Chapter 2. Arithmetic, Strings, and Variables
The first step in learning how to program is to understand the basic Python data types: integers (whole numbers), floating point numbers (numbers with a decimal point), and strings. All programs use these (and other) data types, so it is important to have a good grasp of their basic uses.
Strings, in particular, are used in so many different kinds of programs that Python provides a tremendous amount of support for them. In this chapter, we’ll just introduce the bare basics of strings, and then we’ll return to them in a later chapter.
We’ll also introduce the important concept of a programming variable. Variables are used to store and manipulate data, and it’s hard to write a useful program without employing ...
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