mx Oddity in FC3/RedHat ES

[Eric Azarcon]

Hello!

I've installed the mx package from egenix, and I am experiencing pretty
odd behaviour.

If I launch python and run the following commands, I get an error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'DateTime'


OK, great. However, if I then ask for help on the mx package first, the
above command will work.
help> modules
-- list of modules --
help> mx
-- displays mx info --
help> mx.DateTime
-- displays mx.DateTime info --
help> --quit help here --<DateTime object for '2004-12-20 00:00:00.00' at 984a1b8>

Any ideas what is going on? Is there a path problem that gets resolved
by calling help()?

Note that issuing help(mx) doesn't work. You have to go into help, do
the modules listing and then ask for mx.

This same behaviour is displayed on my Fedora Core 3 box running
mx-2.0.5-3, and on 2 separate machines running RHEL-ES (most recent
version with updates applied) and egenix-mx-base-2.0.6-py2.2_1.

Any help would be very appreciated!

Thanks,

Eric

p.s. the background is that I need to use mx because the target boxes
only have Python 2.2 on them. Using DateTime from Python 2.3 would be
preferred, but being a newbie, I have no idea how to compile just that
module from source and install it into 2.2. *sigh*

 

[Steve Holden]

Hello!

I've installed the mx package from egenix, and I am experiencing pretty
odd behaviour.

If I launch python and run the following commands, I get an error:

Well,

from anything import *

is bad form for any module unless (like Tkinter, for example) it's been
specifically designed to support this behavior. Since "the mx package"
is actually a number of inter-dependent packages you are almost
guaranteeing trouble here.

mx is not designed to be imported, it's just a common namespace for a
number of modules by the same author.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'DateTime'

Try:

Python 2.4 (#1, Dec 4 2004, 20:10:33)
[GCC 3.3.3 (cygwin special)] on cygwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

OK, great. However, if I then ask for help on the mx package first, the
above command will work.



help> modules
-- list of modules --
help> mx
-- displays mx info --
help> mx.DateTime
-- displays mx.DateTime info --
help> --quit help here --


<DateTime object for '2004-12-20 00:00:00.00' at 984a1b8>

Any ideas what is going on? Is there a path problem that gets resolved
by calling help()?

Note that issuing help(mx) doesn't work. You have to go into help, do
the modules listing and then ask for mx.

Well, the help system actually imports the subpackages that live in the
mx space when you ask for help about them. So that's why doing that
allows you to resolve those names.

This same behaviour is displayed on my Fedora Core 3 box running
mx-2.0.5-3, and on 2 separate machines running RHEL-ES (most recent
version with updates applied) and egenix-mx-base-2.0.6-py2.2_1.

Any help would be very appreciated!

It's just a matter of using the packages in the intended way.

Thanks,

No problem.

Eric

p.s. the background is that I need to use mx because the target boxes
only have Python 2.2 on them. Using DateTime from Python 2.3 would be
preferred, but being a newbie, I have no idea how to compile just that
module from source and install it into 2.2. *sigh*

Well the first thing to try would be dropping it into /usr/lib/python2.2
and seeing if you can import it without errors. You might actually find
that the built-in "time" module contains enough date/time functionality
for your needs if they are simple.

regards
Steve

 

[Eric Azarcon]

from anything import *

is bad form for any module unless (like Tkinter, for example) it's been

Ah, I see. Thank you. Is there any reference, or way for me to
determine whether something can/should be imported in this manner? As a
newbie, looking for this information is sorta tough. I only used
from mx import *
because i found a reference to doing it this way elsewhere on the web.

I also use from stat import * to get at the ST_CTIME constant. Is that
a module that supports this, or is there a better way?

<DateTime object for '2004-12-20 00:00:00.00' at a0d85e0>

Awesome! Thanks, that's what I needed.

Well, the help system actually imports the subpackages that live in the
mx space when you ask for help about them. So that's why doing that
allows you to resolve those names.

Makes sense.

It's just a matter of using the packages in the intended way.

Thanks! I tried to look on the egenix website for usage info, but it
just had API info.

The odd thing is that Egenix has an EXAMPLES link on their page. If you
scroll down and look at the actual code examples, you'll see that it
starts out FROM blah IMPORT *. So, you can understand why I did it that
way. I prolly didn't do it deep enough (stopped at mx instead of
mx.blah).

Well the first thing to try would be dropping it into /usr/lib/python2.2
and seeing if you can import it without errors. You might actually find
that the built-in "time" module contains enough date/time functionality
for your needs if they are simple.

My needs are pretty simple. Maybe you can point me in the right
direction. I need to compare the creation time of a file with a date,
and determine if I need to delete it. I know how to use stat to get the
file creation time. I can get the current time. If I subtract the file
ctime from the current time, how do i turn that delta into days?

Thanks for all your help!

Eric

 

[Steve Holden]

Eric Azarcon wrote:

[...]

My needs are pretty simple. Maybe you can point me in the right
direction. I need to compare the creation time of a file with a date,
and determine if I need to delete it. I know how to use stat to get the
file creation time. I can get the current time. If I subtract the file
ctime from the current time, how do i turn that delta into days?

sholden@dellboy ~
$ python
Python 2.4 (#1, Dec 4 2004, 20:10:33)
[GCC 3.3.3 (cygwin special)] on cygwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.(33279, 1407374883881497L, 1410850211L, 1, 544, 513,
5859L, 1103556876, 1102382453, 1102292631)

>>> ctime = s[ST_CTIME]
>>> ctime 1102292631
>>> import time
>>> print "File was created", (time.time() - ctime)/(3600*24), "days ago"

File was created 14.6398609114 days ago

Does this do it?

regards
Steve