if STREAM.isatty():

[Rhodri James]

On 29/08/2019 04:40, Hongyi Zhao wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I read the following code:
> 
> https://github.com/shichao-an/homura/blob/master/homura.py
> 
> On the line 265-266, it said:
> 
>          if STREAM.isatty():
>              p = (self.progress_template + '\r') % params
> 
> 
> What's mean by using the above two lines?  Can I not use them?

If you don't understand them, you definitely shouldn't use them.  So 
let's fix that :-)

"isatty()" is a method of the io.IOBase class that checks to see if the 
stream is connected to a tty, or to use less jargon, if it is 
interactive.  "tty" was I think originally an abbreviation for 
"teletype", but nowadays it refers to any terminal, anywhere you get a 
command line prompt.  See 
https://docs.python.org/3/library/io.html#io.IOBase.isatty

The next line gives you a cheap and cheerful progress message.  I 
haven't looked at the rest of the code, but I imagine 
"self.progress_template" gets set somewhere with a string rather like 
"%d%% complete".  What the expression does is add a carriage return 
character to the end of the string (but *not* a line feed -- remember 
that, it will be important in a minute), then the % operator formats the 
string (see 
https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting) 
using the information in "params".

This is easiest to show by example.  Suppose "self.progress_template" is 
"%d%% complete" as I suggested, and "params" is 1.  Then "p" becomes the 
string "1% complete\r" (where \r is the carriage return character). 
Presumably a little later the code does

   STREAM.write(p)

which will write "1% complete" to the terminal and then put the cursor 
(the "writing point") back to the start of the line.  Since there is no 
carriage return character, it does *not* move on to a new line.  The 
next time we call this code, say with params = 2, we write out "2% 
complete" over the top of the previous message, obliterating the old 
text.  The cursor is once again at the start of the line, so we can 
carry on with "3% complete", "4% complete" and so on.

TLDR: these two lines set up (but don't output) a progress message for 
an interactive stream.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd