Python 3 - The Comprehensive Guide

Ready to master Python? Learn to write effective code, whether you're a beginner or a professional programmer. Review core Python concepts, including functions, modularization, and object orientation and walk through the available data types. Then dive into more advanced topics, such as using Django and working with GUIs. With plenty of code examples throughout, this hands-on reference guide has everything you need to become proficient in Python!




Highlights include:



1) Functions



2) Methods



3) Attributes



4) Data types



5) GUIs



6) Debugging



7) Network communication



8) Modularization



9) Object orientation



10) Iterators



11) Generators



12) Exception handling

1 ... Introduction ... 33


1.1 ... Why Did We Write This Book? ... 33


1.2 ... What Does This Book Provide? ... 34


1.3 ... Structure of the Book ... 34


1.4 ... How Should You Read This Book? ... 35


1.5 ... Sample Programs ... 36


1.6 ... Preface To the First English Edition (2022) ... 36


1.7 ... Acknowledgments ... 37


2 ... The Python Programming Language ... 39


2.1 ... History, Concepts, and Areas of Application ... 39


2.2 ... Installing Python ... 42


2.3 ... Installing Third-Party Modules ... 45


2.4 ... Using Python ... 45


PART I ... Getting Started with Python ... 47


3 ... Getting Started with the Interactive Mode ... 49


3.1 ... Integers ... 49


3.2 ... Floats ... 51


3.3 ... Character Strings ... 51


3.4 ... Lists ... 52


3.5 ... Dictionaries ... 53


3.6 ... Variables ... 54


3.7 ... Logical Expressions ... 55


3.8 ... Functions and Methods ... 57


3.9 ... Screen Outputs ... 59


3.10 ... Modules ... 60


4 ... The Path to the First Program ... 63


4.1 ... Typing, Compiling, and Testing ... 63


4.2 ... Basic Structure of a Python Program ... 66


4.3 ... The First Program ... 70


4.4 ... Comments ... 72


4.5 ... In Case of Error ... 72


5 ... Control Structures ... 75


5.1 ... Conditionals ... 75


5.2 ... Loops ... 79


5.3 ... The pass Statement ... 87


5.4 ... Assignment Expressions ... 87


6 ... Files ... 91


6.1 ... Data Streams ... 91


6.2 ... Reading Data from a File ... 92


6.3 ... Writing Data to a File ... 96


6.4 ... Generating the File Object ... 97


7 ... The Data Model ... 103


7.1 ... The Structure of Instances ... 105


7.2 ... Deleting References ... 109


7.3 ... Mutable versus Immutable Data Types ... 111


8 ... Functions, Methods, and Attributes ... 115


8.1 ... Parameters of Functions and Methods ... 115


8.2 ... Attributes ... 118


9 ... Sources of Information on Python ... 119


9.1 ... The Built-In Help Function ... 119


9.2 ... The Online Documentation ... 120


9.3 ... PEPs ... 120


PART II ... Data Types ... 123


10 ... Basic Data Types: An Overview ... 125


10.1 ... Nothingness: NoneType ... 126


10.2 ... Operators ... 127


11 ... Numeric Data Types ... 131


11.1 ... Arithmetic Operators ... 131


11.2 ... Comparison Operators ... 133


11.3 ... Conversion between Numeric Data Types ... 134


11.4 ... Integers: int ... 135


11.5 ... Floats: float ... 141


11.6 ... Boolean Values: bool ... 144


11.7 ... Complex Numbers: complex ... 149


12 ... Sequential Data Types ... 153


12.1 ... The Difference between Text and Binary Data ... 153


12.2 ... Operations on Instances of Sequential Data Types ... 154


12.3 ... The list Data Type ... 166


12.4 ... Immutable Lists: tuple ... 179


12.5 ... Strings: str, bytes, bytearray ... 182


13 ... Mappings and Sets ... 215


13.1 ... Dictionary: dict ... 215


13.2 ... Sets: set and frozenset ... 227


14 ... Collections ... 239


14.1 ... Chained Dictionaries ... 239


14.2 ... Counting Frequencies ... 240


14.3 ... Dictionaries with Default Values ... 242


