417 Archived Topics
Remove Filter  | We take a look at the various functions of module time, counting seconds and milliseconds, measuring the time a simple for-loop takes, inspect a list of time data and ways to display it in a useful manner. An attempt is made to find the day of the week, given a …  |
| | You can use Python modules math, wave, and struct to create and save a synthetic sine wave of given frequency and duration (size) ... |
| | Wallpaper or tile images are small images that can be spread across a background repetitively. A common practice on web pages. The surface created with wx.PaintDC() can be used for this effect and still allows other widgets to be put on top of the wallpaper. The small tile image is … |
| | A lotto simulator with a twist, you pick the winning numbers and the computer buys the lotto tickets. Anyway, the computer at least generates the tickets and checks how many of them would match the winning numbers you selected. Let's assume you would be the state lotto commissioner and your … |
| | Convert a decimal (denary) integer to a binary string. An exercise in do ... while and while loops. |
| | This is an update of an earlier version. In this version the string containing the approximated pi value is created directly from the iteration of the generator. This way the program is simplified and can be used with Python2 and Python3 ... |
| | Python uses the Mersenne Twister as the core random generator. The module random contains a fair number of methods (or functions) that help you to do random things. Here are some examples ... |
| | The module tkSnack from our friends at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden allows you to play a variety of sound files using the Tkinter GUI. Supported sound files are WAV, MP3, AU, SND and AIFF formats. |
| | Here we apply the module difflib to compare two texts line by line and show the lines of the first text that are different from the second text.  |
| | This program uses the Python win32 extension module to get information on disk or flash drives for Windows machines. Specify the drive with its letter. If no drive letter is specified, the current drive is applied.  |
| | This code snippet shows you how to sort more complicated objects like a list of lists (or tuples) by selecting an index of the item to sort by.  |
| | Here is an example I was thinking of ... [code=python]import random import time def delay(seconds): time.sleep(seconds) def shuffle_hitlists(my_hitlist, mo_hitlist): """shuffle the two lists and return the result""" random.shuffle(my_hitlist) random.shuffle(mo_hitlist) return my_hitlist, mo_hitlist def battle(my_hitlist, mo_hitlist, my_strength, mo_strength): # player starts swinging first for k in range(len(my_hitlist)): my_hit = my_hitlist[k] mo_hit … |
| | A function that takes a string and returns the number of words in the string. An example of using pointers in Pascal. |
| | Python can use its COM support and the OCX of the WindowsMediaPlayer to play mp3 music files. Make sure that your Python installation has the win32com folder. Check [url]http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/Downloads.html[/url] for the latest win32com support. [COLOR="Red"]This code relies on file WMPlayer.OCX which MS has removed on newer versions of Windows. See … |
| | This shows how to create, load and access a ListBox. BCX was used to create the original code which was then modified to work with the Dev C++ (really GCC/G++) compiler, compile as a Windows Application. |
| | A small Windows Application to show you how to play a wave (.wav) sound file. I am using the C# IDE from SharpDevelop and the runtime dotnetfx 1.1 from Microsoft, both free downloads. This forms a small and fast student system to write and debug C# programs. From there you … |
| | Python has some powerful functions, like the math expression evaluator eval(). You can embed this function and others in your Development C++ code. All you need to do, is to download and install the free Python Development Pak and feed the Python code in the form of a string to … |
| | Tired of the Tk icon in the corner of the form. It's easy to replace with any fancy icon you have. Here is the code ... |
| | An example of a range generator that handles floating point numbers, appropriately called frange(). The function range() or the generator xrange() can only be used for integers. Note that xrange() now is range() in Python3. |
| | Here is an example how to write a program to convert between units of distance, area, volume, weight, pressure, and energy. The wxPython GUI toolkit's wx.NoteBook() widget is used to make good use of the limited frame/window space available. |
| | A variation of the previous bouncing ball code. This time the upper left corner of the image rectangle simply follows the position of each mouse click. Use an image you have, in my case I used a small red ball in a black background. A simple code to experiment with. |
| | Text to speech can be implemented in its simplest form using Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) connecting to the Speech API (SAPI). The attached Python code shows you how to do this. |
| | This short Python snippet shows you how to read mouse wheel events with the Tkinter GUI toolkit. Windows and Linux have different bindings and read different events, but can be included in the same program code for use with either operating system. |
| | This well commented Python snippet uses wxPython's plotting widget to graph the projectile motion of two different firing angles on the same plotting canvas. |
| | Sometimes you want to accomplish something with a minimum ammount of code. Here is an example of using modern Python concepts of lambda, list comprehension and all() to create an anonymous function that returns a prime list from 2 to n. |
| | A simple example of applying a font to a text displayed with wxPython's wx.StaticText widget. |
| | Just bouncing a red ball within the frame of a window, the twist here is that the image is stored within the code as a base64 encoded string of the gif image. This way you only have to distribute one file. The Python code is heavily commented, so you can …  |
