Monthly Archives: April 2009

Python vs TTCN-3

Some time ago computing scientists Bernard Stepien and Liam Peyton from the University of Ottawa compared Python with TTCN-3. TTCN-3 means Testing and Test Control Notation and it is domain specific language specifically designed for writing tests in the domain … Continue reading

Posted in DSL, Python, Testing | 4 Comments

Tail recursion decorator revisited

A while ago some of us tried to find the best solution for a tail recursion decorator. The story began when Crutcher Dunnavant came up with a surprising decorator that was able to eliminate tail recursion. His solution used stack … Continue reading

Posted in Python | 6 Comments

Universal Set in Python

Building sets from set() and ANY When defining a regular expression there is a well known duality between a set of characters specified by enclosing characters or character ranges within square brackets `[…]` and defining the pattern of the complement … Continue reading

Posted in Mathematics, Python | Tagged | 5 Comments

The statement that never was

The Python release archive is a nice repository for archaeological findings. My biggest surprise was the existence of an access statement and `access` keyword in the pre-history of Python 1.5.0. The syntax was already specified in release 1.0 with an … Continue reading

Posted in General, Python | Tagged | 1 Comment

Pyload part I ( Path objects )

This article is the first in a series that studies the design of a module import system. Although this work is situated in the Python context it can stay on its own to a large extent and ideas may be … Continue reading

Posted in Python | Comments Off on Pyload part I ( Path objects )

Broken beyond repair – Pythons import system

It often happens that language features we have once distasted become comfortable after a while. We learn to live with them, take their advantages and forget about their annoyance. For many Python developers things like the explicit `self` in the … Continue reading

Posted in Python | 9 Comments