Tips for working with code folding

Here are some tips for working with code folding:

• Bird's eye view of a module:
• A. Fold All
• B Unfold classes
• Fold/unfold whole functions:
• A. Unfold All
• B Fold functions
• Now when you unfold a function it appears fully unfolded. If you want to fold it back just fold it with the mouse or with cursor on the function def select Fold Nearest.
• Fold out of a heavily nested function
• Press Ctrl+/ (Fold Nearest) a few times until you fold up to the level you want.

PyScripter Project of the Week at SourceForge

PyScripter was selected as one of the projects of the week, April 16 2018 by SourceForge.

Benchmark of Regular Expression Engines

I did some benchmarking of regular expression engines and the results are quite interesting.  The benchmark involved finding all matches of different patterns in a 15 Mb text file.  It is a similar benchmark to that found in other comparisons of regular expression engines (here and here).  The following engines were compared.

• Delphi’s built-in engine (PCRE)
• A modified version of Jcl’s regular expression engine, also PCRE based.  Three versions of this set up were tested:
• with Study and JIT enabled
• with Study and no JIT
• without Study and JIT
• Python’s built-in regular expression engine and
• A relative new comer FLRE a pascal-based regular expression engine.

Here follow the results:

                                                        Time     | Match count
==============================================================================
Delphi's own TRegEx:
                                         /Twain/ :       35.00 ms |         811
                                     /(?i)Twain/ :       69.00 ms |         965
                                    /[a-z]shing/ :      510.00 ms |        1540
                    /Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+/ :      581.00 ms |         262
                                     /\b\w+nn\b/ :      548.00 ms |         262
                              /[a-q][^u-z]{13}x/ :      566.00 ms |        4094
                   /Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :      743.00 ms |        2598
               /(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :      875.00 ms |        4152
           /.{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :     2617.00 ms |        2598
           /.{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :     2814.00 ms |        1976
             /Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom/ :      421.00 ms |           2
                                  /[a-zA-Z]+ing/ :      763.00 ms |       78423
                         /\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\s/ :      485.00 ms |       55201
                 /([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\s/ :     1468.00 ms |         209
                     /["'][^"']{0,30}[?!\.]["']/ :      302.00 ms |        8885
Total Time:    12812.00 ms
==============================================================================
Modified TJclWideRegEx with Study and JIT:
                                         /Twain/ :        9.00 ms |         811
                                     /(?i)Twain/ :       30.00 ms |         965
                                    /[a-z]shing/ :       74.00 ms |        1540
                    /Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+/ :       17.00 ms |         262
                                     /\b\w+nn\b/ :      115.00 ms |         262
                              /[a-q][^u-z]{13}x/ :      181.00 ms |        4094
                   /Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :       18.00 ms |        2598
               /(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :       50.00 ms |        4152
           /.{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :      194.00 ms |        2598
           /.{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :      216.00 ms |        1976
             /Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom/ :       24.00 ms |           2
                                  /[a-zA-Z]+ing/ :      168.00 ms |       78423
                         /\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\s/ :       97.00 ms |       55248
                 /([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\s/ :       95.00 ms |         209
                     /["'][^"']{0,30}[?!\.]["']/ :       25.00 ms |        8885
Total Time:     1336.00 ms
==============================================================================
Modified TJclWideRegEx with Study no JIT:
                                         /Twain/ :       11.00 ms |         811
                                     /(?i)Twain/ :       42.00 ms |         965
                                    /[a-z]shing/ :      272.00 ms |        1540
                    /Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+/ :       19.00 ms |         262
                                     /\b\w+nn\b/ :      418.00 ms |         262
                              /[a-q][^u-z]{13}x/ :      384.00 ms |        4094
                   /Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :       23.00 ms |        2598
               /(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :      209.00 ms |        4152
           /.{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :     2664.00 ms |        2598
           /.{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :     2730.00 ms |        1976
             /Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom/ :       45.00 ms |           2
                                  /[a-zA-Z]+ing/ :      627.00 ms |       78423
                         /\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\s/ :      279.00 ms |       55248
                 /([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\s/ :      593.00 ms |         209
                     /["'][^"']{0,30}[?!\.]["']/ :       40.00 ms |        8885
Total Time:     8389.00 ms
==============================================================================
Modified TJclWideRegEx no Study no JIT:
                                         /Twain/ :       10.00 ms |         811
                                     /(?i)Twain/ :       43.00 ms |         965
                                    /[a-z]shing/ :      341.00 ms |        1540
                    /Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+/ :      383.00 ms |         262
                                     /\b\w+nn\b/ :      500.00 ms |         262
                              /[a-q][^u-z]{13}x/ :      659.00 ms |        4094
                   /Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :      716.00 ms |        2598
               /(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :      984.00 ms |        4152
           /.{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :     2769.00 ms |        2598
           /.{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :     3130.00 ms |        1976
             /Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom/ :      409.00 ms |           2
                                  /[a-zA-Z]+ing/ :      845.00 ms |       78423
                         /\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\s/ :      501.00 ms |       55248
                 /([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\s/ :      815.00 ms |         209
                     /["'][^"']{0,30}[?!\.]["']/ :      281.00 ms |        8885
Total Time:    12411.00 ms
==============================================================================           Python Regular Expressions
Twain                                    time:    0.00505 found mathces:    811
(?i)Twain                                time:      0.209 found mathces:    965
[a-z]shing                               time:       0.24 found mathces:   1540
Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+               time:     0.0807 found mathces:    262
\b\w+nn\b                                time:      0.513 found mathces:    262
[a-q][^u-z]{13}x                         time:      0.685 found mathces:   4081
Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn              time:     0.0715 found mathces:   2598
(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn          time:       0.93 found mathces:   4152
.{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)      time:      0.957 found mathces:   2598
.{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)      time:      0.935 found mathces:   1976
Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom        time:     0.0922 found mathces:      2
[a-zA-Z]+ing                             time:       0.52 found mathces:  78423
\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\s                    time:      0.299 found mathces:  55201
([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\s            time:      0.358 found mathces:    209
["][^"]{0,30}[?!\.]["]                   time:     0.0175 found mathces:   5261
total time:       5910 ms
                                                        Time     | Match count
==============================================================================
FLRE:
                                         /Twain/ :        7.83 ms |         811
                                     /(?i)Twain/ :        4.78 ms |         965
                                    /[a-z]shing/ :        8.95 ms |        1540
                    /Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+/ :        8.14 ms |         262
                                     /\b\w+nn\b/ :       50.53 ms |         262
                              /[a-q][^u-z]{13}x/ :       94.96 ms |        4094
                   /Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :       12.24 ms |        2598
               /(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn/ :       21.34 ms |        4152
           /.{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :       47.25 ms |        2598
           /.{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)/ :       47.37 ms |        1976
             /Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom/ :       46.06 ms |           2
                                  /[a-zA-Z]+ing/ :       60.95 ms |       78423
                         /\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\s/ :       55.11 ms |       55248
                 /([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\s/ :       10.76 ms |         209
                     /["'][^"']{0,30}[?!\.]["']/ :       49.21 ms |        8885
Total time:      542.93 ms


