[Tutor] information hiding = interface & documntation hiding

[kevin parks]

information hiding is supposed to olny hide the implementation, not the interface! But unfortunately, the interfac for a piece of code is mysterious to me. There are tons of modules, packages, proceedures, objects, classes, and function that come with the python distribution and also to be fond on the net. The problem is knowing what input they expect and what the output is. Only the people who program them seem to know this and there is often little or no documentation to b found. Additionally there are often dependencies to be known about and often not to be found.  I would really like help with this. This whole OOP thing is such a farce sometimes. The whole idea is that you are supposed to be able to mak use of code thatyo didn't (or in my case couldn't) implement yourself. I am not an algorythms guy and i don't want to reinvent the wheel. i would like to use all the code inthe python image, but getting to know what is in the image and how to use it is so hard. What tools does python have for this? If any? How cani know if my code names are unque orif my funcs are overiding somthing that aleady exsits. In TCL one just types a nam in the the shll. if there is a proc of that name it comes up and the interface is often tere too. For example, i saw there was a markov.py file in the standard distribution, but i have no idea how to use it, when i try to compile it it barfs on me. 


Sory to such a dumb question, but i am really excited about python, but confused about how to use much of the code that i encounter.


cheers,

kevin parks
seoul, korea





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