sdf

Table of Contents
Introduction 1.1
Dedication 1.2
Preface 1.3
About Python 1.4
Installation 1.5
First Steps 1.6
Basics 1.7
Operators and Expressions 1.8
Control flow 1.9
Functions 1.10
Modules 1.11
Data Structures 1.12
Problem Solving 1.13
Object Oriented Programming 1.14
Input and Output 1.15
Exceptions 1.16
Standard Library 1.17
More 1.18
What Next 1.19
Appendix: FLOSS 1.20
Appendix: About 1.21
Appendix: Revision History 1.22
Appendix: Translations 1.23
Appendix: Translation How-to 1.24
Feedback 1.25

Follow me on LinkedIn for more:

Steve Nouri
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenouri/ 1
Introduction

the original text can be fetched from this location.

All the code/scripts provided in this book is licensed under the 3-clause BSD License
unless otherwise noted.

Read Now
You can read it online at https://python.swaroopch.com/

Buy The Book

A printed hardcopy of the book can be purchased at https://www.swaroopch.com/buybook/
for your offline reading pleasure, and to support the continued development and
improvement of this book.

Download
Visit https://www.gitbook.com/book/swaroopch/byte-of-python/details for the following types
of downloads:

PDF (for desktop reading, etc.)

EPUB (for iPhone/iPad, ebook readers, etc.)
Mobi (for Kindle)

Visit https://github.com/swaroopch/byte-of-python for the raw content (for suggesting

corrections, changes, translating, etc.)

Read the book in your native language

If you are interested in reading or contributing translations of this book to other human
languages, please see Translations.

9
Dedication

Dedication
To Kalyan Varma and many other seniors at PESIT who introduced us to GNU/Linux and the
world of open source.

To the memory of Atul Chitnis, a friend and guide who shall be missed greatly.

To the pioneers who made the Internet happen. This book was first written in 2003. It still
remains popular, thanks to the nature of sharing knowledge on the Internet as envisioned by
the pioneers.

10
Preface

Preface
Python is probably one of the few programming languages which is both simple and
powerful. This is good for beginners as well as for experts, and more importantly, is fun to
program with. This book aims to help you learn this wonderful language and show how to
get things done quickly and painlessly - in effect 'The Anti-venom to your programming
problems'.

Who This Book Is For

This book serves as a guide or tutorial to the Python programming language. It is mainly
targeted at newbies. It is useful for experienced programmers as well.

The aim is that if all you know about computers is how to save text files, then you can learn
Python from this book. If you have previous programming experience, then you can also
learn Python from this book.

If you do have previous programming experience, you will be interested in the differences
between Python and your favorite programming language - I have highlighted many such
differences. A little warning though, Python is soon going to become your favorite
programming language!

Official Website
The official website of the book is https://python.swaroopch.com/ where you can read the
whole book online, download the latest versions of the book, buy a printed hard copy and
also send me feedback.

Something To Think About

There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple
that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so complicated that
there are no obvious deficiencies. -- C. A. R. Hoare

Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and opportunity as of concentration and
perseverance. -- C. W. Wendte

11
Preface

12
About Python

About Python
Python is one of those rare languages which can claim to be both simple and powerful. You
will find yourself pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to concentrate on the solution to
the problem rather than the syntax and structure of the language you are programming in.

The official introduction to Python is:

Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language. It has efficient high-level

data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming.
Python's elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make
it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on
most platforms.

I will discuss most of these features in more detail in the next section.

Story behind the name

Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python language, named the language after the BBC
show "Monty Python's Flying Circus". He doesn't particularly like snakes that kill animals for
food by winding their long bodies around them and crushing them.

Features of Python
Simple
Python is a simple and minimalistic language. Reading a good Python program feels almost
like reading English, although very strict English! This pseudo-code nature of Python is one
of its greatest strengths. It allows you to concentrate on the solution to the problem rather
than the language itself.

Easy to Learn
As you will see, Python is extremely easy to get started with. Python has an extraordinarily
simple syntax, as already mentioned.

Free and Open Source

13
About Python

Python is an example of a FLOSS (Free/Libré and Open Source Software). In simple terms,
you can freely distribute copies of this software, read its source code, make changes to it,
and use pieces of it in new free programs. FLOSS is based on the concept of a community
which shares knowledge. This is one of the reasons why Python is so good - it has been
created and is constantly improved by a community who just want to see a better Python.

High-level Language
When you write programs in Python, you never need to bother about the low-level details
such as managing the memory used by your program, etc.

Portable
Due to its open-source nature, Python has been ported to (i.e. changed to make it work on)
many platforms. All your Python programs can work on any of these platforms without
requiring any changes at all if you are careful enough to avoid any system-dependent
features.

You can use Python on GNU/Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Macintosh, Solaris, OS/2, Amiga,
AROS, AS/400, BeOS, OS/390, z/OS, Palm OS, QNX, VMS, Psion, Acorn RISC OS,
VxWorks, PlayStation, Sharp Zaurus, Windows CE and PocketPC!

You can even use a platform like Kivy to create games for your computer and for iPhone,
iPad, and Android.

Interpreted
This requires a bit of explanation.

A program written in a compiled language like C or C++ is converted from the source
language i.e. C or C++ into a language that is spoken by your computer (binary code i.e. 0s
and 1s) using a compiler with various flags and options. When you run the program, the
linker/loader software copies the program from hard disk to memory and starts running it.

Python, on the other hand, does not need compilation to binary. You just run the program
directly from the source code. Internally, Python converts the source code into an
intermediate form called bytecodes and then translates this into the native language of your
computer and then runs it. All this, actually, makes using Python much easier since you don't
have to worry about compiling the program, making sure that the proper libraries are linked
and loaded, etc. This also makes your Python programs much more portable, since you can
just copy your Python program onto another computer and it just works!

14
About Python

Object Oriented
Python supports procedure-oriented programming as well as object-oriented programming.
In procedure-oriented languages, the program is built around procedures or functions which
are nothing but reusable pieces of programs. In object-oriented languages, the program is
built around objects which combine data and functionality. Python has a very powerful but
simplistic way of doing OOP, especially when compared to big languages like C++ or Java.

Extensible
If you need a critical piece of code to run very fast or want to have some piece of algorithm
not to be open, you can code that part of your program in C or C++ and then use it from your
Python program.

Embeddable
You can embed Python within your C/C++ programs to give scripting capabilities for your
program's users.

Extensive Libraries
The Python Standard Library is huge indeed. It can help you do various things involving
regular expressions,documentation generation, unit testing, threading, databases, web
browsers, CGI, FTP, email, XML, XML-RPC, HTML, WAV files, cryptography, GUI (graphical
user interfaces), and other system-dependent stuff. Remember, all this is always available
wherever Python is installed. This is called the Batteries Included philosophy of Python.

Besides the standard library, there are various other high-quality libraries which you can find
at the Python Package Index.

Summary
Python is indeed an exciting and powerful language. It has the right combination of
performance and features that make writing programs in Python both fun and easy.

Python 3 versus 2
You can ignore this section if you're not interested in the difference between "Python version
2" and "Python version 3". But please do be aware of which version you are using. This
book is written for Python version 3.

15
About Python

Remember that once you have properly understood and learn to use one version, you can
easily learn the differences and use the other one. The hard part is learning programming
and understanding the basics of Python language itself. That is our goal in this book, and
once you have achieved that goal, you can easily use Python 2 or Python 3 depending on
your situation.

For details on differences between Python 2 and Python 3, see:

The future of Python 2

Porting Python 2 Code to Python 3
Writing code that runs under both Python2 and 3
Supporting Python 3: An in-depth guide

What Programmers Say

You may find it interesting to read what great hackers like ESR have to say about Python:

Eric S. Raymond is the author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and is also the person
who coined the term Open Source. He says that Python has become his favorite
programming language. This article was the real inspiration for my first brush with
Python.
Bruce Eckel is the author of the famous 'Thinking in Java' and 'Thinking in C++' books.
He says that no language has made him more productive than Python. He says that
Python is perhaps the only language that focuses on making things easier for the
programmer. Read the complete interview for more details.
Peter Norvig is a well-known Lisp author and Director of Search Quality at Google
(thanks to Guido van Rossum for pointing that out). He says that writing Python is like
writing in pseudocode. He says that Python has always been an integral part of Google.
You can actually verify this statement by looking at the Google Jobs page which lists
Python knowledge as a requirement for software engineers.

16
Installation

Installation
When we refer to "Python 3" in this book, we will be referring to any version of Python equal
to or greater than version Python 3.6.0.

Installation on Windows
Visit https://www.python.org/downloads/ and download the latest version. At the time of this
writing, it was Python 3.5.1 The installation is just like any other Windows-based software.

Note that if your Windows version is pre-Vista, you should download Python 3.4 only as later
versions require newer versions of Windows.

CAUTION: Make sure you check option Add Python 3.5 to PATH .

To change install location, click on Customize installation , then Next and enter
C:\python35 (or another appropriate location) as the install location.

If you didn t check the Add Python 3.5 PATH option earlier, check Add Python to

environment variables . This does the same thing as Add Python 3.5 to PATH on the first
install screen.

You can choose to install Launcher for all users or not, it does not matter much. Launcher is
used to switch between different versions of Python installed.

If your path was not set correctly (by checking the Add Python 3.5 Path or Add Python to

environment variables options), then follow the steps in the next section ( DOS Prompt ) to fix
it. Otherwise, go to the Running Python prompt on Windows section in this document.

NOTE: For people who already know programming, if you are familiar with Docker, check
out Python in Docker and Docker on Windows.

DOS Prompt
If you want to be able to use Python from the Windows command line i.e. the DOS prompt,
then you need to set the PATH variable appropriately.

For Windows 2000, XP, 2003 , click on Control Panel -> System -> Advanced ->
Environment Variables . Click on the variable named PATH in the System Variables section,
then select Edit and add ;C:\Python35 (please verify that this folder exists, it will be

17
Installation

different for newer versions of Python) to the end of what is already there. Of course, use the
appropriate directory name.

For older versions of Windows, open the file C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and add the line
PATH=%PATH%;C:\Python35 and restart the system. For Windows NT, use the AUTOEXEC.NT

file.

For Windows Vista:

Click Start and choose Control Panel

Click System, on the right you'll see "View basic information about your computer"
On the left is a list of tasks, the last of which is Advanced system settings . Click that.
The Advanced tab of the System Properties dialog box is shown. Click the Environment

Variables button on the bottom right.

In the lower box titled System Variables scroll down to Path and click the Edit button.
Change your path as need be.
Restart your system. Vista didn't pick up the system path environment variable change
until I restarted.

For Windows 7 and 8:

Right click on Computer from your desktop and select Properties or click Start and
choose Control Panel -> System and Security -> System . Click on Advanced system

settings on the left and then click on the Advanced tab. At the bottom click on
Environment Variables and under System variables , look for the PATH variable, select
and then press Edit .
Go to the end of the line under Variable value and append ;C:\Python35 (please verify
that this folder exists, it will be different for newer versions of Python) to the end of what
is already there. Of course, use the appropriate folder name.
If the value was %SystemRoot%\system32; It will now become
%SystemRoot%\system32;C:\Python36

Click OK and you are done. No restart is required, however you may have to close and
reopen the command line.

For Windows 10:

Windows Start Menu > Settings > About > System Info (this is all the way over to the
right) > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables (this is towards the bottom) >
(then highlight Path variable and click Edit )> New > (type in whatever your python
location is. For example, C:\Python35\ )

Running Python prompt on Windows

18
Installation

For Windows users, you can run the interpreter in the command line if you have set the
PATH variable appropriately.

To open the terminal in Windows, click the start button and click Run . In the dialog box, type
cmd and press [enter] key.

Then, type python and ensure there are no errors.

Installation on Mac OS X
For Mac OS X users, use Homebrew: brew install python3 .

To verify, open the terminal by pressing [Command + Space] keys (to open Spotlight search),
type Terminal and press [enter] key. Now, run python3 and ensure there are no errors.

Installation on GNU/Linux
For GNU/Linux users, use your distribution's package manager to install Python 3, e.g. on
Debian & Ubuntu: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python3 .

To verify, open the terminal by opening the Terminal application or by pressing Alt + F2

and entering gnome-terminal . If that doesn't work, please refer the documentation of your
particular GNU/Linux distribution. Now, run python3 and ensure there are no errors.

You can see the version of Python on the screen by running:

$ python3 -V
Python 3.6.0

NOTE: $ is the prompt of the shell. It will be different for you depending on the settings of
the operating system on your computer, hence I will indicate the prompt by just the $

symbol.

CAUTION: Output may be different on your computer, depending on the version of Python
software installed on your computer.

Summary
From now on, we will assume that you have Python installed on your system.

Next, we will write our first Python program.

19
Installation

20
First Steps

First Steps
We will now see how to run a traditional 'Hello World' program in Python. This will teach you
how to write, save and run Python programs.

There are two ways of using Python to run your program - using the interactive interpreter
prompt or using a source file. We will now see how to use both of these methods.

Using The Interpreter Prompt

Open the terminal in your operating system (as discussed previously in the Installation
chapter) and then open the Python prompt by typing python3 and pressing [enter] key.

Once you have started Python, you should see >>> where you can start typing stuff. This is
called the Python interpreter prompt.

At the Python interpreter prompt, type:

print("Hello World")

followed by the [enter] key. You should see the words Hello World printed to the screen.

Here is an example of what you should be seeing, when using a Mac OS X computer. The
details about the Python software will differ based on your computer, but the part from the
prompt (i.e. from >>> onwards) should be the same regardless of the operating system.

$ python3
Python 3.6.0 (default, Jan 12 2017, 11:26:36)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.38)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print("Hello World")
Hello World

Notice that Python gives you the output of the line immediately! What you just entered is a
single Python statement. We use print to (unsurprisingly) print any value that you supply
to it. Here, we are supplying the text Hello World and this is promptly printed to the screen.

How to Quit the Interpreter Prompt

21
First Steps

If you are using a GNU/Linux or OS X shell, you can exit the interpreter prompt by pressing
[ctrl + d] or entering exit() (note: remember to include the parentheses, () ) followed
by the [enter] key.

If you are using the Windows command prompt, press [ctrl + z] followed by the [enter]

key.

Choosing An Editor
We cannot type out our program at the interpreter prompt every time we want to run
something, so we have to save them in files and can run our programs any number of times.

To create our Python source files, we need an editor software where you can type and save.
A good programmer's editor will make your life easier in writing the source files. Hence, the
choice of an editor is crucial indeed. You have to choose an editor as you would choose a
car you would buy. A good editor will help you write Python programs easily, making your
journey more comfortable and helps you reach your destination (achieve your goal) in a
much faster and safer way.

One of the very basic requirements is syntax highlighting where all the different parts of your
Python program are colorized so that you can see your program and visualize its running.

If you have no idea where to start, I would recommend using PyCharm Educational Edition
software which is available on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. Details in the next
section.

If you are using Windows, do not use Notepad - it is a bad choice because it does not do
syntax highlighting and also importantly it does not support indentation of the text which is
very important in our case as we will see later. Good editors will automatically do this.

