Python Pocket Reference, 4th Edition

Introduction

Python is a general-purpose, object-oriented, and open source computer programming language. It is commonly used for both standalone programs and scripting applications in a wide variety of domains, by hundreds of thousands of developers.

Python is designed to optimize developer productivity, software quality, program portability, and component integration. Python programs run on most platforms in common use, including mainframes and supercomputers, Unix and Linux, Windows and Macintosh, Java and .NET, and more.

This pocket reference summarizes Python types and statements, special method names, built-in functions and exceptions, commonly used standard library modules, and other prominent Python tools. It is intended to serve as a concise reference tool for developers and is designed to be a companion to other books that provide tutorials, code examples, and other learning materials.

This fourth edition covers both Python versions 3.0 and 2.6, and later releases in the 3.X and 2.X lines. This edition is focused primarily on Python 3.0, but also documents differences in Python 2.6, and so applies to both versions. It has been thoroughly updated for recent language and library changes and expanded for new language tools and topics.

This edition also incorporates notes about prominent enhancements in the imminent Python 3.1 release, which is intended to subsume Python 3.0 (in this book, Python 3.0 generally refers to the language variations introduced by 3.0 but present in ...