Programmer's text editor, for Python and everything else (was: IDE for python)
Greg Schroeder gmschroe...@gmail.com writes: Any gripes against vim with some tweaks? None from me; Vim is a fine programming (and programmable) editor. It is free software, like Python. This is vital for any tool in which one expects to sink an amount of effort. It means no party has privileged access to change it, which ensures that (unlike proprietary software) it will never be held hostage to one party's disinterest or whim. It works the same way on all important operating systems today that programmers will use to write programs. This is, of course, a result of it being free software; anyone motivated to improve the software on a particular platform has full freedom to do so, and return the improvements to the community. It is mature and highly flexible, both of which mean it can handle any important programming task once someone puts in the effort to configure it. And it has a thriving community, which means most of what you want customised has already been done by others. It supports a massive range of text editing tasks, most of which you don't need to know but will be there when your programming tasks expand as they inevitably do. You won't need to re-learn another tool, but only a plug-in for your existing text editor. All of the above are true for Vim and Emacs, which is why I strongly recommend learning one of them well and using it for all the editing you do while programming. URL:https://wiki.python.org/moin/Vim URL:http://blog.dispatched.ch/2009/05/24/vim-as-python-ide/ URL:https://wiki.python.org/moin/EmacsEditor URL:http://www.enigmacurry.com/2008/05/09/emacs-as-a-powerful-python-ide/ -- \ “When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold to the masses | `\over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and | _o__)its speaker a raving lunatic.” —Dresden James | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
I use python in Windows XP platform. I find that if I write a .py file in a directory, such as windows desktop, in which a file named 'ticket.txt' is located: f=open(\ticket.txt) print f.read() In IDLE, this py file work all right. But if I launch python interpretor in the command shell like this: C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zhengpython C:\Documents and Settings\Xiao zhong Zheng\Desktop\t.py The interpretor would not find the file. Traceback (most recent call last): File C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zheng\Desktop\t.py, line 1, in ? f=open(ticket.txt) IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'ticket.txt' Anyone knows why? In addition, if I start IIS web service that runs .py file as CGI program, then this .py file also works. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
I use python on Windows XP platform. I find that if I write a .py file in a directory, such as windows desktop, in which a file named 'ticket.txt' is located: f=open(ticket.txt) print f.read() In IDLE, this py file work all right. But if I launch python interpretor in the command shell like this: C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zhengpython C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zheng\Desktop\t.py The interpretor would not find the file. Traceback (most recent call last): File C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zheng\Desktop\t.py, line 1, in ? f=open(ticket.txt) IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'ticket.txt' Anyone knows why? In addition, if I start IIS web service that runs .py file as CGI program, then this .py file also works. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
Sullivan WxPyQtKinter wrote: I use python in Windows XP platform. I find that if I write a .py file in a directory, such as windows desktop, in which a file named 'ticket.txt' is located: f=open(\ticket.txt) print f.read() \t is a tab character: print '\ticket.txt' icket.txt try opening r\ticket.txt or /ticket.txt instead. /F -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
Sorry, I mistyped the line. In the program it IS: f=open(ticket.txt), no '\' included. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
Sullivan WxPyQtKinter wrote: In IDLE, this py file work all right. But if I launch python interpretor in the command shell like this: C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zhengpython C:\Documents and Settings\Xiaozhong Zheng\Desktop\t.py The interpretor would not find the file. open(ticket.txt) means look for ticket.txt in the current directory, not in the directory where the PY file lives. if you change to the Desk- top directory before you run the Python interpreter, your script should work as expected. to fix this, you can - use a full path or - use os.path.basedir(__file__) to get the directory where the module lives, and do something like root = os.path.basedir(__file__) ticketfile = os.path.join(root, ticket.txt) f = open(ticketfile) /F -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
I see. I once was a VB programmer. In VB, the current directory is always set to where the module locates before it runs. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Can not find a file in CMD model python when everything is OK in IDLE
I see. I once was a VB programmer. In VB, the current directory is always set to where the module locates before it runs. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Larry Bates wrote: poorly. When new version of Python ships, you just learn what is new. If you try to keep up with C, C++, Visual Basic, ... it gets to be impossible. Hope information helps. Larry Bates Huh? Part of C++'s problem is that it takes too long for obvious good stuff to get into the language. It stays the same for years at a crack inbetween the committees approving stuff. Python in contrast can see a release every few months. Python is a moving target. C++ is not. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Mike Meyer wrote: You wind up having to invoke the function through your data object, and then pass the data object in - sort of as an explicit self. Yeah, and us pythonists hate explicit self! ;) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Joseph Garvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mike Meyer wrote: You wind up having to invoke the function through your data object, and then pass the data object in - sort of as an explicit self. Yeah, and us pythonists hate explicit self! ;) Except the explicit self is on the method invocation, and not in the method definition! So you wind up repeating the variable name. mike -- Mike Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:55:20 -0400, rumours say that Mike Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] might have written: Actually, I was thinking of pre-KR Unix compilers. There must be something I am missing here, cause I don't understand what you mean; what is the earliest KR C compiler (Unix compiler) you consider as such? Were there other Unix C compilers before KR wrote one? Or are you considering as KR Unix compilers those after the publication of the white book and before C89? -- TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best. Dear Paul, please stop spamming us. The Corinthians -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Were there other Unix C compilers before KR wrote one? Considering that KR (along with T) invented both Unix and C, I would say that the answer to the above has to be No. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:55:20 -0400, rumours say that Mike Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] might have written: Actually, I was thinking of pre-KR Unix compilers. There must be something I am missing here, cause I don't understand what you mean; what is the earliest KR C compiler (Unix compiler) you consider as such? Were there other Unix C compilers before KR wrote one? Or are you considering as KR Unix compilers those after the publication of the white book and before C89? The latter. I was considering KR Unix compilers to be the compiler described by the white KR book - what is basically the v7 Unix C compiler. Thwe v6 compiler didn't do op=, it still did =op. We used the photo7 C compiler on our v6 system. I don't believe that was written by KR. mike -- Mike Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: can Python do it all? More or less. There are two places where python falls down, IMHO. One is performance: python isn't generally as fast as C or Java, even with Psyco. However, the number of cases where performance - and absolute straight-line performance of the code - actually matters is much smaller than you might think. Also, you can incorporate C into python pretty easily. The other is in bit-twiddling - anything that involves mucking about with data at the level of bits and bytes. Maybe this is just blind prejudice, but i'm never as comfortable hacking on that sort of stuff (writing a Huffman coder, say) in python as in java. Other than that, python is pure victory. I am wondering what to learn as my scripting language. Python. I have read that perl is good up to about 250 lines, and after that it gets kind of hairy. That's putting it mildly. I would like opinions as to the suitability of Python as a general purpose language for programming unix, everything from short scripts to muds. Python is, all things considered, definitely the best such language. There are strong arguments that can be made in favour of younger cousins of Python such as Ruby and Lua, but none of those have anything like the userbase or third-party code that Python does, and that counts for a lot. LISP (or rather Scheme) would be a more unusual option; it's a language that most people hate, but that people who really take the time to learn it love with a fervour bordering on scary. tom -- In-jokes for out-casts -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Let me express it with an exaple (by the way, sorry for my bad english): Suppose you are planning to build a house. You have two choices: - Option one: Buy several thousands bricks, doors, tiles, windows, etc... put them all together according to the blueprints and build your home. - Option two: Get loads of sand, concrete, wood and raw materials, make your own bricks, make each door and windows with your prefered kind of wood, design and make your tiles, etc.. and after a long, long time, create a unique, one of a kind house. Option one would be like using Python for creating your programs. It gives you all the built-in functions and high level data structures with which you can create a solution for almost any kind of problem you might want to solve. You don't have to spend time allocating memmory, using pointers, creting your data structures from scratch, etc, etc.. because it's all there already available for you, and all these time consuming, error-prone tasks are