The Quick Python Book

by Harms, Daryl D.

• ISBN13: 9781884777745
• ISBN10: 1884777740
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-12-01
• Publisher: Manning Pubns Co

Summary

The Quick Python Book is a clear, concise introduction to Python, one of the most elegant programming languages in existence. The book is aimed at readers who know programming but for whom the Python language is new. This book is designed so that you can use it to quickly become proficient in Python. However, it provides more than just a beginners tutorial. Even once you've become more experienced, it should continue to be quite valuable to you as an indexed cache of information on the bulk of the Python concepts and constructs of which you will find yourself wanting to refresh or augment your knowledge.

Author Biography

Daryl Harms has developed and managed the development of software systems since the mid 1980s. He has a Ph.D. in computer science. Kenneth McDonald is a Technical Writer at Be, Inc. where he is implementing a C++ automatic documentation system entirely in--of course--Python!

Table of Contents

preface	xvii
special thanks	xviii
about the author	sxix
about the cover illustratio	nxxi
author online	xxii
Part 1 Starting out	1	(26)
About Python	3	(10)
About this book	13	(8)
Getting started	21	(6)
Part 2 The essentials	27	(182)
The Quick Python overview	29	(13)
The absolute basics	42	(9)
Lists and tuples	51	(16)
Strings	67	(15)
Dictionaries	82	(8)
Control flow	90	(9)
Functions and procedures	99	(7)
Modules and scoping rules	106	(14)
Using the filesystem	120	(11)
Reading and writing files	131	(13)
Exceptions	144	(12)
Scripts	156	(17)
Classes and object-oriented programming	173	(21)
Graphical User Interfaces and Tk	194	(15)
Part 3 Advanced language features	209	(32)
Packages	211	(8)
Data types as objects	219	(5)
Special method attributes	224	(8)
Regular expressions	232	(9)
Part 4 Advanced topics and applications	241	(108)
Python, Windows, and COM	243	(26)
Extending Python with C and C++	269	(10)
Integration with the Java Virtual Machine: JPython	279	(18)
HTML and Python---the HTMLgen package	297	(24)
Using `Zope'	321	(25)
What else can Python do?	346	(3)
appendix The Quick Python reference	349	(50)
index	399