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Python & XML
book

Python & XML

by Christopher A. Jones, Fred L. Drake
December 2001
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
380 pages
11h 54m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Python & XML

The Power of Python and XML

Now that we’ve introduced you to the world of XML, we’ll look at what Python brings to the table. We’ll review the Python features that apply to XML, and then we’ll give some specific examples of Python with XML. As a very high-level language, Python includes many powerful data structures as part of the core language and libraries. The more recent versions of Python, from 2.0 onward, include excellent support for Unicode and an impressive range of encodings, as well as an excellent (and fast!) XML parser that provides character data from XML as Unicode strings. Python’s standard library also contains implementations of the industry-standard DOM and SAX interfaces for working with XML data, and additional support for alternate parsers and interfaces is available.

Of course, this much could be said of other modern high-level languages as well. Java certainly includes an impressive library of highly usable data structures, and Perl offers equivalent data structures also. What makes Python preferable to those languages and their libraries? There are several features, of which we briefly discuss the most important:

  • Python source code is easy to read and maintain.

  • The interactive interpreter makes it simple to try out code fragments.

  • Python is incredibly portable, but does not restrict access to platform-specific capabilities.

  • The object-oriented features are powerful without being obscure.

There are many languages capable of doing what can be done with Python, ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596001282Supplemental ContentErrata Page