What idioms should I use to make my code easier to read?
Read "The Python Cookbook", especially the first few chapters.
It's a great source of well-written Python code examples.
Use function factories to create utility functions.
Often, especially if you're using map and filter a lot,
you need utility functions that convert other functions or methods to
taking a single parameter. In particular, you often want to bind some data
to the function once, and then apply it repeatedly to different objects.
In the above example, we needed a function that multiplied a particular field
of an object by 3, but what we really want is a factory that's able to return
for any field name and amount a multiplier function in that family:
Use zip and dict to map fields to names.
zip turns a pair of sequences into a list of tuples containing
the first, second, etc. values from each sequence. For example,
zip('abc', [1,2,3]) == [('a',1),('b',2),('c',3)]. You can use
this to save a lot of typing when you have fields in a known order that
you want to map to names:
Compiling PyLucene for a PPC 10.4.9 with Python 2.5 was really a nightmare. If you have to do it, make sure to get the right gcc 4.1 from MacPorts. Otherwise, it will never work. Also, your Pysqlite has to have been compiled with the latest sqlite.
This is the home of Pygments. It is a generic syntax highlighter for
general use in all kinds of software such as forum systems, wikis or other
applications that need to prettify source code. Highlights are:
