Week 6

From Expressive Computing

Some text-oriented work

A tentative list. Not necessarily related to one another. (See Week 8 or Project 3 for a more extensive list)

Jeff Crouse, A Bullshit Markup Language
Loss Pequeno Glazier, Mendum (scroll to bottom of page)
Nick Montfort reads Composition No. 1
I, you, we
Apollinaire, La Petit Auto
Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries
The Dada Engine, used in the Postmodern Thesis generator (among other things)

Why Python?

For our purposes, Python is ideal because it has simple and elegant idioms for working with files, strings, and lists. It lets us get down to the real business of munging text without having to worry about technicalities. Just as an example, here are two programs, both of which do the same thing: visit every line in a file and print the first three characters on each line.

First, in Java:

import java.io.*;
class TextTest {
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    String line;
    try {
      BufferedReader stdin =
        new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
      while ((line = stdin.readLine()) != null) {
        if (line.length() >= 3) {
          System.out.println(line.substring(0, 3));
        }
        else {
          System.out.println(line);
        }
      }
    } 
    catch (IOException e) {
      System.err.println("Error: " + e);
    }
  }
}

The equivalent in Python:

import sys
for line in sys.stdin:
  print line[0:3]

Sample code and text from this week

Download here. Includes several Python scripts and a number of sample texts.

Resources for Learning and Using Python

Official Python tutorial
Dive Into Python
Learn Python in 10 Minutes
Simple Programs
Python Standard Library (check here for handy libraries that come with Python)
Python Built-in Functions (check here first if you find a function that looks unfamiliar or confusing)

Reading for next week

Six Selections by the Oulipo, NMR pp. 147-189.

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