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• Should uni provide "correct answer" after programming assignment is due?

  - by Michael Mao

  Hi all: This is my very first subjective question. And I think it is programming related - the assignment is to be written in a programming language. I am not for "getting the full marks out of a subject". I am actually not for a "correct answer", but for a "better solution", so that I can compare, and can improve. I reckon it is good that I practice programming first and check the solution later to pick up the things I've done wrong/bad. Without a "benchmark" to against, this would be much harder. Unfortunately as far as I know, not all programming subjects taught in uni would kindly provide the students with a "correct answer" in the end, after the assignment is due. One bad metaphor for this is like someone asks you a question which they don't have a clear answer themselves and hope to take advantage of your answer as the basis for their answer. Personally, I feel having a assignment solution provided by the academic staff is essential to students. I do appreciate this, and I feel I might not be the only one. I am a very proactive student in uni. I learn more, I practice more, an assignment for me is more like a challenge to achieve "the best solution I can come up with", not something "I have to pass"... The cause of this question is that for the past few days I have crafted 500+ lines of Perl code, for a tiny assignment. I feel pain when I look at my solution(not finished yet) and I feel like I am an idiot doing some crap code. I know there must be a much better solution. And I reckon it is better for the lecturer in this subject to get me one, rather than asking for an answer here, even I would shamelessly add the link to my solution apart from the assignment requirements. I know in SO, there are a lot of tutors/lecturers for programming subjects/courses. I'd like to hear your words on this question.

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• Automatically Organize Tags in Tax/Folksonomy

  - by Rob Wilkerson

  I'm working on a process that will perform natural language processing (NLP) on one--and potentially several--of our content rich sites. What I'd like to do once the NLP is complete is to automatically organize the output (generally a set of terms that you might think of as tags given the prevalence of that metaphor) into some kind of standard or generally accepted organizational structure. In a perfect world, I'd really like this to be crowd sourced under the folksonomy concept (as opposed to a taxonomy) since the ultimate goal is to target/appeal to real people rather than "domain experts", but I'm open to ideas and best practices. For the obvious purpose of scalability, I'd like to automate the population of this tax/folksonomy so that "some guy" in the team/organization isn't responsible for looking at a bunch of words (with or without context) and arbitrarily fleshing out the contextual components of the tree. I have a few ideas for doing this that require some research to establish viability, but I have exactly zero practical experience with this sort of thing so the ideas really just boil down to stuff I made up that might perform some role in accomplishing the task. Imagining that others have vastly more experience with this sort of thing, I'm hoping that I can stand on your shoulders. Thanks for your thoughts and insights.

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• Web UI element to represent two different micro-views of data in the same spot?

  - by Chris McCall

  I've been tasked with laying out a portion of a screen for a customer care (call center) app that serves as sort of a header/summary block at the top of the screen. Here's what it looks like: The important part is in the red box. That little tooltip is the biz's vision for how to represent both the numeric SiteId and the textual Site Name all in the same piece of screen real estate. I asked, and the business thinks the Name is more important than the ID, but lists the Id by default, because the Name can't be truncated in the display, and there's only so much horizontal room to put the data. So they go with the Id, because it's fewer characters, and then they have the user mouse-over the Id to display the name (presumably because the tooltip can be of unlimited width and since it's floating over the rest of the screen, the full name will always be displayed. So, here's my question: Is there some better UI metaphor that I don't know about that could get this job done, while meeting the following constraints?: Does not require the mouse (uses a keyboard shortcut to do the "reveal") Allows the user to copy and paste the name Will not truncate the name Provides for the display of both the ID and name in the same spot Works with IE7

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• using python 'with' statement with iterators?

