Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language

Python 3 is the best version of the language yet: It is more powerful, convenient, consistent, and expressive than ever before. Now, leading Python programmer Mark Summerfield demonstrates how to write code that takes full advantage of Python 3’s features and idioms. The first book written from a completely “Python 3” viewpoint, Programming in Python 3 brings together all the knowledge you need to write any program, use any standard or third-party Python 3 library, and create new library modules of your own.   Summerfield draws on his many years of Python experience to share deep insights into Python 3 development you won’t find anywhere else. He begins by illuminating Python’s “beautiful heart”: the eight key elements of Python you need to write robust, high-performance programs. Building on these core elements, he introduces new topics designed to strengthen your practical expertise—one concept and hands-on example at a time. This book’s coverage includes   Developing in Python using procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming paradigms Creating custom packages and modules Writing and reading binary, text, and XML files, including optional compression, random access, and text and XML parsing Leveraging advanced data types, collections, control structures, and functions Spreading program workloads across multiple processes and threads Programming SQL databases and key-value DBM files Utilizing Python’s regular expression mini-language and module Building usable, efficient, GUI-based applications Advanced programming techniques, including generators, function and class decorators, context managers, descriptors, abstract base classes, metaclasses, and more   Programming in Python 3serves as both tutorial and language reference, and it is accompanied by extensive downloadable example code—all of it tested with the final version of Python 3 on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1   Chapter 1: Rapid Introduction to Procedural Programming 7 Creating and Running Python Programs 7 Python’s “Beautiful Heart” 12 Examples 36 Summary 42 Exercises 44   Chapter 2:Data Types 47 Identifiers and Keywords 47 Integral Types 50 Floating-Point Types 54 Strings 61 Examples 88 Summary 95 Exercises 97   Chapter 3: Collection Data Types 99 Sequence Types 99 Set Types 112 Mapping Types 117 Iterating and Copying Collections 127 Examples 138 Summary 146 Exercises 147   Chapter 4: Control Structures and Functions 149 Control Structures 149 Exception Handling 153 Custom Functions 161 Example: make_html_skeleton.py 175 Summary 181 Exercise 182   Chapter 5: Modules 185 Modules and Packages 185 Overview of Python’s Standard Library 202 Summary 219 Exercise 220   Chapter 6: Object-Oriented Programming 223 The Object-Oriented Approach 224 Custom Classes 228 Custom Collection Classes 251 Summary 272 Exercises 274   Chapter 7: File Handling 277 Writing and Reading Binary Data 282 Writing and Parsing Text Files 294 Writing and Parsing XML Files 302 Random Access Binary Files 313 Summary 326 Exercises 327   Chapter 8: Advanced Programming Techniques 329 Further Procedural Programming 330 Further Object-Oriented Programming 353 Functional-Style Programming 384 Example: Valid.py 388 Summary 390 Exercises 392   Chapter 9: Processes and Threading 395 Delegating Work to Processes 396 Delegating Work to Threads 400 Summary 409 Exercises 410   Chapter 10: Networking 413 Creating a TCP Client 414 Creating a TCP Server 420 Summary 427 Exercises 427   Chapter 11: Database Programming 431 DBM Databases 432 SQL Databases 436 Summary 443 Exercise 444   Chapter 12: Regular Expressions 445 Python’s Regular Expression Language 446 The Regular Expression Module 455 Summary 464 Exercises 465   Chapter 13: Introduction to GUI Programming 467 Dialog-Style Programs 470 Main-Window-Style Programs 476 Summary 491 Exercises 491   Epilogue 493 Index 495