If you are an experienced programmer, then you must be already using Vim or Emacs.
Needless to say, these are two of the most powerful editors and you will benefit from using
them to write your Python programs. I personally use both for most of my programs, and
have even written an entire book on Vim.

In case you are willing to take the time to learn Vim or Emacs, then I highly recommend that
you do learn to use either of them as it will be very useful for you in the long run. However,
as I mentioned before, beginners can start with PyCharm and focus the learning on Python
rather than the editor at this moment.

To reiterate, please choose a proper editor - it can make writing Python programs more fun
and easy.

22
First Steps

PyCharm
PyCharm Educational Edition is a free editor which you can use for writing Python programs.

When you open PyCharm, you'll see this, click on Create New Project :

Select Pure Python :

23
First Steps

Change untitled to helloworld as the location of the project, you should see details
similar to this:

24
First Steps

Click the Create button.

Right-click on the helloworld in the sidebar and select New -> Python File :

25
First Steps

You will be asked to type the name, type hello :

You can now see a file opened for you:

26
First Steps

Delete the lines that are already present, and now type the following:

print("hello world")

Now right-click on what you typed (without selecting the text), and click on Run 'hello' .

27
First Steps

You should now see the output (what it prints) of your program:

Phew! That was quite a few steps to get started, but henceforth, every time we ask you to
create a new file, remember to just right-click on helloworld on the left -> New -> Python

File and continue the same steps to type and run as shown above.

You can find more information about PyCharm in the PyCharm Quickstart page.

Vim
1. Install Vim
Mac OS X users should install macvim package via HomeBrew
Windows users should download the "self-installing executable" from Vim website
GNU/Linux users should get Vim from their distribution's software repositories, e.g.
Debian and Ubuntu users can install the vim package.
2. Install jedi-vim plugin for autocompletion.
3. Install corresponding jedi python package : pip install -U jedi

Emacs
1. Install Emacs 24+.
Mac OS X users should get Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com
Windows users should get Emacs from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/

28
First Steps

GNU/Linux users should get Emacs from their distribution's software repositories,
e.g. Debian and Ubuntu users can install the emacs24 package.
2. Install ELPY

Using A Source File

Now let's get back to programming. There is a tradition that whenever you learn a new
programming language, the first program that you write and run is the 'Hello World' program
1
- all it does is just say 'Hello World' when you run it. As Simon Cozens says, it is the
"traditional incantation to the programming gods to help you learn the language better."

Start your choice of editor, enter the following program and save it as hello.py .

If you are using PyCharm, we have already discussed how to run from a source file.

For other editors, open a new file hello.py and type this:

print("hello world")

Where should you save the file? To any folder for which you know the location of the folder.
If you don't understand what that means, create a new folder and use that location to save
and run all your Python programs:

/tmp/py on Mac OS X
/tmp/py on GNU/Linux
C:\py on Windows

To create the above folder (for the operating system you are using), use the mkdir

command in the terminal, for example, mkdir /tmp/py .

IMPORTANT: Always ensure that you give it the file extension of .py , for example,
foo.py .

To run your Python program:

1. Open a terminal window (see the previous Installation chapter on how to do that)
2. Change directory to where you saved the file, for example, cd /tmp/py

3. Run the program by entering the command python hello.py . The output is as shown
below.

$ python hello.py
hello world

29
First Steps

If you got the output as shown above, congratulations! - you have successfully run your first
Python program. You have successfully crossed the hardest part of learning programming,
which is, getting started with your first program!

In case you got an error, please type the above program exactly as shown above and run
the program again. Note that Python is case-sensitive i.e. print is not the same as Print

- note the lowercase p in the former and the uppercase P in the latter. Also, ensure there
are no spaces or tabs before the first character in each line - we will see why this is
important later.

How It Works

A Python program is composed of statements. In our first program, we have only one
statement. In this statement, we call the print statement to which we supply the text "hello
world".

Getting Help
If you need quick information about any function or statement in Python, then you can use
the built-in help functionality. This is very useful especially when using the interpreter
prompt. For example, run help('len') - this displays the help for the len function which is
used to count number of items.

30
First Steps

TIP: Press q to exit the help.

Similarly, you can obtain information about almost anything in Python. Use help() to learn
more about using help itself!

In case you need to get help for operators like return , then you need to put those inside
quotes such as help('return') so that Python doesn't get confused on what we're trying to
do.

Summary
You should now be able to write, save and run Python programs at ease.

Now that you are a Python user, let's learn some more Python concepts.

1
. the author of the amazing 'Beginning Perl' book ↩

31
Basics

Basics
Just printing hello world is not enough, is it? You want to do more than that - you want to
take some input, manipulate it and get something out of it. We can achieve this in Python
using constants and variables, and we'll learn some other concepts as well in this chapter.

Comments
Comments are any text to the right of the # symbol and is mainly useful as notes for the
reader of the program.

For example:

print('hello world') # Note that print is a function

or:

# Note that print is a function

print('hello world')

Use as many useful comments as you can in your program to:

explain assumptions
explain important decisions
explain important details
explain problems you're trying to solve
explain problems you're trying to overcome in your program, etc.

Code tells you how, comments should tell you why.

This is useful for readers of your program so that they can easily understand what the
program is doing. Remember, that person can be yourself after six months!

Literal Constants
An example of a literal constant is a number like 5 , 1.23 , or a string like 'This is a

string' or "It's a string!" .

32
Basics

It is called a literal because it is literal - you use its value literally. The number 2 always
represents itself and nothing else - it is a constant because its value cannot be changed.
Hence, all these are referred to as literal constants.

Numbers
Numbers are mainly of two types - integers and floats.

An example of an integer is 2 which is just a whole number.

Examples of floating point numbers (or floats for short) are 3.23 and 52.3E-4 . The E

notation indicates powers of 10. In this case, 52.3E-4 means 52.3 * 10^-4^ .

Note for Experienced Programmers

There is no separate long type. The int type can be an integer of any size.

Strings
A string is a sequence of characters. Strings are basically just a bunch of words.

You will be using strings in almost every Python program that you write, so pay attention to
the following part.

Single Quote
You can specify strings using single quotes such as 'Quote me on this' .

All white space i.e. spaces and tabs, within the quotes, are preserved as-is.

Double Quotes
Strings in double quotes work exactly the same way as strings in single quotes. An example
is "What's your name?" .

Triple Quotes
You can specify multi-line strings using triple quotes - ( """ or ''' ). You can use single
quotes and double quotes freely within the triple quotes. An example is:

33
Basics

'''This is a multi-line string. This is the first line.

This is the second line.
"What's your name?," I asked.
He said "Bond, James Bond."
'''

Strings Are Immutable

This means that once you have created a string, you cannot change it. Although this might
seem like a bad thing, it really isn't. We will see why this is not a limitation in the various
programs that we see later on.

Note for C/C++ Programmers

There is no separate char data type in Python. There is no real need for it and I am
sure you won't miss it.

Note for Perl/PHP Programmers

Remember that single-quoted strings and double-quoted strings are the same - they do
not differ in any way.

The format method

Sometimes we may want to construct strings from other information. This is where the
format() method is useful.

Save the following lines as a file str_format.py :

age = 20
name = 'Swaroop'

print('{0} was {1} years old when he wrote this book'.format(name, age))
print('Why is {0} playing with that python?'.format(name))

Output:

$ python str_format.py
Swaroop was 20 years old when he wrote this book
Why is Swaroop playing with that python?

How It Works

A string can use certain specifications and subsequently, the format method can be called
to substitute those specifications with corresponding arguments to the format method.

34
Basics

Observe the first usage where we use {0} and this corresponds to the variable name

which is the first argument to the format method. Similarly, the second specification is {1}

corresponding to age which is the second argument to the format method. Note that
Python starts counting from 0 which means that first position is at index 0, second position is
at index 1, and so on.

Notice that we could have achieved the same using string concatenation:

name + ' is ' + str(age) + ' years old'

but that is much uglier and error-prone. Second, the conversion to string would be done
automatically by the format method instead of the explicit conversion to strings needed in
this case. Third, when using the format method, we can change the message without
having to deal with the variables used and vice-versa.

Also note that the numbers are optional, so you could have also written as:

age = 20
name = 'Swaroop'

print('{} was {} years old when he wrote this book'.format(name, age))

print('Why is {} playing with that python?'.format(name))

which will give the same exact output as the previous program.

We can also name the parameters:

age = 20
name = 'Swaroop'

print('{name} was {age} years old when he wrote this book'.format(name=name, age=age))
print('Why is {name} playing with that python?'.format(name=name))

which will give the same exact output as the previous program.

Python 3.6 introduced a shorter way to do named parameters, called "f-strings":

age = 20
name = 'Swaroop'

print(f'{name} was {age} years old when he wrote this book') # notice the 'f' before
the string
print(f'Why is {name} playing with that python?') # notice the 'f' before the string

which will give the same exact output as the previous program.

35
Basics

What Python does in the format method is that it substitutes each argument value into the
place of the specification. There can be more detailed specifications such as:

# decimal (.) precision of 3 for float '0.333'

print('{0:.3f}'.format(1.0/3))
# fill with underscores (_) with the text centered
# (^) to 11 width '___hello___'
print('{0:_^11}'.format('hello'))
# keyword-based 'Swaroop wrote A Byte of Python'
print('{name} wrote {book}'.format(name='Swaroop', book='A Byte of Python'))

Output:

0.333
___hello___
Swaroop wrote A Byte of Python

Since we are discussing formatting, note that print always ends with an invisible "new
line" character ( \n ) so that repeated calls to print will all print on a separate line each. To
prevent this newline character from being printed, you can specify that it should end with a
blank:

print('a', end='')
print('b', end='')

Output is:

ab

Or you can end with a space:

print('a', end=' ')

print('b', end=' ')
print('c')

Output is:

a b c

Escape Sequences

36
Basics

Suppose, you want to have a string which contains a single quote ( ' ), how will you specify
this string? For example, the string is "What's your name?" . You cannot specify 'What's

your name?' because Python will be confused as to where the string starts and ends. So,
you will have to specify that this single quote does not indicate the end of the string. This can
be done with the help of what is called an escape sequence. You specify the single quote as
\' : notice the backslash. Now, you can specify the string as 'What\'s your name?' .

Another way of specifying this specific string would be "What's your name?" i.e. using
double quotes. Similarly, you have to use an escape sequence for using a double quote
itself in a double quoted string. Also, you have to indicate the backslash itself using the
escape sequence \\ .

What if you wanted to specify a two-line string? One way is to use a triple-quoted string as
shown previously or you can use an escape sequence for the newline character - \n to
indicate the start of a new line. An example is:

'This is the first line\nThis is the second line'

Another useful escape sequence to know is the tab: \t . There are many more escape
sequences but I have mentioned only the most useful ones here.

One thing to note is that in a string, a single backslash at the end of the line indicates that
the string is continued in the next line, but no newline is added. For example:

"This is the first sentence. \

This is the second sentence."

is equivalent to

"This is the first sentence. This is the second sentence."

Raw String
If you need to specify some strings where no special processing such as escape sequences
are handled, then what you need is to specify a raw string by prefixing r or R to the
string. An example is:

r"Newlines are indicated by \n"

37
Basics

Note for Regular Expression Users

Always use raw strings when dealing with regular expressions. Otherwise, a lot of
backwhacking may be required. For example, backreferences can be referred to as
'\\1' or r'\1' .

Variable
Using just literal constants can soon become boring - we need some way of storing any
information and manipulate them as well. This is where variables come into the picture.
Variables are exactly what the name implies - their value can vary, i.e., you can store
anything using a variable. Variables are just parts of your computer's memory where you
store some information. Unlike literal constants, you need some method of accessing these
variables and hence you give them names.

Identifier Naming
Variables are examples of identifiers. Identifiers are names given to identify something.
There are some rules you have to follow for naming identifiers:

The first character of the identifier must be a letter of the alphabet (uppercase ASCII or
lowercase ASCII or Unicode character) or an underscore ( _ ).
The rest of the identifier name can consist of letters (uppercase ASCII or lowercase
ASCII or Unicode character), underscores ( _ ) or digits (0-9).
Identifier names are case-sensitive. For example, myname and myName are not the
same. Note the lowercase n in the former and the uppercase N in the latter.
Examples of valid identifier names are i , name_2_3 . Examples of invalid identifier
names are 2things , this is spaced out , my-name and >a1b2_c3 .

Data Types
Variables can hold values of different types called data types. The basic types are numbers
and strings, which we have already discussed. In later chapters, we will see how to create
our own types using classes.

Object

38
Basics

Remember, Python refers to anything used in a program as an object. This is meant in the
generic sense. Instead of saying "the something"', we say "the object".

Note for Object Oriented Programming users:

Python is strongly object-oriented in the sense that everything is an object including

numbers, strings and functions.

We will now see how to use variables along with literal constants. Save the following
example and run the program.

How to write Python programs

Henceforth, the standard procedure to save and run a Python program is as follows:

For PyCharm
1. Open PyCharm.
2. Create new file with the filename mentioned.
3. Type the program code given in the example.
4. Right-click and run the current file.

NOTE: Whenever you have to provide command line arguments, click on Run -> Edit

Configurations and type the arguments in the Script parameters: section and click the OK

button:

39
Basics

For other editors

1. Open your editor of choice.
2. Type the program code given in the example.
3. Save it as a file with the filename mentioned.
4. Run the interpreter with the command python program.py to run the program.

Example: Using Variables And Literal Constants

Type and run the following program:

# Filename : var.py
i = 5
print(i)
i = i + 1
print(i)

s = '''This is a multi-line string.

This is the second line.'''
print(s)

Output:

5
6
This is a multi-line string.
This is the second line.

How It Works

Here's how this program works. First, we assign the literal constant value 5 to the variable
i using the assignment operator ( = ). This line is called a statement because it states that
something should be done and in this case, we connect the variable name i to the value
5 . Next, we print the value of i using the print statement which, unsurprisingly, just
prints the value of the variable to the screen.

Then we add 1 to the value stored in i and store it back. We then print it and expectedly,
we get the value 6 .

Similarly, we assign the literal string to the variable s and then print it.

Note for static language programmers

Variables are used by just assigning them a value. No declaration or data type definition
is needed/used.

40
Basics

Logical And Physical Line

A physical line is what you see when you write the program. A logical line is what Python
sees as a single statement. Python implicitly assumes that each physical line corresponds to
a logical line.

An example of a logical line is a statement like print('hello world') - if this was on a line
by itself (as you see it in an editor), then this also corresponds to a physical line.

Implicitly, Python encourages the use of a single statement per line which makes code more
readable.

If you want to specify more than one logical line on a single physical line, then you have to
explicitly specify this using a semicolon ( ; ) which indicates the end of a logical
line/statement. For example:

i = 5
print(i)

is effectively same as

i = 5;
print(i);

which is also same as

i = 5; print(i);

and same as

i = 5; print(i)

However, I strongly recommend that you stick to writing a maximum of a single logical line
on each single physical line. The idea is that you should never use the semicolon. In fact, I
have never used or even seen a semicolon in a Python program.

