Question

I have been trying to learn Python for a while now. By chance, I happened across chapter 6 of the official tutorial through a Google search link pointing
here.
When I learned, from that page, that functions were the heart of modules, and that modules could be called from the command line, I was all ears. Here’s my first attempt at doing both, openbook.py

import nltk, re, pprint
from __future__ import division

def openbook(book):
    file = open(book)
    raw = file.read()
    tokens = nltk.wordpunct_tokenize(raw)
    text = nltk.Text(tokens)
    words = [w.lower() for w in text]
    vocab = sorted(set(words))
    return vocab
if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys
    openbook(file(sys.argv[1]))

What I want is for this function to be importable as the module openbook, as well as for openbook.py to take a file from the command line and do all of those things to it.

When I run openbook.py from the command line, this happens:

gemeni@a:~/Projects-FinnegansWake$ python openbook.py vicocyclometer
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "openbook.py", line 23, in <module>
    openbook(file(sys.argv[1]))
  File "openbook.py", line 5, in openbook
    file = open(book)

When I try using it as a module, this happens:

>>> import openbook
>>> openbook('vicocyclometer')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'module' object is not callable

So, what can I do to fix this, and hopefully continue down the long winding path to enlightenment?

Answer 1

Error executing openbook.py

For the first error, you are opening the file twice:

openbook(file(sys.argv[1]))
ph0 = open(book)

Calling both file() and open() is redundant. They both do the same thing. Pick one or the other: preferably open().

open(…)

open(name[, mode[, buffering]]) → file object

Open a file using the file() type, returns a file object. This is the
preferred way to open a file.

Error importing openbook module

For the second error, you need to add the module name:

>>> import openbook
>>> openbook.openbook('vicocyclometer')

Or import the openbook() function into the global namespace:

>>> from openbook import openbook
>>> openbook('vicocyclometer')