  - by Stephen

  Hi, I'm using Python 2.5. I'm trying to use this 'with' statement. from __future__ import with_statement a = [] with open('exampletxt.txt','r') as f: while True: a.append(f.next().strip().split()) print a The contents of 'exampletxt.txt' are simple: a b In this case, I get the error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/tmp/python-7036sVf.py", line 5, in <module> a.append(f.next().strip().split()) StopIteration And if I replace f.next() with f.read(), it seems to be caught in an infinite loop. I wonder if I have to write a decorator class that accepts the iterator object as an argument, and define an __exit__ method for it? I know it's more pythonic to use a for-loop for iterators, but I wanted to implement a while loop within a generator that's called by a for-loop... something like def g(f): while True: x = f.next() if test1(x): a = x elif test2(x): b = f.next() yield [a,x,b] a = [] with open(filename) as f: for x in g(f): a.append(x)

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• Download-from-PyPI-and-install script

  - by zubin71

  Hello, I have written a script which fetches a distribution, given the URL. After downloading the distribution, it compares the md5 hashes to verify that the file has been downloaded properly. This is how I do it. def download(package_name, url): import urllib2 downloader = urllib2.urlopen(url) package = downloader.read() package_file_path = os.path.join('/tmp', package_name) package_file = open(package_file_path, "w") package_file.write(package) package_file.close() I wonder if there is any better(more pythonic) way to do what I have done using the above code snippet. Also, once the package is downloaded this is what is done: def install_package(package_name): if package_name.endswith('.tar'): import tarfile tarfile.open('/tmp/' + package_name) tarfile.extract('/tmp') import shlex import subprocess installation_cmd = 'python %ssetup.py install' %('/tmp/'+package_name) subprocess.Popen(shlex.split(installation_cmd) As there are a number of imports for the install_package method, i wonder if there is a better way to do this. I`d love to have some constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement. Also, I have only implemented the install_package method for .tar files; would there be a better manner by which I could install .tar.gz and .zip files too without having to write seperate methods for each of these?

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• why does b'(and sometimes b' ') show up when I split some HTML source[Python]

  - by Oliver

  I'm fairly new to Python and programming in general. I have done a few tutorials and am about 2/3 through a pretty good book. That being said I've been trying to get more comfortable with Python and proggramming by just trying things in the std lib out. that being said I have recently run into a wierd quirk that I'm sure is the result of my own incorrect or un-"pythonic" use of the urllib module(with Python 3.2.2) import urllib.request HTML_source = urllib.request.urlopen(www.somelink.com).read() print(HTML_source) when this bit is run through the active interpreter it returns the HTML source of somelink, however it prefixes it with b' for example b'<HTML>\r\n<HEAD> (etc). . . . if I split the string into a list by whitespace it prefixes every item with the b' I'm not really trying to accomplish something specific just trying to familiarize myself with the std lib. I would like to know why this b' is getting prefixed also bonus -- Is there a better way to get HTML source WITHOUT using a third party module. I know all that jazz about not reinventing the wheel and what not but I'm trying to learn by "building my own tools" Thanks in Advance!

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• deepcopy and python - tips to avoid using it?

  - by blackkettle

  Hi, I have a very simple python routine that involves cycling through a list of roughly 20,000 latitude,longitude coordinates and calculating the distance of each point to a reference point. def compute_nearest_points( lat, lon, nPoints=5 ): """Find the nearest N points, given the input coordinates.""" points = session.query(PointIndex).all() oldNearest = [] newNearest = [] for n in xrange(nPoints): oldNearest.append(PointDistance(None,None,None,99999.0,99999.0)) newNearest.append(obj2) #This is almost certainly an inappropriate use of deepcopy # but how SHOULD I be doing this?!?! for point in points: distance = compute_spherical_law_of_cosines( lat, lon, point.avg_lat, point.avg_lon ) k = 0 for p in oldNearest: if distance < p.distance: newNearest[k] = PointDistance( point.point, point.kana, point.english, point.avg_lat, point.avg_lon, distance=distance ) break else: newNearest[k] = deepcopy(oldNearest[k]) k += 1 for j in range(k,nPoints-1): newNearest[j+1] = deepcopy(oldNearest[j]) oldNearest = deepcopy(newNearest) #We're done, now print the result for point in oldNearest: print point.station, point.english, point.distance return I initially wrote this in C, using the exact same approach, and it works fine there, and is basically instantaneous for nPoints<=100. So I decided to port it to python because I wanted to use SqlAlchemy to do some other stuff. I first ported it without the deepcopy statements that now pepper the method, and this caused the results to be 'odd', or partially incorrect, because some of the points were just getting copied as references(I guess? I think?) -- but it was still pretty nearly as fast as the C version. Now with the deepcopy calls added, the routine does it's job correctly, but it has incurred an extreme performance penalty, and now takes several seconds to do the same job. This seems like a pretty common job, but I'm clearly not doing it the pythonic way. How should I be doing this so that I still get the correct results but don't have to include deepcopy everywhere?

