Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Aug 2)

[Peter Otten]

QOTW: "We can't really say much more about thread safety than this, we
think the interpreter will survive. The rest is up to the programmer."
- Donn Cave

"Despite the seemingly endless necessity for doing so, it's actually not
possible to reverse-engineer intended invariants from staring at
thousands of lines of code (not in C, and not in Python code either)."
- Tim Peters


    Marduk wants to use string formatting with an arbitrary iterable
    instead of a tuple. Hans Nowak posts a format function that fits the
    bill.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=40FF1A61.9050408%40zephyrfalcon.org
    
    The release of IronPython 0.6, a Python implementation for .Net and
    Mono, spawns a broader discussion on the merits of .Net and the
    Common Language Runtime.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=278de0e.0407281353.27b6a457%40posting.google.com
        http://www.ironpython.com
    
    Christopher T. King takes a closer look at Yaroslav Bulatov's attempt
    to benchmark various approaches to sum many floating point numbers.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=Pine.LNX.4.44.0408011847510.21160-100000%40ccc4.wpi.edu

    Premshree Pillai writes an SMS-to-LiveJournal gateway
    in Python
        http://www.livejournal.com/users/premshree/33967.html
    
    How would you iterate over a list two consecutive items at a time?
    That's a the heart of jblazi's question, and it turns out that there
    are two ways to do it.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=pan.2004.07.31.12.27.23.547000%40hotmail.com
    
    Patrick Rutledge has written an introduction on how to create games
    using pygame.
        http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7694
    
    Is Python fully thread-safe? Jeff Epler is poking fun at the
    questioner, but Francois Pinard (sorry, no cedilla today) points the
    discussion into a more serious direction.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.775.1090684870.5135.python-list%40python.org
    
    "Btw, thank you for those footnotes in Thinking in Java that
    encouraged me to try Python :-)" - Dan Bishop.
    Bruce Eckel, author of "Thinking in Java", asks for a test for string
    similarity. He receives various answers and a thank-you.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=mailman.958.1091195562.5135.python-list%40python.org
    
    Dan Sugalski has lost the "Pie-thon" bet to Guido van Rossum that
    Python would run faster on Parrot, the virtual machine meant to power
    Perl 6. Images of Guido throwing the pie are finally available.
        http://www.onlamp.com/pub/wlg/5346
        http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oscon2004/friday/index.html

    
========================================================================
Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in
these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    marvelous daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  
    Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
    World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
         http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html 
    While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
    are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
    their results.

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newsgroup weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Brett Cannon continues the marvelous tradition established by 
    Andrew Kuchling and Michael Hudson of intelligently summarizing
    action on the python-dev mailing list once every other week.
	http://www.python.org/dev/summary/

    The Python Package Index catalogues packages.
        http://www.python.org/pypi/

    The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references
    to all sorts of Python resources.
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies
    that base their business on ... Python."
	http://www.python-in-business.org

    The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python
    Consortium as an independent nexus of activity.  It has official
    responsibility for Python's development and maintenance. 
        http://www.python.org/psf/
    Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation.
        http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html

    Cetus collects Python hyperlinks.
        http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and
    interesting recipes.
	http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python

    Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are
	http://www.python.org/channews.rdf
	http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi
	http://python.de/backend.php
    For more, see
	http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all
    The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
    SourceForge reincarnation.
        http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
        http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html
     
    The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
    editor at pythonjournal.com and editor at pythonjournal.cognizor.com
    welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
    of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

    *Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
        http://www.pyzine.com

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/         
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant)
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


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