There is one kind of situation where this concept is really useful: if you have a long line of
code, you can break it into multiple physical lines by using the backslash. This is referred to
as explicit line joining:

41
Basics

s = 'This is a string. \
This continues the string.'
print(s)

Output:

This is a string. This continues the string.

Similarly,

i = \
5

is the same as

i = 5

Sometimes, there is an implicit assumption where you don't need to use a backslash. This is
the case where the logical line has a starting parentheses, starting square brackets or a
starting curly braces but not an ending one. This is called implicit line joining. You can see
this in action when we write programs using list in later chapters.

Indentation
Whitespace is important in Python. Actually, whitespace at the beginning of the line is
important. This is called indentation. Leading whitespace (spaces and tabs) at the beginning
of the logical line is used to determine the indentation level of the logical line, which in turn is
used to determine the grouping of statements.

This means that statements which go together must have the same indentation. Each such
set of statements is called a block. We will see examples of how blocks are important in later
chapters.

One thing you should remember is that wrong indentation can give rise to errors. For
example:

i = 5
# Error below! Notice a single space at the start of the line
print('Value is', i)
print('I repeat, the value is', i)

42
Basics

When you run this, you get the following error:

File "whitespace.py", line 3

print('Value is', i)
^
IndentationError: unexpected indent

Notice that there is a single space at the beginning of the second line. The error indicated by
Python tells us that the syntax of the program is invalid i.e. the program was not properly
written. What this means to you is that you cannot arbitrarily start new blocks of statements
(except for the default main block which you have been using all along, of course). Cases
where you can use new blocks will be detailed in later chapters such as the control flow.

How to indent

Use four spaces for indentation. This is the official Python language recommendation.
Good editors will automatically do this for you. Make sure you use a consistent number
of spaces for indentation, otherwise your program will not run or will have unexpected
behavior.

Note to static language programmers

Python will always use indentation for blocks and will never use braces. Run from

__future__ import braces to learn more.

Summary
Now that we have gone through many nitty-gritty details, we can move on to more
interesting stuff such as control flow statements. Be sure to become comfortable with what
you have read in this chapter.

43
Operators and Expressions

Operators and Expressions

Most statements (logical lines) that you write will contain expressions. A simple example of
an expression is 2 + 3 . An expression can be broken down into operators and operands.

Operators are functionality that do something and can be represented by symbols such as
+ or by special keywords. Operators require some data to operate on and such data is
called operands. In this case, 2 and 3 are the operands.

Operators
We will briefly take a look at the operators and their usage.

Note that you can evaluate the expressions given in the examples using the interpreter
interactively. For example, to test the expression 2 + 3 , use the interactive Python
interpreter prompt:

>>> 2 + 3
5
>>> 3 * 5
15
>>>

Here is a quick overview of the available operators:

+ (plus)

Adds two objects

3 + 5 gives 8 . 'a' + 'b' gives 'ab' .
- (minus)

Gives the subtraction of one number from the other; if the first operand is absent it
is assumed to be zero.
-5.2 gives a negative number and 50 - 24 gives 26 .
* (multiply)

Gives the multiplication of the two numbers or returns the string repeated that many
times.
2 * 3 gives 6 . 'la' * 3 gives 'lalala' .
** (power)

Returns x to the power of y

44
Operators and Expressions

3 ** 4 gives 81 (i.e. 3 * 3 * 3 * 3 )
/ (divide)

Divide x by y
13 / 3 gives 4.333333333333333

// (divide and floor)

Divide x by y and round the answer down to the nearest integer value. Note that if
one of the values is a float, you'll get back a float.
13 // 3 gives 4

-13 // 3 gives -5

9//1.81 gives 4.0

% (modulo)

Returns the remainder of the division

13 % 3 gives 1 . -25.5 % 2.25 gives 1.5 .
<< (left shift)

Shifts the bits of the number to the left by the number of bits specified. (Each
number is represented in memory by bits or binary digits i.e. 0 and 1)
2 << 2 gives 8 . 2 is represented by 10 in bits.
Left shifting by 2 bits gives 1000 which represents the decimal 8 .
>> (right shift)

Shifts the bits of the number to the right by the number of bits specified.
11 >> 1 gives 5 .
11 is represented in bits by 1011 which when right shifted by 1 bit gives
101 which is the decimal 5 .
& (bit-wise AND)

Bit-wise AND of the numbers

5 & 3 gives 1 .
| (bit-wise OR)

Bitwise OR of the numbers

5 | 3 gives 7

^ (bit-wise XOR)

Bitwise XOR of the numbers

5 ^ 3 gives 6

~ (bit-wise invert)

The bit-wise inversion of x is -(x+1)

~5 gives -6 . More details at http://stackoverflow.com/a/11810203

45
Operators and Expressions

< (less than)

Returns whether x is less than y. All comparison operators return True or False .
Note the capitalization of these names.
5 < 3 gives False and 3 < 5 gives True .
Comparisons can be chained arbitrarily: 3 < 5 < 7 gives True .
> (greater than)

Returns whether x is greater than y

5 > 3 returns True . If both operands are numbers, they are first converted to a
common type. Otherwise, it always returns False .
<= (less than or equal to)

Returns whether x is less than or equal to y

x = 3; y = 6; x <= y returns True

>= (greater than or equal to)

Returns whether x is greater than or equal to y

x = 4; y = 3; x >= 3 returns True

== (equal to)

Compares if the objects are equal

x = 2; y = 2; x == y returns True

x = 'str'; y = 'stR'; x == y returns False

x = 'str'; y = 'str'; x == y returns True

!= (not equal to)

Compares if the objects are not equal

x = 2; y = 3; x != y returns True

not (boolean NOT)

If x is True , it returns False . If x is False , it returns True .

x = True; not x returns False .
and (boolean AND)

x and y returns False if x is False , else it returns evaluation of y

x = False; y = True; x and y returns False since x is False. In this case, Python
will not evaluate y since it knows that the left hand side of the 'and' expression is
False which implies that the whole expression will be False irrespective of the
other values. This is called short-circuit evaluation.
or (boolean OR)

If x is True , it returns True, else it returns evaluation of y

x = True; y = False; x or y returns True . Short-circuit evaluation applies here

46
Operators and Expressions

as well.

Shortcut for math operation and assignment

It is common to run a math operation on a variable and then assign the result of the
operation back to the variable, hence there is a shortcut for such expressions:

a = 2
a = a * 3

can be written as:

a = 2
a *= 3

Notice that var = var operation expression becomes var operation= expression .

Evaluation Order
If you had an expression such as 2 + 3 * 4 , is the addition done first or the multiplication?
Our high school maths tells us that the multiplication should be done first. This means that
the multiplication operator has higher precedence than the addition operator.

The following table gives the precedence table for Python, from the lowest precedence (least
binding) to the highest precedence (most binding). This means that in a given expression,
Python will first evaluate the operators and expressions lower in the table before the ones
listed higher in the table.

The following table, taken from the Python reference manual, is provided for the sake of
completeness. It is far better to use parentheses to group operators and operands
appropriately in order to explicitly specify the precedence. This makes the program more
readable. See Changing the Order of Evaluation below for details.

lambda : Lambda Expression

if - else : Conditional expression
or : Boolean OR
and : Boolean AND
not x : Boolean NOT
in, not in, is, is not, <, <=, >, >=, !=, == : Comparisons, including membership
tests and identity tests

47
Operators and Expressions

| : Bitwise OR
^ : Bitwise XOR
& : Bitwise AND
<<, >> : Shifts
+, - : Addition and subtraction
*, /, //, % : Multiplication, Division, Floor Division and Remainder
+x, -x, ~x : Positive, Negative, bitwise NOT
** : Exponentiation
x[index], x[index:index], x(arguments...), x.attribute : Subscription, slicing, call,
attribute reference
(expressions...), [expressions...], {key: value...}, {expressions...} : Binding or
tuple display, list display, dictionary display, set display

The operators which we have not already come across will be explained in later chapters.

Operators with the same precedence are listed in the same row in the above table. For
example, + and - have the same precedence.

Changing the Order Of Evaluation

To make the expressions more readable, we can use parentheses. For example, 2 + (3 *

4) is definitely easier to understand than 2 + 3 * 4 which requires knowledge of the

operator precedences. As with everything else, the parentheses should be used reasonably
(do not overdo it) and should not be redundant, as in (2 + (3 * 4)) .

There is an additional advantage to using parentheses - it helps us to change the order of

evaluation. For example, if you want addition to be evaluated before multiplication in an
expression, then you can write something like (2 + 3) * 4 .

Associativity
Operators are usually associated from left to right. This means that operators with the same
precedence are evaluated in a left to right manner. For example, 2 + 3 + 4 is evaluated as
(2 + 3) + 4 .

Expressions
Example (save as expression.py ):

48
Operators and Expressions

length = 5
breadth = 2

area = length * breadth

print('Area is', area)
print('Perimeter is', 2 * (length + breadth))

Output:

$ python expression.py
Area is 10
Perimeter is 14

How It Works

The length and breadth of the rectangle are stored in variables by the same name. We use
these to calculate the area and perimeter of the rectangle with the help of expressions. We
store the result of the expression length * breadth in the variable area and then print it
using the print function. In the second case, we directly use the value of the expression 2

* (length + breadth) in the print function.

Also, notice how Python pretty-prints the output. Even though we have not specified a space
between 'Area is' and the variable area , Python puts it for us so that we get a clean nice
output and the program is much more readable this way (since we don't need to worry about
spacing in the strings we use for output). This is an example of how Python makes life easy
for the programmer.

Summary
We have seen how to use operators, operands and expressions - these are the basic
building blocks of any program. Next, we will see how to make use of these in our programs
using statements.

49
Control flow

Control Flow
In the programs we have seen till now, there has always been a series of statements
faithfully executed by Python in exact top-down order. What if you wanted to change the flow
of how it works? For example, you want the program to take some decisions and do different
things depending on different situations, such as printing 'Good Morning' or 'Good Evening'
depending on the time of the day?

As you might have guessed, this is achieved using control flow statements. There are three
control flow statements in Python - if , for and while .

The if statement
The if statement is used to check a condition: if the condition is true, we run a block of
statements (called the if-block), else we process another block of statements (called the
else-block). The else clause is optional.

Example (save as if.py ):

number = 23
guess = int(input('Enter an integer : '))

if guess == number:
# New block starts here
print('Congratulations, you guessed it.')
print('(but you do not win any prizes!)')
# New block ends here
elif guess < number:
# Another block
print('No, it is a little higher than that')
# You can do whatever you want in a block ...
else:
print('No, it is a little lower than that')
# you must have guessed > number to reach here

print('Done')
# This last statement is always executed,
# after the if statement is executed.

Output:

50
Control flow

$ python if.py
Enter an integer : 50
No, it is a little lower than that
Done

$ python if.py
Enter an integer : 22
No, it is a little higher than that
Done

$ python if.py
Enter an integer : 23
Congratulations, you guessed it.
(but you do not win any prizes!)
Done

How It Works

In this program, we take guesses from the user and check if it is the number that we have.
We set the variable number to any integer we want, say 23 . Then, we take the user's
guess using the input() function. Functions are just reusable pieces of programs. We'll
read more about them in the next chapter.

We supply a string to the built-in input function which prints it to the screen and waits for
input from the user. Once we enter something and press kbd:[enter] key, the input()

function returns what we entered, as a string. We then convert this string to an integer using
int and then store it in the variable guess . Actually, the int is a class but all you need to
know right now is that you can use it to convert a string to an integer (assuming the string
contains a valid integer in the text).

Next, we compare the guess of the user with the number we have chosen. If they are equal,
we print a success message. Notice that we use indentation levels to tell Python which
statements belong to which block. This is why indentation is so important in Python. I hope
you are sticking to the "consistent indentation" rule. Are you?

Notice how the if statement contains a colon at the end - we are indicating to Python that
a block of statements follows.

Then, we check if the guess is less than the number, and if so, we inform the user that they
must guess a little higher than that. What we have used here is the elif clause which
actually combines two related if else-if else statements into one combined if-elif-

else statement. This makes the program easier and reduces the amount of indentation
required.

The elif and else statements must also have a colon at the end of the logical line
followed by their corresponding block of statements (with proper indentation, of course)

51
Control flow

You can have another if statement inside the if-block of an if statement and so on - this
is called a nested if statement.

Remember that the elif and else parts are optional. A minimal valid if statement is:

if True:
print('Yes, it is true')

After Python has finished executing the complete if statement along with the associated
elif and else clauses, it moves on to the next statement in the block containing the if

statement. In this case, it is the main block (where execution of the program starts), and the
next statement is the print('Done') statement. After this, Python sees the ends of the
program and simply finishes up.

Even though this is a very simple program, I have been pointing out a lot of things that you
should notice. All these are pretty straightforward (and surprisingly simple for those of you
from C/C++ backgrounds). You will need to become aware of all these things initially, but
after some practice you will become comfortable with them, and it will all feel 'natural' to you.

Note for C/C++ Programmers

There is no switch statement in Python. You can use an if..elif..else statement to

do the same thing (and in some cases, use a dictionary to do it quickly)

The while Statement

The while statement allows you to repeatedly execute a block of statements as long as a
condition is true. A while statement is an example of what is called a looping statement. A
while statement can have an optional else clause.

Example (save as while.py ):

52
Control flow

number = 23
running = True

while running:
guess = int(input('Enter an integer : '))

if guess == number:
print('Congratulations, you guessed it.')
Follow me on LinkedIn for more:
# this causes the while loop to stop
Steve Nouri
running = False https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenouri/
elif guess < number:
print('No, it is a little higher than that.')
else:
print('No, it is a little lower than that.')
else:
print('The while loop is over.')
# Do anything else you want to do here

print('Done')

Output:

$ python while.py
Enter an integer : 50
No, it is a little lower than that.
Enter an integer : 22
No, it is a little higher than that.
Enter an integer : 23
Congratulations, you guessed it.
The while loop is over.
Done

How It Works

In this program, we are still playing the guessing game, but the advantage is that the user is
allowed to keep guessing until he guesses correctly - there is no need to repeatedly run the
program for each guess, as we have done in the previous section. This aptly demonstrates
the use of the while statement.

We move the input and if statements to inside the while loop and set the variable
running to True before the while loop. First, we check if the variable running is True

and then proceed to execute the corresponding while-block. After this block is executed, the
condition is again checked which in this case is the running variable. If it is true, we
execute the while-block again, else we continue to execute the optional else-block and then
continue to the next statement.

53
Control flow

The else block is executed when the while loop condition becomes False - this may
even be the first time that the condition is checked. If there is an else clause for a while

loop, it is always executed unless you break out of the loop with a break statement.

The True and False are called Boolean types and you can consider them to be equivalent
to the value 1 and 0 respectively.

Note for C/C++ Programmers

Remember that you can have an else clause for the while loop.

The for loop

The for..in statement is another looping statement which iterates over a sequence of
objects i.e. go through each item in a sequence. We will see more about sequences in detail
in later chapters. What you need to know right now is that a sequence is just an ordered
collection of items.