very well hadled by python itself. Option two is like using C: It gives you full control in the creating on your program, but 90% of the times (or more) you might think do I really need to go through all this hassle?. Sure, it will be faster but, do I really need this extra speed?. I think that with the current processors, speed and performance is less an isue than it was a few years ago. Most of the times, developing time is paramount. And even if you need very good execution speed for a given task, you can still code an extension in c or c++ and keep all the benefits of a high level programming language such as python. And if these arguments still can't convince you, be adviced that there's a very ambicious and exciting project called Pypy which aims to create a high performance python implementation, and it is being developed very succesfully. They say that the secret goal is being faster than c... and I'm not sure but I think that there's a tentative hard line set to december of 2006. Check it out: http://codespeak.net/pypy/index.cgi?news Cheers, Luis -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
On 2005-06-30, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have read in the old days that C was used for everything. It was a systems programming language, and also did a lot of the same stuff Bash scripts and perl do now. Not really. C was used for a lot of stuff (mostly just under Unix), but there was still tons of COBOL, FORTRAN, Lisp, and a bunch of other languages. Under Unix bourne shell (from which bash evolved) has always been popular for scripting. Sed and awk scripts have been popular for ages as well. Other OSes have various JCL and batch scripting languages. C was only popular under Unix OSes -- under most other OSes, C wasn't popular at all. MacOS and Windows APIs were originally designed for use by Pascal, VAX/VMS was apparently intended to be used via FORTRAN and BLISS-32. C was later made available on those platforms but you could tell it didn't really fit well with the OS. So, in that era, C did it all, from short to tall. My memory only goes back about 25 years, but that was never true in my experience. My question is, can Python do it all? I am wondering what to learn as my scripting language. First, stop thinking in the singular. For starters I'd recommend bash, Python, and awk. Add perl if you like, but I think it's syntax/semantics are extraordinarily nasty (I even find the Lisp family of languages far easier to read). I have read that perl is good up to about 250 lines, and after that it gets kind of hairy. In my experience it get's hairy a lot faster than that. :) However, from what little I have heard about Python, it's very well suited for readability due to the whitespace requirements of the language, and very good for large projects due to it's large amount of modules and it's object oriented structure. True. I would like opinions as to the suitability of Python as a general purpose language for programming unix, everything from short scripts to muds. I use Python for all sorts of programs under from a couple lines for a normal text filter to thousands of lines with a complex GUI. [Why are Python programs referred to as scripts. Python no more a scripting language than Java, Pascal, Smalltalk, Objective C.] -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Yow! We're going to at a new disco! visi.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
On 2005-06-30, Ivan Van Laningham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As other have noted, C was never really used for everything. Unix tools were designed to connect together from the very beginning, which is what makes shell scripting so powerful. This was true before there was a C. Likewise, some things you need more control over the machine than you get in C - those are still done in assembler. These days, C compilers let you embed assembler statements in your C, so some of these things are done in such variants. It really was used for everything; I think there are two intepretations of C being used for everthing. My reading of that phrase is that nothing else was used: there were no shell scripts, no awk scripts, no FORTRAN programs, no JCL, no COBOL, no Lisp, no sed. That just was never the case. There never was a C-language monoculture in any OS. Another possible interpretation is that at some point in the past, there was some misguided soul who has tried to use C for every type of task imaginable. That's probably true, but the same could be said of any language. -- Grant Edwards -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Grant Edwards wrote: [Why are Python programs referred to as scripts. Python no more a scripting language than Java, Pascal, Smalltalk, Objective C.] I think it's because the term script is a nice, simple word that evokes the idea of source file that can be directly executed, which is a convenient thing to be able to say in fewer words than that... I think it would be unusual for anyone to refer to a multi-file Python program as merely a script. We do often call individual source files in a large Python program scripts, but I think that's probably just out of habit or association: calling single Python source files scripts is so common, even if they aren't scripts in the sense of individually executable files written in a scripting language any more. -Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Python for everything?
