Python in a Nutshell

In the tradition of O'Reilly's "In a Nutshell" series, this book offers Python programmers help remembering or deciphering the syntax of this open source language and its many modules. This comprehensive reference guide should make it easy to look up all the most frequently needed information - not just about the Python language itself, but also the most frequently used parts of the standard library and the most important third-party extensions. The book includes: a fast-paced tutorial on the syntax of the Python language itself; an explanation of object-oriented programming in Python, covering both the classic and new-style object models; coverage of other core topics, including exceptions, modules, strings, and regular expressions; a quick reference for Python's built-in types and functions, as well as the key modules in the Python standard library, including sys, os, time, thread, math, and socket, among many others; reference material on important third-party extensions, such as Numeric and Tkinter; and information about extending Python and embedding it into other applications.

Table of Contents:
Preface I. Getting Started with Python 1. Introduction to Python The Python Language The Python Standard Library and Extension Modules Python Implementations Python Development and Versions Python Resources 2. Installation Installing Python from Source Code Installing Python from Binaries Installing Jython 3. The Python Interpreter The python Program Python Development Environments Running Python Programs The Jython Interpreter II. Core Python Language and Built-ins 4. The Python Language Lexical Structure Data Types Variables and Other References Expressions and Operators Numeric Operations Sequence Operations Dictionary Operations The print Statement Control Flow Statements Functions 5. Object-Oriented Python Classic Classes and Instances New-Style Classes and Instances Special Methods Metaclasses 6. Exceptions The try Statement Exception Propagation The raise Statement Exception Objects Custom Exception Classes Error-Checking Strategies 7. Modules Module Objects Module Loading Packages The Distribution Utilities (distutils) 8. Core Built-ins Built-in Types Built-in Functions The sys Module The getopt Module The copy Module The bisect Module The UserList, UserDict, and UserString Modules 9. Strings and Regular Expressions Methods of String Objects The string Module String Formatting The pprint Module The repr Module Unicode Regular Expressions and the re Module III. Python Library and Extension Modules 10. File and Text Operations The os Module Filesystem Operations File Objects Auxiliary Modules for File I/O The StringIO and cStringIO Modules Compressed Files Text Input and Output Richer-Text I/O Interactive Command Sessions Internationalization 11. Persistence and Databases Serialization DBM Modules The Berkeley DB Module The Python Database API (DBAPI) 2.0 12. Time Operations The time Module The sched Module The calendar Module The mx.DateTime Module 13. Controlling Execution Dynamic Execution and the exec Statement Restricted Execution Internal Types Garbage Collection Termination Functions Site and User Customization 14. Threads and Processes Threads in Python The thread Module The Queue Module The threading Module Threaded Program Architecture Process Environment Running Other Programs The mmap Module 15. Numeric Processing The math and cmath Modules The operator Module The random Module The array Module The Numeric Package Array Objects Universal Functions (ufuncs) Optional Numeric Modules 16. Tkinter GUIs Tkinter Fundamentals Widget Fundamentals Commonly Used Simple Widgets Container Widgets Menus The Text Widget The Canvas Widget Geometry Management Tkinter Events 17. Testing, Debugging, and Optimizing Testing Debugging The warnings Module Optimization IV. Network and Web Programming 18. Client-Side Network Protocol Modules URL Access Email Protocols The HTTP and FTP Protocols Network News Telnet Distributed Computing 19. Sockets and Server-Side Network Protocol Modules The socket Module The SocketServer Module Event-Driven Socket Programs 20. CGI Scripting and Alternatives CGI in Python Cookies Other Server-Side Approaches 21. MIME and Network Encodings Encoding Binary Data as Text MIME and Email Format Handling 22. Structured Text: HTML The sgmllib Module The htmllib Module The HTMLParser Module Generating HTML 23. Structured Text: XML An Overview of XML Parsing Parsing XML with SAX Parsing XML with DOM Changing and Generating XML V. Extending and Embedding 24. Extending and Embedding Classic Python Extending Python with Python's C API Extending Python Without Python's C API Embedding Python 25. Extending and Embedding Jython Importing Java Packages in Jython Embedding Jython in Java Compiling Python into Java 26. Distributing Extensions and Programs Python's distutils The py2exe Tool The Installer Tool Index