Question

I’m new on Python. I’m testing this code on Python 2.7 but gives me an error.

import statsout

def output(data, format="text"):
    output_function = getattr(statsout, "output_%s" % format, statsout.output_text)
    return output_function(data)

Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\anlopes\workspace\test\src\test.py", line 1, in <module>
    import statsout
ImportError: No module named statsout

Can someone give me a clue on what is wrong?

Best Regards,

Answer 1

Your example is from Dive Into Python, and statsout is an imaginary module used as an example. To quote from http://diveintopython.net/power_of_introspection/getattr.html :

For example, let’s imagine a program that prints site statistics in HTML, XML, and plain text formats. The choice of output format could be specified on the command line, or stored in a configuration file. A statsout module defines three functions, output_html, output_xml, and output_text. Then the main program defines a single output function, like this:

“For example, let’s imagine” being the key words there 🙂 Actually, reading it again I can quite see that that paragraph is easy to misparse…