Pylint: The Python Code bug/quality checker

Now that I am off and running in Python, I thought I should install Pylint. Pylint will review your code for bugs and quality (as determined by some formalized Python standards).

You can run it via command line simply by typing:

pylint myscript.py

There are also a lot of options for silencing reports, getting more detail from messages, etc. If you leave the reports on, you get a global evaluation score. I just ran my script the decodes a binary SIO IMG file into an ARC ASCII grid through pylint and got this result:

Global evaluation
-----------------
Your code has been rated at 4.92/10

Not bad, considering this is my first ever script. My code runs fine; the majority of the messages involved formatting issues, such as some of my lines being too long. For code readability, the convention is to keep lines as short as possible. I definitely have some that I could break up into 2 lines. I also get some messages about not following my commas with a space (picky, picky).

After shortening just a couple lines and putting in some spaces after some commas, I ran it again:

Global evaluation
-----------------
Your code has been rated at 6.44/10 (previous run: 4.92/10)

It is still complaining about some line lengths and the fact that I have some variables named with single letters, but in general my code is pretty good. If you want to help make your code better, especially if you are just learning like I am or if you plan to distribute your code, I recommend Pylint.