Jay Loden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This isn't just a problem with the socket module, so please don't > think I'm picking on it or singling it out, it's something I've seen a > number of places. e.g. from os.stat: > > os.stat = stat(...) > stat(path) -> stat result > > Perform a stat system call on the given path. > > Ok...and what is the return value? a list? tuple? string? some type of > stat object? dictionary? The only way to find out is to read the os > module's source code or try it to find out. If you were really lucky > you might find the related documentation from class statvfs_result and > put two and two together to figure it out.
Or if you were really, really lucky you might try reading the documentation (http://docs.python.org/lib/os-file-dir.html): stat( path) Perform a stat() system call on the given path. The return value is an object whose attributes correspond to the members of the stat structure, namely: st_mode (protection bits), st_ino (inode number), st_dev (device), st_nlink (number of hard links), st_uid (user ID of owner), st_gid (group ID of owner), st_size (size of file, in bytes), st_atime (time of most recent access), st_mtime (time of most recent content modification), st_ctime (platform dependent; time of most recent metadata change on Unix, or the time of creation on Windows): >>> import os >>> statinfo = os.stat('somefile.txt') >>> statinfo (33188, 422511L, 769L, 1, 1032, 100, 926L, 1105022698,1105022732, 1105022732) >>> statinfo.st_size 926L >>> Changed in version 2.3: If stat_float_times returns true, the time values are floats, measuring seconds. Fractions of a second may be reported if the system supports that. On Mac OS, the times are always floats. See stat_float_times for further discussion. On some Unix systems (such as Linux), the following attributes may also be available: st_blocks (number of blocks allocated for file), st_blksize (filesystem blocksize), st_rdev (type of device if an inode device). st_flags (user defined flags for file). On other Unix systems (such as FreeBSD), the following attributes may be available (but may be only filled out if root tries to use them): st_gen (file generation number), st_birthtime (time of file creation). On Mac OS systems, the following attributes may also be available: st_rsize, st_creator, st_type. On RISCOS systems, the following attributes are also available: st_ftype (file type), st_attrs (attributes), st_obtype (object type). For backward compatibility, the return value of stat() is also accessible as a tuple of at least 10 integers giving the most important (and portable) members of the stat structure, in the order st_mode, st_ino, st_dev, st_nlink, st_uid, st_gid, st_size, st_atime, st_mtime, st_ctime. More items may be added at the end by some implementations. The standard module stat defines functions and constants that are useful for extracting information from a stat structure. (On Windows, some items are filled with dummy values.) Note: The exact meaning and resolution of the st_atime, st_mtime, and st_ctime members depends on the operating system and the file system. For example, on Windows systems using the FAT or FAT32 file systems, st_mtime has 2-second resolution, and st_atime has only 1-day resolution. See your operating system documentation for details. Availability: Macintosh, Unix, Windows. Changed in version 2.2: Added access to values as attributes of the returned object. Changed in version 2.5: Added st_gen, st_birthtime. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
