Programming Python, 3rd Edition

Using the Book’s Examples

Because examples are central to the structure of this book, I want to briefly describe how to use them here. In general, though, see the following text files in the examples directory for more details:

README-root.txt

Package structure notes

PP3E\README-PP3E.txt

General usage notes

Of these, the README-PP3E.txt file is the most informative. In addition, the PP3E\Config directory contains low-level configuration file examples for Windows and Linux, which may or may not be applicable to your usage. I give an overview of some setup details here, but the preceding files give the complete description.

The Book Examples Tree

In a sense, the directory containing the book’s examples is itself a fairly sophisticated Python software system and the examples within it have been upgraded structurally in a number of important ways:

Examples directory tree: a package

The entire examples distribution has been organized as one Python module package to facilitate cross-directory imports and avoid name clashes with other Python code installed on your computer. All cross-directory imports in book examples are package imports, relative to the examples root directory.

Using directory paths in import statements (instead of a complex PYTHONPATH) also tends to make it easier to tell where modules come from. Moreover, you now need to add only one directory to your PYTHONPATH search-path setting for the entire book examples tree: the directory containing the PP3E examples root directory. ...