Python, anyone?

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SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Ficons%2Fbr.gif&y=1999" ALT=""></TD> </TR> </TABLE>  <P> </TD> <TD ROWSPAN="2" WIDTH="5"><IMG BORDER="0" WIDTH="5" HEIGHT="1" SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Ficons%2Fdot_clear.gif&y=1999" ALT=""></TD> <TD ROWSPAN="2" VALIGN="TOP"> <TABLE WIDTH="100%" CELLPADDING="0" BORDER="0"> <TR> <TD BGCOLOR="#FFCC66"> <font face="Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif"> <strong> Development Tools</strong> </font> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD> <BR> <H1 ALIGN="CENTER"> Python, anyone? </H1> <H3 ALIGN="CENTER"> You may have dismissed Python as just another scripting language beginning with 'P,' but more and more open source developers are finding Python has some bite </H3> <BLOCKQUOTE> <STRONG>Summary</STRONG><BR> At first, the Python scripting language may sound like another version of Perl, but Robert Richardson highlights the differences that make it useful in its own right. <em>(1,500 words)</em> </BLOCKQUOTE> <STRONG>By Robert Richardson</STRONG> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD BGCOLOR="#FFCC66"><IMG border="0" width="1" height="4" SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Ficons%2Fdot_clear.gif&y=1999" ALT=""></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <BR>  <IMG ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="10" width="180" height="80" SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Fexpo%2Fimages%2Ftapping.gif&y=1999" ALT="Tapping the Source"> <IMG ALIGN="LEFT" width="40" height="29" SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Fabcs%2FW.gif&y=1999" ALT="W">hile the rest of the world has been catching on to the Perl scripting language, the Linux community, long since past the pleasing shock of Perl's power, has been catching on to a different scripting animal -- Python. <P> If you just flatly state what Python is -- a scripting language with open source, a relatively small learning curve, and lots more power than most older scripting environments -- it sounds suspiciously like Perl. "Do we need another Perl?" you might ask. <P> But there are differences, and the more I've looked at Python and talked to the people who use it, the more it's clear there's plenty of room for both Perl and Python to grow and flourish. <P> <P> <FONT SIZE="+1"><STRONG>What's it like?</STRONG></FONT><BR> A quick look at Python's syntax should give us some indication of why Python is different, as well as when and where we might use it. <P> For those coming from C, Java, or Perl backgrounds, the thing that jumps off literally any page of Python code is that the code looks vaguely "naked." The ends of statements go without terminating semicolons. There are no curly braces wrapped around blocks of statements. <P> Instead, statements are terminated merely by line endings, and blocks are set off simply by dint of consistent indentation. So an if-then statement looks like this: <P> <code> x = 3<BR> if x == 4:<BR>    result = x + 2<BR>    print x<BR> else:<BR>    print 'Try again.'<BR> </code> <P> Guido van Rossum, the fellow who originally concocted Python, says, "Python's intention is to cater to infrequent users," as well as to full-time Python users. With infrequent use, he points out, a "rich syntax is more of a burden than a help." <P> To keep things simple, Van Rossum made Python "more regular," with "fewer 'shortcuts' that the casual user is likely to forget. Python emphasizes the ease of reading code -- one's own, or another programmer's -- over writing." <P> Though Python may not offer abundant syntactical shortcuts, many "Pythonistas" liken the spare, punctuation-light code to "pseudocode that actually runs." There are definitely plenty of instances where this claim holds, as in this bit of code that performs an FTP session: <P> <code> from ftplib import FTP <BR> ftp = FTP('ftp.someserver.com') # connect to host <BR> ftp.login() # login anonymous <BR> ftp.cwd('pub/samples') # change directory <BR> ftp.retrlines('LIST') # list the directory <BR> F = open('current_issue', 'w') <BR> ftp.retrbinary('RETR current_issue', F.write, 1024) <BR> ftp.quit() <BR> </code> <P> Still, that's not to say that Python doesn't wind up looking pretty obscure sometimes, particularly owing to the way it supports object orientation to its core. <P> Certainly, Python does plenty of old-fashioned things (i.e., it functions in familiar, old-fashioned ways), but it also lets (indeed, pretty much requires that) you treat most of your creations as <em>object classes.