Christopher Spears wrote: > I just completed an assignment out of Learning Python > in which I used the Cmd class from the cmd module to > create a little shell: > My main question concerns the naming of functions such > as: > > def do_ls(self, line): > if line == '': dirs = [os.curdir] > else: dirs = line.split() > for dirname in dirs: > print 'Listing of %s:' % dirname > print '\n'.join(os.listdir(dirname)) > > Originally, I called the function 'ls', but when I did > that, the function didn't work when I typed 'ls' at > the prompt. When I looked in the back of the book, I > saw the name the authors gave their function, which > was 'do_ls'. When I changed the function's name to > do_ls, the function worked when I typed 'ls' at the > prompt. Does anyone know why this happened?
Cmd uses introspection (using the built-in function getattr()) to find the handler methods. For a command named 'ls' it looks for a method 'do_ls' to handle the command. You can also provide 'help_ls' to respond to the user command 'help ls'. This naming convention is built-in to Cmd so you have to use it for the module to work correctly. Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
