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An Introduction to Python

• 1 Publisher's Preface
• 2 Introduction
• 3 Whetting Your Appetite
  • 3.1 Where From Here
• 4 Using the Python Interpreter
  • 4.1 Invoking the Interpreter
    • 4.1.1 Argument Passing
    • 4.1.2 Interactive Mode
  • 4.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment
    • 4.2.1 Error Handling
    • 4.2.2 Executable Python Scripts
    • 4.2.3 The Interactive Startup File
• 5 An Informal Introduction to Python
  • 5.1 Using Python as a Calculator
    • 5.1.1 Numbers
    • 5.1.2 Strings
    • 5.1.3 Unicode Strings
    • 5.1.4 Lists
  • 5.2 First Steps Towards Programming
• 6 More Control Flow Tools
  • 6.1 if Statements
  • 6.2 for Statements
  • 6.3 The range() Function
  • 6.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops
  • 6.5 pass Statements
  • 6.6 Defining Functions
  • 6.7 More on Defining Functions
    • 6.7.1 Default Argument Values
    • 6.7.2 Keyword Arguments
    • 6.7.3 Arbitrary Argument Lists
    • 6.7.4 Lambda Forms
    • 6.7.5 Documentation Strings
• 7 Data Structures
  • 7.1 More on Lists
    • 7.1.1 Using Lists as Stacks
    • 7.1.2 Using Lists as Queues
    • 7.1.3 Functional Programming Tools
    • 7.1.4 List Comprehensions
  • 7.2 The del statement
  • 7.3 Tuples and Sequences
  • 7.4 Dictionaries
  • 7.5 Looping Techniques
  • 7.6 More on Conditions
  • 7.7 Comparing Sequences and Other Types
• 8 Modules
  • 8.1 More on Modules
    • 8.1.1 The Module Search Path
    • 8.1.2 "Compiled" Python files
  • 8.2 Standard Modules
  • 8.3 The dir() Function
  • 8.4 Packages
    • 8.4.1 Importing * From a Package
    • 8.4.2 Intra-package References
• 9 Input and Output
  • 9.1 Fancier Output Formatting
  • 9.2 Reading and Writing Files
    • 9.2.1 Methods of File Objects
    • 9.2.2 The ‘pickle’ Module
• 10 Errors and Exceptions
  • 10.1 Syntax Errors
  • 10.2 Exceptions
  • 10.3 Handling Exceptions
  • 10.4 Raising Exceptions
  • 10.5 User-defined Exceptions
  • 10.6 Defining Clean-up Actions
• 11 Classes
  • 11.1 A Word About Terminology
  • 11.2 Python Scopes and Name Spaces
  • 11.3 A First Look at Classes
    • 11.3.1 Class Definition Syntax
    • 11.3.2 Class Objects
    • 11.3.3 Instance Objects
    • 11.3.4 Method Objects
  • 11.4 Random Remarks
  • 11.5 Inheritance
    • 11.5.1 Multiple Inheritance
  • 11.6 Private Variables
  • 11.7 Odds and Ends
    • 11.7.1 Exceptions as Derived Classes
• 12 What Now?
• A Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
  • 12.1 Line Editing
  • 12.2 History Substitution
  • 12.3 Key Bindings
  • 12.4 Commentary
• B Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations
  • 12.5 Representation Error
• C History and License
  • 12.6 History of the software
  • 12.7 Terms and conditions