use raw_input instead of input in python3 - python

I am in the habit of using raw_input(...) for certain debugging. However, in python3 this has changed to input(...). Is there a way to define an alias at the top of my project, such as:
# __init__.py
raw_input = input
I tried the above, but it only worked in the file I added it to, and not any other files in that directory. I'd like this to work basically in every file within my python repository.

You can define all aliases in a separate file (e.g. aliases.py) then import said file where needed (i.e. import aliases).
The con with this method that you'll be referencing the alias through aliases.alias unless you make the import stricter (i.e. from aliases import raw_input) or if you don't care about avoiding a wildcard import (i.e. from aliases import *).
Additionally, if you don't mind another import in the aliases file you can use the builtins namespace:
import builtins
builtins.raw_input = input
You still have to define all aliases separate file (e.g. aliases.py) then import said file where needed (i.e. import aliases) but the advantage of using the builtins namespace is that you can use that import exactly as given.

You can do it by creating a module for creating the renaming function and then importing it to every file you want to like this:
First the module function declaration in alias.py
def raw_input(a):
return input(a)
Secondly, import to another file:
from alias import raw_input
x = raw_input("hello world")
print(x)
Sadly, you will have to make the import of the module to every file you want to use the renamed function.
Hope it works for you!

Put this at the top, and you will get exactly what you want.
import builtins
builtins.raw_input = builtins.input
It is guaranteed to work, but generally considered a bad practice (everybody will be confused with where is that raw_input defined)

Related

Partial Imports: Import everything up to a error

Is there a way to perform a python import which is not atomic?
For instance, I have a file as follows:
# Filename: a.py
myvariable = 1
mylist = [1, 2, 3]
raise ImportError
donotimportthis = 5
I then have a separate file which does the following:
import a
a.myvariable == 1 # This is okay as it imported it
a.donotimportthis # <-- raise an exception as this is not imported.
I have a file which contains some python code, this follows the format of:
...variables...
import X
I do not have X installed nor do I want it however I do want the variables.
Note: This file is autogenerated not by me but by a tool whose version is frozen.
Two choices, in descending order of preference:
Change the autogeneration process. Instead of invoking proprietary_autogen_process, invoke custom_autogen_wrapper. This wrapper in turn first invokes the proprietary third-party tool, and then modifies the produced module source code by searching for the code that imports module X, and deletes everything after it.
This is relatively straightforward. You just need to take some care to not introduce false positives or false negatives by performing too loose (or too strict) matching of the import code. Ideally you’d use an AST rewriter but that’s probably overkill; a regular expression search for import X might work, although it will yield wrong results if this text appears inside a comment, string literal or inside a method which isn’t executed.
Generate a stub module X in a location where it will be found by the autogenerated module when importing the latter. I don’t recommend this because it’s tedious: You probably can’t just generate an empty module, since the autogenerated module will want to use X. You need to generate meaningful method stubs.
You can do specific imports with
from a import myvariable
EDIT: The above won't work if anything that is flat in the file raises an error. If you have no way to edit the imported file then I don't know if there is a (resonable) solution to this. Sorry didn't realise.
(an unreasonable solution would be to read in the file as text, slice it, and then run eval on it).
Or, as mentioned in the comments, put the stuff you don't want under
if __name__=="__main__":
<here>
Then it will only be invoked if you run the file directly.
What you can do is removing the donotimportthis variable at the end of the module, as follows: del donotimportthis. I hope it helps

How can I perform `import *` from within a function?

I have the following standard import procedure:
from ROOT import *
Because of the way ROOT handles command line options and arguments, something like the following is required in order to avoid screwing up the script's command line parsing:
argv_tmp = sys.argv
sys.argv = []
from ROOT import *
sys.argv = argv_tmp
I need to perform this operation in many scripts. This operation may change or there might turn out to be a better approach, so I want to centralise this procedure in a single function provided by some imported module, making it easy to change the procedure in future.
def import_ROOT():
# magic
import os
import sys
import_ROOT()
import docopt
How can I import the ROOT module from within a function such that the result of the script's operation is the same as for the from ROOT import * procedure described above?
Due to how local variables are implemented in python you cannot do this. And since you don't know all the variables that may be imported you can't declare them global.
As to why you can't import unknown locals in a function. This is because at compile time python establishes all the different possible locals that may exist (anything that is directly assigned to and hasn't been declared global or nonlocal). Space for these locals are made in an array associated with each call of the function. All locals are then referenced by their index in the array rather than their name. Thus, the interpreter is unable to make additional space for unknown locals nor know how to refer to them at runtime.
I believe there's already a similiar question in here:
Python: how to make global imports from a function
example:
def example_function():
global module
import module
This probably misses all sorts of corner cases, but it's a start:
def import_ROOT():
import ROOT
globals().update(ROOT.__dict__)
Obligatory disclaimer: if you're importing *, you're probably doing it wrong. But I guess there could be situations where import * is the lesser evil.

