Pybot Wiki
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This page describes a script. In general, it refers to the script in its current form, but pywikpedia coders tend only to add functions, not take them away. Chances are that you'll be able to use most of the information on the page, regardless of the age of your installation.

Watchlist.py
Creator:
Daniel Herding
Pywikipedia team
Code location: mediawiki repository
What it does: Produces your bot account's watchlist
Complexity: Basic
Applicability: all MediaWiki installations

Watchlist.py is a script that saves your bot account's current watchlist — in Wikia terms, the list of pages that your bot is following — in a folder called "watchlists" within the pywikipedia folder.

Syntax

The syntax for this script is:

python watchlist.py 

This will produce a watchlist file for the current wiki.

Parameters

Name Function
-all reloads watchlists for all wikis where a watchlist is already present
-new loads watchlists for all wikis referenced in user-config.py; if you use your bot account on several different wikis, this parameter will look at your watchlist on all those wikis

Use cases

No actual use cases are known, or even imaginable.

Sample output

Output is of a highly unusual, but at least regular, format.

(lp0
VAlonso Frame
p1
aVTerence Woodfield
p2
aVSkutloid
p3
aVShur
p4
aVAmaryll
p5

As can be seen, the letters aV appear before every entry, except for the first one, and the page numbers appear underneath. Why this format obtains is unclear.

It's also uncertain why, on Mac systems at least, the file has a .dat extension. This is usually associated with video files, so Mac users have to force target the opening application to be something like TextEdit.

The utility of this list is therefore obscure. It doesn't even help you manage your watchlist, which can be more effectively done at Special:EditWatchlist/raw.

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