Python tips

If you are a maths freak, you would surely love this next tip. You may have used sets in your lower classes. Remember something? Yeah, exactly, Unions and stuff. So, there are people like me who don’t like to use automated softwares sometimes. The reason for that is Security. Let’s take a simple example of Microsoft Excel. Some people tend to use excel only to the group and create a database. They just need that and good security for that. They are not interested in formatting the text, colour and stuff. So, what I do at those times, is I create my own python Programming software stack and create my own database. For some of my security reasons, I prefer Python over MYSql. So, coming back to my point of sets, Sets are extremely useful when creating databases. Especially when you want to find matches, create groups and other similar tasks. Following is a simple example of that.

A = {1, 2, 3, 3} A set([1, 2, 3]) B = {3, 4, 5, 6, 7} B set([3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) A | B set([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) A & B set([3]) A - B set([1, 2]) B - A set([4, 5, 6, 7]) A ^ B set([1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7]) (A ^ B) == ((A - B) | (B - A)) True

Another useful tip I can think of is py2exe. Normally, when writing a code in any language, it can sometimes be a hassle to compile them into an executable, especially if you are using windows. But for Python Programming, it’s actually very simple. You can simply download py2exe, which again is open-source software that you can download from sourceforge.net. Using this app, you can simply convert even your modules into an exe, unlike C or C++, which is actually stress of mind when compiling into an exe.

When writing a program, our main goal is to make the program efficient, fast and compact. But there are times, when you simply cannot make the program compact. So at these times, you may not actually want to make the program compact to make it faster. What you can do is, for example, when handling codes in a dictionary, you can try an alternate method of dictating an item. Confused? Let me explain this. You can simply choose to add an item directly and then check whether the inserted items exist or need to be updated. So, by doing this, you don’t need to check each and every other item to match with it and then update it, which kind of will make the application slow. Following is a famous example of that: p = 16 myDiction = {} for i in range(0, p): char = 'abcd'[i%4] if char not in myDict: myDiction[char] = 0 myDiction[char] += 1 print(myDiction) The above example is the normal way of writing it. Now here is how it will make the code run faster, p = 16 myDiction = {} for I in range(0, p): char = ‘abcd’[i%4] try: myDiction[char] += 1 except KeyError: myDiction[char] = 1 print(myDiction)

This is also one of the most used methods. If you have ever played games, and by games, I mean high-end Games, you must have noticed that sometimes you have to lower the graphics. But again, sometimes, even you cannot find these options in the game. So, what you normally do is, find the config file in the documents folder and change it. For example, you change the Vsync = True or False as per the situation. But the one which I am trying to explain here is somewhat different but still related to it. True equals to 1, and False equals to 0 in python. In short, true means you agree and false means you disagree. These things are used most often in python. So, you can either assign True and False statements by using the “=” sign, or you can check the equality by using the “==” sign. As simple as that.

The best thing about python is that you can create your own modules. For example, I can create my own function and modules and place them all together in a separate folder. So what I do is I write down specific codes, which I know I would be used in common in most of my work, then convert them into a module and keep them aside in a separate folder. By doing this, I save a lot of time, from writing them again and debugging them to check for errors. Another reason is that you need to keep your program efficient and manageable if they are big in size. To manage this, you can break them into separate files, put multiple functions and definitions into a file and use them by importing them into scripts and programs. Note that these files will have a *.py extension. And once you import them, it will auto-create a *.pyc extension file that will load much quicker than the normal *.py file.

Last but not the least, it’s the Zen of python. Zen of python is a mini-guide for python programming. Even if you don’t program python, it’s still an interesting thing to read. Just simply go to the python interpreter and type:

import this And I won’t be explaining this one because it’s simply amazing to try it out yourself. And now, we have come to the end of the road. These are just my experiences, but if you find some, sure, do post it so that the world knows how exactly awesome python is. First Image Source: pixabay.com