Globally loading classes or functions for any file in an application in Python

I am building an application in Python and I have my whole package. While I really like the fact that you have to explicitly state every import you need, I was wondering if there is a way to add some function or class to the global scope implicitly.
In my example a want a Factory class that should be available in all files. Classes like dict, str and so on are all available and I thought maybe it is possible to add my own class to the global scope in the same way in my __init__.py.
Is this possible?
For interactive mode, add all your import definitions to a file (say all_my_imports.py) like below:
from abc import xyz
from my_stuff import *
And, point the environment variable PYTHONSTARTUP to it.
From a script, simply import the file that contains the above definitions:
from all_my_imports import *
Remember, it is not good to depend on this functionality, it's (almost) always better to explicitly import all your modules.

How do I do 'from foo import *' using Python's __import__ function

I want to replace settings.py in my Django system with a module implemented as a directory settings containing __init__.py. This will try to import a module named after the server, thus allowing for per-server settings.
If I don't know the name of a module before I import it then I can't use the import keyword but must instead use the __import__ function. But this does not add the contents of the module to the settings module. I need the equivalent of from MACHINE_NAME import *. Or I need a way to iterate over vars(m) (where m is the loaded module) and add them to the current namespace. But I can't work out how to refer to the current namespace in order to make the assignment. In other words, I can't use setattr(x, ..) or modify x.__dict__, because I don't know what to use for x.
I can't think of much else to try now apart from using exec. This seems a little feeble to me. Am I missing some aspect of Pythonic introspection that would allow me to manipulate the current scope while still in it?
For similar situation where based on lang setting I import different messages in messages.py module it is something like
# set values in current namespace
for name in vars(messages):
v = getattr(messages, name)
globals()[name] = v
Btw why do you want to create a package for settings.py? whatever you want to do can be done in settings.py directly?

load python code at runtime

I would like to load a .py file at runtime. This .py file is basically a config file with the following format:
var1=value
var2=value
predicate_function=func line : <return true or false>
Once this file is loaded, I would like to be able to access var1, var2 and predicate_function. For each line, I'll pass it to the predicate function, and if it returns false, I'll ignore it.
In any case, I'm not sure how to load a python file at runtime and access its variables.
Clarification: there may be any number of these config files that I need to pass to the main program and I won't know their names until runtime. Google tells me I should use __import__. I'm not sure how to correctly use that method and then access the variables of the imported file.
As written in the python official documentation, if you just want to import a module by name, you can look it up in the sys.modules dictionary after using __import__.
Supposing your configuration is in myproject.mymodule, you would do like that :
module_name = 'myproject.mymodule'
import sys
__import__(module_name)
mymodule = sys.modules[module_name]
# Then you can just access your variables and functions
print mymodule.var1
print mymodule.var2
# etc...
You can also use the return value of __import__ statement but you will have to understand fully how python works with namespaces and scopes.
You just need to be able to dynamically specify the imports and then dynamically get at the variables.
Let's say your config file is bar.py and looks like this:
x = 3
y = 4
def f(x): return (x<4)
Then your code should look like this:
import sys
# somehow modnames should be a list of strings that are the names of config files
#
# you can do this more dynamically depending on what you're doing
modnames = ['bar']
for modname in modnames:
exec('import %s' % modname)
for modname in modnames:
mod = sys.modules[modname]
for k in mod.__dict__:
if k[:2] != '__':
print modname, k, mod.__dict__[k]
I get this output:
bar f <function f at 0x7f2354eb4cf8>
bar x 3
bar y 4
Then you at least have all the variables and functions. I didn't quite get what you wanted from the predicate functions, but maybe you can get that on your own now.
To access another Python module, you import it. execfile has been mentioned by a couple people, but it is messy and dangerous. execfile clutters your namespace, possibly even messing up the code you are running. When you want to access another Python source file, use the import statement.
Even better would be not to use a Python file for configuration at all, but rather to use the builtin module ConfigParser or a serialization format like JSON. This way your configuration files don't allow execution of arbitrary (possibly malicious) code, doesn't require people to know Python to configure your program, and can easily be altered programatically.
If the imported module is on the regular search path, you can use __import__.
If you need to load the module from an arbitrary path in the filesystem, use imp.load_module.
Be sure to consider the security implications of loading arbitrary user-specified code.
In Python 2.*, execfile works (I recommend passing a specific dictionary and accessing the variables from there -- as the note in the docs says, execfile can't affect the calling function's locals() dictionary).
In Python 3.*, execfile has been removed, so do, instead:
with open('thefile.py') as f:
exec(f.read(), somedict)
Since the Python version hasn't been clearly mentioned, it is worth pointing out that the imp module has been deprecated in newer Python versions in favor of the importlib module. Example here.
I'm kinda late to the party, but I want to present an alternative answer nonetheless.
If you want to import code without affecting the global module namespace, you can create an anonymous module (using types.ModuleType) and load arbitrary code in it (using compile and exec). For instance, like this:
import types
filename = "/path/to/your/file.py"
with open(filename) as fp:
code = compile(fp.read(), filename, "exec")
config_module = types.ModuleType("<config>")
exec code in config_module.__dict__
You can then access the variables as config_module.var1, &c.
If you want to have a configuration file that will only be edited by the user when the program isn't running, just import it as a normal python file
ie.
main.py:
import config
print config.var1
config.py:
var="var12"
var2 = 100.5
try the imp module : http://docs.python.org/library/imp.html

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