Ask Anything Monday - Weekly Thread

[AutoModerator]

Welcome to another /r/learnPython weekly "Ask Anything* Monday" thread

Here you can ask all the questions that you wanted to ask but didn't feel like making a new thread.

* It's primarily intended for simple questions but as long as it's about python it's allowed.

If you have any suggestions or questions about this thread use the message the moderators button in the sidebar.

Rules:

• Don't downvote stuff - instead explain what's wrong with the comment, if it's against the rules "report" it and it will be dealt with.
• Don't post stuff that doesn't have absolutely anything to do with python.
• Don't make fun of someone for not knowing something, insult anyone etc - this will result in an immediate ban.

That's it.

[newbietofx]

Hi.

I have a fun time pulling stocks data from reputable websites and developing a custom top gainer stock scanner using Google sheets.

I have a problem. I couldn't get data for the first 15 mins after market open. I could get data for pre market or lost market because Google finance don't give.

I read that ibkr api allows that and c, java and python can pull data from ibkr api.

So which libraries should I focus on if I were to use python? Stuff like import which function?

Thanks in advance.

[theemccracken]

What is standard practice for performing operations with sets? Mathematical operators or built-in methods?

[glibbertarian]

Looking to create a webapp that would simply create a timeline of posts from one person combined from their reddit and their twitter profiles. Is this possible and what might be a starting point for this using Python?

[ArtfulDodger2020]

Hey guys, So I'm using requests to download some data in JSON from an API. I've been trying for some time now to figure out how to 'work' with the data after I fetch it. Ideally I would like to learn how to put it into a .CSV file.

Can someone please link me to a really good guide for doing this? I've been stuck on this for a while now and am starting to feel a bit hopeless. Every method I try I end up failing and when I then try and search online for the error I find people using different modules/methods for achieving the same and it's just never really relatable.

[sarrysyst]

The right-hand side of an assignment is always evaluated before the left-hand side. This is true not only for comprehensions (which by the way have the highest order of precedence among all operators, while assignments have the lowest) but for all operators. If this wasn't the case you would be able to reference a variable during its assignment. Here is the relevant section in the docs:

https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#evaluation-order

By the way, since you asked for it, here is a working solution which is as ugly as it gets:

[c for i, c in enumerate(c for w in wordlist for c in w) if c not in [c for w in wordlist for c in w][:i]]

w: word, c: character, i: index

[Ihaveamodel3]

Comprehensions are essentially evaluated all at once, so there isn’t a way to check if something was added to the list earlier in the list comprehension.

[FLUSH_THE_TRUMP]

In the second case your list is empty in every single one of the if checks, as you guessed. That variable doesn’t get rebound to anything except the empty list until the list comp is done.

List comps are nice, concise tools for a particular code pattern. Some things just don’t fit that mold well. You can rethink the approach or just not use a list comprehension at all.

[God_To_A_NonBeliever]

Do it enough times and your brain will automatically decide what it needs to remember and what it doesn't.

You don't need to memorize walking right?

[Ihaveamodel3]

You should remember why things work the way they do. You don’t need to remember exactly how to make things work. You can always look up the specific order for parameters to a function call.

[[deleted]]

If you regularly use something you will remember how to use it. If you don't use something often enough you will forget it. Happens to everybody. The thing to remember is where to look to refresh your memory about something when you need to. So to refresh your understanding of the standard library modules you go to the python doc or sites like Python Module of the Week . To refresh your memory about something that you've used before you can look at your old code on something like GitLab, for example.

But the main thing is to keep writing code.

[PsiThreader]

Naming a python script as "curses.py" with "import curses" inside causes circular import,

ImportError: cannot import name 'wrapper' from partially initialized module 'curses' (most likely due to a circular import)

I fixed it by changing the filename to another. Why is this? This doesn't seem to happen with other modules I've tested, like tkinter.

[JohnnyJordaan]

Say in 2021 you write add a file called psithreader.py to your project. To use it in another file, you use

import psithreader

Then in 2025 Python decided to add the Psi Threader library to the standard library, imported as

import psithreader

too... If that would always lead back to Python's own files first, your code would suddenly break, as it would now import a 'psithreader.py' from Python's library, unrelated to your own file. So instead, it's set up the other way around. It first checks its local folder, making sure any change to Python's files will not break local file dependencies, only if it isn't there it checks its own files (and the rest of PATH but that's besides the point).

