Python Questions - July 25, 2015

[E.D.G.]

"Laura Creighton" <lac at openend.se> wrote in message 
news:mailman.980.1437832769.3674.python-list at python.org...
> The most common way to do things is to tell your users to install
> whatever python distribution you pick and then optionally
> install these extra packages (if you need any) and then give them a python
> program to run.
> But you can also package everything up into a .exe for them if they
> need this.


Posted by E.D.G.   July 26, 2015

       For general interest purposes, as you can see, with my posts I 
usually include E.D.G. and the date of the posting.  This is because the 
projects that I work on involve scientific research.  And this way printed 
versions of the posts can be made.  And they will include references that 
people can use.  The printed versions would not have the types of 
information that are included with the electronic newsgroup distributions.


       What I was asking about in that earlier post is something that very 
few programmers or perhaps even no programmers are familiar with.  Most 
people know what the .exe versions of programs are.  But what I was asking 
about is more basic.

       It can take a considerable amount of time and effort to get a 
programming language installed and running with all of the features that are 
needed.  It probably took me 5 to 10 years to get Perl organized on my 
computer like that.

       Once that process is done, people who are not professional 
programmers don't want to have to constantly update and change the basic 
language they have running on their computers.  So, they might do what I do 
though I have never heard of anyone else doing that.

       My entire Perl language is in a directory called "Perl" on my 
computer.  I use ActiveState 5.10 Perl which is a very old version.  But it 
does everything that needs to be done except graphics and fast calculations. 
For the graphics I use a Perl to Gnuplot "Pipe" that works quite well and 
which took a long time for me to develop.  A very old version of Gnuplot is 
also used for simplicity.  I consists of just 2 small .exe files.

       Then if I want to run a .pl program on any computer or even from a 
flash drive I simply copy the entire 5.10 Perl directory to the new computer 
or flash drive.  And any Perl program will then run on the new computer or 
from the flash drive.

       Windows let you specify that a .pl program should always be opened 
with perl.exe.  The same is probably true with Python.  So, Perl itself does 
not actually need to be installed on a computer to get .pl programs to run. 
However, it is probably a good idea to do that so that the perl.exe address 
is in the right Windows Environment variables.

       So, that is what I was asking about Python.  Once it is installed and 
running properly, can people simply copy the entire Python directory to some 
other computer or flash drive and a Python language program will then run?


       If necessary, to get Perl programs to run faster we were planning to 
use a Perl to Fortran "Pipe" plus file storage of bulk data.  Fortran would 
then process the files and tell the Perl program when it was done.  But 
before doing that we decided to see if we could find another language that 
would do everything that my version of Perl does plus graphics and fast 
calculations.  It appears that Python will do that.  But it also appears 
that it would take quite a while to select a specific version of Python and 
then learn how to get everything organized and running.

       Another of my posts will probably go into more detail regarding that 
subject.

Thanks for the comments.

Regards,

E.D.G.