advice on this little script

[John Salerno]

My first project when I started learning C# was to make a little timer
to tell me when my laundry was done and I thought it would be fun to
convert this to Python. Here's what I came up with after much struggling
with the Timer class from the threading module -- as you can see, I
abandoned it for the sleep() function from timer.

Please let me know if this is a good (i.e. Pythonic) way of doing this,
and if it can be improved (although I don't need anything fancier than
this basic functionality).
---------------------
from time import sleep

minutes = input('Enter the number of minutes to wait: ')

for x in range(minutes):
sleep(1.0)
minutes -= 1
print minutes, 'minutes remaining.'
---------------------

And if you are interested, here is the original C# code in all its
monstrous glory. I can't believe the difference!
----------------------------
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;

namespace MyTimer
{
class Timer
{
static void Main()
{
Console.Write("Enter the number of minutes to wait: ");
int iTime = Int32.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
Thread.Sleep(60000);

for (int i = iTime - 1; i > 0; i--)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} minute(s) remaining.", i);
Thread.Sleep(60000);
}

Console.Write("{0} minutes have elapsed.", iTime);

for (int i = 3; i > 0; i--)
{
Console.Beep();
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
}
}
}

 

[John Salerno]

sleep(1.0)

Heh heh, that was for testing. Obviously it should read 60.0 (is a float
necessary at all?).

 

[James Stroud]

My first project when I started learning C# was to make a little timer
to tell me when my laundry was done and I thought it would be fun to
convert this to Python. Here's what I came up with after much struggling
with the Timer class from the threading module -- as you can see, I
abandoned it for the sleep() function from timer.

Please let me know if this is a good (i.e. Pythonic) way of doing this,
and if it can be improved (although I don't need anything fancier than
this basic functionality).
---------------------
from time import sleep

minutes = input('Enter the number of minutes to wait: ')

for x in range(minutes):
sleep(1.0)
minutes -= 1
print minutes, 'minutes remaining.'
---------------------

Very nice, but maybe

....
sleep(60.0)

This corrects for the number of seconds in a minute.

James

--
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

What about a console beep? How do you add that?

rpd

 

[John Salerno]

Very nice, but maybe

...
sleep(60.0)

This corrects for the number of seconds in a minute.

James

Thanks! And yeah, I fixed that little issue. If only laundry could be
done that fast.

 

[Grant Edwards]

from time import sleep

minutes = input('Enter the number of minutes to wait: ')

for x in range(minutes):
sleep(1.0)
minutes -= 1
print minutes, 'minutes remaining.'

for x in range(minutes,0,-1):
sleep(60.0)
print minutes, 'minutes remaining'

 

[John Salerno]

What about a console beep? How do you add that?

rpd

Ooh, good point! I forgot about the most important part, otherwise I'd
never know it was done and someone would steal my clothes!

Time to do some library reference research....

 

[John Salerno]

for x in range(minutes,0,-1):
sleep(60.0)
print minutes, 'minutes remaining'

Nice! Cross off another line! I feel like Hemingway.

 

[John Salerno]

from time import sleep ....
sleep(1.0)

Very picky point, but I'd like to know what others think of this. Should
I import as above, or should I do this:

import time
.....
time.sleep(60.0) ???

I think the 'from time import sleep' looks cleaner, because I'm only
taking what I need (is an import any more expensive than this from?),
but I also feel like the 'time.sleep' syntax is much more
self-describing and better to read than just 'sleep'.

So what do you guys think between these two choices?

 

[Ben Cartwright]

What about a console beep? How do you add that?

rpd

Just use ASCII code 007 (BEL/BEEP):

Or if you're on Windows, use the winsound standard module.

--Ben

 

[Grant Edwards]

Nice! Cross off another line! I feel like Hemingway.

Was he the one who once apologized to his editor for a story
being so long because he was in a hurry and didn't have time to
make it shorter?

 

[John Salerno]

Was he the one who once apologized to his editor for a story
being so long because he was in a hurry and didn't have time to
make it shorter?

Hmm, not sure. He doesn't seem like the type to apologize, or even have
long stories. He was ruthless with his edits, that's for sure.

 

[John Salerno]

for x in range(minutes,0,-1):
sleep(60.0)
print minutes, 'minutes remaining'

I might be doing something wrong, but this just keeps printing out '10
minutes remaining' each time.

 

[John Salerno]

Just use ASCII code 007 (BEL/BEEP):


Or if you're on Windows, use the winsound standard module.

--Ben

I'd prefer to be platform neutral when possible. Is the first option
that, or does this change depending on OS?

 

[James Stroud]

I might be doing something wrong, but this just keeps printing out '10
minutes remaining' each time.

print x, 'minutes remaining'



--
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/

 

[Benjamin Liebald]

I might be doing something wrong, but this just keeps printing out '10
minutes remaining' each time.

should be:

for x in range(minutes,0,-1):
sleep(60.0)
print x, 'minutes remaining'

Ben

 

[John Salerno]

print x, 'minutes remaining'

Ah! Thanks to both of you!

 

[Paul Rubin]

Nice! Cross off another line! I feel like Hemingway.

Besides the bug mentioned, I don't think you should really do it that
way, since sleep(60.0) might not sleep for exactly 60 sec (it could be
longer or shorter). Preferable is something like (untested):

now = time.time()
sleep_until = now + 60*minutes
while now < sleep_until:
print int((now - sleep_until)/60), 'minutes remaining'
sleep (60)
now = time.time()

You might actually want to stop sleeping a little bit early (say if
you wake up 5 seconds before sleep_until), or round the message to the
nearest number of minutes, etc.

 

[Alex Martelli]

Was he the one who once apologized to his editor for a story
being so long because he was in a hurry and didn't have time to
make it shorter?

Nope, that immortal quote is by Blaise Pascal (also known as a
philosopher, a mathematician, and the developer of one of the best early
mechanical calculators, as well as for the programming language Niklaus
Wirth named after him, and the SI standard unit of pressure, 1 Pa == 1 N
per square meter, also named in his honor because he was the first to
use a barometer to measure altitude); it's found in his "Lettres
Provinciales" (which is not a collection of "real" letters, but rather a
philosophical, theological and political polemic cast in epistular
form). It's often misattributed to Mark Twain, but this the first time
I've heard it associated with Hemingway!



Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

I think the 'from time import sleep' looks cleaner, because I'm only
taking what I need (is an import any more expensive than this from?),
but I also feel like the 'time.sleep' syntax is much more
self-describing and better to read than just 'sleep'.

So what do you guys think between these two choices?

I only use the 'from' statement to import specific modules from a
package, never to import specific objects (functions, classes, or
whatever) from a module. It scales much better: when reading a long
module, I _know_ that any barename X always refers to a local,
nested-scope, or global name, never to something snatched from
who-recalls-what module -- in the latter case I'll never see a barename,
but always somemodule.X, and searching for '... import somemodule' will
immediately tell me where somemodule was coming from (should I need to
be reminded of that information).


Alex