yaoi prophet posted:

I don't know how good Python is but I do know that you can run a Debian virtual machine on any computer that's not powered by a potato battery.

Captain Capacitor posted:

I hope you guys don't mind if I plug an upcoming sprint for a project I've been working with a lot recently, Salt. If there's a meet near you feel free to stop by, or pop by IRC if you're stuck somewhere remote.

More details here

duck monster posted:

Tell them to put "Say what SALT does on the front page of the website" as a sprint task. Seriously. I found it in the documentation, but that website really looks like its been fistfucked by a marketing person who actually has no idea what the products for.

Captain Capacitor posted:

The site recently went under a redesign, so the new look still has some fixes needed. Basically it's a server configuration and remote execution system. Fabric meets Puppet, minus Puppet's DSL and more centrally managed than Fabric.

duck monster posted:

See this poo poo here, it needs to be on the front page. Attention spans are short, especially for IT people who are desparately trying to research a solution on a lovely limited time span. A 2 sentence description right up the top on the front page, followed by a "Learn more" link that clearly enumerates what it does will make a world of difference.

e: Even better just give the loving thing a slogan that appears near the logo on every god drat page, so that no matter what direction I land from google, I'll see "SALT , a remote configuration toolkit for people who forgot to stab the marketing guy" and I'll see it and go "Hey, this poo poo is useful, wheres the "ABOUT" link?" and go find out more.

JetsGuy posted:

Also, I'm a scientific programmer who probably isn't your target audience, so keep that in mind anyway.

the posted:

So how do I do this?

Blenheim posted:

My intro to Python 2.7 class is asking for a recursive functions that counts the vowels in a string.

code:

def countVowels(s,idx):
    lst = list(s)
    i = 0
    if idx == len(lst)-1: 
        if character in ["a","e","i","o","u","A","E","I","O","U"]:
            i = i + 1
        return i
    else:
        return i + countVowels(s,idx+1) 

s = raw_input("Sentence? ")
print countVowels(s,0)

Problem 1 is that the program claims the global name "character" is not defined. Problem 2 is everything else. (Also, the professor wants a recursive version of the program without the idx argument, but one thing at a time, I suppose.) I've been struggling with this for a while now and could use some guidance.

Blenheim posted:

My intro to Python 2.7 class is asking for a recursive functions that counts the vowels in a string.

code:

def countVowels(s,idx):
    lst = list(s)
    i = 0
    if idx == len(lst)-1: 
        if character in ["a","e","i","o","u","A","E","I","O","U"]:
            i = i + 1
        return i
    else:
        return i + countVowels(s,idx+1) 

s = raw_input("Sentence? ")
print countVowels(s,0)

Problem 1 is that the program claims the global name "character" is not defined. Problem 2 is everything else. (Also, the professor wants a recursive version of the program without the idx argument, but one thing at a time, I suppose.) I've been struggling with this for a while now and could use some guidance.

Ridgely_Fan posted:

I would say you shouldn't just do someone's homework for them, but it looks like you haven't since you ignored what was asked for, ha.

Blenheim posted:

Problem 1 is that the program claims the global name "character" is not defined. Problem 2 is everything else. (Also, the professor wants a recursive version of the program without the idx argument, but one thing at a time, I suppose.) I've been struggling with this for a while now and could use some guidance.

Jewel posted:

Ridgely_Fan posted:

I usually do something like

Python code:

xmax = x.max()
if y[-1] < 0:
    max_i = numpy.nonzero(y < 0)[0][0]
    xmax = x[max_i]
pylab.xlim([0, xmax])

the posted:

Thanks, but could you explain in a little bit more detail what you did there in the if statement?

Jewel posted:

Because someone already did it for them in a recursive way! I was simply showing them the preferred method to use when actually programming and not forced to constrain to a specific style by an assignment

Oh my god I thought I hit new post not edit, welp, there goes all my code

xtal posted:

because it copies each segment of the string on each iteration, it's very inefficient. perhaps there's a better solution?

the posted:

I don't like having to know which module they're all from when I can just say pylab.blah

Is that a bad habit to get into? Why?

OnceIWasAnOstrich posted:

This might not really be a Python question, but I am slowly compiling a bunch of methods I use into a program I'll be releasing as open source with a scientific paper thats hopefully getting published soon. In trying to make it as flexible as possible I've started using the argparse module. I end up with an object containing all of my parameters. In possible coding horror fashion, my program consists of a cascade of small functions passing data around. I am wondering what the correct way to distribute parameters is. Do I pass the argparse object around like a toy, do I take the parameters out and pass them around or make it global somehow? The problem I am discovering is that I get 5-6 function calls deep and my methods have all sorts of parameters in them that they really have no use for except to pass to their grandchildren for use.

Blenheim posted:

In my Python for Dummies class, we're doing an exercise where we compile a dictionary of terms from a text file and make a simple translator. The keys are all one-word, but the values vary from one word to several.

So:

code:

for line in FILE:
	pairs = line.split( 	)
	key = pairs[0]
	value = pairs[1]
	dct[key] = value

I need to say that the zeroth element in a line is the key and the rest, be it one word or several, is the value. I don't know what terminology to use to do that, though. (I know that the current code is directing the value to be the first element in the list only.) Any help would be appreciated.