Python

Basic stuff

• Invented (in 1990) and still overseen by Guido van Rossum
• Interpreted, dynamically typed
• Emphasizes programmer effort: "readability trumps speed and expressiveness"
• Resources
  • Python's home
  • Python 2.4.3 documentation (2006-03-29)
  • Python 2.4 Quick Reference (Richard Gruet)
  • Some Python utility functions (from Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach (Russell & Norvig)
• Python 2.5 (not yet on IU STC computers)

Getting started

• Running Python, the interpreter
• IDLE
• Evaluation and expressions
• Numbers and operations on them
• Comparisons
• Booleans and boolean operations
• Collections
  • Sequences: lists, tuples
  • Sets: 1, 2
  • Mappings (dictionaries): 1, 2
• Comments and documentation
• Statements
  • Line structure
  • Assignment and deletion
  • print: 1, 2, 3
• Functions and procedures
  • Definitions
  • Calls
• Conditionals
• Looping: 1, 2
• I/O
  • raw_input
  • Files: 1, 2

Classes, objects, modules, programs

• Objects and attributes
• Class definitions: 1, 2
• Modules, namespaces, and import

More advanced stuff

• __main__
• Customization of classes
• Exceptions
• lambda expressions
• Functional programming tools
• Iterators and generators
• Serialization (pickling)
• GUIs: Tkinter
  • Tkinter Reference (John Shipman, 2006-05-19)
  • Thinking in Tkinter (Stephen Ferg, 2005-07-17)
  • An Introduction to Tkinter (Fredrik Lundh, 1999)
• Jython
• A gazillion libraries

© 2006. Indiana University and Michael Gasser. www.indiana.edu/~gasser/Q450/python.html 2006-10-01