A few beginning questions

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

richardc wrote:
> Ive just started playing with Python and have a couple of questions.

Welcome

> Im looking for an agument parsing library (from the command line), Ive come
> across optik and argtools.  What other ones are there are any of them any
> good, is there a 'standard' lib for doing this.

See other posts in this thread

> Also how should I '#define' magic numbers in Python.  I spent ages looking
> around for a 'define' statement or anything that will allow me to create a
> constant value 'object'.  Am I missing something very obvious ?

Idem...

The 'obvious' thing you might be missing is that Python relies heavily 
on programmers following conventions, where other languages impose 
strict rules... Some conventions are :

UPPERCASE_VARIABLE : a constant, don't touch unless you really know what 
you're doing

_NameWithLeadingSingleUnderscore : 'protected' access , don't touch 
unless you really know what you're doing

__NameWithLeadingAndTrailingDoubleUnderscore__ :
a 'magic' thing, don't touch unless you really know what you're doing

A special case is __NameWithLeadingDoubleUnderscore :
In older Python version, it was just a convention for 'private' access, 
now it makes Python doing some mumbo-jumbo name mangling (which don't 
strictly enforce 'privacy', but)...

Another special case is the 'self' pseudo-key word : the first argument 
for object methods could be named whatYouWant, but (almost ?) everybody 
uses 'self'.

> Also, what 'IDE/editor' do people recomend for MAC OSX, so far Ive found
> 'Hydra' to be the best as it works on plain files and has Python syntax
> highlighting... what else is there and are any of them any good.

I guess vim and emacs should run on Mac OS X ?

> Has nobody written an editor/IDE in Python with wxWindows so that it runs on
> all platforms ?

You could try boa contructor (a wxPython delphi-like RAD/IDE).


Bruno