[Tutor] updating Unix config file

[Matt Herzog]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 07:53:17AM -0700, Steve Willoughby wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 10:44:16AM -0400, Matt Herzog wrote:
> > Yes, thanks. What failed was the invocation of PIPE. Apparently I had to explicitly import PIPE from subprocess or python had no clue as to what PIPE was! 
> > 
> > Dare I say, "wtf?" since when fo I have to specify such? Shouldn't importing the subprocess module make all its methods available? I can't remember having to do this before.
> 

I have been reading python books and trying to learn python for about a year now and this has never met my attention before. Thanks.

> It's always been like that.  Otherwise we'd have lots of collisions between module global
> names that namespaces are designed to avoid in the first place.  So you either name them
> explicitly, or import them explicitly:
> 
> import subprocess
> # now you can reference subprocess.PIPE
> 
> --or--
> 
> from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
> # now you can reference PIPE without the namespace identifier
> 
> --or--
> 
> from subprocess import *
> # but I don't recommend this one (caution! danger!)
> 

-- 
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald