Python/Perl Popularity (Re: A Mountain of Perl...)

[Martijn Faassen]

tom__98 at my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <200004102111.HAA03380 at envy.fulcrum.com.au>,
>   Richard.Jones at fulcrum.com.au wrote:
>> Tom you little troll-meister. Half those arguments
>> you cite are bollocks if you _really_ knew and
>> "greatly prefer" Python. Try again.

> Maybe you can contribute more constructively:

I'm not him, but I'll be constructive. :)

>  -- How can I browse the Python documentation without firing
>     up a web browser?

A text mode web browser can be useful for this. I've found w3m on
Linux to be very nice. I can just do:

w3m file:///usr/doc/python-docs-1.5.2/html/lib/modindex.html

And the documentation page is there instantly.

>  How do I get information on a single Python
>     function or class quickly?

The docstring situation in the library is pretty good:

>>> import string
>>> dir(string)
>>> print string.split.__doc__

>>> import BaseHTTPServer
>>> print BaseHTTPServer.SocketServer.__doc__

>  Is there any equivalent of
>     "perldoc -f split" or "perldoc Net::POP3"?  What do you
>     do in that situation?

Perhaps there are more easy tools to query docstrings; I'm sure there
should be done out there. Since I'm a web developer I usually have
a browser going somewhere, so I use the HTML documentation. :)

>  -- Is there a Python equivalent of CPAN and the Perl CPAN
>     module?  The closest I know of is Parnassus.  But Parnassus
>     is merely a collection of links, not an archive, and it
>     doesn't have any facilities (AFAIK) for automatic installation.

Parnassus is way cool, but it can't do this yet. There have been talks
in the past between the Distutils people and the Parnassus folks (um,
individual). Once distutils matures it should provide for automatic
installation, and it'll probably be integrated with Parnassus.

>  -- Several extensions I have wanted to install have required access
>     to the full Python source tree, not just the header files and
>     the library.  Is that going to change?  Otherwise, how can
>     I install Python extensions that want access to the source
>     tree on, say, a standard RedHat system?  Having the standard
>     RPM-based installation in parallel with a /usr/local installation
>     from source is confusing, and removing the RPM-based installation
>     risks breaking things.

Hm, haven't seen these yet myself. That does sound tricky. We're just
all rooting for distutils to save the day. :)

Regards,

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