but the overhead for "slicing" the 
string and concatenating it again would probably slow down any 
app that calls such an operation many times on the same string.
(To know for sure, one would have to implement the application 
in multiple ways and then time the performance.)

For example, consider
s = """some very long string...probably 
 spanning multiple lines"""
s = s[:2] + ',' + s[2:]
s = s[:4] + ',' + s[4:]
s = s[:6] + ',' + s[6:]
s = s[:8] + ',' + s[8:]

Think of all of the objects being created and destroyed by Python.
There's the original string for s, 4*2=8 substrings on the right
side of the equals sign formed by concatenation, and the four 
resulting strings that are assigned to s.  In fact, I think there's
even a temporary string created to hold the intermediate results 
of the addition (s[:2] + ',').

The other problem with such a solution is that if I compute the 
indices where I want the commas first (on the original string s), 
then the indices will need to be adjusted as I add characters to 
the string.

A different solution (the essence of another reply to this post)
is to split the string up into a list based on some criterion and
then rejoin the list elements with a comma.

For example,
import string
s = "one two three four"
sList = string.split(s)
s = string.join(sList,',')

Of course, then the hard part becomes splitting up the string in 
the first place, but I'm assuming that that part is already done 
if the poster just needs to insert a comma at a given index.

---Tom



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sat Oct 16 23:21:43 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 23:21:43 -0400
Subject: Detect file existance before open?
In-Reply-To: <zWaO3.2925$lv2.105561@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <1271992746-7662859@hypernet.com>

Bill Rodgers asks:

> I would like to check for the existance of a file before I
> attempt an open and maybe throw an exception.  I don't see a way
> to do this.  I would like to tell the user that the file he
> specified doesn't exist.  Is there a way to do this or do I need
> to catch the exception and deal with it that way?

os.path.exists(nm), probably also os.path.isfile(nm).

Of course, the fact that it exists and is a file still doesn't mean 
the user can open it.


- Gordon



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sun Oct  3 17:16:48 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:16:48 -0400
Subject: re vs. sgmllib (was: Moving from Perl to Python)
In-Reply-To: <37F1819A.DD5CF81@horvath.com>
Message-ID: <000401bf0de4$9b071360$812d153f@tim>

[Bob Horvath]
> I have not had the time to check out the Python parsers as much as I
> would like, but I have played around with JavaCC and liked it.  If there
> were something in Python that was similar to JavaCC, this would be
> very nice.

I've said before that Python parsers tend to be "excessively novel" <0.9
wink> -- very creative, but unclear that's an overall advantage over a
traditional parsing approach.

> None of the Python parsers seem to jump out as being "the one to use".
> Perhaps I need to spend some more time - a nudge in the right direction
> would be appreciated?

I rarely save URLs, so you'll have to trudge thru DejaNews to find these (or
maybe their authors will pipe up):

Most conventional:  TRAP (this builds on Aaron Watters's kjParsing, in more
than less conventional ways).

Least conventional, & fastest:  Marc-Andre Lemburg's mxTextTools.  You
basically build your own state machine out of Python tuples, which are
executed by a C extension module; very fast, very delicate.  MikeF put a
more conventional layer on top of it, in his own unconventional <wink> way.

Most general, most elegant, & slowest:  John Aycock's framework, which is
throughly OO and handles any context-free grammar using an Earley parser.

Least general, easiest for a parsing newbie to understand:  Amit Patel's
YAPPS, which generates readable recursive descent parsers (i.e., the kind
God intended people to write if they have to write one by hand).

Most invisible:  PyBison, a Python interface to GNU flex/bison, to which you
can find scattered references but never the actual code.

Most commonly used:  Everyone eventually learns to regret trying to use
regexps for parsing <wink>.

Most tantalizingly unusable:  Python's own Guido-grown parser generator,
which generates the parse tables Python itself uses.  This is tied into
Python rather more deeply than it "should be".

combine-the-best-features-of-each-and-it-probably-wouldn't-work-ly y'rs  -
tim





From scott at chronis.pobox.com  Mon Oct  4 03:14:33 1999
From: scott at chronis.pobox.com (scott)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 03:14:33 -0400
Subject: A Python color syntax file for VIM
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vfv03.v1c.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>
References: <slrn7vcmuh.do.daniels@localhost.localdomain> <slrn7vfv03.v1c.nascheme@adler.dynodns.net>
Message-ID: <19991004031433.A94685@chronis.pobox.com>

On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 12:59:39AM +0000, Neil Schemenauer wrote:
> I don't want to ram my beliefs down everbody's throat though.
> Users of python.vim, please vote:
> 
>     a) more highlighting
>     b) less highlighting
>     c) its perfect, don't mess with it
> 
> If I get enought votes I will post a summary.  I guess emacs (and

I think that different people like different types of highlighting, so
It would probably be best if lots of individual things could be turned
on and off, and some default setting for lots and just a little
highlighting be made.

I don't like a lot of highlighting either, but I did make the
following changes to my python.vim file in order to have printf-like
characters and %(substitute-me)s strings stand out from within
strings.  It seems to makes it much clearer what is happening with
strings 99% of the time, and follows vim's c-highlighting lead a bit.


syn match   pythonSpecialCharacter      "\\['\"?\\abfnrtv]" contained
syn match   pythonSpecialCharacter      "\\\(0x\)\=[0123456789]\{1,3}" contained
hi link pythonSpecialCharacter        pythonFormat
syn match   pythonFormat                contained "%%"
syn match   pythonFormat                "%\(\d\+\$\)\=[-+' #0*]*\(\d*\|\*\|\*\d\+\$\)\(\.\(\d*\|\*\|\*\d\+\$\)\)\=\([hlL]\|ll\)\=\([diuoxXfeEgGcCsSpn]\|\[\^\=.[^]]*\]\)" contained
syn match   pythonFormat                "%([^)]\+)\(\d\+\(\.\d\+\)\=\)\=[sdf]" contained
syn region  pythonString		start=+'+  end=+'+ skip=+\\\\\|\\'+ contains=pythonFormat,pythonSpecialCharacter
syn region  pythonString		start=+"+  end=+"+ skip=+\\\\\|\\"+ contains=pythonFormat,pythonSpecialCharacter
syn region  pythonString		start=+"""+  end=+"""+ contains=pythonFormat,pythonSpecialCharacter
syn region  pythonString		start=+'''+  end=+'''+ contains=pythonFormat,pythonSpecialCharacter

scott



From wtanksle at hawking.armored.net  Sun Oct 31 16:54:59 1999
From: wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 21:54:59 GMT
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com> <38146d39.12662187@aplnews> <3814FC7E.6DB64BD@mincom.com> <m31zaeibx2.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>
Message-ID: <slrn81q7hd.asr.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>

On 29 Oct 1999 14:33:45 +0200, Konrad Hinsen wrote:
>Martin Pool <martinp at mincom.com> writes:

>> For me, it's some kind of combination of a technical stunt and
>> frustration that calculator apps are never quite powerful enough.  It'd
>> be nice to be able to doodle algorithms into a handheld.

>One step up is MathPad, which solves coupled sets of equations.
>But that's still far from being able to use algorithms. Perhaps
>Pocket C, but for someone used to Python it's difficult to use
>such a primitive language. Maybe that's the real motivation for the
>repeated questions about Python for the Palm: Python addiction.

Well, there's a Scheme for the Pilot (which I've never used) and a very
nice Forth.  I've used the Forth to solve some nasty modular arithmetic
problems.

>Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From sdyer7073 at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 20 11:37:00 1999
From: sdyer7073 at my-deja.com (sdyer7073 at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:37:00 GMT
Subject: cgi.py and IE 4.01 Content-type headers
Message-ID: <7ukniq$amb$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I am running into the occaisional problem with IE 4.01 sending a
content-type header of the form where the content-type is repeated
seperated by commas:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/x-www-form-urlencoded

instead of the more usual:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded

The cgi module chokes on this. It happens about 0.5% of the time, but I
eventually need to address the problem. Is this allowable in the HTTP
specs, or is it simply garbage generated by IE? Since IE 4.01 seems to
be the browser shipped with Win98, the cgi module may need to address
this eventually...


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From webmaster at python.org  Wed Oct 20 12:24:23 1999
From: webmaster at python.org (webmaster at python.org)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 12:24:23 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Python Jobs Board
Message-ID: <14349.60599.781526.397932@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

Folks,

I've started a low-tech Python Job Board at

    http://www.python.org/Jobs.html

If you have Python related jobs that you'd like to advertise on this
page, please email webmaster at python.org.  For space purposes, I will
only post short announcements with URLs, so you should have more
details about the job on your own site.  See the instructions on the
above page.

-Barry



From gerrit.holl at pobox.com  Thu Oct  7 09:04:42 1999
From: gerrit.holl at pobox.com (Gerrit Holl)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 15:04:42 +0200
Subject: Python Beginner Question!!!
In-Reply-To: <rvo96j9b8c18@corp.supernews.com>
References: <rvo96j9b8c18@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <19991007150442.B29511@optiplex.palga.uucp>

Cm:
> I have never had any experience programming period, but I am really anxious to 
> learn.  I bought the book, O'Reilly's "Programming Python", and began to read 
> it, but I had no clue what was going on.  Does anybody have a suggestion for a 
> book about beginning programming for someone who knows nothing about it.  I 
> need any help I can get.

Get learning python.

regards,
Gerrit.
-- 
linuxgames.nl.linux.org	 All about games on Linux in Dutch (under construction).
www.nl.linux.org	       The Dutch resource for Dutch Linux documentation.
www.nl.linux.org/discoverb		    Learn foreign words and definitions.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/asperger	 I'm an Asperger, go here for more info.
www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit			    About me and pictures of me.



From darcy at vex.net  Wed Oct 20 16:06:46 1999
From: darcy at vex.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 20:06:46 GMT
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net> <14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu> <14348.40578.648039.972783@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <7uifot$nsi$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net> <14349.49358.407167.675972@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us> <7ukoru$2o19$1@hub.org> <14349.65336.600265.684267@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <7ul7cm$u8b$1@hub.org>

Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
> D'Arcy J.M. Cain writes:
>  > It is possible to add optional arguments without messing up regular
>  > use.  You just have to put restrictions on the use of flags that
>  > take optional arguments but that's fine in an extension anyway.  See

>   Perhaps it's not enough of a problem; I'm thinking of the case where 
> the applications command-line UI is "extended" by making a required
> value optional.  What was once:

>       myprog -f value

> would no longer work if the value for -f became optional and required

Right.  I am assuming that no one would change the behaviour of existing
options.  If someone were to switch to this function I would expect that
they would use the extra functionality for new options and mention the
new usage in the instructions.  The existing commands would work as they
now do.  It's only the new, optional arguments that would require a small
attitude adjustment on the part of the user.

I agree that changing expected behaviour gratuitously is a bad thing.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at caingang.com>      |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on         
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 06:13:02 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 12:13:02 +0200
Subject: Newbie need help
References: <380D9040.745B21F8@sssup.it>
Message-ID: <034801bf1ae3$b277b070$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Marco Guidi <ENONMELOSPAMMATEguidi at sssup.it> wrote:
> I've a very silly problem, but I'm not able to solve it.

silly or not, Zope questions are probably better
asked on the appropriate zope mailing list:

http://www.zope.org/Resources/MailingLists

...but alright, I can make an unqualified guess:

> >>> import DocumentTemplate
> >>> import Common
...
> Why did I get the error
> 
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> ImportError: No module named Common ?

probably because the App directory isn't
on your Python path.
 
> and Why could I import DocumentTemplate correctly ?

probably because it's a package (if there's a
file called __init__.py in that directory, it's
a package)
 
> Which is the correct way for importing a file residing in
> some directory different from the one from wich I run python
> (and different from Extensions or other predefined directories) ?

first, make sure the right things are on your
Python path (the PYTHONPATH variable.  to
see the current setting, import sys and print
the value of sys.path).  the Zope installation
guidelines should tell you what (if anything)
you need to have on the path.

package directories shouldn't be on the path,
though.  to import things from a package, use:

    from App import Common

or

    import App.Common

importing App or DocumentTemplate imports
the package itself, which may or may not be
a relevant thing to do, depending on what the
package designer intended...

hope this helps!

</F>

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




From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Wed Oct 27 12:51:13 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:51:13 -0400
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFED@rimail03>

I use the following code.  Its kludgy and I'm a Python newbie, but so far it
works, so.....

def comCmd(log, comlist) :
    global onNT

    if log == None :
        log.prtError("comCmd(log, comlist) passed incorrect logger")
        sendError( "comCmd(log, comlist) passed incorrect logger")
        sys.exit(1)
        
    curcom = comlist[0]
    cmdl = ""
    
    for arg in comlist[1:] :
        cmdl = cmdl + " " + arg
      
    log.prtl(9, "**** call shell with [%s] " % cmdl)
    
    resultlines = []
    
    on98 = 0   # should never run on 98.
     
    if on98 :
        program = os.popen(cmdl, 'r')
    elif onNT :
        program = os.popen('( ' + cmdl + ' ) 2>&1', 'r')
    else:
        program = os.popen('{ ' + cmdl + '; } 2>&1', 'r')
    
    log.prtl(1, " result of call...")
                                                                    
    while 1:                                                        
        line = program.readline()                                   
        if not line:                                                
            break                                                   
        resultlines.append(line)                          
        log.prtl(1, line)
    #end while

    status = program.close()         
                                      
    if status:                                                      
        status = status >> 8                                        
        log.prtWarning('Command exited with abnormal status: %s'% status )

    
    resultlines[0:] = []   # deletes cells
    
    log.prtl(3, " !!!  %s command completed" % curcom)
#end def comCmd


> -----Original Message-----
> From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal at lemburg.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 11:34 AM
> To: Thomas Heller
> Cc: python-list
> Subject: Re: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
> 
> 
> Thomas Heller wrote:
> > 
> > I searched the MSDN again,
> > it seems that winmsd.exe is included in NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
> > and installed by default.
> 
> Sound even better ;-) (It doesn't seem to exist on Win95, so I'll
> only use it for WinNT.)
> 
> What command string would I have to pass to os.popen to get the output
> (I only need the first few lines) without any windows popping up ?
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Marc-Andre Lemburg
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Y2000:                                                    65 days left
> Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
> Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From chscherr at indiana.edu  Wed Oct  6 19:53:03 1999
From: chscherr at indiana.edu (Chad Scherrer)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 23:53:03 GMT
Subject: core dump
Message-ID: <37FBE0DF.488A8823@indiana.edu>

I'm using Python 1.5.2 in Red Hat 6.0, and am getting a core dump.
Here's the code:
____________________________________________________________________

from random import gauss
import Numeric; N=Numeric
import LinearAlgebra; LA=LinearAlgebra
import ranlib
from math import pi
TWOPI=2.0*pi

def stdnormal(shape=[]):
    if type(shape) == type(0): shape = [shape]
    n = Numeric.multiply.reduce(shape)

    x = TWOPI*ranlib.sample(n/2)
    y = Numeric.sqrt(-2*Numeric.log(ranlib.sample(n/2)))
    (x,y)=(Numeric.cos(x)*y,Numeric.sin(x)*y)

    if len(shape) != 0:
        return Numeric.reshape((x,y), shape)
    else:
         return x[0]

def altnorm(mu1,mu2,n):
    z = stdnormal([n,3])
    for zn in z:
        zn[2] = mu1 * zn[0] + mu2 * zn[1] + zn[2]
    return z

def genS(mu1,mu2,n):
    X = altnorm(mu1,mu2,n)
    return N.dot(N.transpose(X),X)/n

def genPsi(mu1,mu2,n):
    S = genS(mu1,mu2,n)

    a = N.dot(S[2,:2],LA.inverse(S[:2,:2]))
    b=N.array(S[0,0],S[1,1])

    return (a,b)
_____________________________________________________________

The core dump happens when I import this module and then try something
like
Psi=genPsi(3,3,6). Is this a bug in Python, or am I doing something
wrong? Thanks in advance.
-Chad




From tg at melaten.rwth-aachen.de  Thu Oct 21 07:39:32 1999
From: tg at melaten.rwth-aachen.de (Thomas Gellekum)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 13:39:32 +0200
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com> <14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <kq7lkh9c3v.fsf@cip12.melaten.rwth-aachen.de>

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> writes:

> What does the output of ldd look like for glibc and libc on other
> platforms (e.g. Redhat, *BSD, etc.) ?

Forget about glibc on FreeBSD. There's not even a port for it, and all
binaries I've seen use the native libc. The same probably applies to
Net/OpenBSD.

tg



From jklymak at apl.washington.edu  Thu Oct 21 12:31:51 1999
From: jklymak at apl.washington.edu (Jody M. Klymak)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 09:31:51 -0700
Subject: win32: cygwin modules?
In-Reply-To: Charles G Waldman's message of "Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:23:12 +0200 (MET DST)"
References: <n1tdpakv.fsf@apl.washington.edu> <14350.52592.909170.303195@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <iu40pte0.fsf@apl.washington.edu>

Hi Charles,

Oh yeah, I can easily make a compface executable.  The problem is
making a dll in a format that python can call.

Thanks!  Jody


>>>>> "CGW" == Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov> writes:

    CGW> Jody M. Klymak writes:
    >>  For some peverse reason I have decided to get my feet wet with
    >> python by getting Piers Lauder's facemail package to work on
    >> NT.  After a little fiddling some of it works, but I really
    >> want to get those pretty X-Faces in there.  This requires
    >> building compface.c and compfacemodule.c as Python modules.
    >> 
    >> Has anyone built modules from c-source using cygwin (20.1 if it
    >> matters) that work with python?
    >> 

    CGW> I don't have access to an NT machine at the moment, but I'm
    CGW> 99% sure that the XEmacs team has compface support working on
    CGW> NT, in both the cygwin and "native" environments.  Check out
    CGW> the www.xemacs.org and you'll probably be able to dig up
    CGW> something you can look at for ideas.

-- 
Jody Klymak                         APL/School of Oceanography,
Doctoral Candidate                  University of Washington
mailto:jklymak at apl.washington.edu   (206)-685-9080
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/jklymak/




From python-list at teleo.net  Wed Oct  6 11:42:57 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 08:42:57 -0700
Subject: Anyway to *SET* the date & time?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-OR9bdV5dKcVd@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com> <19991006021336.B28582@quark.emich.edu> <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-CeWsRRBPuSQk@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <99100608480103.00964@quadra.teleo.net>

[Benjamin Schollnick, on Wed, 06 Oct 1999]:
:: It's kinda a little pointless to run a time client and then have to 
:: manually
:: set the time, you sort of loose the "millisecond" timing >weak grin<.
:: 
:: I am prepared to deal with this, I can have the client use the Sys 
:: module
:: and make a system shell call to DATE & TIME, which will work
:: under both OS/2 & Windows.
:: 
:: It's annoying, but I can work around it for said platforms.  *nix, and
:: 
:: everything else are out of luck, since I don't know how to set their 
:: clock,
:: but........ That's what modifying the source if for.

Perhaps I missed something at the beginning of this thread... Why don't
you just set up ntp server/client on one *nix box and ntp clients on
the others?



From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Tue Oct 12 16:08:49 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 22:08:49 +0200
Subject: Improved struct module
References: <000801bf146b$43e99160$11a2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BE09107@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:000801bf146b$43e99160$11a2143f at tim...
> [Robin Boerdijk]
> > I would like to make a case for replacing the current Python
> > struct module with an improved version of it. I think the
> > struct module contains very useful functionality, but the
> > interface functions (pack and unpack) are inconvenient
> > for a number of situations.
> >
> > To fix the pack/unpack inconvenience, I have written an xstruct
> > module that extends the struct module with a new structdef
> > function to *define* packed binary data structures (similar to
> > C's struct keyword).
> >
> > [and code & docs are at
> >      http://www.sis.nl/python/xstruct/xstruct.html
> > ]
>
> The xstruct interface is nice.  Why is it implemented in C?  That is, it
> seems to combine two things:  random improvements to the std struct
module's
> internals, and a new interface.  The latter is much easier to do and
> maintain if written in Python, and would also be sub-classable then.  You
> should try to get the "random improvements" into the std struct module
> regardless; the new interface would likely have a better chance as 100 new
> lines of Python than as 800-900 new lines of C.

There are a number of reasons for implementing the xstruct module in C as
opposed to implementing it as a Python wrapper around the current struct
module.

1. Implementing it as a Python wrapper would be horribly inefficient and not
as simple as you seem to think. To randomly change the value of a field
somewhere in the middle of a packed binary data buffer, I would have to do
something like:

def __setattr__(self, FieldName, Value):

    Field = self.fields[FieldName]
    BufferBeforeField = self.buffer[:Field.offset]
    NewFieldBuffer = struct.pack(Field.struct_format, Value)
    BufferAfterField = self.buffer[Field.offset + Field.size:] #
    self.buffer = BufferBeforeField + NewFieldBuffer + BufferAfterField

This takes at least 5 memory allocations whereas the xstruct's "s.FieldName
= Value"
requires none, the __getattr__ would have similar problems. Think of what
happens when we have a struct with 20 fields and we need to set these
randomly... If there is any proper use for C, then it is low-level stuff
like this.

I also feel that the xstruct's interface is the more natural interface for
low-level access to packed binary data structures. I'm pretty sure that most
people currently using the pack/unpack interface would not have done so if
they had a more structured interface like xstruct provides (see another
follow-up to your reply). If there is any C code that is redundant, it is
the pack/unpack code <0.9 wink>

2. The xstruct objects support the new buffer interface of Python 1.5.2.
This makes it possible to read and write data directly from a file or socket
into and out of a packed memory buffer. All we have to do is to add support
for the buffer interface to other low level modules like cStringIO and
socket (files already do !!) and we would have a perfect set of seemlessly
fitting, complementary packages. How could I achieve this in native Python ?

Another reason for providing the buffer interface is to facilitate writing
extension modules for C APIs that make heavily use of C structs. The most
notorious example I know is the MQI interface of IBMs MQSeries. I think it
defines more than 20 C structs, all of which I can define in Python now and
still interact nicely with the Python MQI extension module written in C.

> guido-gets-so-c-sick-i-tell-you-he-vomits<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

I feel for Guido <wink>, but in this (exceptional) case, I think C beats
Python. By implemting this in C, we can actually reduce the amount of C code
that otherwise would need to be written (see MQSeries example).

Robin.





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Oct 15 16:31:47 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 22:31:47 +0200
Subject: User classes for Int, etc?
References: <030201bf16aa$aa64d710$0301a8c0@mnot.net>
Message-ID: <p6qzoxk4b7w.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Mark Nottingham" <mnot at mnot.net> writes:

> Are there any user template classes (like UserDict, UserList, etc)
> for Int, String, and other basic data types? That would be, IMHO,
> way cool.

I don't think so. They would most likely be called UserInt, UserString
etc. - searching for that on python.org reveals that they don't exist,
publically.

> I've already implemented most of them in my application, but it
> would be really nice if there was something I could subclass to
> catch everything...

When you are through, please don't forget to place a copy of these
classes on python.org :-)

Regards,
Martin



From mirko at picard.inka.de  Fri Oct 29 06:04:37 1999
From: mirko at picard.inka.de (Mirko Zeibig)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:04:37 +0200
Subject: BIND interface
References: <19991028153839.B29354@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn81is9l.4ba.mirko@picard.inka.de>

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:38:40 +0200, Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Anyway, if there is no such beast (it needn't be complete... it's mostly
> about removing and adding domains, and changing their zonefiles) i'll write
> my own, maybe even complete enough for other people to be of use... ;)

Hello Thomas,
I really like python but maybe if you are running Linux you could have a
look at linuxconf, which has a module named dnsconf able to automate such
tasks via scripts (so you might take python for that part at last ;-)).

Regards
Mirko
-- 
mailto:   mirko.zeibig at gmx.de
privat:   http://sites.inka.de/picard
commerce: http://www.webideal.de
qmail, ldap, serialfax, rh-isdn: http://www.webideal.de/#downloads



From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Tue Oct  5 12:49:50 1999
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu C. Gherman)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:49:50 +0200
Subject: Burning all GIFs on Python.org?
Message-ID: <37FA2C2E.CF326636@darwin.in-berlin.de>

Hi all,

What about joining the "Burn all GIFs" movement as described on 
this site:

  http://burnallgifs.org/

Of course an appropriate (but little) icon on the Python's home 
page would be needed, then, maybe like on 

  http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/gif2png/

Seems like Unisys might really be after making money with non-
commercial internet sites unable to prove that their GIF files 
were created with licensed software.

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman

................................................................
"An average of more than 15 % of adults in 12 industrialized 
countries are functionally illiterate; in Ireland, the United 
Kingdom and the United States, the rates are over 20 %."

  (The State of the World's Children 1999,
   UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/sowc99)



From tylerpeter at hotmail.com  Fri Oct  8 08:42:01 1999
From: tylerpeter at hotmail.com (tyler Peter)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 22:42:01 +1000
Subject: Python Port Newbie
Message-ID: <uHlL3.14520$lE.42049@ozemail.com.au>

I have developed an app for Windows in Vis Basic 6 but now want to port to
Linux.  Thinking of re-writing the app in Python on Linux, but would like to
work under similar development environment as available in Vis B.

Does anybody know if there is a similar development environment + form
builder for Python?

Thanks Pete.





From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 25 04:36:06 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:36:06 +0100
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <1271354562-2632983@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <000101bf1ec3$fac1e3d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> I don't think Moshe was saying introspection is evil. I'd put it 
> this way: Python without double-underscore stuff is safe as 
> Mommy's milk.

Not quite:

l = []
m = []
l.append(l)
m.append(m)
l == m

But anyone using "unsafe" features deserves everything they get.
Same applies to using the traceback object in anything other than
a debugger.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From gsez020 at kryten.bedford.waii.com  Tue Oct 19 04:23:37 1999
From: gsez020 at kryten.bedford.waii.com (Pete Forman)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 09:23:37 +0100
Subject: mime email creation with attachment
References: <7ufjr0$bpt$1@hercules.tno.nl> <380B7FC3.1D20C2C4@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <tud7ubwygm.fsf@kryten.bedford.waii.com>

>>>>> "Jason" == Jason Trowbridge <ratman at nmt.edu> writes:

    Jason> You forgot a header to make it a valid MIME message.  I
    Jason> added a line to the segment of code below:

It is not a valid MIME message as it is using uuencode.  Set the
Content-Transfer-Encoding to base64 or another valid encoding
mechanism.  (RFC 2045 6.1)
-- 
Pete Forman
Western Geophysical
pete.forman at westgeo.com



From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Thu Oct  7 10:28:38 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 15:28:38 +0100
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
 <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <FJ4pFq.CwE@world.std.com>
 <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <reHLgNAW4K$3Ew4o@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <001901bf0f2e$4a4ac6b0$f29b12c2 at secret.pythonware.com>,
Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes
>Will Ware <wware-nospam at world.std.com> wrote:
>> That is called "junk DNA" because it is never translated to a
>> protein. There are various conjectures about it.
>
>a quick web search for "junk DNA" brought up three
>major theories (since they were posted on the web,
>they have to be true.  all of them):
>
>    1. the great designer only did one design,
>    and the DNA that we consider as junk is
>    actually used by extra-terrestrial beings.
>
>    (motorola processors, that is)
>
>    2. since there's no possible chance that an
>    evolutionary process would leave junk in
>    there, Darwin was obviously wrong.
>
>    (GvR is in good company, in other words ;-)
>
>    3. statistical analysis shows that the junk
>    looks like human text, which clearly shows
>    that it is actually used in some yet unknown
>    way.
>
>    (docstrings?)
>
></F>
>
4) could be there to absorb gamma rays/neutrons.
5) defends against parasitising viruses by encouraging them to insert
into non-expressed sequences.
6) Allow more extreme mutations to occasionally succeed.

and on and on
-- 
Robin Becker



From nolan at ethereal.dhis.org  Mon Oct 18 01:27:47 1999
From: nolan at ethereal.dhis.org (Nolan Darilek)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 00:27:47 -0500
Subject: Developing and testing modules live
Message-ID: <871zatfdbg.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org>

When I develop modules, I prefer testing them immediately after I
write each specific function. One solution I've tried is to run an
instance of the Python interpreter in a shell buffer alongside my
editting in another. When I import the module, test some
functionality and modify the source file, I've discovered that del'ing
and re-importing the module doesn't include the changes. For example,
if I write:

print "Hello, world."

in test.py and import test, I receive the message. If I modify the
message to just "Hello.", delete test and re-import it, it doesn't
even print the message.

To me, deleting and re-importing seemed to be an intuitous way of
reloading my changes, but I seem to be missing some important fact
about how importing works. Granted, I can kill the interpreter and
restart it, but this is a bit slower. Is there a way to quickly reread
the module without restarting?



From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Wed Oct 13 14:35:37 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 13 Oct 1999 18:35:37 GMT
Subject: Database interface
Message-ID: <7u2jdp$1c6$1@essle.valdyas.org>

Dear people,

I've just more or less finished a couple of classes that make working
with a database easier - they should work with any DB-Api II compliant
database module, really.

Basically, it provides a way to define tables and relations in a sort of
repository. The repository is then used in record and table objects to
provide inserting, deleting, updating and selecting without the need to
code SQL in the actual application. There is some rudimentary integrity
checking, too. I've provided a small test application and a create
table script.

I don't think the work is advanced enough to officially announce it on
c.l.p.announce or Freshmeat, or so - but I thought I'd mention it here
for interested people.  I hope people like it, but if there's someone
who thinks it's the silliest thing since sliced bread, I'd like to hear
that, too!

Anyway, find it at:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/python/index.html

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From mtifvk at rec.uk  Fri Oct  8 11:59:15 1999
From: mtifvk at rec.uk (mtifvk at rec.uk)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 17:59:15 +0200 
Subject: Important issue !  710   [2/2]
Message-ID: <04B596965534D31196710000F81EA08901E7D9BC@news.tesoro.it>





From jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com  Thu Oct 21 14:59:39 1999
From: jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com (John W. Stevens)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 12:59:39 -0600
Subject: Python for HP-UX
References: <3805F2E8.64189D2@imf.au.dk>
Message-ID: <380F629B.DB687010@basho.fc.hp.com>

Emil Hedevang Lohse wrote:
> 
> I have a simple request: Python for HP-UX.
> 
> I have downloaded the sourcecode and tried to compile it but it will not work.
> So is it possible that anyone out there could email the compiled Python??
> 
> From Emil
> emil at imf.au.dk

Just a quick question:  Why didn't it compile for you?  Where
were the problems?

John S.
============

If I spoke for HP --- there probably wouldn't BE an HP!

John Stevens
john_stevens2 at hp.com



From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Sun Oct  3 18:41:20 1999
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: 3 Oct 1999 22:41:20 GMT
Subject: for faq?: multithreaded curses getch()
References: <37F70BFD.2EC25E1A@nw.com.au>
Message-ID: <slrn7vf91h.e5.cjc26@tankgrrl.bridget.mindriot.net>

Pada Sun, 03 Oct 1999 15:55:41 +0800, Todd Owen bilang:
| To get the getch thread to block without holding the GIL, the solution I
| found was to do a select on stdin, as described in...
| a faq-oriented summary :)...!
| Hint for using curses module with threads: to wait for a keypress
| without blocking other threads, try inserting a
| "select.select([sys.stdin], [], [])" call before the call to getch().

stdwin.nodelay(1) also works--it causes getch() to always be non-blocking.


-- 
cliff crawford   http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
            There are more stars in the sky than there are
-><-        grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.



From python-list at teleo.net  Wed Oct 20 19:38:44 1999
From: python-list at teleo.net (Patrick Phalen)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 16:38:44 -0700
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: <vrzoxdzkb5.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
References: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim> <99102015440605.04931@quadra.teleo.net> <vrzoxdzkb5.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <99102016445407.04931@quadra.teleo.net>

[Fran?ois Pinard, on Wed, 20 Oct 1999]:

::  So, it means you forgive me my errances?

Well, I'm prone to l'errance occasional myself ... for instance, 1729 is
the smallest number which can be expressed as the sum of two *cubes* in
two different ways (not two squares). Doh!



From bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct  5 18:53:50 1999
From: bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:53:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Memory leak in JPython beta 2
References: <q5=wN479RJmAiseo=b6xMKnwEuhT@4ax.com>
	<14330.23432.464380.623272@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <14330.33150.191628.350444@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <bwarsaw at cnri.reston.va.us> writes:

    BAW> Most JVMs don't free memory associated with classes, even
    BAW> when the classes are no longer reachable.  For this reason,
    BAW> the exec() method in JPython leaks.  JimH has given me a
    BAW> patch which may fix the problem, but I haven't had time to
    BAW> look at it in detail yet.

Just to follow up; I took a look at JimH's patch and indeed it does
seem to quash JPython memory leaks in the face of gazillions of
exec()s.  So I'll probably check this in some time soon.  Watch the
CVS tree if you're desperate. :)

-Barry



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Oct 15 04:14:26 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:14:26 +0200
Subject: initialization of lists in classes
References: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9910150904020.2553-100000@ural2>
Message-ID: <003001bf16e5$4cccb830$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Balint Aradi <ab007 at hszk.bme.hu> wrote:
> I don't understand the mechanism behind that. Why is b.list initialized
> with the value of a.list? (Or why isn't b.float initialized with the value
> of a.float?)  I'm quite a newbie in Python, so this was probably a stupid
> question, but can anyone explain that to me?

and to give you some additional clues, look
carefully at the following two statements:

    self.list.append(1,2)
    self.float = self.float + 2.0

they're doing two entirely different things.
can you figure out how they differ?  (hint:
as you've seen, one is modifying an existing
object, one is not)

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From djc at itga.com.au  Wed Oct 27 20:06:34 1999
From: djc at itga.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 10:06:34 +1000
Subject: Using stdin / stdout on Unix
Message-ID: <87zox48i2d.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>

I have only just started to use progress and am trying to make a
program (on Solaris) accept input from stdin and write to stdout.  The
only I have worked out is the following:

INPUT THROUGH cat NO-ECHO.
OUTPUT THROUGH cat.

This seems a bit stupid.  Surely there is a way to do the same thing
without having to bounce everything through cat.

- Dave




From ivanlan at callware.com  Mon Oct 18 13:14:42 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:14:42 -0600
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
Message-ID: <380B5582.F6C2CB09@callware.com>

Hi All--

Les Schaffer wrote:
> 
> just started using the getopt module. i was surprised to see it
> returns the options in list format rather than perl's (better)
> dictionary format.
> 
> i thought i read on c.l.p many moons ago about someone who had written
> an add-on to getopt to return a dict of options a la perl. but i found
> nothing in deja news for this.
> 
> anyone have a pointer to such solution (before i implement it myself),
> i'd do something like this:
> 

Try my getargs module.  It's available at:

	http://www.pauahtun.org/ftp.html

Near the bottom of the page (getargspy.zip).

It's fairly well documented, too.

Take care,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From r.albanese at qut.edu.au  Thu Oct 28 00:21:59 1999
From: r.albanese at qut.edu.au (Rico Albanese)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:21:59 +1000
Subject: mktime and tupples
Message-ID: <3817CF66.8128A13F@qut.edu.au>

Hi everyone,

I am writing a web application and I am trying to get a string which
represents a date (eg. 16071999) and generate from this the
corresponding Unix Time in secs from Epoch.  So with the following code
I am trying to generate a tuple which is suitable to pass to
time.mktime() as a parameter.  I have imported all of the required
modules but the following code bombs out at the line "thetime=...".  Are
the variables y, m, d strings? How do I create a tuple (ie. variable
"atime" below) so that it is a valid parameter for time.mktime()?  Here
is my code :

yr=re.search('[0-9]{1,4}$',c_date)  #pull year from 16071999 eg. 1999
dymnth=re.search('^[0-9]{1,4}',c_date)  #pull out day/month from
16071999 eg. 1607
daymonth=dymnth.group()
dy=re.search('^[0-9]{1,2}',daymonth)  #pull out day from 16071999 eg. 16

mnth=re.search('[0-9]{1,2}$',daymonth)  #pull out month from 16071999
eg. 07
y=yr.group()
m=mnth.group()
d=dy.group()
atime=(y,m,d,0,0,0,0,0,0)
thetime=time.mktime(atime)

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Rico





From garry at research.att.com  Wed Oct  6 09:45:22 1999
From: garry at research.att.com (Garrett G. Hodgson)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:45:22 GMT
Subject: Making regular expressions more friendly
References: <37FA0DED.93857F8@logica.com>
Message-ID: <37FB5272.954EFF2D@research.att.com>

Ian Clarke wrote:

> I have never liked regular expressions, they seem to come from the Perl
> school of programming 

a minor nit: it would be more accurate to say that perl 
comes from the regular expression school of programming,
as expressed in tools like sed, grep(s), and awk.

-- 
Garry Hodgson			"Hey, mister, can ya tell me,
garry at sage.att.com		where a man might find a bed?"
Software Innovation Services	He just grinned and shook my hand,
AT&T Labs			"No", was all he said.



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct 14 11:52:39 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:52:39 +0100
Subject: do ... while loop
In-Reply-To: <873dveynjm.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <002801bf165c$24ac09c0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> >     while 1:
> >         xxx
> >         yyy
> >         if not condition:
> >             break

> Actually, Python is full of `while 1' loops.  One gets used to them
> after a while (and my C loops with multiple exit points tend to have
> them too), but they're not really nice.

I disagree. It's often a lot clearer to say:

while 1:
    if condition1:
        break
    if condition2:
        break
    do_something()

than:

while not (condition1 or condition2):
    do_something()

> One wonders what's the point of having a condition in the while
> loop if you're not to use it.  :-)

How about something like an old construct in GFA BASIC (anyone
remeber that?):

do:		# Equivalent to while 1
    if condition1:
        break
    if condition2:
        break
    do_something()

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From best_linux_application at hotmail.com  Sun Oct 17 09:05:55 1999
From: best_linux_application at hotmail.com (best_linux_application at hotmail.com)
Date: Mon,18 Oct 1999 09:05:55+2000
Subject: New, unknown way to use Linux !!!
Message-ID: <510181999122626sforge@mcs.net>

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http://www.bluegum.com/NetNews/col.dev.apps/130.html

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From binette at worldnet.att.net  Sat Oct 23 13:19:16 1999
From: binette at worldnet.att.net (binette)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 11:19:16 -0600
Subject: Backspace key and Arrows in JPython
Message-ID: <3811EE14.5185CD02@worldnet.att.net>

I have both Python and JPython installed on my linux box (redhat).

For some reason I have no problem using the up and down arrows to access
past command (bash shell style) in Python but can't use 'hem in JPython.
Same for the Backspace key.

Can someone tell me how to do it?

(Also, I have no idea how to  fix it (generally) on linux either.  I
just know that some shells let me do it and others don't)

Thanks.

Sebastien




From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Fri Oct  8 04:36:57 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 10:36:57 +0200
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <7tiu4o$12k@ieng9.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <199910080832.JAA29686@axil.hvision.nl>

On 7 Oct 99, at 13:00, William Tanksley wrote:

> >> Great.  I'll do that right away, if I can find an .arj extractor.
> >> Speaking of which, is there any particular reason why you used .zip for
> >> the executable and .arj for the (required) libraries?
> 
> >That's more for hysterical raisins; I wrote a script which packs a 
> >directory and all its subdirectories in an arj file; I did not manage 
> >to do so for zip files (back then, that is :).
> 
> pkzip -ad ?  It's part of the zip command set.

I suppose so; I never liked pkzip much, I preferred other (often more 
obscure) archivers like rar, ace, and jar. :)

> But anyhow, this still isn't working for me, and I'm slamming up against
> a nasty deadline.  The problem is that I have to run this under pure DOS,
> and I _must_ call an external program.  When I do "import os" under wpy,
> it tells me that there's no such module.
> 
> The PythonDX library has long file names, which aren't supported under DOS.

If you unpack them with arj, the name should be sliced off to 8.3 
format. Not the ugly tilde notation, mind you; exceptions.py will 
become exceptio.py rather than except~1.py. You should be able to do 
'import exceptions' and it still finds them. (It should, anyway)

Don't forget to set your PYTHONPATH variable correctly, of course, 
and since this is DOS, setting the PYTHONCASEOK variable will help a 
lot too. In fact, if you have a file called OS.PY in DOS (rather than 
os.py), Python might not find it unless you do a SET PYTHONCASEOK=1. 

The Python source is Unix-based and making it work correctly on a 
case-insensitive, 8.3-filename based OS takes a few tricks. 

> arj appears to have two options for truncating the long file names.  Which
> of them should I use?

Hmmz, I just do arj x archive.arj -y and it doesn't ask me any 
questions... 

> >> Okay, this will clearly take some more work.  It seems that the arj
> >> program doesn't support long file names, but the arj archive includes
> >> them.  (How'd you manage that?)
> 
> >Oh it does, if you have the right version. Here's one:
> >http://www.cuci.nl/~hnowak/stuff/Arj.exe
> >I believe this link *is* on my site somewhere. :-)
> 
> Not that I could find.  You don't suppose that you could zip the archive up,
> do you?

I could use WinZip. ;-) 

> That'd be convenient.  Of course, I already have ARJ and so on, but for other
> people -- and perhaps for me as well.
> 
> I'm in a world of hurt.  I hope someone can fix this!

Aww... I'll see what I can do...


--Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/



From kain at twilight.  Tue Oct 19 16:38:50 1999
From: kain at twilight. (Scott Barron)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 20:38:50 GMT
Subject: Byte type advice
Message-ID: <7uiksq$gcv$1@marcie.fissiontech.com>

Is there any Byte type in Python?  What I am specifically trying to do
is port some VB code which has a Byte type defined as an unsigned 8-bit
number.  Would it be safe to use a regular Python number type, or am I
going to have to do more work?

Thanks,
Scott



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Fri Oct  1 10:23:41 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 14:23:41 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7t2g5d$2o5$535@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct 19 21:02:12 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 19:02:12 -0600
Subject: `re' difficulty?
References: <vrzoxfpdwp.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910191315060.286-100000@rigoletto.ski.org> <14348.57394.697161.702340@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us> <380CE2FD.D110548C@callware.com> <7uj0cf$mc9$1@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <380D1494.72B0D8F7@callware.com>

Hi All--

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <380CE2FD.D110548C at callware.com>,
> Ivan Van Laningham  <ivanlan at callware.com> wrote:
> >
> >I'm not obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive
> >obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive obsessive
> >obsessive.
> >
> ><no-time-for-witticisms-in-total-panic-mode>-ly y'rs,
> 
> Yeah, like, when are you getting the next chapter to me?  ;-)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

<no-fair>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-0

(two tomorrow)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From mring at harris.com  Mon Oct 18 11:31:39 1999
From: mring at harris.com (Matthew Ring)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 15:31:39 GMT
Subject: JPython?
References: <199910132322.QAA11710@hermes.aspectdv.com> <199910141949.MAA18769@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <01bf197d$d8996080$490bb193@SC017123.rfc.comm.harris.com>

Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> wrote in article
<199910141949.MAA18769 at hermes.aspectdv.com>...
<...SNIP...>
> With this methodology, all of the 
> "programming" is done using JPthon
> and yet the static user interface elements
> are "drawn" with a visual tool (JBuilder3).
> 
> As I said, it has been working great for
> me.
> 
> Jim

Jim,

I like this Idea, but I have a few questions for you.

1) Did you know Java before learning Python?
2) How long did it take you to become productive with JPython?
3) What time savings do you experience using JPython vs. straight Java?

Thank you.

-Matt Ring



From malcolmt at smart.net.au  Sun Oct 31 20:41:24 1999
From: malcolmt at smart.net.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 12:41:24 +1100
Subject: Contribution: nice floating point number formatting
In-Reply-To: <7vhrfm$glv$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>; from Carel Fellinger on Sun, Oct 31, 1999 at 05:41:26PM +0100
References: <381a4316$0$209@nntp1.ba.best.com> <19991030063317.A16991@better.net> <7vhrfm$glv$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>
Message-ID: <19991101124124.A903@Ridcully.home>

On Sun, Oct 31, 1999 at 05:41:26PM +0100, Carel Fellinger wrote:
> And for the spaces in the decimal part, are you shure that is conventional?
> I can't remember having seen this *ever* in my life. At least not in my life
> as a programmer.

There is a convention in some situations/places where the comma (or, in
Europe, the dot) is dropped entirely and a thin space is used (if you are
typesetting -- something smaller than a normal inter-word space).

You will notice I have couched that last paragraph somewhat cautiously: my
recollection is that this situation (using spaces) is meant to be standard,
these days but since everybody is used to using commas, etc, they still
appear quite frequently. IMVHO, the spaces every three digits look nicer
than throwing a bunch of punctuation marks at the number. :-)

(and if that doesn't start some sort of religious war, I don't know what
will.) :-)

Cheers,
Malcolm Tredinnick




From janssen at parc.xerox.com  Fri Oct  8 18:16:23 1999
From: janssen at parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 15:16:23 PDT
Subject: Python and IDL interface
In-Reply-To: <37FE2EC3.253632DD@kodak.com>
References: <37FE2EC3.253632DD@kodak.com>
Message-ID: <grzaorsB0KGW0UFUN1@holmes.parc.xerox.com>

Excerpts from ext.python: 8-Oct-99 Python and IDL interface Warren
Poe at kodak.com (182*)

> Where can I find documentation on writing Corba/IDL inferface in
> python?  Has anyone done this before?  Thanks in advance

Sure.  ILU has supported this for years.  Python is one of the great
languages for CORBA -- it was recently accepted by the OMG as one of the
two languages adopted as CORBA Scripting languages.  There's more ILU
info at ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/ilu.html.

Bill



From mcicogni at siosistemi.it  Fri Oct  8 09:50:39 1999
From: mcicogni at siosistemi.it (Mauro Cicognini)
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 15:50:39 +0200
Subject: Anyone have success w/STRPTIME???
References: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-R7GdiTzGgOlL@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <37FDF6AF.BD35B03A@siosistemi.it>

Benjamin Schollnick wrote:

> Can anyone point me in the right direction, re: STRPTIME?
>
> To my knowledge the strptime function(s) are correct below,
> yet under both OS/2 & Win NT, I am getting a attribute error.
>
> I'm assuming it's my fault, but according to the Docs I think
> I've got it setup AOK (TMHK).
>
>                 - Benjamin
>
> import time
> import sys
> from telnetlib import Telnet
>
> print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
> tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 13) # Connect to MS Win NT date /
> time
> datetime   = tn_session.read_all()
> tn_session.close()
> print "Server returned: ",datetime
> #timevalue = time.strptime (datetime, '%A, %B, %d, %Y %X')
> timestr    = time.strptime (datetime)
> print timevalue, '   - ', time.asctime(timevalue)
> print
>
> Connecting to :  128.173.14.71
> Server returned:  Tue Oct  5 03:59:56 1999
>
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "D:\OS2\PYTHON\WORKING\TIMESERVER\CLIENT13.PY", line 20, in ?
>     timestr    = time.strptime (datetime)
> AttributeError: strptime
>

Ben, strptime() is not supported under Windows. It does say so in the
docs. :(

If you're interested, I've written a str2time() which I'm pretty much
satisfacted with, that does some nice RE processing and a couple crude
hacks to get what I want in a Python format. It extracts a date from
many general-format strings; if you need to, changing the RE will allow
you to parse even more formats. I can send you the source if you wish.

Also, a coworker of mine has found a strptime() written in Python (which
will work on Windows, too) that does all that the standard strptime()
does, and more.

Cheers
Mauro

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From henk_p at my-deja.com  Tue Oct 12 08:34:01 1999
From: henk_p at my-deja.com (henk_p at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:34:01 GMT
Subject: Running python as a deamon (rfork)
References: <7tshtf$ljt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87puylf1fs.fsf@psyche.evansnet>
Message-ID: <7tv9ro$l0k$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

mmm, I was wrong about the rfork being POSIX,
just because it is "unistd.h" on my freebsd box, doesn't make it POSIX?

I will try the normal fork solution, but does this not simply create a
new process with the invoking shell as it's parent process??.
If I log out, I want the process to continue, so in some way it has to
detach itself from the shell parent process. I was under the impression
that this is what the rfork(NOWAIT) function does and the normal fork
does not.

Henk.



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Mon Oct 11 02:20:24 1999
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 06:20:24 GMT
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <7tanv8$ga$1@essle.valdyas.org> <38008111.2B6F0AD7@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <7trvj8$fp$1@essle.valdyas.org>

M.-A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:

> mxTools (available via my Python Pages below) has a dict() function
> which converts a sequence of tuples to a dictionary. It also has a
> function for zipping (or transposing) two lists:

The silly thing is, I have the mxTools installed, but forgot to
look there. Of course, I don't know if I can rely on users of
my programs to have it too, and I already demand a lot of software
to be installed and of the right version.

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Wed Oct 27 07:52:03 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:52:03 +1000
Subject: Queue.get_nowait() raises Empty when it's not...
In-Reply-To: <009001bf206a$38f70c00$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <000601bf2071$b0106140$0501a8c0@bobcat>

Stephen J. Turner <sjturner at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Of course, the documentation for the Queue module says as
> much, stating
> that Empty is "raised when non-blocking get() (or get_nowait()) is
> called on a Queue object which is empty *or locked*
> [emphasis mine]."

Eeek - this is definately bad.  Fredrik's suggestion would seem to
work, but it is still nasty.  I can see how this would be a real
"gotchya" - Empty should definately mean emtpy!  How expensive would
it be in practice to make it so?  Lacking the time to re-check the
implementation, I can't see how it could be too bad to guarantee this!

Mark.




From vdkoijk at linux01.prc.tno.nl  Fri Oct  8 04:59:14 1999
From: vdkoijk at linux01.prc.tno.nl (John van der Koijk)
Date: 08 Oct 1999 10:59:14 +0200
Subject: websucker.py versus password-protected web tree
References: <Pine.SOL2.3.96.SK.991006175337.15949J-100000@sun>
Message-ID: <874sg2kz31.fsf@linux01.prc.tno.nl>

    >> I'm out of luck trying to mirror a certain web-tree which is
    >> protected by a password-username combination. Don't know how
    >> the protocol works

    >> - I know the username and password ;-)
    >> 
    >> Websucker seems unable to cope with this and I can't find
    >> relevant references in the urllib docs. Any pointers? Should I
    >> alter the URL?

    >>    urllib can cope with this - look for http_error_401. You may
    >> modify your URLs to http://user:passwd at host/path.

I get a 401 error all right... The http://user:passwd at host/path does
not seem to work in this case...

Thanks,
-- 
John van der Koijk.



From soubies at ese-metz.fr  Wed Oct 27 14:04:20 1999
From: soubies at ese-metz.fr (Maître Soubi)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 20:04:20 +0200
Subject: Newbie question
Message-ID: <7v7c0b$1r3$1@news.univ-metz.fr>

I am a French student, and I'm gathering information for a project I have to
conduct...
I am currently pondering the possibility that I use Zope as an intranet
server, but I need some information in order to know if it is worth learning
the Python language from scratch.
I need to write an application that would take all forms of documents (.doc,
.xls, etc...), then send it to Zope to be published on the intranet, and
keep a trace of the date somewhere.
This application should be as easy to use and as user-friendly as possible,
since most of its users won't know much about computers.
I plan to make an icon, to which you would drag your document, and then all
the conversions and the publishing would be done  automatically.
Do you know if it is possible, and if it is, how hard is it?
Is Python the language I should use for such a task?

Thanks in advance.





From tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz  Fri Oct 29 18:31:59 1999
From: tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz (Tim Evans)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 11:31:59 +1300
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com> <87d7tzi14v.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au> <c75iu3rm5k9.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <87904nhul3.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <c75d7txn6hs.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Dave Cole <djc at itga.com.au> writes:

> >>>>> "Tim" == Tim Evans <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:
> 
> Tim> that's an unnecessary lamdba there.
> Tim> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))
> Tim> is the same as:
> Tim> a.sort(cmp)
> Tim> but, then that's the same as:
> Tim> a.sort()
> 
> I agree, I was trying to show that the sort with lambda comparison
> function did work.  The original article said that it didn't word.
> 
> - Dave

Oops, guess I should have read the rest of the thread before making a
fool of myself.

--
Tim Evans




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Wed Oct  6 08:15:16 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:15:16 GMT
Subject: Bug: (Locale) IDLE/Tkinter/Python?
Message-ID: <001901bf0ff4$72fc2fb0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

I'm not sure how well Python copes with this generally, but
changing my locale so that the thousands sep and decimals sep
(normally ',' , '.') are reversed ('.' , ',') causes a problem
in Tkinter, and therfore IDLE.

But, for some reason, only in embedded code, not Python run from
the commandline. Perhaps by default it ignores locale info.

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Tools\idle\idle.py", line 2, in ?
    import PyShell
  File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Tools\idle\PyShell.py", line 12, in ?
    from Tkinter import *
  File "C:\Progra~1\Python\Lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 19, in ?
    TkVersion = _string.atof(_tkinter.TK_VERSION)
ValueError: invalid literal for atof(): 8.0

Any suggestions?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Thu Oct 28 10:24:07 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:24:07 -0400
Subject: Learning to program
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFF1@rimail03>

The best book I've seen is "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell.  Its more of
a reference book and of course doesn't mention Python, but most of its
contents are general enough to be useful in a Python context.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan [mailto:jonathan at meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 7:42 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Learning to program
> 
> 
> A friend of mine wants to learn to program. Python seems one 
> of the most
> suitable languages to start with. I think the Lutz et al book 
> is good at
> explaining the language to a newcomer, but I'd also like to find an
> accessible book that explains program design, clarity, debugging, data
> structures, etc in a Python friendly way. Suggestions? 
> ("Programming Pearls"
> and "The Practice of Programming" are just too much book for 
> my friend's
> needs and experience right now.)
> 
> Jonathan Coupe
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From savageb at pacbell.net  Thu Oct 14 16:23:15 1999
From: savageb at pacbell.net (savageb)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:23:15 -0700
Subject: macspeech module?
References: <3805CB0F.10470EFB@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <XYqN3.272$ws.8957@typhoon-sf.snfc21.pbi.net>

Ben Jones wrote:
----------------
> Where can I find the Speech Channel objects for the Macspeech Module?
> They didn't come with the download
> I would really like to use them. GetPitch etc

Ben,

Speech Channel Objects are created from individual voices that need to be
loaded in the Voices folder of the Extensions folder in the System Folder.

The Voices come with the Operating System. If they are not already
installed, you can either do a custom install from the install CD or
download them from Apple's website.

There is a way to test if you have the basic components installed in Python:

>>> import macspeech
>>> macspeech.Available()

this should return 1
if so, try this:

>>> macspeech.CountVoices()

on my computer this returns 22

To get a Speech Channel Object you first select one of the voices by number,
so I could select a number from 1 to 22 (*Not* 0 - 21). As it turns out the
numbering system is the opposite of the alphabetic listing of the voices (I
don't know why), so if you did:

>>> import os
>>> l = os.listdir("HD:System Folder:Extensions:Voices")
>>> l.reverse()
>>> v = macspeech.GetIndVoice( l.index('Ralph') + 1)

(where 'HD' was the name of your Hard Drive containing the active OS) you
would have a Voice *FROM WHICH* you create the Speech Channel Object:

>>> sco = v.NewChannel()

This is the object that you can manipulate by setting the pitch etc.

Good luck with it!

Bob Savage



From tbryan at python.net  Thu Oct 14 16:44:29 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:44:29 -0400
Subject: Starship Python down?
Message-ID: <380640AD.17452205@python.net>

A message to Starship Python members:

Can anyone access the Starship?  I can't connect
by any means, and I can't tell whether it's a 
problem on my end or on the Starship's end.

Thanks.
---Tom



From bob at horvath.com  Thu Oct 28 01:08:31 1999
From: bob at horvath.com (Bob Horvath)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 05:08:31 +0000
Subject: Python and the Internet -- not!
References: <bs7R3.808$qy6.5433@news2.mia> <381599b1.89775720@news.oh.verio.com> <38162C4F.EB030755@mindspring.com> <m3r9igeeqi.fsf@death.origin.ea.com>
Message-ID: <3817DA4E.4A1C6BB9@horvath.com>

Jason Asbahr wrote:

> "Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight at mindspring.com> writes:
> > Er, why not just use http://www.pair.com/ ?  Their hosting quality is
> > quite good, and they DO support Python.
> >
> > Unfortunately no Zope yet, though.  :(
>
> Not yet, but if enough of us ask...  :-)
>
> Another thumbs up for Pair.com.
>

Pair looks good.  There are other Python friendly ISPs....

http://www.corrt.com/info/pyisp-list.html

I use EnterAct, which is a very good ISP.




From pereira at research.att.com  Sat Oct  9 11:52:16 1999
From: pereira at research.att.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 15:52:16 GMT
Subject: regular expression example generator
References: <37FBE230.6A4113C5@mincom.com> <001401bf1145$54e9fe60$072292cb@akha>
Message-ID: <091019991152168458%pereira@research.att.com>

In article <001401bf1145$54e9fe60$072292cb at akha>, Jon Fernquest
<ferni at loxinfo.co.th> wrote:
> It could be used for a much more powerful set of finite state
> tools than Perl currently has. See the notes from lecture 4
> at Columbia on the Bell Labs set of finite state tools:
> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~mohri/notes.html
> Index:
> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/courses/Summer1999/COMSE6998-2.html
Thank you for mentioning out finite-state tools. Just a small
correction: while the work started at Bell Labs before AT&T spun off
Lucent Technologies, which took with it the name "Bell Labs," most of
the work has been done after that event not at Bell Labs, but at AT&T
Labs, AT&T's own R&D arm, which is *not* related to Bell Labs except
through a common ancestry before the AT&T-Lucent split. The main
contributors to the package are Merhyar Mohri, Michael Riley and
myself, all at AT&T Labs.

-- F



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 11 11:38:18 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:38:18 GMT
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
Message-ID: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

 Hello all!

Thanks to everyone who responded to the thread about Python 2.0.

I'm back with a more pragmatic question this time.

I'm trying to untar a large file from within a Python script.

I'm calling tar like this:

filename = "/tmp/data.tar.gz"

status, result = commands.getstatusoutput("tar xzvf %s" % filename)

if status:
   print "error! tar said:\n%s" % result

else:
   # continue

The problem is that every time I get an error status from tar, though
tar seems to completely extract all files.  I get this as the last 2
lines of output:

gzip: stdout: Broken pipe
tar: Child returned status 1

If I try to perform this same operation from the command line, it works
fine.  But if I try to do it in Python, I get this error status.  Has
anybody seen anything like this?

Like I said, all the data seems to extract fine.  It's just that my
program looks for the non-zero error condition and stops there.

thanks,

---Preston

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From aahz at netcom.com  Tue Oct 12 00:36:54 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 12 Oct 1999 04:36:54 GMT
Subject: How do I shell-out on Win32 systems with python?
References: <000301bf143d$c45db7a0$f1a2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <7tudt6$7an@dfw-ixnews16.ix.netcom.com>

In article <000301bf143d$c45db7a0$f1a2143f at tim>,
Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
>[yinger]
>> I know that on Unix systems you can use the commands  or the popen
>> modules.
>>
>> What do I have to do to get the output from a command (like 'dir', or a
>> batch file) executed on a Win32 system?
>
>It's a crap shoot.  If you're going to do this a lot, buy and install a
>"real shell" (like 4NT).  

Better yet, use the equivalent Python commands in the os module or
install the CygWin utilities so you can use the same commands on Windoze
and Unix.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From fred at ontosys.com  Fri Oct 22 11:52:06 1999
From: fred at ontosys.com (Fred Yankowski)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 15:52:06 GMT
Subject: distutils installation fails in WinNT; sys.exec_prefix empty
Message-ID: <7uq176$3sr$1@eve.enteract.com>

[I sent the following note to the distutils SIG mailing list on Oct 6,
but there was no reply so I'll try a broader audience.  I hope the
distutils SIG is still alive; it's mission seems essential to the
continued growth of Python use.  Anyway...]

I just downloaded Distutils-0.1.tar.gz (which might be better named
Distutils-0.1.tgz to accommodate WinZip), expanded it, and tried
installing it by running 'python -v setup.py install'.  It ran OK for
a while, then took an exception in _init_nt() in sysconfig.py,
apparently because sys.exec_prefix (and sys.prefix, for that matter)
are both set to '' on my system.

I just installed Python 1.5.2 yesterday, on a WinNT 4.0 (SP 5)
machine.  Other than choosing a non-default installation path
(different volume), I think I took all defaults when running the
Python installer.

Why wouldn't sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix be set to correct values
after installing on NT?  Did I do something wrong, or is this a bug in
the installer?  Or is the distutils code wrong to expect those values
to be correct?  Is there something I can do to work around the
problem?  I couldn't see any registry key that I could tweak.  I'm
willing to help solve this problem, but I don't know where to look
next.

-- 
Fred Yankowski




From kelley at bioreason.com  Thu Oct 28 17:26:55 1999
From: kelley at bioreason.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:26:55 -0600
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
Message-ID: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com>

Could someone help me verify this?  I ran into this bug on SGI Python
1.5.2, Solaris Python 1.5.2 and linux Python 1.5.2 but not on Python
1.5.1 on the same platforms...  The problem seems to be that sorting a
list using a lambda function is broken.  If code snippet doesn't raise
an AssertionError all is well.

class foo:
    def __init__(self, size):
        self.data = range(size)

unsorted = [ foo(47), foo(47), foo(57), foo(49), foo(40), foo(54) ]

sorted = unsorted[:]
sorted.sort(lambda x,y: len(x.data) > len(y.data))

print "sorted?"
old_mol = sorted[0]
for mol in sorted[1:]:
    print len(mol.data)
    assert len(mol.data) >= len(old_mol.data), "List not sorted
correctly"
    old_mol = mol





--
Brian Kelley          w 505 995-8188
Bioreason, Inc        f 505 995-8186
309 Johnson Av
Santa Fe, NM 87501    kelley at bioreason.com






From aa8vb at yahoo.com  Fri Oct 29 15:08:48 1999
From: aa8vb at yahoo.com (Randall Hopper)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:08:48 -0400
Subject: Regex problem with multiline matches
Message-ID: <19991029150848.A106981922@vislab.epa.gov>

Why doesn't the second match find 'bb'?


     >>> print re.compile( "b(.)", re.M ).match( "bb" )
     <re.MatchObject instance at 1013a218>

     >>> print re.compile( "b(.)", re.M ).match( "aa\nbb" )
     None


Thanks,

Randall



From zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de  Sat Oct 30 11:45:15 1999
From: zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Gregor Zych)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 16:45:15 +0100
Subject: pipes and commands
References: <87d7ty4cyg.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de> <c75aep1n5qq.fsf@pc142.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <87904konsk.fsf@python.kullen.rwth-aachen.de>

"Tim Evans" <tre17 at student.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

> Gregor Zych <zych at pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> 
> > Hi!
> > How can I get many commands connected with pipes executed. I try
> > 
> > startexe = 'gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pbmraw -r600x600 -sOutputFile=- '+pfad+'/'+name+'.eps quit.ps | pnmcut 610 982 4023 5483 | pnmtotiff - > '+pfad+'/'+name+'.tif'
> > os.system(startexe)
> > 
> > but the system just waits for ever until I interrupt it, although it
> > gets the final file written correctly.
> > os.popen() seems to make my system unusable 'cos it slurps the generated 
> > file und these pictures are HUGE. Any hints are welcome.
> > Linux 2.2.11 python 1.5.2
> > Ciao
> > 	Gregor
> 
> Not a Python solution, but the `convert' program from `imagemagick' is
> really good at this sort of conversion (ps -> image) and can do all of
> the above line in a single step IIRC, so you don't need the pipes.
Tell me where I can change the resolution and I'll do it. 

The problem is the invocation of ghostscript. It seems to be a python
issue. You can pipe "pnm??? .... | pnm???? ... | pnm??? |" BUT you
can't pipe ghostscript to another program.
> 
> It's not really an answer, but it might solve your problem.
> 
> The home page for imagemagick is:
> 
> http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html
> 
> --
> Tim Evans
Ciao
	Gregor



From joshzeidner at my-deja.com  Sat Oct  9 14:07:59 1999
From: joshzeidner at my-deja.com (joshzeidner at my-deja.com)
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 18:07:59 GMT
Subject: Communication Between Zope and Java Process
References: <37FF5655.F6A0B896@ionet.net>
Message-ID: <7to09o$mt0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>


 - How dynamic is the data you are sychronizing?  Is it something more
like a chat room or a BBS?

  I just thought of a good idea!  A very useful thing for Zope would be
a CORBA/IIOP bridge because this is fully supported in Java( not to
mention the industry distributed object standard ).  So all zope
objects would also be CORBA objects.  And better yet, there is Fnorb so
most of the marshalling stuff is already done.

 Also, make sure you look into JPython.

  -good luck

 Josh Zeidner


> Given a Java application and a Zope webserver (may or may not be
running
> on the same machine):  What would be a good way to set up a
> communications link between the two?
>
> Some tools that come to mind are HTTP, ILU, XML.  Has anyone done
> anything like this and/or care to comment?
>
> -- Steve
>


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From fdrake at acm.org  Tue Oct 19 12:38:26 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:38:26 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
In-Reply-To: <380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu>
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
	<m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<m2wvsjtk8m.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<14348.37729.239756.884248@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<380c9934.13431403@news.fsu.edu>
Message-ID: <14348.40578.648039.972783@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Michael Zawrotny writes:
 > One way out of that trap (at least with the other p-lang's package
 > for options is to allow an optional integer argument whose
 > default is one for the -v flag.

