Python

Python
Notes for Professionals
®

Notes for Professionals

700+ pages
of professional hints and tricks

GoalKicker.com
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Contents
About ................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1: Getting started with Python Language ...................................................................................... 2
Section 1.1: Getting Started ........................................................................................................................................... 2
Section 1.2: Creating variables and assigning values ................................................................................................ 6
Section 1.3: Block Indentation ..................................................................................................................................... 10
Section 1.4: Datatypes ................................................................................................................................................. 11
Section 1.5: Collection Types ...................................................................................................................................... 15
Section 1.6: IDLE - Python GUI .................................................................................................................................... 19
Section 1.7: User Input ................................................................................................................................................. 21
Section 1.8: Built in Modules and Functions .............................................................................................................. 21
Section 1.9: Creating a module ................................................................................................................................... 25
Section 1.10: Installation of Python 2.7.x and 3.x ....................................................................................................... 26
Section 1.11: String function - str() and repr() ........................................................................................................... 28
Section 1.12: Installing external modules using pip ................................................................................................... 29
Section 1.13: Help Utility ............................................................................................................................................... 31
Chapter 2: Python Data Types ............................................................................................................................ 33
Section 2.1: String Data Type ..................................................................................................................................... 33
Section 2.2: Set Data Types ....................................................................................................................................... 33
Section 2.3: Numbers data type ................................................................................................................................ 33
Section 2.4: List Data Type ......................................................................................................................................... 34
Section 2.5: Dictionary Data Type ............................................................................................................................. 34
Section 2.6: Tuple Data Type ..................................................................................................................................... 34
Chapter 3: Indentation ............................................................................................................................................. 35
Section 3.1: Simple example ....................................................................................................................................... 35
Section 3.2: How Indentation is Parsed ..................................................................................................................... 35
Section 3.3: Indentation Errors ................................................................................................................................... 36
Chapter 4: Comments and Documentation .................................................................................................. 37
Section 4.1: Single line, inline and multiline comments ............................................................................................ 37
Section 4.2: Programmatically accessing docstrings .............................................................................................. 37
Section 4.3: Write documentation using docstrings ................................................................................................ 38
Chapter 5: Date and Time ...................................................................................................................................... 41
Section 5.1: Parsing a string into a timezone aware datetime object .................................................................... 41
Section 5.2: Constructing timezone-aware datetimes ............................................................................................ 41
Section 5.3: Computing time dierences .................................................................................................................. 43
Section 5.4: Basic datetime objects usage ............................................................................................................... 43
Section 5.5: Switching between time zones .............................................................................................................. 44
Section 5.6: Simple date arithmetic ........................................................................................................................... 44
Section 5.7: Converting timestamp to datetime ...................................................................................................... 45
Section 5.8: Subtracting months from a date accurately ....................................................................................... 45
Section 5.9: Parsing an arbitrary ISO 8601 timestamp with minimal libraries ...................................................... 45
Section 5.10: Get an ISO 8601 timestamp .................................................................................................................. 46
Section 5.11: Parsing a string with a short time zone name into a timezone aware datetime object ................ 46
Section 5.12: Fuzzy datetime parsing (extracting datetime out of a text) ............................................................ 47
Section 5.13: Iterate over dates .................................................................................................................................. 48
Chapter 6: Date Formatting .................................................................................................................................. 49
Section 6.1: Time between two date-times ............................................................................................................... 49
Section 6.2: Outputting datetime object to string .................................................................................................... 49
 Section 6.3: Parsing string to datetime object ......................................................................................................... 49
Chapter 7: Enum .......................................................................................................................................................... 50
Section 7.1: Creating an enum (Python 2.4 through 3.3) ......................................................................................... 50
Section 7.2: Iteration ................................................................................................................................................... 50
Chapter 8: Set ............................................................................................................................................................... 51
Section 8.1: Operations on sets .................................................................................................................................. 51
Section 8.2: Get the unique elements of a list .......................................................................................................... 52
Section 8.3: Set of Sets ................................................................................................................................................ 52
Section 8.4: Set Operations using Methods and Builtins ......................................................................................... 52
Section 8.5: Sets versus multisets .............................................................................................................................. 54
Chapter 9: Simple Mathematical Operators ................................................................................................. 56
Section 9.1: Division ..................................................................................................................................................... 56
Section 9.2: Addition .................................................................................................................................................... 57
Section 9.3: Exponentiation ........................................................................................................................................ 58
Section 9.4: Trigonometric Functions ........................................................................................................................ 59
Section 9.5: Inplace Operations ................................................................................................................................. 60
Section 9.6: Subtraction .............................................................................................................................................. 60
