Ten more essential Python tips
Python documentation tool
You can pop up a graphical interface for searching the Python documentation using the command:
$ pydoc -g
You will need python-tk package for this to work.
Python documentation server
You can start an HTTP server on the given port on the local machine. This will give you a nice-looking access to all Python documentation, including third-party module documentation.
$ pydoc -p <portNumber>
Python development software
There are plenty of tools to assist you with Python development. Here are a few important ones:
IDLE: The Python built-in IDE, with autocompletion, function signature popup help, and file editing.
IPython: Another enhanced Python shell with tab-completion and other features.
Eric3: A GUI Python IDE with autocompletion, class browser, built-in shell and debugger.
WingIDE: Commercial Python IDE with free licence available to open-source developers.
Executing functions at the time of Python interpreter termination
You can use ‘atexit’ module to execute functions at the time of Python interpreter termination.
[Example]
def sum():
print(4+5)
def message():
print(“Executing Now”)
import atexit
atexit.register(sum)
atexit.register(message)
Output:
Executing Now
9
Converting from integer to binary, hexadecimal and octal
Python provides easy-to-use functions – bin(), hex() and oct() – to convert from integer to binary, decimal and octal format respectively.
[Example]
>>> bin(24)
‘0b11000’
>>> hex(24)
‘0×18’
>>> oct(24)
‘030’
This article originally appeared in issue 83 of Linux User & Developer. Click here for more tutorials from the magazine.
Pretty neat.
How about the top ten Websites to help you learn Python?
Your DateTime example is a little confusing as datetime is the built-in Python module and doesn’t allow that syntax.
The intro for DateTime says the following:
DateTime 2.12.0
This package provides a DateTime data type, as known from Zope 2. Unless you need to communicate with Zope 2 APIs, you’re probably better off using Python’s bult-in datetime module.
datetime.strptime(date_string, format) will accomplish the same thing only using the Python built-in module datetime.
[...] to XML parsing. To compliment our ‘ten essential Python tips for beginners‘ and ‘ten more essential Python tips‘ features, we’ve compiled yet another collection of ten gems to make your Python [...]
Please be careful to note both the version of
python you are using and the reasons for not using
later version such as 3.1.2 which is recommended
for new projects. I am (sob,sob) trying to work cross
platform between Windows Vista 64 bit, Mac OS X
10.4, & various Ubuntu’s using 3.1.2. It is a real
pain to read through a site such as PyGt only to
realize after two days it doesn’t work with 64 bit
python 3.1.2, only 32 bit.
What's your opinion?