>From "Python Cookbook, 3rd Ed." by David Beazley and Brian K. Jones, the authors recommend using pkgutil.get_data() to obtain the contents of data files. Normally I would use "with open..." giving my expected file's location, but the authors claim that using pkgutil.get_data() is a more robust way to do things due to the differences in how packages get installed and used. I have not thought that far ahead on distributing my work. So far I have been using my projects on the machines on which I develop them, or manually copy the source code to another nearby machine, manually making any adjustments in my program's "home" directory. (Typically my main.py program has a single variable that sets the home location for the project, so I only need to manually change it in this one place.)
But these projects in development for my wife's classes where they have a variety of OS's has me rethinking this approach. The book's authors also seem to recommend relative addressing for importing a program's modules. That sounds nice in terms of being independent of where the project gets installed, but I don't find "dots" to be very descriptive! So, some questions: 1) Is using pkgutil.get_data() the way I should be reading my data files? 2) The book says that this method will return "...a byte string containing the raw contents of the file." (From page 409) Can I do all of the normal things on this returned object that I could do if I used "with open..."? Is it iterable? [OK, I confess up front. I am being lazy here. I *could* create a file and try this out to see what happens, so I will understand if I get chided (or worse!).] 3) Should I be using relative imports in my projects? TIA! -- boB _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor