cpython/Doc/lib/libundoc.tex

217 lines
5.3 KiB
TeX
Raw Normal View History

\chapter{Undocumented Modules}
Here's a quick listing of modules that are currently undocumented, but
that should be documented. Feel free to contribute documentation for
them! (The idea and most contents for this chapter were taken from a
posting by Fredrik Lundh; I have revised some modules' status.)
\section{Fundamental, and pretty straightforward to document}
UserDict.py -- user-defined wrapper around dictionary objects
UserList.py -- user-defined wrapper around list objects
ni.py -- New import scheme with package support
site.py -- easy access to site-specific modules
\section{Frameworks; somewhat harder to document, but
well worth the effort}
Tkinter.py -- Interface to Tcl/Tk for graphical user interfaces;
Fredrik is working on this one!
BaseHTTPServer.py -- HTTP server base class
CGIHTTPServer.py -- CGI-savvy HTTP Server
SimpleHTTPServer.py -- Simple HTTP Server
SocketServer.py -- Generic socket server classes
anydbm.py -- Generic interface to all dbm clones
\section{Stuff useful to a lot of people, including the CGI crowd}
MimeWriter.py -- Generic MIME writer
mimify.py -- Mimification and unmimification of mail messages
multifile.py -- make each part of a multipart message ``feel'' like
base64.py -- Conversions to/from base64 transport encoding
mailbox.py -- handle Unix style, MMDF style, and MH style mailboxes
quopri.py -- Conversions to/from quoted-printable transport encoding
\section{Miscellaneous useful utilities}
Some of these are very old and/or not very robust; marked with ``hmm''.
fnmatch.py -- filename globbing (low level interface)
calendar.py -- Calendar printing functions
cmp.py -- Efficiently compare files
cmpcache.py -- Efficiently compare files (uses statcache)
dircache.py -- like os.listdir, but caches results
dircmp.py -- class to build directory diff tools on
linecache.py -- Cache lines from files (used by pdb)
pipes.py -- Conversion pipeline templates (hmm)
popen2.py -- improved popen? (read AND write simultaneously) (hmm)
random.py -- random numbers, layered on top of whrandom.py
statcache.py -- Maintain a cache of file stats
colorsys.py -- Conversion between RGB and other color systems
commands.py -- executing commands and looking at their output and
status
dumbdbm.py -- A dumb and slow but simple dbm clone (anydbm's last
resort)
mhlib.py -- MH interface
pty.py -- Pseudo terminal utilities
tty.py -- Terminal utilities
cmd.py -- build line-oriented command interpreters (used by pdb)
whichdb.py -- Guess which db package to use to open a db file
bdb.py -- A generic Python debugger base class (used by pdb)
ihooks.py -- Import hook support (for ni and rexec)
\section{Parsing Python}
(One could argue that these should all be documented together with the
parser module; in fact the parser module section already references
the token and symbol modules.)
token.py -- Tokens (from ``token.h'')
symbol.py -- Symbols (from ``graminit.h'')
tokenize.py -- regular expression that recognizes Python tokens
AST.py -- see parser module documentation
pyclbr.py -- Parse a Python file and retrieve classes and methods
\section{Platform specific modules}
ntpath.py -- equivalent of posixpath on 32-bit Windows
dospath.py -- equivalent of posixpath on MS-DOS
macpath.py -- equivalent of posixpath on Mac
\section{Code objects and files, debugger etc.}
compileall.py -- force "compilation" of all .py files in a directory
py_compile.py -- "compile" a .py file to a .pyc file
codehack.py -- extract a function name from a code object
dis.py -- Disassembler for Python bytecode objects
repr.py -- Redo the `...` (representation) but with limits on most
sizes (used by pdb)
newdir.py -- New dir() function
\section{Multimedia}
audiodev.py -- Plays audio files
sunau.py -- parse Sun and NeXT audio files
sunaudio.py -- interpret sun audio headers
toaiff.py -- Convert "arbitrary" sound files to AIFF files
sndhdr.py -- recognizing sound files
wave.py -- parse WAVE files
whatsound.py -- recognizing sound files
\section{Oddities}
These modules are probably also obsolete, or just not very useful.
Queue.py -- A multi-producer, multi-consumer queue
bisect.py -- Bisection algorithms
dump.py -- Print python code that reconstructs a variable
emacs.py -- Execute Emacs code from a Python interpreter
find.py -- find files matching pattern in directory tree
fpformat.py -- General floating point formatting functions
grep.py -- grep
mutex.py -- Mutual exclusion -- for use with module sched
packmail.py -- create a self-unpacking shell archive
poly.py -- Polynomials
sched.py -- event scheduler class
shutil.py -- utility functions usable in a shell-like program
util.py -- useful functions that don't fit elsewhere
zmod.py -- Compute properties of mathematical "fields"
tzparse.py -- Parse a timezone specification (unfinished)
\section{Obsolete}
addpack.py -- standard support for "packages" (use ni instead)
dbhash.py -- (g)dbm-compatible interface to bsdhash.hashopen (use
bsddb instead)
fmt.py -- obsolete text formatting abstractions
Para.py -- helper for fmt.py
lockfile.py -- wrapper around FCNTL file locking (use
fcntl.lockf/flock intead)
tb.py -- Print tracebacks, with a dump of local variables (use
pdb.pm() or traceback.py instead)
\section{Extension modules}
There are some undocumented goodies here, too. Someone should make a
list.