Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition

• Table of Contents • Index • Reviews • Reader Reviews • Errata • Academic Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition By David Ascher, Alex Martelli, Anna Ravenscroft Publisher : O'Reilly Pub Date : March 2005 ISBN : 0-596-00797-3 Pages : 844 Copyright Preface The Design of the Book The Implementation of the Book Using the Code from This Book Audience Organization Further Reading Conventions Used in This Book How to Contact Us Safari® Enabled Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Text Introduction Recipe 1.1. Processing a String One Character at a Time Recipe 1.2. Converting Between Characters and Numeric Codes Recipe 1.3. Testing Whether an Object Is String-like Recipe 1.4. Aligning Strings Recipe 1.5. Trimming Space from the Ends of a String Recipe 1.6. Combining Strings Recipe 1.7. Reversing a String by Words or Characters Recipe 1.8. Checking Whether a String Contains a Set of Characters Recipe 1.9. Simplifying Usage of Strings' translate Method Recipe 1.10. Filtering a String for a Set of Characters Recipe 1.11. Checking Whether a String Is Text or Binary Recipe 1.12. Controlling Case Recipe 1.13. Accessing Substrings Recipe 1.14. Changing the Indentation of a Multiline String Recipe 1.15. Expanding and Compressing Tabs Recipe 1.16. Interpolating Variables in a String Recipe 1.17. Interpolating Variables in a Stringin Python 2.4 Recipe 1.18. Replacing Multiple Patterns in a Single Pass Recipe 1.19. Checking a String for Any of Multiple Endings Recipe 1.20. Handling International Text with Unicode Recipe 1.21. Converting Between Unicode and Plain Strings Recipe 1.22. Printing Unicode Charactersto Standard Output Recipe 1.23. Encoding Unicode Data for XML and HTML Recipe 1.24. Making Some Strings Case-Insensitive Recipe 1.25. Converting HTML Documents to Texton a Unix Terminal Chapter 2. Files Introduction Recipe 2.1. Reading from a File Recipe 2.2. Writing to a File Recipe 2.3. Searching and Replacing Text in a File Recipe 2.4. Reading a Specific Line from a File Recipe 2.5. Counting Lines in a File Recipe 2.6. Processing Every Word in a File Recipe 2.7. Using Random-Access Input/Output Recipe 2.8. Updating a Random-Access File Recipe 2.9. Reading Data from zip Files Recipe 2.10. Handling a zip File Inside a String Recipe 2.11. Archiving a Tree of Files into a Compressed tar File Recipe 2.12. Sending Binary Data to Standard Output Under Windows Recipe 2.13. Using a C++-like iostream Syntax Recipe 2.14. Rewinding an Input File to the Beginning Recipe 2.15. Adapting a File-like Object to a True File Object Recipe 2.16. Walking Directory Trees Recipe 2.17. Swapping One File Extension for Another Throughout a Directory Tree Recipe 2.18. Finding a File Given a Search Path Recipe 2.19. Finding Files Given a Search Path and a Pattern Recipe 2.20. Finding a File on the Python Search Path Recipe 2.21. Dynamically Changing the PythonSearch Path Recipe 2.22. Computing the Relative Path from One Directory to Another Recipe 2.23. Reading an Unbuffered Character in a Cross-Platform Way Recipe 2.24. Counting Pages of PDF Documents on Mac OS X Recipe 2.25. Changing File Attributes on Windows Recipe 2.26. Extracting Text from OpenOffice.org Documents Recipe 2.27. Extracting Text from Microsoft Word Documents Recipe 2.28. File Locking Using a Cross-Platform API Recipe 2.29. Versioning Filenames Recipe 2.30. Calculating CRC-64 Cyclic Redundancy Checks Chapter 3. Time and Money Introduction Recipe 3.1. Calculating Yesterday and Tomorrow Recipe 3.2. Finding Last Friday Recipe 3.3. Calculating Time Periods in a Date Range Recipe 3.4. Summing Durations of Songs Recipe 3.5. Calculating the Number of Weekdays Between Two Dates Recipe 3.6. Looking up Holidays Automatically Recipe 3.7. Fuzzy Parsing of Dates Recipe 3.8. Checking Whether Daylight Saving Time Is Currently in Effect Recipe 3.9. Converting Time Zones Recipe 3.10. Running