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• python 'with' statement

  - by Stephen

  Hi, I'm using Python 2.5. I'm trying to use this 'with' statement. from __future__ import with_statement a = [] with open('exampletxt.txt','r') as f: while True: a.append(f.next().strip().split()) print a The contents of 'exampletxt.txt' are simple: a b In this case, I get the error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/tmp/python-7036sVf.py", line 5, in <module> a.append(f.next().strip().split()) StopIteration And if I replace f.next() with f.read(), it seems to be caught in an infinite loop. I wonder if I have to write a decorator class that accepts the iterator object as an argument, and define an __exit__ method for it? I know it's more pythonic to use a for-loop for iterators, but I wanted to implement a while loop within a generator that's called by a for-loop... something like def g(f): while True: x = f.next() if test(x): a = x elif test(x): b = f.next() yield [a,x,b] a = [] with open(filename) as f: for x in g(f): a.append(x)

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• Directly call distutils' or setuptools' setup() function with command name/options, without parsing

  - by Ryan B. Lynch

  I'd like to call Python's distutils' or setuptools' setup() function in a slightly unconventional way, but I'm not sure whether distutils is meant for this kind of usage. As an example, let's say I currently have a 'setup.py' file, which looks like this (lifted verbatim from the distutils docs--the setuptools usage is almost identical): from distutils.core import setup setup(name='Distutils', version='1.0', description='Python Distribution Utilities', author='Greg Ward', author_email='[email protected]', url='http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/', packages=['distutils', 'distutils.command'], ) Normally, to build just the .spec file for an RPM of this module, I could run python setup.py bdist_rpm --spec-only, which parses the command line and calls the 'bdist_rpm' code to handle the RPM-specific stuff. The .spec file ends up in './dist'. How can I change my setup() invocation so that it runs the 'bdist_rpm' command with the '--spec-only' option, WITHOUT parsing command-line parameters? Can I pass the command name and options as parameters to setup()? Or can I manually construct a command line, and pass that as a parameter, instead? NOTE: I already know that I could call the script in a separate process, with an actual command line, using os.system() or the subprocess module or something similar. I'm trying to avoid using any kind of external command invocations. I'm looking specifically for a solution that runs setup() in the current interpreter. For background, I'm converting some release-management shell scripts into a single Python program. One of the tasks is running 'setup.py' to generate a .spec file for further pre-release testing. Running 'setup.py' as an external command, with its own command line options, seems like an awkward method, and it complicates the rest of the program. I feel like there may be a more Pythonic way.

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• tipfy for Google App Engine: Is it stable? Can auth/session components of tipfy be used with webapp?

  - by cv12

  I am building a web application on Google App Engine that requires users to register with the application and subsequently authenticate with it and maintain sessions. I don't want to force users to have Google accounts. Also, the target audience for the application is the average non-geek, so I'm not very keen on using OpenID or OAuth. I need something simple like: User registers with an e-mail and password, and then can log back in with those credentials. I understand that this approach does not provide the security benefits of Google or OpenID authentication, but I am prepared to trade foolproof security for end-user convenience and hassle-free experience. I explored Django, but decided that consecutive deprecations from appengine-helper to app-engine-patch to django-nonrel may signal that path may be a bit risky in the long-term. I'd like to use a code base that is likely to be maintained consistently. I also explored standalone session/auth packages like gaeutilities and suas. GAEUtilities looked a bit immature (e.g., the code wasn't pythonic in places, in my opinion) and SUAS did not give me a lot of comfort with the cookie-only sessions. I could be wrong with my assessment of these two, so I would appreciate input on those (or others that may serve my objective). Finally, I recently came across tipfy. It appears to be based on Werkzeug and Alex Martelli spoke highly of it here on stackoverflow. I have two primary questions related to tipfy: As a framework, is it as mature as webapp? Is it stable and likely to be maintained for some time? Since my primary interest is the auth/session components, can those components of the tipfy framework be used with webapp, independent of the broader tipfy framework? If yes, I would appreciate a few pointers to how I could go about doing that.

