PyLint results?

[Michael Yanowitz]

Hello:

I ran the new pylint and my code and I had a few questions on why those
are warnings or what I can do to fix them:

1) W: 0: Too many lines in module (1587)
Why is 1587 considered too many lines? Would there be necessarily be an
advantage to split it up into 2 or 3 files? Can I up the limit?

2) C: 0: Missing required attribute "__revision__"
What is this? Is that for CVS? I don't use CVS (we use SVN). I have not
seen any sample code which includes this tag yet. But if I include
__revision 1.0 somewhere in the code it will remove that warning?

3) W:230:readDiscreteData: Using the global statement
What is wrong with using the global statement? I know the use of Globals
should be discouraged, but often they can't be avoided.
Suppose I have a constant. In C or C++, I could just use a #define and
it would be known throughout the whole file. In Python, there isn't a
similar construct, so rather than creating a large parameter list, of
constants, I like to use globals.

4) W:261:getDiscreteData: Catch "Exception"
What is wrong with that?

5) R:547:readDiscreteData: Too many branches (28/12)
Python doesn't have the switch/case statements that C/C++ have. So I
could have a large block if/elif/else statements.
Is there any way to avoid that?

6) R:722:waitDiscretes: Too many local variables (38/15)
That's new to me. What is wrong with too many local variables?
Can anything be done to improve that besides having too many globals?

7) W:933:sendStringToSocket: Redefining name 'nPortNumber' from outer scope
(line
What is wrong with using the same variable name in a function that is
used by its caller?

8) W:995:sendStringToSocket: Used builtin function 'map'
Is that a problem?

Plus many other warnings about my naming convention or unused variables
which I will ignore
at this time.

I did find it to be a very useful too any how in cleaning up my code.
I raised my code rate from about -8 to about +7.

Thanks:
Michael Yanowitz

 

[Alexis Roda]

Michael Yanowitz escribió:

Hello:

I ran the new pylint and my code and I had a few questions on why those
are warnings or what I can do to fix them:

2) C: 0: Missing required attribute "__revision__"
What is this? Is that for CVS? I don't use CVS (we use SVN). I have not
seen any sample code which includes this tag yet. But if I include
__revision 1.0 somewhere in the code it will remove that warning?

try it and see what happens

3) W:230:readDiscreteData: Using the global statement
What is wrong with using the global statement? I know the use of Globals
should be discouraged, but often they can't be avoided.
Suppose I have a constant. In C or C++, I could just use a #define and
it would be known throughout the whole file. In Python, there isn't a
similar construct, so rather than creating a large parameter list, of
constants, I like to use globals.

* define all your constants in a separate module constants.py, then:

from constants import *

* add the constants to __builtins__

__builtins__.constant_name = value

this approach is a bit tricky

4) W:261:getDiscreteData: Catch "Exception"
What is wrong with that?

cause you're masquerading *all* exceptions, this could be potentially
dangerous

6) R:722:waitDiscretes: Too many local variables (38/15)
That's new to me. What is wrong with too many local variables?
Can anything be done to improve that besides having too many globals?

too many local variables probably means "too complex function, split it
in smaller functions"

 

[Guest]

I ran the new pylint and my code and I had a few questions on why those
are warnings or what I can do to fix them:

1) W: 0: Too many lines in module (1587)
Why is 1587 considered too many lines? Would there be necessarily be
an
advantage to split it up into 2 or 3 files? Can I up the limit?

not necessarily. It might be considered bad style to put too much stuff into
one module. This depends on the content. You can now raise the limit (which
is 1000 lines by default) with the --max-module-lines command line option
or using a config file (generate one with pylint --generate-rcfile, use it
with pylint --rcfile=<filename>).

Alternatively you can disable the message for this module by putting
# pylint: disable-msg = W<id>
on the top (after the # -*- coding -*- line, if any).
The new pylint allows for local disabling also such comments within the
code.

The id can you get if you enable them in the output via cmdline or config
file.

2) C: 0: Missing required attribute "__revision__"
What is this? Is that for CVS? I don't use CVS (we use SVN). I have not
seen any sample code which includes this tag yet. But if I include
__revision 1.0 somewhere in the code it will remove that warning?

yeah. But you can list these attributes in the config... ;-)

3) W:230:readDiscreteData: Using the global statement
What is wrong with using the global statement? I know the use of
Globals should be discouraged, but often they can't be avoided.
Suppose I have a constant. In C or C++, I could just use a #define and
it would be known throughout the whole file. In Python, there isn't a
similar construct, so rather than creating a large parameter list, of
constants, I like to use globals.

Consider *writing* globals from inside a function as bad style.

4) W:261:getDiscreteData: Catch "Exception"
What is wrong with that?

Typically you do want be more specific, because Exception catches too much.

5) R:547:readDiscreteData: Too many branches (28/12)
Python doesn't have the switch/case statements that C/C++ have. So I
could have a large block if/elif/else statements.
Is there any way to avoid that?

Not always. But usually you can restructure your code better (Use more
functions/methods, structure them semantically).

6) R:722:waitDiscretes: Too many local variables (38/15)
That's new to me. What is wrong with too many local variables?
Can anything be done to improve that besides having too many globals?

