Thursday, December 12, 2002

Full circle open source... Over the last couple of days, I have been raving about various random tools to make python-at-the-command line all that much more pleasant. This morning I mentioned IPython. This evening I finally had a chance to read the docs and when I got to the Credits section, I discover my name near the top for a piece of code I wrote and open source'd nearly 7 years ago. Bill Bumgarner : for providing the DPyGetOpt module which gives very powerful and convenient handling of command-line options (light years ahead of what Python 2.1.1's getopt module does). Certainly validates the "everything comes back to you someday" theory of the 'net... 9:18:01 PM

Python adventures continue... Michael D wrote to mention IPython as an alternative to pyrepl. Wow! IPython is amazing -- it is a complete command line interactive Python analysis and debugging system. I'm not even going to try to describe all the features other than to say it is bloody amazing. However, it is not a repacement for pyrepl. IPython is more like a command line IDE whereas pyrepl is a backwards compatible [i.e. works with doctest] interactive mode. I'll be using both. In case anyone is wondering, all of the stuff I have mentioned in the past few weeks regarding Python works great with the Python that ships with OS X 10.2. However, you will need the readline module. 9:30:50 AM