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• Coding the Python way

  - by Aaron Moodie

  I've just spent the last half semester at Uni learning python. I've really enjoyed it, and was hoping for a few tips on how to write more 'pythonic' code. This is the __init__ class from a recent assignment I did. At the time I wrote it, I was trying to work out how I could re-write this using lambdas, or in a neater, more efficient way, but ran out of time. def __init__(self, dir): def _read_files(_, dir, files): for file in files: if file == "classes.txt": class_list = readtable(dir+"/"+file) for item in class_list: Enrol.class_info_dict[item[0]] = item[1:] if item[1] in Enrol.classes_dict: Enrol.classes_dict[item[1]].append(item[0]) else: Enrol.classes_dict[item[1]] = [item[0]] elif file == "subjects.txt": subject_list = readtable(dir+"/"+file) for item in subject_list: Enrol.subjects_dict[item[0]] = item[1] elif file == "venues.txt": venue_list = readtable(dir+"/"+file) for item in venue_list: Enrol.venues_dict[item[0]] = item[1:] elif file.endswith('.roll'): roll_list = readlines(dir+"/"+file) file = os.path.splitext(file)[0] Enrol.class_roll_dict[file] = roll_list for item in roll_list: if item in Enrol.enrolled_dict: Enrol.enrolled_dict[item].append(file) else: Enrol.enrolled_dict[item] = [file] try: os.path.walk(dir, _read_files, None) except: print "There was a problem reading the directory" As you can see, it's a little bulky. If anyone has the time or inclination, I'd really appreciate a few tips on some python best-practices. Thanks.

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• small code redundancy within while-loops (doesn't feel clean)

  - by wallacoloo

  So, in Python (though I think it can be applied to many languages), I find myself with something like this quite often: the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n") while the_input != "quit": print the_input the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n") Maybe I'm being too picky, but I don't like how the line the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n") has to get repeated. It decreases maintainability and organization. But I don't see any workarounds for avoiding the duplicate code without further decreasing the problem. In some languages, I could write something like this: while ((the_input=raw_input("what to print?\n")) != "quit") { print the_input } This is definitely not Pythonic, and Python doesn't even allow for assignment within loop conditions AFAIK. This valid code fixes the redundancy, while 1: the_input = raw_input("what to print?\n") if the_input == "quit": break print the_input But doesn't feel quite right either. The while 1 implies that this loop will run forever; I'm using a loop, but giving it a fake condition and putting the real one inside it. Am I being too picky? Is there a better way to do this? Perhaps there's some language construct designed for this that I don't know of?

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• Python - Checking for membership inside nested dict

  - by victorhooi

  heya, This is a followup questions to this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2901422/python-dictreader-skipping-rows-with-missing-columns Turns out I was being silly, and using the wrong ID field. I'm using Python 3.x here. I have a dict of employees, indexed by a string, "directory_id". Each value is a nested dict with employee attributes (phone number, surname etc.). One of these values is a secondary ID, say "internal_id", and another is their manager, call it "manager_internal_id". The "internal_id" field is non-mandatory, and not every employee has one. (I've simplified the fields a little, both to make it easier to read, and also for privacy/compliance reasons). The issue here is that we index (key) each employee by their directory_id, but when we lookup their manager, we need to find managers by their "internal_id". Before, when employee.keys() was a list of internal_ids, I was using a membership check on this. Now, the last part of my if statement won't work, since the internal_ids is part of the dict values, instead of the key itself. def lookup_supervisor(manager_internal_id, employees): if manager_internal_idis not None and manager_internal_id!= "" and manager_internal_id in employees.keys(): return (employees[manager_internal_id]['mail'], employees[manager_internal_id]['givenName'], employees[manager_internal_id]['sn']) else: return ('Supervisor Not Found', 'Supervisor Not Found', 'Supervisor Not Found') So the first question is, how do I check whether the manager_internal_id is present in the dict's values. I've tried substituting employee.keys() with employee.values(), that didn't work. Also, I'm hoping for something a little more efficient, not sure if there's a way to get a subset of the values, specifically, all the entries for employees[directory_id]['internal_id']. Hopefully there's some Pythonic way of doing this, without using a massive heap of nested for/if loops. My second question is, how do I then cleanly return the required employee attributes (mail, givenname, surname etc.). My for loop is iterating over each employee, and calling lookup_supervisor. I'm feeling a bit stupid/stumped here. def tidy_data(employees): for directory_id, data in employees.items(): # We really shouldnt' be passing employees back and forth like this - hmm, classes? data['SupervisorEmail'], data['SupervisorFirstName'], data['SupervisorSurname'] = lookup_supervisor(data['manager_internal_id'], employees) Thanks in advance =), Victor

