Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Acknowledgments

My heartfelt thanks to everybody who helped me out on this book, both in the first edition and in its current second edition. Many Python beginners, practitioners, and experts have read drafts of parts of the book and have offered feedback to help me make the book clear, precise, accurate, and readable. Out of all of them, for the quality and quantity of their feedback and other help, I must single out for special thanks my colleagues at Google, especially Neal Norwitz and Mohsin Ahmed.

The first edition received indispensable help from Python experts in specific areas (Aahz on threading, Itamar Shtull-Trauring on Twisted, Mike Orr on Cheetah, Eric Jones and Paul Dubois on Numeric, and Tim Peters on threading, testing, and optimization), a wonderful group of technical reviewers (Fred Drake, Magnus Lie Hetland, Steve Holden, and Sue Giller), and the book’s editor, Paula Ferguson. The second edition benefited from the efforts of editors Jonathan Gennick and Mary O’Brien, and technical reviewers Ryan Alexander, Jeffery Collins, and Mary Gardiner. I owe special thanks to the wonderful folks in the O’Reilly Tools Group, who (both directly and personally, and through the helpful tools they developed) helped me through several difficult technical problems.

As always, even though they’re back in my native Italy and my career with Google has taken me to California, my thoughts go to my family: my children Flavia and Lucio, my sister Elisabetta, and my father Lanfranco.

But the ...