Section 9.7: Multiplication ........................................................................................................................................... 60
Section 9.8: Logarithms .............................................................................................................................................. 61
Section 9.9: Modulus ................................................................................................................................................... 61
Chapter 10: Bitwise Operators ............................................................................................................................. 63
Section 10.1: Bitwise NOT ............................................................................................................................................ 63
Section 10.2: Bitwise XOR (Exclusive OR) .................................................................................................................. 64
Section 10.3: Bitwise AND ............................................................................................................................................ 65
Section 10.4: Bitwise OR .............................................................................................................................................. 65
Section 10.5: Bitwise Left Shift .................................................................................................................................... 65
Section 10.6: Bitwise Right Shift .................................................................................................................................. 66
Section 10.7: Inplace Operations ................................................................................................................................ 66
Chapter 11: Boolean Operators ............................................................................................................................ 67
Section 11.1: `and` and `or` are not guaranteed to return a boolean ...................................................................... 67
Section 11.2: A simple example ................................................................................................................................... 67
Section 11.3: Short-circuit evaluation ......................................................................................................................... 67
Section 11.4: and ........................................................................................................................................................... 68
Section 11.5: or .............................................................................................................................................................. 68
Section 11.6: not ............................................................................................................................................................ 69
Chapter 12: Operator Precedence ...................................................................................................................... 70
Section 12.1: Simple Operator Precedence Examples in python ............................................................................. 70
Chapter 13: Variable Scope and Binding ......................................................................................................... 71
Section 13.1: Nonlocal Variables ................................................................................................................................. 71
Section 13.2: Global Variables .................................................................................................................................... 71
Section 13.3: Local Variables ...................................................................................................................................... 72
Section 13.4: The del command ................................................................................................................................. 73
Section 13.5: Functions skip class scope when looking up names ......................................................................... 74
Section 13.6: Local vs Global Scope ........................................................................................................................... 75
Section 13.7: Binding Occurrence ............................................................................................................................... 77
Chapter 14: Conditionals ......................................................................................................................................... 78
Section 14.1: Conditional Expression (or "The Ternary Operator") ......................................................................... 78
Section 14.2: if, elif, and else ....................................................................................................................................... 78
Section 14.3: Truth Values ........................................................................................................................................... 78
 Section 14.4: Boolean Logic Expressions ................................................................................................................... 79
Section 14.5: Using the cmp function to get the comparison result of two objects ............................................. 81
Section 14.6: Else statement ....................................................................................................................................... 81
Section 14.7: Testing if an object is None and assigning it ...................................................................................... 82
Section 14.8: If statement ............................................................................................................................................ 82
Chapter 15: Comparisons ........................................................................................................................................ 83
Section 15.1: Chain Comparisons ................................................................................................................................ 83
Section 15.2: Comparison by `is` vs `==` ...................................................................................................................... 84
Section 15.3: Greater than or less than ...................................................................................................................... 85
Section 15.4: Not equal to ........................................................................................................................................... 85
Section 15.5: Equal To ................................................................................................................................................. 86
Section 15.6: Comparing Objects ............................................................................................................................... 86
Chapter 16: Loops ....................................................................................................................................................... 88
Section 16.1: Break and Continue in Loops ................................................................................................................ 88
Section 16.2: For loops ................................................................................................................................................ 90
Section 16.3: Iterating over lists .................................................................................................................................. 90
Section 16.4: Loops with an "else" clause .................................................................................................................. 91
Section 16.5: The Pass Statement .............................................................................................................................. 93
Section 16.6: Iterating over dictionaries .................................................................................................................... 94
Section 16.7: The "half loop" do-while ........................................................................................................................ 95
Section 16.8: Looping and Unpacking ....................................................................................................................... 95
Section 16.9: Iterating dierent portion of a list with dierent step size ............................................................... 96
Section 16.10: While Loop ............................................................................................................................................ 97
Chapter 17: Arrays ...................................................................................................................................................... 99
Section 17.1: Access individual elements through indexes ....................................................................................... 99
Section 17.2: Basic Introduction to Arrays ................................................................................................................. 99
Section 17.3: Append any value to the array using append() method ................................................................ 100
Section 17.4: Insert value in an array using insert() method ................................................................................ 100
Section 17.5: Extend python array using extend() method ................................................................................... 100
Section 17.6: Add items from list into array using fromlist() method .................................................................. 101
Section 17.7: Remove any array element using remove() method ..................................................................... 101
Section 17.8: Remove last array element using pop() method ............................................................................ 101
Section 17.9: Fetch any element through its index using index() method ........................................................... 101
