Is there a Python equivalent to the ‘which’ command
I believe there is none in the python libraries
operating-system
What are atomic operations for newbies?
Pretty much, yes. “Atom” comes from greek “atomos” = “uncuttable”, and has been used in the sense “indivisible smallest unit” for a very long time (till physicists found that, in fact, there are smaller things than atoms). In concurrent programming, it means that there will be no context switch during it – nothing can affect the execution … Read more
Why is Windows 32-bit called Windows x86 and not Windows x32?
x86 is the name of the architecture that it’s built to run on (the name comes from a series of old Intel processors, the names of which all ended in 86, The first of which was the 8086). Although x86 was originally a 16-bit architecture, the version in use today is the 32-bit extension. x64 … Read more
How can I safely create a nested directory in Python?
On Python ≥ 3.5, use pathlib.Path.mkdir: For older versions of Python, I see two answers with good qualities, each with a small flaw, so I will give my take on it: Try os.path.exists, and consider os.makedirs for the creation. As noted in comments and elsewhere, there’s a race condition – if the directory is created between the os.path.exists and the os.makedirs calls, the os.makedirs will … Read more
How to view / open a calculator in mac OS X?
You can hit command + spacebar, which will bring up a search bar, and then type in calc, or calculator, and hit enter to open the calculator application. You can also find the calculator in Applications, or you can just use command + spacebar and type in the equation you wish to solve to the … Read more
Difference between binary semaphore and mutex
Is there any difference between a binary semaphore and mutex or are they essentially the same?
What is the meaning of *nix?
*nix just means operating systems that are like the old workhorse Unix. Some examples include Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X (its kernel, Darwin, is based on BSD). The main relation between *nix and Ruby is just a pragmatic one; most Ruby developers seem to prefer to work on Unix-like OSes (typically Linux or Mac … Read more
What is the difference between a process and a thread?
Both processes and threads are independent sequences of execution. The typical difference is that threads (of the same process) run in a shared memory space, while processes run in separate memory spaces. I’m not sure what “hardware” vs “software” threads you might be referring to. Threads are an operating environment feature, rather than a CPU … Read more
What are file descriptors, explained in simple terms?
In simple words, when you open a file, the operating system creates an entry to represent that file and store the information about that opened file. So if there are 100 files opened in your OS then there will be 100 entries in OS (somewhere in kernel). These entries are represented by integers like (…100, … Read more
What’s a Pthread?
Threads are a generic concept. Wikipedia defines it as: In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by an operating system scheduler. A thread is a light-weight process. Pthreads or POSIX threads are one implementation of that concept used with C program on Unix. … Read more