Michael,
  It's those flags with optional arguments that hold the highest
possibility of confusion for users.  Is 'foo -v 1' a command with one
option and one parameter, or is it a command with one option that
takes a value?  If the value is optional, it's not clear.  I don't
know what the "right" way to deal with it is, perhaps, but not using
optional values for options seems the safest.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de  Sun Oct  3 03:33:39 1999
From: hauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de (Janko Hauser)
Date: 03 Oct 1999 09:33:39 +0200
Subject: Numeric, how to do in place full-array modification?
References: <7t5s4u$mat@mail.psy.uva.nl>
Message-ID: <877ll4hp9o.fsf@ifm.uni-kiel.de>

"Ionel Simionescu" <ionel at psy.uva.nl> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I want to do the following:
> 
> for t in range( T ):
>    net = dot( C, x )
>    x   = A*net*(1-net)
> 
> Because these arrays might turn to be large, I want to pre-alloate <net> and
> write both <net> and <x> in place rather than creating new arrays.
> 
> 
> Intuitively, I would write it like:
> 
> net = zeros(shape, typecode)
> for t in range( T ):
>     net[:] = dot( C, x)
>     x[:]   = A*net*(1-net)
> 
This would not buy you much. Because you only substitute inplace, the
dot function is always generating a new array, which gets copied into
net in your case, which would be more expensive than only to reference 
the result with

net = dot( C, x) 

But dot is mainly implemented in C, so this should be no memory problem.

The second one can be changed to inplace modification.

x=multiply(multiply(A,net,x),subtract(1,net,x),x)

That looks ugly, right? :-)

HTH

__Janko

-- 
  Institut fuer Meereskunde             phone: 49-431-597 3989
  Dept. Theoretical Oceanography        fax  : 49-431-565876
  Duesternbrooker Weg 20                email: jhauser at ifm.uni-kiel.de
  24105 Kiel, Germany



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Tue Oct 12 22:51:12 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:51:12 +1000
Subject: Freeze for Windows NT?
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-VjJRP7doxjVZ@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <002801bf1525$d0bf6280$0801a8c0@bobcat>

> > I suggest you check out Gordon's installer at
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/.  If this works for you it
is
> > probably a much better alternative.
>
> I'll take a look, but the problem is that my boss doesn't want
python
> installed
> on additional machines.

Gordon's tool still meets this criteria.  It basically ends up with
the same end result as freeze, but can be done without a C compiler.

Freeze for windows still requires you to ship Python15.dll - it doesnt
support a static build.  but you dont have to install the Python
library in either case.  Both make stand-alone programs (ie, a few
files in a single directory is all you need).  Gordons goes a step
further and allows you to ship a single file which will automatically
be exploded into those few files.

Have a look!

Mark.




From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Mon Oct 18 14:22:37 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 18:22:37 GMT
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp> <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> <7u5da5$pp2$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <7u5l55$boh$1@nntp4.atl.mindspring.net> <38067944.D6558D95@bruer.org> <380752EC.3C105EAC@easystreet.com>
Message-ID: <7ufoh2$seo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Just to summarize for other people,

It looked like the fastest method of string building is string.join'ing
a list/tuple.  It seems to be about 20-30% faster than s = "%s" %
string style stuff.  s = foo + bar is atrociously slow.

Note that I did not run these benchmarks myself, I'm just reporting on
the old discussion.

---Preston

In article <380752EC.3C105EAC at easystreet.com>,
  Al Christians <achrist at easystreet.com> wrote:
> If you are doing this enough to take efficiency seriously, go to
> deja.com and look at the thread we had on
>
> 	"string.join() vs % and + operators"
>
> about six months ago.  There were some examples posted by the experts,
> along with some timings, etc.  Basically the same subject as this
> thread.

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From skip at mojam.com  Fri Oct  1 14:19:24 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 18:19:24 GMT
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.05.9910011305400.28817-100000@lemur.magnet.com>
References: <14324.55883.614652.812873@dolphin.mojam.com>
	<Pine.SGI.4.05.9910011305400.28817-100000@lemur.magnet.com>
Message-ID: <14324.64300.150693.271562@dolphin.mojam.com>

Me:

    >> First, the real thing:
    >> 
    >> r"(?P<m>\s*(?P<date>\d+/\d[-,\d]*/\d+),?"
    >> "(?P<venue>[^,]+),"
    >> "(?P<city>[^,]+),"
    >> "(?P<state>[A-Za-z\s]+),"

John:

    Regex's, to coin a phrase, suck.  I'd suggest breaking out your REs a
    little more, and to add comments or examples to each segment. Also learn
    the non-greedy match syntax, which is *VERY* useful.

    [proposed readability enhancements elided]

I agree re's suck.  That's why in the one application where I use them *a
lot*, I wrote a higher level representation (the %{smonth}, %{city} stuff I
mentioned in my earlier post) that avoids most all of the line noise one
normally associates with re's.  I'm not too concerned about the
maintainability of the ones I mentioned before, since I only have nine to
worry about (three patterns, each with a desired re and two simpler prefix
re's), and they haven't needed to be twiddled for a long time.  Also, the
patterns I displayed were originally written using regex, not re.
(Actually, maybe it was pregex, I can't recall.)  The thousands of patterns
I mentioned before are encoded in the more restrictive higher level
notation (which does "compile" to pregex re's).

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...




From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Tue Oct 12 08:52:36 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:52:36 -0400
Subject: Borland compilation
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF687@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Instead of explaining how to do it, would it be possible just to put the
BCB++ project file on Python.org? Unless you need to modify some source
files, that would save people much trouble.

______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"



From robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk  Fri Oct 29 07:30:54 1999
From: robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:30:54 +0100
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <m1KYeLAuVYG4EwP9@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <381A421D.D8C8E22F at bigfoot.com>, Louis Madon
<madonl at bigfoot.com> writes
>
...
I'm a bit confused here after seeing the argument presented as a
function of only two types. Say I implement + for floats and then Tim
does it for rationals then in terms of functional mappings + has 2
inputs and one output ie 3 possible types are involved.

Thus my take is that we have

f  f  and r  r
 f +       r +

after the combination we have

f  f r and r f r
  f+ .      f. .
  r. .      r. +

so to my way of thinking to fill in we seem to have to modify the
existing operators or provide the mapping f-->r or r-->f
-- 
Robin Becker



From sparlin at openpro.org  Sun Oct 10 15:59:16 1999
From: sparlin at openpro.org (Sonny Parlin)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:59:16 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
In-Reply-To: <00a901bf1343$589ec540$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	(fredrik@pythonware.com)
References: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <38003892.85E01BC@mindspring.com> <m3puynwdcj.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <004301bf1326$a3dd0840$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <m3iu4f2nz2.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org> <00a901bf1343$589ec540$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <199910101959.PAA08904@parlin-lap.openpro.org>

Well thank you very much for taking the time to enlighten me on these
issues, I really appreciate it! 

FYI- I decided to learn python because one of the companies that I do
contract work for (a mathematical modeling company) writes most of their
code in python, so I wanted to see what it's all about... I've mostly been
a C/Perl person, and as you probably saw by my references to read/write
that it's mostly been in the UNIX (Linux) environment... 

Please visit my web site, http://www.openpro.org, you may find some tools
or papers there that might somehow make your life a little easier, it's the
least I can offer for the help you've provided me...

Thanks again,

-Sonny
-- 
Sonny Parlin
sparlin at openpro.org
http://www.openpro.org
fingerprint = 45 FE 56 72 C2 04 CD 76  
		09 75 52 7A C6 7C 23 D2



From reggie at merfinllc.com  Tue Oct 12 20:33:11 1999
From: reggie at merfinllc.com (Reggie Dugard)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:33:11 -0700
Subject: My missing posts
References: <001301bf1502$45ccc9b0$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <7u0k1b$eae$1@ffx2nh3.news.uu.net>

Actually about a month ago, you sent me e-mail saying that you had posted
code that would make it possible to use win32com without having to use the
registry and that I could find it using DejaNews.  I was unable to find it
(I thought because of my own incompetence) so if you have it handy I'd
appreciate a re-post.

Thanks

Reggie

Mark Hammond <mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote in message
news:001301bf1502$45ccc9b0$0801a8c0 at bobcat...
> It appears my incredibly slack ISP (Telstra - Australias biggest telco
> for God's sake!) hasnt been propagating my news posts since 23/Sep/99.
> I only just noticed when checking DejaNews.
>
> If there are Windows specific questions that have not been addressed
> by anyone else, you may like to ask them again (Im now reading it
> through the mailing list)
>
> Unfortunately Telstra has a local monopoly on Cable modems, so
> changing ISPs would be quite painful...
>
> Mark.
>
>
>





From ivnowa at hvision.nl  Fri Oct  8 07:44:44 1999
From: ivnowa at hvision.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 13:44:44 +0200
Subject: DOS Python [off-topic]
In-Reply-To: <000601bf117c$34450a60$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910081113480.25786-100000@gatekeeper.zwax.mtg.co.at>
Message-ID: <199910081140.MAA04941@axil.hvision.nl>

On 8 Oct 99, at 11:59, Adrian Eyre wrote:

> >> I suppose so; I never liked pkzip much, I preferred other (often more 
> >> obscure) archivers like rar, ace, and jar. :)
> 
> > Well, jar, IFAIK, is a renamed pkzip ;)
> 
> IIRC, there are two archive formats called jar. One is the one commonly
> associated with Java. The other is a really obscure aged archiver which
> hardly anyone has heard of. That's why I was a bit concerned when Sun
> chose the .jar extension for their purposes.

I wouldn't call it aged... check out this link...

http://www.arjsoft.com/jar.htm

I am not in any way associated with ARJ Software, I just happen to 
like this archiver. <g> On my humble PC at work, it was the only one 
which managed to pack 800 Mb of data... where WinZip, ARJ and other 
archivers failed to do so.


--Hans Nowak (ivnowa at hvision.nl)
Homepage: http://fly.to/zephyrfalcon
Snippets: http://tor.dhs.org/~zephyrfalcon/snippets/



From bpetterson at uswest.net  Fri Oct 22 00:32:47 1999
From: bpetterson at uswest.net (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 22:32:47 -0600
Subject: Anyone have Cookie.py?
Message-ID: <380FE8EF.4391B141@uswest.net>

The link on python.org seems to be dead...  Could someone send it to me?

thanks,
--bjorn

bpetterson at uswest.net




From olipt at mayo.edu  Fri Oct 29 20:31:17 1999
From: olipt at mayo.edu (Travis Oliphant)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:31:17 -0500
Subject: Python/C
In-Reply-To: <9910291656.ZM20777@eel.ucsd.edu>
References: <9910291656.ZM20777@eel.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910291929200.22611-100000@us2.mayo.edu>

> Hi:
> 
> 	I'm starting a project where I'll be extending Python with C.  I have a
> very beginner's question ...
> 
> 	If I have an array I created in the Python interpreter, how can I
> access that array in my imported C module?

If you are going to be passing arrays back and forth between Python and C,
I would suggest using Numerical Python which is a must-have extension
module.

The C API for NumPy is quite easy to use and there is good documentation
for it in the Numerical Python manual.

Check out the scicomp topic guide at www.python.org for links.

-Travis





From devnull at fleetingimage.com  Tue Oct 19 14:50:05 1999
From: devnull at fleetingimage.com (Dev)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:50:05 -0700
Subject: tcl-style string parsing
Message-ID: <940359574.1875665333@news.swbell.net>

I have a string consisting of multiple strings---

  a = '"This, m\'dear,"  is  "an example" "of a parsing problem."'

I would like to efficiently convert this to a list (or tuple):

  b = ["This, m'dear,", "is", "an example", "of a parsing problem."]

In the source string, note that whitespace
within a quoted string should be retained,
whitespace outside a quoted string should be ignored,
and strings without whitespace don't need to be quoted.

I'm converting some code from TCL, where this is trivial.
(The original string can be treated and indexed as a list.)
I've not found a suitable re expression for this, nor a set
of string replacements.

Any ideas?

--Dev




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Tue Oct  5 11:48:43 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 15:48:43 GMT
Subject: compile.py does not work on WinNT system
In-Reply-To: <37F9FD7E.4CB7E1E9@GermanLloyd.org>
References: <37F9FD7E.4CB7E1E9@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <001201bf0f49$1a21df80$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>     print getattr(self, 'noexport', None)
> TypeError: getattr requires exactly 2 arguments; 3 given

Try removing the 3rd parameter.

BTW: Can you mail me this compile.py file. I can't get it myself due
to extreme firewall restrictions.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From jima at aspectdv.com  Mon Oct 18 13:30:19 1999
From: jima at aspectdv.com (Jim Althoff)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:30:19 -0700
Subject: JPython?
In-Reply-To: <01bf197d$d8996080$490bb193@SC017123.rfc.comm.harris.com>
References: <199910132322.QAA11710@hermes.aspectdv.com>
 <199910141949.MAA18769@hermes.aspectdv.com>
Message-ID: <199910181725.KAA04313@hermes.aspectdv.com>

All very good questions.

I did know Java prior to learning 
JPython, although I
was not an expert on all of the
various APIs.  As a side note, I found
it much faster and easier to learn
the Java APIs -- like Swing, for example --
by using JPython because of the
interactive interpreter which lets you
do all kinds of simple experiments
without having to write and compile
lots of tedious test programs to try to
figure out how things really work.

Python only takes a couple of hours
to get a feel for the basics.  Over the
course of a couple of weeks you
start to feel reasonably proficient.

After having used JPython for a while
now, I have this strong feeling that I should
be significantly more productive in
JPython than in straight Java.  Most
times, I feel like I am cruising along
at 2 to 5 times more productive, depending
on the nature of the task and how
much of the dynamic programming
aspects of Python I can apply to the
problem at hand.

The down side is that there are still
a couple of nasty bugs in JPython 1.1beta-x
and the standard debugger for Python,
pdb, only partially works so sometimes
the JPython productivity is less than
it should be.

I am betting all of my marbles on JPython
due to the productivity potential mentioned
above, so I am REALLY, REALLY, REALLY
hoping the JPython team can get the bugs
fixed soon.  If they can, I really believe JPython
will be the best applications development
framework available.

Jim



At 03:31 PM 10/18/99 +0000, Matthew Ring wrote:
>Jim Althoff <jima at aspectdv.com> wrote in article
><199910141949.MAA18769 at hermes.aspectdv.com>...
><...SNIP...>
>> With this methodology, all of the 
>> "programming" is done using JPthon
>> and yet the static user interface elements
>> are "drawn" with a visual tool (JBuilder3).
>> 
>> As I said, it has been working great for
>> me.
>> 
>> Jim
>
>Jim,
>
>I like this Idea, but I have a few questions for you.
>
>1) Did you know Java before learning Python?
>2) How long did it take you to become productive with JPython?
>3) What time savings do you experience using JPython vs. straight Java?
>
>Thank you.
>
>-Matt Ring
>
>-- 
>http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From thomas at bibsyst.no  Mon Oct 11 04:13:24 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:13:24 +0200
Subject: Filehandling/processing in Python
Message-ID: <38019C24.FB1DE12A@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

I`ve asked similar questions earlier, but bear with me.

It seems like file-handling, ie. more than reading lines in a plain-text
file, is done by 3rd-party modules in Python. I`ve looked into
os.stat-module, but I`d like know what methods/functions are available,
and most importantly, how to handle the returned values. Isn`t there
somebody who has worked on this earlier, like made a ls/dir-like command
that lists out files and modification time, size, type ( file or dir
) etc?

Most of my scripts dive into folders and process them recursively, so
this is rather important to me, but my Python books ( Learning Python,
Programming Python and Internet Programming with Python ) don`t seem to
go beyond the old input.readline() stuff.

Any tips on how or where or whatever to do from here ( related to
file-handling that is, not in a universal, metaphysical sense ) would be
appreciated.

Thomas Weholt




From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 28 13:33:56 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:33:56 +0200
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
References: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJOENFCDAA.kputland@wisen.com>
Message-ID: <38188904.BFD13231@lemburg.com>

Karl Putland wrote:
>  [win32 code]

Thanks. I've integrated you example into the latest version:

       http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/platform.py

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    64 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 21 04:41:02 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:41:02 +0200
Subject: Finding out the OS distribution name
Message-ID: <380ED19E.1CA8168A@lemburg.com>

Is there a way to find out the name of the OS distribution a script is
running on ?

E.g. I'd like a function that returns 'Redhat6.1'/'SuSE6.2' or
'Win95'/'Win98'/'WinNT' or 'MacOS8'/'MacOS9' etc.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    71 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From JBurke at lrs.com  Thu Oct 14 15:41:19 1999
From: JBurke at lrs.com (Burke, Jason)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:41:19 -0500
Subject: Tkinter Question
Message-ID: <31658864B59ECF11AA700001FA444D61016B783A@SPFLDNT.lrsinc.LRS.COM>

Greetings all,

I've been pouring over the tutorials for using Tkinter, but I
can't seem to find an answer to what I think should be a
simple question. 

My main problem with using Tkinter so far has been that 
I have no idea how to get data out of the GUI object. I've
used PerlTk quite a bit, and with that if I want to get info
out of a text field I would do something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Tk;

$window = MainWindow->new;
$window->Entry(-textvariable => \$your_name, width => 40)
             ->pack();
$window->Button(-text => "Get Name", -command => \&action)
            ->pack();

sub action
 {
   print "Your name is $your_name!";
 }

Or I could use the cget function (I think that's its name) to 
get the data if I had assigned a handle to the GUI object. 

In any event, if some kind soul out there could give me a 
quick example, or reference to where I can find the answer
to this I would really appreciate it (please include checkboxes,
radio buttons, entry, and text widgets if you don't mind).

Thanks in advance,

Jason Burke



From robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com  Thu Oct 14 15:46:23 1999
From: robin.boerdijk at nl.origin-it.com (Robin Boerdijk)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:46:23 +0200
Subject: A case for the buffer interface (was: Improved struct module)
Message-ID: <0E16861EE7BCD111BE9400805FE6841F0BEB5F83@c1s5x001.cor.srvfarm.origin-it.com>

[Tim about the buffer interface]
> >> It's not ready for prime time (e.g., it's easy to crash the interpreter
> >> with the little that's already there, staying within pure Python).
>
[Robin]
> > Can you give me an example ?
>
[Tim]
> Yes, but I won't.  You can create your own by thinking about the
> implementation:  a buffer object contains a pointer to a base object and a
> separate pointer to a chunk of untyped memory.  If the base object happens
> to stop using that memory, there's no way for the buffer object to know
> that.  And if that memory happens to get reused by some other object for
> something else (or even unmapped by the OS), anything at all can happen --
> it's a hole so big even Perl could fit into it <wink>.

Yes, this obviously doesn't work. But what has this got to do with the
buffer *interface* ? I now that the Python built in buffer *objects* work
like
this and that's why I don't use them. The buffer object also *happens* to
have a
buffer interface, which is probably very confusing.

> Your new objects are
> safe because they hold on to their buffer memory until they die (and so
long
> as a buffer object refers to them, they can't die).

Exactly, and every Python object should (either directly or indirectly)
regardless of whether it implements the buffer interface or not.

> Some object types
> aren't so nicely behaved.

I'm assuming you are talking about the Python buffer object here. When I
first
read about the buffer object, I thought, great, that's exactly what I need.
I
had expected this to be nothing more than a "writeable string", which is
very
useful, but it turned out to be the strange thing that it is.

Now, back to the buffer interface. The reason why it is so useful is because
it allows direct but controlled access to the internal data buffers of
objects.
If every Python object that holds an internal memory buffer exposes the
buffer
interface, copying between them, for example, can be very efficient (as
opposed
to through intermediate string objects).

It may be interesting to note that string objects themselves expose a
(read-only)
buffer interface. As a matter of fact, PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "s#", &str,
&len)
doesn't even care if the argument is a string; any object that exposes a
readable
buffer through its buffer interface can be used here.

There are more examples of the proper use of the buffer interface in Python,
such
as the readinto() method of the file object type. The cStringIO and
socket object types have not followed in its footsteps yet, but I'd be happy
to add
this. And then I would also add the writable string object and probably call
it
(suprise): buffer.

I hope this also puts my buffer related arguments for the xstruct module
into perspective.

Robin.





From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Wed Oct  6 10:53:09 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:53:09 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <14331.1643.652858.744529@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <7tfnod$sec$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

A big thanks to everyone who pointed out mkdir -p to me and other
examples of how to do it.

---Preston

In article <14331.1643.652858.744529 at gargle.gargle.HOWL>,
  Charles G Waldman <cgw at fnal.gov> wrote:

> touch() {
>   mkdir -p `dirname $1`
>   touch $1
> }

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct  4 21:43:44 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 21:43:44 -0400
Subject: print longs
In-Reply-To: <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com>
Message-ID: <000501bf0ed3$0effd9c0$4da2143f@tim>

[Nathan Clegg]
> Do I have to convert to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?

[Greg Ewing]
> Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this is a pain as well,
> but Guido doesn't seem to be among them, so we're stuck with this
> for the time being.

It can't ever be changed in Python1.  Too much existing e.g.
    str(long)[:-1]
and
    hex(long)[2:-1]
code would silently break.

I *hope* Python2 has a generic "number" concept, and doesn't distiguish
among ints, longs, floats and complexii <ahem> by default.  Those are
low-level implementation distinctions of interest only to experts and idiots
<wink -- but C counts as an idiot for this purpose>.

counting-the-hoursL-ly y'rs  - tim





From jwbaxter at olympus.net  Sun Oct 31 23:55:26 1999
From: jwbaxter at olympus.net (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 20:55:26 -0800
Subject: commas vs. spaces. vs. the legions of new lines
References: <7vj35t$8p1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <jwbaxter-3110992055260001@otter.olympus.net>

In article <7vj35t$8p1$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, G. Lewis <lemiss at my-deja.com> wrote:

> People claiming the use of spaces in numbers
> is heretical and perhaps not even a valid form of artistic expression
> (if not scientific) (at least someone stuck up for the honour of our
> hapless poster over this practice---after all, spaces are a metric
> thing, are they not?

Hmmm...don't say all those bad things about spaces in France (where one
would write  12 345,67 in the place a US person would write 12,345.67). 
Or Sweden or Norway for Finland.  And then there is the Spanish or Flemish
12.346,67 (which doesn't have spaces, but doesn't use , and . in the
"right" places).  Sigh.

   --John (quickly setting his "Numbers" control panel back to US)

-- 
John W. Baxter   Port Ludlow, WA USA  jwb at olympus.net



From egelando at online.no  Wed Oct 27 06:39:37 1999
From: egelando at online.no (Egeland)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:39:37 +0200
Subject: Getting A LOT of errors from python source (header files)
Message-ID: <2KAR3.13191$7G2.79311@news1.online.no>

When compiling my app, which embedds python1.5.2, using MSVC6.0, I compile
against the
Python sources. These errros leave me clueless. Any help ?


Anders Moe

<file>(91) : error C2660: 'PySys_SetArgv' : function does not take 2
parameters
<file>(122) : error C2660: 'PyRun_SimpleFile' : function does not take 2
parameters
<file>(134) : error C2660: 'Py_Exit' : function does not take 1 parameters
<file>(168) : error C2660: 'PyArg_ParseTuple' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(185) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(186) : error C2660: 'Py_BuildValue' : function does not take 2
parameters
<file>(187) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(193) : error C2197: 'void (__cdecl *)(void)' : too many actual
parameters
<file>(194) : error C2197: 'void (__cdecl *)(void)' : too many actual
parameters
<file>(211) : error C2660: 'Py_BuildValue' : function does not take 2
parameters
<file>(223) : error C2660: 'PyArg_ParseTuple' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(232) : error C2660: 'Py_BuildValue' : function does not take 2
parameters
<file>(238) : error C2660: 'PyInt_FromLong' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(251) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(254) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(257) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(273) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(274) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(275) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(281) : error C2660: 'PyInt_FromLong' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(282) : error C2660: 'PyTuple_New' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(283) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(283) : error C2660: 'PyTuple_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(284) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(284) : error C2660: 'PyTuple_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(286) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(301) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(302) : error C2660: 'PyInt_FromLong' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(303) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(305) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(306) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(307) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(309) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(310) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(311) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(314) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(315) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(316) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(318) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(319) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(320) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(322) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(323) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(324) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(326) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(327) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(328) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(330) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(331) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(332) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(334) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(335) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(336) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(338) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(339) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(340) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(342) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(343) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(344) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(346) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(347) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(348) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(350) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(351) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(352) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(354) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(355) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(356) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(358) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(359) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(360) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(362) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(363) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(364) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(366) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(367) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(368) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(370) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(371) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(372) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(374) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(375) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(376) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(378) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(379) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(380) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(382) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(383) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(384) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(386) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(387) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(388) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(390) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(391) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(392) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(394) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(395) : error C2660: 'PyFloat_FromDouble' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(396) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(399) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(400) : error C2660: 'PyString_FromString' : function does not take 1
parameters
<file>(401) : error C2660: 'PyDict_SetItem' : function does not take 3
parameters
<file>(401) : fatal error C1003: error count exceeds 100; stopping
compilation
cadActHand.cxx
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(70) :
warning C4005: 'va_start' : macro redefinition
        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(58) :
see previous definition of 'va_start'
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(72) :
warning C4005: 'va_end' : macro redefinition
        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(60) :
see previous definition of 'va_end'
cadActwin.cxx
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(70) :
warning C4005: 'va_start' : macro redefinition
        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(58) :
see previous definition of 'va_start'
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(72) :
warning C4005: 'va_end' : macro redefinition
        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(60) :
see previous definition of 'va_end'
cadAlpha.cxx
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(70) :
warning C4005: 'va_start' : macro redefinition
        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\stdarg.h(58) :
see previous definition of 'va_start'
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\varargs.h(72) :
warning C4005: 'va_end' : macro redefinition





From thomas at bibsyst.no  Fri Oct 29 11:42:03 1999
From: thomas at bibsyst.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:42:03 +0200
Subject: cPickle on speed and size
Message-ID: <3819C04B.CABEBA67@bibsyst.no>

Hi,

Just wondering :

I want to store objects in a simple key/value-based database. These
objects are pickled, maybe compressed using zlib and then stored. If I
use cPickle instead of pickle, would the speed and size of the database
be ok when the amount of data got bigger? Is cPickle aimed at small
"databases"? I`m not talking complex objects, and waiting 2-3 seconds
for a search is just fine, but I need to store millions ( actually
objects containing info on files on my cd-roms) of objects.

Should I go for Berkley DB or any of the other available dbms, or is
cPickle sufficient for personal use ??

Best regards,
Thomas Weholt




From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Mon Oct 18 15:07:12 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:07:12 +0100
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <14347.27708.339677.706483@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au> <slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com> <3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au> <m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk> <14347.27708.339677.706483@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910182000250.23836-100000@localhost.localdomain>

On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Jeremy Hylton wrote:

> >>>>> "MH" == Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> writes:
> 
>   MH> PS: Given the bizarre reluctance of my university to give me any
>   MH> work, can I ask if the source to viperi (at least) will be
>   MH> perusable anytime soon?
> 
> Suggestion for an interesting project if you don't have anything else
> to do:  A Python compiler written in Python.  For starters, it could
> just generate Python bytecode.  But it would seem much easier to do
> analysis of Python code if we didn't have to muck with any C code to
> do it.

Uhh.. two problems. 

1) I'm assuming I will have something to do, pretty soon.
2) I really don't get on with parsing & high level semantic analysis. I've
never poured much effort into it, but I certainly don't have any natural
flair for it.

Something I had been meaning to play with was extend the Python core to
incorporate a register machine as well as the stack machine we have at the
moment. This also strays far from my experience, but sounds more appealing
to me.

I was thinking of working from the existing bytecode and recompiling it to
my new vm. Not sure if this is wise.

But your idea is definitely a nice one. I think I'm more suited to
backends, me.

speculative-ly y'rs Michael




From skip at mojam.com  Tue Oct  5 15:46:34 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 14:46:34 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <slrn7vkkek.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
References: <slrn7vkkek.ts.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <14330.21914.601621.894740@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Billy> I just downloaded the DOS version of Python from Hans Nowak's
    Billy> page.  Probalm is, there don't seem to be any docs or modules
    Billy> included -- it's just the .exe file.  Where do I get the .py
    Billy> modules which are supposed to go with it, and where do I install
    Billy> them?

Assuming you didn't miss something on Hans' page, I suggest you grab the
corresponding source distribution from www.python.org and extract the
contents of the Lib subdirectory.  Put it where it belongs (check sys.path),
run the compileall.py script, and you should be all set.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...



From phd at sun.med.ru  Sun Oct 17 08:59:07 1999
From: phd at sun.med.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 16:59:07 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
In-Reply-To: <000b01bf189e$8cf59f70$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.20.9910171652180.2777-100000@sun>

Hi!

   I marked it with the word "misfeature", but of course I meant only the
problem with mutable types. Sure, I use
   lambda x, y=z: ...
often.
   (But that's another problem. After 10 years with Pascal, I used to use
local functions, that have access to outer function's variables. Learning
to use lambdas was a little pain for me. And I still hope Python will have
local functions sometime... may be 2.0+)

On Sun, 17 Oct 1999, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> >    Mmm??? Are there a line of code that *relies* on that misfeature?
> 
> yes, there are tons of code that relies on the
> fact that the default values are evaluated once,
> and more importantly, that they are evaluated
> in the namespace where the function/lambda
> is defined.
> 
> in fact, it's currently the only reasonable way
> to pass local variables into a nested namespace
> (like when using lambdas).  it's also often used
> to speed things up, by binding commonly used
> globals to local names.

> but sure, I'm sure Guido is open for proposals. I
> don't think you can get away with "always evaluate
> them on each call," though...

Oleg.
---- 
    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 17:16:58 1999
From: jeremy at cnri.reston.va.us (Jeremy Hylton)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 17:16:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <380CCF9A.3BD80F74@maxtal.com.au>
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
	<3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au>
	<slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
	<3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au>
	<m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
	<380CCF9A.3BD80F74@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <14348.57290.905209.541963@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>

>>>>> "MS" == skaller  <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:

  MS> Michael Hudson wrote:
  >>  skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:

  >> Hold it there a second; you are proposing that knowing that x has
  >> a certain type in the expression
  >> 
  >> x = x + "hello"
  >> 
  >> has an impact on inference?

  MS> 	Yes. Rather, the type of x is _deduced_ from the fact that
  MS> operator + must be string concatenation in this context, since
  MS> the second argument is a string, and thus x must be a string.

I assume you're handling some of the special cases, and I'd be
interested to hear how.

It is easy enough to write a class that will do something when added
to a string.  Arbitrary example:

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
            self.strings = []
    def __add__(self, other):
            new = Foo() 
            new.strings = self.strings[:]
            new.strings.append(other)
            return new

x = Foo()
x = x + "hello"

I assume you can do some analysis to discover that x *might* be a
class that implements __add__.  How specific is your analysis?  If you
see a class like Foo, are all bets off about the meaning of x +
"hello"?

The second variation is a library that accepts some object as an
argument and adds "hello" to it.  Do you do whole-program analysis to
determine whether any client of the library might pass something other
than a string?  What are the implications of that for writing a
generic library?

Jeremy





From da at ski.org  Tue Oct 26 17:51:46 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:51:46 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Subject: Python Job @ Industrial Light & Magic
In-Reply-To: <14358.8347.488255.256931@falfa.lucasdigital.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910261449490.186-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>

> http://www.ilm.com.
> 
> Look for the "Scripts Programmer Job #111-00" under "ILM Production
> Engineering".

See also: "Script/Tools Programmer Job #182-99" under "ILM Feature 
Production"

--david




From skip at mojam.com  Thu Oct 28 11:21:20 1999
From: skip at mojam.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:21:20 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: urllib.urlencode small improvement
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910281402400.881-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910281402400.881-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <14360.27120.980587.523722@dolphin.mojam.com>

    Oleg> Currently urllib.urlencode takes dictionary {"x": "y", "u": "v"}
    Oleg> and produces encoded string as "x=y&u=v". But wat if I want to
    Oleg> repeat some keys: "x=y1&x=y2&u=v"? I cannot pass this to urlencode
    Oleg> using dictionaries!

Why not modify urlencode to explode dict values into multiple instances if
the value was a list or tuple instead?  Example:

    {"x": ["y1", "y2], "u": "v"} ---> x=y1&x=y2&u=v

The resulting urlencode would look something like the following lightly
tested code:

    def urlencode(obj):
        l = []
        for k, v in obj.items():
            k = quote_plus(k)
            if type(v) is types.StringType: v = [v]
            for i in v:
                l.append("%s=%s" % (k, quote_plus(i)))
        return string.join(l, "&")



From ephi at adital.com  Sun Oct 31 14:55:36 1999
From: ephi at adital.com (Ephi Dror)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 11:55:36 -0800
Subject: Looking for example of calling C++ from Python
Message-ID: <381ca15e$0$235@nntp1.ba.best.com>

Hi All,

I am new to python and would like to know if there is any example of how to
use C++ classes from Python.