14.4 ... Doubly Linked Lists ... 243


14.5 ... Named Tuples ... 245


15 ... Date and Time ... 247


15.1 ... Elementary Time Functions-time ... 247


15.2 ... Object-Oriented Date Management: datetime ... 254


15.3 ... Time Zones: zoneinfo ... 263


16 ... Enumerations and Flags ... 269


16.1 ... Enumeration Types: enum ... 269


16.2 ... Enumeration Types for Bit Patterns: flag ... 271


16.3 ... Integer Enumeration Types: IntEnum ... 272


PART III ... Advanced Programming Techniques ... 275


17 ... Functions ... 277


17.1 ... Defining a Function ... 278


17.2 ... Return Values ... 280


17.3 ... Function Objects ... 282


17.4 ... Optional Parameters ... 282


17.5 ... Keyword Arguments ... 283


17.6 ... Arbitrarily Many Parameters ... 284


17.7 ... Keyword-Only Parameters ... 286


17.8 ... Positional-Only Parameters ... 287


17.9 ... Unpacking When Calling a Function ... 288


17.10 ... Side Effects ... 290


17.11 ... Namespaces ... 293


17.12 ... Anonymous Functions ... 299


17.13 ... Recursion ... 300


17.14 ... Built-In Functions ... 300


18 ... Modules and Packages ... 325


18.1 ... Importing Global Modules ... 326


18.2 ... Local Modules ... 328


18.3 ... Packages ... 331


18.4 ... The importlib Package ... 335


18.5 ... Planned Language Elements ... 338


19 ... Object-Oriented Programming ... 341


19.1 ... Example: A Non-Object-Oriented Account ... 341


19.2 ... Classes ... 346


19.3 ... Inheritance ... 351


19.4 ... Multiple Inheritance ... 363


19.5 ... Property Attributes ... 365


19.6 ... Static Methods ... 367


19.7 ... Class Methods ... 369


19.8 ... Class Attributes ... 370


19.9 ... Built-in Functions for Object-Oriented Programming ... 370


19.10 ... Inheriting Built-In Data Types ... 373


19.11 ... Magic Methods and Magic Attributes ... 375


19.12 ... Data Classes ... 393


20 ... Exception Handling ... 399


20.1 ... Exceptions ... 399


20.2 ... Assertions ... 411


20.3 ... Warnings ... 412


21 ... Generators and Iterators ... 415


21.1 ... Generators ... 415


21.2 ... Iterators ... 422


21.3 ... Special Generators: itertools ... 432


22 ... Context Manager ... 441


22.1 ... The with Statement ... 441


22.2 ... Helper Functions for with Contexts: contextlib ... 444


23 ... Decorators ... 449


23.1 ... Function Decorators ... 449


23.2 ... Class Decorators ... 454


23.3 ... The functools Module ... 455


24 ... Annotations for Static Type Checking ... 463


24.1 ... Annotations ... 464


24.2 ... Type Hints: The typing Module ... 471


24.3 ... Static Type Checking in Python: mypy ... 476


25 ... Structural Pattern Matching ... 479


25.1 ... The match Statement ... 479


25.2 ... Pattern Types in the case Statement ... 480


PART IV ... The Standard Library ... 495


26 ... Mathematics ... 497


26.1 ... Mathematical Functions: math, cmath ... 497


26.2 ... Random Number Generator: random ... 503


26.3 ... Statistical Calculations: statistics ... 507


26.4 ... Intuitive Decimal Numbers: decimal ... 509


26.5 ... Hash Functions: hashlib ... 514


27 ... Screen Outputs and Logging ... 521


27.1 ... Formatted Output of Complex Objects: pprint ... 521


27.2 ... Log Files: logging ... 523


28 ... Regular Expressions ... 529


28.1 ... Syntax of Regular Expressions ... 529


28.2 ... Using the re Module ... 539


28.3 ... A Simple Sample Program: Searching ... 546


28.4 ... A More Complex Sample Program: Matching ... 547


28.5 ... Comments in Regular Expressions ... 550


29 ... Interface to Operating System and Runtime Environment ... 553


29.1 ... Operating System Functionality: os ... 553


29.2 ... Accessing the Runtime Environment: sys ... 555


29.3 ... Command Line Parameters: argparse ... 561


30 ... File System ... 569


30.1 ... Accessing the File System: os ... 569


