What are some possible ways to name a variable representing a range of numbers? For example, I am working on a metrics application that displays the age of certain items in a person's queue. They are measured in
0-50 days
51-100 days
100+ days
I've thought about spelling the range out: zeroToFifty, range0-50. I've also considered naming them by "sections": first, second, third, but this doesn't prove to be very descriptive at all. What have you guys done to represent number ranges?
First, a name like ZeroToFifty isn't really very descriptive, hardly any better than if (number < 50). Variable names should provide more information if possible, while still being brief.
Second, I'd advise against embedding the numerical values into the constants - if you decide that the bottom range goes to 60 then a ZeroToFifty naming won't match any more. It will be much easier to adjust the values later if you don't have to refactor a name change throughout your codebase. Also, users of the constant probably don't care about 50, they care about "is it young or old?".
So you need to think "what do these number ranges represent"?
It depends on the usage, but you may find Young, Mature, Old works well for your case, as it describes the age of the item (and thus gives you strong clues about the meaning or usage of the value). Or maybe Modern, Classic, Vintage. Or Baby, Child, Adult. (If they "fit" the usage you have in mind).
In C# if you use an enumerated type, the typename must always be used, and that also can help clarify the meaning: ItemAge.Young/Mature/Old or TimeInQueue.Short/Medium/Long.
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Possible Duplicate:
How can I convert an integer into its verbal representation?
I am looking for some solution to return a number as text.
By that I mean that 100 should be returned as 'one hundred'
It is more or less just a tidious task to make such a function myself, but I rather not re-invent the wheel, and this can't be the first time someones has requested this.
Unfortunatly my search so far has not turned up anything, so here I try stackowerflow.
Basically the numbers comes from a database, so if there is some smart methods you could use here it would be pretty nice.
As mentioned, a small function that returns eg. 100 as 'one hundred' is not a complicated task, but what if you need to take language considarations into the solution?
Has anybody come accross something that actually can do this, and perhaps in multiple languages?
Yes you can use this:
Java numbers to text
Basically the idea is to form the numbers by simply defining all the digits and the tenths, and after that you can also the define the hundreds, the thousands and so on. Because numbers in English are always formed the same way, this is very easy for the English language.
Something like this (may be not the best one, I just make a draft search)?
http://www.daniweb.com/software-development/csharp/threads/53072
I know this question have been asked a lot of time.
I want a suggestion on which algorithm is suitable for approximate string matching.
The application is specifically for company name matching only and nothing else.
The biggest challenge is probably the company end name part and short named part
Example:
1. companyA pty ltd vs companyA pty. ltd. vs companyA
2. WES Engineering vs W.E.S. Engineering (extremely rare occurance)
Do you think Levenshtein Edit Distance is adequate?
I'm using C#
Regards,
Max
There are various string distance metrics you could use.
I would recommend Jaro-Winkler. Unlike edit-distance where the result of a comparison is in discrete units of edits, JW gives you a 0-1 score. It is especially suited for proper names. Also look at this nice tutorial and this SO question.
I haven't worked with C# but here are some implementations of JW I found online:
Impl 1 (They have a DOT NET version too if you look at the file list)
Impl 2
If you want to do a bit more sophisticated matching, you can try to do some custom normalization of word forms commonly occurring in company names such as ltd/limited, inc/incorporated, corp/corporation to account for case insensitivity, abbreviations etc. This way if you compute
distance (normalize("foo corp."),
normalize("FOO CORPORATION") )
you should get the result to be 0 rather than 14 (which is what you would get if you computed levenshtein edit-distance).
Yes, Levenshtein distance is suitable for this. It will work for all those you have listed at least.
You could also possibly use Soundex, but I don't think you'll need it.
In these simple examples, just removing all non-alpha-numeric characters gives you a match, and is the easiest to do as you can pre-compute the data on each side, then do a straight equals match which will be a lot faster than cross multiplying and calculating the edit distance.
I have provided my answer already in another question.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/30120166/2282794
I have worked on really large scale system with similar name matching requirements that you have talked about.