Thanks a lot in advance,
Ephi.









From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Fri Oct 29 14:05:03 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 20:05:03 +0200
Subject: cPickle on speed and size
References: <3819C04B.CABEBA67@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <3819E1CF.B9FD6D73@appliedbiometrics.com>


Thomas Weholt wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Just wondering :
> 
> I want to store objects in a simple key/value-based database. These
> objects are pickled, maybe compressed using zlib and then stored. If I
> use cPickle instead of pickle, would the speed and size of the database
> be ok when the amount of data got bigger? Is cPickle aimed at small
> "databases"? I`m not talking complex objects, and waiting 2-3 seconds
> for a search is just fine, but I need to store millions ( actually
> objects containing info on files on my cd-roms) of objects.
> 
> Should I go for Berkley DB or any of the other available dbms, or is
> cPickle sufficient for personal use ??

It depends on how you use cPickle.
I think cPickle can be said to be "very fast" on loading/storing
stuff. But if you intend to always loade several megabytes into
main memory and look into a huge dictionary, then you will have
created a slow solution, and some db like thing would be better.

You could of course use the persitent module from Bobo or Zope
which is fast, and is based upon cPickle.

If you want to write your won and if you can make sure that
your master index is not huge, then you can use this approach:

Create an index file which is a pickled dictionary of keys
and file positions/lengths.
Create a data file which is a sequence of pickled data snippets.
For every entry, you append some pickled data to the data file,
this way:

dfile.seek(0, 2) # find the end
pos = self.dfile.tell() # here we are

data = cPickle.dumps(yourthingtoputintothedatabase)

dfile.write(data)
keys["whatisyourkey"] = (pos, len(data))

# and later on, don't forget to save your dict as a pickle.

BTW if you do not intend to save structured data like classes,
it might be even faster to save data using marshal.

Another, even better approach: Use metaKit which has a nice
wrapper module MkWrap. You can simply stuff keys and values
into a database and get it back if you just use native objects
like strings and numbers.
If you want to store structured data, cPickle it and put that
into the MK database. This is what we do for a customer at
the moment, in a real application.

ciao - chris

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
     we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home



From jfarrell at mincom.com  Thu Oct 28 00:07:02 1999
From: jfarrell at mincom.com (John Farrell)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:07:02 +1000
Subject: search (match) backward
References: <000301bf20f7$bd007d00$0a2d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <3817CBE6.4A7BFD2B@mincom.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> > This raises the interesting question of whether there is an
> > algorithm for reversing an RE (i.e. find an RE which matches
> > the reverse of the strings that the original RE matches).
> > Can it even be done in general? My intuition says yes, but
> > I can't think of a proof off the top of my head.

> The proof
> is easy if you look at machines instead:  build a state machine that accepts
> the language defined by the RE.  Build a derived machine with the same set
> of states, but invert the transitions, make the new machine's accepting
> states the original machine's start states, and make the new machine's start
> states the original machine's accepting states (special case here:  if the
> language is empty, there may not be any accepting states in the original
> machine).

In theory, yes, but I don't believe that REs can necessarily be
converted to state machines, particularly not DFAs. For example:

>(?P=name)
>Matches whatever text was matched by the earlier group named name.

This implies that the value is stored somewhere, and DFAs cannot do
that. \number is similar. I am not sure about these either:

>(?=...)
>Matches if ... matches next, but doesn't consume any of the string. This is called a >lookahead assertion. For example, Isaac (?=Asimov) will match 'Isaac ' only if it's >followed by 'Asimov'.
>(?!...)
>Matches if ... doesn't match next. This is a negative lookahead assertion. For example, >Isaac (?!Asimov) will match 'Isaac ' only if it's not followed by 'Asimov'.


I don't know whether there are other types of state machines that
have the memory to implement the RE specification properly, and are 
still susceptible to Tim's argument. However I believe for the subset of
REs which do not use the constructs mentioned above, Tim's argument is
correct.

John



From kputland at wisen.com  Thu Oct 28 10:35:13 1999
From: kputland at wisen.com (Karl Putland)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 08:35:13 -0600
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
In-Reply-To: <38180DA6.E62D5C9E@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <NDBBIAJJDMLKMBCHENJJOENFCDAA.kputland@wisen.com>

Two way to get the values that you want.

The values that are useful are
['CurrentVersion','CurrentBuildNumber','CSDVersion','Plus! VersionNumber']

>
> Is there a way to directly extract a certain key from the registry ?
> I'd need the values of the keys 'CSDVersion', 'CurrentVersion' and
> 'CurrentBuild'. Plus perhaps 'CurrentType' if someone could enlighten
> me with a suitable interpretation ;-) ... 'Uniprocessor Free' sounds
> somewhat strange.
>

I think, but don't quote me, that "Uniprocessor Free" is the number of
processors or the number of unused processors left for the version that you
own. eg. WinNTwrkstn4.0 is dual processor capable.  My machine only has one
processor.  I don't have a dual machine to test that theory though.

> Thanks,
> --
> Marc-Andre Lemburg
>

Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
IDLE 0.5 -- press F1 for help
>>> from win32api import
RegQueryValueEx,RegEnumValue,RegOpenKeyEx,RegCloseKey
>>> from win32con import HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
>>> HKLM = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
>>> keyNTCurVer = RegOpenKeyEx(HKLM,'SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion')
>>> verVals={}
>>> i=0
>>> while 1:
	try:
		name,val,typ = RegEnumValue(keyNTCurVer,i)
		verVals[name] = val
		i=i+1
	except:
		break


>>> verVals['CurrentBuildNumber']
'1381'
>>> verVals['CSDVersion']
'Service Pack 4'
>>> verVals['Plus! VersionNumber']
'IE 5 5.00.2314.1003'
>>> verVals['CurrentVersion']
'4.0'
>>>
>>> # OR individual calls
>>>
>>> RegQueryValueEx(keyNTCurVer,'CurrentVersion')
('4.0', 1)
>>> RegQueryValueEx(keyNTCurVer,'CSDVersion')
('Service Pack 4', 1)
>>> RegQueryValueEx(keyNTCurVer,'CurrentBuildNumber')
('1381', 1)
>>> RegQueryValueEx(keyNTCurVer,'Plus! VersionNumber')
('IE 5 5.00.2314.1003', 1)
>>>
>>>
>>> RegCloseKey(keyNTCurVer)
>>>


Karl Putland
kputland at wisen.com




From pier at parc.xerox.com  Wed Oct 20 15:26:31 1999
From: pier at parc.xerox.com (Ken Pier)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 12:26:31 PDT
Subject: Signal Handler ignored on Windows NT
References: <1271699299-25314929@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <380E1767.5F152FD3@parc.xerox.com>

We have a work-around that solves this problem, courtesy of the ILU
implementation for python (ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu).  ILU
implements alarms, and setting a periodic ILU alarm interrupts the
select loop and allows the SIGINT signal handler to execute
(signal.alarm is not implemented in the NT version of python).  Since we
were already using ILU in our application, it was a freebie.

So I am happily ^Cing out of my ILU server today.  Thanks.

Gordon McMillan wrote:

> Ken Pier writes:
>
> > We are using signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler) to set a
> > signal handler for ControlC interrupts.  This works on UNIX
> > (Solaris2.6) and on NT if our program is interrupted during
> > time.sleep().  However, if it is interrupted during a select
> > call, the handler is called on UNIX but not on NT.
> >
> > Particulars: python1.5.2 on Sun Solaris2.6 and the compiled
> > version out of py152.exe on NT 4.0, Service Pack 5.
> >
> > Advice?
>
> If you read the MSVC docs on signals, you'll find that you
> have very little hope of getting ^C to act as it does on Unix.
> Windows actually starts a thread to listen for ^C, and ends
> your process for you. Supposedly there's a way of interfering
> in this, but I've never gotten it to work.
>
> - Gordon

--
Ken Pier
Xerox PARC
"Nothing would ever be accomplished
were it not for unwarranted optimism."





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Oct 11 10:01:21 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:01:21 -0400
Subject: ANN: Win32 Installer - new beta
In-Reply-To: <1272541430-52232301@hypernet.com>
References: <1272601162-48639446@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <1272472771-56362108@hypernet.com>

Yet another rev:

http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/install.html now points to
rev b of the beta: Installer_b_03b.exe.

(I'd screwed up the hackery to get Python to load the 
exceptions.pyc in the archive; it was either finding the normal 
exceptions.py or falling back to string exceptions).

- Gordon



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Wed Oct 27 23:05:26 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 13:05:26 +1000
Subject: Running script files in python.
In-Reply-To: <7v79t8$tes$1@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <000b01bf20f1$6eb0f040$0501a8c0@bobcat>

> I have python embedded in a C++ application.  I was wondering
> what would be
> the best way to run python files:

IMO, the best way is not to run a file at all, but execute functions.

Eg, you should _import_ a module (which may be user configurable),
then when necessary, run functions in that module.

Or slightly better and not much harder - get a class object, and run
functions against that.

One problem with the "PyRun_*" functions is that it is difficult to
trap errors.  Using an import is much simpler.

> The python scripts I will run will have a 99% chance of
> needing to talk back
> to my C++ app also?

No problem - just create an extension module _inside_ your
application, and the code can call functions on this.  Embedding an
extension module is quite simple - just use the exact same code for a
"normal" extension module, but call the module init function manually.

Mark.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Oct 20 09:27:05 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:27:05 +0200
Subject: unmimify or ...................
References: <7uke53$3i8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <007101bf1afe$ce62f3b0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

tester89 at hotmail.com wrote:
> Does anyone know if a module exists that would take an email message
> with or without attachments and create objects for each portion of the
> message?

not really, but the multifile and mimetools/rfc822
modules (all in the standard library) will take you
a bit closer to a solution.  here's something to
start with:

#
# multifile-example-1.py (from the eff-bot guide)

import multifile
import cgi, rfc822

infile = open("samples/sample.msg")

message = rfc822.Message(infile)

# print parsed header
for k, v in message.items():
    print k, "=", v

# use cgi support function to parse content-type header
type, params = cgi.parse_header(message["content-type"])

if type[:10] == "multipart/":

    # multipart message
    boundary = params["boundary"]

    file = multifile.MultiFile(infile)

    file.push(boundary)

    while file.next():

        submessage = rfc822.Message(file)

        # print submessage
        print "-" * 68
        for k, v in submessage.items():
            print k, "=", v
        print
        print file.read()

    file.pop()

else:

    # plain message
    print infile.read()

---

this code merely prints the subpart bodies; use uu,
base64, or quopri to decode them (you may wish to
change rfc822 to mimetools in the above example,
to make it a bit easier to deal with the content-type
header field).

</F>

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




From clement at ans.com.au  Wed Oct  6 19:42:42 1999
From: clement at ans.com.au (Clement)
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:42:42 +1000
Subject: print longs
References: <XFMail.991004090302.nathan@islanddata.com> <37F9D6FA.16011CB5@compaq.com> <37F98517.DD12EF2F@ans.com.au> <5GkK3.21$y51.4731@news.direcpc.com>
Message-ID: <37FBDE72.8BEA5E0@ans.com.au>

What OS are you using?  In my Redhat 6/Python 1.5.2, I have this,

>>> print '%d' % 9876543219876541L
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
OverflowError: long int too long to convert

>>> print '%d' % 987654321L
987654321

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> Did I miss something?
> 
> >>> print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
> 987654321987654321L
> >>> print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in ?
>     print '%d' % 987654321987654321L
> OverflowError: long int too long to convert
> >>>
> 
> --
> 
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com
> -------------------
> 
> Clement <clement at ans.com.au> wrote in message
> news:37F98517.DD12EF2F at ans.com.au...
> > Try '%d'
> >
> > Greg Ewing wrote:
> > >
> > > Nathan Clegg wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Do I have to convert
> > > > to a string and manually pull the 'L' off?
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, yes. Many other people think this
> > > is a pain as well, but Guido doesn't seem to be
> > > among them, so we're stuck with this for the time
> > > being.
> > >
> > > Greg
> >
> > --
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Clement

-- 

Regards

Clement



From jbauer at rubic.com  Wed Oct 20 06:46:46 1999
From: jbauer at rubic.com (Jeff Bauer)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 05:46:46 -0500
Subject: pickle->zlib->shelve
References: <380D994F.E6E775EA@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <380D9D96.F9D120A5@rubic.com>

Thomas Weholt wrote:
> I was thinking maybe I could use pickle and compress the pickled object
> too, before storing it into the database and save some space. Pickled
> objects also seem to have lots of repetitive data.
> 
> Now my question is :
> 
> 1. has this been tested and found ineffective in relation to a) speed of
> decompression or b) size of objects not big enough to gain any
> significant size advantage by compression
> 2. if not tested, why? Maybe a subclass of pickle could implement
> compression and decompression of objects?

Thomas,

I would hazard a guess that the reason we haven't seen
compression built into the pickler:

a) nobody's been motivated yet (go to it! ;-)
b) potentially non-portable (not all Python environments
have access to zlib)

I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to
compress pickles intended for your own use.

Best regards,

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon Research



From mwh21 at cam.ac.uk  Fri Oct 15 10:57:18 1999
From: mwh21 at cam.ac.uk (Michael Hudson)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 15:57:18 +0100
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <7u7bph$hvt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <m3k8ooisdt.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

rturpin at my-deja.com writes:

> Given Python's run-time typing and the ability to generate call stacks
> of line numbers and module names, I suspect there is a way to answer
> this question, but it has escaped my perusal of my books and the online
> documentation.  Help appreciated.
> 
> Russell
> 
> PS to previous discussion:  I now use re's less, and string functions
> more.

There may be clearer and more succinct ways of writing it, but they
all do roughly this:

def whocalled():
    import sys
    try:
        raise ""
    except:
        return sys.exc_traceback.tb_frame.f_back.f_back.f_code.co_name

def test():
    def f():
        return whocalled()
    def g():
        def h():
            return whocalled()
        return h()
    print f(), "was the caller"
    print g(), "was the caller this time"

so in a function whocalled() returns the name of the function that
called the function calling whocalled(). Confused? Good.

insert-standard-disclaimer-about-poking-at-internals-ly y'rs
Michael



From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Thu Oct 21 17:20:04 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:20:04 -0400
Subject: Apply a function to each list member?
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6F9@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Hi,

Is there a way to do this (see "ListApply" below) with standard Python
stuff?

def f(s):
    from string import upper
    from types import StringType
    if type(s) == StringType:
        return upper(s) 
    else:
        return s


def ListApply(f, l):
    for i in  range(0, len(l)):
        l[i] = f(l[i])


l = ["aaa", "bbb", "ccc", 1, 2, 3, "xxx", "yyy", "zzz"]
print l

ListApply(f, l)
print l


Thanks,
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"




From news at dorb.com  Tue Oct 19 22:05:56 1999
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:05:56 -0400
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
References: <380B8EB5.B03BB07A@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <Sq9P3.280$Xd2.30761@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

I wouldn't try to do this in your own process space.
If it were me I'd create a simple process that can load a file
and execute it. Then you can use off the self debuggers
and isolate the GP faults from your main Python application.

Extra benefit will come from seeing that the debugger sees
the same code you think your writing.

Untested code:

#include <stdio.h>
void Goto(char *fn)
{
 const size_t BufSize=10000;
 FILE *fp=fopen(fn,"rb");
 char *buf=new char[BufSize];
 fread(buf,BufSize,sizeof(char), fp);
 typedef void (*FuncPtr)(void);
 FuncPtr functionPtr=(FuncPtr) buf;
 functionPtr();
}


--
--Darrell
Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu> wrote in message
news:380B8EB5.B03BB07A at nmt.edu...
> I am building an interactive Intel Assembly interpreter using Python. I
> am now needing to add the part where my binary code is taken, loaded
> into memory and executed. I've heard the only way of doing this is to
> use C (how, I'm not quite sure yet *grin*). I am having trouble making
> up a module in Python. I've looked at the example in the handbooks I've
> found and they don't seem to work for me.  Could someone show me a
> working example and tell me what include files, etc I would need for it
> to compile correctly.
>
> If anybody knows of a better way to take binary code and execute it,
> then please feel free to tell me! =)
>
> --
> Jeff Shipman
>
> shippy at cs.nmt.edu
>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





From enigma at nmt.edu  Mon Oct 11 15:45:06 1999
From: enigma at nmt.edu (SysProg - Nathan Paul Simons)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:45:06 -0600
Subject: Who maintains Tkinter?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910111331540.24886-100000@moogle.tcct.nmt.edu>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

	A few months ago, i attempted to get some answers to a question
about a bug with tkinter.  i received no reply.  Therefore, i would like
to know who maintains tkinter so that i could contact them directly.
	Just in case my last messages didn't get through all the noise,
and you think you can help, here it is again in full:

X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0
From: enigma at tcct.nmt.edu (SysProg - Nathan Paul Simons)
Subject: TkInter: class Grid missing remove?
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python

	I tried posting this once already, but apparently it didn't get
posted, or if it did, nobody replied, so I'm posting it again.

	Apparently, class Grid in tkinter (Tkinter.py) is missing the
grid_remove method.  Here is the relevant code, including the change:

class Grid:
	# Thanks to Masazumi Yoshikawa (yosikawa at isi.edu)
	def grid_configure(self, cnf={}, **kw):
		apply(self.tk.call, 
		      ('grid', 'configure', self._w) 
		      + self._options(cnf, kw))
	grid = configure = config = grid_configure
	bbox = grid_bbox = Misc.grid_bbox
	columnconfigure = grid_columnconfigure = Misc.grid_columnconfigure
	def grid_forget(self):
		self.tk.call('grid', 'forget', self._w)
	# AMS 10/28/98: was missing!  Added, following grid_forget().
	def grid_remove(self):
		self.tk.call('grid', 'remove', self._w)

I actually didn't find it.  Credit for this fix goes to 
Prof. Al Stavely <al at nmt.edu>.

Systems Programmer - Nathan Paul Simons
http://www.nmt.edu/~enigma   Speare 20   x5748

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From bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu  Thu Oct 28 16:09:54 1999
From: bernhard at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 20:09:54 GMT
Subject: A Small dos->UNIX convertor
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991028111615.12941A-100000@sundial> <19991028065755.B10826@better.net> <y0jogdjcshq.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <slrn81hbci.g.bernhard@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>

On 28 Oct 1999 19:20:01 +0200, Magnus L. Hetland <mlh at vier.idi.ntnu.no> wrote:
>William Park <parkw at better.net> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 11:19:28AM +0200, Moshe Zadka wrote:
>> > Hi!
>> > 
>> > I wrote a simple dos file -> UNIX file (i.e., removes \r's), with some 
>> > cute features, such as automatic decend through directories, keep same 
>> > "last changed" time and more.
>> > 
>> > You can get it at http://buffy.acmecity.com/sanctum/195/dos2unix
>> > 
>> > It's in the public domain, so you can do with it whatever you want.
>> 
>> What's wrong with 'fromdos' and 'todos' avaiable in most Linux
>> distributions?  You can perform those features using shell.  Since your
>> target audience is Unix people, there is no need to reinvent wheel.
>
>Or dos2unix/unix2dos, also readily available already...? :)

Hey, what about "recode"? :)
	Bernhard


-- 
Research Assistant, Geog Dept UM-Milwaukee, USA.    (www.uwm.edu/~bernhard)
Free Software Projects and Consulting 			    (intevation.de)  
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure              (ffii.org)



From wtanksle at hawking.armored.net  Tue Oct 19 09:39:12 1999
From: wtanksle at hawking.armored.net (William Tanksley)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 13:39:12 GMT
Subject: Musings about Python syntax
References: <7ui60u$hg1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <slrn80plsc.n1t.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net>

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:25:19 GMT, steve_allison at my-deja.com wrote:
>Hello all,

>I've been working through the Python tutorial, and a have a few queries
>about the syntax of Python.  Python seems to me to basically be a very
>nicely constructed language, but I have been wondering about a few
>(seeming) syntactic anomalies:

>i) if Python is as object orientated as is claimed, why are things like
>len() not member functions of list/tuples ?

Because of the type/class split, really.  It's a flaw of which we plan to
be soon rid.

Someone else poionted out that member functions versus unqualified
function calls are not a valid way to distinguish OO from non-OO.  This is
true in general, but Python is a little different -- your judgement, as
tainted as it is by OO-propaganda, happens to be correct in this one case.

For an example of a language for which your rule doesn't hold (for very
good reasons), look at Dylan.

>ii) similarly, why is 'del' operator like, and not a member function of
>those types that support it ?  having an 'append' method, but a 'del'
>operator seems peculiar.

That's easy.  'del' operates on the variable, not the object contained in
it.  You can del ANY variable, regardless of whether the object it's
holding implements a __del__ method.  It results in the variable becoming
undefined and the object which it contained having its reference counter
decremented.  If it so happened that the variable was the ONLY thing which
referred to the object, the object will then delete itself -- but that's
not the job of the del keyword.

>Are these historical artefacts, or is the language designed liek tis
>for a reason ?

Yes.  :)

>this scheme ?  I have mostly really liked what I've seen of Python so
>far, but niggles like these are really annoying me!

I hope this helps.  Good luck.

>Steve

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Wed Oct 20 19:25:34 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 19:25:34 -0400
Subject: `re' difficulty?
In-Reply-To: Patrick Phalen's message of "Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:45:52 -0700"
References: <000601bf1a9c$fff91ec0$252d153f@tim> <3dzoxd7vkj.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us> <vr904x1z40.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <99102015440605.04931@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <vrzoxdzkb5.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

Patrick Phalen <pphalen at teleo.net> ?crit:

> Hardy went to visit Ramanujan in the hospital and remarked that his
> taxicab had had a particularly dull number: 1729.  Ramanujan immediately
> remarked, "Oh no, Hardy. It is a very interesting number indeed. It is
> the least number that can be written as the sum of two squares in two
> different ways."

Yes, I remember that story, yet I did not remember the number :-).

> :: [37] is a factor of any number made up by repeating any single digit
> :: some multiple of three times?  (v.g. 111, 222222, 333333333, 444444444444)

> I'm going to choose to imagine that you arrived at the answer above by
> pure intuition.

It was an easy cheat.  I once noticed that 111 = 3 * 37, so making 37 a
bit interesting.  Of course, going from 111 to NNN just means multiply by N.
An going from XYZ to XYZXYZ means multiply by 1001, and XYZXYZXYZ... means
multiply by 1001001...  So you see, the formulation above is just a complex
and flashy (yet a bit empty) way to say nothing more than 111 = 3 * 37. :-)

> I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed your recent contributions to this
> list!

Wow!  You are making my day! :-)  So, it means you forgive me my errances?

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From rturpin at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 15 09:56:10 1999
From: rturpin at my-deja.com (rturpin at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:56:10 GMT
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
Message-ID: <7u7bph$hvt$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Given Python's run-time typing and the ability to generate call stacks
of line numbers and module names, I suspect there is a way to answer
this question, but it has escaped my perusal of my books and the online
documentation.  Help appreciated.

Russell

PS to previous discussion:  I now use re's less, and string functions
more.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Wed Oct  6 09:48:11 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 06 Oct 1999 09:48:11 -0400
Subject: 'ipfw' IOCTLS available as python module?
In-Reply-To: "Malcolm Tredinnick"'s message of "Wed, 6 Oct 1999 11:51:34 +1000"
References: <19990930100423.D22550@quark.emich.edu> <oqaepztek5.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991004104110.C26463@quark.emich.edu> <37FA45D0.6BAB1FE9@boi.hp.com> <oqd7ut5ngu.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca> <19991006115134.A802@Ridcully.home>
Message-ID: <oq3dvok3c4.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

"Malcolm Tredinnick" <malcolmt at smart.net.au> ?crit:

> Hope this helps,

Tremendously, thanks a lot!

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard




From shecter at darmstadt.gmd.de  Tue Oct 12 15:31:45 1999
From: shecter at darmstadt.gmd.de (Robb Shecter)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 21:31:45 +0200
Subject: Minimum Python requirements? (was: Python for PDAs?)
References: <FJ8uG6.M1n@world.std.com> <37FCF7B6.9C94C964@rubic.com>
Message-ID: <38038CA1.E44A7BB1@darmstadt.gmd.de>

Hi,

I've got a question along these lines.  I've been thinking about
taking an old laptop and making it into a "Python-PDA".  I figure I'd
put a bare linux load on it, a text editor, python, and nothing else. 
I'd write my own XML-based PDA software that uses the character mode.

Any clue as to how much hard drive space I'd need?  I'd probably want
to install an extra python package or two, like the xml parser.

Also, how much RAM would I need to run a bare Linux (I'm guessing 2.5
MB) plus a running python process (???MB).

Thanks!

(PS: Anybody else thinking about doing something like this?)

- Robb



From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 22 10:32:13 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:32:13 GMT
Subject: Python and HTML hidden input variables
References: <7upopa$s50$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7upshe$v0k$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Greetings!

You want something like this:

test = "Hello"
print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=%s>" % (test)

Consult section 7.1 ("Formatting") of the Python tutorial.

yours,

---Preston

In article <7upopa$s50$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  rainer2207 at my-deja.com wrote:
> I have a Python script which displays a form and has a hidden input.
The
> relevant code part looks something like this:
>
> print "<form method=\"post\" action=\"sendmsg.cgi\">"
> print "<textarea name=\"sndmsg\" rows=\"7\" cols=\"73\" nowrap>"
> print "</textarea>"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value="test">"
> print "<br>"
> print "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"Talk\">"
> print "</form>"
>
> I was wondering how I could pass a variable using the hidden field.
That
> is I'd like to do something like this:
>
> test = "Hello"
> print "<input type=\"HIDDEN\" name=\"username\"  value=test>"
>
> but this returns the string test rather than "Hello". Is there anyway
> I can get it to pass "Hello"? Am I right in leaving out the double
> quotes for the value part? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>

--
|| Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> ||


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From hei at adtranzsig.de  Wed Oct 13 07:13:08 1999
From: hei at adtranzsig.de (Dirk-Ulrich Heise)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:13:08 +0200
Subject: Borland compilation
References: <7tqmtb$e1p$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <939630546.498030@news.adtranzsig.de> <38041E61.5936C196@tile.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <939813231.529182@news.adtranzsig.de>

Tim Eccles schrieb in Nachricht <38041E61.5936C196 at tile.demon.co.uk>...
>Hello Dirk-Ulrich
>
>How difficuly was it?

About 1 or 2 days(?) - didn't measure (actually it took me half a
year, workin on it 10 min a day, but not every day).  I know, this doesn't
help
you much...

>Is it just a matter of writing a correct MAKE
>file, or do we have to manipulate the source code.

no and yes, but you get it for free from me if you wait a little...

>
>The reason for the query is that we are thinking of embedding a Python
>engine within a BCB program, so we do not really want to use VC at all.

Me too. The BCB app is working for quite a while now, but still i'm stuck
to my old WINAPI-based app that contains a Python 1.4 because
i'm still seeking the perfect architecture for the new one...
Might take another 2 years
until i really start programming it. (The apps i write at home tend to be
a little like Cyc or Xanadu, i suppose. I mean the timescale, not the
goals.)

You don't have to wait for 2 years for my patch, though. Just a few hours
from now.  If it's still there.
--
Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise
hei at adtranzsig.de
dheise at debitel.net








From x at x.x  Tue Oct 12 20:53:53 1999
From: x at x.x (Eric Jacobs)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 20:53:53 -0400
Subject: Custom objects & performance
Message-ID: <3803D821.197F75DF@x.x>

Recently I've been working on some Python classes which I need to be
fairly quick. Here's the conundrum I've been running into: in order
to make the objects compute faster, I often use auxiliary lists and
dictionaries as caches, so if a particular result is needed
frequently, I don't have to recompute it every time. So far, so
good; the trouble is invalidating these caches when the input info
changes. Here's the three options I've been exploring:

1. A non-standard interface to make changes to the object (or a
     property of the object.) So instead of

      foo.list[x] = y

     I might do

      foo.invalidate_cache()
      foo.list[x] = y

     or

      foo.list_setval(x,y)

   I don't really like either of these solutions. The first one
   is very error-prone (don't forget to invalidate the cache!).
   The second one is more like C or C++, where you have a
   different external interface wherever the internals might
   differ. One of the best aspects of Python is that the
   abstractions can remain the same even when the implementation
   is different. I know that there are some cases when I would
   like to write a function that either takes a normal list or
   a list that's a property of an object that uses a cache, 
   and I don't want to have to rewrite the function to do that.

2. UserList / UserDict type things. So in the example above,
     foo.list would be an object which emulates a list and
     provides special processing whenever a value is written
     to it. That works great, except of course that it takes
     a large performance hit especially when there are a lot
     more reads than writes--and speed is the reason why I'm
     trying to do this at all.

   Now some of you probably think that this is going to be
     a plug for letting Python code derive classes off of
     built-in types--and I do think that would be a great
     idea--but it still wouldn't solve all of these
     problems (although it would make it easier.)
     Two-dimensional lists and dictionaries still would
     be tough.

3. Trying to detect a change at a certain point and decide
     whether recalculation is necessary. This is tricky
     because it can get slow, and speed is the bottom line
     here. Lists and dictionaries are not hashable; even
     if they were, that speed might be significant.

Anyone have any ideas??



From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Tue Oct  5 13:41:46 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 17:41:46 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7tdd8q$9tl$585@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From DOUGS at oceanic.com  Wed Oct 13 15:02:21 1999
From: DOUGS at oceanic.com (Doug Stanfield)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:02:21 -1000
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python SNMP module
Message-ID: <5650A1190E4FD111BC7E0000F8034D26A0F071@huina.oceanic.com>

Ilya,

I'm very interested in your module and your development.  I downloaded and
scanned through the files, but haven't had a chance to try anything yet.  I
assume you are aware of the other SNMP module for Python, SNMPy.
<http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/snmpy.html>, a page
set up by Cameron Laird, has a link to information and the source.  He's
alreadey put there a mention of your efforts.

I understand your module is all Python, and SNMPy is using one or the other
of the available PD libraries.  It appears some thought went in to the SNMPy
interface design.  Have you given thought to using the same scheme or does
that fit with your design plans?

-Doug-

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ilya at glas.net [mailto:ilya at glas.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 1999 8:14 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: ANNOUNCE: Python SNMP module
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've written a simple (and incomplete) SNMP V1 manager class. 
> Currently
> it holds BER encoders/decoders and a few transport methods. 
> Only Get-Request
> is supported (no problem to add other request types, though). No MIB
> parser yet.
> 
> However, it is written entirely in Python and it works.
> 
> I hope this module may be helpful to Python community as a 
> starting point
> for developing a more sophisticated solution.
> 
> The package is available at 
> ftp://ftp.glas.net/~ilya/tools/pysnmp.tar.gz
> 
> I'm interested 
> in bug reports & fixes, suggestions and improvements. Please,
> please send your feedback to <ilya at glas.net>.
> 
> Thanks,
> ilya
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From darrell at dorb.com  Thu Oct 21 18:16:26 1999
From: darrell at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 18:16:26 -0400
Subject: Apply a function to each list member?
References: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6F9@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <022a01bf1c11$eb3739b0$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>

>>> map(f,l)
['AAA', 'BBB', 'CCC', 1, 2, 3, 'XXX', 'YYY', 'ZZZ']

--Darrell
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Gaetan Corneau <Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com>
To: 'Python list' <python-list at cwi.nl>
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 5:20 PM
Subject: Apply a function to each list member?


> Hi,
> 
> Is there a way to do this (see "ListApply" below) with standard Python
> stuff?
> 
> def f(s):
>     from string import upper
>     from types import StringType
>     if type(s) == StringType:
>         return upper(s) 
>     else:
>         return s
> 
> 
> def ListApply(f, l):
>     for i in  range(0, len(l)):
>         l[i] = f(l[i])
> 
> 
> l = ["aaa", "bbb", "ccc", 1, 2, 3, "xxx", "yyy", "zzz"]
> print l
> 
> ListApply(f, l)
> print l
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> ______________________________________________________
>    Gaetan Corneau
>    Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
>    BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
>    E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
>    Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
>    ICQ Number: 7395494             
>    Tel: (418) 266-8252          
> ______________________________________________________
> "Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From arnold at dstc.edu.au  Mon Oct  4 22:51:47 1999
From: arnold at dstc.edu.au (David Arnold)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 02:51:47 GMT
Subject: Determining python installation prefix 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "05 Oct 1999 11:57:43 +1000."
             <87k8p27enc.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au> 
References: <87k8p27enc.fsf@heresy.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <199910050251.MAA05910@piglet.dstc.edu.au>

-->"Dave" == Dave Cole <djc at itga.com.au> writes:

  Dave> Is there a nice way to ask the Python interpreter where it was
  Dave> installed?

try sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix (matching the autoconf params of
similar names)



d





From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Thu Oct 28 18:21:01 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:21:01 +0200
Subject: Python 1.5.2 list sorting bug
References: <3818BF9F.8C6CCDEF@bioreason.com> <3818C0DD.D55CE53@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <3818CC4D.3B3658D7@appliedbiometrics.com>


Brian Kelley wrote:
> 
> actually a much quicker test is:
> 
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Oct 27 1999, 17:21:07) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> a = [3,4,5,1,2]
> >>> a.sort(lambda x,y: x>y)
> >>> a
> [3, 4, 5, 1, 2]
> >>>

Please have a look into the documentation about sorting and
the cmp function. Actually, you need a three valued compare.