</em> This means things get self-referential in a hurry, and you wind up with code that's just line after line of <code>self.this</code> and <code>self.that</code>. <P> Which brings us to an important distinction between Perl and Python: Perl springs more or less directly from Larry Wall's desire to get some text scanning and twiddling done quickly and painlessly. That's why Perl has great support for regular expressions (and why they're built directly into the language), for grabbing input from groups of files, and for kicking out reports. <P> Python, on the other hand, comes more from Guido van Rossum's desire to collect the best features he'd worked with as a computer sciences academic and roll them all into one language with a clean, consistent syntax. <P> Mark Lutz, author of <em>Programming Python</em> (O'Reilly & Associates, ISBN 1-56592-197-6), says Perl "tends to be best for 'lone wolf' development, where one programmer writes code that others (and perhaps she) will never need to read or maintain." Perl's core premise, that there should be multiple ways to do everything, "makes it fine for write-once, throwaway coding tasks, but much less than ideal in more substantial and realistic development scenarios." <P> <P> <FONT SIZE="+1"><STRONG>Life of Python</STRONG></FONT><BR> Guido van Rossum began work on Python in December 1989, as a project to keep him busy during the winter holidays when his office would be closed. He wanted to write a successor to ABC, a teaching language he'd helped create that had languished unappreciated in the academic world. <P> For this new language, he wanted to provide direct appeal to Unix users who were accustomed to programming in C; he also intended to make Python easy to connect to other languages and development environments, unlike the closed environment found in ABC. <P> His creation borrows a certain amount of its approach from Modula, with a few flourishes (such as dynamic typing and object orientation) coming from classic comp-sci languages like Lisp and Smalltalk. The Python interpreter, which performs a fast compile to bytecodes and then executes them, is written in C. <P> Like other flourishing languages, Python offers <P> <ul> <li>Object-oriented classes <li>Exceptions <li>Dynamic data types <li>A frightening array of interfaces to system calls, external libraries, and several windowing systems (including Tk, X11, Motif, Mac, Windows, and MFC) </ul> <P> By now, almost 10 years since its creation, Python runs on plenty of environments other than Linux and Unix (it was originally conceived on a Macintosh, in fact). There are versions for Windows, DOS, OS/2, Macintosh, and Amiga. The Python license allows its use in proprietary software, unlike software protected by the GNU GPL. The GPL normally does not permit the use of software copyrighted under it in nonfree software. Neither the Python license nor the GPL restrict software from commercial use. There's a copyright on Python, but you're pretty much free to do with it what you will. <P> For just plain scanning a file and replacing every third character with a dollar sign, you'll need a few more lines in Python than you will in Perl, plus you'll probably find that Perl executes such work somewhat faster. But if you're interested in rapidly prototyping a program you might otherwise have written in C, C++, or Java, you'll find that Python more naturally supports the constructs you're working with, all the while keeping to its script nature by letting you get a lot of work done in relatively few and straightforward statements. <P> <P> <FONT SIZE="+1"><STRONG>Faster work</STRONG></FONT><BR> Indeed, Python can be a great tool for getting applications written quickly. This is in part because it's a language that gets a lot done with relatively few lines. <P> It's possible to write large applications in Python and, where speed of execution isn't a primary factor, it's possible to simply package the Python and call it a day. This packaging can happen in a number of ways. <P> There's a utility that will transform your Python code into compilable C code, or you can "freeze" the Python code into an executable that stores and runs the Python bytecode. <P> Perhaps the most interesting option of all lies in a recent addition to the Python pantheon -- a version of Python, called JPython, that runs atop the Java virtual machine. <P> With JPython you can work on a project interactively, literally testing changes as you make them, then save your project as Java bytecode that will run anywhere Java does. In this environment, your Python is extended to give you easy access to all the basic Java classes, so you can use the same AWT windowing environment that you'd use in Java to get your widgets onscreen. <P> I asked Van Rossum what Python projects he's been working on lately. He had a big answer and a small answer. <P> "At the large end," Van Rossum says, "I'm writing an extensible integrated development environment for Python called IDLE. It uses Tkinter -- Python's de-facto GUI standard based on Tcl/Tk -- for the GUI interface and thus it is portable between Unix, Mac, and Windows." The project, he says is "medium sized," with some 40 files and 5,000 lines of code. He adds, "It's a joy to see how easy it is to write in Python. Clearly, Python is not just for 'scripting.' " <P> "At the small end of the spectrum," Van Rossum says, "I just rewrote a small C program to save audio data directly from CD-ROM." <P> <P> <FONT SIZE="+1"><STRONG>Anybody else?