This book is intended to be a concise reference to the Python programming language. Although an experienced programmer will probably be able to learn Python from this book, it's not intended to be an extended tutorial or a treatise on software design. Rather, the goal is to present the core Python language, the contents of the Python library, and the Python extension API in a manner that's accurate and succinct. This book assumes that the reader has prior programming experience with Python or other languages such as C or Java. In addition, a general familiarity with systems programming topics (for example, basic operating system calls, process management, and network programming) may be useful in understanding certain parts of the library reference.
Python is freely available for download at http:// www. python.org.Versions are available for Unix, Windows, Macintosh, and Java. In addition, this site includes links to documentation, how-to guides, and a wide assortment of extension modules.
The contents of this book are based on Python 1.5.2. However, readers should be aware that Python is a constantly evolving language. Most of the topics described herein are likely to be applicable to future versions of Python 1.x. In addition, most topics are applicable to earlier releases. To a lesser extent, the topics in this book also apply to JPython, an implementation of Python entirely in Java. However, as of this writing, JPython is still in beta release and undergoing active development-making it a difficult target for up-to-date reference material.
Finally, it should be noted that Python is distributed with well over 500 pages of reference documentation. The contents of thisbook are largely based on this documentation, but with a number of enhancements, additions, and omissions. First, this reference presents most of the same material in a more compact form with different examples and alternative descriptions of many topics. Second, a number of topics in the library reference have been expanded to include additional outside reference material. This is especially true for low-level system and networking modules in which effective use of a module normally relies on a myriad of options listed in Unix manual pages and outside reference material. In addition, in order to produce a more concise reference, a number of deprecated and relatively obscure library modules have been omitted. Finally, this reference doesn't attempt to cover large frameworks such as Tkinter or the COM extension, as these topics are beyond the scope of this book and are described in books of their own.
In writing this book, it has been my goal to produce a reference containing virtually everything I have needed to use Python and its large collection of modules. To do this, I have incorporated and condensed a considerable amount of information from manual pages, online documentation, and several thousand pages of systems programming books. Although this is by no means a gentle introduction to the Python language, I hope that you find the contents of this book to be a useful addition to your programming reference library for many years to come. I welcome your comments.
