QOTW: "[expletives deleted]" - John Machin, snipping a section of Perl code.
"What sort of programmer are you? If it works on your computer, it's done, ship it!" - Grant Edwards Guido invites us to comment on PEP 343. This Python Enhancement Proposal includes a 'with' statement, allowing you simply and reliably wrap a block of code with entry and exit code, in which resources can be acquired and released. It also proposes enhancements to simple generators, making them easy to use to build these wrappers: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/a9d9b591ca7b296d Timothy Smith would like to truncate a Decimal. It's not as easy as it sounds, but Raymond Hettinger has the definitive solution, as is so often the case: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/f40d2863110dc81e If you need to set Windows' environment variables persistently, Gigi's recipe is what you need: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/416087 EasyInstall, Phillip J. Eby's CPAN clone is ready to go: http://dirtsimple.org/2005/06/cpan-goodies-for-all.html How does one check if a given datetime is within a specified range? Andrew Dalke shows Maksim Kasimov how: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/e186c915a237c9a7 Robert Kern shows how to turn a CSV file into a list of dictionaries, and Peter Otten shows off a lovely iterator trick for turning adjacent list entries into dictionary elements: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/ed07b9f71724dcbd Ryan Tomayko defends the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Python/Perl/PHP) platform: http://naeblis.cx/rtomayko/2005/05/28/ibm-poop-heads Skip Montanaro tells us why Emacs is the perfect IDE for him: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/6df813d2d8d187fb#8438e5f0d2352e5f O'Reilly has published a couple of interesting articles by Jeremy Jones, "Python Standard Logging" and "Writing Google Desktop Search Plugins": http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2005/06/02/logging.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2005/06/01/kongulo.html How can you reliably eradicate data from a hard disk? Nuke the site from orbit; it's the only way to be sure. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/2e73c88596c35427 Tomasz Bieruta shows us how to sort large files: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/415581 Google's new Sitemaps allow a Webmaster to tell Google what to spider. They provide a Python script to get you started: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html ======================================================================== Everything Python-related you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages: Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional center of Pythonia http://www.python.org Notice especially the master FAQ http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the marvelous daily python url http://www.pythonware.com/daily Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new) World-Wide Web articles related to Python. http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL are utterly different in their technologies and generally in their results. For far, FAR more Python reading than any one mind should absorb, much of it quite interesting, several pages index much of the universe of Pybloggers. http://lowlife.jp/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/PythonProgrammersWeblog http://www.planetpython.org/ http://mechanicalcat.net/pyblagg.html comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software. Be sure to scan this newsgroup weekly. http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce Steve Bethard, Tim Lesher, and Tony Meyer continue the marvelous tradition early borne by Andrew Kuchling, Michael Hudson and Brett Cannon of intelligently summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every other week. http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ The Python Package Index catalogues packages. http://www.python.org/pypi/ The somewhat older Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collects references to all sorts of Python resources. http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/ Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group mailing lists http://www.python.org/sigs/ The Python Business Forum "further[s] the interests of companies that base their business on ... Python." http://www.python-in-business.org Python Success Stories--from air-traffic control to on-line match-making--can inspire you or decision-makers to whom you're subject with a vision of what the language makes practical. http://www.pythonology.com/success The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has replaced the Python Consortium as an independent nexus of activity. It has official responsibility for Python's development and maintenance. http://www.python.org/psf/ Among the ways you can support PSF is with a donation. http://www.python.org/psf/donate.html Kurt B. Kaiser publishes a weekly report on faults and patches. http://www.google.com/groups?as_usubject=weekly%20python%20patch Cetus collects Python hyperlinks. http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html Python FAQTS http://python.faqts.com/ The Cookbook is a collaborative effort to capture useful and interesting recipes. http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python Among several Python-oriented RSS/RDF feeds available are http://www.python.org/channews.rdf http://bootleg-rss.g-blog.net/pythonware_com_daily.pcgi http://python.de/backend.php For more, see http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=python&ShowStatus=all The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a SourceForge reincarnation. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com. [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work. del.icio.us presents an intriguing approach to reference commentary. It already aggregates quite a bit of Python intelligence. http://del.icio.us/tag/python *Py: the Journal of the Python Language* http://www.pyzine.com Archive probing tricks of the trade: http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100 http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.* Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here: http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/ (requires subscription) http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=python-url+group:comp.lang.python*&start=0&scoring=d& http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html (dormant) or http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome. E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> should get through. To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning (approximately), ask <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> to subscribe. Mention "Python-URL!". -- The Python-URL! 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