Example (save as for.py ):

for i in range(1, 5):

print(i)
else:
print('The for loop is over')

Output:

$ python for.py
1
2
3
4
The for loop is over

How It Works

In this program, we are printing a sequence of numbers. We generate this sequence of

numbers using the built-in range function.

What we do here is supply it two numbers and range returns a sequence of numbers
starting from the first number and up to the second number. For example, range(1,5) gives
the sequence [1, 2, 3, 4] . By default, range takes a step count of 1. If we supply a third

54
Control flow

number to range , then that becomes the step count. For example, range(1,5,2) gives
[1,3] . Remember that the range extends up to the second number i.e. it does not include
the second number.

Note that range() generates only one number at a time, if you want the full list of numbers,
call list() on the range() , for example, list(range(5)) will result in [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] .
Lists are explained in the data structures chapter.

The for loop then iterates over this range - for i in range(1,5) is equivalent to for i in

[1, 2, 3, 4] which is like assigning each number (or object) in the sequence to i, one at a
time, and then executing the block of statements for each value of i . In this case, we just
print the value in the block of statements.

Remember that the else part is optional. When included, it is always executed once after
the for loop is over unless a break statement is encountered.

Remember that the for..in loop works for any sequence. Here, we have a list of numbers
generated by the built-in range function, but in general we can use any kind of sequence of
any kind of objects! We will explore this idea in detail in later chapters.

Note for C/C++/Java/C# Programmers

The Python for loop is radically different from the C/C++ for loop. C# programmers
will note that the for loop in Python is similar to the foreach loop in C#. Java
programmers will note that the same is similar to for (int i : IntArray) in Java 1.5.

In C/C++, if you want to write for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) , then in Python you write
just for i in range(0,5) . As you can see, the for loop is simpler, more expressive
and less error prone in Python.

The break Statement

The break statement is used to break out of a loop statement i.e. stop the execution of a
looping statement, even if the loop condition has not become False or the sequence of
items has not been completely iterated over.

An important note is that if you break out of a for or while loop, any corresponding loop
else block is not executed.

Example (save as break.py ):

55
Control flow

while True:
s = input('Enter something : ')
if s == 'quit':
break
print('Length of the string is', len(s))
print('Done')

Output:

$ python break.py
Enter something : Programming is fun
Length of the string is 18
Enter something : When the work is done
Length of the string is 21
Enter something : if you wanna make your work also fun:
Length of the string is 37
Enter something : use Python!
Length of the string is 11
Enter something : quit
Done

How It Works

In this program, we repeatedly take the user's input and print the length of each input each
time. We are providing a special condition to stop the program by checking if the user input
is 'quit' . We stop the program by breaking out of the loop and reach the end of the
program.

The length of the input string can be found out using the built-in len function.

Remember that the break statement can be used with the for loop as well.

Swaroop's Poetic Python

The input I have used here is a mini poem I have written:

Programming is fun
When the work is done
if you wanna make your work also fun:
use Python!

The continue Statement

The continue statement is used to tell Python to skip the rest of the statements in the
current loop block and to continue to the next iteration of the loop.

56
Control flow

Example (save as continue.py ):

while True:
s = input('Enter something : ')
if s == 'quit':
break
if len(s) < 3:
print('Too small')
continue
print('Input is of sufficient length')
# Do other kinds of processing here...

Output:

$ python continue.py
Enter something : a
Too small
Enter something : 12
Too small
Enter something : abc
Input is of sufficient length
Enter something : quit

How It Works

In this program, we accept input from the user, but we process the input string only if it is at
least 3 characters long. So, we use the built-in len function to get the length and if the
length is less than 3, we skip the rest of the statements in the block by using the continue

statement. Otherwise, the rest of the statements in the loop are executed, doing any kind of
processing we want to do here.

Note that the continue statement works with the for loop as well.

Summary
We have seen how to use the three control flow statements - if , while and for along
with their associated break and continue statements. These are some of the most
commonly used parts of Python and hence, becoming comfortable with them is essential.

Next, we will see how to create and use functions.

57
Functions

Functions
Functions are reusable pieces of programs. They allow you to give a name to a block of
statements, allowing you to run that block using the specified name anywhere in your
program and any number of times. This is known as calling the function. We have already
used many built-in functions such as len and range .

The function concept is probably the most important building block of any non-trivial software
(in any programming language), so we will explore various aspects of functions in this
chapter.

Functions are defined using the def keyword. After this keyword comes an identifier name
for the function, followed by a pair of parentheses which may enclose some names of
variables, and by the final colon that ends the line. Next follows the block of statements that
are part of this function. An example will show that this is actually very simple:

Example (save as function1.py ):

def say_hello():
# block belonging to the function
print('hello world')
# End of function

say_hello() # call the function

say_hello() # call the function again

Output:

$ python function1.py
hello world
hello world

How It Works

We define a function called say_hello using the syntax as explained above. This function
takes no parameters and hence there are no variables declared in the parentheses.
Parameters to functions are just input to the function so that we can pass in different values
to it and get back corresponding results.

Notice that we can call the same function twice which means we do not have to write the
same code again.

58
Functions

Function Parameters
A function can take parameters, which are values you supply to the function so that the
function can do something utilising those values. These parameters are just like variables
except that the values of these variables are defined when we call the function and are
already assigned values when the function runs.

Parameters are specified within the pair of parentheses in the function definition, separated
by commas. When we call the function, we supply the values in the same way. Note the
terminology used - the names given in the function definition are called parameters whereas
the values you supply in the function call are called arguments.

Example (save as function_param.py ):

def print_max(a, b):

if a > b:
print(a, 'is maximum')
elif a == b:
print(a, 'is equal to', b)
else:
print(b, 'is maximum')

# directly pass literal values

print_max(3, 4)

x = 5
y = 7

# pass variables as arguments

print_max(x, y)

Output:

$ python function_param.py
4 is maximum
7 is maximum

How It Works

Here, we define a function called print_max that uses two parameters called a and b .
We find out the greater number using a simple if..else statement and then print the
bigger number.

The first time we call the function print_max , we directly supply the numbers as arguments.
In the second case, we call the function with variables as arguments. print_max(x, y)

causes the value of argument x to be assigned to parameter a and the value of

59
Functions

argument y to be assigned to parameter b . The print_max function works the same way
in both cases.

Local Variables
When you declare variables inside a function definition, they are not related in any way to
other variables with the same names used outside the function - i.e. variable names are
local to the function. This is called the scope of the variable. All variables have the scope of
the block they are declared in starting from the point of definition of the name.

Example (save as function_local.py ):

x = 50

def func(x):
print('x is', x)
x = 2
print('Changed local x to', x)

func(x)
print('x is still', x)

Output:

$ python function_local.py
x is 50
Changed local x to 2
x is still 50

How It Works

The first time that we print the value of the name x with the first line in the function's body,
Python uses the value of the parameter declared in the main block, above the function
definition.

Next, we assign the value 2 to x . The name x is local to our function. So, when we
change the value of x in the function, the x defined in the main block remains unaffected.

With the last print statement, we display the value of x as defined in the main block,
thereby confirming that it is actually unaffected by the local assignment within the previously
called function.

60
Functions

The global statement

If you want to assign a value to a name defined at the top level of the program (i.e. not inside
any kind of scope such as functions or classes), then you have to tell Python that the name
is not local, but it is global. We do this using the global statement. It is impossible to assign
a value to a variable defined outside a function without the global statement.

You can use the values of such variables defined outside the function (assuming there is no
variable with the same name within the function). However, this is not encouraged and
should be avoided since it becomes unclear to the reader of the program as to where that
variable's definition is. Using the global statement makes it amply clear that the variable is
defined in an outermost block.

Example (save as function_global.py ):

x = 50

def func():
global x

print('x is', x)
x = 2
print('Changed global x to', x)

func()
print('Value of x is', x)

Output:

$ python function_global.py
x is 50
Changed global x to 2
Value of x is 2

How It Works

The global statement is used to declare that x is a global variable - hence, when we
assign a value to x inside the function, that change is reflected when we use the value of
x in the main block.

You can specify more than one global variable using the same global statement e.g.
global x, y, z .

61
Functions

Default Argument Values

For some functions, you may want to make some parameters optional and use default
values in case the user does not want to provide values for them. This is done with the help
of default argument values. You can specify default argument values for parameters by
appending to the parameter name in the function definition the assignment operator ( = )
followed by the default value.

Note that the default argument value should be a constant. More precisely, the default
argument value should be immutable - this is explained in detail in later chapters. For now,
just remember this.

Example (save as function_default.py ):

def say(message, times=1):

print(message * times)

say('Hello')
say('World', 5)

Output:

$ python function_default.py
Hello
WorldWorldWorldWorldWorld

How It Works

The function named say is used to print a string as many times as specified. If we don't
supply a value, then by default, the string is printed just once. We achieve this by specifying
a default argument value of 1 to the parameter times .

In the first usage of say , we supply only the string and it prints the string once. In the
second usage of say , we supply both the string and an argument 5 stating that we want
to say the string message 5 times.

CAUTION

Only those parameters which are at the end of the parameter list can be given default
argument values i.e. you cannot have a parameter with a default argument value
preceding a parameter without a default argument value in the function's parameter list.

This is because the values are assigned to the parameters by position. For
example, def func(a, b=5) is valid, but def func(a=5, b) is not valid.

62
Functions

Keyword Arguments
If you have some functions with many parameters and you want to specify only some of
them, then you can give values for such parameters by naming them - this is called keyword
arguments - we use the name (keyword) instead of the position (which we have been using
all along) to specify the arguments to the function.

There are two advantages - one, using the function is easier since we do not need to worry
about the order of the arguments. Two, we can give values to only those parameters to
which we want to, provided that the other parameters have default argument values.

Example (save as function_keyword.py ):

def func(a, b=5, c=10):

print('a is', a, 'and b is', b, 'and c is', c)

func(3, 7)
func(25, c=24)
func(c=50, a=100)

Output:

$ python function_keyword.py
a is 3 and b is 7 and c is 10
a is 25 and b is 5 and c is 24
a is 100 and b is 5 and c is 50

How It Works

The function named func has one parameter without a default argument value, followed by
two parameters with default argument values.

In the first usage, func(3, 7) , the parameter a gets the value 3 , the parameter b gets
the value 7 and c gets the default value of 10 .

In the second usage func(25, c=24) , the variable a gets the value of 25 due to the
position of the argument. Then, the parameter c gets the value of 24 due to naming i.e.
keyword arguments. The variable b gets the default value of 5 .

In the third usage func(c=50, a=100) , we use keyword arguments for all specified values.
Notice that we are specifying the value for parameter c before that for a even though a

is defined before c in the function definition.

VarArgs parameters
63
Functions

Sometimes you might want to define a function that can take any number of parameters, i.e.
variable number of arguments, this can be achieved by using the stars (save as
function_varargs.py ):

def total(a=5, *numbers, **phonebook):

print('a', a)

#iterate through all the items in tuple

for single_item in numbers:
print('single_item', single_item)

#iterate through all the items in dictionary

for first_part, second_part in phonebook.items():
print(first_part,second_part)

total(10,1,2,3,Jack=1123,John=2231,Inge=1560)

Output:

$ python function_varargs.py
a 10
single_item 1
single_item 2
single_item 3
Inge 1560
John 2231
Jack 1123

How It Works

When we declare a starred parameter such as *param , then all the positional arguments
from that point till the end are collected as a tuple called 'param'.

Similarly, when we declare a double-starred parameter such as **param , then all the
keyword arguments from that point till the end are collected as a dictionary called 'param'.

We will explore tuples and dictionaries in a later chapter.

The return statement

The return statement is used to return from a function i.e. break out of the function. We
can optionally return a value from the function as well.

Example (save as function_return.py ):

64
Functions

def maximum(x, y):

if x > y:
return x
elif x == y:
return 'The numbers are equal'
else:
return y

print(maximum(2, 3))

Output:

$ python function_return.py
3

How It Works

The maximum function returns the maximum of the parameters, in this case the numbers
supplied to the function. It uses a simple if..else statement to find the greater value and
then returns that value.

Note that a return statement without a value is equivalent to return None . None is a
special type in Python that represents nothingness. For example, it is used to indicate that a
variable has no value if it has a value of None .

Every function implicitly contains a return None statement at the end unless you have
written your own return statement. You can see this by running print(some_function())

where the function some_function does not use the return statement such as:

def some_function():
pass

The pass statement is used in Python to indicate an empty block of statements.

TIP: There is a built-in function called max that already implements the 'find maximum'
functionality, so use this built-in function whenever possible.

DocStrings
Python has a nifty feature called documentation strings, usually referred to by its shorter
name docstrings. DocStrings are an important tool that you should make use of since it
helps to document the program better and makes it easier to understand. Amazingly, we can
even get the docstring back from, say a function, when the program is actually running!

65
Functions

Example (save as function_docstring.py ):

def print_max(x, y):

'''Prints the maximum of two numbers.

The two values must be integers.'''

# convert to integers, if possible
x = int(x)
y = int(y)

if x > y:
print(x, 'is maximum')
else:
print(y, 'is maximum')

print_max(3, 5)
print(print_max.__doc__)

Output:

$ python function_docstring.py
5 is maximum
Prints the maximum of two numbers.

The two values must be integers.

How It Works

A string on the first logical line of a function is the docstring for that function. Note that
DocStrings also apply to modules and classes which we will learn about in the respective
chapters.

The convention followed for a docstring is a multi-line string where the first line starts with a
capital letter and ends with a dot. Then the second line is blank followed by any detailed
explanation starting from the third line. You are strongly advised to follow this convention for
all your docstrings for all your non-trivial functions.

We can access the docstring of the print_max function using the __doc__ (notice the
double underscores) attribute (name belonging to) of the function. Just remember that
Python treats everything as an object and this includes functions. We'll learn more about
objects in the chapter on classes.

If you have used help() in Python, then you have already seen the usage of docstrings!
What it does is just fetch the __doc__ attribute of that function and displays it in a neat
manner for you. You can try it out on the function above - just include help(print_max) in
your program. Remember to press the q key to exit help .

66
Functions

Automated tools can retrieve the documentation from your program in this manner.
Therefore, I strongly recommend that you use docstrings for any non-trivial function that you
write. The pydoc command that comes with your Python distribution works similarly to
help() using docstrings.

Summary
We have seen so many aspects of functions but note that we still haven't covered all aspects
of them. However, we have already covered most of what you'll use regarding Python
functions on an everyday basis.

Next, we will see how to use as well as create Python modules.

67
Modules

Modules
You have seen how you can reuse code in your program by defining functions once. What if
you wanted to reuse a number of functions in other programs that you write? As you might
have guessed, the answer is modules.

There are various methods of writing modules, but the simplest way is to create a file with a
.py extension that contains functions and variables.

Another method is to write the modules in the native language in which the Python
interpreter itself was written. For example, you can write modules in the C programming
language and when compiled, they can be used from your Python code when using the
standard Python interpreter.

A module can be imported by another program to make use of its functionality. This is how
we can use the Python standard library as well. First, we will see how to use the standard
library modules.