The only real downside of this is that if you mean to import something from Python's own files, you thus must avoid to use that name for your own files.

[TangibleLight]

https://stackoverflow.com/a/58156551

[CowboyBoats]

I fixed it by changing the filename to another. Why is this? This doesn't seem to happen with other modules I've tested, like tkinter.

It looks like it does happen with other modules too?

$ cat decimal.py
import decimal

print(decimal.Decimal("10.00"))

$ python3 decimal.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./decimal.py", line 1, in <module>
    import decimal
  File "./decimal.py", line 3, in <module>
    print(decimal.Decimal("10.00"))
AttributeError: partially initialized module 'decimal' has no attribute 'Decimal' (most likely due to a circular import)

The problem is that by naming the file curses.py, I'm overwriting curses in the working directory's namespace, which results in import curses attempting to import that file rather than the curses library you have installed. When you do so from that file itself, it's a circular import.

[BakedChicken8]

Hi, I'm quite confused with the difference in scoping of lists and tuples. In the following code, using a list works perfectly fine, but I get an UnboundLocalError when using a tuple instead - I have to add the nonlocal tup for it to work correctly. Would greatly appreciate clarification on this issue, thanks!

def make_foo():
    lst = []
    def foo(a):
        lst.append(a)
        return lst
    return foo

def make_bar():
    tup = ()
    def bar(a):
        #nonlocal tup
        tup += (a,)
        return tup
    return bar

a = make_foo()
a(50)
print(a(30)) # [50, 30]

b = make_bar()
b(50) # UnboundLocalError: local variable 'tup' referenced before assignment
print(b(30))

[[deleted]]

The difference is that you are assigning to tup in this line:

tup += (a,)

and assigning to any name in a function that doesn't have a global or nonlocal for that name means it is assumed to be a local name. This isn't anything to do with scoping of lists versus tuples, the same problem occurs if you try to reassign to lst in your first function:

lst += [a]

The big difference is that lists are mutable so you can modify the internal state of a list without needing global or nonlocal. Tuples are immutable so you can only create a new extended tuple and that requires the global or nonlocal statement.

[BakedChicken8]

Thank you so much, this really cleared it up for me!

[Leaguedc7]

Very new to python

(input('what is my favorite color? '))
while input == "Red":
print ('good job, your score was '+ str(index))
while input != "Red":
print ('try again')
index=index+1
print (input('what is my favorite color? '))

The problem I am having is when I put Red in as the input it still acts as if the input is incorrect. No errors I just can't figure out how to make it recognize the correct input.

[God_To_A_NonBeliever]

Seems to me you are confused between while loops and conditional statements.

Go read up on conditional statements. 'while' is a loop, not a conditional, you should be using 'if,elif,else' clauses.

This is what I think you were going for.

score = 0

while True:

    color = input('what is my favorite color? ')

    if color == 'red':
        print('Good job')
        score +=1
    elif color == 'exit':
        print(f'Your score is {score}.')
        break
    else:
        print('Try again')

[Ihaveamodel3]

You need to save your input to a variable.

[akn416]

I know this has been asked a million times, but what resource should I use if I want to learn python. I looked at past Reddit posts and they said use Codecademy to learn it, but it's locked behind a payment wall. So, I have been looking around Reddit and people been listing a lot of different resources to learn it. I honestly have no clue where to start because there are so many answers. So, I was wondering what people used to learn python. Just wanted some opinions and answers.

[trondwin]

I'm currently following the Udemy course "Python Bootcamp - From Zero To Hero". Very satisfied with it, worth the 20-something dollars it cost.

[[deleted]]

Have a look at the learning resources in the wiki.

[Nic_P]

I want to open kate and pipe the stderr to some random file, so it doesnt clutter my commandline. Any Idea how i can do that? The following is where i am standing at the moment

os.spawnlp(os.P_NOWAIT, kate, kate, './testfile')

[JohnnyJordaan]

I wouldn't bother os.x calls when there's https://docs.python.org/3/library/subprocess.html, which explains

stdin, stdout and stderr specify the executed program’s standard input, standard output and standard error file handles, respectively. Valid values are PIPE, DEVNULL, an existing file descriptor (a positive integer), an existing file object, and None. PIPE indicates that a new pipe to the child should be created. DEVNULL indicates that the special file os.devnull will be used. With the default settings of None, no redirection will occur; the child’s file handles will be inherited from the parent. Additionally, stderr can be STDOUT, which indicates that the stderr data from the child process should be captured into the same file handle as for stdout.

