🌐 Mailman 3 August 2004 - Python-list - python.org

Re: Announcing PyCs, a new Python-like language on .Net
by Tom B. Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

"Mark Hahn" <mark(a)prothon.org> wrote in message news:mailman.2572.1093751093.5135.python-list@python.org... > > This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new > Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like IronPython, > PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features and > probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation > technique. See http://pycs.org. > > PyCs is a fusion of Python and C#. It is the first Python-like dynamic > language with all the capabilities of C# including the capabilities of the > research language C-Omega (http://research.microsoft.com/Comega/) including > the X# language features > (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Egmb/Papers/vanilla-xml2003.html) that embed > XML/SQL support directly in the language. At the same time PyCs keeps all > the advantages of the Python language and the Python way. > > PyCs will not be source compatible with either C# or Python but code could > be ported from either one easily. > > PyCs is being developed by Mark Hahn who developed Prothon and PyCs grew > out of the initial efforts to port Prothon to .Net. For an explanation of > why the Prothon port to .Net turned into a whole new language, see > http://prothon.org/pycsnews.htm. > > PyCs is just now starting development and will be developed using the same > XP-like language design process used to develop Prothon. This process will > use the PyCs mailing list to design the language where Mark acts as > moderator and implements the language in real-time as the ideas are worked > out. He will be working on PyCs full-time and drive the development just as > he did with Prothon. > > Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a > low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the > design of the latest and greatest dynamic language. > > -- Mark Hahn, http://pycs.org > Python already does all the things that M*soft has tacked on in a kludgy way, in a beautiful pythonic way. I have been using windows based machines for a long time and in the language department (as well as others) M*soft has been superceded by the open source community. Tom

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Re: Announcing PyCs, a new Python-like language on .Net
by Tom B. Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

> > PyCs is a fusion of Python and C#. > > All joking not aside, what is next, P? > > -jack > How about P# , nice and short for the cut and paste challenged. By naming it PyCs they are just trying to glom (or is that glob) onto Python's fame. Why not just name it something new like Omnimegagolopolic-OO. Tom

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Re: File System
by Max M Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

Aaron Bingham wrote: > Hello Maboroshi, > > You are not the first to think that there might be an alternative to the > filesystem. Here are a few links to sites for projects where > filesystems have been rethought or eliminated in very different ways. > Most of this is unfortunately vaporware. This is by no means a complete No, you forgot www.zope.org Especially Zope 3 This could easily be seen as a model for an object oriented filesystem. regards Max M

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allowing braces around suites
by Kjetil Torgrim Homme Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

often when re-factoring code, I need to change the indent level of some chunk of code. due to the lack of an end marker, my Emacs has to use heuristics when re-indenting, and this will occasionally lead to mistakes. of course this is really _my_ fault, not Emacs', but it's annoying all the same. a colleague uses #fi, #yrt etc. to mark the end of blocks, but I don't find this satisfactory since neither Python nor Emacs has any knowledge of what the magic comment means. my suggestion is to allow braces to mark the suites. Python is still strictly enforcing indentation, in fact, in some ways it's stricter then before. code which uses braces and is wrongly re-indented will always cause a syntax error during compilation. code could look like this: def appraise_insurance(rental_cars): { assert isinstance(rental_cars, (list, tuple)) for car in rental_cars: { if car.make == "Lamborghini": { car.insurance = 1000.00 } elif car.make == "Lada": { car.insurance = 50.00 } else: { car.insurance = 100.00 } } logger.debug("Insurance values updated") } now, I don't suggest to write code like that, that has far too much air between actual codelines. I'd only add the braces where there is a risk re-indentation changing the meaning of the program, like this: def appraise_insurance(rental_cars): assert isinstance(rental_cars, (list, tuple)) for car in rental_cars: { if car.make == "Lamborghini": car.insurance = 1000.00 elif car.make == "Lada": car.insurance = 50.00 else: car.insurance = 100.00 } logger.debug("Insurance values updated") the single pair of braces is enough. there is now no risk of Emacs including the debug line into the else branch unnoticed. the patch to implement this is very simple and restricted to the tokenizer. as it stands, it requires the braces to be placed as in the above examples, you _can't_ write if True: { code } else { code } a single braces style improves readability and style consistency among software projects. my patch does allow two styles, though: to reduce line count you can put the else: on the same line as the closing brace. if True: { code } else: { code } in both styles, the braces line up and IMHO this makes it easier to identify where a medium sized block begins and ends. there can be no code after an opening brace, but it's a good place to put a comment, so in practice the number of added lines may not be so large. a small caveat: it breaks code which looks like this: def test_varargs1(self): """some text""" {}.has_key(0) this function is taken from Lib/test/test_call.py, but the doc string was added to make my patched Python reject it with a syntax error. the problem is that a brace at the same indent level as the line above will always mark the beginning of a new suite. I don't think such code is widespread, but would be interested in hearing contrary experiences. one fix for this issue is to have the parser tell the tokenizer whether "a suite may follow" when it asks for the next token, but I haven't persued writing such a patch. a patch relative to Python 2.4a2 is available at http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~kjetilho/hacks/braces-python-2.4a2.patch what do you think? should I write a PEP? -- Kjetil T.