a Command Repeatedly Recipe 3.11. Scheduling Commands Recipe 3.12. Doing Decimal Arithmetic Recipe 3.13. Formatting Decimals as Currency Recipe 3.14. Using Python as a Simple Adding Machine Recipe 3.15. Checking a Credit Card Checksum Recipe 3.16. Watching Foreign Exchange Rates Chapter 4. Python Shortcuts Introduction Recipe 4.1. Copying an Object Recipe 4.2. Constructing Lists with List Comprehensions Recipe 4.3. Returning an Element of a List If It Exists Recipe 4.4. Looping over Items and Their Indices in a Sequence Recipe 4.5. Creating Lists of Lists Without Sharing References Recipe 4.6. Flattening a Nested Sequence Recipe 4.7. Removing or Reordering Columnsin a List of Rows Recipe 4.8. Transposing Two-Dimensional Arrays Recipe 4.9. Getting a Value from a Dictionary Recipe 4.10. Adding an Entry to a Dictionary Recipe 4.11. Building a Dictionary Without Excessive Quoting Recipe 4.12. Building a Dict from a List of Alternating Keys and Values Recipe 4.13. Extracting a Subset of a Dictionary Recipe 4.14. Inverting a Dictionary Recipe 4.15. Associating Multiple Values with Each Key in a Dictionary Recipe 4.16. Using a Dictionary to Dispatch Methods or Functions Recipe 4.17. Finding Unions and Intersections of Dictionaries Recipe 4.18. Collecting a Bunch of Named Items Recipe 4.19. Assigning and Testing with One Statement Recipe 4.20. Using printf in Python Recipe 4.21. Randomly Picking Items with Given Probabilities Recipe 4.22. Handling Exceptions Within an Expression Recipe 4.23. Ensuring a Name Is Defined in a Given Module Chapter 5. Searching and Sorting Introduction Recipe 5.1. Sorting a Dictionary Recipe 5.2. Sorting a List of Strings Case-Insensitively Recipe 5.3. Sorting a List of Objects by an Attribute of the Objects Recipe 5.4. Sorting Keys or Indices Basedon the Corresponding Values Recipe 5.5. Sorting Strings with Embedded Numbers Recipe 5.6. Processing All of a List's Items in Random Order Recipe 5.7. Keeping a Sequence Ordered as Items Are Added Recipe 5.8. Getting the First Few Smallest Items of a Sequence Recipe 5.9. Looking for Items in a Sorted Sequence Recipe 5.10. Selecting the nth Smallest Element of a Sequence Recipe 5.11. Showing off quicksort in Three Lines Recipe 5.12. Performing Frequent Membership Tests on a Sequence Recipe 5.13. Finding Subsequences Recipe 5.14. Enriching the Dictionary Type with Ratings Functionality Recipe 5.15. Sorting Names and Separating Them by Initials Chapter 6. Object-Oriented Programming Introduction Recipe 6.1. Converting Among Temperature Scales Recipe 6.2. Defining Constants Recipe 6.3. Restricting Attribute Setting Recipe 6.4. Chaining Dictionary Lookups Recipe 6.5. Delegating Automatically as an Alternative to Inheritance Recipe 6.6. Delegating Special Methods in Proxies Recipe 6.7. Implementing Tuples with Named Items Recipe 6.8. Avoiding Boilerplate Accessors for Properties Recipe 6.9. Making a Fast Copy of an Object Recipe 6.10. Keeping References to Bound Methods Without Inhibiting Garbage Collection Recipe 6.11. Implementing a Ring Buffer Recipe 6.12. Checking an Instance for Any State Changes Recipe 6.13. Checking Whether an Object Has Necessary Attributes Recipe 6.14. Implementing the State Design Pattern Recipe 6.15. Implementing the "Singleton" Design Pattern Recipe 6.16. Avoiding the "Singleton" Design Pattern with the Borg Idiom Recipe 6.17. Implementing the Null Object Design Pattern Recipe 6.18. Automatically Initializing Instance Variables from _ _init_ _ Arguments Recipe 6.19. Calling a Superclass _ _init_ _ Method If It Exists Recipe 6.20. Using Cooperative Supercalls Concisely and Safely Chapter 7. Persistence and Databases Introduction Recipe 7.1. Serializing Data Using the marshal Module Recipe 7.2. Serializing Data Using the pickle and cPickle Modules Recipe 7.3. Using Compression with Pickling Recipe 7.4. Using the cPickle Module on Classes and Instances Recipe 7.5. Holding Bound Methods in a Picklable Way Recipe 