Name matching is not very straightforward and the order of first and last names might be different.
Simple fuzzy name matching algorithms fail miserably in such scenarios.
If we just want to talk about the Approximate String matching algorithms, then there are many. Few of them are: Jaro-Winkler, Edit distance(Levenshtein), Jaccard similarity, Soundex/Phonetics based algorithms etc. A simple googling would give us all the details.
You can implement all of them in C#
Irony is, they work while you try to match two given input strings. Alright theoretically and to demonstrate the way fuzzy or approximate string matching works.
However, grossly understated point is, how do we use the same in production settings. Not everybody that I know of who were scouting for an approximate string matching algorithm knew how they could solve the same in the production environment.
I might have just talked about Lucene which is specific to Java but there is Lucene for .Net also.
https://lucenenet.apache.org/
I was looking at some code length metrics other than Lines of Code. Something that Source Monitor reports is statements. This seemed like a valuable thing to know, but the way Source Monitor counted some things seemed unintuitive. For example, a for statement is one statement, even though it contains a variable definition, a condition, and an increment statement. And if a method call is nested in an argument list to another method, the whole thing is considered one statement.
Is there a standard way that statements are counted and are their rules governing such a thing?
The first rule of metrics is "be careful what you measure". You ask for a count of statements, that's what you're going to get. As you note, that figure is perhaps not actually relevant.
If you're interested in other measures, like how "complex" code is, consider looking into other code metrics, like cyclometric complexity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity
UPDATE: Re: your comment
I agree that "doing too much" is an interesting metric. My rule of thumb is that one statement should have one side effect (usually a "local" side effect like mutating a local variable, but sometimes a visible side effect, like writing to a file) and therefore "number of statements" should be roughly correlated with how much the method is "doing" in terms of its number of side effects.
In practice, of course no one's code, my own included, actually meets that bar all the time. You might consider a metric for "how much the method is doing" to count not just statements but also, say, method calls.
To actually answer your question: I'm not aware of any industry standard that regulates what "number of statements" is. The C# specification certainly defines what a "statement" is lexically, but then of course you have to do some interpretation to do a count. For example:
void M()
{
try
{
if (blah)
{
Frob();
Blob();
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{ /* eat it */ }
finally
{
Grob();
}
}
How many statements are there in M? Well, the body of M consists of one statement, a try-catch-finally. So is the answer one? The body of the try contains one statement, an "if" statement. The consequence of the "if" contains one statement -- remember, a block is a statement. The block contains two statements. The finally contains one statement. The catch block contains no statements -- a catch block is not a statement, lexically -- but it certainly is highly relevant to the operation of the method!
So how many statements is that altogether? One could make a reasonable case for any number from one to six, depending on whether you count blocks as "real" statements, whether you consider child statements as in addition to their parent statement or not, and so on. There is no standards body which regulates the answer to this question that I'm aware of.
The closest you might get to a formal definition of "what is a statement" would be the C# specification itself. Good luck working out whether a particular tool's measurement agrees with your reading of the specification.
Given that metrics are best used as a guide to better/worse code, and not a strict formula, does the exact definition used by the tool make much difference?
If I have three methods, with "statement lengths" of 2500, 1500 and 150, I know which method I'll be examining first; that another tool might report 2480, 1620 and 174 isn't too important.
One of the best tools I've seen for measuring metrics is NDepend, though again I'm not 100% sure what definitions it is using. According to the website, NDepend has 82 separate metrics, including Number of instructions and Cyclomatic Complexity.
The C# Metrics Tool defines the things being counted ("statements", "operands"), etc. by using a precise C# BNF language definition. (In fact, it precisely parses the code according a full C# grammar and then computes structural metrics by walking over the parse tree; SLOC count it gets by countline lines as you'd expect).
You might still argue that such a definition it unintuitive (grammars rarely are), but they are precise. I agree with other posters here, however, that the precise measure isn't as important as the relative value that one block of code has with respect to another. A value of "173.92" complexity just isn't very helpful by itself; compard to another complexity value of "81.02", we can say there's a good indication that the first one is more complex than the second, and that's enough to provide a focus of attention.
