1,161 posts tagged “python”
The Python programming language.
2004
Python Memory Management (via) It’s not quite as straight forward as you might have thought.
Cache decorator in Python 2.4 (via) Nothing like a good example to understand why decorators are a cool language feature.
Running Pydoc under mod_python
I’ve written about pydoc before. In my opinion it’s one of Python’s best kept secrets: a way of instantly browsing the properties, methods and documentation strings of any module available to the Python environment. It can even run a local HTTP server to allow for easy browsing of available documentation.
[... 372 words]Python in Air Traffic Control (via) Python goes mission critical.
Python will assimilate you (via) “From the wind-up school of technology strategizing”
The Observer Pattern in Python (via) Makes smart use of weak references.
Backporting from Python 2.3 to Python 2.2
We have a home-grown templating system at work, which I intend to dedicate an entry to some time in the future. We originally wrote it in Python 2.2, but upgraded to Python 2.3 a while ago and have since been evolving our code in that environment. Today I found a need to load the most recent version of our templating system on to a small, long neglected application that had been running the original version ever since it had enough features to be usable.
[... 356 words]Switch statements in Python
Python doesn’t support a native switch statement. I’ve found myself using the following coding idiom instead recently which seems to work pretty well:
[... 114 words]Python in Mathematics
Python in the Mathematics Curriculum by Kirby Urner is something of a sprawling masterpiece. It really comes in four parts: the first is a history of computer science in education, the second an appraisal of the impact of open source on education and the world at last, the third a dive in to the things that make Python so suitable for enhancing the mathematics curriculum and the fourth a discussion of how computer science and traditional mathematics are likely to play off against each other in the field of high school education.
[... 319 words]Python Cookbook: Parsing the command line (via) Using optparse, but with the command line setup options stored in the program’s docstring.
Panther, Python, and CoreGraphics (via) I didn’t realise Apple shipped special custom Python modules with OS X.
PHP 5 Release Candidate 1
I haven’t blogged much about PHP in a while because I’ve been up to my nose in mod_python and loving every minute of it. This news is just too important to miss: PHP 5 Release Candidate 1 has been released, bringing the first production-ready release tantilisingly close. While I doubt PHP 5 will tempt me back it’s definitely an exciting upgrade—my biggest complaint with PHP 4 is the brain-dead object model which defaults to copying whole objects rather than passing references, and this is one of the many things addressed by PHP 5. The new libxml2 powered XML features sound really powerful, and SQLite as an on-board database should be ideal for knocking out small stand-alone applications without needing to set up a mySQL database for them.
[... 173 words]Mod_python’s PSP: Python Server Pages. Grisha spills the beans for ONLamp.
Advanced Python network programming
Understanding Network I/O, Part 2 by George Belotsky (via The Farm) is the best tutorial on the subject of network programming I’ve seen yet. It provides a detailed explanation of simple threaded network clients, thread pools using the Queue module and asynchronous I/O using both Twisted and Python’s asyncore library—then discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
[... 93 words]Code generation vs data driven programming
Via Ned Batchelder, this interview with pragmatic Dave Thomas on code generation closely reflects my own nascent thoughts on the issue:
[... 369 words]Ned Batchelder: Showing C header structure. Using Python to maked other languages less painful
XML.com: Lightweight XML Search Servers [Jan. 21, 2004] (via) More fun with Python and libxml2
Ned Batchelder: handyxml. Yet another XML object wrapper for Python, this time with full DOM method support included
Python Cookbook : FSList (via) A fun alternative to os.path and friends—a list subclass for directory access
AppScripting (via) The power of AppleScript with the less verbose syntax of Python
2003
Installing psycopg on Red Hat 9
Adrian Holovaty and I spent some time today figuring out how to get the psycopg Postgres module to install on Red Hat 9. It took a while, but eventually we tweaked the spec file and used it to compile our own RPM. I’ve posted our modified spec file to the psycopg mailing list. More for my own record than anything else, the arcane incantations needed to create the RPM went roughly as follows:
[... 151 words]Javascript from Python
In a way I’m disappointed to see python-spidermonkey released. It’s a Python wrapper around the Mozilla project’s SpiderMonkey Javascript engine which allows Python scripts to execute Javascript code in a rock-solid, battle-tested embedded interpreter.
[... 187 words]Donate to the PSF! Support Python as well.
New Python Computer Science text book
Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science is a new Computer Science text book designed for use in introduction to programming classes, written by John Zelle, who’s Teaching with Python page . Kirby Urner recently posted a mostly positive review of the book to the Python Edu-SIG mailing list, which sparked an interesting discussion about Python’s place in the CS curriculum.
[... 183 words]Implementing filesystems in Python
LUFS-Python provides a relatively simple API for implementing new Linux filesystems in pure Python. You install the package, write a class implementing methods for handling filesystem operations such as creating a directory, opening/reading/writing/closing a file, creating symlinks etc and finally mount your new filesystem with some special arguments to the mount command.
[... 371 words]Extracting the length from MP3 files with Python
Ned Batchelder recently wrote about the difficulties involved in extracting the length from an MP3 file. We’re going to need to solve this problem soon at work; luckily, it seems that the answer may lie in the Python bindings for mpgedit, an audio file editing library available for both Windows and Linux.
[... 149 words]Discovering Berkeley DB
I’m working on a project at the moment which involves exporting a whole bunch of data out of an existing system. The system is written in Perl and uses Berkeley DB files for most of its storage.
[... 339 words]Numerical Python. Some day I really ought to get this installed and figure it out
Python Natural Language Toolkit (via) Yet another reason Python at University is a great idea