Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 16. Array Processing

You can represent arrays with lists (covered in Lists), as well as with the array standard library module (covered in The array Module). You can manipulate arrays with loops; list comprehensions; iterators; generators; genexps (all covered in Chapter 4); built-ins such as map, reduce, and filter (all covered in Built-in Functions); and standard library modules such as itertools (covered in The itertools Module). However, to process large arrays of numbers, such functions may be slower and less convenient than extensions such as Numeric, numarray, and numpy (covered in Extensions for Numeric Array Computation).