Python Forum

Is there a good way to determine if an object is a numeric type? Generally, I avoid type-checks in favor of try/except blocks, but I'm not sure what to do in this case: def f(i): ... if x < i: ... The problem is, no error will be thrown if 'i' is, say, a string:

Hi, I've been using Python for about 2 years now, for my honours project and now my postgrad project. I must say that I am loving it more and more now. From my knowledge, Python bytecodes are not back-compatible. I must say that my technical background isn't strong enough but is there any good reason for not being back-compatible in...

Hi, I'd like to write a windows app that accesses a locally stored database. There are a number of tables, the largest of which has 455,905 records. Can anyone recommend a database that runs on Windows, is fast / efficient and can be shipped without restrictions or extra downloads? I have googled and found plenty of information on...

import socket, thread host, port = '192.168.0.3', 1434 s1 = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) s2 = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) s2.connect((host, 1433)) s1.bind((host, port)) s1.listen(1) cn, addr = s1.accept() def VB_SCRIPT():

Hello, Python regular expressions must not have more than 100 capturing groups. The source code responsible for this reads as follows: # XXX: <fl> get rid of this limitation! if p.pattern.groups > 100: raise AssertionError( "sorry, but this version only supports 100 named groups"

Buenos dias, amigos! I have to write _simple_ gui library, for embedding into game. My first attempt was to use XML: isn't it cute to describe ui in such a way: <window> <title>Hello World!</title> <image text="nice picture here" pos=... src=... /> <text opts=...> (some text here)

The numerical robustness of Python is very poor - this is not its fault, but that of IEEE 754 and (even more) C99. In particular, erroneous numerical operations often create apparently valid numbers, and the NaN state can be lost without an exception being raised. For example, try int(float("nan")). Don't even ASK about complex, unless...

Can these operators be overloaded? If so. How?

Hi, I want to be a professional python programmer, unfortunately I'm working on technical support and don't have the time/patience to start making projects my self. I tried to apply to some Python positions but unfortunately sometimes to work as a programmer is really hard in this world, every employee requires professional experience and...

hello, I discovered that boolean evaluation in Python is done "fast" (as soon as the condition is ok, the rest of the expression is ignored). Is this standard behavior or is there a compiler switch to turn it on/off ? thanks, Stef Mientki

I'm afraid that the GIL is killing the usefullness of python for some types of applications now where 4,8 oder 64 threads on a chip are here or comming soon. What is the status about that for the future of python? I know that at the moment allmost nobody in the scripting world has solved this problem, but it bites and it bites hard. Only...

Hi I am new to Python and have recieved this error message when trying to instantiate an object from a class from another file within the same directory and wondered what I have done wrong. I have a Step.py class: class Step(object) def __init__(self, sName): "Initialise a new Step instance"

Hi, say I have a string like the following: s1 = 'hi_cat_bye_dog' and I want to replace the even '_' with ':' and the odd '_' with ',' so that I get a new string like the following: s2 = 'hi:cat,bye:dog' Is there a common recipe to accomplish that? I can't come up with any solution...

Why is the migration to py3k a concern? For example I have libraries which use string%dictionary substitution where the dictionary is actually an object which emulates a dictionary. The __getitem__ for the object can be very expensive and is only called when needed by the string substitution. In py3k string%dictionary is going away. Why?...

Is it possible to write a list comprehension for this so as to produce a list of two-item tuples? base_scores = range(8, 19) score_costs = print zip(base_scores, score_costs) I can't think of how the structure of the list comprehension would work in this case, because it seems to require iteration over two separate sequences to produce...

I have just re-read the list of changes in Python 2.6, it's huge, there are tons of changes and improvements, I'm really impressed: http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.6.html I'll need many days to learn all those changes! I can see it fixes several of the missing things/problems I have found in Python in the past, like the lack of...

I am concerned by the lack of follow-through on some responses to recent ideas I have described. Do I merely have a wrong understanding of group policy? Is it a good policy (defined with respect to the future of Python and the welfare of humans at large) if so? Is there a serious lack of diligence, or should I merely take more initiative,...

What do you think of this Python logo? http://pythonology.org/logos Good, bad, indifferent, love it, hate it? -- Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law): "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of

I have a program in which I make very good use of a memoizer: def memoize(callable): cache = {} def proxy(*args): try: return cache except KeyError: return cache.setdefault(args, callable(*args)) return proxy which, is functionally equivalent to

This is somewhat a NEWBIE question... My company maintains a small RDBS driven website. We currently generate HTML using PHP. I've hacked a bit in Python, and generally think it is a rather cool language. I've done Perl and like it, there are a few features of PHP I like but overall am not too excited about it. I have found PHP's...

This article is posted at the request of C.W. Yang who asked me to detail my opinion of Lisp, and for the benefit of people like him, who may find themselves intrigued by this language. The opinions expressed herein are my personal ones, coming from several years of experience with Lisp. I did plenty of AI programming back in the day, ...

Hello, I'm Peter, and I'm very much a newbie. New in the sense of being a novice at everything to do with programming, rather than just new to Python, so please be very explicit in your replies (should you deem me worth of such attention). I've long had a passing interest in programming from a macro-conceptual level, but only very recently...

I see the value of a class when two or more instances will be created, but Python programmers regularly use a class when there will only be one instance. What is the benefit of this? It has a disadvantage of a whole lot of "self." being required everywhere, making the code less readable. Also, since a strength of Python is rapid...

Let us assume I have a list like and would like to transoform it into the string '{1,2},{7,8},{12,13}' Which is the simplest way of achiebing this? (The list is in fact much longer and I may have to cut the resulting strings into chunks of 100 or

Hi, I'm currently checking out Python as an alternative to VB.Net to moving from VB, but can't find a GUI designer that is as good as VB. I tried wxDesigner and wxGlade, but neither lets me move the widgets around. I also tried Dialogblocks, but it seems to only handle C++ or XRC, not Python.