Example (save as module_using_sys.py ):

import sys

print('The command line arguments are:')

for i in sys.argv:
print(i)

print('\n\nThe PYTHONPATH is', sys.path, '\n')

Output:

$ python module_using_sys.py we are arguments # each arg is separated by white spac

e
The command line arguments are:
module_using_sys.py
we
are
arguments

The PYTHONPATH is ['/tmp/py',

# many entries here, not shown here
'/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

68
Modules

How It Works

First, we import the sys module using the import statement. Basically, this translates to
us telling Python that we want to use this module. The sys module contains functionality
related to the Python interpreter and its environment i.e. the system.

When Python executes the import sys statement, it looks for the sys module. In this
case, it is one of the built-in modules, and hence Python knows where to find it.

If it was not a compiled module i.e. a module written in Python, then the Python interpreter
will search for it in the directories listed in its sys.path variable. If the module is found, then
the statements in the body of that module are run and the module is made available for you
to use. Note that the initialization is done only the first time that we import a module.

The argv variable in the sys module is accessed using the dotted notation i.e. sys.argv .
It clearly indicates that this name is part of the sys module. Another advantage of this
approach is that the name does not clash with any argv variable used in your program.

The sys.argv variable is a list of strings (lists are explained in detail in a later chapter).
Specifically, the sys.argv contains the list of command line arguments i.e. the arguments
passed to your program using the command line.

If you are using an IDE to write and run these programs, look for a way to specify command
line arguments to the program in the menus.

Here, when we execute python module_using_sys.py we are arguments , we run the module
module_using_sys.py with the python command and the other things that follow are
arguments passed to the program. Python stores the command line arguments in the
sys.argv variable for us to use.

Remember, the name of the script running is always the first element in the sys.argv list.
So, in this case we will have 'module_using_sys.py' as sys.argv[0] , 'we' as
sys.argv[1] , 'are' as sys.argv[2] and 'arguments' as sys.argv[3] . Notice that
Python starts counting from 0 and not 1.

The sys.path contains the list of directory names where modules are imported from.
Observe that the first string in sys.path is empty - this empty string indicates that the
current directory is also part of the sys.path which is same as the PYTHONPATH environment
variable. This means that you can directly import modules located in the current directory.
Otherwise, you will have to place your module in one of the directories listed in sys.path .

Note that the current directory is the directory from which the program is launched. Run
import os; print(os.getcwd()) to find out the current directory of your program.

69
Modules

Byte-compiled .pyc files

Importing a module is a relatively costly affair, so Python does some tricks to make it faster.
One way is to create byte-compiled files with the extension .pyc which is an intermediate
form that Python transforms the program into (remember the introduction section on how
Python works?). This .pyc file is useful when you import the module the next time from a
different program - it will be much faster since a portion of the processing required in
importing a module is already done. Also, these byte-compiled files are platform-
independent.

NOTE: These .pyc files are usually created in the same directory as the corresponding
.py files. If Python does not have permission to write to files in that directory, then the
.pyc files will not be created.

The from..import statement

If you want to directly import the argv variable into your program (to avoid typing the sys.

everytime for it), then you can use the from sys import argv statement.

WARNING: In general, avoid using the from..import statement, use the import

statement instead. This is because your program will avoid name clashes and will be
more readable.

Example:

from math import sqrt

print("Square root of 16 is", sqrt(16))

A module's __name__

Every module has a name and statements in a module can find out the name of their
module. This is handy for the particular purpose of figuring out whether the module is being
run standalone or being imported. As mentioned previously, when a module is imported for
the first time, the code it contains gets executed. We can use this to make the module
behave in different ways depending on whether it is being used by itself or being imported
from another module. This can be achieved using the __name__ attribute of the module.

Example (save as module_using_name.py ):

70
Modules

if __name__ == '__main__':
print('This program is being run by itself')
else:
print('I am being imported from another module')

Output:

$ python module_using_name.py
This program is being run by itself

$ python
>>> import module_using_name
I am being imported from another module
>>>

How It Works

Every Python module has its __name__ defined. If this is '__main__' , that implies that the
module is being run standalone by the user and we can take appropriate actions.

Making Your Own Modules

Creating your own modules is easy, you've been doing it all along! This is because every
Python program is also a module. You just have to make sure it has a .py extension. The
following example should make it clear.

Example (save as mymodule.py ):

def say_hi():
print('Hi, this is mymodule speaking.')

__version__ = '0.1'

The above was a sample module. As you can see, there is nothing particularly special about
it compared to our usual Python program. We will next see how to use this module in our
other Python programs.

Remember that the module should be placed either in the same directory as the program
from which we import it, or in one of the directories listed in sys.path .

Another module (save as mymodule_demo.py ):

71
Modules

import mymodule

mymodule.say_hi()
print('Version', mymodule.__version__)

Output:

$ python mymodule_demo.py
Hi, this is mymodule speaking.
Version 0.1

How It Works

Notice that we use the same dotted notation to access members of the module. Python
makes good reuse of the same notation to give the distinctive 'Pythonic' feel to it so that we
don't have to keep learning new ways to do things.

Here is a version utilising the from..import syntax (save as mymodule_demo2.py ):

from mymodule import say_hi, __version__

say_hi()
print('Version', __version__)

The output of mymodule_demo2.py is same as the output of mymodule_demo.py .

Notice that if there was already a __version__ name declared in the module that imports
mymodule, there would be a clash. This is also likely because it is common practice for each
module to declare it's version number using this name. Hence, it is always recommended to
prefer the import statement even though it might make your program a little longer.

You could also use:

from mymodule import *

This will import all public names such as say_hi but would not import __version__

because it starts with double underscores.

WARNING: Remember that you should avoid using import-star, i.e. from mymodule

import * .

72
Modules

Zen of Python

One of Python's guiding principles is that "Explicit is better than Implicit". Run import

this in Python to learn more.

The dir function

The built-in dir() function returns the list of names defined by an object. If the object is a
module, this list includes functions, classes and variables, defined inside that module.

This function can accept arguments. If the argument is the name of a module, the function
returns the list of names from that specified module. If there is no argument, the function
returns the list of names from the current module.

Example:

$ python
>>> import sys

# get names of attributes in sys module

>>> dir(sys)
['__displayhook__', '__doc__',
'argv', 'builtin_module_names',
'version', 'version_info']
# only few entries shown here

# get names of attributes for current module

>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__',
'__name__', '__package__', 'sys']

# create a new variable 'a'

>>> a = 5

>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', 'sys', 'a']

# delete/remove a name
>>> del a

>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', 'sys']

How It Works

First, we see the usage of dir on the imported sys module. We can see the huge list of
attributes that it contains.

73
Modules

Next, we use the dir function without passing parameters to it. By default, it returns the list
of attributes for the current module. Notice that the list of imported modules is also part of
this list.

In order to observe dir in action, we define a new variable a and assign it a value and
then check dir and we observe that there is an additional value in the list of the same
name. We remove the variable/attribute of the current module using the del statement and
the change is reflected again in the output of the dir function.

A note on del : This statement is used to delete a variable/name and after the statement
has run, in this case del a , you can no longer access the variable a - it is as if it never
existed before at all.

Note that the dir() function works on any object. For example, run dir(str) for the
attributes of the str (string) class.

There is also a vars() function which can potentially give you the attributes and their
values, but it will not work for all cases.

Packages
By now, you must have started observing the hierarchy of organizing your programs.
Variables usually go inside functions. Functions and global variables usually go inside
modules. What if you wanted to organize modules? That's where packages come into the
picture.

Packages are just folders of modules with a special __init__.py file that indicates to
Python that this folder is special because it contains Python modules.

Let's say you want to create a package called 'world' with subpackages 'asia', 'africa', etc.
and these subpackages in turn contain modules like 'india', 'madagascar', etc.

This is how you would structure the folders:

74
Modules

- <some folder present in the sys.path>/

- world/
- __init__.py
- asia/
- __init__.py
- india/
- __init__.py
- foo.py
- africa/
- __init__.py
- madagascar/
- __init__.py
- bar.py

Packages are just a convenience to organize modules hierarchically. You will see many
instances of this in the standard library.

Summary
Just like functions are reusable parts of programs, modules are reusable programs.
Packages are another hierarchy to organize modules. The standard library that comes with
Python is an example of such a set of packages and modules.

We have seen how to use these modules and create our own modules.

Next, we will learn about some interesting concepts called data structures.

75
Data Structures

Data Structures
Data structures are basically just that - they are structures which can hold some data
together. In other words, they are used to store a collection of related data.

There are four built-in data structures in Python - list, tuple, dictionary and set. We will see
how to use each of them and how they make life easier for us.

List
A list is a data structure that holds an ordered collection of items i.e. you can store a
sequence of items in a list. This is easy to imagine if you can think of a shopping list where
you have a list of items to buy, except that you probably have each item on a separate line in
your shopping list whereas in Python you put commas in between them.

The list of items should be enclosed in square brackets so that Python understands that you
are specifying a list. Once you have created a list, you can add, remove or search for items
in the list. Since we can add and remove items, we say that a list is a mutable data type i.e.
this type can be altered.

Quick Introduction To Objects And Classes

Although I've been generally delaying the discussion of objects and classes till now, a little
explanation is needed right now so that you can understand lists better. We will explore this
topic in detail in a later chapter.

A list is an example of usage of objects and classes. When we use a variable i and assign
a value to it, say integer 5 to it, you can think of it as creating an object (i.e. instance) i of
class (i.e. type) int . In fact, you can read help(int) to understand this better.

A class can also have methods i.e. functions defined for use with respect to that class only.
You can use these pieces of functionality only when you have an object of that class. For
example, Python provides an append method for the list class which allows you to add
an item to the end of the list. For example, mylist.append('an item') will add that string to
the list mylist . Note the use of dotted notation for accessing methods of the objects.

A class can also have fields which are nothing but variables defined for use with respect to
that class only. You can use these variables/names only when you have an object of that
class. Fields are also accessed by the dotted notation, for example, mylist.field .

76
Data Structures

Example (save as ds_using_list.py ):

# This is my shopping list

shoplist = ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana']

print('I have', len(shoplist), 'items to purchase.')

print('These items are:', end=' ')

for item in shoplist:
print(item, end=' ')

print('\nI also have to buy rice.')

shoplist.append('rice')
print('My shopping list is now', shoplist)

print('I will sort my list now')

shoplist.sort()
print('Sorted shopping list is', shoplist)

print('The first item I will buy is', shoplist[0])

olditem = shoplist[0]
del shoplist[0]
print('I bought the', olditem)
print('My shopping list is now', shoplist)

Output:

$ python ds_using_list.py
I have 4 items to purchase.
These items are: apple mango carrot banana
I also have to buy rice.
My shopping list is now ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana', 'rice']
I will sort my list now
Sorted shopping list is ['apple', 'banana', 'carrot', 'mango', 'rice']
The first item I will buy is apple
I bought the apple
My shopping list is now ['banana', 'carrot', 'mango', 'rice']

How It Works

The variable shoplist is a shopping list for someone who is going to the market. In
shoplist , we only store strings of the names of the items to buy but you can add any kind
of object to a list including numbers and even other lists.

We have also used the for..in loop to iterate through the items of the list. By now, you
must have realised that a list is also a sequence. The speciality of sequences will be
discussed in a later section.

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Data Structures

Notice the use of the end parameter in the call to print function to indicate that we want
to end the output with a space instead of the usual line break.

Next, we add an item to the list using the append method of the list object, as already
discussed before. Then, we check that the item has been indeed added to the list by printing
the contents of the list by simply passing the list to the print function which prints it neatly.

Then, we sort the list by using the sort method of the list. It is important to understand that
this method affects the list itself and does not return a modified list - this is different from the
way strings work. This is what we mean by saying that lists are mutable and that strings are
immutable.

Next, when we finish buying an item in the market, we want to remove it from the list. We
achieve this by using the del statement. Here, we mention which item of the list we want to
remove and the del statement removes it from the list for us. We specify that we want to
remove the first item from the list and hence we use del shoplist[0] (remember that
Python starts counting from 0).

If you want to know all the methods defined by the list object, see help(list) for details.

Tuple
Tuples are used to hold together multiple objects. Think of them as similar to lists, but
without the extensive functionality that the list class gives you. One major feature of tuples is
that they are immutable like strings i.e. you cannot modify tuples.

Tuples are defined by specifying items separated by commas within an optional pair of
parentheses.

Tuples are usually used in cases where a statement or a user-defined function can safely
assume that the collection of values (i.e. the tuple of values used) will not change.

Example (save as ds_using_tuple.py ):

78
Data Structures

# I would recommend always using parentheses

# to indicate start and end of tuple
# even though parentheses are optional.
# Explicit is better than implicit.
zoo = ('python', 'elephant', 'penguin')
print('Number of animals in the zoo is', len(zoo))

new_zoo = 'monkey', 'camel', zoo # parentheses not required but are a good idea
print('Number of cages in the new zoo is', len(new_zoo))
print('All animals in new zoo are', new_zoo)
print('Animals brought from old zoo are', new_zoo[2])
print('Last animal brought from old zoo is', new_zoo[2][2])
print('Number of animals in the new zoo is',
len(new_zoo)-1+len(new_zoo[2]))

Output:

$ python ds_using_tuple.py
Number of animals in the zoo is 3
Number of cages in the new zoo is 3
All animals in new zoo are ('monkey', 'camel', ('python', 'elephant', 'penguin'))
Animals brought from old zoo are ('python', 'elephant', 'penguin')
Last animal brought from old zoo is penguin
Number of animals in the new zoo is 5

How It Works

The variable zoo refers to a tuple of items. We see that the len function can be used to
get the length of the tuple. This also indicates that a tuple is a sequence as well.

We are now shifting these animals to a new zoo since the old zoo is being closed.
Therefore, the new_zoo tuple contains some animals which are already there along with the
animals brought over from the old zoo. Back to reality, note that a tuple within a tuple does
not lose its identity.

We can access the items in the tuple by specifying the item's position within a pair of square
brackets just like we did for lists. This is called the indexing operator. We access the third
item in new_zoo by specifying new_zoo[2] and we access the third item within the third item
in the new_zoo tuple by specifying new_zoo[2][2] . This is pretty simple once you've
understood the idiom.

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Data Structures

Tuple with 0 or 1 items

An empty tuple is constructed by an empty pair of parentheses such as myempty = () .

However, a tuple with a single item is not so simple. You have to specify it using a
comma following the first (and only) item so that Python can differentiate between a
tuple and a pair of parentheses surrounding the object in an expression i.e. you have to
specify singleton = (2 , ) if you mean you want a tuple containing the item 2 .

Note for Perl programmers

A list within a list does not lose its identity i.e. lists are not flattened as in Perl. The same
applies to a tuple within a tuple, or a tuple within a list, or a list within a tuple, etc. As far
as Python is concerned, they are just objects stored using another object, that's all.

Dictionary
A dictionary is like an address-book where you can find the address or contact details of a
person by knowing only his/her name i.e. we associate keys (name) with values (details).
Note that the key must be unique just like you cannot find out the correct information if you
have two persons with the exact same name.

