Contents

• Contents
• 1. Whetting Your Appetite
  • 1.1 Where From Here
• 2. Using the Python Interpreter
  • 2.1 Invoking the Interpreter
    • 2.1.1 Argument Passing
    • 2.1.2 Interactive Mode
  • 2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment
    • 2.2.1 Error Handling
    • 2.2.2 Executable Python Scripts
    • 2.2.3 The Interactive Startup File
• 3. An Informal Introduction to Python
  • 3.1 Using Python as a Calculator
    • 3.1.1 Numbers
    • 3.1.2 Strings
    • 3.1.3 Lists
  • 3.2 First Steps Towards Programming
• 4. More Control Flow Tools
  • 4.1 if Statements
  • 4.2 for Statements
  • 4.3 The range() Function
  • 4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops
  • 4.5 pass Statements
  • 4.6 Defining Functions
  • 4.7 More on Defining Functions
    • 4.7.1 Default Argument Values
    • 4.7.2 Keyword Arguments
    • 4.7.3 Arbitrary Argument Lists
    • 4.7.4 Lambda Forms
    • 4.7.5 Documentation Strings
• 5. Data Structures
  • 5.1 More on Lists
    • 5.1.1 Functional Programming Tools
  • 5.2 The del statement
  • 5.3 Tuples and Sequences
  • 5.4 Dictionaries
  • 5.5 More on Conditions
  • 5.6 Comparing Sequences and Other Types
• 6. Modules
  • 6.1 More on Modules
    • 6.1.1 The Module Search Path
    • 6.1.2 ``Compiled'' Python files
  • 6.2 Standard Modules
  • 6.3 The dir() Function
  • 6.4 Packages
    • 6.4.1 Importing * From a Package
    • 6.4.2 Intra-package References
• 7. Input and Output
  • 7.1 Fancier Output Formatting
  • 7.2 Reading and Writing Files
    • 7.2.1 Methods of File Objects
    • 7.2.2 The pickle Module
• 8. Errors and Exceptions
  • 8.1 Syntax Errors
  • 8.2 Exceptions
  • 8.3 Handling Exceptions
  • 8.4 Raising Exceptions
  • 8.5 User-defined Exceptions
  • 8.6 Defining Clean-up Actions
• 9. Classes
  • 9.1 A Word About Terminology
  • 9.2 Python Scopes and Name Spaces
  • 9.3 A First Look at Classes
    • 9.3.1 Class Definition Syntax
    • 9.3.2 Class Objects
    • 9.3.3 Instance Objects
    • 9.3.4 Method Objects
  • 9.4 Random Remarks
  • 9.5 Inheritance
    • 9.5.1 Multiple Inheritance
  • 9.6 Private Variables
  • 9.7 Odds and Ends
    • 9.7.1 Exceptions Can Be Classes
• 10. What Now?
• A. Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
  • A1. Line Editing
  • A2. History Substitution
  • A3. Key Bindings
  • A4. Commentary