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background function in Python

I’ve got a Python script that sometimes displays images to the user. The images can, at times, be quite large, and they are reused often. Displaying them is not critical, but displaying the message associated with them is. I’ve got a function that downloads the image needed and saves it locally. R…

Python: if not val, vs if val is None

I’ve always coded in the style of if not value, however, a few guides have brought to my attention that while this style works, it seems to have 2 potential problems: It’s not completely readable; if value is None is surely more understandable. This can have implications later (and cause subtle bu…

Subclass dict: UserDict, dict or ABC?

What’s the difference between UserDict, dict and ABC and which one is recommended? The docs seem to deprecate UserDict? Also it seems UserDict’s update() would use my setitem method whereas dict doesn’t? Which methods are really essential to override given I want custom setitem and getitem f…

Build the full path filename in Python

I need to pass a file path name to a module. How do I build the file path from a directory name, base filename, and a file format string? The directory may or may not exist at the time of call. For example: I need to create a string ‘/home/me/dev/my_reports/daily_report.pdf’ Concatenating the piec…