On 6/27/10 5:16 AM, Thomas Jollans wrote:
On 06/27/2010 01:46 PM, rantingrick wrote:
P.S. Am I the only one who has never, ever, even *seen* a 'print'
statement in non-toy or non-bash-script-style code in any application
or even third-party library I looked at? Except, on occasion, for
quick and dirty debugging. Perhaps because I'm more used to
cross-platform to windows development, where a stray print can
actually break the entire application (depending on contexts, if one
is run under a service or sometimes even pythonw)
Oh i dunno, these "toys" include print...
[replying to Rick here, just cuz! -- I can get two replies into one that
way]
You did see "or non-bash-script-style code" right? Or? Or, meaning it
can be toy, or bash-script-style-code. Now you may have no idea what the
latter means, but no: I rather explicitly included a whole category of
uses which aren't toy code.
[Now, back to Thomas!]
Do your homework properly. I randomly checked a few of these. base64
includes a "Small main program", which is certainly "bash-script-style".
Quite a few of the other files don't use print-the-statement/function at
all, but use "print" as part of an identifier. Your grepping is sloppy,
my friend!
Apparently he was confused between "a 'print' statement" and "the word
print appearing somewhere in a file" :)
Granted, some use print to emit warnings (aifc for example). This isn't
perfectly clean, of course, but it's not used a whole lot either. Mostly
rather old code too, I think.
I'd actually, personally, consider it a bug if any stdlib module used
'print' in the normal course of operations (i.e., not during some
test/debug mode, and not when the lib is run as a script and the print
is just part of example/testing stuff in the __name__ == "__main__"
guard) -- unless it was one of those platform-specific modules. I don't
know if python-dev would agree with that assessment, but if I ever
encountered one I'd write up a patch and submit a bug report.
I haven't yet, so I'm pretty sure your analysis is correct.
That being said, Stephen's statement was very broad, but I think it's
true: print is primarily used in small scripts, or script-like testing
functions/methods.
I was going a little bit down the hyperbole road with my wording of the
statement, but yeah. I did a random checking of the list myself, and the
only ones I found with actual print statements would qualify under what
I *meant* in 'non-toy or non-bash-script-style code'.
Its entirely possible that definition is not perfectly clear. But I'm
really too tired to find a better way to describe it. You know. Quick
glue-type and drive-other-things and test-this-out and one-off sort of
activities.
There's nothing *wrong* with that kind of code or the people who use it.
Doing those kinds of activities in Python makes way more sense then
doing it in say, bash or perl :) (I'm biased on the latter in that perl
makes my eyes cross and despite many attempts, learning even rudimentary
perl has defied me)
But its also the kind of code which, in my personal experience, tends to
-not- use advanced new features of the language, and which tends to
-not- be the kind of stuff which gets run on a platform whose Python
version evolves very fast if at all.
Then again, I have seen one instance where a heavily "scripted"
environment made up of basically a bunch of interlocking Python scripts,
sort of spontaneously evolved into a MCP, and advanced features started
spreading around. It wouldn't at all have surprised me if the MCP put
various scripts into laser bike races to see which were the best for its
purposes.
--
... Stephen Hansen
... Also: Ixokai
... Mail: me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io
... Blog: http://meh.ixokai.io/
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