Relearning Python #1/2: Ch-ch-ch-changes

When Last We Left Our Heroes …

A few things have changed in the three months(?!?) since the last article.

Computers Change

For reasons I was forced decided to upgrade to Linux Mint 21.1l which has Python 3.10.6 installed.

Also for reasons, I bought a Windows 10 machine that also has Python 3.11.2 available to download. So I guess I’m going to get acquainted with the Power Shell.¹

Scripts Change

I made a few upgrades to duplicate-files.rb and its companion program, remove-files.rb:

• Replaced the overbuilt Printer objects with a simple and boring if statement near the end of run.

• Replaced the terrible logic in append_duplicates with Hashes used like sets. Code at the end turns them into lists of files.

• Built a Progress class to create a progress bar with ASCII while the program compares each file in its list of duplicates. As of this writing it over-reports progress, because I’m not accurately estimating how many operations it takes to compare files. Still working on it, amidst other things.

• As a result of the previous failure, the program logs performance data, including the estimated and actual number of comparisons, the wall-clock time to run each part of the script, and the calculated map of files with the same size. Perf logs go either to the Temp directory or to a directory the user can specify on the command line. At some point I’ll run some simulations to figure out why the choose function and even factorial grossly underestimate the number of comparisons needed.

• duplicate-files.rb is much simplified(?) and simpler to use. It takes output from duplicate-files.rb, either in a file or piped in directly, and deletes all but one of the duplicate files listed. And that’s it. (Previous versions also deleted files listed on the command line. I lost more output files that way …)

I was going to “surprise” my hypothetical readers with that fact once duplicate-files.py was nearly complete, but that day seems ever more distant.

Instead, I’m going to track the changes as I make them, or at least as they become relevant.

Priorities Change

While looking for Python books I also happened across books on Go, Rust, TypeScript, and Windows. Hugo, the program that generates this site, is written in Go; I’ve stumbled on references to Rust here and there, and at one time TypeScript was the improvement on JavaScript everyone needed to use. (Not sure if that’s still true.)

All of which look interesting. But so do Antlr, Erlang, Hugo’s template language, Lua, Scheme, and all the projects I listed elsewhere. There just aren’t enough hours.

Meanwhile I put about two dozen posts on this site. Another dozen still remain as drafts, ranging from a title and topic to text almost done but still in need of editing. Plus my usual habit of tweaking things I’ve already published when I find a typo or braino.

“Holy Short Attention Span, Bat– Ooh, Shiny”

So, hypothetical readers, it seems I have too many irons in the fire and not enough heat. I will continue this series, though.²

Reproducing a script I’d been hacking on for more than two decades, though, sounds like a lot. Maybe a version 0.1 proof of concept: recurse down directories, collect sets of same-sized files, compare them, report the results in whatever convenient format (JSON, YAML, Python lists, whatever).

After that I may bail and pursue another Python project, or some smaller explorations.

Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel

So, hopefully in something less than three months, I’ll finally have a “Relearning Python #1” ready.