I posted a article earlier pertaining programming for my boss. Now I am gonna ask a question about programming for myself. I just finished my first C++ Class. Next semester is a class on encryption(and it's probably gonna be a math class too). And finally back in programming in the fall with C++ and Java 1. The C++ will cover pointers, and linked lists, sorting algorithms, etc... I run linux and OS X. I have read in the old days that C was used for everything. It was a systems programming language, and also did a lot of the same stuff Bash scripts and perl do now. So, in that era, C did it all, from short to tall. My question is, can Python do it all? I am wondering what to learn as my scripting language. I have read that perl is good up to about 250 lines, and after that it gets kind of hairy. However, from what little I have heard about Python, it's very well suited for readability due to the whitespace requirements of the language, and very good for large projects due to it's large amount of modules and it's object oriented structure. I would like opinions as to the suitability of Python as a general purpose language for programming unix, everything from short scripts to muds. Thanks for your patience, opinions, and comments. Xeys -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Python for everything except things that need to be ridiculously optimized for speed. Thats what C embedded in Python and Psyco enhanced Python code is for. Oh wait, thats still all Python... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Short answer is yes. Longer answer: You will still need C for device drivers and other applications that have high performance demands. Calling C from Python is quite easy. Python can be used from short shell scripting to projects that very large (see Zope, Plone, ReportLab, etc). Other than C, Python is the only language that I've been able to write Windows Services (or *nix daemons), COM objects, GUI programs, text programs, and headless programs (e.g. programs that produce no console output). I'm much more productive with Python. By choosing Python you commit to learning one language extremely well instead of jumping all over with different languages that you can remember only poorly. When new version of Python ships, you just learn what is new. If you try to keep up with C, C++, Visual Basic, ... it gets to be impossible. Hope information helps. Larry Bates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I posted a article earlier pertaining programming for my boss. Now I am gonna ask a question about programming for myself. I just finished my first C++ Class. Next semester is a class on encryption(and it's probably gonna be a math class too). And finally back in programming in the fall with C++ and Java 1. The C++ will cover pointers, and linked lists, sorting algorithms, etc... I run linux and OS X. I have read in the old days that C was used for everything. It was a systems programming language, and also did a lot of the same stuff Bash scripts and perl do now. So, in that era, C did it all, from short to tall. My question is, can Python do it all? I am wondering what to learn as my scripting language. I have read that perl is good up to about 250 lines, and after that it gets kind of hairy. However, from what little I have heard about Python, it's very well suited for readability due to the whitespace requirements of the language, and very good for large projects due to it's large amount of modules and it's object oriented structure. I would like opinions as to the suitability of Python as a general purpose language for programming unix, everything from short scripts to muds. Thanks for your patience, opinions, and comments. Xeys -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have read in the old days that C was used for everything. It was a systems programming language, and also did a lot of the same stuff Bash scripts and perl do now. I learned C in the old days (1977 or maybe 78). We had plenty of other tools for scripting. Before perl, we certainly had shell scripts (although the early shells were not as powerful as bash/ksh/etc), along with a healthy dose of utilities like grep/sed/sort and awk. I don't know anybody who tried to do everything in C. My question is, can Python do it all? Probably not. I couldn't imagine writing an operating system in Python; you'd never get the performance you need. For very low-level stuff that interfaces with hardware and twiddles with bits, it's probably the wrong tool as well. I am wondering what to learn as my scripting language. Python is an excellent scripting language, and I strongly urge you to learn it. But, for certain niches, there are better tools. If you main goal is to execute other processes and manipulate files, for example, bash is probably a better tool. Often, your choice of tool will be dictated by external constraints. If you're trying to interface to some third-party system which only has a perl or java API (not an uncommon situation), you're going to be doing it in perl or java. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Python is in my opinion the best all-purpose language ever designed ( lisp is extremely cool but not as all purpose.) Much more elegant than perl and far far easier to do cool things than java (java is c++ on valium). HOWEVER, all purpose needs a little disclosure. A well coded C program may be 100 times faster than Python. C forces you to learn some things about relative addressing and memory management. C is pretty much required for interrupt handling. Python is coded in C. (everthing is coded in C, including C) The C language embodies a language design philosophy which has influenced everything for 30 years. So Python is just a wonderful way to learn about things like algorithms, with relatively little pain. But the bottom line for a would be computer scientist is that Python is sort of like a model or an abstraction of C (which itself is a very weak (but convenient) model of the CPU) IMHO There probably is NO college where you can get out of C++ and Java. Too bad. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I posted a article earlier pertaining programming for my boss. Now I am gonna ask a question about programming for myself. I just finished my first C++ Class. Next semester is a class on encryption(and it's probably gonna be a math class too). And finally back in programming in the fall with C++ and Java 1. The C++ will cover pointers, and linked lists, sorting algorithms, etc... I run linux and OS X. I have read in the old days that C was used for everything. It was a systems programming language, and also did a lot of the same stuff Bash scripts and perl do now. So, in that era, C did it all, from short to tall. My question is, can Python do it all? I am wondering what to learn as my scripting language. I have read that perl is good up to about 250 lines, and after that it gets kind of hairy. However, from what little I have heard about Python, it's very well suited for readability due to the whitespace requirements of the language, and very good for large projects due to it's large amount of modules and it's object oriented structure. I would like opinions as to the suitability of Python as a general purpose language for programming unix, everything from short scripts to muds. Thanks for your patience, opinions, and comments. Xeys -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I posted a article earlier pertaining programming for my boss. Now I am
gonna ask a question about programming for myself. I just finished my
first C++ Class. Next semester is a class on encryption(and it's
probably gonna be a math class too). And finally back in programming in
the fall with C++ and Java 1. The C++ will cover pointers, and linked
lists, sorting algorithms, etc... I run linux and OS X. I have read in
the old days that C was used for everything. It was a systems
programming language, and also did a lot of the same stuff Bash scripts
and perl do now. So, in that era, C did it all, from short to tall. My
question is, can Python do it all? I am wondering what to learn as my
scripting language. I have read that perl is good up to about 250
lines, and after that it gets kind of hairy. However, from what little
I have heard about Python, it's very well suited for readability due to
the whitespace requirements of the language, and very good for large
projects due to it's large amount of modules and it's object oriented
structure. I would like opinions as to the suitability of Python as a
general purpose language for programming unix, everything from short
scripts to muds. Thanks for your patience, opinions, and comments.
As other have noted, C was never really used for everything. Unix
tools were designed to connect together from the very beginning, which
is what makes shell scripting so powerful. This was true before there
was a C. Likewise, some things you need more control over the machine
than you get in C - those are still done in assembler. These days, C
compilers let you embed assembler statements in your C, so some of
these things are done in such variants.
Some things require you to be able to generate machine code. Those
can't be done in any current implementation of Python. That doesn't
mean they'll never be doable in Python - just not now. As mentioned,
some things needvery explicit control over the generated machine
code. Those things aren't done in C now, and will never be done in C
or Python.
Rather than talk about how suitable Python is for programming in
general, I wanted to talk about the things you mentioned you'd be
learning.
Python doesn't have explicit pointers - except that every name is a
pointer. That makes it hard to learn about pointers with Python. You
can do data structures in Python, though. Just replace the C/C++
struct with a class, and manipulate the attributes like you'd
manipulate struct members. For instance, a linked list might be
represented by:
class ListNode:
def __init__(self, data):
self.data = data
self.next = None
A routine that manipulated a list might look like:
def cons(car, cdr): car.next = cdr
Though I'd be tempted to make it a method of ListNode:
def cons(self, cdr): self.next = cdr
You build a list from the back to the front like so:
LinkedList = cons(ListNode(1), cons(ListNode(2), ListNode(3)))
or
LinkedList = ListNode(1).cons(ListNode(2).cons(ListNode(3)))
(this is heavily influenced by LISP; you might prever a different
abstraction) and then you'd iterate over the list like so:
item = LinkedList
while item:
Process(item.data)
item = item.next
Compared to a C implementation, which would look like:
struct ListNode {
struct ListNode *next ;
void *data ;
} ;
and an iteration like so:
struct ListNode *item ;
item = LinkedList ;
while (item) {
Process(item-data) ;
item = item-next ;
}
I won't get into the details of building a list in C. It's just too
ugly.