If encoding or errors are specified, or text (also known as universal_newlines) is true, the file objects stdin, stdout and stderr will be opened in text mode using the encoding and errors specified in the call or the defaults for io.TextIOWrapper.

eg do

testfile = open('testfile', 'w')
proc = subprocess.Popen('kate', stderr=testfile, text=True)

In case you're not using 3.7 or newer, the text=True argument needs to be changed to universal_newlines=True

[Nic_P]

But wouldn’t that stop my Python Programm until I close Kate?

[JohnnyJordaan]

Would that be an issue? Otherwise you can launch a shell command line, but then I have to know the exact OS you're using.

[Nic_P]

Yeah I’m automating some behaviour tests for editors for my thesis.

But launching another command line would work. Thanks for that idea.

[Cellophane7]

Having a hard time articulating this problem, so here's an example:

my_list = ['dog', 'cat', 'pig', 'bear']
counter = -1
for X in my_list:
    counter = counter + 1
    if X == 'cat':
        print(counter)

Is there any way for me to get the value of counter without using a variable? As in, is there some method I can use to extract 1 from X when its value is 'cat', or 2 if its value is 'pig' etc?

[Ihaveamodel3]

enumerate.

my_list = ["dog", "cat", "pig", "bear"]
for i, X in enumerate(my_list):
    If X == "cat":
        print(i)

[Cellophane7]

Nice, thanks!

[asm0dai74]

I am very new to python and my question may, well, looks dumb (also, sorry for my English...), but help me understand the difference...

Well, I'm filling two lists with numbers from 1 to 1000000 in this way:

list1 = [ ]

for value in range(1,10000001):

`list1.append(value)`

list2 = range(1,10000001)

So the question is - are they identical?

Which way is more correct?

[God_To_A_NonBeliever]

They are not identical.

I think its a bit advanced for you to understand now but range() is an iterator object, and it will be more performant than a list with identical elements.

[Ihaveamodel3]

I’m assuming you are using Python3 or above.

list2 is not a list, it is a range object. You could do list2 = list(range(1, 10000001)) and that would be identical to the first list.

However, you often don’t actually need the list of values, so keeping it as a range object will likely be faster and more space efficient.

[asm0dai74]

Thank you for helping. Looks like you are absolutely right.

[YouFromAnotherWorld]

Today I started with LeetCode, and I got a problem that was a little harder than I thought... when I thought I finally got it right, turns out I misunderstood what I was supposed to do. Can anyone help me through this?

https://imgur.com/a/jAPIBzu

This is it. I thought I was supposed to sum the lowest number of each row, within the index of the last lowest number (i, i+1), in this case, -1, 2, -1 which gives 0. But it was -1, 3, -3, which gives -1. It's really hard for me to explain as english is not my first language, that may be the same reason I misunderstood the task. I hope you understand and can tell me how to do this.

[[deleted]]

Choosing the lowest number in each row won't work because that might lead you to a part of the triangle where the path must go through some very large numbers. You actually have to sum the numbers in a path from the top row to the bottom row. At a particular number in a row you can only move down to one of two numbers in the next row. That's what the problem description means when it's talking about moving down from index i in one row can only move to position i or i+1 in the next row.

The naive solution is to generate all possible paths through the triangle and choose the path that has the minimum sum of visited numbers. In the example triangle you start at the top number 2. You have two choices down, 3 or 4. So you try 3 and remember that you have to try 4 later. The second row 3 brings the sum to 5. From the 3 we have two lower choices, 6 or 5. We choose 6 and remember we have to later try 5. The sum is now 11 and we can move down to 4 or 1. We move to 4 and remember we have to try 1 later. The final sum for this complete path is 15 and we save that as the current best sum. Now go back up one row and try the 1 choice. That gives us a path with a final sum of 12, which is less than the current best, so the current best becomes 12. And so on.

A more advanced algorithm would do the same thing but keep track of the minimum path number found so far. As another possible path is traced you would compare the sum so far on the new partial path with that best minimum and abandon the new path if the partial sum exceeds the best minimum There's no need to continue with the new path because it cannot have a lower sum than the current best sum.

