Python for Secret Agents - Volume II

Background briefing: review of the Python language

Before moving on to our first mission, we'll review some essentials of the Python language, and the ways in which we'll use it to gather and disseminate data. We'll start by reviewing the interactive use of Python to do some data manipulation. Then we'll look at statements and script files.

When we start Python from the Terminal tool or the command line, we'll see an interaction that starts as shown in the following:

MacBookPro-SLott:Code slott$ python3.4
Python 3.4.3 (v3.4.3:9b73f1c3e601, Feb 23 2015, 02:52:03) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

The >>> prompt is Python's read-eval-print loop (REPL) that ...