| \chapter{Undocumented Modules} |
| \label{undoc} |
| |
| Here's a quick listing of modules that are currently undocumented, but |
| that should be documented. Feel free to contribute documentation for |
| them! (The idea and most contents for this chapter were taken from a |
| posting by Fredrik Lundh; I have revised some modules' status.) |
| |
| |
| \section{Frameworks; somewhat harder to document, but well worth the effort} |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[Tkinter.py] |
| --- Interface to Tcl/Tk for graphical user interfaces; |
| Fredrik Lundh is working on this one! |
| |
| \item[Tkdnd.py] |
| --- Drag-and-drop support for \module{Tkinter}. |
| |
| \item[CGIHTTPServer.py] |
| --- CGI-savvy HTTP Server |
| |
| \item[SimpleHTTPServer.py] |
| --- Simple HTTP Server |
| |
| \item[test] |
| --- Regression testing framework. This is used for the Python |
| regression test, but is useful for other Python libraries as well. |
| This is a package rather than a module. |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Stuff useful to a lot of people, including the CGI crowd} |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[MimeWriter.py] |
| --- Generic MIME writer |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Miscellaneous useful utilities} |
| |
| Some of these are very old and/or not very robust; marked with ``hmm''. |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[ConfigParser.py] |
| --- Parse a file of sectioned configuration parameters |
| |
| \item[cmp.py] |
| --- Efficiently compare files |
| |
| \item[cmpcache.py] |
| --- Efficiently compare files (uses statcache) |
| |
| \item[dircache.py] |
| --- like os.listdir, but caches results |
| |
| \item[dircmp.py] |
| --- class to build directory diff tools on |
| |
| \item[getpass.py] |
| --- Utilities to get a password and/or the current user name. |
| |
| \item[linecache.py] |
| --- Cache lines from files (used by pdb) |
| |
| \item[pipes.py] |
| --- Conversion pipeline templates (hmm) |
| |
| \item[statcache.py] |
| --- Maintain a cache of file stats |
| |
| \item[colorsys.py] |
| --- Conversion between RGB and other color systems |
| |
| \item[dbhash.py] |
| --- (g)dbm-like wrapper for bsdhash.hashopen |
| |
| \item[mhlib.py] |
| --- MH interface |
| |
| \item[pty.py] |
| --- Pseudo terminal utilities |
| |
| \item[tty.py] |
| --- Terminal utilities |
| |
| \item[bdb.py] |
| --- A generic Python debugger base class (used by pdb) |
| |
| \item[wdb.py] |
| --- A primitive windowing debugger based on STDWIN. |
| |
| \item[ihooks.py] |
| --- Import hook support (for rexec) |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Parsing Python} |
| |
| (One could argue that these should all be documented together with the |
| parser module.) |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[tokenize.py] |
| --- regular expression that recognizes Python tokens; also |
| contains helper code for colorizing Python source code. |
| |
| \item[pyclbr.py] |
| --- Parse a Python file and retrieve classes and methods |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Platform specific modules} |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[ntpath.py] |
| --- equivalent of posixpath on 32-bit Windows |
| |
| \item[dospath.py] |
| --- equivalent of posixpath on MS-DOS |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Code objects and files, debugger etc.} |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[repr.py] |
| --- Redo the `...` (representation) but with limits on most |
| sizes (used by pdb) |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Multimedia} |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[audiodev.py] |
| --- Plays audio files |
| |
| \item[sunau.py] |
| --- parse Sun and NeXT audio files |
| |
| \item[sunaudio.py] |
| --- interpret sun audio headers |
| |
| \item[toaiff.py] |
| --- Convert "arbitrary" sound files to AIFF files |
| |
| \item[sndhdr.py] |
| --- recognizing sound files |
| |
| \item[wave.py] |
| --- parse WAVE files |
| |
| \item[whatsound.py] |
| --- recognizing sound files |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Oddities} |
| |