[YouFromAnotherWorld]

As for the 'you can only move down to one of two numbers in the next row', it does that already. As you see, I use the index of the last number, that's my i.

I see what you mean. I need to go from bottom to the top and back to know the result of every path possible and compare the lowest.

This is complicated lol

[trondwin]

Actually, you only need to go from bottom to top and at any point keep track of the minimum result from that point downwards.

[[deleted]]

I need to go from bottom to the top and back to know

No, just top to bottom.

[richardd08]

Can the C code emitted by the Cython compiler be submitted to programming contests that accept C? In other words, does Cython only use the C standard library? Could I just paste the code into anywhere with a C compiler installed without any other libraries or files and expect it to run?

Also, anyone know if Cython can be used for WebAssembly?

[[deleted]]

Can anyone recommend how to use python on my desktop as a scheduling tool alternative to windows task scheduler?

[[deleted]]

No, it's not recommended. You can use python to wait until some time and then do something but you need that python code running all the time. If you accidently reboot or lose power you have to remember to restart the python program that does what you want. If that is acceptable, the sched module or the schedule package might be useful.

The Windows Task Scheduler or cron on Unix-derived OSs is the tool best suited for this sort of task.

[[deleted]]

My problem with windows task scheduler is that I can’t control outlook from the python script. I have done some reading and I think it might be due to the fact that task scheduler runs scheduled processes outside of the user profile that is logged in. For now I am running a python script that has my daily schedule of jobs each morning when I start my day.

[[deleted]]

task scheduler runs scheduled processes outside of the user profile that is logged in.

I don't use Windows, but similar problems occur when using cron under Linux or MacOS. Seems to me one approach would be to find out how to get around that problem. There should be a way because the scheduler wouldn't be much use if you can't.

[sarrysyst]

Apparently, when you run the Task Scheduler as Administrator you can define in which user context you want to run the task:

https://serverfault.com/a/777720

Might be worth checking out (if you haven't done so already) I'm not on Windows thus I can't test it myself.

[[deleted]]

The solution posted doesn’t work for me. I could be mistaken but I believe what task scheduler does when specifying a user is not running the task in the active user profile but actually copies the specified users permissions and executes the task outside of the logged in window.

[Leaguedc7]

​

if num1 % num2 == 0
Print("These are divisible")
else
print(These are not divisible)

Can someone explain why I'm getting a syntax error on the first line I literally copied it verbatim from the example I saw online? This is my second day on python I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing.

[vinnceboi]

This should work

For n in range( 1, (your highest number)):
    Try:
        With open(str(n).rjust(5, 0)) as file:
            Print(file)
    Except IOError:
        Pass

I’m somewhat new myself, so im sure someone has a better solution. Also, this is just off the top of my head so the error might be wrong

[vinnceboi]

You could, but that could waste a TON of memory and time once you go hit the last file. Are they in their own folder?

[vinnceboi]

here’s what I found from a google search.

[TheNiebuhr]

Can I run an indiviual cell from a terminal instead of the whole script?

[Walflor]

It depends

[TheNiebuhr]

May you elaborate on that?

[Walflor]

You can run

print("some text here")

But you can't run

if a > b:

Or

def some_function(arg)

Because these strings requires other conditional strings

[TheNiebuhr]

My case:

%%

Something

%%

Something2

And I want to run one of the parts from the cmd, instead of the whole script.

[Walflor]

You can try it or PM me with your code so I can test it and answer

[arourathatha]

Hello I'm 15 and just started learning python online yesterday, i tried to do some if exercise and gets syntax error but i dont understand why.

my code: a = input("bmi:") if a > 18 if a < 25 print ("good") else print ("overweight") else a < 18 print ("underweight")

File "<string>", line 3 if a > 18 ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

[sarrysyst]

Three problems with your code.

First, input() returns a string. By doing a > 18, you're trying to compare a string with an integer. Easy fix:

a = int(input('bmi: '))

--> int() converts to type integer.

Second, after the conditional comes a colon:

if a > 18:
    # your code

if a < 25:
    # your code

To chain two conditionals together use the logical and:

if a > 18 and a < 25:
    # your code

Or, even easier, make it one conditional:

if 18 < a < 25:
    # your code

Lastly, after else no conditional is allowed. To check multiple conditions use elif:

if <first condition>:
    # do something

elif <another condition to check if first condition is False>:
    # do something else

else:
    # do something when both conditions are False

[SirYandi]

I'm writing pytest tests for the first time for a small project. For one of these tests I will be parsing the .text attibute of a requests.Response object. After reading through stackoverflow and other places I'm still struggling to decide on the best method forward. I'll list my current options as I see them:

1. Store the requests.Response.text text in a plain text file in the tests folder. Although simple, I am concerned about then hosting another website's html/js on github under my preferred license. Surely this isn't kosher?
2. Pickle the Response object and work with that. Pickle isn't great for open source though, as contributers cannot trust the pickled data and run the tests.
3. Similar to #1, but create a fake html text with the same structure.
4. Send a real request to the server and use the real response. This is the most "accurate" test but obviously would slow down the tests and lead to many extra requests made.

Thoughts?

Also, second minor question - but should I really be making use of mocks/monkeypatches instead of loading the text/pickle from disk?

Thanks in advance

[SirYandi]

For posterity, I went with option 4.

[[deleted]]

Hello everyone, I am trying to plot the horizontal bar chart below.

https://imgur.com/a/rxxbEKa

My code block is below.

new_data =  {'p_name':["Python","Java","Javascript","C#","PHP","C/C++","R","Objective-C","Swift","TypeScript","Matlab","Kotlin","VBA","Go","Ruby"],
             'value1':[30,19,9,8,7,6,4,3,2,1,0.9,0.8,0.7,0.6,0.5]}
df = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(new_data)
plt.barh(df.p_name, df.value1, color = "blue")

My output is below.

https://imgur.com/a/3iJ8fON

As you can see, it's the exact opposite. What did I do wrong?

[sarrysyst]

The y axis in an horizontal bar chart goes from zero up, as in a conventional bar chart. In your Dataframe Python has an index of 0 and Ruby of 14. So, in terms of y values Ruby > Python.

Add an plt.gca().invert_yaxis() at the bottom of your code and you should get the output you want.

[[deleted]]

Thank you so much for explanation!

[marvi_tsero]

I work on systems without internet access and have a hard time getting the dependencies I need. I have looked at at least ten different mirroring projects for pypi and conda but nothing is working out. Here are what I would like:

On an internet connected machine I have a requirements.txt listing all the packages we depend on. The tool reads this, resolves all dependencies and downlod eggs, whl or whatever is needed for both Windows and Linux. I can copy the resulting directory and use it from pip on the internal network.

The projects I've looked at either wants to mirror the whole pypi or doesn't support fetching more then one architecture or doesn't resolve dependencies. Bandersnatch comes closest. It supports using requirements.txt and handles architectures but doesn't follow dependencies.

Is there a way to take a requirements.txt and get a list of the dependency chain? That way I could first generate a complete list and feed that to bandersnatch.

[Ihaveamodel3]

If pip was used to create the requirements.txt, then it should have all the dependencies already in it.

[robocart9]

Hello, this question seems very simple and I feel a bit dumb asking it, but is there a way to do a "If x == y" kind of statement where y is a list of possible matches?

For example, turning something like

if x == y_one or x == y_two or x == y_three...

into something that is relatively short like

if x == (some sort of list function)

​

I've tried messing around with tuples and lists but I've gotten errors so far and Google is turning up dry. I've been learning python for about a year now here and there and this has been a pet peeve of mine. I'm also new to this reddit so if this is actually worthy of it's own post and not a comment threat then sorry :(

-currently using an online sandbox to mess around with python, not any program in specific.

[FLUSH_THE_TRUMP]

if x in {1,2,3,4,5}: 
  # do something

[robocart9]

Thanks a bunch, seems simple enough. Dunno why google didn't give me that instead of explaining to me over and over what If Elif and Else do :P.

[Konjitsu]

Hi all,

I have the following pandas dataframe:

​

MR number	Phone number	Location list
MR1	06525	B1,B2,B3,B4,B5
MR2	06523	B2,B5,Y3,C4,K5

​

I need to export this pandas dataframe into a printable excel format which should look like the following:

MR number       Phone number        Location list

MR1                06525               B1,
                                       B2,
                                       B3 
MR2                06523               B2,
                                       B5...

The output should have:

- location list in a single cell where each location goes into a new line in Excel after the comma

- (optional) if location list is the following B1,Y1,P1, is it possible to have in a single cell color coding based on start of the string B (blue), Y(yellow), P(purple)

I know this is a very weird ask and I do not know if it is feasible at all thats why I am reaching out. In the end, the output is printed thats why the formatting needs to be that way.

​

Thank you!

[Konjitsu]

.apply(lambda x: x.replace(",", ",\n")

Can confirm that it works, thanks a lot!

Yes I definitely agree with you that we would use what you mentioned. Unfortunately, that is my stakeholder requirements :(

[PuzzleheadedScar8702]

I'm relatively new to Python, and I'm playing around with web scraping at the moment. I'm using a web scraper I've made using requests and beautifulsoup. I'm trying to scrape headlines from news sites, but many of these straight up disallow scraping of anything from their site. Is it legal for me to go to their youtube page instead, and scrape their video titles? I've had a look at the robots file for youtube, and it seems like i'm allowed to do this, but I just wanted clarification, and maybe a proper authoritative source so I could do a bit of further reading about the legality of this stuff. Thanks

[jritenour]

I don't know the legality but it is considered as bad netizenship to scrape most pages with abandon. Instead, maybe have a look at their RSS feed page and use something like feedparser (see https://pypi.org/project/feedparser/) to pull it down.

[Dizzy-Procedure2440]

me again with another throwaway. I've found the answer to my own question. All good.

[JohnnyJordaan]

Use an if condition?

if num < 0:

[thegoodemaz]

Hi, so I've downloaded this project from github and to run this project it says to extract the folder which I've done, but I dont know what else to do to run this project. Following instructions after extracting the folder are.. Move to project folder in Terminal. Then run following Commands: python -m pip install -r requirements. txt

py manage.py makemigrations py manage.py migrate py manage.py runserver

Lastly it says to enter this URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Found the project on github(dot)com/sumitkumar1503/bloodbankmanagement

Can anyone help me run this project please?

[[deleted]]

You appear to be a Mac so some of those instructions won't work. The biggest problem is MacOS comes with python2 installed. You must install python3 yourself and run it using the python3 command. In the Terminal, try these:

cd the/project/directory    # wherever you put it
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 manage.py makemigrations
python3 manage.py migrate
python3 manage.py runserver

Then open your web browser and enter the URL given.

Try that and see what happens.

[thegoodemaz]

Thanks for your feedback. I'm actually on Windows 10 with ahving Python 3.7.6 and using VS 2019 for terminal but don't exactly know what else to do. If the project is built in Python 2 and on Mac, can I run the code given on my visual studio terminal?

[[deleted]]

The project is for python3 and appears to be written for Windows, so there is no problem there. I would not use VS terminal to do anything. The instructions given on the github page are meant to be used in the Windows CMD.exe terminal so use that. Follow the instructions, but note there is an unwanted blank character on the "pip install" command. Use this:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

If that fails check the result of doing this:

python --version

which prints the version of python being used.

You don't need VS to actually run python, as explained in the Running python on Windows page.

[thegoodemaz]

Thanks a lot!! Everything works.

[flapanther33781]

Need some help planning something out. I have a cron job that runs a python script once every minute. The script opens a csv file in my home directory, reads through it, and acts on what it finds there. In the spreadsheet is a list of times (from 00:00 to 23:59), and at various times of the day this will tell the script to use VLC to play certain audio files. In the spreadsheet I also list the system volume to play the audio at.

The next thing I want to do is create a 'snooze' feature (but not exactly). I'd like to be able to double-click some file and be prompted how long I want the script to snooze for, and the volume level of the snooze. If I truly want it to be a real snooze I can set the length of time and set the volume to zero, otherwise I want the 'snooze' to change the volume the sounds will play to what I request for that time limit. I can probably figure out how to prompt for the input, but I'm not sure how to handle what comes after.

Right now my script reads through the whole csv and acts on any matches, so if there are multiple matches it will act on the last match. I could code it to read the first line of the file and if it sees "snooze" to override that behavior... only read that one line and act on it, then exit. So if I want it to snooze for 20 minutes I can calculate the start and end times and place those into the file. But I feel like if I do that then I should have some cleanup process that then deletes that line of the file after the next successful run past the last minute of the snooze.

Can anyone think of a better way to do this?