I think that metrics are also useful in trending; if last week, this code was "81.02" complex, ad this week it is "173.92", I should wonder why is all that happening inthis part of the code?
You might also consider a ratio of a structural metric (e.g., Cyclomatic) to SLOC as an indication of "doing too much", or at least an indication of writing code that is way too dense to understand
One simple metric is to just count the punctuation marks (;, ,, .) between tokens (so as to avoid those in strings, comments, or numbers). Thus, for (x = 0, y = 1; x < foo.Count; x++, y++) bar[y] = foo[x]; would count as 6.
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I've mainly been doing C# development for the past few years but recently started to do a bit of Python (not Iron Python). But I'm not sure if I've made the mental leap to Python...I kind of feel I'm trying to do things as I would in C#.
Any advice on how I can fully take advantage of Python?
Or any tips\tricks, things to learn more about, things to watch out for?
First, check tgray's and Lundström's advice.
Then, some things you may want to know:
Python is dynamically typed, so unlike C#, you will not
check type, but behavior. You may want to google about duck
typing. It implies you do not have to deal with boxing and
unboxing.
Python is fully object oriented, but the syntax does not
enforce this paradigm. You can write Python without using
the word "class".
The GUI library featured with Python can't compare with
C#'s. Check PyQt, GTK or wxPython libraries.
Python has a lot of concepts you may not be familiar with:
list comprehensions, generators ("yield" does exist in C#,
but it is not used much), decorators, metaclasses, etc. Don't
be afraid; you can program in Python without them. They
are just smart tools, not mandatory.
Like in C#, the Python standard library is huge. Always
look at it when you encounter any problem. It is most
likely that someone solved it already.
Python use LATE binding and variable labels. It's far too
early for somebody starting with the language to worry
about it, but remember that one day you will encounter a
behavior with variables that SEEMS illogical, and you'll
have to check that. For the moment:
Just remember to never do the following:
def myfunc(my_list=[]) :
# bla
Instead:
def myfunc(my_list=()) :
my_list = list(my_list)
And you'll be good. There is a good reason for that, but
that's not the point :-)
Python is cross platform, enjoy writing on Mac, and
run on Linux, if you wish.
Python is not provided with a complex IDE (you got IDLE :-)).
If you are a Visual Studio addict, check Glade. This is
not as advanced as Visual Studio, but it's still a good RAD.
If you want to develop some web application in Python,
remember that Python is not .NET. You must add a web
framework to it if you want to compare. I like Django.
Python does not need a huge IDE to work with. SciTE,
Notepad++, IDLE, Kate, gedit...
Lightweight editors are really sufficient.
Python enforces indentation using spaces and line break,
you can't change that. You should avoid using tabs for
indenting and choose spaces instead. The equivalent of
empty bracelets {} is the keyword "pass".
Python does not enforce private variables. You can define a
private var using "__" (two underscores) at the beginning of
the variable name, but it's still bypassable in some tricky
ways. Python usually assume programmers are grown adults
that know what they do and communicate.
Python uses iteration. A lot. A lot of a lot. And so the
itertools module is you best friend.
Python has no built in delegates. The delegate module is
not what you think. For event-driven programming, use a
GUI lib (or code the pattern yourself, it's not that
difficult).
Python has an interpreter: you can test almost anything,
live. It should always be running next to your text
editor. Python basic interpreter is not much, try IPython
for something tasty.
Python is autodocumented: use docstrings in your own code
and consult other's using "help()" in the python interpreter
Module basics:
sys: manipulate system features
os: set credential, manipulate file paths, rename, recursive file walk, etc
shutil: batch file processing (such as recursive delete)
re: regexp
urllib and urllib2: HTTP¨scripting like downloading, post / get resquests, etc.
datetime: manipulate date, time AND DURATION
thread: you guess it
zlib: compression
pickle: serialization
xml: parsing / Writing XML with SAX or DOM
There are hundreds of modules. Enjoy.