Using 

>>> a.sort(lambda x,y: cmp(x,y))

should convince you :-)

ciao - chris

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at appliedbiometrics.com>
Applied Biometrics GmbH      :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101   :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net
10553 Berlin                 :     PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net
PGP Fingerprint       E182 71C7 1A9D 66E9 9D15  D3CC D4D7 93E2 1FAE F6DF
     we're tired of banana software - shipped green, ripens at home



From mlinnen at usa.net  Sun Oct 17 11:54:18 1999
From: mlinnen at usa.net (Mike Linnen)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 15:54:18 GMT
Subject: parallel port programming using Python?
References: <19991014.22042400@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <KimO3.9837$pL5.20871@news.rdc1.az.home.com>

I am in the process of rolling my own extension to python that allows
parrallel port access.  If you know C it is not to hard to extend pyhtons
functionallity.


Mark Rickets <markr at tfz.net> wrote in message
news:19991014.22042400 at mis.configured.host...
I want to use python for data acquisition from the parallel port.  I
am using Mandrake-Linux as the operating system  on a PC if that makes
a difference.  Are there any modules available in Python that allow
one to access the system parallel port for this type of function?

msdr at sprint.ca








From mfein at aplcomm.jhuapl.edu  Mon Oct 25 10:54:55 1999
From: mfein at aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (Matt Feinstein)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:54:55 GMT
Subject: Python for the Palm(tm) Computing Platform
References: <3813F1B7.49D49499@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <38146d39.12662187@aplnews>

On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:59:19 +1000, Martin Pool <martinp at mincom.com>
wrote:


>Has anybody worked on porting the Python interpreter to these
>handhelds?  

Well, it's not obvious that actually running Python on a handheld
would be a good thing, rather than just a technical stunt.  On the
other hand,  Python as the language of a portable hosted Palm
development environment could be quite useful.  Libraries and
emulation would be the keys for that, I'd guess.

--
Matt Feinstein
mfein at aplcomm.jhuapl.edu
Organizational Department of Repeated
and Unnecessary Redundancy



From meowing at banet.net  Fri Oct 29 10:12:58 1999
From: meowing at banet.net (greg andruk)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:12:58 -0400 (EWT)
Subject: CGIHTTPServer
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.91.991029082821.15131H-100000@amati.techno.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910291005510.3341-100000@slip-32-100-243-245.ma.us.prserv.net>

On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Paul wrote:

> On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Adrian Eyre wrote:
> > Better still, is it possible to implement os.fork() under Win32?
> 
> I would have thought not, but cygwin does it so it is possible, but 
> perhaps hairy.

FWIW, MS has thrown some money to the Activestate people to get fork
working under Windows Perl.  I'm sure MS will want it to work under their
own compilers, so an open-source way to emulate fork() in that
environment ought to be out there Real Soon Now[tm].




From laheadle at boguscs.uchicago.edu  Mon Oct  4 00:08:04 1999
From: laheadle at boguscs.uchicago.edu (Lyn A Headley)
Date: 03 Oct 1999 23:08:04 -0500
Subject: re vs. sgmllib (was: Moving from Perl to Python)
References: <000401bf0de4$9b071360$812d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <wr33dvr6a57.fsf@yeenoghu.cs.uchicago.edu>

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

    Tim> Most tantalizingly unusable: Python's own Guido-grown parser
    Tim> generator, which generates the parse tables Python itself
    Tim> uses.  This is tied into Python rather more deeply than it
    Tim> "should be".

If you're looking to parse python itself, the transformer.py module,
part of the Python2C compiler, does a nice job of making
understandable abstract syntax trees out of the python parser module.

-- 
Lyn Headley remove the word "bogus" from my address for the real one.



From ionel at psy.uva.nl  Sun Oct  3 15:39:18 1999
From: ionel at psy.uva.nl (Ionel Simionescu)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 21:39:18 +0200
Subject: When Good Regular Expressions Go Bad
References: <000701bf0bb9$def95240$322d153f@tim> <7t2l56$7uq@dfw-ixnews16.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <7t8bge$q6k@mail.psy.uva.nl>

|
| Okay, okay, you've mostly convinced me.  Now, here's the hard part: got
| any recommendations for a parsing book similar to the O'Reilly Regex
| book?  (By "similar", I mean a good combined tutorial/reference that's
| aimed at the ignorant but generally well-educated techie.  Two or three
| books that combine to that goal would be fine.)
| --

While I am no specialist and no practician of languages design, I have
recently read about parsing, searched for and evaluated several free tools
designed to make the job of designing compilers easier.

I list below some free resources that I found valuable.

(I guess that Paislei will, at least in concept, be enjoyed by many of the
people alredy using a lot of REs in their work. In fact, for this intuition
I dropped this message.)

ionel
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------

Book:

Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide
--------------------------------------
by Dick Grune and Ceriel J.H. Jacobs
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/PTAPG.html
'''
This 320-page book treats parsing in its own right, in greater depth than is
found in most computer science and linguistics books. It offers a clear,
accessible, and thorough discussion of many different parsing techniques
with their interrelations and applicabilities, including error recovery
techniques. Unlike most books, it treats (almost) all parsing methods, not
just the popular ones. See Preface + Introduction and/or Table of Contents
for a quick impression.
The book features a 48 page systematic bibliography containing over 400
entries. A general context-free parser is supplied (Figure 12.1 and Figure
12.2) and discussed in detail.
No advanced mathematical knowledge is required; the book is based on an
intuitive and engineering-like understanding of the processes involved in
parsing, rather than on the set manipulations used in practice.
'''


Tools:

An index:
---------
Catalog of Compiler Construction Tools
FREEWARE AND COMMERCIAL RESOURCES FOR COMPILER WRITERS
SEPTEMBER 1999
http://www.first.gmd.de/cogent/catalog/


ANTLR/PCCTS
-----------
http://www.antlr.org/
Solidly established, active user base. Recurrent descent parsers, LL(k)
grammars.
'''
What's An ANTLR?
ANTLR, ANother Tool for Language Recognition, (formerly PCCTS) is a language
tool that provides a framework for constructing recognizers, compilers, and
translators from grammatical descriptions containing C++ or Java actions
[You can use PCCTS 1.xx to generate C-based parsers].
'''


Elegant
--------
http://www.research.philips.com/generalinfo/special/elegant/elegant.html
Almost unknown but with a definite elegance in concept and implementation
which makes it worth checking. Attribute grammars with late evaluation.
Outputs unfriendly, but quite portable C code. Has relatively few users.
'''
What is Elegant
Elegant started as a compiler generator based on attributed grammars (the
name stands for Exploiting Lazy Evaluation for the Grammar Attributes of
Non-Terminals) and has grown into a full programming language. It has been
inspired by the abstraction mechanisms found in modern functional languages,
yet Elegant is an imperative language (Elegant has assignment).
Elegant is written in Elegant. (Beware of any language implementation not
written in that same language!) and has been used for internal use within
Philips for about 10 years now. In this period, dozens of compilers have
been built with Elegant. Elegant release 7 is distributed under the Gnu
Public License Agreement.
'''

Paislei
--------
http://www.qtj.net/~lpm/index.html
IDE for developing *and* testing compilers.
The grammar rules are specified as pseudo regular expressions. The docs are
pretty clear.
Outputs C++ classes, which are not quite easy to play with, but you can put
your code in for implementing semantics, so you shouldn't care.
'''
PAISLEI is an experimental system that allows you to design adaptive
recursive descent predicate grammars using the LPM notation.  To view
screenshots, click here.
Once you have graphically designed and debugged your grammar in PAISLEI and
have convinced yourself that it is behaving on test data as you wish it to,
you can generate a potentially cross-platform compatible C++ class (derived
from the LPM class CLpmGrammar) which will accept the same data as you
tested in the IDE.  Since the IDE uses the CLpmGrammar class internally
during debugging, your class will behave identically and accept the same
files.
The LPM language has several features which allow it to parse certain
"classic" difficult items in the grammar, rather than in the attached code.
The examples included with PAISLEI demonstrate this.
Both The PAISLEI IDE and LPM Cross Platform are currently offered completely
free of charge for all use, but the author reserves the exclusive right to
distribute the source.   What this means is that you absolutely must not
distribute PAISLEI or the LPM source files.  You hold the copyright on C++
grammar classes generated by PAISLEI, and on the contents of files in the
.LPM and .PSL formats.
'''







From martinp at mincom.com  Mon Oct 18 23:28:22 1999
From: martinp at mincom.com (Martin Pool)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 13:28:22 +1000
Subject: Read one key press.
References: <19991018175123.A28845@optiplex.palga.uucp> <002a01bf1989$f68d42d0$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com> <19991018201908.B29979@optiplex.palga.uucp>
Message-ID: <380BE556.4E1EC1F4@mincom.com>

Gerrit Holl wrote:
> Hmm. I think curses is the module I need, but I can't find documentation and
> the module is written in c so I can't read that. If I run your example, I get
> Traceback (innermost last):it:~/oefen/python$ python modcurse.py
>                              File "modcurse.py", line 6, in ?
>                                                                  key = curses.getch()
>      AttributeError: getch
>                           20:17:46:17/516:gerrit at gerrit:~/oefen/python$
> and my terminal is totally wrong (if I press enter I don't get a newline, etc.)

If you get into this state by breaking a curses program you can usually
fix it by typing 

  reset [enter]

which gets your terminal back to a sane state.  (It doesn't reset the
machine, or anything like that.)  This often works even if you can't see
your keypresses echoed back: it's getting to the shell anyhow.

-- 
 /\\\  Mincom | Martin Pool          | martinp at mincom.com
// \\\        | Software Engineer    | Phone: +61 7 3303-3333
\\ ///        | Mincom Ltd.          | 
 \///         | Teneriffe, Brisbane  | Speaking for myself only



From hniksic at srce.hr  Mon Oct 11 05:18:28 1999
From: hniksic at srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic)
Date: 11 Oct 1999 11:18:28 +0200
Subject: Newbie question: files..
References: <000001bf1379$f17c77e0$7fa2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <87hfjyxnkr.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

> It isn't slower than Perl in my experience (the contrary) -- but then I use
> Perl for the little bit of serious text-crunching and regexp-slinging that
> comes up in my work.  Perl put extraordinary effort into implementing those
> efficiently; outside of them, I find that Python is typically
> faster.

How do you measure that?  So far I haven't seen an example of Python
code that would be faster than its Perl equivalent.

> try-timing-a-program-with-bigints<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

Huh?



From mhammond at skippinet.com.au  Wed Oct 27 07:54:10 1999
From: mhammond at skippinet.com.au (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 21:54:10 +1000
Subject: Wpy and COM samples/demos/tutorials/how-tos?
In-Reply-To: <6D8A17398E28D3119F860090274DD7DB064345@pces.cadlab.it>
Message-ID: <000701bf2071$fb6644c0$0501a8c0@bobcat>

I can't give you wpy pointers, but if you install the win32all-127
package, you will get the COM extensions and all the COM
documentation, as well as Pythonwin, which is a Windows only wrapper
of MFC (where wpy also provides an MFC interface over Tcl).  Check out
my starship page at http://starship.python.org/crew/mhammond

Mark.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Alessandro Bottoni
> Sent: Wednesday, 27 October 1999 8:44
> To: 'Pyhon List (Messages)'
> Subject: Wpy and COM samples/demos/tutorials/how-tos?
>
>
> I'm starting to write a few small programs (for in-house use
> only) that will
> have to communicate with a few COM servers (like MSIE) and
> will have to have
> a Windows-compliant GUI. For this task, I'm using Visual
> Basic 6.0 but, as
> you can understand, I would like to use Python instead...
>
> I saw that there are Wpy (an MFC-based GUI library) and a COM
> interface for
> Python, so I'm looking around for samples, demos, tutorials, etc...
> everything that can add up to the documentation and sample
> code that I got
> with the Python distribution...
>
> Any suggestion? Any URL to visit?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --------------------------------
> Alessandro Bottoni
> (Alessandro.Bottoni at Think3.com)
> (abottoni at yahoo.com)
> Web Programmer
> Think3 inc.
> (www.think3.com)
>
>
> --
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>




From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Thu Oct 14 22:09:16 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 02:09:16 GMT
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
References: <007801bf16b0$552ef860$0801a8c0@bobcat>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-o3wNIN2XO0dn@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999 01:55:17, "Mark Hammond" 
<mhammond at skippinet.com.au> wrote:

> > Sorry you *COMPLETELY* lost me there!
> >
> > Can you elaborate a little bit more, and/or include a code example?
> 
> Sorry - there is a bug in win32apimodule.cpp - the implementation of
> SetSystemTime uses the PyArg_ParseTuple C function, and it needs to be
> changed.  ie, you need a new win32apimodule.pyd.  My guess is you dont
> have Visual C++, so if you are running win32all-127 I can send you a
> new one.

I was guessing that's what you meant.

I'll double check what version of win32all I'm running, but I just 
downloaded
it a short while ago from the python.org web site.

If you could, feel free to attach to me directly 
(junkster at rochester.rr.com).
In the worst case, I'll just redownload it again, and install it.

By the way, "Installer B3" works great as a freeze replacement.
(I believe you suggested it as a replacement? I forget, and I'm
being lazy in not tracking backwards to see who did).

I've run into two problems with it.  I have to find out who to email
bug reports to (& what address).

1) Builder doesn't seem to like it when programs aren't in the 
	same directory.
2) Builder tries to run python (i.e. c:\program 
files\python\python.exe)
	and can't see it.  
	a) Use the short name (i.e. c:\progr~1\python\....)
	b) Just rely on path (i.e. python.exe)
	c) Use the long name w/quotes (i.e. c:\"program 
files"\python\python.exe
    The problem is that without the quotes, it isn't finding the 
python file(s).

			- Benjamin
================================
Please feel free to copy any and or
all of this sig.
A little something for spam bots:

root at localhost postmaster at localhost admin at localhost
abuse at localhost postmaster at 127.0.0.1

Chairman William Kennard: bkennard at fcc.gov 
Commissioner Susan Ness: sness at fcc.gov
Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: hfurchtg at fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael Powell: mpowell at fcc.gov
Commissioner Gloria Tristani: gtristan at fcc.gov
consumerline at ftc.gov
fccinfo at fcc.gov
ssegal at fcc.gov




From mehta at mama.indstate.edu  Tue Oct 19 22:33:20 1999
From: mehta at mama.indstate.edu (mehta at mama.indstate.edu)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 02:33:20 GMT
Subject: re to match java function
Message-ID: <7uj9lf$b56$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Hello,

I am trying to write re to match java fucntion.


scope = r'(public|private|protected)?[ \t]+'
modifier = r'(abstract|synchronized|statis|final)?[ \t]+'
returntype = r'(^[a-zA-Z0-9]+[ \t]+)'
name = returntype

funcre = what?


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From thomas at xs4all.nl  Sun Oct 31 04:13:43 1999
From: thomas at xs4all.nl (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:13:43 +0100
Subject: dynamic modules, bsdi, and zope
In-Reply-To: <381b179f.486594382@news.giganews.com>; from bitz.nospam@bitdance.com on Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 10:12:33PM +0000
References: <381b179f.486594382@news.giganews.com>
Message-ID: <19991031101343.F29354@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 10:12:33PM +0000, R. David Murray wrote:

> Thomas Wouters helped me out with this by working through the
> differences between his BSDI 4.0.1 setup and mine.  He eventually
> figured out that I needed to recompile Python with dynamic modules
> enabled.  But to do that I needed a little voodo, which he provided:

> LDSHARED=       gcc -shared
> CCSHARED=       -fpic
> LINKFORSHARED=  -Xlinker -export-dynamic

> PS: Hopefully someone who really understands what's
> going on here can fix configure (or whatever) so this
> will work out of the box...

I know what they do, they send different options to the compiler and linker
during the compile ;) The trick is that before BSDI 4.0, BSDI used COFF
binaries, with ugly hacks to fake shared libraries (well, they're really
shared, just not really very dynamically linked) and an ugly hack gcc
wrapper (shlicc) to compile shared libraries. 

BSDI 4.0 uses ELF, though, with genuine shared libraries (and there was much
rejoicement) and it's no longer necessary to use shlicc, unless you wish to
create COFF binaries for some reason. Configure doesn't know that,
apparently, but i dont know if that's a python problem or an autoconf
problem.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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



From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct  9 21:54:54 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 21:54:54 -0400
Subject: opening a file to read under windows
In-Reply-To: <7tokcq$lab$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <000001bf12c2$72fe7f60$61a2143f@tim>

[dave hatton]
> ...
> How should I open a text file for reading under windows? (98 in this case)
>
> Every thing I try results in an error message which shows the filename
> correctly but with "\\" between each element not "\"
>
> I'm using "fd = open(filename, 'r')" where filename="c:\dir\file.txt"

It is much more helpful to post an actual code snippet and the actual error
message, rather than attempt to describe either.  You wouldn't believe how
ambiguous those descriptions are <wink>.

Here are 4 ways to open that work:

D:\Python>type example.txt
line 1
line 2

D:\Python>python
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> f = open("example.txt")
>>> print f.readline()
line 1

>>> print f.readline()
line 2

>>> print f.readline()

>>> f.close()
>>> f = open("d:/python/example.txt")
>>> print f.readlines()
['line 1 \012', 'line 2 \012']
>>> f.close()
>>> f = open("d:\\python\\example.txt")
>>> print f.readlines()
['line 1 \012', 'line 2 \012']
>>> f = open(r"d:\python\example.txt")
>>> print f.readlines()
['line 1 \012', 'line 2 \012']
>>>

The most common mistakes under Windows:

1) Using backslashes naively in file paths; e.g. "\t" is a tab character,
not a backslash followed by a t.  "\\t" is a backslash followed by a t, as
is r"\t".

2) Opening binary files (for input or output) without explicitly specifying
binary mode.  Text mode and binary mode are different under Windows.

once-you-get-beyond-opening-closing-is-easy-ly y'rs  - tim





From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sun Oct 24 01:10:16 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 24 Oct 1999 05:10:16 GMT
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017081520.9169B-100000@sundial> <22101999.3@sanctum.jae>
Message-ID: <EA4BCCBF98340313.E7B2447D778F2968.62055E04A84ECBEB@lp.airnews.net>

In article <22101999.3 at sanctum.jae>, Juergen A. Erhard <jae at ilk.de> wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>>>>>> "Moshe" == Moshe Zadka <moshez at math.huji.ac.il> writes:
>
>    Moshe> [Posted and CCed to author]
>    Moshe> On 17 Oct 1999, Cameron Laird wrote:
>
>    >> Is there a profound and/or interesting
>    >> reason Python doesn't provide the kinds
>    >> of introspective features we're discus-
>    >> sing here (a traceback, for example)
>    >> without the detour through the land of
>    >> exception-tossing?
>
>    Moshe> Yes. It is a reminder that IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE (sorry for
Ouch.  It's taken me several days to
get my hearing back.  I'm rather sen-
sitive to shouting.
>    Moshe> shouting).  Introspecting into "static" stuff (like
>    Moshe> classes, methods, etc.) is /moderately/ ok (though it is
>    Moshe> usually more a sign the design was wrong).
>
>I strongly disagree here.  Introspection is surely not as evil as you
>make it to be.  Objective-C, for example, has complete introspection
>into the static side of things...
Interesting arguments.  There certainly
seem to be plenty of respected people in
the C++ world who believe run-time type
information is valuable.  Do you, Mr.
Zadka, generally suspect their designs
are wrong?  I'm willing to consider
that possibility.
			.
			.
			.
>    Moshe> However, introspecting into /dynamic/ data should be
>    Moshe> available (because the debugger needs it) but obscure
>    Moshe> (because anyone doing this for the runtime of his program
>    Moshe> is commiting a shooting offense). If someone needs this
>    Moshe> information to debug his program, they should use the
>    Moshe> debugger.
>
>I also disagree, though not as strongly as above.  But again, just
>because you don't see a need for this doesn't mean it can't be used in
>a meaningful way.
			.
			.
			.
Enough of this abstraction.  Let's
present concrete cases, and see whose
position is "for-real".

Mr. Zadka, is your point that there's
no place in the requirements specifica-
tion of a user application for the
kinds of information available through
introspection?  This supposes Python
is a language somewhat like Pascal or
COBOL:  targeted for application writers,
who can be protected from the obscurities
debugger writers must negotiate.

Even if we stick to userland applications,
and deny Python a "systems" role, examples
like Scheme show it's possible to have a
healthy tradition of application-oriented
idioms which rely on code-data dualities.
I'm a tiny bit surprised, in fact, that
Python programs "eval" as little as they
do.  I'll conjecture, again, that there
might be some deeper reason that this is
so.  Generalized appeals to propriety,
though, seem to me misplaced.

I can accept that object-orientation's
traditions of polymorphism and so on are
supposed to answer all the questions
introspection answers.  I don't agree,
but I understand the position.  Is that
Python's story?  It's OO, and simply has
no place for that dirty stuff, except in
"debuggers"?  To me, that's at odds with
docstrings, self-testing definitions,
and other habits which Python justly
boasts.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From MSteed at altiris.com  Tue Oct 19 16:58:44 1999
From: MSteed at altiris.com (Mike Steed)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 14:58:44 -0600
Subject: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
Message-ID: <65118AEEFF5AD3118E8300508B124877073C36@webmail.altiris.com>

> From: Greg Ewing [mailto:greg.ewing at compaq.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 9:22 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: IDLE loses menus on Macintosh
>
> Now, does anyone know of an existing Python GUI 
> toolkit that really does work across Mac/Unix/Windows?

This may not be much help, but here are two GUI toolkits that work on these
platforms:

YAAF: http://www.pandawave.com/yaaf1.html
Zinc: http://www.zinc.com/

I say 'not much help' because I don't know of Python interfaces for either
toolkit.  But it's a start.

--
M.



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Oct 31 05:43:03 1999
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 31 Oct 1999 05:43:03 -0500
Subject: Comment in Grail source code
In-Reply-To: "Juergen A. Erhard"'s message of "Sun, 31 Oct 1999 02:22:20 +0200"
References: <2zkQ3.9170$P3.10169@ozemail.com.au> <14355.13361.105554.204636@anthem.cnri.reston.va.us> <31101999.2@sanctum.jae>
Message-ID: <oqemebu7yg.fsf@titan.progiciels-bpi.ca>

"Juergen A. Erhard" <jae at ilk.de> ?crit:

> The common (in GNU land at least) marker seems to be FIXME:

Did I share my usual trick with you?  Forgive me if I repeat myself without
noticing, it merely goes with senility :-).  For Emacs lovers:


(when window-system
  (let ((color (face-foreground 'font-lock-comment-face)))
    (copy-face 'italic 'font-lock-comment-face)
    (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-comment-face color))
  (copy-face 'underline 'fp-space-face)
  (set-face-foreground 'fp-space-face "red")
  (copy-face 'underline 'fp-unbreakable-space-face)
  (set-face-foreground 'fp-unbreakable-space-face "grey")

  (let ((liste '(c-mode c++-mode change-log-mode emacs-lisp-mode m4-mode
			mail-mode magic-point-mode makefile-mode
			metafont-mode message-mode metapost-mode
			perl-mode python-mode scheme-mode sgml-mode sh-mode
			shell-script-mode texinfo-mode text-mode)))
    (while liste
      (font-lock-add-keywords
       (pop liste)
       '(("\\<\\(FIXME\\)[!:]?\\>" 1 font-lock-warning-face t)
	 ("\240" 0 'fp-unbreakable-space-face t)
	 ("[ \t]+$" 0 'fp-space-face t)
	 ("\n\\(\n+\\)\\'" 1 'fp-space-face t))
       'append))))


One effect of the above, when put in your `.emacs', is to render any `FIXME'
occurring in Python sources with bold flashy red, when followed by either
a colon or exclamation mark.  Other effects are to do the same in various
other modes, to display spurious whitespace, when any, with red thin lines,
and to underline unbreakable spaces with gray.  Oh, and it also uses italics
for comments, which I like a lot too (I think I stole that idea from XEmacs).

Of course, simplify as wanted by removing anything you do not like! :-)

P.S. - You might need to preload "cl" for `pop' to work, or rework the
loop a tiny bit.  In any case, Richard told me he will make `pop' standard.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard





From samschul at pacbell.net  Mon Oct 11 15:46:53 1999
From: samschul at pacbell.net (Sam Schulenburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:46:53 GMT
Subject: lazy function calling?
References: <380202B7.ADF0E803@GermanLloyd.org>
Message-ID: <7tter7$btl$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <380202B7.ADF0E803 at GermanLloyd.org>,
  Berthold Hoellmann <hoel at GermanLloyd.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I think I can remember a Python extension module, posted or announced
> here a while ago, where it was possible to make functions callable
lazy.
> This means I could call a function spam just writing spam instead of
> spam(). Was I just dreaming or is it real. And if it's real, where
can I
> get it :-)?
>
> Thanks
>
> Berthold
> --
> email: hoel at GermanLloyd.org
>    )
>   (
> C[_]  These opinions might be mine, but never those of my employer.
>




# ######################################
# DATE:         Feb 1,1999
# PROGRAMMER:   Samuel W. Schulenburg
# This function was defined at
http://starship.skyport.net/~da/parenless/
# Modifications were made by me to return function arguments
#
#//@pyfunc classfunc | wrap | This function will take a <nl>
#//                          function name and return <nl>
#//                          class variabe that instantiates<nl>
#//                          the original function<nl>
#//
#//@parm   function name    | FunctName | function name
#//@rdesc  Class function
#
########################################################################
###
def wrap(f):
    class w:
        def __init__(self,f):
            self.f = f
        def __repr__(self):
            rtn=apply(self.f)
            repr(rtn) and ""
            return rtn
        def __call__(self,*args,**kw):
            rtn = apply(self.f,args,kw)
            return(rtn)
    return w(f)

#==============END wrap ============================

The following example will show the use of wrap(f):

>>>def testwrap():
      print "This is a test of wrap\n"



>>>test = wrap(testwrap)

>>>test
   This is a test of wrap






Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From marc.saric at mpi-dortmund.mpg.de  Mon Oct 18 07:57:44 1999
From: marc.saric at mpi-dortmund.mpg.de (Marc Saric)
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:57:44 +0200
Subject: Syntax highlighting for Ultra-Edit 32?
References: <38093126.5D25121F@usit.net>
Message-ID: <380B0B38.32525982@mpi-dortmund.mpg.de>

Chuck Esterbrook schrieb:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm using UltraEdit-32 for Windows to edit my Python scripts. Overall,
> it's a fairly nice editor with lots of customization options that
> allowed me to make it behave the way I think a text editor should.
> 
> It also has a feature for syntax highlighting and comes standard with
> modules for Perl, C++, etc.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone had a Python syntax highlighting module for
> UltraEdit?
Take a look at the Uedit web-page, there is some additional stuff,
especially a list of Python-keywords usable for highlighting.


-- 
Bye,

Marc Saric

Max-Planck-Institut f?r molekulare Physiologie
Otto-Hahn-Strasse 11
44227 Dortmund

phone: +49 231 133 2168



From davidopp at megsinet.net  Mon Oct  4 20:58:42 1999
From: davidopp at megsinet.net (David Oppenheimer)
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 20:58:42 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <37F94D41.A1BA6AAC@megsinet.net>


Michael Vanier wrote:

> Here's a quote from Guido in a recent interview
> (http://207.178.22.52/articles/conversations/005.html):
>
> > The tools will give them a lot of hand holding, a lot of insight into the
> > existing code and will help them get an idea of what the consequences of
> > changes would be. That is, you can say, ``Okay, now I have this code and
> > I think I want to make this change. You tell me where this variable is
> > used elsewhere in the program--what the dependencies are, what code is
> > using this function. Maybe this function isn't being used at all!'' Just
> > like in our DNA, there are large pieces of software containing unused
> > code. Nobody noticed it was no longer needed, so nobody bothered to take
> > it out.
>

I'm not sure if he should have used DNA as an example.  I'm OK with extra info
being in my DNA.  My Nuclei have never given me an error message that the
nucleus is running out of space...lol.

Maybe a head-on assault on the bloatware produced by a certain company in
Redmond Washington would have been more appropriate.  I have heard that around
40% of the code for Windoze 2000 is just filler (DLL's that will never be used,
hidden programs that no one needs or knows about) that does nothing at all but
take up hard drive space.

The most absurd thing that I have recently heard is that M$ is trying out the
concept of "renting" their software instead of selling it.  If M$ products were
an apartment instead of software, they'd be expensive, filled with cockroaches,
too large, and would be filled with a million wonderful appliances that most
people would never use.  Those appliances that you would want to use would be
broken half the time.  To make them work properly would require you to turn out
all the lights and appliances in your apartment, flip the main circuit breaker,
leave the apartment and lock it up, and then unlock and enter the apartment,
flip the main circuit breaker, turn on all the lights, and then turn your
appliances on again.

Imagine using a piece of software, spending hundreds of hours coding and
creating a project, and then Bill raises the rent on your software right before
you finish a project.  I'm not going to be lining up to have Bill Gates be my
landlord!  If M$ decides that renting their software is the thing to do and
eliminates outright retail sales, this will be the necessary push that takes me
over to the Linux side.

As to the signature line, I trust that this is sarcasm.  Please tell me that
you don't view advocating a certain OS as some type of religious crusade.  I
hope that Linux and Windows can challenge each other to make better, more
functional software.  A marketplace with healthy competitors and lots of choice
for consumers is of great benefit to us all.

What really needs to happen for greater acceptance of Linux is that the
business mindset of "If it doesn't come in a shrink-wrapped package, then it's
shit!" needs to change.  Open source software and open source technologies tend
to be less buggy and more efficient than proprietary ones.  Yahoo and Walnut
Creek CD-ROM (the two sites with the most traffic and data transfer on Earth)
use Free BSD to run their sites because this free software is the best product
available.  Both companies would certainly buy better software if it existed
but in their load balancing environments and with their security needs, nothing
else compares.


> With all due respect to Guido, who is usually the most low-key no-bullshit
> person on the planet, the statement about DNA is a beautiful example of
> marketing-speak.  I thought I was reading an interview with Steve Jobs for
> a second :-)  Guido, did they slip something into your coffee? ;-)

I think you may have gone a bit too far by insinuating that Guido was
"chemically inconvenienced" when he made his statement.  You could have easily
rewritten your paragraph in the following sentence: "With all due respect, were
you high when you said this?"  Prefacing an insult with the clause "with all
due respect" does not make an insult any less insulting.  Leave the guy alone.
As long as Guido doesn't say "I am going to discontinue my work on Python as
open source and create a better, proprietary software," I could care less what
he says.  Simplistic, even absurd metaphorical comparisons are often made in an
attempt to reach the minds of the intellectually challenged.

>
>
> No offense meant, really.  I was just a little surprised.
>
> Mike
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Mike Vanier     mvanier at bbb.caltech.edu
> Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech 216-76
> GNU/Linux: We can't lose; we're on a mission from God.

Sincerely,

David Oppenheimer

P.S. Guido's a cool dude.  Leave him alone.  Did you never hear you the saying
"If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all!" ? You can
take issue with a person's statements without turning it into a personal
attack.  You will notice that I did not personally attack you or insinuate you
were on drugs anywhere in this post.




From madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM  Fri Oct  1 12:34:11 1999
From: madq968 at djeksta.comNOSPAM (madQ)
Date: 1 Oct 1999 16:34:11 GMT
Subject: Download Ia.n.i.!!! It's free!
Message-ID: <7t2nq3$eeu$346@nslave1.tin.it>

Download Ia.n.i. RemoteControlSystem 1.2 beta. It's free!!!
New site: http://jump.to/IaniProject




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Oct 14 16:00:51 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:00:51 +0200
Subject: Python for HP-UX
References: <3805F2E8.64189D2@imf.au.dk>
Message-ID: <017201bf167e$d1641230$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Emil Hedevang Lohse <emil at imf.au.dk> wrote:
> I have a simple request: Python for HP-UX.
> 
> I have downloaded the sourcecode and tried to compile it but it will not work.
> So is it possible that anyone out there could email the compiled Python??

python 1.5.1 is available here:

    http://hpux.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de/
    pick an appropriate mirror, search
    for python, and download.

dunno about 1.5.2

</F>

coming soon:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm




From pf at artcom-gmbh.de  Wed Oct 27 03:41:18 1999
From: pf at artcom-gmbh.de (Peter Funk)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:41:18 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: Integrating Python 1.5.2 with Tcl/Tk 8.1 or Tcl/Tk 8.2?
Message-ID: <m11gNhu-000twYC@artcom0.north.de>

Hi!

