Python Programming
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DISTUTILS_USE_SETUPTOOLS, QA spam and… more QA spam? – Michał Górny
I suppose that most of the Gentoo developers have seen at least one of the ‘uses a probably incorrect DISTUTILS_USE_SETUPTOOLS value’ bugs by now. Over 350 have been filed so far, and new ones are filed practically daily. The truth is, I’ve never intended for this QA check to result in bugs being filed against packages, and certainly not that many bugs.
This is not an important problem to be fixed immediately. The vast majority of Python packages depend on setuptools at build time (this is why the build-time dependency is the eclass’ default), and being able to unmerge setuptools is not a likely scenario. The underlying idea was that the QA check would make it easier to update DISTUTILS_USE_SETUPTOOLS when bumping packages.
Nobody has asked me for my opinion, and now we have hundreds of bugs that are not very helpful. In fact, the effort involved in going through all the bugmail, updating packages and closing the bugs greatly exceeds the negligible gain. Nevertheless, some people actually did it. I have bad news for them: setuptools upstream has changed entry point mechanism, and most of the values will have to change again. Let me elaborate on that.
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Python and the infinite [LWN.net]
A recent proposal on the python-ideas mailing list would add a new way to represent floating-point infinity in the language. Cade Brown suggested the change; he cited a few different reasons for it, including fixing an inconsistency in the way the string representation of infinity is handled in the language. The discussion that followed branched in a few directions, including adding a constant for "not a number" (NaN) and a more general discussion of the inconsistent way that Python handles expressions that evaluate to infinity.
In general, Python handles floating-point numbers, including concepts like infinity, following the standards laid out by IEEE 754. Positive and negative infinity are represented by two specific floating-point values in most architectures. Currently, representing a floating-point infinite value in Python can be done using a couple of different mechanisms. There is the float() function, which can be passed the string "inf" to produce infinity, and there is the inf constant in the math library, which is equivalent to float('inf'). Brown provided several reasons why he believed a new, identical, and built-in constant was necessary. One of his reasons was that he felt that infinity is a "fundamental constant" that should be accessible from Python without having to call a function or require a library import.
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Further analysis of PyPI typosquatting [LWN.net]
We have looked at the problem of confusingly named packages in repositories such as the Python Package Index (PyPI) before. In general, malicious actors create these packages with names that can be mistaken for those of legitimate packages in the repository in a form of "typosquatting". Since our 2016 article, the problem has not gone away—no surprise—but there has been some recent analysis of it, as well as some efforts to combat it.
On the IQT blog, John Speed Meyers and Bentz Tozer recently posted some analysis they had done to quantify PyPI typosquatting attacks and to categorize them. They started by looking at the examples of actual attacks against PyPI users from 2017 to 2020; they found 40 separate instances over that time span. The criteria used were that the package had a name similar to another in PyPI, contained malware, and was identified and removed from the repository.
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Automating PDF generation using Python reportlab module
Generating PDF using python reportlab module, Adding table to PDF using Python, Adding Pie Chart to PDF using Python, Generating PDF invoice using Python code, Automating PDF generation using Python reportlab module
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Level Up Your Skills With the Real Python Slack Community – Real Python
The Real Python Community Slack is an English-speaking Python community with members located all over the world. It’s a welcoming group in which you’re free to discuss your coding and career questions, celebrate your progress, vote on upcoming tutorial topics, or just hang out with us at the virtual water cooler.
As a community member, you also get access to our weekly Office Hours, a live online Q&A session with the Real Python team where you’ll meet fellow Pythonistas to chat about your learning progress, ask questions, and discuss Python tips and tricks via screen sharing.
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Remove Duplicates From a List
How do we remove duplicates from a list? One way is to go through the original list, pick up unique values, and append them to a new list.
About the "Writing Faster Python" series
"Writing Faster Python" is a series of short articles discussing how to solve some common problems with different code structures. I run some benchmarks, discuss the difference between each code snippet, and finish with some personal recommendations.
Are those recommendations going to make your code much faster? Not really.
Is knowing those small differences going to make a slightly better Python programmer? Hopefully!You can read more about some assumptions I made, the benchmarking setup, and answers to some common questions in the Introduction article.
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