Python in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference, 3rd Edition

Useful in many roles, from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and maintenance, Python is consistently ranked among today’s most popular programming languages. The third edition of this practical book provides a quick reference to the language—including Python 3.5, 2.7, and highlights of 3.6—commonly used areas of its vast standard library, and some of the most useful third-party modules and packages.

Ideal for programmers with some Python experience, and those coming to Python from other programming languages, this book covers a wide range of application areas, including web and network programming, XML handling, database interactions, and high-speed numeric computing. Discover how Python provides a unique mix of elegance, simplicity, practicality, and sheer power.

This edition covers

• Python syntax, Object-Oriented Python, standard library modules, and third-party Python packages
• Python’s support for file and text operations, persistence and databases, concurrent execution, and numeric computations
• Networking basics, event-driven programming, and client-side network protocol modules
• Python extension modules, and tools for packaging and distributing extensions, modules, and applications

Table of Contents

Part I, Getting Started with Python
Chapter 1, Introduction to Python
Chapter 2, The Python Interpreter

Part II, Core Python Language and Built-ins
Chapter 3, The Python Language
Chapter 4, Object-Oriented Python
Chapter 5, Exceptions
Chapter 6, Modules
Chapter 7, Core Built-ins and Standard Library Modules
Chapter 8, Strings and Things
Chapter 9, Regular Expressions

Part III, Python Library and Extension Modules
Chapter 10, File and Text Operations
Chapter 11, Persistence and Databases
Chapter 12, Time Operations
Chapter 13, Controlling Execution
Chapter 14, Threads and Processes
Chapter 15, Numeric Processing
Chapter 16, Testing, Debugging, and Optimizing

Part IV, Network and Web Programming
Chapter 17, Networking Basics
Chapter 18, Asynchronous Alternatives
Chapter 19, Client-Side Network Protocol Modules
Chapter 20, Serving HTTP
Chapter 21, Email, MIME, and Other Network Encodings
Chapter 22, Structured Text: HTML
Chapter 23, Structured Text: XML

Part V, Extending, Distributing, v2/v3 Migration
Chapter 24, Extending and Embedding Classic Python
Chapter 25, Distributing Extensions and Programs
Chapter 26, v2/v3 Migration and Coexistence