13 Thursday Oct 2022
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Python str instances have many useful methods. I use strip, split, startswith, and others, quite a lot, for instance. One method I haven’t had reason to use so far is translate. It takes a dictionary argument and uses it to map the existing string to a new string.
It’s flexible and useful, so it’s worth knowing how to use.
15 Saturday Jan 2022
Posted in Python
One part of Python I especially appreciate is lambda functions. While I’ve never pursued functional programming, I do like many things about it, particularly the notion of functions as native data objects. Programming with functional objects opens new vistas. Most languages handle it one way or another, but languages make it natural.
Python’s lambda is such a facility, and I use it often. This week I finally got around to writing a lambda function I’ve been meaning to for a long time, and it’s my new favorite. I thought I’d share it along with some of my other “one-liners”…
03 Friday Dec 2021
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Recently I thought to myself, “Hey self,… Although I’ve never looked into them, I know Python has tools for parsing Python code. I wonder if they might make generating syntax-highlighted HTML pages of Python scripts pretty easy?”
I found the help page for the tokenize module, and the introduction says it’s “useful for implementing ‘pretty-printers,’ including colorizers for on-screen displays.” That sounds like a strong yes.
24 Wednesday Nov 2021
Posted in Python
In the last two posts I’ve explored Python generator functions. The first post went over the basics and showed how they return an iterable object usable in for-loops and list constructors. The second post explored how generator functions work in more detail.
This time I’ll wrap it up with some examples that are a bit more involved. If Python generators were a mystery before these three posts, I hope you feel more comfortable with them after!
23 Tuesday Nov 2021
Posted in Python
Last time I began exploring Python generator functions. I mostly covered their basic function as iterables, and why they’re good in for-loops. They’re also good for infinite lists. Much of their value lies in how they defer processing an item until it is actually asked for.
This time I’ll dig into the send method, which allows sending messages to a running generator. I’ll also introduce the yield from statement, which allows us to wrap a generator with another function that also acts like a generator.
22 Monday Nov 2021
Posted in Python
Python has a feature called a generator — it’s a way of writing a function that allows that function to trade control back and forth with a calling function. It’s not something one needs often, but it can very useful in certain situations.
Create a Python generator, firstly, in using yield instead of return and, secondly, by designing the function a little differently from one that generates and then returns a list of items.
03 Saturday Oct 2020
Posted in Python
For me, Python modules seem to divide into two basic classes: library modules and application modules. The former contain basic building blocks, but the latter has top-level routines the operating system invokes when it runs the application.
Today I thought I’d post about the application framework I use for all apps.
25 Saturday Apr 2020
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Aspect-Oriented Programming, computer language, programming language, Python 101, Python code, Python decorator
Last time I began exploring Python decorators, which are a way of having one function “wrap” another function. Because the wrapper has access to both the input parameters and the return value, it can modify these values (unbeknownst to the inner function).
This time I pick up where I left off by exploring decorators modifying return values, decorators that take parameters, and decorators in classes.
24 Friday Apr 2020
I’ve been playing around with what Python calls decorators. They’re a built-in way of implementing Aspect-Oriented Programming techniques in Python. In fact, they’re quite powerful.
Since they aren’t a common language feature, they can be a little confusing at first, so I thought I’d try my hand at laying out how they work.
The Hard-Core Coder 