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OT: simple compiled languages?
by Paul Rubin Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

I'm wondering what other languages clpy'ers are familiar with, that have simple implmentations with compilers. I'm asking out of general interest, not for a specific application. Usually, discussions of small languages revolve around interpreters so I'm asking specifically about languages with compilers. Qualifications: - Simple compact implementation, not too many LOC and not too many machine resources needed. Example: Ron Cain's Small-C and its descendants. Tiny CC (www.tinycc.org) is pushing the complexity limits for what I have in mind. - Real compiler, must generate real machine code (not threaded code or byte code or asm macros) that's not too horrible, but needn't make serious optimizing attempts. Compiler should at least in principle be retargetable to multiple cpu's. Load-and-go operation (i.e. no external assembler needed) is highly desirable. - Real language with datatypes and semantics, not a fancy assembler or FORTH. Static or dynamic typing are both fine. Fancy parsing is not required, e.g. Lisp-like syntax is fine. - Preferably self hosting, i.e. the compiler should be able to compile itself, once you've gotten a running instance of the compiler somehow. Among other things, this helps establish that the language is actually useable. Ideas?

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RE: has_method
by Batista, Facundo Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

[Gandalf] #- Does anyone knows how to tell if an object has a method with a given #- name? How can I access that method? >>> class C: def mymeth(self): return >>> c = C() >>> dir(c) ['__doc__', '__module__', 'mymeth'] >>> c.mymeth <bound method C.mymeth of <__main__.C instance at 0x009ACBC0>> >>> . Facundo

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Give * operator "deep copy"
by nicksjacobson＠yahoo.com Sept. 1, 2004

Sept. 1, 2004

This question is with regard to the * operator as used for sequence concatenation. There's the well-known gotcha: a = [[1, 2]] b = a*3 b[0][0] = 4 print b Result: [[4, 2], [4, 2], [4, 2]] When you wanted: [[4, 2], [1, 2], [1, 2]] My question is, since b = a*3 is equivalent to b = a + a + a, why not use deep copies of a? That is, let b = a*3 be equivalent to: b = copy.deepcopy(a) + copy.deepcopy(a) + copy.deepcopy(a) It seems much more likely that someone would want to create copies of an item, rather than inserting the same item several times into the list. If this has been previously discussed/documented, please point me to where I can read about it. Thanks! --Nick

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Setting up Tix
by bncarper＠cs.com Aug. 31, 2004

Aug. 31, 2004

I get the following message when tryin to setup Tix on Linux rh7.3: >>> import Tix >>> root = Tix.Tk() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/lib-tk/Tix.py", line 210, in __init__ self.tk.eval('package require Tix') _tkinter.TclError: couldn't load file "/usr/lib/libtix": /usr/lib/libtix.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory >>> I have libtix8.1.8.4.a and libtix8.1.8.4.so in /usr/local/lib. I guess I'm not sure how to set the varibles to correctly point at the /usr/local directory. Bob

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would be nice: import from archive
by Dan Perl Aug. 31, 2004

Aug. 31, 2004

Here is a python feature that I would like: to be able to import modules from an archive like the jar files in Java. Maybe a regular tar file? Maybe a python specific file type, let's call it a 'par' file? It would be useful in packaging an python library. Sure, there's always the python packages, but a single file instead of a whole directory tree would be more convenient. I am particularly interested because I am working on a framework/toolkit and I am using a configuration divided into several modules. It would be nice to be able to save configurations (combinations of several modules) into single archive files and then switch between configurations by pointing to one such archive file. I am quite new to python so I should ask first whether there is already something like that, although I did a search already. Or maybe such a feature has already been discussed somewhere? If this is an original idea, how can I propose it for future releases? Dan Perl (yes, I'm Mr. Perl, but I'm using Python, after all Perl is not my middle name, it's my last name)

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Beeping the console
by Jeffrey Barish Aug. 31, 2004

Aug. 31, 2004

What is the easiest way to beep the console from a Python program (i.e., to do the same thing as echo -e \a)? -- Jeffrey Barish

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