</STRONG></FONT><BR> For all its strengths, Python has been overlooked in the floodlight glare surrounding Perl, which has flourished of late largely because so many Unix hackers use it to write CGI scripts for Web servers. But don't accept the impression that Python never gets used. <P> Several major Web sites, including InfoSeek and Four11, are supportive users. Other corporations are closet users, visible only when they goof in their code writing and get debugging "traceback" messages from their scripts. These tracebacks are displayed in your Web browser (which, by the way, brings up the positive point that Python checks segment boundaries and the like very closely, and Van Rossum guarantees that Python never just bombs -- you always get a traceback). The most recent traceback "outing" I've heard of was at the American Greetings site (see <a href="#resources">Resources</a>). <P> Finally, yes, it is named after Monty Python, not after the snake. Making references to Monty Python in source code examples seems to be very nearly required in the otherwise fairly sedate and serious Python community. <P> So, to paraphrase Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle, one might well come to the conclusion that if you have only as much fun using Python as Guido had writing it, then Guido had twice as much fun as you. <IMG HEIGHT="8" WIDTH="8" SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Ficons%2Fdingbat.gif&y=1999">  <P ALIGN="CENTER"> <STRONG><A HREF="news://forum.linuxworld.com/linuxworld.forums.articles.--lw-python.html">Discuss this article in the LinuxWorld forums</A></STRONG> ([an error occurred while processing this directive] postings)<BR> (Read our <A HREF="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Fcommon%2Flw-forumfaq.html&y=1999">forums FAQ</A> to learn more.) </P> <font size="-1"><strong>Correction</strong><BR> In the original text of this article, we said the following about Python: "It also has a more open licensing arrangement than GNU provides because it doesn't impose any restrictions on commercial use." <P> That statement was wrong in two respects: First, the standard GNU license does not impose any restriction on commercial use, only on proprietary (nonfree) use. Second, while the use of software copyrighted under the GPL in proprietary is software generally prohibited, there is an exception even to this. Guile, the GNU extensibility package, contains public domain software which may be incorporated into either free or proprietary software without restriction. Python's license also allows its use in proprietary software <P> Our mistake was in confusing the terms <em>commercial use</em> and <em>proprietary (nonfree) use.</em> GNU software may be used in commercial software -- that is to say, in software that is offered for sale. What is not normally allowed under the GNU GPL is its reuse in proprietary software -- that is, software whose use is not protected by the GPL. <P> The section in question now reads: <P> "The Python license allows its use in proprietary software, unlike software protected by the GNU GPL. The GPL normally does not permit its use in nonfree software. Neither the Python license nor the GPL restrict software from commercial use." <P> We apologize for having gotten it wrong. Thanks to Nick Moffitt and RMS for notifying us of this error. </font> <P> <A NAME="bio"> <TABLE CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="3" BORDER="0"> <TR> <TD VALIGN="CENTER"> </TD> <TD BGCOLOR="#000000"><IMG SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxworld.com%2Flinuxworld%2Ficons%2Fdot_clear.gif&y=1999" WIDTH="2" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"></TD> <TD VALIGN="TOP"> <STRONG> <FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif"> About the author </FONT> </STRONG><BR> Robert Richardson's articles have appeared in magazines such as <em>Network Magazine, BYTE, Win32 Scripting Journal,</em> and <em>Internet Business.</em> His free <em>Small Office TECH</em> newsletter is available at <a href="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smallofficetech.com%2F&y=1999">http://www.smallofficetech.com/</a>. </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ROWSPAN="1" VALIGN="BOTTOM"> <TABLE WIDTH="125" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="2" BORDER="0"> <TR><TD BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> </TD></TR> <TR> <TD BGCOLOR="#FFCC66"> <FORM METHOD="POST" 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