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• Counting entries in a list of dictionaries: for loop vs. list comprehension with map(itemgetter)

  - by Dennis Williamson

  In a Python program I'm writing I've compared using a for loop and increment variables versus list comprehension with map(itemgetter) and len() when counting entries in dictionaries which are in a list. It takes the same time using a each method. Am I doing something wrong or is there a better approach? Here is a greatly simplified and shortened data structure: list = [ {'key1': True, 'dontcare': False, 'ignoreme': False, 'key2': True, 'filenotfound': 'biscuits and gravy'}, {'key1': False, 'dontcare': False, 'ignoreme': False, 'key2': True, 'filenotfound': 'peaches and cream'}, {'key1': True, 'dontcare': False, 'ignoreme': False, 'key2': False, 'filenotfound': 'Abbott and Costello'}, {'key1': False, 'dontcare': False, 'ignoreme': True, 'key2': False, 'filenotfound': 'over and under'}, {'key1': True, 'dontcare': True, 'ignoreme': False, 'key2': True, 'filenotfound': 'Scotch and... well... neat, thanks'} ] Here is the for loop version: #!/usr/bin/env python # Python 2.6 # count the entries where key1 is True # keep a separate count for the subset that also have key2 True key1 = key2 = 0 for dictionary in list: if dictionary["key1"]: key1 += 1 if dictionary["key2"]: key2 += 1 print "Counts: key1: " + str(key1) + ", subset key2: " + str(key2) Output for the data above: Counts: key1: 3, subset key2: 2 Here is the other, perhaps more Pythonic, version: #!/usr/bin/env python # Python 2.6 # count the entries where key1 is True # keep a separate count for the subset that also have key2 True from operator import itemgetter KEY1 = 0 KEY2 = 1 getentries = itemgetter("key1", "key2") entries = map(getentries, list) key1 = len([x for x in entries if x[KEY1]]) key2 = len([x for x in entries if x[KEY1] and x[KEY2]]) print "Counts: key1: " + str(key1) + ", subset key2: " + str(key2) Output for the data above (same as before): Counts: key1: 3, subset key2: 2 I'm a tiny bit surprised these take the same amount of time. I wonder if there's something faster. I'm sure I'm overlooking something simple. One alternative I've considered is loading the data into a database and doing SQL queries, but the data doesn't need to persist and I'd have to profile the overhead of the data transfer, etc., and a database may not always be available. I have no control over the original form of the data. The code above is not going for style points.

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• Give a reference to a python instance attribute at class definition

  - by Guenther Jehle

  I have a class with attributes which have a reference to another attribute of this class. See class Device, value1 and value2 holding a reference to interface: class Interface(object): def __init__(self): self.port=None class Value(object): def __init__(self, interface, name): self.interface=interface self.name=name def get(self): return "Getting Value \"%s\" with interface \"%s\""%(self.name, self.interface.port) class Device(object): interface=Interface() value1=Value(interface, name="value1") value2=Value(interface, name="value2") def __init__(self, port): self.interface.port=port if __name__=="__main__": d1=Device("Foo") print d1.value1.get() # >>> Getting Value "value1" with interface "Foo" d2=Device("Bar") print d2.value1.get() # >>> Getting Value "value1" with interface "Bar" print d1.value1.get() # >>> Getting Value "value1" with interface "Bar" The last print is wrong, cause d1 should have the interface "Foo". I know whats going wrong: The line interface=Interface() line is executed, when the class definition is parsed (once). So every Device class has the same instance of interface. I could change the Device class to: class Device(object): interface=Interface() value1=Value(interface, name="value1") value2=Value(interface, name="value2") def __init__(self, port): self.interface=Interface() self.interface.port=port So this is also not working: The values still have the reference to the original interface instance and the self.interface is just another instance... The output now is: >>> Getting Value "value1" with interface "None" >>> Getting Value "value1" with interface "None" >>> Getting Value "value1" with interface "None" So how could I solve this the pythonic way? I could setup a function in the Device class to look for attributes with type Value and reassign them the new interface. Isn't this a common problem with a typical solution for it? Thanks!

