Getting Started with Python

coverpage

Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Getting Started with Python

About Packt

Why subscribe?

Packt.com

Contributors

About the authors

Packt is searching for authors like you

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the example code files

Conventions used

Get in touch

Reviews

A Gentle Introduction to Python

A proper introduction

Enter the Python

About Python

Portability

Coherence

Developer productivity

An extensive library

Software quality

Software integration

Satisfaction and enjoyment

What are the drawbacks?

Who is using Python today?

Setting up the environment

Python 2 versus Python 3

Installing Python

Setting up the Python interpreter

About virtualenv

Your first virtual environment

Your friend the console

How you can run a Python program

Running Python scripts

Running the Python interactive shell

Running Python as a service

Running Python as a GUI application

How is Python code organized?

How do we use modules and packages?

Python's execution model

Names and namespaces

Scopes

Objects and classes

Guidelines on how to write good code

The Python culture

A note on IDEs

Summary

Built-in Data Types

Everything is an object

Mutable or immutable? That is the question

Numbers

Integers

Booleans

Real numbers

Complex numbers

Fractions and decimals

Immutable sequences

Strings and bytes

Encoding and decoding strings

Indexing and slicing strings

String formatting

Tuples

Mutable sequences

Lists

Byte arrays

Set types

Mapping types – dictionaries

The collections module

namedtuple

defaultdict

ChainMap

Enums

Final considerations

Small values caching

How to choose data structures

About indexing and slicing

About the names

Summary

Iterating and Making Decisions

Conditional programming

A specialized else – elif

The ternary operator

Looping

The for loop

Iterating over a range

Iterating over a sequence

Iterators and iterables

Iterating over multiple sequences

The while loop

The break and continue statements

A special else clause

Putting all this together

A prime generator

Applying discounts