One could loose the overview, I guess. 38 local variables are really a lot.
Structure your code

7) W:933:sendStringToSocket: Redefining name 'nPortNumber' from outer
scope (line
What is wrong with using the same variable name in a function that is
used by its caller?

It might confuse someone else or you in half a year when reading the code
again.

8) W:995:sendStringToSocket: Used builtin function 'map'
Is that a problem?

Not really. You might consider using list comprehensions, though.

Plus many other warnings about my naming convention or unused variables
which I will ignore
at this time.

I did find it to be a very useful too any how in cleaning up my code.
I raised my code rate from about -8 to about +7.

I personally find the code rate nonsense, YMMV ;-)

Note that all messages from pylint should be taken as hints, not a final
verdict. Think about them (you did, as you asked here ;-). Either correct
or ignore them (typically done by locally or even globally disabling them).

Do some fine-tuning using a config matching your own requirements. The
defaults are, well, just defaults.

nd

 

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

2) C: 0: Missing required attribute "__revision__"
What is this? Is that for CVS? I don't use CVS (we use SVN). I have not
seen any sample code which includes this tag yet. But if I include
__revision 1.0 somewhere in the code it will remove that warning?

AFAIK that's a requirement at Logilab. They use the tool themselves.

3) W:230:readDiscreteData: Using the global statement
What is wrong with using the global statement? I know the use of Globals
should be discouraged, but often they can't be avoided.

I guess more often than you think.

Suppose I have a constant. In C or C++, I could just use a #define and
it would be known throughout the whole file. In Python, there isn't a
similar construct, so rather than creating a large parameter list, of
constants, I like to use globals.

If they are constants then you don't rebind them from within functions or
methods, right? Then you don't need ``global``. This works without
problems::

ANSWER = 42

def spam():
print ANSWER

4) W:261:getDiscreteData: Catch "Exception"
What is wrong with that?

It catches *any* exception. For example `KeyboardInterrupt` which can
lead to programs that can't be stopped with CTRL+C or `ZeroDivisionError`
or `NameError` so programming errors are silenced.

5) R:547:readDiscreteData: Too many branches (28/12)
Python doesn't have the switch/case statements that C/C++ have. So I
could have a large block if/elif/else statements.
Is there any way to avoid that?

One idiom is to create a dictionary with the values to "switch on" mapped
to callables to handle the case.

6) R:722:waitDiscretes: Too many local variables (38/15)
That's new to me. What is wrong with too many local variables?

Well, they are just to many.

7) W:933:sendStringToSocket: Redefining name 'nPortNumber' from outer scope
(line
What is wrong with using the same variable name in a function that is
used by its caller?

It's not used by the caller but in the outer scope. It may confuse the
reader seeing `ham` in the outer scope and then `ham` in the function
without noticing that this is actually another `ham`.

8) W:995:sendStringToSocket: Used builtin function 'map'
Is that a problem?

`map` is "deprecated" in favor of list comprehensions. A matter of taste…

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Suppose I have a constant. In C or C++, I could just use a #define and

A "constant" wouldn't require the global statement, since by
definition it won't be part of the LHS of an assignment -- and RHS
non-locals are automagically retrieved.

8) W:995:sendStringToSocket: Used builtin function 'map'
Is that a problem?

I think every example I've seen posted that used map could be
replaced with a list comprehension -- that might be what the default
warnings set in PyLint prefer...
--

 

[Alexandre Fayolle]

Others have answered most of your questions, I won't repeat the answers
here, but only join the choir to stress that pylint needs tuning to
your coding style. An obvious case is camelCaseMethodNames versus
underscored_method_names, but there are also a lot of issues. The
default pylint settings match Logilab's coding standards. The coding
metrics were heavily inspired by Steve McConnell's Code Complete book,
but the figures provided therein have been heavily downscaled to match
for Python's expressivity (Code Complete deals mostly with C/C++/Java
code).

2) C: 0: Missing required attribute "__revision__"
What is this? Is that for CVS? I don't use CVS (we use SVN). I have not
seen any sample code which includes this tag yet. But if I include
__revision 1.0 somewhere in the code it will remove that warning?

We generally have a
__revision__ = '$Id$'

statement at module top level, which gets replaced a check in time by
CVS, which makes it easy to know who checked in the HEAD revision of the
module. This behaviour can be emulated with subversion properties.

5) R:547:readDiscreteData: Too many branches (28/12)
Python doesn't have the switch/case statements that C/C++ have. So I
could have a large block if/elif/else statements.
Is there any way to avoid that?

6) R:722:waitDiscretes: Too many local variables (38/15)
That's new to me. What is wrong with too many local variables?
Can anything be done to improve that besides having too many globals?

For these two, I strongly recommend giving a look at Martin Fowler's
Refactoring book (published by Addison Wesley). These are typical so
called "code smells" which can be solved using for instance the "Extract
Method" refactoring.

Of course, it all depends on the kind of program you are working, and
sometimes using intermediate variables helps understanding the code (by
providing useful names, for instance). What pylint tells you is "there
could be an issue here, you should check."