Python Essentials

Key Features

• Learn how to write effective Python code
• Get up-to-speed with the most important data structures in Python, using sequences, sets, and mappings
• Explore Python's impressive range of features and discover why it's one of the most popular programming languages in the world

Book Description

Python Essentials provides a vital tour of the most critical features of Python. Starting with setup and installation, you will soon dive into exploring built-in-library types, Python's rich collection of operators and built-in functions, variables, assignment and scoping rules.

From this foundation, you will explore functions, a crucial aspect of any programming language, including considerable sophistication in defining parameters to a function and providing argument values. Explore advanced functional programming using generator expressions, comprehensions, and generator functions. Handle file input and output using web services and context managers, exception handling and explore wider, popular frameworks.

Through this concise and practical guide, you will explore all you need to know to leverage this powerful, and industry-standard, programming language.

What you will learn

• Use Python interactively and master the art of writing efficient Python scripts
• Learn techniques for working with string data, including how to use regular expressions to parse strings
• Get to know how the short-circuit and if-else logic operators work
• Explore mutable data structures including list, set, and dict
• Define functions with positional and optional parameters, and learn to use keyword argument values when calling a function
• Write generator functions, generator expressions, and comprehensions
• Master the use of exceptions for handling errors and other unexpected conditions
• Understand the importance of working with files, context manager, and the with statement

About the Author

Steven F. Lott has been programming since the 70s, when computers were large, expensive, and rare. As a contract software developer and architect, he has worked on hundreds of projects, from very small to very large. He's been using Python to solve business problems for over 10 years

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started
2. Simple Data Types
3. Expressions and Output
4. Variables, Assignment and Scoping Rules
5. Logic, Comparisons, and Conditions
6. More Complex Data Types
7. Basic Function Definitions
8. More Advanced Functions
9. Exceptions
10. Files, Databases, Networks, and Contexts
11. Class Definitions
12. Scripts, Modules, Packages, Libraries, and Applications
13. Metaprogramming and Decorators
14. Fit and Finish Unit Testing, Packaging, and Documentation
15. Next Steps

Steven F. Lott

Steven F. Lott has been programming since the 70s, when computers were large, expensive, and rare. As a contract software developer and architect, he has worked on hundreds of projects, from very small to very large. He's been using Python to solve business problems for over 10 years. He's particularly adept at struggling with thorny data representation problems. He has also authored Mastering Object-oriented Python by Packt Publishing. He is currently a technomad who lives in various places on the east coast of the US.