7.6. Pickling Code Objects Recipe 7.7. Mutating Objects with shelve Recipe 7.8. Using the Berkeley DB Database Recipe 7.9. Accesssing a MySQL Database Recipe 7.10. Storing a BLOB in a MySQL Database Recipe 7.11. Storing a BLOB in a PostgreSQL Database Recipe 7.12. Storing a BLOB in a SQLite Database Recipe 7.13. Generating a Dictionary Mapping Field Names to Column Numbers Recipe 7.14. Using dtuple for Flexible Accessto Query Results Recipe 7.15. Pretty-Printing the Contents of Database Cursors Recipe 7.16. Using a Single Parameter-Passing Style Across Various DB API Modules Recipe 7.17. Using Microsoft Jet via ADO Recipe 7.18. Accessing a JDBC Database from a Jython Servlet Recipe 7.19. Using ODBC to Get Excel Data with Jython Chapter 8. Debugging and Testing Introduction Recipe 8.1. Disabling Execution of Some Conditionals and Loops Recipe 8.2. Measuring Memory Usage on Linux Recipe 8.3. Debugging the Garbage-Collection Process Recipe 8.4. Trapping and Recording Exceptions Recipe 8.5. Tracing Expressions and Comments in Debug Mode Recipe 8.6. Getting More Information from Tracebacks Recipe 8.7. Starting the Debugger Automatically After an Uncaught Exception Recipe 8.8. Running Unit Tests Most Simply Recipe 8.9. Running Unit Tests Automatically Recipe 8.10. Using doctest with unittest in Python 2.4 Recipe 8.11. Checking Values Against Intervals in Unit Testing Chapter 9. Processes, Threads, and Synchronization Introduction Recipe 9.1. Synchronizing All Methods in an Object Recipe 9.2. Terminating a Thread Recipe 9.3. Using a Queue.Queue as a Priority Queue Recipe 9.4. Working with a Thread Pool Recipe 9.5. Executing a Function in Parallel on Multiple Argument Sets Recipe 9.6. Coordinating Threads by Simple Message Passing Recipe 9.7. Storing Per-Thread Information Recipe 9.8. Multitasking Cooperatively Without Threads Recipe 9.9. Determining Whether Another Instanceof a Script Is Already Running in Windows Recipe 9.10. Processing Windows Messages Using MsgWaitForMultipleObjects Recipe 9.11. Driving an External Process with popen Recipe 9.12. Capturing the Output and Error Streams from a Unix Shell Command Recipe 9.13. Forking a Daemon Process on Unix Chapter 10. System Administration Introduction Recipe 10.1. Generating Random Passwords Recipe 10.2. Generating Easily Remembered Somewhat-Random Passwords Recipe 10.3. Authenticating Users by Means of a POP Server Recipe 10.4. Calculating Apache Hits per IP Address Recipe 10.5. Calculating the Rate of Client Cache Hits on Apache Recipe 10.6. Spawning an Editor from a Script Recipe 10.7. Backing Up Files Recipe 10.8. Selectively Copying a Mailbox File Recipe 10.9. Building a Whitelist of Email Addresses From a Mailbox Recipe 10.10. Blocking Duplicate Mails Recipe 10.11. Checking Your Windows Sound System Recipe 10.12. Registering or Unregistering a DLL on Windows Recipe 10.13. Checking and Modifying the Set of Tasks Windows Automatically Runs at Login Recipe 10.14. Creating a Share on Windows Recipe 10.15. Connecting to an Already Running Instance of Internet Explorer Recipe 10.16. Reading Microsoft Outlook Contacts Recipe 10.17. Gathering Detailed System Informationon Mac OS X Chapter 11. User Interfaces Introduction Recipe 11.1. Showing a Progress Indicator on a Text Console Recipe 11.2. Avoiding lambda in Writing Callback Functions Recipe 11.3. Using Default Values and Bounds with tkSimpleDialog Functions Recipe 11.4. Adding Drag and Drop Reordering to a Tkinter Listbox Recipe 11.5. Entering Accented Characters in Tkinter Widgets Recipe 11.6. Embedding Inline GIFs Using Tkinter Recipe 11.7. Converting Among Image Formats Recipe 11.8. Implementing a Stopwatch in Tkinter Recipe 11.9. Combining GUIs and Asynchronous I/Owith Threads Recipe 11.10. Using IDLE's Tree Widget in Tkinter Recipe 11.11. Supporting Multiple Values per Row in a Tkinter Listbox Recipe 11.12. Copying Geometry Methods and Options Between Tkinter Widgets Recipe 11.13. Implementing a Tabbed