Re: newbie question

the library functions. They will take proper account of the character set being used (which you shouldn't even have to know for a task like this, let alone make unsafe assumptions about). -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Number of languages known [was Re: Python is readable] - somewhat OT

I've ever known have had experience with quite a lot of languages. I know 10 languages. But I'm not telling you what base that number is :) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: what happens inside?

to be sure that something can't change. In particular, efficient dictionary implementations need the keys to be immutable, because it you change a key it /really/ fouls up the look-up. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Strong typing vs. strong testing

. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

that in *all* cases you do whatever is *clearest*, then switch to the other one if and only if performance is unacceptable *and* profiling reveals this to be the bottleneck? That avoids your deadlock (or is it livelock?) state. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

* the program by the user. Who -- unless AI has advanced further than I thought -- is *outside* the program. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

mandatory, not merely the only clean way to exit. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

has happened that *should* have, because it happens to have the right behaviour (even if the overhead doesn't matter), then one is misrepresenting the program logic. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

2009/10/11 Philip Semanchuk phi...@semanchuk.com: IMHO, break, goto, etc. have their place, but they're ripe for abuse which leads to spaghetti code. Unrestricted goto can leat to spaghetti code, but surely break can't? AFAICS, any break construct will still be H-K reducible. -- Tim Rowe

Re: The rap against while True: loops

for flow control. Thankfully, python programmers are less dogmatic, and use whatever makes sense to use. I hope. Absolutely. And it doesn't make sense to use exceptions for flow control :-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

) And with enough static analysis to guarantee that the break will be reached? I think it would be a bit much to expect Python to solve the halting problem! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The rap against while True: loops

, if you can define a loop variant then you gurantee that the loop will terminate. Even if you are not being formal, just considering what the loop variants and invariants can save no end of trouble with tricky loops. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Haskell's new logo, and the idiocy of tech geekers

idiot... motherfucking aggresive it's just few of priest fuckheads look at lojban's motherfucking idiotic logo If you really knew anything about social function you would be able to work out why people think you are a troll. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: An assessment of the Unicode standard

it was released. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: An assessment of the Unicode standard

that this just looked and sounded like grief and wasn't actually grief. By the way, at the moment I am thinking of a sort of purple blob-shaped monster with tentacles and fangs, that my language doesn't have a word for and that I have never seen. On your theory, how come I am thinking about it? -- Tim

Re: Confessions of a Python fanboy

2009/7/31 Steven D'Aprano st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au: On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:47:04 +0100, Tim Rowe wrote: That and the fact that I couldn't stop laughing for long enough to learn any more when I read in the Pragmatic Programmer's Guide that Ruby, unlike less flexible languages, lets

Re: Confessions of a Python fanboy

languages, lets you alter the value of a constant. Yep, as they say Bug = Undocumented feature! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Confessions of a Python fanboy

2009/7/30 superpollo u...@example.net: Tim Rowe wrote: Any language that gets any sort of real use has to have. For instance, I love Ada's numeric types (you can specify either the minimum number of significant figures or the maximum delta for a real type, and it will give you a type

Re: Help understanding the decisions *behind* python?

on the concept of dictionaries it's not obscure at all! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Calling functions: Why this complicated ?

in Ada. I shall now enter a period of self-refelection to try to work out why I am so inconsistent :-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

in the production run-time then there's something wrong with your development and testing processes. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

. You *know* the input is often wrong, but you're not bothering to check it? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: language analysis to enforce code standards

that just checks that the comment exists without understanding its contents simply is not adding value but is rather petty bureaucracy that will annoy the programmers. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

to be a response to the persistent refusal to accept his assurances that he is not using the assertions for run-time error checking, nor teaching the students to do that, -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

is saddening, and indicative of why there's so much buggy software out there. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Which one is best Python or Java for developing GUI applications?

for developing GUI! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: best void return of a member function

Ada MS Windows thick wrappers (ie, ones that feel natural to Ada) are built on top of Win32Ada, which stays as close to the underlying C interface as it can. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

that you know the difference. Sorry for the confusion. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

; if ((bilbo() == 0) || (gandalf() == 0) { /* lot's of code here */ } else rval = -1; return rval; } I'd be inclined to do it that way even if multiple exits were allowed; it just seems so much clearer. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

. And then by showing the conclusion is false, you believe you have shown a contradiction? Try looking up Affirming the consequent! GOTO is an /unstructured/ jump. Raise, break, continue, if, for and so an are all /structured/ jumps. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: need to start a new project , can python do all that ?

case there would be no reason for him not to cut his Python teeth (fangs?) on it. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

in Ada (it shows its Pascal roots) but in all the studies I've seen Ada production code has consistently shown fewer errors than the more concise C/C++ family of languages. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

see that it pretty much *is* Modula2. So whether Modula2 was a direct influence or not, it seems to have found its way in. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

2009/4/17 Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com: Spaghetti code can be written in *any* language. I challenge you to write spahgetti code in SPARK! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: need to start a new project , can python do all that ?

. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: need to start a new project , can python do all that ?

), or you could find yourself either with an application you can't use or a very big lawsuit and possibly jail if it goes wrong. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why does Python show the whole array?

2009/4/9 Miles semantic...@gmail.com: Clearly, any comparison with a boolean literal should be illegal.  ;) Hey, we could have strict type checking at compile time of /all/ operations, couldn't we? Anybody care to join me over at the Ada list? ;-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman

Re: A design problem I met again and again.

will be too trivial, and it won't give you the derived classes you need, but it's a good first step to breaking a problem down, and might help break your one big class habit. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: python for loop

. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: How complex is complex?

2009/3/20 Hendrik van Rooyen m...@microcorp.co.za: A joke based on the Monty Python series is BY DEFINITION not stupid! But may get /too/ silly. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Threads not Improving Performance in Program

applications, each one has different compromises. You've just discovered one of Python's. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Rough draft: Proposed format specifier for a thousands separator

in the proposal being considered addresses any of that. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Rough draft: Proposed format specifier for a thousands separator

confusion.. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Rough draft: Proposed format specifier for a thousands separator

and non-professional programmers find the locale approach to be frustrating, arcane and non-obvious then by all means propose a way of making it simpler and clearer, but not a bodge that will increase the amount of bad software in the world. -1 for all of the proposals. -- Tim Rowe -- http

Re: Indentations and future evolution of languages

2009/3/8 Tim Roberts t...@probo.com: Tim Rowe digi...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think the article is right that it's silly to have some expression/statement groupings indentation based and some grouped by enclosing tokens -- provided it's done right. The OCAML-based language F# accepts OCAML

Re: Is python worth learning as a second language?

-- a reasonable programmer can become productive in Python very quickly. For one programmer's experience of learning Python have a look at http://www.python.org/about/success/esr/ (although I grant that Eric Raymond might count slightly higher than just a /reasonable/ programmer!) -- Tim Rowe -- http

Re: 2.6.1 - simple division

exactly in decimal can end up as recurring decimals in binary. 0.8 looks nice and tidy, but in binary (if I get this right) it's 0.1100110011001100..., recurring ad infinitum. The computer has to truncate it somewhere. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Indentations and future evolution of languages

). That seems to me to work pretty cleanly. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Performance of Python 3

in Ruby too) is to get the code working, then if there are any *measured* bottlenecks to optimise them in C++. That means that in practice there won't be a perceptible speed difference for the user. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: removing duplication from a huge list.

records, and it won't all fit into memory. So your observation is pertinent. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: removing duplication from a huge list.

as soon as they're checked, so with some clever buffering you can stop them from clogging up the buffer. The worst case is if there are a lot of genuine collisions, in which case it's probably not a very good hash. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Efficient searching through objects

think there are a couple that Python works well with, but I've never looked into that -- others will no doubt be along with recommendations now I've raised the subject. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Reference or Value?

. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Newby - is this what they are looking for ?? and is their a better a way

your tutor why he/she got you to convert the whole phrase to upper case, wasting a whole pile of character conversion operations under the hood, because it's only the acronym that needs to be converted :-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: try except question - serious foo bar question, and pulling my hair out :-)

an enlightening question; but, sometimes they just make unhelpfull wisecracks.  It's a tough choice. I used to use a baby, which avoids the embarrassment but can be just as problematic to order on the internet. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: datetime.time and midnight

are you interpreting it as a Boolean? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: get most common number in a list with tolerance

[10,30,20,20,11,12,13] and the tolerance were 2? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Will multithreading make python less popular?

. I think it will be a long search. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Will multithreading make python less popular?

will depend on the project. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Will multithreading make python less popular?

of /execution/ that is. Different languages have different trade-offs. Python's trade-offs suit us. If they don't suit you, use a language with trade-offs that do. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Will multithreading make python less popular?

threads and processes and programmer choose the way. I really believe that GIL is a design error. It's only an error if it gets in the way. It's the experience of a lot of programmers that it doesn't, so it's not an error. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Will multithreading make python less popular?

. But in the real world I doubt they're enough to make a significant dent in Python's popularity. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Will multithreading make python less popular?

, was a dream in Python when I'd probably still be coding it today in C++. Horses for courses. It's almost always wrong to say that language A is better than language B; the most you can say is that language A is better than language B for some specific task. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org

Re: Embarrasing questio

2009/2/12 km srikrishnamo...@gmail.com: Hi, you could do it this way also : if i in [3,5]: do something... True, you could do it, but it would be wrong. The original is true for i = 6, 9, 10, 12 and so on, but yours doesn't seem to be... -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman

Re: Putting asterisks around text

it without using a while loop, but to help you we need to know what *you* know). Like: do you understand what a while loop does? And so on. We're a pretty friendly bunch in here, but most of us believe in tough love (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love). -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org

Re: Weird Indentation? (Or: is there a for...else construct?)

about it? Except in the sense of inspiring awe, of course. No, Steven's example isn't broken, it works as the epydoc authors intended. (it's still in 3). Good. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Using while loop and if statement to tell if a binary has an odd or even number of 1's.

inefficient code. Is adding and a modulus *really^ more efficient than flipping a bool as I suggested? I think I'd want to see measurements! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Using while loop and if statement to tell if a binary has an odd or even number of 1's.

insisted on premature optimisation (The root of all evil, according to C A R Hoare), especially in a scripting language! -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Is c.l.py becoming less friendly?

2009/2/5 mk mrk...@gmail.com: (duck) 542 comp.lang.python rtfm 467 comp.lang.python shut+up 263 comp.lang.perl rtfm 45 comp.lang.perl shut+up Yes, but is there any real traffic on comp.lang.perl nowadays? Sorry, cheap shot ;-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo

Re: Is c.l.py becoming less friendly?

other form of hedging in a position that could modify the unfriendly text? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Couple of noobish question

-platform -- as long as we stay clear of the os module :-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

sys.float_info.epsilon

than 0.0 (which I think all representations can represent exactly). What am I missing here? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: sys.float_info.epsilon

) and will give me the answer inf) so presumably he's trying to protect against divide by zero. So my next question is whether there is any x that can be returned by float() such that x != 0 but some_number / (2 * x) raises a ZeroDivisionError? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python

Re: sys.float_info.epsilon

2009/2/4 Scott David Daniels scott.dani...@acm.org: Thanks for that. It makes me feel guilty to point out that: addition is not associative in real numbers should presumably be addition is not associative in floating point numbers. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo

Re: Couple of noobish question

have to use exception handling and catch the Windows case? That's the trouble with using anything in os, of course -- it's os dependent, which is why it's there! :-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Upgrade 2.6 to 3.0

with the differences between versions.. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: sys.float_info.epsilon

:-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Couple of noobish question

2009/2/5 afri...@yahoo.co.uk: On Feb 5, 11:14 am, Tim Rowe digi...@gmail.com wrote: ... On an MS Windows system, os.uname()[0] raises an AttributeError -- sys doesn't seem to contain uname. Is that a Linux thing? Would os.name work on Linux? Or would one have to use exception handling

Re: Using while loop and if statement to tell if a binary has an odd or even number of 1's.

. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Upgrade 2.6 to 3.0

, never mind 3.0). Unless all you want is in the standard library, I think it's worth the general user holding back for a while whilst the tool providers catch up. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Feet and inches

-- when fixed -- may be what you need. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: what IDE is the best to write python?

2009/2/3 Jervis Whitley jervi...@gmail.com: real programmers use ed. Ed? Eee, tha' were lucky. We had to make holes in Hollerith cards wi' our bare teeth... -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: is python Object oriented??

philosophy what would be the point of different languages? Is it worth mentioning (again) that Python is not Java? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: what IDE is the best to write python?

see how it would be any different to any other language. Admittedly I use the IDE because I like IDE's, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with a text editor and make -- the command line compiler is there. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: is python Object oriented??

2009/2/2 Russ P. russ.paie...@gmail.com: On Feb 2, 2:46 pm, Tim Rowe digi...@gmail.com wrote: No, we're supposed to believe that the designers of C++, Java, Ada, and Scala are all designers of languages that are not Python. If all languages had the same philosophy what would be the point

Re: search speed

2009/1/30 Scott David Daniels scott.dani...@acm.org: Be careful with your assertion that a regex is faster, it is certainly not always true. I was careful *not* to assert that a regex would be faster, merely that it was *likely* to be in this case. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org

Re: is python Object oriented??

oriented design (Python doesn't). So the answer to Is Python Object-Oriented is either yes or no, depending on what you're /really/ asking. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: search speed

positives. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Newby: how to transform text into lines of text

that treats '\n' as a terminator (eg, Linux) rather than as a separator (eg, MS DOS/Windows). Perhaps what you don't /really/ want to be reminded of is the existence of operating systems other than your preffered one? -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: A java hobbyist programmer learning python

don't recognise a difference between System and Applications Hungarian, by the way -- the difference is eliminated if you declare types corresponding to the meanings, which is commonplace in, for example, Ada. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Does Python really follow its philosophy of Readability counts?

not fit all, one language is not ideal for all applications. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Does Python really follow its philosophy of Readability counts?

(not the organisation) is more than a few people. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Does Python really follow its philosophy of Readability counts?

is tolerable. The loop variant can help with that, too. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The First Law Of comp.lang.python Dynamics

and the GIL. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The First Law Of comp.lang.python Dynamics

must surely know about Schluehr's Law? ;-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: The First Law Of comp.lang.python Dynamics

2009/1/23 Martin P. Hellwig martin.hell...@dcuktec.org: Or you can argue that even when an argument is repeated indefinitely it doesn't make it suddenly right. No, but it makes for a confirmation of Schluehr's law :-) -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Does Python really follow its philosophy of Readability counts?

-complete. Specifically, all loops that are required to terminate require a loop variant to be defined. Typically the loop variant is a finite non-negative integer that provably decreases on every pass of the loop, which makes halting decidable. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo

Re: Does Python really follow its philosophy of Readability counts?

of that is because of language differences and how much is because Ada tends to be used on critical projects that also tend to get a lot more attention to development standards. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Does Python really follow its philosophy of Readability counts?

after the Ariane 5 incident. I've been at jollier funerals. I can't help thinking that thinking that the team would have benefited from reading David Parnas's work on the specification of the A-7E avionics. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Noob question: Is all this typecasting normal?

, I'm quite interested about where in ATM you plan to use Python code, and how you will be meeting the applicable safety standards in the relevant administration. -- Tim Rowe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

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