[TIP] alphabetical order in testing

[holger krekel]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:11 -0500, Mark Sienkiewicz wrote:
> holger krekel wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 17:09 -0500, Mark Sienkiewicz wrote:
>>   
>>> In that case, there is some clever python feature that I don't know   
>>> about.  How does it work?  Is it easier than
>>>    import os
>>>    l = dir(os)
>>>     
>>
>> functions have a bytecode object which has a co_firstlineno line  
>> number - you can use that to sort. If you insist on oneliners: 
>>
>>     sorted(vars(os).items(), key=lambda x:         
>> getattr(getattr(x[1], 'func_code', None), 'co_firstlineno', 0))
>>
>> In practise i'd rather write this as a five-liner.   
>
> No, I don't insist on one-liners.  I agree:  if I were to write  
> something like this (which I can do now that I know how) I would write  
> it as about 5 lines of code and another 5 lines of comments explaining  
> how it works.  I'm not a fan of taking 5 simple lines and cramming them  
> into 1 complicated line.
>
> But this example points out a general philosophical difference that I  
> think would be useful to the group:
>
> I consider "l = dir(os)" to be simpler for two reasons.  The LESS  
> important reason is that it contains a single function call.
>
> The more important reason is:
>
> You can hardly learn python without being aware of dir(); If I asked any  
> random python programmer "How do you get a list of the symbols in a  
> module, sorted alphabetically?" I would expect the answer "l = dir(mod)"  
> or maybe "l = dir(mod); l.sort()".  That is easy for just about anybody  
> who can write python.

I don't get the point, sorry.  Is your goal easy re-implementability of 
every aspect of a system?  There is *lots* of code in the Python core to 
make things convenient for the user but the implementation of it is not. 
Including the implementation of 'dir' :) 

What makes sense rather to discuss IMO: what is an easy to understand 
and reliable rule for using test-related support code?  And what is 
reliably and in a cross-interpreter straight forward to implement.  

cheers,
holger



> For comparison, I've been using python for years, and I have never seen  
> documentation for the interface in this example.  (I don't claim that it  
> is undocumented -- just that I have never seen it, and after flipping  
> through the table of contents of the standard library, it is not obvious  
> to me where to look for it.)  If I don't know about it, then my first  
> task is to ask "how would I find this information?", which would mean  
> searching the documentation, then possibly reverse engineering the  
> python interpreter if I did not find anything useful.  Compare with just  
> a few seconds to write code that uses dir().
>
> So in a way, we're both right, in slightly different domains:  Listing  
> the functions alphabetically is easy, for just about anybody.  Listing  
> the functions by line number is easy, for anybody who knows about this  
> interface.
>
> Of course, there is no "rule of programming" that falls out of this  
> observation.  It's just something that we should all be aware of.
>
> Mark S.
>

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