Python in a Nutshell. A Desktop Quick Reference

The Python programming language reconciles many apparent contradictions: both elegant and pragmatic, both simple and powerful, it’s very high-level yet doesn’t get in your way when you need to fiddle with bits and bytes, and it’s suitable for programming novices as well as great for experts, too. This book is aimed at programmers with some previous exposure to Python, as well as experienced programmers coming to Python for the first time from other languages. The book is a quick reference to Python itself, the most commonly used parts of its vast standard library, and a few of the most popular and useful thirdparty modules and packages, covering a wide range of application areas, including web and network programming, XML handling, database interactions, and highspeed numeric computing. The book focuses on Python’s cross-platform capabilities and covers the basics of extending Python and embedding it in other applications. How This Book Is Organized This book has five parts, as follows. Part I, Getting Started with Python Chapter 1, Introduction to Python Covers the general characteristics of the Python language, its implementations, where to get help and information, how to participate in the Python community, and how to obtain and install Python on your computer(s). Chapter 2, The Python Interpreter Covers the Python interpreter program, its command-line options, and how to use it to run Python programs and in interactive sessions. The chapter mentions text editors for editing Python programs and auxiliary programs for checking your Python sources, along with some full-fledged integrated devel