I've searched the web for any hints on someone working on Tkinter
in order to use it together with Tcl/Tk 8.1 or Tcl/Tk 8.2 but found nothing.

So ask here:  Which amoount of work will be required to use newer
versions of Tcl/Tk together with Python?  And is there someone already
doing something in this direction?

Regards, Peter
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260
office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct 22 10:22:12 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:22:12 +0100
Subject: NT related question (not really Python related)
In-Reply-To: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6FF@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>
Message-ID: <000901bf1c98$d5263180$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> I often execute UNIX command from Python scripts, redirecting the output
of
> the command to a text file. Then I load the text file, scan it, and do
some
> processing.

Instead of redirecting to a file, why not use os.popen():

import os, string, sys

f = os.popen("ps -a")
l = f.readlines()
f.close()
for i in l[1:]:
	j = string.split(i)
	if j[2] == sys.argv[1]:
	os.kill(j[0])


> Anyway, that kind of stuff is easy to implement and convenient for me. The
> problem is that, sometimes, on *some* NT machines, the file redirection
> doesn't work. It doesn't work at all, not even outside Python (i.e. on the
> command line). As a QA team member, I have access to dozens of machines,
but
> only two have the problem from time to time. All have NT4 SP5.

I have never has problems with redirection before. The only thing I can
think
of is that the program is writing to stderr instead of stdout, or it could
be
a problem with the shell. Have you tried os.popen() on these machines?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com
--------------------------------------------




From aahz at netcom.com  Fri Oct  8 10:13:43 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 8 Oct 1999 14:13:43 GMT
Subject: Python as a first language
References: <7tjfk2$8o6$1@sparky.wolfe.net>
Message-ID: <7tku6n$2ut@dfw-ixnews14.ix.netcom.com>

In article <7tjfk2$8o6$1 at sparky.wolfe.net>,
Jon Cosby <jcosby at wolfenet.com> wrote:
>
>I've seen past references in this newsgroup to an article recommending
>Python as a first language. Can anyone point me to this?

There have been a number of such articles; if you're asking whether
*you* should try Python, I'd recommend just going to
http://www.python.org/, downloading a copy, and working through the
tutorial.

If you're asking on behalf of other people, the starting point that I'd
suggest would be Guido's Computer Programming For Everybody proposal at
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From cmedcoff at sprynet.com  Sun Oct  3 20:13:10 1999
From: cmedcoff at sprynet.com (Charles Medcoff)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 20:13:10 -0400
Subject: Tkinter Radiobutton Menu:  how to select programmatically (newbie)
Message-ID: <7t8rdv$e7h$1@nntp2.atl.mindspring.net>

How does one programmatically select the active entry a radio button menu?
For example in a drawing application with a tool menu with entries for
"Selector", "Line", "Rectangle", etc I want to automatically change the
active drawing task to "Selector" and I need to have the radiobutton menu
reflect this.

Regards,
Chuck






From guido at cnri.reston.va.us  Tue Oct 19 17:13:59 1999
From: guido at cnri.reston.va.us (Guido van Rossum)
Date: 19 Oct 1999 17:13:59 -0400
Subject: tcl-style string parsing
References: <940359574.1875665333@news.swbell.net>
Message-ID: <5l4sfn5a08.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us>

Dev <devnull at fleetingimage.com> writes:

> I have a string consisting of multiple strings---
> 
>   a = '"This, m\'dear,"  is  "an example" "of a parsing problem."'
> 
> I would like to efficiently convert this to a list (or tuple):
> 
>   b = ["This, m'dear,", "is", "an example", "of a parsing problem."]
> 
> In the source string, note that whitespace
> within a quoted string should be retained,
> whitespace outside a quoted string should be ignored,
> and strings without whitespace don't need to be quoted.
> 
> I'm converting some code from TCL, where this is trivial.
> (The original string can be treated and indexed as a list.)
> I've not found a suitable re expression for this, nor a set
> of string replacements.

Your problem seems to be designed with Tcl in mind.  It is a parsing
problem.  It so happens that Tcl stole some of its lexing ideas from
the shell and Python 1.5.2 happens to have a handy module, shlex by
Eric Raymond, that nearly solves your problem:

    >>> import shlex
    >>> import StringIO
    >>> f = StringIO.StringIO(a)
    >>> s = shlex.shlex(f)
    >>> l = []
    >>> while 1:
	    t = s.get_token()
	    if not t: break
	    l.append(t)
	    print `t`


    '"This, m\'dear,"'
    'is'
    '"an example"'
    '"of a parsing problem."'
    >>> print l
    ['"This, m\'dear,"', 'is', '"an example"', '"of a parsing problem."']
    >>>

Note that shlex leaves the string quotes around the quoted tokens;
these are easily removed by adding something like

        if len(t) >= 2 and t[0] == '"' == t[-1]:
            t = t[1:-1]

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



From pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA  Wed Oct 20 14:32:52 1999
From: pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?=)
Date: 20 Oct 1999 14:32:52 -0400
Subject: Is tuple unpacking incompatible with `map'?
Message-ID: <vrhfjl288b.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>

Hi, friends.

Is it possible that tuple unpacking is not compatible with `map', or is
there something I do not understand properly?  Here is a transcript.  This is
with Python 1.5.2.

>>> def postsort(pair):
...	return pair[1]
... 
>>> map(postsort, [(1, 'un'), (2, 'deux'), (3, 'trois')])
['un', 'deux', 'trois']
>>> def postsort(key, item):
...	return item
... 
>>> map(postsort, [(1, 'un'), (2, 'deux'), (3, 'trois')])
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: not enough arguments; expected 2, got 1
>>>

Maybe `map' is trying to protect me against errors I'm not doing?  I would
prefer to use tuple unpacking here, as it allows for cleaner writing.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From da at ski.org  Thu Oct 21 13:15:51 1999
From: da at ski.org (David Ascher)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:15:51 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Subject: PyFloat_Check - help!
In-Reply-To: <7uncgi$6or$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.04.9910211015070.222-100000@rigoletto.ski.org>

On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 k_mcdermott at my-deja.com wrote:

> I would prefer the above code to translate Integer objects, where this
> makes sense. i.e. the rate above could be either 1 or 10 to represent 1%
> or 10%, but I have to explicitly put in a 1.0 or 10.0 to make it a
> float.
> 
> I know this is possible, but how...

Would this do?

PyObject* PyNumber_Float (PyObject *o) 
     Returns the o converted to a float object on success, or NULL on
     failure. This is the equivalent of the Python expression "float(o)". 

--david




From aaron_watters at my-deja.com  Fri Oct 29 08:23:55 1999
From: aaron_watters at my-deja.com (aaron_watters at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:23:55 GMT
Subject: gadfly install problem: "from sqlsem import Parse_Context" fails.
References: <7vb0bh$s9u$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <7vc3kp$jv0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7vb0bh$s9u$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Bryan.Hann at Pobox.Com wrote:
> After installing gadfly via
>     (1) downloading individual *.py files from
>             http://www.chordate.com/kwParsing/index.html
>         (there does not seem to be a zipped package??),
>
>     (2) downloading kwP from the same site, and
>
>     (3) running "python gfinstall.py"

Dunno really.  But there's no reason to download *.py files
since either kwP.tgz, kwP.tar.gz, kwP.zip include all gadfly
files.  You may have a truncated sqlsem.py file for some reason
(Parse_Context is near the bottom of the file).  Look at the
bottom of sqlsem.py and see if Parse_Context is there.  Maybe
try something like:

C:\WINDOWS>d:\python\python -c "from sqlsem import Parse_Context; print
dir()"
['Parse_Context', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__']

in a "dos prompt" (if we're talking win98/nt).

Good luck.  -- Aaron Watters http://www.chordate.com

===

Stop procrastinating tomorrow.




Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Oct 18 15:00:00 1999
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 18 Oct 1999 19:00:00 GMT
Subject: Bidirectional communication through pipes: read/write popen()
References: <871zauoltg.fsf@pc-hrvoje.srce.hr>
Message-ID: <7ufqng$1496$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic at srce.hr>:
| In all kinds of circumstances it would be very useful to call an
| external filter to process some data, and read the results back in.
| What I needed was something like popen(), only working for both
| reading and writing.  However, such a thing is hard to write in a
| simple-minded fashion because of deadlocks that occur when handling
| more than several bytes of data.  Deadlocks can either be caused by
| both programs waiting for not-yet-generated input, or (in my case) by
| both their writes being blocked waiting for the other to read.
|
| The usual choices are to:
|
| a) Write a deadlock-free communication protocol and use it on both
|    ends.  This is rarely a good solution, because the program that
|    needs to be invoked is in most cases an external filter that knows
|    nothing about our deadlock problems.
|
| b) Use PTY's instead of pipes.  Many programmers prefer to avoid this
|    path because of the added system resources that the PTY's require,
|    and because of the increased complexity.
|
| Given these choices, most people opt to use a temporary file and get
| it over with.
|
| However, discussing this problem with a colleague, he thought of a
| third solution: break the circularity by using a process only for
| reading and writing.  This can be done whenever reading and writing
| are independent, i.e. when the data read from the subprocess does not
| influence future writes to it.
|
| The function below implements that idea.  Usage is something like:
|
| rwpopen("""Some long string here...""", "sed", ["s/long/short/"])
|   -> 'Some short string here...'
|
| I've put the function to good use in a program I'm writing.  In
| addition to getting rid of temporary files, the whole operation timed
| faster than using a tmpfile (that was on a single-CPU machine).  The
| function will, of course, work only under Unix and its lookalikes.
| Additional information is embedded in the docstring and the comments.
|
| I'd like to hear feedback.  Do other people find such a thing useful?
| Is there a fundamental flaw or a possibility of a deadlock that I'm
| missing?

Interesting idea.  I was inspired to try a slightly different
approach, which I will append here.

It's definitely a solution, possibly the only general one, for
deadlocks caused by the pipe buffer size.  That's an interesting
problem, but I think a relatively unusual one.  In order to get
here, your processes need to be ignoring their input so it stalls
in the pipe ... for example, the parent might wait() for the child
and then read its output, while the child is stuck trying to
finish writing its large output.  But I am having a hard time
thinking of an example where it isn't easily avoided.  I'm also
surprised that the intermediate process would be more economical
than a temporary file, so I wonder if the resources were all
accounted for.  Temporary files do have the liability that their
filesystem may run out of space, but then it seems like a much
safer way to buffer large transfers.  

By far the most common intractable deadlock problem is internal
buffering in a command that uses C I/O and hasn't flushed its
own buffer.  This is where the pty device comes in, and to my
knowledge it's the only general cure.  It works because C I/O
switches to line buffering with a tty device.  But again this
problem can be easily avoided in a situation where all the input
for the command can be written before you wait for its output -
just close the pipe after you're finished writing to it!  The
problem really arises when you're trying to conduct an exchange
that really needs to alternate reads and writes, like, try to
write a line to "awk", read awk's output, and then write another
line to the same awk process.  To do this, you need a pty device.

Anyway, here's my attempt at the 3rd process solution.  I made
both processes children of the calling process, the 3rd process
copies I/O both ways, and the caller can issue reads and writes
to the command at its convenience.  It's a subclass of a normal
1-stage read/write command.  The 3rd process avoids blocking on
reads or writes with the select system call, which is specific
to UNIX.

#	Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington
#	donn at u.washington.edu
#----------------------------
import os
import select
import sys
import traceback

#  External command, with plain read and write dual pipe.
#
#  ex.  cmd = RWPipe('/bin/sh', ('sh', '-c', 'nslookup'))
#       os.write(cmd.input, 'set q=any\n')
#	os.write(cmd.input, 'nosuchhost\n')
#	os.close(cmd.input)
#	while 1:
#		x = os.read(cmd.output, 8192)
#		if not x:
#			break
#		print 'output:', x
#	status = cmd.wait()
#
#  I/O is unbuffered UNIX read/write, caller may make file objects.
#
class RWPipe:
	def __init__(self, command, argv, environ = None):
		self.command = command
		self.argv = argv
		if environ is None:
			self.environ = os.environ
		else:
			self.environ = environ
		self.start()
	def pipexec(self, pipes):
		for unit, use in pipes:
			os.dup2(use, unit)
		os.execve(self.command, self.argv, self.environ)
	def setpipes(self, rp, wp, xp):
		#  Close unused pipe ends.
		for p in rp:
			#  Using read end here.
			os.close(p[1])
		for p in wp:
			#  Using write end here.
			os.close(p[0])
		for p in xp:
			#  Not using this pipe here.
			os.close(p[0])
			os.close(p[1])
	def start(self):
		tocmd = os.pipe()
		frcmd = os.pipe()
		pid = os.fork()
		if not pid:
			try:
				self.setpipes([tocmd], [frcmd], [])
				self.pipexec([(0, tocmd[0]), (1, frcmd[1])])
			finally:
				traceback.print_exc()
				os._exit(127)
		self.pid = pid
		self.setpipes([frcmd], [tocmd], [])
		self.input = tocmd[1]
		self.output = frcmd[0]
	def wait(self):
		p, s = os.waitpid(self.pid, 0)
		return (s >> 8) & 0x7f

#  Industrial strength external command, with an intermediate process
#  that copies I/O, buffering as necessary to avoid deadlock due to
#  system pipe buffer size limit.
#
class BigRWPipe(RWPipe):
	def buffer(self, xferunits):
		#  Transfer I/O between pipes:  self.buffer([(from, to), ...])
		#
		xfers = []
		for r, w in xferunits:
			xfers.append((r, w, ''))
		while xfers:
			wsel = []
			rsel = []
			esel = []
			nxf = []
			for r, w, buf in xfers:
				#  Compile select masks for active units.
				if w >= 0:
					if buf:
						#  Only check for write if any
						#  data buffered to write.
						wsel.append(w)
				elif r >= 0:
					#  If dest invalid, close source.
					#  Will cause SIGPIPE in source proc.
					os.close(r)
					r = -1
				if r >= 0:
					rsel.append(r)
					esel.append(r)
				elif w >= 0 and not buf:
					#  If source invalid and no data,
					#  close dest.  Will usually cause
					#  dest to finish normally.
					os.close(w)
					w = -1
				if w >= 0:
					esel.append(w)
				if w >= 0 or r >= 0:
					nxf.append((r, w, buf))
			xfers = nxf
			if not xfers:
				break

			rdset, wdset, edset = select.select(rsel, wsel, esel)

			nxf = []
			for r, w, buf in xfers:
				if r in rdset:
					b = os.read(r, 8192)
					if b:
						buf = buf + b
					else:
						os.close(r)
						r = -1
				if r in edset:
					r = -1
				if w in wdset:
					n = os.write(w, buf)
					buf = buf[n:]
				if w in edset:
					w = -1
				if r >= 0 or w >= 0:
					nxf.append((r, w, buf))
			xfers = nxf
	def start(self):
		frcmd = os.pipe()
		tocmd = os.pipe()
		frmed = os.pipe()
		tomed = os.pipe()

		pid = os.fork()
		if not pid:
			#  Set up the buffer process.
			try:
				self.setpipes([frcmd, tomed], [tocmd, frmed], [])
				self.buffer([(frcmd[0], frmed[1]),
					(tomed[0], tocmd[1])])
			except:
				traceback.print_exc()
				sys.exit(1)
			sys.exit(0)
		self.med = pid

		pid = os.fork()
		if not pid:
			try:
				self.setpipes([tocmd], [frcmd], [tomed, frmed])
				self.pipexec([(0, tocmd[0]), (1, frcmd[1])])
			finally:
				traceback.print_exc()
				os._exit(127)
		self.pid = pid
		self.setpipes([frmed], [tomed], [frcmd, tocmd])
		self.output = frmed[0]
		self.input = tomed[1]
	def wait(self):
		p, s = os.waitpid(self.med, 0)
		p, s = os.waitpid(self.pid, 0)
		return (s >> 8) & 0x7f



From junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com  Fri Oct 22 13:17:16 1999
From: junkster at nospam.rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:17:16 GMT
Subject: Python Cookies module?  Bugs?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.20.9910221525430.300-100000@fep132.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-WCrVfFWPxQki@d185d1884.rochester.rr.com>

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:31:00, Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.russ.ru> wrote:


>    But of course. It is normal to Python. Python (nont Cookie.py) saw
> mycookie["PSG"] in expression mycookie["PSG"]["path"] and tryed to find the
> object. But the object isn't there.
>    You certainly must add an object mycookie["PSG"] before setting its
> properties.

That's what I thought, but the instructions for cookie.py imply just 
the opposite...
    <grin>  That's kinda the point.


>    cookie["anketa_id"] = str(1024)
>    cookie["anketa_id"]["expires"] = time.strftime("%a, %d-%b-%Y %T GMT", t)
>    cookie["anketa_id"]["path"] = "/"

Why setup the cookie equaling a string w/length of 1024??

This might be where I'm running into problems.... The only reason I 
can think of 
doing that, is to ensure that the other variables fit into the 
"mother" string????


> > Is there any "preferences" in the python world on Cookie
> > Modules?  (I.e. any better/worse/etc modules)
> 
>    It s excellent module, IMHO! Just use right way...

I agree, it's nice.... But the instructions aren't written right...
Hard to use a module when the docs/examples are telling 
you the wrong thing.

		- Benjamin

BTW-> Thanks for the example, I'll have to try that string
	length maneuver and see if it helps.  Because I 
	believe I have everything else pretty much the
	same.

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From tim_one at email.msn.com  Sat Oct  9 12:25:32 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 12:25:32 -0400
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
In-Reply-To: <37FEDA74.C53A706F@x.x>
Message-ID: <000001bf1272$e8e29b80$0c2d153f@tim>

[Eric Jacobs, cogitating about nested functions & lexical scopes]
> ...
> But that would be very tricky to do for functions, because
> sub-functions are first class and can exist even when their
> containing function has exited. If the sub-function chained
> to the containing function's namespace, that would mean that
> the whole stack frame would essentially have to be moved
> to a "heap frame" and ref-counted and handled like an
> independent object!

Heh heh.  Python already does all of that (frames are heap-allocated
already, and are refcounted like everything else):

>>> try:
...     raise "error"
... except:
...     import sys
...     print sys.exc_info()[2].tb_frame
>>>
<frame object at 80c5b0>
>>>

The only technical hangup in implementing lexical closures is that it
creates cycles among internal objects, which refcounting can't reclaim.
Greg Ewing recently worked up a patch that implements "read only" lexical
closures, that avoids the cycles in many (most, or almost all, for most, or
almost all <wink>, common programming styles) cases, albeit with some other
costs (see DejaNews).

It may (or may not) be revealing that people who have used Python since The
Beginning don't agitate for this.  Python's current "two-level" scoping has
charms of it own; abuse of the default argument mechanism to simulate
closures by hand makes it very explicit which names leak across the scope
boundary; and creating a class is often a much better way to manage a
namespace with indefinite extent.  I expect the pressure for lexical
closures will prove too intense to withstand, but even as a retired
functional-language fan I don't think they'd really add anything to
Python -- apart from the opportunity to pretend you're programming in some
other language <0.9 wink>.

flat-is-better-than-nested-ly y'rs  - tim





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Oct 19 04:03:32 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:03:32 +0200
Subject: Assembly Interpreter/Embedding C
References: <380B8EB5.B03BB07A@nmt.edu>
Message-ID: <017f01bf1a08$f623dff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Jeff Shipman - UC <jeff at nmt.edu> wrote:
> I am building an interactive Intel Assembly interpreter using Python. I
> am now needing to add the part where my binary code is taken, loaded
> into memory and executed. I've heard the only way of doing this is to
> use C (how, I'm not quite sure yet *grin*). I am having trouble making
> up a module in Python. I've looked at the example in the handbooks I've
> found and they don't seem to work for me.  Could someone show me a
> working example and tell me what include files, etc I would need for it
> to compile correctly.

1) get the Python sources
2) look at Modules/xxmodule.c

alternatively, you may wish to take a look at
SWIG (www.swig.org) which can create the
Python interface for you!

> If anybody knows of a better way to take binary code and execute it,
> then please feel free to tell me! =)

well, I'd emulate it if I were you.  but that's another
story...

</F>

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




From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Mon Oct 11 06:29:38 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:29:38 +0100
Subject: BUG: classobject.c
In-Reply-To: <38008D6D.E48AE016@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <000501bf13d3$85610b20$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> The PyObject_* APIs return object references with incremented refcount.
> You don't need the Py_INCREF here -- it would cause a memory leak.

Well. All I know is that the result of the PyObject_GetAttrString is
returning an object with a refcount of 1. And since PyString_AS_STRING
returns a pointer within the PyStringObject struct, then the
Py_XDECREF causes this to become invalid. Perhaps the Py_XDECREF should
be moved down to the line before the return.

Perhaps I've done something wrong. But I'm not sure how. If the
refcount is one, it tends to suggest that this is a new reference.
(i.e. the object didn't exist previously.) Do all PyMethodObjects
have an attribute called '__name__'?

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From lame.adress at munger.edu  Thu Oct 21 10:23:05 1999
From: lame.adress at munger.edu (Grant)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:23:05 -0500
Subject: PythonWin rebuild problem
References: <380E401B.4419BFC@munger.edu> <KDEzzAAC7uD4EwB$@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <380F21C9.F8CB84EC@munger.edu>


Robin Becker wrote:

> In article <380E401B.4419BFC at munger.edu>, Grant <lame.adress at munger.edu>
> writes
> >I've had trouble rebuilding PythonWin using Visual C++ v6.0.  I get
> >the following error message:

> ...

> >     LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "mfc42.lib"

...

> >Anybody know how to fix it?

...

> I have VC++ 6.0 and it definitely has this file inside
> C:\program files\Microsoft\Visual Studio\VC98\MFC\lib
>
> have you installed VC++ 6.0 everything properly.

That's a good suggestion: mfc42.lib isn't anywhere within my installation.
However, VC++ has always worked fine for me in building "Console
Applications", if that proves anything.

Perhaps another symptom is that when I try to rebuild Python itself, I get:

   LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "MSVCRTD.lib"

which also isn't anywhere in my installation.

Perhaps I need to install VC++ 6.0 with a different set of installation
options.  Anybody know which options?

Alternatively, I might be able to substitute some other libraries.  However,
after doing a lot of hunting and grepping, I haven't been able to track
where these things are called out in the project files.  Anybody know?

thanks much,

-Grant





From markr at tfz.net  Thu Oct 14 18:04:24 1999
From: markr at tfz.net (Mark Rickets)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:04:24 GMT
Subject: parallel port programming using Python?
Message-ID: <19991014.22042400@mis.configured.host>

I want to use python for data acquisition from the parallel port.  I 
am using Mandrake-Linux as the operating system  on a PC if that makes 
a difference.  Are there any modules available in Python that allow 
one to access the system parallel port for this type of function?

msdr at sprint.ca






From urban at slo.net  Sun Oct  3 20:06:56 1999
From: urban at slo.net (Urban Velkavrh)
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 23:06:56 -0100
Subject: eval in embed Python
Message-ID: <7t8gge$25kr$1@wet.kiss.uni-lj.si>

Hi,

I am having problems evaluating compiled code object in embed python. The
problem seems to be in PyEval_GetGlobals() which always returns NULL.
Compiling my test code with and without thread support gives same result.

The test code (inside C++'s main()):

Py_Initialize();

initextension();

PyRun_SimpleString("import sys\n");
PyRun_SimpleString("import extension\n");

struct _node*pn=PyParser_SimpleParseString("x=extension.returnone();\nprint
x;",Py_single_input ) ;
PyCodeObject*pco=PyNode_Compile( pn, "test.pyc");
PyNode_Free(pn);

PyObject *globals=PyEval_GetGlobals();  <<<< the problematic function
returns NULL
PyObject * result=PyEval_EvalCode(pco,  globals,  globals ); <<< eval code
doesn't work because globals==NULL

Py_DECREF(pco);
Py_DECREF(result);


I am new in Python so this approach might be totally wrong. Please correct
me.


Regards,
Urban










From bb at free.fr  Mon Oct 11 15:45:52 1999
From: bb at free.fr (BORGHI BRUNO)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:45:52 GMT
Subject: Scripting MS-Access from PythonCom
Message-ID: <01bf1429$aab0ee80$0d301bd4@bbix>

I'm writing a small app creating a MS-Access database from csv files, using
OLE automation through Pythoncom.
So far, so good. I can create a database, populate it, create computed
reports, print them. Nice. 
There is one thing I still can't do: setting the margins in a report.

There is a property of reports named 'PrtMip' that is supposed to be used
for that. MS-Access documentation says that PrtMip is a string packing a
struct of 14 short integers. 
I can get the value of PrtMip, although report.PrtMip gives me a tuple of
56 integers, corresponding to the bytes of 14 long integers..
But I don't know how to set a new value. I tried a tuple of 56 integers, of
14 integers. Doesn't work. I tried some variations about a string packing
integers. Doesn't work either.

My questions are :
1/ Does anyone ever tried to set the margins of report in MS-Access through
Pythoncom and could tell me how to achieve this ?
2/ I don't understand why report.PrtMip returns a tuple of 56 integers,
rather than a tuple of 28 integers. Can someone explain ?

Thanx

Bruno Borghi
bruno.borghi at pobox.com



From aahz at netcom.com  Sat Oct 16 19:34:21 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 16 Oct 1999 23:34:21 GMT
Subject: re question
References: <000001bf1829$95a7ef80$172d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7ub21t$6v0$1@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <000001bf1829$95a7ef80$172d153f at tim>,
Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
>
>r"""
>    %%%
>    ( [^%]*
>      (?: % (?! %%)
>          [^%]*
>      )*
>    )
>    %%%
>"""

<grin>  For someone who hates regexes so much, you sure toss 'em off
pretty easily.
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From mlh at idt.ntnu.no  Fri Oct 15 10:09:48 1999
From: mlh at idt.ntnu.no (Magnus L. Hetland)
Date: 15 Oct 1999 16:09:48 +0200
Subject: Prolog Glue Language?
References: <000101bf1600$98d6faa0$ba2d153f@tim> <_NhN3.8260$D33.31311@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <y0jr9iwlnpv.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>

"the_wrights" <the_wrights at onaustralia.com.au> writes:
[...]
> I've written a native python logic programming framework if that's helpful.
> It has quite good unification performance and I'm using it as the basis for
> some reactive planning stuff with BDI agents that I've implemented in
> Python.

Where is it? (Seems very interesting...)

--

  Magnus          Echelon jamming noise:
  Lie             FBI CIA NSA Handgun Assault Bomb Drug Terrorism
  Hetland         Special Forces Delta Force AK47 Hillary Clinton 



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Thu Oct 14 16:17:33 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 20:17:33 GMT
Subject: do ... while loop
References: <000201bf1602$9d71f4a0$ba2d153f@tim> <1272191608-925935@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <BFC4BD7FC2E91E18.A3BBBB0F98E42078.9A53827A5059DA00@lp.airnews.net>

In article <1272191608-925935 at hypernet.com>,
Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
			.
		["... break ..." style]
			.
			.
>Tim is exaggerating. This is about as naughty as using the 
>wrong fork (ie, your typical American has a 50% chance of 
>doing it right).
			.
			.
			.
Miss Manners for the next PyCon!  She
could give a *great* invited address
(Propriety and Object Orientation, that
sort of thing), although I have no idea
if she realizes it's in her.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From edwardam at home.com  Sat Oct 30 23:20:08 1999
From: edwardam at home.com (Edward Muller)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 03:20:08 GMT
Subject: XML-RPC and Pickle.....
Message-ID: <381BB57A.E8AD1AD6@home.com>

I am trying to unpickle and object on another machine after bieng sent
via xml-rpc.....and I get the following error:
xmlrpclib.Fault: <Fault 1: 'exceptions.SystemError:Failed to import
class foo from module __main__'>


it happens on the loads call....Here is basically what I do on the
client...

class someObject:
    def __init__(self):
        self.x = 1
        self.y = 2

    def dosomething(self):
        print self.x
        print self.y

MyServer = OPEN_XML_RPC_CONNECTION
buf = pickle.dumps(someObject)
MyServer.sendPickle(buf)


On the server I do this....


def sendPickle(buf):
    myobj = pickle.loads(buf)


and that is where it fails with the above error....

If you have any idea please drop me an email...I can send the actual
test server/client to you as well..




From amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU  Thu Oct 28 17:12:43 1999
From: amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Amit Patel)
Date: 28 Oct 1999 21:12:43 GMT
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <1271356405-2522084@hypernet.com> <slrn816um9.dea.wtanksle@hawking.armored.net> <3814B60E.A6D90CDE@maxtal.com.au>
Message-ID: <7vae8b$jt7$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>

 skaller  <skaller at maxtal.com.au> wrote:
| 
| 	Hmm. I'm not so sure. Viper uses 'multiple dispatch' in the
| sense of doing case analysis on argument types. For example,
| to execute python's 
| 
| 	a + b
| 
| it checks the types of a and b, may coerce the arguments,
| and then calls an appropriate function.
| 
| Now, the cases I handle are fixed (int, string, sequence ..),
| but it would be interesting to ask: if I add a new type
| to the language, how can I incorporate it into the
| dispatcher?

Let's do a thought experiment:

Suppose I start out with int and float as my basic numeric types.  The
system provides int+int int+float float+int float+float (4 functions =
number of types^2)

Now Tim gives us a rational module.  He gives us int+rational
rational+int float+rational rational+float rational+rational (now 9
functions = number of types^2).

Unaware of Tim's bold move, Gordon gives us a long module.  He gives
us int+long long+int float+long long+float long+long.

Unaware of both Tim and Gordon, Barry gives us a complex module.  He
gives us int+complex complex+int float+complex complex+float
complex+complex.



Taken separately, each module is great.  It defines the new type's
interaction with the built in numeric types.

But together, who defines what it means to do complex+rational?  There
are gaps in the dispatch table.  If gaps lead to coercions, who
decides if complex can be coerced to rational or if rational can be
coerced to complex?

With multiple dispatch it seems like you can't combine independently
written modules without writing some "glue".  The person using the
modules may not be qualified to make those decisions.  :-(

	- Amit



From Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM  Thu Oct 28 10:05:36 1999
From: Josef.Betancourt at GTECH.COM (Betancourt, Josef)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:05:36 -0400
Subject: Module for generic platform information: platform.py
Message-ID: <7780536C9FD5D211801B0008C75D433933CFF0@rimail03>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal at lemburg.com]
> "Betancourt, Josef" wrote:
> > 
> > I use the following code.  Its kludgy and I'm a Python 
> newbie, but so far it
> > works, so.....
> > ...
> >     if on98 :
> >         program = os.popen(cmdl, 'r')
> >     elif onNT :
> >         program = os.popen('( ' + cmdl + ' ) 2>&1', 'r')
> >     else:
> >         program = os.popen('{ ' + cmdl + '; } 2>&1', 'r')
> > ...
> 
> Is that how one can do redirection on Windows NT ? Would be 
> interesting
> to add in order to avoid silly notices being printed to stderr.
> 

Yes.  I actually use the stderr capture for error control since I cannot
rely solely on the return status code in a usable manner.    For example, I
call make and other utilities, capture the outputs, grep it using re, then
if all goes well, use Python's smtp and FTP to distribute and report on the
process.

----------------------------------

BTW, the latest functionaly added to the program is to capture snapshots
before and after the process and report.  Tried using Unix commands but it
quickly got too complex and may not have been usable on NT Unix shells.
The output is a listing for each category:  deleted, added, changed,
unchanged

I was thinking of adding this to the snippets, but since this is so useful
(maybe), I'm sure there are plenty of utilities that do this.(?)









From tim_one at email.msn.com  Mon Oct 25 02:50:11 1999
From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:50:11 -0400
Subject: Default indentation of 4 columns
In-Reply-To: <vrr9ik58ou.fsf@trex.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Message-ID: <000101bf1eb5$2f56e140$052d153f@tim>

[pinard at IRO.UMontreal.CA, seeking to be told what to do <wink>]
> ...
> Indeed.  INDENT/DEDENT considerations, or explanations about
> Python logical construction of single lines from physical lines,
> are a bit extraneous!

But not to python-mode or IDLE:  mechanical crap like that is all they know
about.  Exercise your right to be human <0.9 wink>.  Regardless of what you
think the style guide is recommending, Guido generally continues long "if"
and "while" tests with backslashes, unless an open paren just happens to be
present naturally when the end of the first line is reached.

> ...
> Somewhere else, Guido insists that we should not use extraneous whitespace
> for lining up things (assignments given as examples), somewhat suggesting
> that we should keep the spacing simple, and not invent spaces just for
> the sake of building an overall look.

