[Zope3-Users] Question about README.txt files

[Marius Gedminas]

On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 06:41:41AM -0500, Kent Tenney wrote:
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Stephan Richter
> <srichter at cosmos.phy.tufts.edu> wrote:
> > On Monday 04 May 2009, Kent Tenney wrote:
> >> So the magic in *.txt is ad-hoc for each package?
> >
> > It is not magic.
>
> I've considered the '>>>' prompt an interpreter prompt, so
> >>> write('file', """content""")
> always looked a bit magical to me.

Since it's not a Python builtin, and it wasn't explicitly imported in
the doctest, it does look a bit like magic.  Quack, quack.

> > But yes, each doctest file
> > can have a different set of global variables.
> 
> Ah.
> The ones available for, say, buildout, look so useful, I
> thought they might be a convention, and packaged.

I'd say it's too early.  Not every package needs to deal with real files
and directories.  In fact, I'd say most of the packages don't.

> In trying to understand code I like to tweak the doctest and
> see what happens. I'll look into the feasibility of adding a
> line to the top of buildout/README.txt like
> >>> import dtglobals
> 
> where dtglobals would expose all the good
> !magic, without requiring the test scaffolding.

Make that 'from myglobals import *' and you've got it.

(A suggestion like this would not be complete without a warning: people
dislike 'import *' and have good reasons for that dislike.  Use it
sparingly.)

Marius Gedminas
-- 
Give a man a computer program and you give him a headache, but teach him to
program computers and you give him the power to create headaches for others for
the rest of his life...
        -- R. B. Forest
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