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• Python: Created nested dictionary from list of paths

  - by sberry2A

  I have a list of tuples the looks similar to this (simplified here, there are over 14,000 of these tuples with more complicated paths than Obj.part) [ (Obj1.part1, {<SPEC>}), (Obj1.partN, {<SPEC>}), (ObjK.partN, {<SPEC>}) ] Where Obj goes from 1 - 1000, part from 0 - 2000. These "keys" all have a dictionary of specs associated with them which act as a lookup reference for inspecting another binary file. The specs dict contains information such as the bit offset, bit size, and C type of the data pointed to by the path ObjK.partN. For example: Obj4.part500 might have this spec, {'size':32, 'offset':128, 'type':'int'} which would let me know that to access Obj4.part500 in the binary file I must unpack 32 bits from offset 128. So, now I want to take my list of strings and create a nested dictionary which in the simplified case will look like this data = { 'Obj1' : {'part1':{spec}, 'partN':{spec} }, 'ObjK' : {'part1':{spec}, 'partN':{spec} } } To do this I am currently doing two things, 1. I am using a dotdict class to be able to use dot notation for dictionary get / set. That class looks like this: class dotdict(dict): def __getattr__(self, attr): return self.get(attr, None) __setattr__ = dict.__setitem__ __delattr__ = dict.__delitem__ The method for creating the nested "dotdict"s looks like this: def addPath(self, spec, parts, base): if len(parts) > 1: item = base.setdefault(parts[0], dotdict()) self.addPath(spec, parts[1:], item) else: item = base.setdefault(parts[0], spec) return base Then I just do something like: for path, spec in paths: self.lookup = dotdict() self.addPath(spec, path.split("."), self.lookup) So, in the end self.lookup.Obj4.part500 points to the spec. Is there a better (more pythonic) way to do this?

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• Parallel Tasking Concurrency with Dependencies on Python like GNU Make

  - by Brian Bruggeman

  I'm looking for a method or possibly a philosophical approach for how to do something like GNU Make within python. Currently, we utilize makefiles to execute processing because the makefiles are extremely good at parallel runs with changing single option: -j x. In addition, gnu make already has the dependency stacks built into it, so adding a secondary processor or the ability to process more threads just means updating that single option. I want that same power and flexibility in python, but I don't see it. As an example: all: dependency_a dependency_b dependency_c dependency_a: dependency_d stuff dependency_b: dependency_d stuff dependency_c: dependency_e stuff dependency_d: dependency_f stuff dependency_e: stuff dependency_f: stuff If we do a standard single thread operation (-j 1), the order of operation might be: dependency_f -> dependency_d -> dependency_a -> dependency_b -> dependency_e \ -> dependency_c For two threads (-j 2), we might see: 1: dependency_f -> dependency_d -> dependency_a -> dependency_b 2: dependency_e -> dependency_c Does anyone have any suggestions on either a package already built or an approach? I'm totally open, provided it's a pythonic solution/approach. Please and Thanks in advance!

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• What's a good way to provide additional decoration/metadata for Python function parameters?

  - by Will Dean

  We're considering using Python (IronPython, but I don't think that's relevant) to provide a sort of 'macro' support for another application, which controls a piece of equipment. We'd like to write fairly simple functions in Python, which take a few arguments - these would be things like times and temperatures and positions. Different functions would take different arguments, and the main application would contain user interface (something like a property grid) which allows the users to provide values for the Python function arguments. So, for example function1 might take a time and a temperature, and function2 might take a position and a couple of times. We'd like to be able to dynamically build the user interface from the Python code. Things which are easy to do are to find a list of functions in a module, and (using inspect.getargspec) to get a list of arguments to each function. However, just a list of argument names is not really enough - ideally we'd like to be able to include some more information about each argument - for instance, it's 'type' (high-level type - time, temperature, etc, not language-level type), and perhaps a 'friendly name' or description. So, the question is, what are good 'pythonic' ways of adding this sort of information to a function. The two possibilities I have thought of are: Use a strict naming convention for arguments, and then infer stuff about them from their names (fetched using getargspec) Invent our own docstring meta-language (could be little more than CSV) and use the docstring for our metadata. Because Python seems pretty popular for building scripting into large apps, I imagine this is a solved problem with some common conventions, but I haven't been able to find them.

