Learning Python 
by Mark Lutz and David Ascher


The following changes were made in the 8/01 reprint:

Here's a key to the markup:

        [page-number]: serious technical mistake
        {page-number}: minor technical mistake
        <page-number>: important language/formatting problem
        (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem
        ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification


<219> 3rd paragraph, 1st sentence; 

The order of cmp return value interpretations wass wrong here. It has been 
changed to:

The cmp built-in returns a negative integer, 0, or a positive integer,
depending on whether its first argument is less than, equal to, or greater than
the second one.


[240] Second half of page, code block;

The "*" was removed from the do_timing function's def header. Also, a "," was 
added to the print statement at the end of do_timing. The code now reads:

    import time, makezeros
    
    def do_timing(num_times, funcs):
        totals = {}
        for func in funcs: totals[func] = 0.0
        for x in range(num_times):
            for func in funcs:
                starttime = time.time()        # record starting time
                apply(func)
                stoptime = time.time()         # record ending time
                elapsed = stoptime-starttime   # difference yields time elapsed
                totals[func] = totals[func] + elapsed
        for func in funcs:
            print "Running %s %d times took %.3f seconds" % (func.__name__,
                                                              num_times,
                                                              totals[func])
    do_timing(100, (makezeros.lots_of_appends, makezeros.one_multiply))