Notebook for Tkinter Recipe 11.14. Using a wxPython Notebook with Panels Recipe 11.15. Implementing an ImageJ Plug-in in Jython Recipe 11.16. Viewing an Image from a URL with Swing and Jython Recipe 11.17. Getting User Input on Mac OS Recipe 11.18. Building a Python Cocoa GUI Programmatically Recipe 11.19. Implementing Fade-in Windows with IronPython Chapter 12. Processing XML Introduction Recipe 12.1. Checking XML Well-Formedness Recipe 12.2. Counting Tags in a Document Recipe 12.3. Extracting Text from an XML Document Recipe 12.4. Autodetecting XML Encoding Recipe 12.5. Converting an XML Document into a Tree of Python Objects Recipe 12.6. Removing Whitespace-only Text Nodes from an XML DOM Node's Subtree Recipe 12.7. Parsing Microsoft Excel's XML Recipe 12.8. Validating XML Documents Recipe 12.9. Filtering Elements and Attributes Belonging to a Given Namespace Recipe 12.10. Merging Continuous Text Events with a SAX Filter Recipe 12.11. Using MSHTML to Parse XML or HTML Chapter 13. Network Programming Introduction Recipe 13.1. Passing Messages with Socket Datagrams Recipe 13.2. Grabbing a Document from the Web Recipe 13.3. Filtering a List of FTP Sites Recipe 13.4. Getting Time from a Server via the SNTP Protocol Recipe 13.5. Sending HTML Mail Recipe 13.6. Bundling Files in a MIME Message Recipe 13.7. Unpacking a Multipart MIME Message Recipe 13.8. Removing Attachments from an Email Message Recipe 13.9. Fixing Messages Parsed by Python 2.4 email.FeedParser Recipe 13.10. Inspecting a POP3 Mailbox Interactively Recipe 13.11. Detecting Inactive Computers Recipe 13.12. Monitoring a Network with HTTP Recipe 13.13. Forwarding and Redirecting Network Ports Recipe 13.14. Tunneling SSL Through a Proxy Recipe 13.15. Implementing the Dynamic IP Protocol Recipe 13.16. Connecting to IRC and Logging Messages to Disk Recipe 13.17. Accessing LDAP Servers Chapter 14. Web Programming Introduction Recipe 14.1. Testing Whether CGI Is Working Recipe 14.2. Handling URLs Within a CGI Script Recipe 14.3. Uploading Files with CGI Recipe 14.4. Checking for a Web Page's Existence Recipe 14.5. Checking Content Type via HTTP Recipe 14.6. Resuming the HTTP Download of a File Recipe 14.7. Handling Cookies While Fetching Web Pages Recipe 14.8. Authenticating with a Proxy for HTTPS Navigation Recipe 14.9. Running a Servlet with Jython Recipe 14.10. Finding an Internet Explorer Cookie Recipe 14.11. Generating OPML Files Recipe 14.12. Aggregating RSS Feeds Recipe 14.13. Turning Data into Web Pages Through Templates Recipe 14.14. Rendering Arbitrary Objects with Nevow Chapter 15. Distributed Programming Introduction Recipe 15.1. Making an XML-RPC Method Call Recipe 15.2. Serving XML-RPC Requests Recipe 15.3. Using XML-RPC with Medusa Recipe 15.4. Enabling an XML-RPC Server to Be Terminated Remotely Recipe 15.5. Implementing SimpleXMLRPCServer Niceties Recipe 15.6. Giving an XML-RPC Server a wxPython GUI Recipe 15.7. Using Twisted Perspective Broker Recipe 15.8. Implementing a CORBA Server and Client Recipe 15.9. Performing Remote Logins Using telnetlib Recipe 15.10. Performing Remote Logins with SSH Recipe 15.11. Authenticating an SSL Client over HTTPS Chapter 16. Programs About Programs Introduction Recipe 16.1. Verifying Whether a String Represents a Valid Number Recipe 16.2. Importing a Dynamically Generated Module Recipe 16.3. Importing from a Module Whose Name Is Determined at Runtime Recipe 16.4. Associating Parameters with a Function (Currying) Recipe 16.5. Composing Functions Recipe 16.6. Colorizing Python Source Using the Built-in Tokenizer Recipe 16.7. Merging and Splitting Tokens Recipe 16.8. Checking Whether a String Has Balanced Parentheses Recipe 16.9. Simulating Enumerations in Python Recipe 16.10. Referring to a List Comprehension While Building It Recipe 16.11. Automating the py2exe Compilation of Scripts into Windows Executables Recipe 16.12. Binding Main Script and Modules into One Executable on Unix Chapter 