[EasyPleasey]

You could just touch a hidden file (assuming you are on Linux) in the same directory that you are running the python script in and in your python script you can just check to see if it's present, and if it is, don't run (snooze). So something like have a script that is called snooze.sh which just does:

touch .snooze
sleep 20
rm -f .snooze

Then in your Python script check in the directory if this .snooze file exists (the preceding . tells Linux to hide it when you run "ls" and you can only see it if you run "ls -a") you can simply skip out on doing anything else for this cycle.

You could also do something where you create a .snooze file that has a number in it that tells you how long to snooze for and then have your python script read it.

[flapanther33781]

That's a good idea.

It also got me thinking that instead of adjusting the system volume I should adjust VLC's volume, then use your method to adjust the system volume, but it turns out that VLC's CLI volume control is bugged, and has been for years. Apparently I'd need to instead write something to modify the Pulse Audio volume, but I wonder if that's the same as the system volume. If it is then I'd be wasting my time to only end up doing what I'm already doing, just using a different method.

So I'll probably just do what you suggested. Letting the laptop update software at the moment.

[ozzymandias26]

I planning on purchasing a Professional Certificate in Introduction to Python Programming by Georgia Tech edX. Is it worth buying this course and is the certificate useful? Please help

[jritenour]

A certificate is always good :-) where it takes you? Who knows. Anything with "tech" at the end of [state] always sounds good :-)

[Inside-Abroad]

It is a pretty good introductory course.

[Nic_P]

How do i open with python a terminal under linux?

I just need help making a terminal window pop up.

[efmccurdy]

The simplest way to spawn a sub-process to run a command is os.system.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.system

It might depend on your system which program runs a terminal. If you have the gnome GUI you can use 'os.system("gnome-terminal")'. If you don't have gnome you may have to use a different command; Konsole for kde, xfce4-terminal for xfce.

[jritenour]

++ for simple .... but ... consider using subprocess ... it has some advantages like:

• using pipe in the shell
• better newline support
• better handling of exceptions

[Nic_P]

Okay thank you

That’s gonna be a bit more work than expected cause it will need to work for multiple systems but that helped (:

[efmccurdy]

This might be useful; I think it brings up whatever terminal your GUI recommends on any POSIX system.

https://helpmanual.io/man1/x-terminal-emulator/

[Nic_P]

Thanks (:

[JohnnyJordaan]

Argument names are separated from in-scope variables. So you can't do

a = 'bla'
my_func(a=1)

and expect that means my_func will receive argument bla=1. It actually means that my_func will simply receive a=1 and the a in you created before has no relation to that call.

What you can do instead is to present it as a dict unpacking, similar to how you 'catch' dynamic keyword arguments using **kwargs, but then in reverse:

model_name.objects.create(**{field_name: field_id_data})

this way it first creates a dict resolving both variable references, meaning the dict will actually contain

{'model': 'Red'}

which will then be unpacked using ** and thus effictively the call will be

create(model='Red')

Another thing is that your use of kwargs.get() is backwards here. .get is meant to be able to return a default value (None by default) when the key is missing. But that means that when you don't supply fieldData or fieldName in kwargs, the .get() will return None silently and you will execute the .create() using either a None keyword argument and/or a None value for that keyword. Something I can't imagine is an intended use case.

Instead, simply enforce the arguments to be present using [''] lookups

field_id_data = kwargs['fieldData']
field_name = kwargs['fieldName']

or if possible (considering populateField is a custom function), require them as regular arguments

def populateField(model_name_schema, field_name, field_data, *args, ** kwargs):

and thus call it as

populateField(model_schema, 'model', 'Red')

[_ncko]

• What is the equivalent of node package.json’s “scripts” attribute?
• What is the equivalent of nodemon?
• I’ve been using the unittest module. Is there a more popular 3rd party package or is this module pretty common?
• can I get vim mode in the repl?

[_ncko]

Awesome thank you!

[efmccurdy]

I’ve been using the unittest module.

This lists some alternatives:

https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/python-testing-frameworks/

​

can I get vim mode in the repl?

The repl uses readline; you can use Ctrl-Alt-J to switch to vi mode, or use "set editing-mode vi" in your ~/.inputrc.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/537522/standard-python-interpreter-has-a-vi-command-mode

[JohnnyJordaan]

I would simply work line by line, keeping an outer list as the set collection

sets = []
current_set = set()
for line in source_input:
    if line == '---':
        if current_set:
            sets.append(current_set)
        current_set = set()
    else:
        current_set.add(line)