Note that you can use only immutable objects (like strings) for the keys of a dictionary but
you can use either immutable or mutable objects for the values of the dictionary. This
basically translates to say that you should use only simple objects for keys.

Pairs of keys and values are specified in a dictionary by using the notation d = {key1 :

value1, key2 : value2 } . Notice that the key-value pairs are separated by a colon and the
pairs are separated themselves by commas and all this is enclosed in a pair of curly braces.

Remember that key-value pairs in a dictionary are not ordered in any manner. If you want a
particular order, then you will have to sort them yourself before using it.

The dictionaries that you will be using are instances/objects of the dict class.

Example (save as ds_using_dict.py ):

80
Data Structures

# 'ab' is short for 'a'ddress'b'ook

ab = {
'Swaroop': 'swaroop@swaroopch.com',
'Larry': 'larry@wall.org',
'Matsumoto': 'matz@ruby-lang.org',
'Spammer': 'spammer@hotmail.com'
}

print("Swaroop's address is", ab['Swaroop'])

# Deleting a key-value pair

del ab['Spammer']

print('\nThere are {} contacts in the address-book\n'.format(len(ab)))

for name, address in ab.items():

print('Contact {} at {}'.format(name, address))

# Adding a key-value pair

ab['Guido'] = 'guido@python.org'

if 'Guido' in ab:
print("\nGuido's address is", ab['Guido'])

Output:

$ python ds_using_dict.py
Swaroop's address is swaroop@swaroopch.com

There are 3 contacts in the address-book

Contact Swaroop at swaroop@swaroopch.com

Contact Matsumoto at matz@ruby-lang.org
Contact Larry at larry@wall.org

Guido's address is guido@python.org

How It Works

We create the dictionary ab using the notation already discussed. We then access key-
value pairs by specifying the key using the indexing operator as discussed in the context of
lists and tuples. Observe the simple syntax.

We can delete key-value pairs using our old friend - the del statement. We simply specify
the dictionary and the indexing operator for the key to be removed and pass it to the del

statement. There is no need to know the value corresponding to the key for this operation.

81
Data Structures

Next, we access each key-value pair of the dictionary using the items method of the
dictionary which returns a list of tuples where each tuple contains a pair of items - the key
followed by the value. We retrieve this pair and assign it to the variables name and address

correspondingly for each pair using the for..in loop and then print these values in the for-
block.

We can add new key-value pairs by simply using the indexing operator to access a key and
assign that value, as we have done for Guido in the above case.

We can check if a key-value pair exists using the in operator.

For the list of methods of the dict class, see help(dict) .

Keyword Arguments and Dictionaries

If you have used keyword arguments in your functions, you have already used
dictionaries! Just think about it - the key-value pair is specified by you in the parameter
list of the function definition and when you access variables within your function, it is
just a key access of a dictionary (which is called the symbol table in compiler design
terminology).

Sequence
Lists, tuples and strings are examples of sequences, but what are sequences and what is so
special about them?

The major features are membership tests, (i.e. the in and not in expressions) and
indexing operations, which allow us to fetch a particular item in the sequence directly.

The three types of sequences mentioned above - lists, tuples and strings, also have a slicing
operation which allows us to retrieve a slice of the sequence i.e. a part of the sequence.

Example (save as ds_seq.py ):

82
Data Structures

shoplist = ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana']

name = 'swaroop'

# Indexing or 'Subscription' operation #

print('Item 0 is', shoplist[0])
print('Item 1 is', shoplist[1])
print('Item 2 is', shoplist[2])
print('Item 3 is', shoplist[3])
print('Item -1 is', shoplist[-1])
print('Item -2 is', shoplist[-2])
print('Character 0 is', name[0])

# Slicing on a list #
print('Item 1 to 3 is', shoplist[1:3])
print('Item 2 to end is', shoplist[2:])
print('Item 1 to -1 is', shoplist[1:-1])
print('Item start to end is', shoplist[:])

# Slicing on a string #
print('characters 1 to 3 is', name[1:3])
print('characters 2 to end is', name[2:])
print('characters 1 to -1 is', name[1:-1])
print('characters start to end is', name[:])

Output:

$ python ds_seq.py
Item 0 is apple
Item 1 is mango
Item 2 is carrot
Item 3 is banana
Item -1 is banana
Item -2 is carrot
Character 0 is s
Item 1 to 3 is ['mango', 'carrot']
Item 2 to end is ['carrot', 'banana']
Item 1 to -1 is ['mango', 'carrot']
Item start to end is ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana']
characters 1 to 3 is wa
characters 2 to end is aroop
characters 1 to -1 is waroo
characters start to end is swaroop

How It Works

First, we see how to use indexes to get individual items of a sequence. This is also referred
to as the subscription operation. Whenever you specify a number to a sequence within
square brackets as shown above, Python will fetch you the item corresponding to that

83
Data Structures

position in the sequence. Remember that Python starts counting numbers from 0. Hence,
shoplist[0] fetches the first item and shoplist[3] fetches the fourth item in the shoplist

sequence.

The index can also be a negative number, in which case, the position is calculated from the
end of the sequence. Therefore, shoplist[-1] refers to the last item in the sequence and
shoplist[-2] fetches the second last item in the sequence.

The slicing operation is used by specifying the name of the sequence followed by an
optional pair of numbers separated by a colon within square brackets. Note that this is very
similar to the indexing operation you have been using till now. Remember the numbers are
optional but the colon isn't.

The first number (before the colon) in the slicing operation refers to the position from where
the slice starts and the second number (after the colon) indicates where the slice will stop at.
If the first number is not specified, Python will start at the beginning of the sequence. If the
second number is left out, Python will stop at the end of the sequence. Note that the slice
returned starts at the start position and will end just before the end position i.e. the start
position is included but the end position is excluded from the sequence slice.

Thus, shoplist[1:3] returns a slice of the sequence starting at position 1, includes position
2 but stops at position 3 and therefore a slice of two items is returned. Similarly,
shoplist[:] returns a copy of the whole sequence.

You can also do slicing with negative positions. Negative numbers are used for positions
from the end of the sequence. For example, shoplist[:-1] will return a slice of the
sequence which excludes the last item of the sequence but contains everything else.

You can also provide a third argument for the slice, which is the step for the slicing (by
default, the step size is 1):

>>> shoplist = ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana']

>>> shoplist[::1]
['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana']
>>> shoplist[::2]
['apple', 'carrot']
>>> shoplist[::3]
['apple', 'banana']
>>> shoplist[::-1]
['banana', 'carrot', 'mango', 'apple']

Notice that when the step is 2, we get the items with position 0, 2,... When the step size is 3,
we get the items with position 0, 3, etc.

84
Data Structures

Try various combinations of such slice specifications using the Python interpreter
interactively i.e. the prompt so that you can see the results immediately. The great thing
about sequences is that you can access tuples, lists and strings all in the same way!

Set
Sets are unordered collections of simple objects. These are used when the existence of an
object in a collection is more important than the order or how many times it occurs.

Using sets, you can test for membership, whether it is a subset of another set, find the
intersection between two sets, and so on.

>>> bri = set(['brazil', 'russia', 'india'])

>>> 'india' in bri
True
>>> 'usa' in bri
False
>>> bric = bri.copy()
>>> bric.add('china')
>>> bric.issuperset(bri)
True
>>> bri.remove('russia')
>>> bri & bric # OR bri.intersection(bric)
{'brazil', 'india'}

How It Works

If you remember basic set theory mathematics from school, then this example is fairly self-
explanatory. But if not, you can google "set theory" and "Venn diagram" to better understand
our use of sets in Python.

References
When you create an object and assign it to a variable, the variable only refers to the object
and does not represent the object itself! That is, the variable name points to that part of your
computer's memory where the object is stored. This is called binding the name to the object.

Generally, you don't need to be worried about this, but there is a subtle effect due to
references which you need to be aware of:

Example (save as ds_reference.py ):

85
Data Structures

print('Simple Assignment')
shoplist = ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot', 'banana']
# mylist is just another name pointing to the same object!
mylist = shoplist

# I purchased the first item, so I remove it from the list

del shoplist[0]

print('shoplist is', shoplist)

print('mylist is', mylist)
# Notice that both shoplist and mylist both print
# the same list without the 'apple' confirming that
# they point to the same object

print('Copy by making a full slice')

# Make a copy by doing a full slice
mylist = shoplist[:]
# Remove first item
del mylist[0]

print('shoplist is', shoplist)

print('mylist is', mylist)
# Notice that now the two lists are different

Output:

$ python ds_reference.py
Simple Assignment
shoplist is ['mango', 'carrot', 'banana']
mylist is ['mango', 'carrot', 'banana']
Copy by making a full slice
shoplist is ['mango', 'carrot', 'banana']
mylist is ['carrot', 'banana']

How It Works

Most of the explanation is available in the comments.

Remember that if you want to make a copy of a list or such kinds of sequences or complex
objects (not simple objects such as integers), then you have to use the slicing operation to
make a copy. If you just assign the variable name to another name, both of them will ''refer''
to the same object and this could be trouble if you are not careful.

Note for Perl programmers

Remember that an assignment statement for lists does not create a copy. You have to
use slicing operation to make a copy of the sequence.

86
Data Structures

More About Strings

We have already discussed strings in detail earlier. What more can there be to know? Well,
did you know that strings are also objects and have methods which do everything from
checking part of a string to stripping spaces? In fact, you've already been using a string
method... the format method!

The strings that you use in programs are all objects of the class str . Some useful methods
of this class are demonstrated in the next example. For a complete list of such methods, see
help(str) .

Example (save as ds_str_methods.py ):

# This is a string object

name = 'Swaroop'

if name.startswith('Swa'):
print('Yes, the string starts with "Swa"')

if 'a' in name:
print('Yes, it contains the string "a"')

if name.find('war') != -1:
print('Yes, it contains the string "war"')

delimiter = '_*_'
mylist = ['Brazil', 'Russia', 'India', 'China']
print(delimiter.join(mylist))

Output:

$ python ds_str_methods.py
Yes, the string starts with "Swa"
Yes, it contains the string "a"
Yes, it contains the string "war"
Brazil_*_Russia_*_India_*_China

How It Works

Here, we see a lot of the string methods in action. The startswith method is used to find
out whether the string starts with the given string. The in operator is used to check if a
given string is a part of the string.

The find method is used to locate the position of the given substring within the string;
find returns -1 if it is unsuccessful in finding the substring. The str class also has a neat
method to join the items of a sequence with the string acting as a delimiter between each

87
Data Structures

item of the sequence and returns a bigger string generated from this.

Summary
We have explored the various built-in data structures of Python in detail. These data
structures will be essential for writing programs of reasonable size.

Now that we have a lot of the basics of Python in place, we will next see how to design and
write a real-world Python program.

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Problem Solving

# Problem Solving

We have explored various parts of the Python language and now we will take a look at how
all these parts fit together, by designing and writing a program which does something useful.
The idea is to learn how to write a Python script on your own.

The Problem
The problem we want to solve is:

I want a program which creates a backup of all my important files.

Although, this is a simple problem, there is not enough information for us to get started with
the solution. A little more analysis is required. For example, how do we specify which files
are to be backed up? How are they stored? Where are they stored?

After analyzing the problem properly, we design our program. We make a list of things about
how our program should work. In this case, I have created the following list on how I want it
to work. If you do the design, you may not come up with the same kind of analysis since
every person has their own way of doing things, so that is perfectly okay.

The files and directories to be backed up are specified in a list.

The backup must be stored in a main backup directory.
The files are backed up into a zip file.
The name of the zip archive is the current date and time.
We use the standard zip command available by default in any standard GNU/Linux or
Unix distribution. Note that you can use any archiving command you want as long as it
has a command line interface.

For Windows users

Windows users can install the zip command from the GnuWin32 project page and
add C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin to your system PATH environment variable, similar
to what we did for recognizing the python command itself.

The Solution
As the design of our program is now reasonably stable, we can write the code which is an
implementation of our solution.

Save as backup_ver1.py :

89
Problem Solving

import os
import time

# 1. The files and directories to be backed up are

# specified in a list.
# Example on Windows:
# source = ['"C:\\My Documents"']
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
source = ['/Users/swa/notes']
# Notice we have to use double quotes inside a string
# for names with spaces in it. We could have also used
# a raw string by writing [r'C:\My Documents'].

# 2. The backup must be stored in a

# main backup directory
# Example on Windows:
# target_dir = 'E:\\Backup'
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
target_dir = '/Users/swa/backup'
# Remember to change this to which folder you will be using

# 3. The files are backed up into a zip file.

# 4. The name of the zip archive is the current date and time
target = target_dir + os.sep + \
time.strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S') + '.zip'

# Create target directory if it is not present

if not os.path.exists(target_dir):
os.mkdir(target_dir) # make directory

# 5. We use the zip command to put the files in a zip archive

zip_command = 'zip -r {0} {1}'.format(target,
' '.join(source))

# Run the backup

print('Zip command is:')
print(zip_command)
print('Running:')
if os.system(zip_command) == 0:
print('Successful backup to', target)
else:
print('Backup FAILED')

Output:

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Problem Solving

$ python backup_ver1.py
Zip command is:
zip -r /Users/swa/backup/20140328084844.zip /Users/swa/notes
Running:
adding: Users/swa/notes/ (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah1.txt (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah2.txt (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah3.txt (stored 0%)
Successful backup to /Users/swa/backup/20140328084844.zip

Now, we are in the testing phase where we test that our program works properly. If it doesn't
behave as expected, then we have to debug our program i.e. remove the bugs (errors) from
the program.

If the above program does not work for you, copy the line printed after the Zip command is

line in the output, paste it in the shell (on GNU/Linux and Mac OS X) / cmd (on Windows),
see what the error is and try to fix it. Also check the zip command manual on what could be
wrong. If this command succeeds, then the problem might be in the Python program itself,
so check if it exactly matches the program written above.

How It Works

You will notice how we have converted our design into code in a step-by-step manner.

We make use of the os and time modules by first importing them. Then, we specify the
files and directories to be backed up in the source list. The target directory is where we
store all the backup files and this is specified in the target_dir variable. The name of the
zip archive that we are going to create is the current date and time which we generate using
the time.strftime() function. It will also have the .zip extension and will be stored in the
target_dir directory.

Notice the use of the os.sep variable - this gives the directory separator according to your
operating system, i.e. it will be '/' in GNU/Linux, Unix, macOS, and will be '\\' in
Windows. Using os.sep instead of these characters directly will make our program portable
and work across all of these systems.

The time.strftime() function takes a specification such as the one we have used in the
above program. The %Y specification will be replaced by the year with the century. The %m

specification will be replaced by the month as a decimal number between 01 and 12 and
so on. The complete list of such specifications can be found in the Python Reference
Manual.

We create the name of the target zip file using the addition operator which concatenates the
strings i.e. it joins the two strings together and returns a new one. Then, we create a string
zip_command which contains the command that we are going to execute. You can check if

91
Problem Solving

this command works by running it in the shell (GNU/Linux terminal or DOS prompt).

The zip command that we are using has some options available, and one of these options
is -r . The -r option specifies that the zip command should work recursively for
directories, i.e. it should include all the subdirectories and files. Options are followed by the
name of the zip archive to create, followed by the list of files and directories to backup. We
convert the source list into a string using the join method of strings which we have
already seen how to use.

Then, we finally run the command using the os.system function which runs the command
as if it was run from the system i.e. in the shell - it returns 0 if the command was
successfully, else it returns an error number.

Depending on the outcome of the command, we print the appropriate message that the
backup has failed or succeeded.

That's it, we have created a script to take a backup of our important files!

Note to Windows Users

Instead of double backslash escape sequences, you can also use raw strings. For
example, use 'C:\\Documents' or r'C:\Documents' . However, do not use
'C:\Documents' since you end up using an unknown escape sequence \D .

Now that we have a working backup script, we can use it whenever we want to take a
backup of the files. This is called the operation phase or the deployment phase of the
software.

The above program works properly, but (usually) first programs do not work exactly as you
expect. For example, there might be problems if you have not designed the program
properly or if you have made a mistake when typing the code, etc. Appropriately, you will
have to go back to the design phase or you will have to debug your program.

Second Version
The first version of our script works. However, we can make some refinements to it so that it
can work better on a daily basis. This is called the maintenance phase of the software.

One of the refinements I felt was useful is a better file-naming mechanism - using the time
as the name of the file within a directory with the current date as a directory within the main
backup directory. The first advantage is that your backups are stored in a hierarchical
manner and therefore it is much easier to manage. The second advantage is that the

92
Problem Solving

filenames are much shorter. The third advantage is that separate directories will help you
check if you have made a backup for each day since the directory would be created only if
you have made a backup for that day.

Save as backup_ver2.py :

93
Problem Solving

import os
import time

# 1. The files and directories to be backed up are

# specified in a list.
# Example on Windows:
# source = ['"C:\\My Documents"', 'C:\\Code']
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
source = ['/Users/swa/notes']
# Notice we had to use double quotes inside the string
# for names with spaces in it.

# 2. The backup must be stored in a

# main backup directory
# Example on Windows:
# target_dir = 'E:\\Backup'
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
target_dir = '/Users/swa/backup'
# Remember to change this to which folder you will be using

# Create target directory if it is not present

if not os.path.exists(target_dir):
os.mkdir(target_dir) # make directory

# 3. The files are backed up into a zip file.

# 4. The current day is the name of the subdirectory
# in the main directory.
today = target_dir + os.sep + time.strftime('%Y%m%d')
# The current time is the name of the zip archive.
now = time.strftime('%H%M%S')

# The name of the zip file

target = today + os.sep + now + '.zip'

# Create the subdirectory if it isn't already there

if not os.path.exists(today):
os.mkdir(today)
print('Successfully created directory', today)

# 5. We use the zip command to put the files in a zip archive

zip_command = 'zip -r {0} {1}'.format(target,
' '.join(source))

# Run the backup

print('Zip command is:')
print(zip_command)
print('Running:')
if os.system(zip_command) == 0:
print('Successful backup to', target)
else:
print('Backup FAILED')

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Problem Solving

Output:

$ python backup_ver2.py
Successfully created directory /Users/swa/backup/20140329
Zip command is:
zip -r /Users/swa/backup/20140329/073201.zip /Users/swa/notes
Running:
adding: Users/swa/notes/ (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah1.txt (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah2.txt (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah3.txt (stored 0%)
Successful backup to /Users/swa/backup/20140329/073201.zip

How It Works

Most of the program remains the same. The changes are that we check if there is a directory
with the current day as its name inside the main backup directory using the os.path.exists

function. If it doesn't exist, we create it using the os.mkdir function.

Third Version
The second version works fine when I do many backups, but when there are lots of backups,
I am finding it hard to differentiate what the backups were for! For example, I might have
made some major changes to a program or presentation, then I want to associate what
those changes are with the name of the zip archive. This can be easily achieved by
attaching a user-supplied comment to the name of the zip archive.

WARNING: The following program does not work, so do not be alarmed, please follow along
because there's a lesson in here.

Save as backup_ver3.py :

import os
import time

# 1. The files and directories to be backed up are

# specified in a list.
# Example on Windows:
# source = ['"C:\\My Documents"', 'C:\\Code']
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
source = ['/Users/swa/notes']
# Notice we had to use double quotes inside the string
# for names with spaces in it.

# 2. The backup must be stored in a

# main backup directory

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Problem Solving

# Example on Windows:
# target_dir = 'E:\\Backup'
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
target_dir = '/Users/swa/backup'
# Remember to change this to which folder you will be using

# Create target directory if it is not present

if not os.path.exists(target_dir):
os.mkdir(target_dir) # make directory

# 3. The files are backed up into a zip file.

# 4. The current day is the name of the subdirectory
# in the main directory.
today = target_dir + os.sep + time.strftime('%Y%m%d')
# The current time is the name of the zip archive.
now = time.strftime('%H%M%S')

# Take a comment from the user to

# create the name of the zip file
comment = input('Enter a comment --> ')
# Check if a comment was entered
if len(comment) == 0:
target = today + os.sep + now + '.zip'
else:
target = today + os.sep + now + '_' +
comment.replace(' ', '_') + '.zip'

# Create the subdirectory if it isn't already there

if not os.path.exists(today):
os.mkdir(today)
print('Successfully created directory', today)

# 5. We use the zip command to put the files in a zip archive

zip_command = "zip -r {0} {1}".format(target,
' '.join(source))

# Run the backup

print('Zip command is:')
print(zip_command)
print('Running:')
if os.system(zip_command) == 0:
print('Successful backup to', target)
else:
print('Backup FAILED')

Output:

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Problem Solving

$ python backup_ver3.py
File "backup_ver3.py", line 39
target = today + os.sep + now + '_' +
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

How This (does not) Work

This program does not work! Python says there is a syntax error which means that the script
does not satisfy the structure that Python expects to see. When we observe the error given
by Python, it also tells us the place where it detected the error as well. So we start
debugging our program from that line.

On careful observation, we see that the single logical line has been split into two physical
lines but we have not specified that these two physical lines belong together. Basically,
Python has found the addition operator ( + ) without any operand in that logical line and
hence it doesn't know how to continue. Remember that we can specify that the logical line
continues in the next physical line by the use of a backslash at the end of the physical line.
So, we make this correction to our program. This correction of the program when we find
errors is called bug fixing.

Fourth Version
Save as backup_ver4.py :

import os
import time

# 1. The files and directories to be backed up are

# specified in a list.
# Example on Windows:
# source = ['"C:\\My Documents"', 'C:\\Code']
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
source = ['/Users/swa/notes']
# Notice we had to use double quotes inside the string
# for names with spaces in it.

# 2. The backup must be stored in a

# main backup directory
# Example on Windows:
# target_dir = 'E:\\Backup'
# Example on Mac OS X and Linux:
target_dir = '/Users/swa/backup'
# Remember to change this to which folder you will be using

# Create target directory if it is not present

97
Problem Solving

if not os.path.exists(target_dir):
os.mkdir(target_dir) # make directory

# 3. The files are backed up into a zip file.

# 4. The current day is the name of the subdirectory
# in the main directory.
today = target_dir + os.sep + time.strftime('%Y%m%d')
# The current time is the name of the zip archive.
now = time.strftime('%H%M%S')

# Take a comment from the user to

# create the name of the zip file
comment = input('Enter a comment --> ')
# Check if a comment was entered
if len(comment) == 0:
target = today + os.sep + now + '.zip'
else:
target = today + os.sep + now + '_' + \
comment.replace(' ', '_') + '.zip'

# Create the subdirectory if it isn't already there

if not os.path.exists(today):
os.mkdir(today)
print('Successfully created directory', today)

# 5. We use the zip command to put the files in a zip archive

zip_command = 'zip -r {0} {1}'.format(target,
' '.join(source))

# Run the backup

print('Zip command is:')
print(zip_command)
print('Running:')
if os.system(zip_command) == 0:
print('Successful backup to', target)
else:
print('Backup FAILED')

Output:

$ python backup_ver4.py
Enter a comment --> added new examples
Zip command is:
zip -r /Users/swa/backup/20140329/074122_added_new_examples.zip /Users/swa/notes
Running:
adding: Users/swa/notes/ (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah1.txt (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah2.txt (stored 0%)
adding: Users/swa/notes/blah3.txt (stored 0%)
Successful backup to /Users/swa/backup/20140329/074122_added_new_examples.zip

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Problem Solving

How It Works

This program now works! Let us go through the actual enhancements that we had made in
version 3. We take in the user's comments using the input function and then check if the
user actually entered something by finding out the length of the input using the len

function. If the user has just pressed enter without entering anything (maybe it was just a
routine backup or no special changes were made), then we proceed as we have done
before.

However, if a comment was supplied, then this is attached to the name of the zip archive just
before the .zip extension. Notice that we are replacing spaces in the comment with
underscores - this is because managing filenames without spaces is much easier.

More Refinements
The fourth version is a satisfactorily working script for most users, but there is always room
for improvement. For example, you can include a verbosity level for the zip command by
specifying a -v option to make your program become more talkative or a -q option to
make it quiet.

Another possible enhancement would be to allow extra files and directories to be passed to
the script at the command line. We can get these names from the sys.argv list and we can
add them to our source list using the extend method provided by the list class.

The most important refinement would be to not use the os.system way of creating archives
and instead using the zipfile or tarfile built-in modules to create these archives. They are part
of the standard library and available already for you to use without external dependencies on
the zip program to be available on your computer.

However, I have been using the os.system way of creating a backup in the above examples
purely for pedagogical purposes, so that the example is simple enough to be understood by
everybody but real enough to be useful.

Can you try writing the fifth version that uses the zipfile module instead of the os.system

call?

The Software Development Process

We have now gone through the various phases in the process of writing a software. These
phases can be summarised as follows:

1. What (Analysis)

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Problem Solving

2. How (Design)
3. Do It (Implementation)
4. Test (Testing and Debugging)
5. Use (Operation or Deployment)
6. Maintain (Refinement)

A recommended way of writing programs is the procedure we have followed in creating the
backup script: Do the analysis and design. Start implementing with a simple version. Test
and debug it. Use it to ensure that it works as expected. Now, add any features that you
want and continue to repeat the Do It-Test-Use cycle as many times as required.

Remember:

Software is grown, not built. -- Bill de hÓra

Summary
We have seen how to create our own Python programs/scripts and the various stages
involved in writing such programs. You may find it useful to create your own program just like
we did in this chapter so that you become comfortable with Python as well as problem-
solving.

Next, we will discuss object-oriented programming.

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Object Oriented Programming

Object Oriented Programming

In all the programs we wrote till now, we have designed our program around functions i.e.
blocks of statements which manipulate data. This is called the procedure-oriented way of
programming. There is another way of organizing your program which is to combine data
and functionality and wrap it inside something called an object. This is called the object
oriented programming paradigm. Most of the time you can use procedural programming, but
when writing large programs or have a problem that is better suited to this method, you can
use object oriented programming techniques.

Classes and objects are the two main aspects of object oriented programming. A class
creates a new type where objects are instances of the class. An analogy is that you can
have variables of type int which translates to saying that variables that store integers are
variables which are instances (objects) of the int class.

Note for Static Language Programmers

Note that even integers are treated as objects (of the int class). This is unlike C++
and Java (before version 1.5) where integers are primitive native types.

See help(int) for more details on the class.

C# and Java 1.5 programmers will find this similar to the boxing and unboxing concept.

Objects can store data using ordinary variables that belong to the object. Variables that
belong to an object or class are referred to as fields. Objects can also have functionality by
using functions that belong to a class. Such functions are called methods of the class. This
terminology is important because it helps us to differentiate between functions and variables
which are independent and those which belong to a class or object. Collectively, the fields
and methods can be referred to as the attributes of that class.

Fields are of two types - they can belong to each instance/object of the class or they can
belong to the class itself. They are called instance variables and class variables
respectively.

A class is created using the class keyword. The fields and methods of the class are listed
in an indented block.

The self

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Object Oriented Programming

Class methods have only one specific difference from ordinary functions - they must have an
extra first name that has to be added to the beginning of the parameter list, but you do not
give a value for this parameter when you call the method, Python will provide it. This
particular variable refers to the object itself, and by convention, it is given the name self .

Although, you can give any name for this parameter, it is strongly recommended that you
use the name self - any other name is definitely frowned upon. There are many
advantages to using a standard name - any reader of your program will immediately
recognize it and even specialized IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) can help
you if you use self .

Note for C++/Java/C# Programmers

The self in Python is equivalent to the this pointer in C++ and the this reference
in Java and C#.

You must be wondering how Python gives the value for self and why you don't need to
give a value for it. An example will make this clear. Say you have a class called MyClass

and an instance of this class called myobject . When you call a method of this object as
myobject.method(arg1, arg2) , this is automatically converted by Python into
MyClass.method(myobject, arg1, arg2) - this is all the special self is about.

This also means that if you have a method which takes no arguments, then you still have to
have one argument - the self .

Classes
The simplest class possible is shown in the following example (save as
oop_simplestclass.py ).

class Person:
pass # An empty block

p = Person()
print(p)

Output:

$ python oop_simplestclass.py
<__main__.Person instance at 0x10171f518>

How It Works

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Object Oriented Programming

We create a new class using the class statement and the name of the class. This is
followed by an indented block of statements which form the body of the class. In this case,
we have an empty block which is indicated using the pass statement.

Next, we create an object/instance of this class using the name of the class followed by a
pair of parentheses. (We will learn more about instantiation in the next section). For our
verification, we confirm the type of the variable by simply printing it. It tells us that we have
an instance of the Person class in the __main__ module.

Notice that the address of the computer memory where your object is stored is also printed.
The address will have a different value on your computer since Python can store the object
wherever it finds space.

Methods
We have already discussed that classes/objects can have methods just like functions except
that we have an extra self variable. We will now see an example (save as
oop_method.py ).

class Person:
def say_hi(self):
print('Hello, how are you?')

p = Person()
p.say_hi()
# The previous 2 lines can also be written as
# Person().say_hi()

Output:

$ python oop_method.py
Hello, how are you?

How It Works

Here we see the self in action. Notice that the say_hi method takes no parameters but
still has the self in the function definition.

The __init__ method

There are many method names which have special significance in Python classes. We will
see the significance of the __init__ method now.

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Object Oriented Programming

The __init__ method is run as soon as an object of a class is instantiated (i.e. created).
The method is useful to do any initialization (i.e. passing initial values to your object) you
want to do with your object. Notice the double underscores both at the beginning and at the
end of the name.

Example (save as oop_init.py ):

class Person:
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name

def say_hi(self):
print('Hello, my name is', self.name)

p = Person('Swaroop')
p.say_hi()
# The previous 2 lines can also be written as
# Person('Swaroop').say_hi()

Output:

$ python oop_init.py
Hello, my name is Swaroop

How It Works

Here, we define the __init__ method as taking a parameter name (along with the usual
self ). Here, we just create a new field also called name . Notice these are two different
variables even though they are both called 'name'. There is no problem because the dotted
notation self.name means that there is something called "name" that is part of the object
called "self" and the other name is a local variable. Since we explicitly indicate which name
we are referring to, there is no confusion.