Some typical ways to do things in Python:
Loops:
Python coders use massively the equivalent of the foreach C#
loop, and prefer it to any others:
Basic iterations:
for item in collection:
print str(item)
"collection" can be a string, a list, a tuple... Any
iterable: any object defining the .next() method. There are
a lot of iterables in Python. E.g: a typical Python idiom
to read files:
for line in open("/path/to/file") :
print line
A shortcut to the for loop is called "list comprehension".
It's a way to create an new iterable in one line:
Creating a filtered list with list comprehension:
my_list = [item for item in collection if condition]
Creating a new list with a list comprehension:
my_list = [int(item) * 3 for item in collection]
Creating a new generator with a list comprehension:
my_list = (int(item) * 3 for item in collection)
Same as above, but the values will be generated on the fly
at the first iteration then lost. More information about it here.
Ordinary for loop
If you want to express a usual for loop, you can use the
xrange() function. for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) becomes:
for i in xrange(0,5) :
do while equivalent
There is no "Do While" in Python. I never missed it, but if
you have to use this logic, do the following:
while True : # Yes, this is an infinite loop. Crazy, hu?
# Do your stuff
if condition :
break
Unpacking
Swapping variables:
a, b = b, a
Multiple assignations:
The above is just a result of what we call "unpacking" (here
applied to a tuple). A simple way to explain it is that you
can assign each value of any sequence directly to an equal
number a variables, in one row:
animal1, animal2, animal3, animal4 = ["cow", "dog", "bird", "fish"]
This has a lot of implications. While iterating on a
multidimensional array, you normally get each sub sequence
one by one then use it, for example:
agenda = [("steve", "jobs"), ("linus", "torvald"), ("bill", "gates"),("jon", "skeet")]
for person in agenda:
print person[0], person[1]
But with unpacking, you can assign the values directly to
variables as well:
agenda = [("steve", "jobs"), ("linus", "torvald"), ("bill", "gates"),("jon", "skeet")]
for name, lastname in agenda:
print name, lastname
And that's why if you want to get an index while iterating,
Python coders use the following idioms (enumerate() is a
standard function):
for index, value in enumerate(sequence) :
print index, value
Unpacking in functions calls
This is advanced use, and you can skip it if it bothers you.
You can unpack values using the sign "*" to use a sequence
directly in a function call. E.g:
>>> foo(var1, var1, var3) :
print var1, var2
print var3
>>> seq = (3.14, 42, "yeah")
>>> foo(*seq)
3.14 42
yeah
There is even more than that. You can unpack a dictionary as
named variables, and write function prototypes with *,
** to accept an arbitrary number of arguments. But it not
used enough to deserve to make this post even longer :-).
String formatting:
print "This is a %s on %s about %s" % ("post", "stackoverflow", "python")
print "This is a %(subject)s on %(place)s about %(about)s" % {"subject" : "post", "place" : "stackoverflow", "about" : "python"}
Slicing an iterable:
You can get any part of an iterable using a very concise syntax:
print "blebla"[2:4] # Print "eb"
last = string[:-1] # Getting last element
even = (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)[::2] # Getting evens only (third argument is a step)
reversed = string[::-1] # Reversing a string
Logical checks:
You can check the way you do in C#, but there are "Pythonic"
ways (shorter, clearer :-)):
if 1 in (1, 2, 3, 4) : # Check en element is in a sequence
if var : # check is var is true. Var == false if it's False, 0, (), [], {} or None
if not var : # Contrary of above
if thing is var: # Check if "thing" and "var" label the same content.
if thing is None : # We use that one because None means nothing in Python (almost null)
Combo (print on one line all the words containing an "o" in uppercase ):
sentence = "It's a good day to write some code"
print " ".join([word.upper() for word in sentence.split() if "o" in word])
Output: "GOOD TO SOME CODE"
Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission
Python coders usually don't check if something is possible. They are a bit like Chuck Norris. They do it. Then catch the exception. Typically, you don't check if a file exists, you try to open it, and roll back if it fails:
try :
f = open(file)
except IOerror :
print "no file here !"
