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Introduction
One of the best things that Python oers is an extensive standard library that oers a wide
range of included features that range from network functionality, database handling,
and XML processing all the way to zip le processing. ere are hundreds of additional
libraries that extend the abilities of Python.
e current versions of Python that are available at this writing are 2.7 and 3.2.5. e
reason for this is that version 3.x is NOT completely backward compatible to the earlier
versions, and with the wealth of existing code and libraries that are currently being used
on a daily basis, both versions are available. You can nd these versions at
www.python.org
for the Windows, Linux/Unix, and Mac OS X operating systems. If you are running Linux,
you can check your normal distribution, which will have a version of Python available. It
might already be installed on your system. You can do a web search for versions that are
available for other operating systems.
Although there are many free and for-pay IDEs (Integrated Development Editors)
available for Python, all code may be written in a standard text editor and run from the
command line in a standard terminal or command box. My personal preference is a free
IDE named Geany, which is available for both Linux and Windows.
e goal of this book is to provide (as the name suggests) a quick guide to the Python
language syntax. Sometimes, a programmer is called on to know multiple languages and
the dierences from one programming language to another can be just dierent enough
to cause issues. is guide is designed to be kept not on the bookshelf but on the desk, to
provide a way to quickly get answers.
You’ll nd chapters on data structures, keywords, strings, variables, and more. ere
is even a chapter on some of the more useful standard libraries that come with almost
every distribution of Python.
Conventions used in this book
Almost all code presented here will be simple examples showing how to use a particular
command or function and can be run in the interpreter shell. e code will look like the
following, with the output or response from the shell in bold.
print('This is a test')
This is a test
If you see a line of code that starts with “>>>”, that shows the prompt from the
interpreter shell. Do not insert that into your code, just the part after it. If you see a line
of code that starts with “. . .”, that shows that the shell recognizes this is a line that should
be indented. Again, do not insert the dots in your code. Just remember that you have to
indent that portion of the code.
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