| | Using count() from Python's itertools module and the Tkinter GUI toolkit's after() function, you can create a simple counter that counts up the seconds until the Stop button is pressed. |
| | The wxPython wx.lib.fancytext widget allows you to display super and subscripts in texts, and allows you to change fonts and colours too. All this is done with XML coded strings. XML documentation code is tag based and not that difficult to understand. It looks rather similar to the older HTML … |
| | The wxPython GUI toolkit has a number of calendar widgets, but the one that is most customizable is the wx.lib.calendar widget. Here we expanded it to colour the weekends and the holidays supplied by a dictionary of 'month: list of holiday dates in month' pairs. Since some holiday dates can … |
| | Just a little mathematical exercise in geography, namely the use of longitude and latitiude coordinates to calculate the distance between two given cities. You can obtain the coordinates for just about any earthly city from [URL="http://www.ASTRO.COM"]WWW.ASTRO.COM[/URL]. The coordinates are in a format like 35n13 (35 degrees, 13 minutes north). The … |
| | There are times when you have to layout widgets on a window area fairly well spaced apart. To do this with pack() or grid() will be more than frustrating, for these occasions place() with its absolute coordinates comes to the rescue. Here is some Python/Tkinter GUI code showing you how … |
| | A short C# code snippet to get the US Naval Observatory Master Clock Time from: [URL]http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/timer.pl[/URL] The snippet displays the raw HTML code with the time infomation and then extracts one specific US time zone.  |
| | The normal XOR crypting is used with a small base64 twist to produce printable crypted text. |
| | Just a quick look at the way C# writes and reads text files.  |
| | C# has two types of strings, one is immutable and the other, the class StringBuilder, is mutable (dynamic). I just wanted to hang a short code snippet out there to show you some of the typical operations. |
| | I followed Lardmeister's smart hints about creating templates with VC# 2003 and using SnippetCompiler.exe to write and test the rest of the program. It also allows you to build the executable (only 7k in size). The algorithm is from one of my Python snippets I wrote a long time ago. … |
| | The surface or canvas established with wx.PaintDC() can be used to draw a number of shapes like lines, rectangles and circles. The snippet shows you how to select colors and then draw a few simple shapes. Use help(wx.PaintDC) to get information about the many things you can use this surface … |
| | This little program uses Python and it's module pygame to do some sprite type animation. The rectangle that contains the image is moved and bounced within the window's frame. Pretty crude, since the whole screen frame is erased for each move. Actually it works smooth enough, and is relatively flicker … |
| | Sometime in my childhood biology class I heard that the fancy colors of butterfly wings aren't really true colors, but interference patterns. This program claims to create interference patterns using a series of 3d sine waves using Python's popular pygame module. The whole contrivance is pretty to look at, and … |
| | The assumption is, that the typical workweek starts with Monday and ends with Friday. This is something the average working bloke has to live with (unless you work for a bank or the government). This little code will spit out a listing of all the workdays of a given month. … |
| | Yes, the Python module 'zipfile' can handle an archive of files. This snippet shows you how to pack a PKZIP format zip file with several files and then unpack these archived files to individual files again. |
| | For those of you who think that an interpreted language like Python has to be slow, here is a small surpise. This snippet will draw a fair sized Mandelbrot set in a relatively short time. I cheated just a little, drawing the set in only black and white. Hey, nothing … |
| | Here is an example of a random spin button using a button surrounded by labels to create the feeling of a spin animation. This example uses the Tkinter GUI and lets you select numbers 1 to 6. If your game requires more then this, just add additional labels. You are … |
| | This little snippet combines a Tkinter GUI application with sound from the pygame mixer. The snippet should do fairly well across platforms. I tested it on a Windows XP machine, but let me know your experience with other platforms. |
| | This shows you how to draw a colorful bar graph of a data set using the Tkinter canvas and rectangles. An attempt has been made to use most of the canvas area for the graph. The bars are spaced and labeled with the corresponding value. The x-axis is simply the … |
| | You can use the Tkinter canvas and the canvas.create_line() function to draw a line plot of a mathematical function. The canvas.create_line() function accepts a list of x, y points that you can create within a for loop. The resulting plot is centered and can be stretched along the x and … |
| | Another famous fractal called the Sierpinski Triangle named after Polish mathematician Waclaw Sierpinski. He seemed to have played around with it the most. To state it simple, you start with an equilateral triangle and then form smaller triangles by connecting the midpoints of each of the sides. Some folks shade … |
| | This is a short code example using the function os.stat() to get some of the basic file information. Things like file size, times the file was created (Windows), last modified, and last accessed. The program uses a dictionary in an interesting way to store and display the information. The times … |
| | There are situations in Python code when a function is used as an object rather then a function call. Handling arguments becomes a mild problem, that can easily be handled by wrapping the function object and its arguments. One common way is the use of a curry function or class. … |
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