17. Extending and Embedding Introduction Recipe 17.1. Implementing a Simple Extension Type Recipe 17.2. Implementing a Simple Extension Type with Pyrex Recipe 17.3. Exposing a C++ Library to Python Recipe 17.4. Calling Functions from a Windows DLL Recipe 17.5. Using SWIG-Generated Modules in a Multithreaded Environment Recipe 17.6. Translating a Python Sequence into a C Array with the PySequence_Fast Protocol Recipe 17.7. Accessing a Python Sequence Item-by-Item with the Iterator Protocol Recipe 17.8. Returning None from a Python-Callable C Function Recipe 17.9. Debugging Dynamically Loaded C Extensions with gdb Recipe 17.10. Debugging Memory Problems Chapter 18. Algorithms Introduction Recipe 18.1. Removing Duplicates from a Sequence Recipe 18.2. Removing Duplicates from a Sequence While Maintaining Sequence Order Recipe 18.3. Generating Random Samples with Replacement Recipe 18.4. Generating Random Samples Without Replacement Recipe 18.5. Memoizing (Caching) the Return Values of Functions Recipe 18.6. Implementing a FIFO Container Recipe 18.7. Caching Objects with a FIFO Pruning Strategy Recipe 18.8. Implementing a Bag (Multiset) Collection Type Recipe 18.9. Simulating the Ternary Operator in Python Recipe 18.10. Computing Prime Numbers Recipe 18.11. Formatting Integers as Binary Strings Recipe 18.12. Formatting Integers as Strings in Arbitrary Bases Recipe 18.13. Converting Numbers to Rationals via Farey Fractions Recipe 18.14. Doing Arithmetic with Error Propagation Recipe 18.15. Summing Numbers with Maximal Accuracy Recipe 18.16. Simulating Floating Point Recipe 18.17. Computing the Convex Hulls and Diameters of 2D Point Sets Chapter 19. Iterators and Generators Introduction Recipe 19.1. Writing a range-like Function with Float Increments Recipe 19.2. Building a List from Any Iterable Recipe 19.3. Generating the Fibonacci Sequence Recipe 19.4. Unpacking a Few Items in a Multiple Assignment Recipe 19.5. Automatically Unpacking the Needed Number of Items Recipe 19.6. Dividing an Iterable into n Slices of Stride n Recipe 19.7. Looping on a Sequence by Overlapping Windows Recipe 19.8. Looping Through Multiple Iterables in Parallel Recipe 19.9. Looping Through the Cross-Product of Multiple Iterables Recipe 19.10. Reading a Text File by Paragraphs Recipe 19.11. Reading Lines with Continuation Characters Recipe 19.12. Iterating on a Stream of Data Blocks as a Stream of Lines Recipe 19.13. Fetching Large Record Sets from a Database with a Generator Recipe 19.14. Merging Sorted Sequences Recipe 19.15. Generating Permutations, Combinations, and Selections Recipe 19.16. Generating the Partitions of an Integer Recipe 19.17. Duplicating an Iterator Recipe 19.18. Looking Ahead into an Iterator Recipe 19.19. Simplifying Queue-Consumer Threads Recipe 19.20. Running an Iterator in Another Thread Recipe 19.21. Computing a Summary Report with itertools.groupby Chapter 20. Descriptors, Decorators,and Metaclasses Introduction Recipe 20.1. Getting Fresh Default Values at Each Function Call Recipe 20.2. Coding Properties as Nested Functions Recipe 20.3. Aliasing Attribute Values Recipe 20.4. Caching Attribute Values Recipe 20.5. Using One Method as Accessorfor Multiple Attributes Recipe 20.6. Adding Functionality to a Class by Wrapping a Method Recipe 20.7. Adding Functionality to a Class by Enriching All Methods Recipe 20.8. Adding a Method to a Class Instance at Runtime Recipe 20.9. Checking Whether Interfaces Are Implemented Recipe 20.10. Using _ _new_ _ and _ _init_ _ Appropriately in Custom Metaclasses Recipe 20.11. Allowing Chaining of Mutating List Methods Recipe 20.12. Using Cooperative Super calls with Terser Syntax Recipe 20.13. Initializing Instance Attributes Without Using _ _init_ _ Recipe 20.14. Automatic Initialization of Instance Attributes Recipe 20.15. Upgrading Class Instances Automatically on reload Recipe 20.16. Binding Constants at Compile Time Recipe 20.17. Solving Metaclass Conflicts Colophon Index