Core Python Programming

From the Back Cover

• New to Python? This is the developer's guide to Python development!
• Learn the core features of Python as well as advanced topics such as regular expressions, multithreaded programming, Web/Internet and network development, GUI development with Tk(inter) and more
• Also includes features found in the new Python 1.6 and 2.0 releases
• CD-ROM: Complete Python distributions (source code, documentation, and various binaries) plus all example scripts in the book

Python is an Internet and systems programming language that is soaring in popularity in today's fast-paced software development environment, and no wonder: it's simple (yet robust), object-oriented (yet can be used as a procedural language), extensible, scalable and features an easy to learn syntax that is clear and concise. Python combines the power of a compiled object language like Java and C++ with the ease of use and rapid development time of a scripting language. In fact, it's syntax is so easy to understand that you are more likely to pick it up faster than any of the other popular scripting languages in use today!

In Core Python Programming, Internet software engineer and technical trainer Wesley Chun provides intermediate and experienced developers all they need to know to learn Python-fast. Like all Core Series books, Core Python Programming delivers hundreds of industrial-strength code snippets and examples, all targeted at professional developers who want to leverage their existing skills! In particular, Core Python Programming presents numerous interactive examples that can be entered into the Python interpreter right in front of you! Finally, we present a chapter that shows you step-by-step how to extend Python using C or C++.

• Python syntax and style
• Development and Run-time Environments
• Objects and Python memory management
• Standard data types, methods, and operators
• Loops and conditionals
• Files and Input/Output
• Exceptions and error handling
• Functions, scope, arguments, and functional programming
• Importing modules and module attributes
• Object-oriented Programming with classes, methods, and instances
• Callable Objects
• Extending Python

Coverage of the Python standard module library and client-server application development includes comprehensive introductions to the following topics in Python programming:

• Regular expressions
• TCP/IP and UDP/IP Network programming using sockets
• Operating system interface
• GUI development with Tk using Tkinter
• Multithreaded programming
• Interactive Web/CGI/Internet applications
• Executing code in a restricted environment
• Inheritance, type emulation, operator overloading, and delegation in an OOP environment

Finally, we provide an introduction to the new features introduced in Python 1.6. These include Unicode string support, the new function invocation syntax which lets the caller provide a tuple of positional arguments and/or a dictionary of keyword arguments, and the new string methods. We also provide a glimpse into features that will only be found in the newer 2.0 release.

Every Core Series book:

• DEMONSTRATES how to write commercial-quality code
• FEATURES dozens of programs and examples!
• FOCUSES on the features and functions most important to real developers
• PROVIDES objective, unbiased coverage of cutting-edge technologies-no
• hype!

Core Python Programming delivers:

• Coverage of the core parts of the Python language
• Real-world insights for developing Web/Internet, network, multithreaded and GUI applications
• Tables and charts detailing Python modules, built-in functions, operators, and attributes
• Code snippets to try live with Python's interactive interpreter, hammering the concepts home
• Extensive code examples-including several complete sample applications

CD-ROM includes complete Python source code and documentation distributions for Unix/Linux along with binaries for Windows and Macintosh platforms plus source code for all examples in the book.

Reviews From AMAZON.COM

Decent but you can do better

The text covers a wide range of topics but doesn't dive very deep. The font in the book is pretty large and there is copious amounts of whitespace that is wasted. It would be a decent read through for a beginner-to-immediate person but you will need to do much more to round out your Python knowledge.

Easy read to get you up and running

I've been a big fan of the Core programming books, including the Core Java volumen 1/2 series. This book I found while skimming my local library and decided to give this little language a try. I understand that this is an "outdated" book that covers Python 2.0, the latest being 2.4.x as of this writing. However, the material covered in this book is still very valuable.

The author does a good job of introducing the language and arguing why Python should grab your interest as an easy to read, easy to maintain, easy to learn language. Several chapters into the book, without writing a single line of code, I could already understand exactly what the code is doing. Python, as taught in this book, sells itself as a very understandable language.

Furthermore, the book provides excercises in the end of each chapter that helps you think in Python when trying to solve the problems. If you've really studied the chapters, the solution to these questions will seem very obvious. As the Python adage goes, "there's only one obvious way of doing it."

The overall format of this book should be a model for how new languages are treated. Get this book if you want to add Python to your programming tool chest. If you're already familiar with one programming language you'll be writing productive scripts in a matter of hours. If this is your first language, in the order of days!