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• Simplifying for-if messes with better structure?

  - by HH

  # Description: you are given a bitwise pattern and a string # you need to find the number of times the pattern matches in the string # any one liner or simple pythonic solution? import random def matchIt(yourString, yourPattern): """find the number of times yourPattern occurs in yourString""" count = 0 matchTimes = 0 # How can you simplify the for-if structures? for coin in yourString: #return to base if count == len(pattern): matchTimes = matchTimes + 1 count = 0 #special case to return to 2, there could be more this type of conditions #so this type of if-conditionals are screaming for a havoc if count == 2 and pattern[count] == 1: count = count - 1 #the work horse #it could be simpler by breaking the intial string of lenght 'l' #to blocks of pattern-length, the number of them is 'l - len(pattern)-1' if coin == pattern[count]: count=count+1 average = len(yourString)/matchTimes return [average, matchTimes] # Generates the list myString =[] for x in range(10000): myString= myString + [int(random.random()*2)] pattern = [1,0,0] result = matchIt(myString, pattern) print("The sample had "+str(result[1])+" matches and its size was "+str(len(myString))+".\n" + "So it took "+str(result[0])+" steps in average.\n" + "RESULT: "+str([a for a in "FAILURE" if result[0] != 8])) # Sample Output # # The sample had 1656 matches and its size was 10000. # So it took 6 steps in average. # RESULT: ['F', 'A', 'I', 'L', 'U', 'R', 'E']

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• The use of getters and setters for different programming languages [closed]

  - by leonhart88

  So I know there are a lot of questions on getters and setters in general, but I couldn't find something exactly like my question. I was wondering if people change the use of get/set depending on different languages. I started learning with C++ and was taught to use getters and setters. This is what I understand: In C++ (and Java?), a variable can either be public or private, but we cannot have a mix. For example, I can't have a read-only variable that can still be changed inside the class. It's either all public (can read and change it), or all private (can't read and can only change inside the class). Because of this (and possibly other reasons), we use getters and setters. In MATLAB, I can control the "setaccess" and "getaccess" properties of variables, so that I can make things read-only (can directly access the property, but can't overwrite it). In this case, I don't feel like I need a getter because I can just do class.property. Also, in Python it is considered "Pythonic" to not use getters/setters and to only put things into properties if needed. I don't really understand why its OK to have all public variables in Python, because that's opposite of what I learned when I started with C++. I'm just curious what other people's thoughts are on this. Would you use getters and setters for all languages? Would you only use it for C++/Java and do direct access in MATLAB and Python (which is what I am currently doing)? Is the second option considered bad? For my purposes, I am only referring to simple getters and setters (just return/set the value and do not do anything else). Thanks!

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• python list/dict property best practice

  - by jterrace

  I have a class object that stores some properties that are lists of other objects. Each of the items in the list has an identifier that can be accessed with the id property. I'd like to be able to read and write from these lists but also be able to access a dictionary keyed by their identifier. Let me illustrate with an example: class Child(object): def __init__(self, id, name): self.id = id self.name = name class Teacher(object): def __init__(self, id, name): self.id = id self.name = name class Classroom(object): def __init__(self, children, teachers): self.children = children self.teachers = teachers classroom = Classroom([Child('389','pete')], [Teacher('829','bob')]) This is a silly example, but it illustrates what I'm trying to do. I'd like to be able to interact with the classroom object like this: #access like a list print classroom.children[0] #append like it's a list classroom.children.append(Child('2344','joe')) #delete from like it's a list classroom.children.pop(0) But I'd also like to be able to access it like it's a dictionary, and the dictionary should be automatically updated when I modify the list: #access like a dict print classroom.childrenById['389'] I realize I could just make it a dict, but I want to avoid code like this: classroom.childrendict[child.id] = child I also might have several of these properties, so I don't want to add functions like addChild, which feels very un-pythonic anyway. Is there a way to somehow subclass dict and/or list and provide all of these functions easily with my class's properties? I'd also like to avoid as much code as possible.

