Mark Lutz is a world-renowned leader in Python training and a pioneering figure in the Python community, authoring its earliest and best-selling texts. His extensive work has been instrumental in establishing Python as one of the most widely-used programming languages globally. Lutz has been actively involved with Python since 1992, beginning with writing books and teaching in the mid-90s. His deep expertise in both teaching and writing has made him a central figure in software development, with contributions spanning compilers, scripting applications, and client-server systems.
Updated for both Python 3.4 and 2.7, this guide provides concise information on Python types and statements, special method names, built-in functions and exceptions, commonly used standard library modules, and other prominent Python tools.--From back cover.
If you want to write efficient, high-quality code that s easily integrated with other languages and tools, this hands-on book will help you be productive with Python quickly. Learning Python, Fifth Edition, is an easy-to-follow, self-paced tutorial based on author and Python expert Mark Lutz s popular training course.§You ll find lots of annotated examples and illustrations to help you get started with Python 2.7 and 3.3. Each chapter contains a standalone lesson on a key component of the language.§Learn about Python s major built-in object types such as numbers, lists, and dictionaries§Create and process objects using Python statements, and learn Python s general syntax model§Structure and reuse code with Python s basic procedural tool§Learn about Python modules: packages of statements, functions, and other tools organized into larger components§Discover Python s object-oriented programming tool for structuring code§Learn about the exception-handling model and development tools for writing larger programs§Explore advanced Python tools, including decorators, descriptors, metaclasses, and Unicode processing