And the winner by a big margin is FLRE! 
Notes:

• The time to read the file is not included in the timings.
• PCRE with JIT is also quite impressive.  In other test it was found to compete well with the engines released by Intel and Google.  However I found the JIT is very buggy (crashes often) and limited (works only with very few options).

Jupyter notebooks in PyScripter

The next version of PyScripter will support running Jupyter notebooks inside the IDE as shown in the picture below:


Jupiter notebooks are JSON files and PyScripter 3.4 provides syntax highlighting with code-folding for such files.   To work with Jupiter notebooks you first need to install jupiter using pip.  You can then select, Tools, Source Code Views, Web preview, to work inside the notebooks in the usual way.  A Jupiter server is automatically started to support this.

You can also open a new notebook through File, New... and selecting the Jupiter notebook file template.   You will be asked to save the empty notebook and then you will go straight into the new notebook to start work.  The support for Jupiter notebooks should be considered at this stage experimental.

PyScripter v3.3.2 released

This hotfix release resolves a problem that may occur when running/debugging GUI scripts and a few minor other minor issues.   It is available at Sourceforge.

Turning your scripts into executables

Sometimes you may want to distribute your python work as a single .exe file.   This post explains how to do it easily with PyScripter.

• If you do not see “Install packages with pip” under Tools Tools you first need to create a new Tool that helps you to use pip from PyScripter as explained in a separate blog post.
• Use the pip tool to install pyinstaller.
• Setup a new tool to use PyInstaller using Tools, Configure Tools, Add and completing the dialog box as shown below:

• Open in editor the script and invoke the new tool.  You can watch the pyinstaller output in the Output window.  After a short while and if everything goes smoothly your executable will be ready and can be found in a folder called “dist”, below your script.
• You could create another tool to easily test the generated executable, but I will leave that as a little challenge.