Sorting is generally done on arrays, though there are methods that use
lists, etc. You can study those just fine in Python. However, those
are mostly of academic interest. Any computing platform worth
mentioning will have a good, general-purpose sort facility
available. Using that is certainly faster than writing and debugging
your own.
mike
--
Mike Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Hi All-- Mike Meyer wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As other have noted, C was never really used for everything. Unix tools were designed to connect together from the very beginning, which is what makes shell scripting so powerful. This was true before there was a C. Likewise, some things you need more control over the machine than you get in C - those are still done in assembler. These days, C compilers let you embed assembler statements in your C, so some of these things are done in such variants. It really was used for everything; C compilers have *always* let you include assembler, with the asm keyword. Unless you're talking about the early days of DOS/Windows compilers, about which I know little, but all *KR* compilers had asm. If you wanted to write kernel code and device driver code (including disk drivers) for large Unix systems, asm was a requirement. To put it in perspective, for Gould systems in the 80s, for the entire OS (BSD-derived Unix), there were under 100 lines of assembler, all in a very few device drivers (multiple thousands of lines of code, don't remember exactly how many). And living with structs instead of classes was not nearly as much of a pain in the butt as you make out; it was perfectly reasonable to include methods within structs, by including a pointer to a function. X10 and X11 showed just how object-oriented you could get with C, using callbacks with required signatures, and specifying how Widgets were to be written--contracts before there were contracts. It's true that OO languages are better, and languages like Python which allow you to combine fairly low-level calls with an OO worldview make life *vastly* easier, but C is still hugely flexible, highly adaptable, and very powerful. For about 10 or 15 years there, knowing C was pretty much a guarantee of a good job. That changed when C++ compilers became common and good and not merely preprocessors that wrote really, really ugly C. Metta, while(*s++=*p++);-ly y'rs, Ivan;-) -- Ivan Van Laningham God N Locomotive Works http://www.andi-holmes.com/ http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html Army Signal Corps: Cu Chi, Class of '70 Author: Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python for everything?
Ivan Van Laningham [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mike Meyer wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As other have noted, C was never really used for everything. Unix tools were designed to connect together from the very beginning, which is what makes shell scripting so powerful. This was true before there was a C. Likewise, some things you need more control over the machine than you get in C - those are still done in assembler. These days, C compilers let you embed assembler statements in your C, so some of these things are done in such variants. It really was used for everything; C compilers have *always* let you include assembler, with the asm keyword. Unless you're talking about the early days of DOS/Windows compilers, about which I know little, but all *KR* compilers had asm. Actually, I was thinking of pre-KR Unix compilers. The v6 Unix compiler, and the photo7 compiler. I don't believe they had asm statements. If they did, it wasn't used in the v6 kernel. And living with structs instead of classes was not nearly as much of a pain in the butt as you make out; it was perfectly reasonable to include methods within structs, by including a pointer to a function. X10 and X11 showed just how object-oriented you could get with C, using callbacks with required signatures, and specifying how Widgets were to be written--contracts before there were contracts. Yeah, X is a good example of how to do OO programming in a non-OO language. The current BSD kernels do the same kind of things. But I'd say it was a bigger pain in the but than I made out to be. You wind up having to invoke the function through your data object, and then pass the data object in - sort of as an explicit self. It's true that OO languages are better, and languages like Python which allow you to combine fairly low-level calls with an OO worldview make life *vastly* easier, but C is still hugely flexible, highly adaptable, and very powerful. For about 10 or 15 years there, knowing C was pretty much a guarantee of a good job. That changed when C++ compilers became common and good and not merely preprocessors that wrote really, really ugly C. I still use C when I need more control/speed than I can get out of Python (or something modern). And for wrapping things to use in HLLs. mike -- Mike Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