Of course Chuck Norris never uses excepts since he never fails.
The else clause
"Else" is a world of many uses in Python. You will find
"else" after "if", but after "except" and "for" as well.
for stuff in bunch :
# Do things
else :
# This always happens unless you hit "break" in the loop
This works for "while" loop too, even if we do not use this
loop as much.
try :
# A crazy stuff
except ToCrazyError :
# This happens if the crazy stuff raises a ToCrazyError Exception
else :
# This will happen if there is no error so you can put only one line after the "try" clause
finally :
# The same as in C#
If you are curious, here is a bunch of advanced quick and
dirty (but nice) Python snippets.
Refrain from using classes. Use dictionaries, sets, list and tuples.
Setters and getters are forbidden.
Don't have exception handlers unless you really need to - let it crash in style.
Pylint can be your friend for more pythonish coding style.
When you're ready - check out list comprehensions, generators and lambda functions.
If you are not new to programming, I would recommend the book "Dive into Python" by Mark Pilgrim. It explains Python in a way that makes it easy to understand how Python techniques and idioms can be applied to build practical applications.
Start by reading The Zen of Python
You can read it at the link above, or just type import this at the Python prompt. =)
Take advantage of Python features not offered* by C#
Such as duck-typing, metaclasses, list comprehension, etc.*
Write simple programs just to test these features. You'll get used (if not addicted) to them in no time.
Look at the Python Standard Library
So you don't reinvent the wheel. Don't try to read the whole thing, even a quick look at the TOC could save you a lot of time.
* I know C# already has some of these features, but from what I can see they're either pretty new or not commonly used by C# developers. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
In case you haven't heard about it yet, Dive Into Python is a great place to start for anyone learning Python. It also has a bunch of Tips & Tricks.
If you are someone who is better learning a new language by taking small incremental steps then I would recommend using IronPython. Otherwise use regular CPython and don't do any more C# coding until you feel like you have a grasp of Python.
I would suggest getting a good editor so that you don't get bitten by whitespace. For simplicity, I just use ActivePython's packages Link, which include an editor and all of the win32api libraries. They are pretty fun to get into if you have been using C#. The win32api in Python can be a little bit simpler. You don't need to do the whole DDLImport thing. Download ActivePython (which comes with CPython), open it up, and start entering some stuff at the console. You will pick it up fairly easy after using C#. For some more interesting Python tidbits, try ActiveState code, which has all sorts of recipes, which can allow you to very simply see different things that you can do with Python.
I'm pretty much in your shoes too, still using C# for most of my work, but using Python more and more for other projects.
#e-satis probably knows Python inside-out and all his advice is top-notch. From my point of view what made the biggest difference to me was the following:
Get back into functional. not necessarily spaghetti code, but learning that not everything has to be in an object, nor should it be.
The interpreter. It's like the immediate window except 10^10 better. Because of how Python works you don't need all the baggage and crap C# makes you put in before you can run things; you can just whack in a few lines and see how things work.
I've normally got an IDLE instance up where I just throw around snippets as I'm working out how the various bits in the language works while I'm editing my files... e.g. busy working out how to do a map call on a list, but I'm not 100% on the lambda I should use... whack in a few lines into IDLE, see how it works and what it does.
And finally, loving into the verbosity of Python, and I don't mean that in the long winded meaning of verbosity, but as e-satis pointed out, using verbs like "in", "is", "for", etc.
If you did a lot of reflection work in C# you'll feel like crying when you see how simple the same stuff is in Python.
Good luck with it.
If you have programming experience and don't feel like spending money I'd recommend How to Think Like a Computer Scientist in Python.
And then something you can benefit from:
IPython shell: Auto completion in the shell. It does batch operations, adds a ton of features, logging and such. >>> Play with the shell - always!
easy_install / pip: So nice and an easy way to install a 3rd party Python application.