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• Dictionaries with more than one key per value in Python

  - by nickname

  I am attempting to create a nice interface to access a data set where each value has several possible keys. For example, suppose that I have both a number and a name for each value in the data set. I want to be able to access each value using either the number OR the name. I have considered several possible implementations: Using two separate dictionaries, one for the data values organized by number, and one for the data values organized by name. Simply assigning two keys to the same value in a dictionary. Creating dictionaries mapping each name to the corresponding number, and vice versa Attempting to create a hash function that maps each name to a number, etc. (related to the above) Creating an object to encapsulate all three pieces of data, then using one key to map dictionary keys to the objects and simply searching the dictionary to map the other key to the object. None of these seem ideal. The first seems ugly and unmaintainable. The second also seems fragile. The third/fourth seem plausible, but seem to require either much manual specification or an overly complex implementation. Finally, the fifth loses constant-time performance for one of the lookups. In C/C++, I believe that I would use pointers to reference the same piece of data from different keys. I know that the problem is rather similar to a database lookup problem by a non-key column, however, I would like (if possible), to maintain the approximate O(1) performance of Python dictionaries. What is the most Pythonic way to achieve this data structure?

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• String comparison in Python: is vs. ==

  - by Coquelicot

  I noticed a Python script I was writing was acting squirrelly, and traced it to an infinite loop, where the loop condition was "while line is not ''". Running through it in the debugger, it turned out that line was in fact ''. When I changed it to != rather than 'is not', it worked fine. I did some searching, and found this question, the top answer to which seemed to be just what I needed. Except the answer it gave was counter to my experience. Specifically, the answerer wrote: For all built-in Python objects (like strings, lists, dicts, functions, etc.), if x is y, then x==y is also True. I double-checked the type of the variable, and it was in fact of type str (not unicode or something). Is his answer just wrong, or is there something else afoot? Also, is it generally considered better to just use '==' by default, even when comparing int or Boolean values? I've always liked to use 'is' because I find it more aesthetically pleasing and pythonic (which is how I fell into this trap...), but I wonder if it's intended to just be reserved for when you care about finding two objects with the same id.

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• Extended slice that goes to beginning of sequence with negative stride

  - by recursive

  Bear with me while I explain my question. Skip down to the bold heading if you already understand extended slice list indexing. In python, you can index lists using slice notation. Here's an example: >>> A = list(range(10)) >>> A[0:5] [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] You can also include a stride, which acts like a "step": >>> A[0:5:2] [0, 2, 4] The stride is also allowed to be negative, meaning the elements are retrieved in reverse order: >>> A[5:0:-1] [5, 4, 3, 2, 1] But wait! I wanted to see [4, 3, 2, 1, 0]. Oh, I see, I need to decrement the start and end indices: >>> A[4:-1:-1] [] What happened? It's interpreting -1 as being at the end of the array, not the beginning. I know you can achieve this as follows: >>> A[4::-1] [4, 3, 2, 1, 0] But you can't use this in all cases. For example, in a method that's been passed indices. My question is: Is there any good pythonic way of using extended slices with negative strides and explicit start and end indices that include the first element of a sequence? This is what I've come up with so far, but it seems unsatisfying. >>> A[0:5][::-1] [4, 3, 2, 1, 0]

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• How can I create a rules engine without using eval() or exec()?

  - by Angela

  I have a simple rules/conditions table in my database which is used to generate alerts for one of our systems. I want to create a rules engine or a domain specific language. A simple rule stored in this table would be..(omitting the relationships here) if temp > 40 send email Please note there would be many more such rules. A script runs once daily to evaluate these rules and perform the necessary actions. At the beginning, there was only one rule, so we had the script in place to only support that rule. However we now need to make it more scalable to support different conditions/rules. I have looked into rules engines , but I hope to achieve this in some simple pythonic way. At the moment, I have only come up with eval/exec and I know that is not the most recommended approach. So, what would be the best way to accomplish this?? ( The rules are stored as data in database so each object like "temperature", condition like "/=..etc" , value like "40,50..etc" and action like "email, sms, etc.." are stored in the database, i retrieve this to form the condition...if temp 50 send email, that was my idea to then use exec or eval on them to make it live code..but not sure if this is the right approach )

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