Section 17.10: Reverse a python array using reverse() method ........................................................................... 101
Section 17.11: Get array buer information through buer_info() method ........................................................ 102
Section 17.12: Check for number of occurrences of an element using count() method .................................... 102
Section 17.13: Convert array to string using tostring() method ............................................................................ 102
Section 17.14: Convert array to a python list with same elements using tolist() method .................................. 102
Section 17.15: Append a string to char array using fromstring() method ........................................................... 102
Chapter 18: Multidimensional arrays .............................................................................................................. 103
Section 18.1: Lists in lists ............................................................................................................................................ 103
Section 18.2: Lists in lists in lists in.. .......................................................................................................................... 103
Chapter 19: Dictionary ............................................................................................................................................ 105
Section 19.1: Introduction to Dictionary ................................................................................................................... 105
Section 19.2: Avoiding KeyError Exceptions ........................................................................................................... 106
Section 19.3: Iterating Over a Dictionary ................................................................................................................. 106
Section 19.4: Dictionary with default values ........................................................................................................... 107
Section 19.5: Merging dictionaries ........................................................................................................................... 108
Section 19.6: Accessing keys and values ................................................................................................................ 108
Section 19.7: Accessing values of a dictionary ....................................................................................................... 109
 Section 19.8: Creating a dictionary .......................................................................................................................... 109
Section 19.9: Creating an ordered dictionary ......................................................................................................... 110
Section 19.10: Unpacking dictionaries using the ** operator ................................................................................. 110
Section 19.11: The trailing comma ............................................................................................................................ 111
Section 19.12: The dict() constructor ........................................................................................................................ 111
Section 19.13: Dictionaries Example ......................................................................................................................... 111
Section 19.14: All combinations of dictionary values .............................................................................................. 112
Chapter 20: List ......................................................................................................................................................... 113
Section 20.1: List methods and supported operators ............................................................................................ 113
Section 20.2: Accessing list values .......................................................................................................................... 118
Section 20.3: Checking if list is empty ..................................................................................................................... 119
Section 20.4: Iterating over a list ............................................................................................................................. 119
Section 20.5: Checking whether an item is in a list ................................................................................................ 120
Section 20.6: Any and All .......................................................................................................................................... 120
Section 20.7: Reversing list elements ...................................................................................................................... 121
Section 20.8: Concatenate and Merge lists ............................................................................................................ 121
Section 20.9: Length of a list .................................................................................................................................... 122
Section 20.10: Remove duplicate values in list ....................................................................................................... 122
Section 20.11: Comparison of lists ............................................................................................................................ 123
Section 20.12: Accessing values in nested list ........................................................................................................ 123
Section 20.13: Initializing a List to a Fixed Number of Elements ........................................................................... 124
Chapter 21: List comprehensions ...................................................................................................................... 126
Section 21.1: List Comprehensions ........................................................................................................................... 126
Section 21.2: Conditional List Comprehensions ...................................................................................................... 128
Section 21.3: Avoid repetitive and expensive operations using conditional clause ............................................ 130
Section 21.4: Dictionary Comprehensions ............................................................................................................... 131
Section 21.5: List Comprehensions with Nested Loops .......................................................................................... 132
Section 21.6: Generator Expressions ........................................................................................................................ 134
Section 21.7: Set Comprehensions ........................................................................................................................... 136
Section 21.8: Refactoring filter and map to list comprehensions ......................................................................... 136
Section 21.9: Comprehensions involving tuples ...................................................................................................... 137
Section 21.10: Counting Occurrences Using Comprehension ............................................................................... 138
Section 21.11: Changing Types in a List .................................................................................................................... 138
Section 21.12: Nested List Comprehensions ............................................................................................................ 138
Section 21.13: Iterate two or more list simultaneously within list comprehension .............................................. 139
Chapter 22: List slicing (selecting parts of lists) ....................................................................................... 140
Section 22.1: Using the third "step" argument ........................................................................................................ 140
Section 22.2: Selecting a sublist from a list ............................................................................................................ 140
Section 22.3: Reversing a list with slicing ................................................................................................................ 140
Section 22.4: Shifting a list using slicing .................................................................................................................. 140
Chapter 23: groupby() ............................................................................................................................................ 142
Section 23.1: Example 4 ............................................................................................................................................. 142
Section 23.2: Example 2 ............................................................................................................................................ 142
Section 23.3: Example 3 ............................................................................................................................................ 143
Chapter 24: Linked lists ......................................................................................................................................... 145
Section 24.1: Single linked list example ................................................................................................................... 145
Chapter 25: Linked List Node ............................................................................................................................. 149
Section 25.1: Write a simple Linked List Node in python ....................................................................................... 149
Chapter 26: Filter ...................................................................................................................................................... 150
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