Yes, some of his recommendations *are* wrong <wink>.  The specific example
he gives is extreme (although not nearly as extreme as I've seen in actual
code!), inserting a dozen spaces repeatedly to make a long variable name
line up with a bunch of short ones.  This looks silly -- it doesn't help.
It *can* improve readability for identifiers close to the same length, as in

    x  =   3.005
    dx = -12.500
    y  =   7.147
    dy = 145.002

There I not only lined up the equal signs, but also the decimal points, and
padded the "short" number with extra zeroes.  Does Guido like that?  I don't
care!  He's not maintaining my code, it's not extreme, and it helps me.  So
there.

> As I see it, there is some peeking inconsistencies in these suggestions,

The subtitle of the essay is "A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of
Little Minds" -- reread the second paragraph.  Inconsistency can be helpful
too.

> which are sometimes strongly formulated.  We could surely make religious
> debates trying to explain everything (we say "ex?g?se" in French for that
> science which interprets religious texts :-).

Exegesis in English -- can't you French come up with any of your own words
<wink>?

> My overall feeling is that the guide is not fully satisfactory as
> it stands. ...

This is a topic for th?odic?e (English theodicy):  how can Guido be both
good and omnipotent if evil exists?  The usual answer applies:  if He spared
us every uncertainty and unsatisfied appetite, it would be tantamount to
nullifying our free will.  There can be no triumph without struggle in the
face of adversity, be it in saving one's soul or making indentation look
pretty <wink>.

salvation-thru-whitespace-ly y'rs  - tim





From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Wed Oct 20 12:02:40 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 02:02:40 +1000
Subject: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?
References: <7tlk6p$4o5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
		<3801486F.A7CDEF1D@maxtal.com.au>
		<slrn8043co.o0.neelk@brick.cswv.com>
		<3809C575.B8F953FF@maxtal.com.au>
		<m3d7udix2x.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
		<380CCF9A.3BD80F74@maxtal.com.au> <14348.57290.905209.541963@bitdiddle.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <380DE7A0.4EB441CC@maxtal.com.au>

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "MS" == skaller  <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:
> 
>   MS> Michael Hudson wrote:
>   >>  skaller <skaller at maxtal.com.au> writes:
> 
>   >> Hold it there a second; you are proposing that knowing that x has
>   >> a certain type in the expression
>   >>
>   >> x = x + "hello"
>   >>
>   >> has an impact on inference?
> 
>   MS>   Yes. Rather, the type of x is _deduced_ from the fact that
>   MS> operator + must be string concatenation in this context, since
>   MS> the second argument is a string, and thus x must be a string.
> 
> I assume you're handling some of the special cases, and I'd be
> interested to hear how.

	Please note: the inference system is not written yet.
I have done some tests to see if it can work (my results agree with
Jim Hunguins: yes, it can work).

	The method is simple enough: each function (such as + )
has a set of possible signatures, such as:

	int + int -> int
	float + float -> float
	string + string -> string

Now, when you see a +, there is a constraint on the arguments.
If one of the arguments, for example, is a string, then
given the three signatures above, the other has to be a string
too, and, the result is also a string.

Now, the list above is not complete for Python. For all
core language types, there is a fixed list of all the
functions and all the signatures: these are for operators
plus builtin functions.

In addition, user defined classes can do interesting things.
So we could allow, in most cases, the possibility that
the type is 'class instance'. We could go further and say 
_which_ classes, by adding to these lists for each
class defining, say '__add__' or '__radd__'.

However, the really big speed improvements from
the type inference will come with core language
operations, where the overhead of lookup and
function call and allocations can be avoided
by using say, machine registers to hold
an integer.

This is already the case in some parts of Viper.
For example, Viper executes the loop:

	for i in xrange(limit):

MUCH faster than Python. The time for 100000
iterations on my 166Mhz Pentium I machine
is ZERO second. Python takes 3 seconds.
That is because this case is hard coded in the interpreter
as a native for loop, which is compiled to machine
fast machine code.

> It is easy enough to write a class that will do something when added
> to a string.  Arbitrary example:
> 
> class Foo:
>     def __init__(self):
>             self.strings = []
>     def __add__(self, other):
>             new = Foo()
>             new.strings = self.strings[:]
>             new.strings.append(other)
>             return new
> 
> x = Foo()
> x = x + "hello"
> 
> I assume you can do some analysis to discover that x *might* be a
> class that implements __add__.  How specific is your analysis?  

	It is vague: I haven't written the code yet.

>If you
> see a class like Foo, are all bets off about the meaning of x +
> "hello"?

	No. There are some rules for inference.
For example, consider:

	if something: x = 1
	else: x= "string"

Here, Viper should be able to tell that x is either an integer or
a string (and nothing else).

What Viper will do is glean all the available 'static' information.
What it will not do, is be able to do dynamic flow analysis.
{except in special idiomatic cases like 'if 1: .. '}

However, there is a trick. Viper compiles code by FIRST running
the interpreter Viperi to load the modules: in this stage,
stuff is imported. After this stage is finished,
THERE IS NO MODULE LEVEL CODE LEFT. All the code is in functions,
and the dictionaries of the modules are built.
So cases like:

	# module level code ..
	try: import x
	except: x = None

will work, because they're actually interpreted: this code
is not compiled.

 
> The second variation is a library that accepts some object as an
> argument and adds "hello" to it.  Do you do whole-program analysis to
> determine whether any client of the library might pass something other
> than a string? 

	Yes.

> What are the implications of that for writing a
> generic library?

	None. Viperc does not build modules or packages,
it builds whole executable programs. So, a particular
module or function may be used differently in different
programs. [At least, this is the initial goal]

	The reason for this choice, despite the appeal
of compiling modules, packages, or libraries, is simply
that experience of others indicates that the existing
python interpreter is so fast, compiling code which 
is equivalent on a per module/per function kind of basis
is not really worth the effort.

	The only way to gain any leverage is to 
analyse a whole program, in which case many
possible uses of, say, a function like:

	def f (x,y): return x + y

are eliminated because they're not in fact used
in a particular program.


-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From davidh at progmatics.com.au  Wed Oct 20 21:09:34 1999
From: davidh at progmatics.com.au (David Hobley)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:09:34 +1000
Subject: Using CGI with POST
Message-ID: <380E67CE.E57D8795@progmatics.com.au>

Hello,

I just knocked up a simple cgi script. It works fine if I
use the GET method on the form. However, if I try and POST
it, the script just hangs until it times out.

Is there any special magic to make this work?

The script does:

form = cgi.FieldStorage()
     form_ok = 0
     if form.has_key("name"):
         if form["name"].value != "":
             form_ok = 1
...

but it hangs on the call to cgi.FieldStorage()

Thanks.

-- 
Cheers,
david                                 davidh at progmatics.com.au

Progmatics Pty Ltd - Architects of IT and Internet Solutions

Level 8, 191 Clarence Street              Phone +61 2 9262 4933
Sydney NSW Australia                      Fax   +61 2 9262 4045
http://www.progmatics.com.au/



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Oct  5 00:01:31 1999
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 04:01:31 GMT
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Sep 20)
References: <EC5158419350B090.6626105EB6EC65C9.75E9B9F7F2A580AD@lp.airnews.net> <361D828D8C4A1DB7.B2014CD75E380143.8300C24EFC157D44@lp.airnews.net> <19991004155928.B18440@acs.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <F3E6729A7FA2195A.0E09C610CA6A6521.25ECAF63B636DE0F@lp.airnews.net>

In article <19991004155928.B18440 at acs.ucalgary.ca>,
 <nascheme at enme.ucalgary.ca> wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 09:24:13PM +0000, Cameron Laird wrote:
>> I apologize for the thousands, if not jillions, in packet
>> costs this mistake has cost (do readers still recognize that
>> reference?).
>
>rn.  It was the first newreader I ever used.  Kids these days have
>it so easy.  Thanks for making me feel like an old-timer.
			.
			.
			.
Happy to oblige.  By the way, the folks in some
dark intersection of alt.folklore.computers and
comp.arch are boasting about how much older their
favorite home computers are than their significant
others.  "Big iron and fast women", I think the
bumper sticker said.  'Meet you there for the next
TTL wallow.
-- 

Cameron Laird           http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com      +1 281 996 8546 FAX



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Tue Oct 19 15:47:45 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 05:47:45 +1000
Subject: tcl-style string parsing
References: <940359574.1875665333@news.swbell.net>
Message-ID: <380CCAE1.895736FB@maxtal.com.au>

Dev wrote:
> 
> I have a string consisting of multiple strings---
> 
>   a = '"This, m\'dear,"  is  "an example" "of a parsing problem."'
> 
> I would like to efficiently convert this to a list (or tuple):
> 
>   b = ["This, m'dear,", "is", "an example", "of a parsing problem."]
> 
> In the source string, note that whitespace
> within a quoted string should be retained,
> whitespace outside a quoted string should be ignored,
> and strings without whitespace don't need to be quoted.
> 
> I'm converting some code from TCL, where this is trivial.
> (The original string can be treated and indexed as a list.)
> I've not found a suitable re expression for this, nor a set
> of string replacements.
> 
> Any ideas?

	Sure. Use Tcl. What I mean is,
write a C interface which actually calls
TCL to do the work, interfaced to Python.

	An easier method is to simply
grab the conversion code from TCL and
modify it to work in Python.

	[I have already done this, but the code
was taken down because no one was interested]

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Tue Oct  5 14:45:17 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 18:45:17 GMT
Subject: MUD servers and microthreads (was Re: Last question of the day (This one's easy!))
References: <877ll88031.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org> <7t1tes$itq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7tbp9b$21c$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <7tdgvt$fna$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Amit Patel <amitp at xenon.stanford.edu> wrote:
>  Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
[the problem of one execution thread in a mud hogging all cpu resources]
> | I've also been curious how Joe Strout gets around this problem in his POO
> | (a MOO inspired Python based mud).

> As far as I know, POO does not deal with this problem at all, nor does
> it support the MOO commands fork() or suspend().  That's the main
> reason I stopped using POO

I see, that explains the lack of info; it wasn't there. :)

> (the other being that I'm used to MOO, in
> which all non-objects are immutable, and Python's mutable data just
> made it too easy for one user to mess up another user's data).

Some security model would be neat; Zope's (again) might be an interesting to
look at.

> I do
> way too many neat things with fork() and suspend(), and not being able
> to create new background tasks was too limiting.  :(

I'm not familiar with MOO programming; I know more about lpmud programming
(though I haven't done a lot of that in years).

> I think microthreads/coroutines would be the right way to do this.
> It'd be nice to write the scheduler yourself so that you can maintain
> some kind of load balancing among users (i.e., one user with 10000
> tasks gets the same CPU time as another user with 3 tasks).  You'd
> also like to save the execution state somehow and checkpoint it all to
> disk, for those rare cases when the server has to go down.

I think an object database can help here. It's automatically saved to
disk, though of course only the state of objects; not the entire
execution state. But a shutdown procedure can ensure the system is
in a clean state before the shutdown happens. 

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From skaller at maxtal.com.au  Thu Oct 28 02:17:49 1999
From: skaller at maxtal.com.au (skaller)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 16:17:49 +1000
Subject: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 preliminary features?)
References: <000e01bf20e6$d7041880$c8a2143f@tim>
Message-ID: <3817EA8D.6AC04CFE@maxtal.com.au>

Tim Peters wrote:

> The first language I saw that took multimethods seriously was Cecil.  As is
> often the case for pioneers, they answered the question in *the* obviously
> right way, then waited a decade for everyone else to realize that subsequent
> "improvements" weren't <wink>

The main thing about Cecil, though, is that 

	a) it is prototype based
	b) it throws out encapsulation 

It is not clear to me that (a) is required for multi-methods,
but (b) definitely is. _proper_ multimethods cannot
coexist with class based object orientation.

Since python doesn't provide encapsulation, (it is object
based, not object oriented) MM might work, 
and if it could be done, it would determine that
(a) wasn't required.

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
1/10 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
homepage: http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
downloads: http://www.triode.net.au/~skaller



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Oct 22 16:03:20 1999
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 22 Oct 1999 22:03:20 +0200
Subject: Opening url's
References: <7upob0$rp8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <p6qn1tb5fjr.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

rainer2207 at my-deja.com writes:

> Can anyone tell me how I can open a page given a URL? There seems to be
> very little documentation on urllib abd I haven't seen any examples. I
> have a CGI script which calls another CGI script. I would like this
> CGI script to call the CGI script it came from. Can anyone help? Thanks.

Please have a look at the urllib documentation, at

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-urllib.html

A simple example follows:

>>> import urllib
>>> f=urllib.urlopen("http://www.python.org/")
>>> s=f.readlines()
>>> s[0]
'<HTML>\012'
>>> s[1]
'<!-- THIS PAGE IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED.  DO NOT EDIT. -->\012'

Hope this helps,
Martin



From Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com  Fri Oct 22 08:54:50 1999
From: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com (Gaetan Corneau)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:54:50 -0400
Subject: NT related question (not really Python related)
Message-ID: <816010E2456BD111A48700805FBBE2EEFDF6FF@ex-quebec-u1.baan.com>

Hello,

My question is not directly related to Python, but maybe you have
encountered this problem, too.

I often execute UNIX command from Python scripts, redirecting the output of
the command to a text file. Then I load the text file, scan it, and do some
processing. As an example, I have a Python function that receives a single
argument. If the argument is a number, I call  os.kill(). If the argument is
a string, I run a "ps -a" command, redirected to a temporary file, and load
its content, and collect the PID of all processes that match the argument.
Then I kill 'em all.

Anyway, that kind of stuff is easy to implement and convenient for me. The
problem is that, sometimes, on *some* NT machines, the file redirection
doesn't work. It doesn't work at all, not even outside Python (i.e. on the
command line). As a QA team member, I have access to dozens of machines, but
only two have the problem from time to time. All have NT4 SP5.

Any idea?
______________________________________________________
   Gaetan Corneau
   Software Developer (Quality Assurance Team)
   BaaN  Supply Chain Solutions  
   E-mail: Gaetan_Corneau at baan.com        
   Compuserve: Gaetan_Corneau at compuserve.com  
   ICQ Number: 7395494             
   Tel: (418) 266-8252          
______________________________________________________
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"




From tbryan at python.net  Tue Oct  5 19:38:28 1999
From: tbryan at python.net (Thomas A. Bryan)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 19:38:28 -0400
Subject: How to use readline interactively?
References: <37FAA9F6.80EAE@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <37FA8BF4.37B06774@python.net>

John Farrell wrote:
> 
> import sys
> while 1:
>     print "> ",
>     s = sys.stdin.readline()
>     if s[-1] == '\n': s = s[:-1]
>     if len(s) == 0: break
>     print "Hello " + s
> 
> What's wrong with it is that there is always a spare space 
> at the beginning of the first line of output after the prompt:
> 
> I want to get rid of that space before Hello.

You could use sys.stdout.write() in one or both places.

I've never run into this problem before, but if you use 

print "whatever", 
#followed by a bunch of python
print "second thing"

there will be a space between "whatever" and "second thing".
That is, it appears that a space is added to "second thing" 
before it is printed.  What you're seeing is the comma from 
the line
print "> ",
It is output as a space at the front of your 
print "Hello" + s
You're just getting confused because the user's input (and carriage
return)
separates the two print statements.

I'm not sure how it's implemented, but it appears that calling
sys.stdout.write() between calls to print will kill that space.

For example, 

import sys
print "Ready?"
print "eins",
print "zwei",
print "drei",
sys.stdout.write("interruption")
print "vier",
print "Done"

$ python test.py
Ready?
eins zwei dreiinterruptionvier Done
$

---Tom

P.S. I'm sure you're just posting a code fragement, but I 
used EOF to get out of the while loop (like any good Python 
programmer :), and the code snippet died with an uncaught 
IndexError exception.



From sasha at ofoto.com  Wed Oct 27 20:47:12 1999
From: sasha at ofoto.com (Sasha Voynow)
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:47:12 -0700
Subject: Python / VSS automation
Message-ID: <f0NR3.15463$I_5.13717@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

Has anybody here used Python's COM support to automate
Visual Source Safe (i.e. check-in, check-out, get etc.)?


--
Sasha Voynow
Software Engineer
Ofoto Inc.
sasha at ofoto.com
510 704 2071





From ferni at loxinfo.co.th  Fri Oct  8 00:26:41 1999
From: ferni at loxinfo.co.th (Jon Fernquest)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 11:26:41 +0700
Subject: regular expression example generator
References: <37FBE230.6A4113C5@mincom.com>
Message-ID: <001401bf1145$54e9fe60$072292cb@akha>

John Farrell wrote:
> I have a faint recollection of hearing somewhere that someone for some
> language had written some software which took a regular expression and
> generated for you the types of things that would match it:

Grail (free,C++ finite state library) can generate the set of
strings that a finite state machine defines.
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/research/grail/grail.html
Though first you have to generate the finite state machine from the regex.

Anyway, just looking at the finite state machine for a given
regex is going to make that regex more understandable/friendly.

You can also add error states to the finite state machine
so you can know what went wrong when an expected regex match
failed.

If you want to roll your own example generator...
You can generate example strings for the regex by traversing
finite state machine's graph repeatedly from start to finish node.
You can choose random paths if the regex can generate an infinite
or large number of strings or if the number of strings it can
generate is finite you can do a thorough traversal of every possible
path from a start to an end state.

Elements in the regex like ".*", "\w+", ".+?" are obviously going to cause
problems if you don't limit the alphabet and the number of iterations
in any expansion. You can also generate strings with a reduced alphabet.

My first impulse when I see a knarly regex is to pull my hair out.
Seeing it reduced to a simple finite state diagram is a calming experience.
(see for example p65 Hall and Schwartz, Effective Perl Programming).

IMHO Complicated textual patterns were not meant (by god?) to be described
within the confines of a string, but a graph? Graphs must have some favored
status in the universe. (See all the beautiful automata graphs that can be
used for parsing in Gough (1988). Syntax Analysis and Software Tools.)

A powerful graph editor like:
http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/Graphlet/
Would be a nice complement to Perl.
This is already a Tcl/Tk system based on C code.
So it should be easy to integrate it into Python/Tkinter??????

It could be used for a much more powerful set of finite state
tools than Perl currently has. See the notes from lecture 4
at Columbia on the Bell Labs set of finite state tools:
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~mohri/notes.html
Index:
http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/courses/Summer1999/COMSE6998-2.html


Jon Fernquest
bayinnaung at hotmail.com
ferni at loxinfo.co.th











From zeitlin at seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr  Thu Oct 14 11:55:48 1999
From: zeitlin at seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr (Vadim Zeitlin)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 15:55:48 GMT
Subject: Tk,GTK or Qt ?
References: <7dsN3.318$_m2.1737@news> <3805EDAE.888C6CEA@python.net>
Message-ID: <slrn80bvdd.84a.zeitlin@seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr>

On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:50:22 -0400, Thomas A. Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
>I don't know much about PyGtk.  Using PyQt is just like using Qt 
>from C++.  Thus, you can basically use your Python reference and 
>the standard Qt docs.  Of course, if you don't know C++ and have 
>never used Qt before, you might find it difficult to produce anything
>useful at first.
>
>I've also heard good things about wxWindows (sp?).  I'm sure someone
>will pop up with a URL.

 www.wxwindows.org :-) (and the link to wxPython from there).

 The same comments apply to it as to wxQt, although wxWindows docs have some
items specifically for Python programmers. BTW, wxWindows has a GTK port (the
best port for Unix systems right now), so it competes more with PyGtk
probably.

 Regards,
VZ



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sat Oct 30 17:45:18 1999
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 30 Oct 1999 21:45:18 GMT
Subject: advocate needed! get organized you Python gurus :-)
References: <slrn81jfnn.b2e.c.kotsokalis@ajax.noc.ntua.gr> <B43F505E.226C%petrilli@digicool.com> <99102911314704.01843@quadra.teleo.net>
Message-ID: <7vfote$iea$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Patrick Phalen <python-list at teleo.net> wrote:
[snip]
> It's becoming increasingly evident that "Tim Peters" is something on
> the order of an emergent intelligence which arose spontaneously from
> the primordial soup of the Python list. In its current state of
> development, "Tim" doesn't appear to have evolved an Avatar mode of
> operation (in the Snow Crash sense). So how could "he" appear in
> Seattle?

He would hire a human actor and communicate with the actor through a
miniature earphone, of course. A mini microphone would pass back what
the actor hears to the Timbot. 

How would the entity Tim Peters understand and generate speech? After all it
usually deals with Usenet postings in ASCII.

But then look at where it works. No coincidence!

Regards,

Martijn 
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From sorot at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 14 21:10:49 1999
From: sorot at my-deja.com (sorot at my-deja.com)
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 01:10:49 GMT
Subject: Sort
Message-ID: <7u5uug$iuc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I'm the newbie of Python. I wonder that is there
any function to sort the list alphabetically in
python? And is there any function to get the date
and time of OS?

Thanks

Sorot P.


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Oct 10 10:30:03 1999
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:30:03 +0200
Subject: Decrementing a reference counter...
References: <7tq6r3$3l6$1@feed.teaser.fr>
Message-ID: <005901bf132b$f4156eb0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>

Olivier Deckmyn <olivier.deckmyn at mail.dotcom.fr> wrote:
> def toto(self, titi):
>     self.myTiti=titi
>     dec_refcount(titi) # To avoid circular reference
> 
> Of course, I wonder about the existence and syntax of a "dec_refcount"
> function. I know it is dangerous ; but it is the case where "I know what
> I am doing :)"

no, you don't ;-)

or perhaps: yes, it's spelled "del".

if you want the caller to hand over
the ownership, it should delete its
own reference:

    object.toto(titi)
    del titi # I don't need this

or maybe:

    object.toto(titi)
    titi = None # I don't need this

(after all, if you cannot trust it to
remember that, how on earth can
you trust it to not do anything with
the object it passed to toto?)

(alright, you could perhaps monkey
around with the call stack, but along
that road lies madness... ;-)

</F>




From p.knight at ktgroup.co.uk  Fri Oct 22 06:00:58 1999
From: p.knight at ktgroup.co.uk (Pat Knight)
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:00:58 GMT
Subject: Q: how to "spawn" an external cmd and catch its stdin,stdout,stderr (on Win32)
References: <380F22AA.5EF2D410@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>
Message-ID: <38103636.0@nnrp1.news.uk.psi.net>

Sorry if this article is a little long - it contains about 90 lines of source.

In article <380F22AA.5EF2D410 at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De>, Andreas Rozek 
<Andreas.Rozek at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.De> wrote:
>is there any possibility to launch an external program (without repla-
>cing the current process - i.e., no os.exec* call alone) and catch the
>stdin, stderr and stdout IO streams (the latter also renders spawn and
>fork together with exec* unusable)?

On UNIX, you do need to go with fork/exec, also using pipes to set up the 
output streams of the child process. The commands module in the Python 
standard library does this for you.

>
>A platform-independent solution  would be preferrable - however,  it's
>more important for me to get it for Windows 98!

Sadly, fork/exec doesn't work on any of the Windows platforms. Happily, Mark 
Hammond's fantastic Pythonwin package provides access to the Win32 
CreateProcess API together with the pipe handling APIs you'll need. You can 
get Pythonwin from Mark's Python Starship page at 
http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/

If the child process you want to run is a console application or a .bat file, 
you'll need a further step to stop a DOS console popping up and to correctly 
detect termination of the child process. Microsoft have documented this and 
provided sample ('C') code in various knowledge base articles:

Redirection Issues on Windows 95 MS-DOS Applications
Last reviewed: April 10, 1997
Article ID: Q150956 

Spawn Console Processes with Redirected Standard Handles
Last reviewed: September 9, 1998
Article ID: Q190351 

Article Q150956 gives sample source code for a program called conspawn which 
will run the target program and pass output back to you. You'll need to check 
that it does what you want with command line arguments and all the I/O streams 
you care about.

Here's the code we use after we found all this out.We use it on NT 4.x, Win95 
and Win98. YMMV. You'll probably want a very recent version of Pythonwin.

Cheers,
        Pat
Pat Knight, http://www.wideawake.co.uk

import win32pipe
import pywintypes
import win32process
import win32con
import win32api
import win32file
import string
import types

ver = win32api.GetVersionEx()[3]        # distinguish NT and Win95/98
if ver == 2:                    # we're on NT
    PROCESS_RUNNER = 'cmd.exe /c'
else:
    PROCESS_RUNNER = '<name of program based on MS conspawn.exe>'


def mkarg(arg):
    result = string.replace(arg,'"','"""')
    if string.count(arg, ' ') > 0:
        return ' "' + result + '"'
    else:
        return ' ' + result

def mkcommand(command, args):
    # On 95 waspawn.exe is used to run child processes, it prevents a bug
    # when running dos apps/batch files, a console would otherwise be
    # created to run the batch file in, and this would hang around
    # afterwards leaving WA waiting for it. Also stops a console from
    # popping up.
    # On NT cmd.exe is used since otherwise we couldn't invoke DOS
    # commands. This also prevents console windows from popping up.

    our_command = PROCESS_RUNNER + mkarg(command)
    if type(args) == types.StringType:
        our_command = our_command + mkarg(args)
    else:
        for arg in args:
            our_command = our_command + mkarg(arg)
    return our_command

def alt_popen(command_line):
    start_up_info = win32process.STARTUPINFO()
    security_attributes = pywintypes.SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES()
    security_attributes.bInheritHandle = 1

    # create pipe for stdout of the child
    Pyh_read_end, Pyh_write_end = win32pipe.CreatePipe(security_attributes, 0)

    # Make our end of the pipe uninheritable by duplicating it
    # with inheritance set to FALSE
    Pyh_read_end2 = win32api.DuplicateHandle(
        win32api.GetCurrentProcess(), Pyh_read_end,
        win32api.GetCurrentProcess(), 0, 0, win32con.DUPLICATE_SAME_ACCESS)
    win32file.CloseHandle(Pyh_read_end)

    # duplicate the file handle to act as the standard error of the child.
    Pyh_write_end2 = win32api.DuplicateHandle(
        win32api.GetCurrentProcess(), Pyh_write_end,
        win32api.GetCurrentProcess(), 0, 0, win32con.DUPLICATE_SAME_ACCESS)

    # Create a pipe to be used for the childs stdin
    Pyh_read_end_for_stdin, Pyh_write_end_for_stdin = win32pipe.CreatePipe(
        security_attributes, 0)

    # Make our end of the pipe uninheritable by duplicating it
    # with inheritance set to FALSE
    Pyh_write_end_for_stdin2 = win32api.DuplicateHandle(
        win32api.GetCurrentProcess(), 
        Pyh_write_end_for_stdin,
        win32api.GetCurrentProcess(), 
        0, 0, win32con.DUPLICATE_SAME_ACCESS)
    win32file.CloseHandle(Pyh_write_end_for_stdin)

    # set the STARTUPINFO fields
    start_up_info.dwFlags = 1 |256 #win32process.STARTF_USESTDHANDLES
    start_up_info.wShowWindow = 0; # SW_HIDE

    start_up_info.hStdOutput = Pyh_write_end
    start_up_info.hStdError = Pyh_write_end2
    start_up_info.hStdInput = Pyh_read_end_for_stdin

    # create the process
    process_info = win32process.CreateProcess(None, command_line, 
                                              None, None, 1, 0, None, 
                                              None, start_up_info)  

    win32file.CloseHandle(Pyh_write_end2)
    win32file.CloseHandle(Pyh_read_end_for_stdin)

    return Pyh_read_end2, process_info[0]







From prestonlanders at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 16:51:25 1999
From: prestonlanders at my-deja.com (Preston Landers)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 20:51:25 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdgb9$bbv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7tdie6$cq1@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <7tdoc8$hno$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <7tdie6$cq1 at dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>,
  aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

> I haven't really looked at your code, but I needed to mention that
> 'open(file,"w")' will cause the file to become zero bytes long.

Isn't that what touch does?

---Preston


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From jeff at nmt.edu  Sat Oct 23 18:42:45 1999
From: jeff at nmt.edu (Jeff Shipman - UC)
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 16:42:45 -0600
Subject: Embedding C into Python
Message-ID: <381239E4.9BC83935@nmt.edu>

I am trying to embed a C module into my python code. I've coded the
module and I think everything's ok, but when I use 'gcc blahmodule.c', I
get the following error:

/tmp/ccype0NL.o: In function `blah_add':
/tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x24): undefined reference to `PyArg_ParseTuple'
/tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x4f): undefined reference to `Py_BuildValue'
/tmp/ccype0NL.o: In function `initblah':
/tmp/ccype0NL.o(.text+0x7b): undefined reference to `Py_InitModule4'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

I'm including Python.h so I don't know why this is happening. Also, when
this compiles, will this allow me to say 'import blahmodule' like
I want? Or is there more that has to be done in order to put a C module
into Python?

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeff Shipman (jeff at nmt.edu)
User Consultant - New Mexico Tech Computer Center
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






From rturpin at my-deja.com  Tue Oct  5 09:50:33 1999
From: rturpin at my-deja.com (rturpin at my-deja.com)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 13:50:33 GMT
Subject: Why TERRIBLE performance of regular expressions in re module ?
References: <000201bf0eef$532e9e80$f92d153f@tim>
Message-ID: <7tcvn2$ttc$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

In article <000201bf0eef$532e9e80$f92d153f at tim>,
  "Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
> .. Perl can do a fast Boyer-Moore search for a literal
> embedded substring that needs to match, skipping -- at
> high speed -- over vast stretches of input that can't
> possibly match overall due to not containing a match
> for the embedded literal.

I was wondering if re's were optimized against embedded
literal substrings.  I am surprised (1) that Perl's package
is substantially better than Python's, and (2) that Perl's
package beats the Boyer-Moore algorithm for substring search.
I had always thought the latter was pretty close to optimal.
Where is this faster algorithm described?  Is it
algorithmically faster, or merely a more efficient
implementation with same O(m)/O(n) behavior?

Regards,
Russell


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From spalomo at abo.fi  Fri Oct 29 10:04:32 1999
From: spalomo at abo.fi (Sergio Palomo)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:04:32 +0300
Subject: Tkinter. Container Frame
Message-ID: <3819B780.7DB7B681@abo.fi>

First hello everybody, I'm a newbie into Python and into this newsgroup.

I am working on the graphical user interface of an application.
I have a frame that I would like to act as a container of several
Toplevel windows.
With the below code I get to embed a Toplevel window into the frame, but
it does not include the tipical border and the minimize, and maximize
window buttons.


self.workarea=Frame(self, bd=2,  container=1)
self.workarea.pack(fill=BOTH,expand=YES)

newwin=Toplevel(use=self.workarea.winfo_id())

#contents of new window.....


My question if is there any way to make the Toplevels "float" inside the
frame. Thank you!

Sergio


--
------------------------------
Sergio Palomo
?bo Akademi University, IAMSR.
Lemmink?isenkatu 14A.
20520 Turku, Finland.
Phone: +358 2 2154756
Fax: +358 2 2154809
------------------------------





From shrogers at ionet.net  Thu Oct 28 21:40:06 1999
From: shrogers at ionet.net (Steven H. Rogers)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 20:40:06 -0500
Subject: Python and PythOz
References: <7v44sc$rur$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <y0j7lkanst0.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <3818FAF6.CF30B7D0@ionet.net>

"Magnus L. Hetland" wrote:
> 
> Henk Jansen <hj at rdr-nl.com> writes:
> 

> 
> This sounds great... You're not the first one to want
> logic-programming features available in Python... Swig'ing GNU Prolog
> has been mentioned, as has a simple logic-programming framework
> implemented in python... (Which I haven't seen yet... still waiting :)
> 
> I would really like something like this too... I love the logic
> programming paradigm for some very limited applications - but hate
> making big programs in Prolog... So having a logic engine available in
> Python would be wonderful... <sigh>
> 

CLIPS (http://www.ghgcorp.com/clips/CLIPS.html) might be another
possibility.  

-- Steve



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Thu Oct 21 12:23:55 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:23:55 +0100
Subject: PyFloat_Check - help!
In-Reply-To: <7uncgi$6or$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <000601bf1be0$ab9e3640$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

> [code snipped]
>
> I would prefer the above code to translate Integer objects, where this
> makes sense. i.e. the rate above could be either 1 or 10 to represent 1%
> or 10%, but I have to explicitly put in a 1.0 or 10.0 to make it a
> float.