| These modules are probably also obsolete, or just not very useful. |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[dump.py] |
| --- Print python code that reconstructs a variable |
| |
| \item[find.py] |
| --- find files matching pattern in directory tree |
| |
| \item[fpformat.py] |
| --- General floating point formatting functions --- |
| interesting demonstration of how to do this without using the \C{} |
| library |
| |
| \item[grep.py] |
| --- grep |
| |
| \item[mutex.py] |
| --- Mutual exclusion --- for use with module sched |
| |
| \item[packmail.py] |
| --- create a self-unpacking \UNIX{} shell archive |
| |
| \item[poly.py] |
| --- Polynomials |
| |
| \item[sched.py] |
| --- event scheduler class |
| |
| \item[shutil.py] |
| --- utility functions usable in a shell-like program |
| |
| \item[util.py] |
| --- useful functions that don't fit elsewhere |
| |
| \item[zmod.py] |
| --- Compute properties of mathematical "fields" |
| |
| \item[tzparse.py] |
| --- Parse a timezone specification (unfinished) |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Obsolete} |
| |
| These modules are not on the standard module search path; |
| \indexiii{module}{search}{path} |
| but are available in the directory \file{lib-old/} installed under |
| \file{\textrm{\$prefix}/lib/python1.5/}. % $ <-- bow to font lock |
| To use any of these modules, add that directory to \code{sys.path}, |
| possibly using \envvar{PYTHONPATH}. |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[newdir.py] |
| --- New dir() function (the standard dir() is now just as good) |
| |
| \item[addpack.py] |
| --- standard support for "packages" |
| |
| \item[fmt.py] |
| --- text formatting abstractions (too slow) |
| |
| \item[Para.py] |
| --- helper for fmt.py |
| |
| \item[lockfile.py] |
| --- wrapper around FCNTL file locking (use |
| \function{fcntl.lockf()}/\function{flock()} intead) |
| |
| \item[tb.py] |
| --- Print tracebacks, with a dump of local variables (use |
| \function{pdb.pm()} or \module{traceback} instead) |
| |
| \item[codehack.py] |
| --- Extract function name or line number from a function |
| code object (these are now accessible as attributes: co.co_name, |
| func.func_name, co.co_firstlineno). |
| |
| \item[timingmodule] |
| --- Measure time intervals to high resolution (use |
| \function{time.clock()} instead). (This is an extension module.) |
| \end{description} |
| |
| The following modules were documented in previous versions of this |
| manual, but are now considered obsolete: |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[ni] |
| --- Import modules in ``packages.'' Basic package support is now |
| built in. |
| |
| \item[rand] |
| --- Old interface to the random number generator. |
| |
| \item[soundex] |
| --- Algorithm for collapsing names which sound similar to a shared |
| key. (This is an extension module.) |
| \end{description} |
| |
| |
| \section{Extension modules} |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[bsddbmodule.c] |
| --- Interface to the Berkeley DB interface (yet another |
| dbm clone). |
| |
| \item[cursesmodule.c] |
| --- Curses interface. |
| |
| \item[dlmodule.c] |
| --- A highly experimental and dangerous device for calling |
| arbitrary \C{} functions in arbitrary shared libraries. |
| |
| \item[newmodule.c] |
| --- Tommy Burnette's \module{new} module (creates new empty objects of |
| certain kinds) --- dangerous. |
| |
| \item[nismodule.c] |
| --- NIS (a.k.a. Sun's Yellow Pages) interface. |
| |
| \item[stdwinmodule.c] |
| --- Interface to STDWIN (an old, unsupported |
| platform-independent GUI package). Obsolete; use Tkinter for a |
| platform-independent GUI instead. |
| \end{description} |
| |
| The following are SGI specific: |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[clmodule.c] |
| --- Interface to the SGI compression library. |
| |
| \item[svmodule.c] |
| --- Interface to the ``simple video'' board on SGI Indigo |
| (obsolete hardware). |
| \end{description} |
| |
| The following is Windows specific: |
| |
| \begin{description} |
| \item[msvcrtmodule.c] |
| (in directory \file{PC/}) --- define a number of Windows |
| specific goodies like \function{khbit()}, \function{getch()} and |
| \function{setmode()}. (Windows 95 and NT only.) |
| \end{description} |