Python editors for Windows question

[Dustin]

Hello,

I just started programming in Python last night, and I've really enjoyed my
experience so far. I would like to know if there is a Windows editor that
recognizes Python and will support a module syntax/definition lists For
instance, let's say that I set form = cgi and then when I hit the period
(".") on the keyboard, a list of objects shows up, such as FieldStorage(),
etc.. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!

Dustin

 

[Dustin]

I believe what I'm looking for is an "autocomplete" capable editor

 

[Peter Hansen]

I just started programming in Python last night, and I've really enjoyed my
experience so far. I would like to know if there is a Windows editor that
recognizes Python and will support a module syntax/definition lists For
instance, let's say that I set form = cgi and then when I hit the period
(".") on the keyboard, a list of objects shows up, such as FieldStorage(),
etc.. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!

SciTE can handle that: http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTE.html
So can practically every other halfway decent editor these days,
most likely.

-Peter

 

[Noah from IT Goes Click]

I haven't actually checked if it does it for PHP but it says it has
autocomplete, weather it explores your classes or not I don't know.


http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/index.plex

 

[Mike C. Fletcher]

PythonWin (part of the pywin32/win32all package) has limited
autocomplete. Basically it will auto-complete for modules which are
loaded, so if you import cgi in the interactive session then you will
have autocompletion for cgi. If the module is not loaded, then PythonWin
uses a simpler algorithm that searches through the current file looking
for x.y notations where x matches your currently-begun x.

PythonWin also has very nice ctrl+space identifier completion which
searches back/forward from where you're typing, so you can type longer
identifiers with just a few keystrokes.

Would be nice to have that same set of mechanisms in all Python
editors. I believe Boa has auto-completion in much the same way. Not
sure about the other win32 editors. I think the Activestate IDEs may
have auto-completion, but again, not sure.

Good luck and welcome,
Mike

Hello,

I just started programming in Python last night, and I've really enjoyed my
experience so far. I would like to know if there is a Windows editor that
recognizes Python and will support a module syntax/definition lists For
instance, let's say that I set form = cgi and then when I hit the period
(".") on the keyboard, a list of objects shows up, such as FieldStorage(),
etc.. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!

Dustin

_______________________________________
Mike C. Fletcher
Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
http://members.rogers.com/mcfletch/

 

[Gabriel Cooper]

Komodo will do it. It will even autocomplete custom class information.
For example, if I type:

x.y.z = 5

the next time I type x. it will autocomplete (suggest) that I add 'y'
and so on. (woooo, aahhhhhh...)

 

[Dustin]

Thank you everyone. I will test out the various editors!

 

[Marco Aschwanden]

The best auto-completion you can get for Python is: WingIde
http://wingide.com/

Normally WingIDE is quite good at auto-completion but sometimes it needs
some help:

if wingIde does not "recognize" a class you may add:

assert isinstance(btnHello, wxButton)

and after that point it will handle this for you too...

Good luck,
Marco

 

[Hemanth P.S.]

You can also give SPE (Stani's Python Editor) a try. (http://spe.pycs.net)

---Hemanth

 

[Lothar Scholz]

The best auto-completion you can get for Python is: WingIde
http://wingide.com/

Normally WingIDE is quite good at auto-completion but sometimes it needs
some help:

if wingIde does not "recognize" a class you may add:

assert isinstance(btnHello, wxButton)

and after that point it will handle this for you too...

But keep in mind that auto-completion is by concepts miles away from
what you see in Java. The problem for us who try to implement this
feature is always that most people don't understand why this is
impossible in a dynamically typed language.

 

[Ed Suominen]

PyPE seems like a really nice piece of work as well.

 

[Josiah Carlson]

But keep in mind that auto-completion is by concepts miles away from

what you see in Java. The problem for us who try to implement this
feature is always that most people don't understand why this is
impossible in a dynamically typed language.

Not quite impossible, but very difficult. It is impossible in a
practical sense for editors that don't use a parser capable of creating
an abstract syntax tree (generally compiler.ast or the tokenizer module
are used in editors written in Python).

Furthermore, it usually involves questions like "how many levels of
imports should we deal with, and how much namespace emulation should be
done", which involves potentially expensive namespace creation,
modification, and later recreation ("from module import *" becoming
"import module" being one of them) in more than a single level of
namespace. Quite an ugly problem that you're hard-pressed to find an
editor (for dynamically typed languages) with a decent implementation.

WingIDE's method for getting past some inference checks is nifty, though
I would be a bit irked if I used autocompletion (I don't) and needed to
pepper my code with (unneeded) assert statements just to get it to work
all the time.

- Josiah