Quite simple. Just switch the type:

double rate;

switch (PyObject_Type(poRate))
{
case PyFloat_Type:
	rate = PyFloat_AsDouble(poRate);
	break;

case PyInt_Type:
	rate = (double) PyInt_AsLong(poRate);
	break;

case PyLong_Type:
	rate = PyLong_AsDouble(poRate);
	break;

default:
	PyErr_SetString(PyExc_TypeError, "Rate must be numerical");
	return NULL;
}

This should allow: 1, 10, 1.0, 10.0, and even 1L and 10L

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From jim at bruer.org  Thu Oct 14 22:12:16 1999
From: jim at bruer.org (Jim Bruer)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:12:16 -0400
Subject: newbee
References: <yIJH3.3815$cPf.192099840@news.telia.no> <37EF69E6.D575FEB9@bibsyst.no>
Message-ID: <38068D80.42316B2B@bruer.org>

Thomas Weholt wrote:

> Eric Holmes wrote:
> >
> > hi
> >
> > i want to know how to get started with python the language.
> >
> > regards
> > eric
>
> Being a rather newbie myself here`s what I`ve found so far :
>
> 1. Lots of stuff is available from www.python.org. See documentation.
> 2. Buy a book as soon as possible. Search for python at www.amazon.com.
> Read the reviews.
> 3. Get into reading newsgroups, ie. comp.lang.python
>
> Good luck.
>
> Thomas Weholt

Real nice intro--helped me a lot:
www.idi.ntnu.no/~mlh/python/programming.html




From madonl at bigfoot.com  Sat Oct 30 07:01:03 1999
From: madonl at bigfoot.com (Louis Madon)
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 07:01:03 -0400
Subject: Multimethods 101 (was Re: Multiple dispatch (Re: Q: Python 2.0 
 preliminary features?))
References: <381A421D.D8C8E22F@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990106480001@bruce.bgh> <381A5FE7.1EBECBE2@bigfoot.com> <brucehoult-3010990252300001@bruce.bgh>
Message-ID: <381ACFEF.38E6B1E3@bigfoot.com>

Bruce Hoult wrote:
> 
 > > For example, you suggested that maybe something in module X calls
> > > something in module Y, passing it a BB.  Module Y creates an AA (which X
> > > doesn't know about) and calls foo(AA, BB).  oops.  The only place that
> > > this problem can be detected at compile-time is in module X, and then only
> > > if the compiler knows that module Y imports both AA and foo EVEN IF IT
> > > DOESN'T RE-EXPORT THEM.  This seems like a big ask.
> >
> > I agree, but isn't that what runtime exceptions are for?
> 
> That's right, but some people seem to prefer to get told about potential
> problems at compile time -- there is always a danger that the particular
> case that causes the exception doesn't get exercised in testing but gets
> hit in the field.

Guaranteed compile time errors on this would certainly be nice.  [BTW, I
wonder what Cecil does here?  Its statically typed and the compiler does
whole-program analysis, so perhaps it *can* report this kind of error at
compile time?].

> 
> > >  If not then perhaps foo() is trying to do too much and
> > > should be split up?  In particular, perhaps there should instead be a
> > > bar(A) and baz(B) and just a single, generic, version of foo(A, B) that
> > > calls bar(A) and baz(B) as part of its operation.  In which case the
> > > implementator of AA should make a bar(AA) and the implementatior of BB
> > > should make a baz(BB). And then all is sweetness and light :-)
> >
> > You're not suggesting explicit type tests inside foo(A, B) are you?
> 
> Aww, *maate*.  Strewth, I'm not suggesting any such thing as a type test.

Sorry, I didn't read your point properly.

> 
> > Thats precisely the kind of thing we need to get away from.  I could
> > come along and define a new class AB that inherits from both A and B and
> > all of a sudden your typecase is broken.
> 
> The only typecase is in the (compiler-generated) code for the generic
> function itself.
> 
> When you define your class AB, you'll just need to define appropriate
> bar(AB) and baz(AB) methods.

So if the function that foo performs allows independant processing of
each argument, then yes I agree.  I think the more interesting case is
where you can't easily split it up like that :- 

eg. foo = 'add', 
	A = datetime, AA = limited-datetime{minDate, maxDate}, 
	B = time-offset, BB = time-offset-with-weekday-adjustment. 

[So when you add a BB to a datetime it automatically increases the
offset by whatever amount neccesary to make sure the resulting datetime
falls on the next closest weekday].

Louis.



From reic0024 at ub.d.umn.edu  Fri Oct 29 14:46:13 1999
From: reic0024 at ub.d.umn.edu (Aaron J Reichow)
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:46:13 -0500
Subject: WebCrawler ?
In-Reply-To: <slrn81jpei.5c0.thor@localhost.localdomain>
References: <slrn81jpei.5c0.thor@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <Pine.SO4.4.02.9910291345310.16461-100000@ub.d.umn.edu>

There a program I just got off of the sunsite called HTML-bot which
downloads all of a website, but doesn't put it into a file.  It worked
pretty well.  Email me if you can't find it, I don't have it handy.

Aaron





From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Oct 21 16:49:46 1999
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew M. Kuchling)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 16:49:46 -0400
Subject: Pythoneers at Mtl. Linux conf.?
Message-ID: <3dogdsphg5.fsf@amarok.cnri.reston.va.us>

I'm going to be attending the Alternative Linux
(http://www.alternativelinux.org) conference in Montreal, November
1-3.  Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any BOF sessions at the
conference, but if any other Pythoneers will be attending, perhaps we
can arrange a dinner or something.  Please contact me via private
e-mail if you'd be interested.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
You're bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything.
    -- Donald E. Knuth, said while answering questions after a lecture at
       Concordia University, Montreal



From loredo at spacenet.tn.cornell.edu  Wed Oct  6 14:40:52 1999
From: loredo at spacenet.tn.cornell.edu (Tom Loredo)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 14:40:52 -0400
Subject: Just like in our DNA...
References: <jlemfau24u.fsf@endor.bbb.caltech.edu> <14329.49020.872339.580660@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <199910052037.NAA01885@endor>
Message-ID: <37FB97B4.F3A1660@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu>

Michael Vanier wrote:
> 
> Actually, yes, I know something about junk DNA (I have a degree in
> molecular biology).  To the best of my knowledge (please correct me,
> anyone, if I'm wrong) no one has ever proved that so-called junk DNA serves
> no function whatsoever, although it isn't transcribed into proteins --
> e.g. it may have some role in maintaining the structural integrity of
> chromosomes during cell division etc.  

I don't know much about junk DNA (being an astronomer rather than a
biologist!), but we happened to have a physics colloquium this week
on yeast DNA that focused on this stuff.  It seems "junk DNA" is
now being called "noncoding DNA"---the part of the DNA that doesn't
code into proteins.  However, according to this talk, it is now
believed that at least some of this DNA serves a critical function
in determining under what situations various bits of coding DNA
are expressed---chemicals bond to upstream noncoding DNA and trigger
the transcription of the coding parts.  As already noted in the
thread, lower organisms tend to have a much higher ratio of
coding to noncoding DNA; but this may have more to do with them
being simpler (single cells rather than multicellular with different
cells needing to express different coding genes) and thus not
needing the extra control function of the noncoding DNA.

The talk was entirely on use of computational physics methods on
trying to identify the "code" of noncoding DNA; this is apparently
a major area of DNA research right now.

Peace,
Tom Loredo



From tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com  Sat Oct  2 11:17:53 1999
From: tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver)
Date: 2 Oct 1999 15:17:53 GMT
Subject: Passing file descriptors in Python?
References: <37f56662.9607568@news.supernews.com> <19991001203033.A14484@acs.ucalgary.ca> <37f5aa20.6716735@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <53AAE190BE36E29B.0AC297CC417A0869.91E94CE7C2606CFD@lp.airnews.net>

In article <37f5aa20.6716735 at news.supernews.com>,
Dan <puter_programmer at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>I suppose I should clarify my request. :-)
>
>What I want to do is to have a parent process spawn off a child
>process which then waits for new file descriptor (socket) to come from
>the parent.  The parent after it spawns several children will wait
>listen on a socket for new connections which it will pass to one of
>the child processes after the connection has been established.
>
>My goal here is to make a Python based web server that will run on
>more than one processor simultaniously.  I've already built one that
>uses threading but unfortunately Python has a global interpreter lock
>which keeps two threads from running at the same time on a
>multi-processor machine.  So I need to go with a multi-process scheme
>in order to take advantage of a multi-processor system but the problem
>is that I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to pass a file
>descriptor from one process ro another since the only sample code I
>can find is written in C.

The bible for this kind of stuff is W. S. Stevens'
_Unix_Network_Programming_.  Volume 1 of the second edition, section 27.9,
has exactly the kind of setup you describe.  The mechanism used is quite
arcane:  essentially, the two processes use a Unix-domain socket to pass
the descriptor via sendmsg() / recvmsg();  exact details depend on the
actual kernel used.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tres Seaver           tseaver at palladion.com       713-523-6582
Palladion Software    http://www.palladion.com



From tg at melaten.rwth-aachen.de  Thu Oct 21 08:00:20 1999
From: tg at melaten.rwth-aachen.de (Thomas Gellekum)
Date: 21 Oct 1999 14:00:20 +0200
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com> <14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <kqyacw9b57.fsf@cip12.melaten.rwth-aachen.de>

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> writes:

> What does the output of ldd look like for glibc and libc on other
> platforms (e.g. Redhat, *BSD, etc.) ?

I forgot (FreeBSD):

/usr/bin/vi:
        libcurses.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcurses.so.2 (0x2809f000)
        libtermcap.so.2 => /usr/lib/libtermcap.so.2 (0x280ab000)
        libc.so.3 => /usr/lib/libc.so.3 (0x280b0000)

but beware of threaded programs:

/usr/local/bin/python:
        libmytinfo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libmytinfo.so.2 (0x280b6000)
        libreadline.so.3 => /usr/lib/libreadline.so.3 (0x280cc000)
        libtermcap.so.2 => /usr/lib/libtermcap.so.2 (0x280ef000)
        libm.so.2 => /usr/lib/libm.so.2 (0x280f4000)
        libcrypt.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcrypt.so.2 (0x2810f000)
        libc_r.so.3 => /usr/lib/libc_r.so.3 (0x28124000)

libc_r contains the pthread functions and the corresponding reentrant
libc code.

tg



From cgw at fnal.gov  Wed Oct  6 04:20:59 1999
From: cgw at fnal.gov (Charles G Waldman)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 08:20:59 GMT
Subject: Quick question: recursive touch?
In-Reply-To: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
References: <7tdden$929$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Message-ID: <14331.1643.652858.744529@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Preston Landers writes:
 > Anyone know of a function equilivent in concept to a 'recursive
 > touch?'
 > 
 > Where if I say:
 > 
 > touch foo/bar/baz.txt
 > 
 > If the directories foo and bar don't exist, create them, then create
 > baz.txt inside of bar.
 > 
 > An equivilent unix command would suffice.


I'd use something like the following Bourne-shell function:

touch() {
  mkdir -p `dirname $1`
  touch $1
}

then "xtouch foo/bar/baz.txt"  will do what you want.




From fdrake at acm.org  Tue Oct 19 10:49:50 1999
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:49:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: getopt: where's da dicts?????
In-Reply-To: <m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net>
References: <m290501t7v.fsf@netmeg.net>
	<018101bf1a08$ff7cc210$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com>
	<al8emerr5eg.fsf@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
	<m26703a4pk.fsf@netmeg.net>
Message-ID: <14348.34062.623917.959422@weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>

Les Schaffer writes:
 > still, after /F's comment this morning, i had to strain my brain too
 > hard to try and imagine (creating) an app where arg order
 > mattered. all i could think of was tar -- and if i had written that

  tar is a really painful example, and I won't argue that
order-dependent options are a good thing, but is more of a style issue 
than anything else; Python allows you to do something else by using a
different option-processing model.
  Even with order-independent options, something to consider is
options which may be repeated; often we write code for which --verbose
(or -v) may be repeated to increase the level of messages that are
written out.  getopt supports this easily; an alternate module that
allows this needs some way to specify this behavior.  Not too
difficult, but just another wrinkle in what the processor needs to
understand.  There are enough wrinkles to get reasonably desirable
behaviors that it actually becomes fairly tedious code.
  (No, I'm not saying a better approach isn't desirable or warranted,
just trying to point out one of the issues.)


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives



From k_mcdermott at my-deja.com  Wed Oct 13 09:23:05 1999
From: k_mcdermott at my-deja.com (k_mcdermott at my-deja.com)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:23:05 GMT
Subject: PythonCOM - xmlRPC
Message-ID: <7u213c$ldv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I have been trying to get the xmlRPC COM client to work in Python.

I keep getting a Unable to create ActiveX component returned from the
xmlRPC object that I create.

I know very little about how the PythonCOM works, so if anybody has any
suggestions...

I am creating my object alright with:

xmlrpcServer = xmlRPC.XMLRPCclient()

and when I try to then run a query with
paramArr = [50]
retval = xmlrpcServer.xmlRPC("http://betty.userland.com", "", "", "",
"getStateName", paramArr)

I get the above error.

You can get the bits for the xmlRPC COM client from:
http://www.deltabiz.com/xmlrpc/default.asp

Kevin


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.



From tismer at appliedbiometrics.com  Tue Oct 19 09:09:18 1999
From: tismer at appliedbiometrics.com (Christian Tismer)
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:09:18 +0200
Subject: ANN: (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
References: <007d01bf1974$8d20eff0$f29b12c2@secret.pythonware.com> <380BC5D7.1B9A70C0@rubic.com>
Message-ID: <380C6D7E.B10BF537@appliedbiometrics.com>


Jeff Bauer wrote:
...
> Nostalgia Trip:  At the October '97 conference
> in San Jose, I drove Andrew Kuchling, Konrad
> Hinsen, and Christian Tismer(?) out to the
> "Computer Literacy Bookstore".  That was the
> original name for what is now "FatBrain."

True.
It was actually my car :-)

ciao - chris



From moshez at math.huji.ac.il  Sun Oct 17 02:20:45 1999
From: moshez at math.huji.ac.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 08:20:45 +0200 (IST)
Subject: "What is the name of the function/method that called me?"
In-Reply-To: <13B697B21AFE023E.6897FE671A2DA67E.CDF33673E7FAABAD@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.991017081520.9169B-100000@sundial>

[Posted and CCed to author]

On 17 Oct 1999, Cameron Laird wrote:

> Is there a profound and/or interesting
> reason Python doesn't provide the kinds
> of introspective features we're discus-
> sing here (a traceback, for example)
> without the detour through the land of
> exception-tossing?

Yes. It is a reminder that IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE (sorry for shouting).
Introspecting into "static" stuff (like classes, methods, etc.) is
/moderately/ ok (though it is usually more a sign the design was wrong).
However, introspecting into /dynamic/ data should be available (because
the debugger needs it) but obscure (because anyone doing this for the
runtime of his program is commiting a shooting offense). If someone needs
this information to debug his program, they should use the debugger.

--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka at geocities.com>. 
INTERNET: Learn what you know.
Share what you don't.




From claudius at catlover.com  Sun Oct 31 10:52:03 1999
From: claudius at catlover.com (claudius at catlover.com)
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 15:52:03 GMT
Subject: hasattr(obj, attr) overloading?
References: <1270748764-19272878@hypernet.com>
Message-ID: <DAZS3.5953$Ec1.84516@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>

gmcm at hypernet.com says:
>claudius writes:
>
>> Is there a way to overload the hasattr method (by default it
>> calls __getattr__ and checks for an exception.  However, my
>> __getattr__ can be a heavy hit that I'd rather avoid for hasattr
>> calls.)
>
>So you are computing attributes?
>
>What would you have hasattr do - return "True, well False, but 
>don't worry about it" <0.5 wink>?
>
>The easiest thing to do is compute the attribute in __getattr__ 
>and assign it to self before returning it. That way subsequent 
>calls won't even go through __getattr__.

I'm storing attributes (and their pickled values) in an RDBMS (MySQL to be
exact) and retrieving and unpickling a longblob just to determine if it exists
is inefficient (and, because I'm storing/retrieving database entries, I can't
rely on the attribute changing out from under me...so caching the data would
require a query [possibly making for two queries for a call to __getattr__.])



From martinp at mincom.com  Wed Oct 20 01:52:25 1999
From: martinp at mincom.com (Martin Pool)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:52:25 +1000
Subject: Help! calling tar from Python on Linux
References: <7tt098$7i$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7ttk6r$ids$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <5loge456a9.fsf@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> <7u2gsa$2a0$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7u5pvr$2ou$1@vvs.superst.iae.nl>
Message-ID: <380D5899.CDF45CC3@mincom.com>

Carel Fellinger wrote:
> 
> Preston Landers <prestonlanders at my-deja.com> wrote:
> > In article <5loge456a9.fsf at eric.cnri.reston.va.us>,
> >   Guido van Rossum <guido at cnri.reston.va.us> wrote:
> 
> >> My guess as to why he's getting the error that he's getting is that
> >> tar somehow stops reading the gzip output before gzip is done.  Maybe
> >> the rest of the tar output (if there's any) would be a clue.
> 
> > There was no additional output from tar.  I used the verbose flag, and
> > it printed that it untarred' all the files, then it printed the message
> > about recieving exit code of 1 from gzip.
> 
> Guido's remark shed a faint light on some almost extinct part of my brain
> and suddenly I start remembering that once I encountered a similar behaviour
> of tar and gzip. It had to do with excess bytes in the gzipped file, but
> elas my memory is like it always was, a rusty colander, and no matter what
> I try I can't reproduce it on my current machine. I also dimmly remember
> something like it had to do with tar-balls from elsewhere, not locally made
> ones. Well, this isn't going to help you much, is it. And I lack the old
> Atari the try it out:(

If there is more data after the end of a gzipped file, gzip will assume
it's another gzip file and try to read it's header.  If the trailing
data isn't a proper header, gzip will return an error.  

This gives you the nice feature of being able to just concatenate gzip
files and read them back as if they were concatenated plaintext files. 
However, if trailing garbage somehow gets onto the file (who knows how?)
then you might experience these symptoms.

-- 
 /\\\  Mincom | Martin Pool          | martinp at mincom.com
// \\\        | Software Engineer    | Phone: +61 7 3303-3333
\\ ///        | Mincom Ltd.          | 
 \///         | Teneriffe, Brisbane  | Speaking for myself only



From aahz at netcom.com  Thu Oct 14 18:23:33 1999
From: aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Oct 1999 22:23:33 GMT
Subject: delimiting text file??
References: <19991014213727.B4358@optiplex.palga.uucp> <3804F889.30739C22@bruer.org> <7u30ol$coc@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> <7u5da5$pp2$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <7u5l55$boh$1@nntp4.atl.mindspring.net>

In article <7u5da5$pp2$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
Donn Cave  <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>Quoth Gerrit Holl <gerrit.holl at pobox.com>:
>| Aahz Maruch:
>[re how to insert comma delimiters]
>
>|> delimitedString = string[:x] + "," + string[x:]
>|> 
>|> That's a rather lame way to do it; as you learn more about Python,
>|> you'll come across better ways.
>|
>| Is it? I think I've learned more about Python than Jim has (already finished
>| Learning python, and I'm waiting for Programming TkInter with Python now),
>| but I don't know a better way than this?
>
>He may have gauged better than I the original poster's zeal for
>discovering things on his own, but I was surprised no one mentioned
>string.join'ing a list of fields in one step.  It's what I consider
>the normal approach to this common task.  Easier on the eyes, probably
>faster if there are more than a couple of fields.

Oh, I agree -- but the original poster didn't say anything about a list
of fields....
--
                      --- Aahz (@netcom.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>      http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6  (if you want to know, do some research)



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Oct 14 22:36:33 1999
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:36:33 -0400
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
In-Reply-To: <rNHvjEdhm5Pp-pn2-o3wNIN2XO0dn@d185d1865.rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <1272168257-2330505@hypernet.com>

Benjamin "Spamless in Rochester" writes:

> By the way, "Installer B3" works great as a freeze replacement.
> (I believe you suggested it as a replacement? I forget, and I'm
> being lazy in not tracking backwards to see who did).

Yeah, that was Mark.

> I've run into two problems with it.  I have to find out who to
> email bug reports to (& what address).

That would be me.

> 1) Builder doesn't seem to like it when programs aren't in the 
>  same directory.

You run Builder from the directory in which the config file (and 
presumably, the top level script you're distributing) lives.

> 2) Builder tries to run python (i.e. c:\program 
> files\python\python.exe)
>  and can't see it.  

You must have just missed rev d of Beta 3. Download again.

>  a) Use the short name (i.e. c:\progr~1\python\....)

Then I'd have to rely on the user having Mark's stuff installed - 
determining the proper name is not something you guess at.

>  b) Just rely on path (i.e. python.exe)

Why do you think I was using the full path? Someone without 
python on their path submitted a bug report.

>  c) Use the long name w/quotes (i.e. c:\"program 
> files"\python\python.exe
>     The problem is that without the quotes, it isn't finding the
> python file(s).

Done.

Cant-believe-MS-allows-you-to-quote-a-path-name-without-
spaces-in-it-ly y'rs


- Gordon



From alex at somewhere.round.here  Tue Oct  5 19:38:19 1999
From: alex at somewhere.round.here (Alex)
Date: 05 Oct 1999 19:38:19 -0400
Subject: Converting to lists into one dictionary
References: <000401bf0ed3$0cd77b80$4da2143f@tim> <y0jyadh345q.fsf@vier.idi.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <etdzoxx9y50.fsf@w20-575-109.mit.edu>

> Why? Why not pad with None? I think it would be worse if
> len(seq2)>len(seq1) - because you couldn't pad the keys with Nones...

But don't you then run the risk of having more than one None?  In that 
case, don't you lose some of the values as their keys collide?

Alex.



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Oct 21 07:29:33 1999
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 13:29:33 +0200
Subject: Checking for libc vs. glibc using Python
References: <380ED1A6.5AD18ACA@lemburg.com> <14350.57067.605898.954745@gargle.gargle.HOWL>
Message-ID: <380EF91D.99A694AA@lemburg.com>

Charles G Waldman wrote:
> 
> M.-A. Lemburg writes:
>  > Is it possible to examine a Python interpreter and check whether
>  > it was compiled against libc5 or glibc2 (libc6) on Linux/*BSD/etc. ?
>  >
>  > I'm currently using this hack, but would appreciate a more
>  > elegant and portable solution:
> 
>  > def system_nm(progfile):
>  >     try:
>  >      f = os.popen('nm %s' % progfile)
>  >     except os.error:
>  >      return ''
>  >     return f.read()
> 
> I would use "ldd" instead of "nm".  It's another hack, not much more
> elegant, but a little more portable.  In particular it doesn't require
> that python was compiled -g.
> 
> I'm not sure how much the ldd output varies on different unices
> (haven't tried this on BSD), but I think it should be pretty easy to
> find a portable way search for the libc.so.* line in the output and
> figure out the libc version.
> 
> This will fail if libc is linked statically, as far as I know this is
> rarely done.  It's still less of a restriction than requiring python
> to be built with debugging info.
> 
> It's still not exactly elegant but possibly a little more portable than
> what you were doing.

True, "ldd" would work even when compiled without debugging infos.
Perhaps I could use it as fallback solution when "nm" doesn't
find anything.

What does the output of ldd look like for glibc and libc on other
platforms (e.g. Redhat, *BSD, etc.) ? On SuSE 6.2 Linux I get:

        libX11.so.6 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40014000)
        libdl.so.1 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libdl.so.1 (0x400b5000)
        libm.so.5 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libm.so.5 (0x400b8000)
        libc.so.5 => /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libc.so.5 (0x400c1000)

for a program linked against libc5 and

        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40021000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

for one linked against libc6 (glibc). Note that I can't deduce the
glibc version from the above output.

Isn't there some other way to find out ?

Hmm, just checking via grep: I could probably simply scan the binary file
for "libc.so.<version>" and "__libc_init" or "GLIBC_<version>" instead
of using the OS tools. That should work on both types of binaries,
shared and statically linked.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Y2000:                                                    71 days left
Business:                                      http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From sparlin at openpro.org  Sat Oct  9 21:49:25 1999
From: sparlin at openpro.org (Sonny Parlin)
Date: 09 Oct 1999 21:49:25 -0400
Subject: Newbie question: files..
Message-ID: <m3hfk0gf2y.fsf@parlin-lap.openpro.org>

Hello, I'm trying to learn python by setting up some pretty easy examples
of file manipulation...

I have a file of 1000 lines that I'm simply trying to read in and display
using python. The code I have is here:

#!/usr/bin/python

file = open('testfile.txt', 'r')
for line in file.readlines(): # read file
    s = line[:-1] # get rid of newline
    print s #print string
file.close()

I think I have some unnecessary steps in that program, because here is the
Perl equivalent:

#!/usr/bin/perl

open(FD, "testfile.txt");
while(<FD>) {
    print $_;
}
close(FD);

The Perl example is smaller and runs a few milliseconds faster, so could
someone please point out the deficiencies in my python script?

Thanks

-Sonny
-- 
Sonny Parlin
sparlin at openpro.org
http://www.openpro.org
fingerprint = 45 FE 56 72 C2 04 CD 76  
		09 75 52 7A C6 7C 23 D2



From a.eyre at optichrome.com  Fri Oct  8 06:59:34 1999
From: a.eyre at optichrome.com (Adrian Eyre)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 11:59:34 +0100
Subject: DOS Python
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9910081113480.25786-100000@gatekeeper.zwax.mtg.co.at>
Message-ID: <000601bf117c$34450a60$3acbd9c2@peridot.optichrome.com>

>> I suppose so; I never liked pkzip much, I preferred other (often more 
>> obscure) archivers like rar, ace, and jar. :)

> Well, jar, IFAIK, is a renamed pkzip ;)

IIRC, there are two archive formats called jar. One is the one commonly
associated with Java. The other is a really obscure aged archiver which
hardly anyone has heard of. That's why I was a bit concerned when Sun
chose the .jar extension for their purposes.

--------------------------------------------
Adrian Eyre <mailto:a.eyre at optichrome.com>
Optichrome Computer Solutions Ltd
Maybury Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5HX, UK
Tel: +44 1483 740 233  Fax: +44 1483 760 644
http://www.optichrome.com 
--------------------------------------------




From amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU  Mon Oct  4 22:54:35 1999
From: amitp at Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Amit Patel)
Date: 5 Oct 1999 02:54:35 GMT
Subject: MUD servers and microthreads (was Re: Last question of the day (This one's easy!))
References: <877ll88031.fsf@ethereal.dhis.org> <7t1tes$itq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <7tbp9b$21c$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU>

 Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
| 
| I've done some thinking about the use of Python as a mud server language
| as well, and I suspect it's well up to the job. Compare for instance with
| Zope (www.zope.org), which implements a dynamic *web* server in Python. If
| you can do that, you can do the same for muds. Of course Zope has parts
| written in C for speed, but you can do that for a mud server too, if
| necessary.
| 
| Also compare with lpc of lpmuds, which you mentioned. I doubt lpc code can
| run that much more quickly than python code (if at all), and lpmuds have
| been around for years now and work just fine.
| 
| Python has a lot of exciting technologies that would make building a mud
| easier. Lots of standard stuff is already done for you, for one. Then there
| are interesting things like the Zope object database which you may want to
| use to build a persistent database for a mud. There's all sorts of things to
| make Python talk to remote methods as well (CORBA, XML-RPC, etc).
| 
| My main concern with using Python as a mud server is infinite loops, and
| costly methods in general. A mud shouldn't 'hang' when some coder inside
| happens to code a buggy object with an infinite loop in it. Instead the
| mud should detect a method is costing way too many ticks (or bytecode
| executions) and abort it. I've seen two main ways to get around this; one
| is Zope's approach; basically it limits its DTML so that you can't write
| infinite loops. I don't much like this one for muds, as you'd like people
| to use Python to extend it.
| 
| Another possibility is to do something like Will Ware's microthreads do;
| they work by using the 'tick' approach and thus even if one thread loops
| infinitely the rest is still fine. Unfortunately microthreads depend on
| a module that contains a patched Python interpreter loop, which isn't
| exactly easy to maintain..
| 
| I only have limited knowledge about how full fledged multithreading can
| help here, perhaps someone else can give an answer.
| 
| I've also been curious how Joe Strout gets around this problem in his POO
| (a MOO inspired Python based mud).

As far as I know, POO does not deal with this problem at all, nor does
it support the MOO commands fork() or suspend().  That's the main
reason I stopped using POO (the other being that I'm used to MOO, in
which all non-objects are immutable, and Python's mutable data just
made it too easy for one user to mess up another user's data).  I do
way too many neat things with fork() and suspend(), and not being able
to create new background tasks was too limiting.  :(

I think microthreads/coroutines would be the right way to do this.
It'd be nice to write the scheduler yourself so that you can maintain
some kind of load balancing among users (i.e., one user with 10000
tasks gets the same CPU time as another user with 3 tasks).  You'd
also like to save the execution state somehow and checkpoint it all to
disk, for those rare cases when the server has to go down.

      - Amit



From ivanlan at callware.com  Tue Oct 26 13:16:48 1999
From: ivanlan at callware.com (Ivan Van Laningham)
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 11:16:48 -0600
Subject: An article on Python in practice
References: <19991026133227.A601@Ridcully.home> <02b301bf1fd0$730be040$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com> <3815DBDE.96D8FF4A@callware.com> <02ce01bf1fd5$1a9ff950$0100a8c0@rochester.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3815E200.A7A93A6E@callware.com>

Hi All--

Darrell wrote:
> 
> >
> > Why?  gvim.org provides pre-built 95/98/NT executables already.
> >
> Yelp they do.
> But gvim version 54 didn't have the python option turned on.
> 

5.5 does.

Take care,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
----------------------------------------------



From sunil_tripathy at hp.com  Thu Oct 28 18:44:02 1999
From: sunil_tripathy at hp.com (Sunil Tripathy)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 15:44:02 -0700
Subject: fastcgi and python
Message-ID: <3818D1B2.B8B77E22@hp.com>

Hi ,
  I am trying use python for fastcgi applications on Windows NT. I
downloaded fastcgi development kit from www.fastcgi.com and also I
downloaded the python/c api fastcgiappmodule from
http://www.digicool.com/releases/fcgi/. When I try to build the
fastapp.dll using MSVC++ 6.0, this is the error message I get.
D:\fcgiappmodule.c(505) : error C2099: initializer is not a constant.
This message comes form the 2nd line of the following code peice
static PyTypeObject Fcgietype = {
 PyObject_HEAD_INIT(&PyType_Type)
 0,    /*ob_size*/
    //0, 0, 1, &PyType_Type, 0,
 "fcgiEnviron",   /*tp_name*/
 sizeof(fcgieobject),  /*tp_basicsize*/
 0,    /*tp_itemsize*/
I would appreciate if anyone could help me to resolve the problem.
in place of  PyObject_HEAD_INIT(&PyType_Type) i tried to use 0, 0, 1,
NULL, 0, and I initialized
Fcgietype.ob_type = &PyType_Type; in the initfcgiapp function. This
seems to work as for as the compilation problem is concerned but this
does not do anything(i feel it exits when I invoke fcgiapp.Accept()
method)  when I import the module fcgiapp in my python program.
Thanks
Sunil





From quickbbs at my-deja.com  Thu Oct 14 13:56:36 1999
From: quickbbs at my-deja.com (quickbbs at my-deja.com)
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:56:36 GMT
Subject: TimeClient win32api.setsystemtime
Message-ID: <7u55gb$vkq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Folks,

	I'm posting from Deja because I'm behind a firewall, please reply
either in the usenet conference, or to junkster at rochester.rr.com.

	This is the latest version of the timeserver *CLIENT*, it's not
quite ready, it's *ALMOST* ready...

	Except that when I use win32api.SetSystemTime, two little quirks
are happening.

	1) It's "GPF's" (Aka Dr. Watson reports a error has occurred).
	2) Even though the time.asctime (timetuple) reports the right
		time, the tuple when processed by SetSystemTime is off by
		5 hours.  It might be due to a setting somewhere in windows
		but can someone glance at this and make sure everything
		looks AOK?

	I'm not sure what's causing the GPF, the clock gets set (except
-5 hours), so the time/date set is occuring.  It just dies before it
closes the program.

			- Benjamin

#
#       Python Time Server client, based off of RFC 868.
#
#       Thanks to the folks in comp.language.python for their assistance
with this code.
#
#       This code is free to the public, EXCEPT, I would appreciate any
changes to be
#       emailed to me ("Junkster at rochester.rr.com")
#

import time
import struct
import sys
from telnetlib import Telnet

#
#       Use Telnet library to connect to server on port 37
#
print "Connecting to : ", sys.argv[1]
tn_session = Telnet(sys.argv[1], 37)    # Connect to NTP date / time
server
datetime   = tn_session.read_all()      # Read the Integer
tn_session.close()                      # Close the Telnet session

dt = struct.unpack ("!L", datetime)     # Unpack the data from the server

#
#       "Dump the Data to Screen for Debug"
#
print "Server Returned: ",datetime," |       Unpacked structure value :
", dt

#
#       Epoch is the diff. between Epochs between Python & RFC 868
#
epoch = 2208988800L
dt = (dt[0]) - epoch             # Remove "Tuple" status & Convert it to
a python time value

#
#       Print out "English" Version of time/date
#
timetuple = time.localtime(dt)
print "Time - ", time.asctime(timetuple)

#
#
#
if sys.platform == "win32":
        import win32api
        win32api.SetSystemTime (timetuple[0], timetuple[1], timetuple[6],
timetuple[2], timetuple[3], timetuple[4], timetuple[5], 0)


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