30.2 ... File Paths: os.path ... 575


30.3 ... Accessing the File System: shutil ... 579


30.4 ... Temporary Files: tempfile ... 585


31 ... Parallel Programming ... 587


31.1 ... Processes, Multitasking, and Threads ... 587


31.2 ... Python's Interfaces for Parallelization ... 591


31.3 ... The Abstract Interface: concurrent.futures ... 592


31.4 ... The Flexible Interface: threading and multiprocessing ... 602


31.5 ... Cooperative Multitasking ... 613


31.6 ... Conclusion: Which Interface Is the Right One? ... 629


32 ... Data Storage ... 631


32.1 ... XML ... 631


32.2 ... Databases ... 643


32.3 ... Compressed Files and Archives ... 661


32.4 ... Serializing Instances: pickle ... 662


32.5 ... The JSON Data Exchange Format: json ... 665


32.6 ... The CSV Table Format: csv ... 667


33 ... Network Communication ... 673


33.1 ... Socket API ... 674


33.2 ... XML-RPC ... 690


34 ... Accessing Resources on the Internet ... 701


34.1 ... Protocols ... 701


34.2 ... Solutions ... 702


34.3 ... The Easy Way: requests ... 703


34.4 ... URLs: urllib ... 705


34.5 ... FTP: ftplib ... 713


35 ... Email ... 721


35.1 ... SMTP: smtplib ... 721


35.2 ... POP3: poplib ... 724


35.3 ... IMAP4: imaplib ... 728


35.4 ... Creating Complex Emails: email ... 734


36 ... Debugging and Quality Assurance ... 739


36.1 ... The Debugger ... 739


36.2 ... Automated Testing ... 741


36.3 ... Analyzing the Runtime Performance ... 749


37 ... Documentation ... 759


37.1 ... Docstrings ... 759


37.2 ... Automatically Generated Documentation: pydoc ... 761


PART V ... Advanced Topics ... 763


38 ... Distributing Python Projects ... 765


38.1 ... A History of Distributions in Python ... 765


38.2 ... Creating Distributions: setuptools ... 767


38.3 ... Creating EXE files: cx_Freeze ... 775


38.4 ... Package Manager ... 776


38.5 ... Localizing Programs: gettext ... 781


39 ... Virtual Environments ... 785


39.1 ... Using Virtual Environments: venv ... 786


39.2 ... Virtual Environments in Anaconda ... 787


40 ... Alternative Interpreters and Compilers ... 789


40.1 ... Just-in-Time Compilation: PyPy ... 789


40.2 ... Numba ... 790


40.3 ... Connecting to C and C++: Cython ... 793


40.4 ... The Interactive Python Shell: IPython ... 799


41 ... Graphical User Interfaces ... 805


41.1 ... Toolkits ... 805


41.2 ... Introduction to tkinter ... 807


41.3 ... Introduction to PySide6 ... 850


41.4 ... Signals and Slots ... 859


41.5 ... Important Widgets ... 861


41.6 ... Drawing Functionality ... 868


41.7 ... Model-View Architecture ... 879


42 ... Python as a Server-Side Programming Language on the Web: An Introduction to Django ... 893


42.1 ... Concepts and Features of Django ... 894


42.2 ... Installing Django ... 895


42.3 ... Creating a New Django Project ... 896


42.4 ... Creating an Application ... 900


43 ... Scientific Computing and Data Science ... 935


43.1 ... Installation ... 936


43.2 ... The Model Program ... 936


43.3 ... Overview of the numpy and scipy Modules ... 944


43.4 ... An Introduction to Data Analysis with pandas ... 953


44 ... Inside Knowledge ... 969


44.1 ... Opening URLs in the Default Browser: webbrowser ... 969


44.2 ... Interpreting Binary Data: struct ... 969


44.3 ... Hidden Password Entry ... 971


44.4 ... Command Line Interpreter ... 972


44.5 ... File Interface for Strings: io.StringIO ... 975


44.6 ... Generators as Consumers ... 976


44.7 ... Copying Instances: copy ... 981


44.8 ... Image Processing: Pillow ... 984


45 ... From Python 2 to Python 3 ... 993


45.1 ... The Main Differences ... 996


45.2 ... Automatic Conversion ... 1001


... Appendices ... 1005


A ... Appendix ... 1005


B ... The Authors ... 1017


... Index ... 1019