newbie asking for info about Python

[Philip Swartzleonard]

Laura Creighton || Wed 13 Feb 2002 09:09:59a:
> Can you please not send HTML mail out to this list.  It is very hard
> on those of us that read this not as a newsgroup but as a digestified
> mailing list.  

It's not particularly nice to those of us who use a newsgroup program 
that knows it's job and only displays raw text, either =).


Joseph Youssef || Tue 12 Feb 2002 06:21:25p:
> Hello, I know nothing about Python but before I start learning I would
> like to know what Python is usually "used" for, I mean I don't think
> it's made to write some kinda application or something, so what
> exaclty is it used for? 

Well, it certanly is used for applications, although i can't think of 
any off the top of my head. Games too, see pygame for that. I'm actually 
working on a 3d roguelike completly in python, and it's only a little 
bit slow (and thats only because in my current setup every frame drawn 
involves either 1200 or 1600 function calls, i can do better =). (There 
are some screenshots at rubydragon.com/image/sproj -- not very good 
looking yet though :).

The other thing i find it useful for is 'complex file operations'. 
Simple: i have a script that recursivly calls 'unzip xxx.zip -d xxx' for 
each file in a tree. Complex: I have a suite of scripts that turns a 
tree full of .msxhtml, .sxhtml, and .info.sx files into useable .html 
files (composing the gallery is particularly involved), copies all 
relevent files to a 'dist' directory, and (using Stefan Schwarzer's 
upload.py, slightly tweaked), uploads everything to my site. Nothing is 
generated if its source file hasn't changed.

There's lots of other good stuff too =).

-- 
Philip Sw "Starweaver" [rasx] :: www.rubydragon.com