On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 12:22 AM, L O'Shea <lo0...@my.bristol.ac.uk> wrote: > I'm starting to get pretty worried about my lack of overall progress and so I > wondered if anyone out there had some tips and techniques for understanding > other peoples code. There has to be 10/15 different scripts with at least 10 > functions in each file I would say.
The first thing I'd recommend is getting yourself familiar with the language itself, and (to some extent) the standard library. Then you'll know that any unrecognized wotzit must have come from your own project, so you'll be able to search up its definition. Then I'd tackle source files one at a time, and look at the very beginning. If the original coder was at all courteous, each file will start off with a block of 'import' statements, looking something like this: import re import itertools Or possibly like this: from itertools import cycle, islice Or, if you're unlucky, like this: from tkinter import * The first form is easy. You'll find references to "re.sub" or "itertools.takewhile"; the second form at least names what it's grabbing (so you'll find "cycle" or "islice" in the code), and the third just dumps a whole lot of stuff into your namespace. Actually, if the programmer's been really nice, there'll be a block comment or a docstring at the top of the file, which might even be up-to-date and accurate. But I'm guessing you already know to look for that. :) The other thing I would STRONGLY recommend: Keep the interactive interpreter handy. Any line of code you don't understand, paste it into the interpreter. Chances are it won't wipe out your entire hard drive :) But seriously, there is much to gain and nothing to lose by keeping IDLE or the command-line interpreter handy. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