When creating new instance p , of the class Person , we do so by using the class name,
followed by the arguments in the parentheses: p = Person('Swaroop').

We do not explicitly call the __init__ method. This is the special significance of this
method.

Now, we are able to use the self.name field in our methods which is demonstrated in the
say_hi method.

Class And Object Variables

104
Object Oriented Programming

We have already discussed the functionality part of classes and objects (i.e. methods), now
let us learn about the data part. The data part, i.e. fields, are nothing but ordinary variables
that are bound to the namespaces of the classes and objects. This means that these names
are valid within the context of these classes and objects only. That's why they are called
name spaces.

There are two types of fields - class variables and object variables which are classified
depending on whether the class or the object owns the variables respectively.

Class variables are shared - they can be accessed by all instances of that class. There is
only one copy of the class variable and when any one object makes a change to a class
variable, that change will be seen by all the other instances.

Object variables are owned by each individual object/instance of the class. In this case,
each object has its own copy of the field i.e. they are not shared and are not related in any
way to the field by the same name in a different instance. An example will make this easy to
understand (save as oop_objvar.py ):

class Robot:
"""Represents a robot, with a name."""

# A class variable, counting the number of robots

population = 0

def __init__(self, name):

"""Initializes the data."""
self.name = name
print("(Initializing {})".format(self.name))

# When this person is created, the robot

# adds to the population
Robot.population += 1

def die(self):
"""I am dying."""
print("{} is being destroyed!".format(self.name))

Robot.population -= 1

if Robot.population == 0:
print("{} was the last one.".format(self.name))
else:
print("There are still {:d} robots working.".format(
Robot.population))

def say_hi(self):
"""Greeting by the robot.

Yeah, they can do that."""

105
Object Oriented Programming

print("Greetings, my masters call me {}.".format(self.name))

@classmethod
def how_many(cls):
"""Prints the current population."""
print("We have {:d} robots.".format(cls.population))

droid1 = Robot("R2-D2")
droid1.say_hi()
Robot.how_many()

droid2 = Robot("C-3PO")
droid2.say_hi()
Robot.how_many()

print("\nRobots can do some work here.\n")

print("Robots have finished their work. So let's destroy them.")

droid1.die()
droid2.die()

Robot.how_many()

Output:

$ python oop_objvar.py
(Initializing R2-D2)
Greetings, my masters call me R2-D2.
We have 1 robots.
(Initializing C-3PO)
Greetings, my masters call me C-3PO.
We have 2 robots.

Robots can do some work here.

Robots have finished their work. So let's destroy them.

R2-D2 is being destroyed!
There are still 1 robots working.
C-3PO is being destroyed!
C-3PO was the last one.
We have 0 robots.

How It Works

This is a long example but helps demonstrate the nature of class and object variables. Here,
population belongs to the Robot class and hence is a class variable. The name variable
belongs to the object (it is assigned using self ) and hence is an object variable.

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Object Oriented Programming

Thus, we refer to the population class variable as Robot.population and not as

self.population . We refer to the object variable name using self.name notation in the
methods of that object. Remember this simple difference between class and object
variables. Also note that an object variable with the same name as a class variable will hide
the class variable!

Instead of Robot.population , we could have also used self.__class__.population because

every object refers to its class via the self.__class__ attribute.

The how_many is actually a method that belongs to the class and not to the object. This
means we can define it as either a classmethod or a staticmethod depending on whether
we need to know which class we are part of. Since we refer to a class variable, let's use
classmethod .

We have marked the how_many method as a class method using a decorator.

Decorators can be imagined to be a shortcut to calling a wrapper function (i.e. a function that
"wraps" around another function so that it can do something before or after the inner
function), so applying the @classmethod decorator is the same as calling:

how_many = classmethod(how_many)

Observe that the __init__ method is used to initialize the Robot instance with a name. In
this method, we increase the population count by 1 since we have one more robot being
added. Also observe that the values of self.name is specific to each object which indicates
the nature of object variables.

Remember, that you must refer to the variables and methods of the same object using the
self only. This is called an attribute reference.

In this program, we also see the use of docstrings for classes as well as methods. We can
access the class docstring at runtime using Robot.__doc__ and the method docstring as
Robot.say_hi.__doc__

In the die method, we simply decrease the Robot.population count by 1.

All class members are public. One exception: If you use data members with names using the
double underscore prefix such as __privatevar , Python uses name-mangling to effectively
make it a private variable.

Thus, the convention followed is that any variable that is to be used only within the class or
object should begin with an underscore and all other names are public and can be used by
other classes/objects. Remember that this is only a convention and is not enforced by
Python (except for the double underscore prefix).

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Object Oriented Programming

Note for C++/Java/C# Programmers

All class members (including the data members) are public and all the methods are
virtual in Python.

Inheritance
One of the major benefits of object oriented programming is reuse of code and one of the
ways this is achieved is through the inheritance mechanism. Inheritance can be best
imagined as implementing a type and subtype relationship between classes.

Suppose you want to write a program which has to keep track of the teachers and students
in a college. They have some common characteristics such as name, age and address.
They also have specific characteristics such as salary, courses and leaves for teachers and,
marks and fees for students.

You can create two independent classes for each type and process them but adding a new
common characteristic would mean adding to both of these independent classes. This
quickly becomes unwieldy.

A better way would be to create a common class called SchoolMember and then have the
teacher and student classes inherit from this class, i.e. they will become sub-types of this
type (class) and then we can add specific characteristics to these sub-types.

There are many advantages to this approach. If we add/change any functionality in

SchoolMember , this is automatically reflected in the subtypes as well. For example, you can
add a new ID card field for both teachers and students by simply adding it to the
SchoolMember class. However, changes in the subtypes do not affect other subtypes.
Another advantage is that you can refer to a teacher or student object as a SchoolMember

object which could be useful in some situations such as counting of the number of school
members. This is called polymorphism where a sub-type can be substituted in any situation
where a parent type is expected, i.e. the object can be treated as an instance of the parent
class.

Also observe that we reuse the code of the parent class and we do not need to repeat it in
the different classes as we would have had to in case we had used independent classes.

The SchoolMember class in this situation is known as the base class or the superclass. The
Teacher and Student classes are called the derived classes or subclasses.

We will now see this example as a program (save as oop_subclass.py ):

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Object Oriented Programming

class SchoolMember:
'''Represents any school member.'''
def __init__(self, name, age):
self.name = name
self.age = age
print('(Initialized SchoolMember: {})'.format(self.name))

def tell(self):
'''Tell my details.'''
print('Name:"{}" Age:"{}"'.format(self.name, self.age), end=" ")

class Teacher(SchoolMember):
'''Represents a teacher.'''
def __init__(self, name, age, salary):
SchoolMember.__init__(self, name, age)
self.salary = salary
print('(Initialized Teacher: {})'.format(self.name))

def tell(self):
SchoolMember.tell(self)
print('Salary: "{:d}"'.format(self.salary))

class Student(SchoolMember):
'''Represents a student.'''
def __init__(self, name, age, marks):
SchoolMember.__init__(self, name, age)
self.marks = marks
print('(Initialized Student: {})'.format(self.name))

def tell(self):
SchoolMember.tell(self)
print('Marks: "{:d}"'.format(self.marks))

t = Teacher('Mrs. Shrividya', 40, 30000)

s = Student('Swaroop', 25, 75)

# prints a blank line

print()

members = [t, s]
for member in members:
# Works for both Teachers and Students
member.tell()

Output:

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Object Oriented Programming

$ python oop_subclass.py
(Initialized SchoolMember: Mrs. Shrividya)
(Initialized Teacher: Mrs. Shrividya)
(Initialized SchoolMember: Swaroop)
(Initialized Student: Swaroop)

Name:"Mrs. Shrividya" Age:"40" Salary: "30000"

Name:"Swaroop" Age:"25" Marks: "75"

How It Works

To use inheritance, we specify the base class names in a tuple following the class name in
the class definition (for example, class Teacher(SchoolMember) ). Next, we observe that the
__init__ method of the base class is explicitly called using the self variable so that we
can initialize the base class part of an instance in the subclass. This is very important to
remember- Since we are defining a __init__ method in Teacher and Student

subclasses, Python does not automatically call the constructor of the base class
SchoolMember , you have to explicitly call it yourself.

In contrast, if we have not defined an __init__ method in a subclass, Python will call the
constructor of the base class automatically.

While we could treat instances of Teacher or Student as we would an instance of

SchoolMember and access the tell method of SchoolMember by simply typing
Teacher.tell or Student.tell , we instead define another tell method in each subclass
(using the tell method of SchoolMember for part of it) to tailor it for that subclass. Because
we have done this, when we write Teacher.tell Python uses the tell method for that
subclass vs the superclass. However, if we did not have a tell method in the subclass,
Python would use the tell method in the superclass. Python always starts looking for
methods in the actual subclass type first, and if it doesn’t find anything, it starts looking at the
methods in the subclass’s base classes, one by one in the order they are specified in the
tuple (here we only have 1 base class, but you can have multiple base classes) in the class
definition.

A note on terminology - if more than one class is listed in the inheritance tuple, then it is
called multiple inheritance.

The end parameter is used in the print function in the superclass's tell() method to
print a line and allow the next print to continue on the same line. This is a trick to make
print not print a \n (newline) symbol at the end of the printing.

Summary

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Object Oriented Programming

We have now explored the various aspects of classes and objects as well as the various
terminologies associated with it. We have also seen the benefits and pitfalls of object-
oriented programming. Python is highly object-oriented and understanding these concepts
carefully will help you a lot in the long run.

Next, we will learn how to deal with input/output and how to access files in Python.

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Input and Output

Input and Output

There will be situations where your program has to interact with the user. For example, you
would want to take input from the user and then print some results back. We can achieve
this using the input() function and print function respectively.

For output, we can also use the various methods of the str (string) class. For example,
you can use the rjust method to get a string which is right justified to a specified width.
See help(str) for more details.

Another common type of input/output is dealing with files. The ability to create, read and
write files is essential to many programs and we will explore this aspect in this chapter.

Input from user

Save this program as io_input.py :

def reverse(text):
return text[::-1]

def is_palindrome(text):
return text == reverse(text)

something = input("Enter text: ")

if is_palindrome(something):
print("Yes, it is a palindrome")
else:
print("No, it is not a palindrome")

Output:

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Input and Output

$ python3 io_input.py
Enter text: sir
No, it is not a palindrome

$ python3 io_input.py
Enter text: madam
Yes, it is a palindrome

$ python3 io_input.py
Enter text: racecar
Yes, it is a palindrome

How It Works

We use the slicing feature to reverse the text. We've already seen how we can make slices
from sequences using the seq[a:b] code starting from position a to position b . We can
also provide a third argument that determines the step by which the slicing is done. The
default step is 1 because of which it returns a continuous part of the text. Giving a negative
step, i.e., -1 will return the text in reverse.

The input() function takes a string as argument and displays it to the user. Then it waits
for the user to type something and press the return key. Once the user has entered and
pressed the return key, the input() function will then return that text the user has entered.

We take that text and reverse it. If the original text and reversed text are equal, then the text
is a palindrome.

Homework exercise
Checking whether a text is a palindrome should also ignore punctuation, spaces and case.
For example, "Rise to vote, sir." is also a palindrome but our current program doesn't say it
is. Can you improve the above program to recognize this palindrome?
1
If you need a hint, the idea is that...

Files
You can open and use files for reading or writing by creating an object of the file class
and using its read , readline or write methods appropriately to read from or write to the
file. The ability to read or write to the file depends on the mode you have specified for the file
opening. Then finally, when you are finished with the file, you call the close method to tell
Python that we are done using the file.

Example (save as io_using_file.py ):

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Input and Output

poem = '''\
Programming is fun
When the work is done
if you wanna make your work also fun:
use Python!
'''

# Open for 'w'riting

f = open('poem.txt', 'w')
# Write text to file
f.write(poem)
# Close the file
f.close()

# If no mode is specified,
# 'r'ead mode is assumed by default
f = open('poem.txt')
while True:
line = f.readline()
# Zero length indicates EOF
if len(line) == 0:
break
# The `line` already has a newline
# at the end of each line
# since it is reading from a file.
print(line, end='')
# close the file
f.close()

Output:

$ python3 io_using_file.py
Programming is fun
When the work is done
if you wanna make your work also fun:
use Python!

How It Works

Note that we can create a new file object simply by using the open method. We open (or
create it if it doesn't already exist) this file by using the built-in open function and specifying
the name of the file and the mode in which we want to open the file. The mode can be a
read mode ( 'r' ), write mode ( 'w' ) or append mode ( 'a' ). We can also specify whether
we are reading, writing, or appending in text mode ( 't' ) or binary mode ( 'b' ). There are
actually many more modes available and help(open) will give you more details about them.
By default, open() considers the file to be a 't'ext file and opens it in 'r'ead mode.

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Input and Output

In our example, we first open/create the file in write text mode and use the write method of
the file object to write our string variable poem to the file and then we finally close the file.

Next, we open the same file again for reading. We don't need to specify a mode because
'read text file' is the default mode. We read in each line of the file using the readline

method in a loop. This method returns a complete line including the newline character at the
end of the line. When an empty string is returned, it means that we have reached the end of
the file and we 'break' out of the loop.

In the end, we finally close the file.

We can see from our readline output that this program has indeed written to and read from
our new poem.txt file.

Pickle
Python provides a standard module called pickle which you can use to store any plain
Python object in a file and then get it back later. This is called storing the object persistently.

Example (save as io_pickle.py ):

import pickle

# The name of the file where we will store the object

shoplistfile = 'shoplist.data'
# The list of things to buy
shoplist = ['apple', 'mango', 'carrot']

# Write to the file

f = open(shoplistfile, 'wb')
# Dump the object to a file
pickle.dump(shoplist, f)
f.close()

# Destroy the shoplist variable

del shoplist

# Read back from the storage

f = open(shoplistfile, 'rb')
# Load the object from the file
storedlist = pickle.load(f)
print(storedlist)
f.close()

Output:

115
Input and Output

$ python io_pickle.py
['apple', 'mango', 'carrot']

How It Works

To store an object in a file, we have to first open the file in write binary mode and then call
the dump function of the pickle module. This process is called pickling.

Next, we retrieve the object using the load function of the pickle module which returns
the object. This process is called unpickling.

Unicode
So far, when we have been writing and using strings, or reading and writing to a file, we
have used simple English characters only. Both English and non-English characters can be
represented in Unicode (please see the articles at the end of this section for more info), and
Python 3 by default stores string variables (think of all that text we wrote using single or
double or triple quotes) in Unicode.

NOTE: If you are using Python 2, and we want to be able to read and write other non-
English languages, we need to use the unicode type, and it all starts with the character
u , e.g. u"hello world"

>>> "hello world"

'hello world'
>>> type("hello world")
<class 'str'>
>>> u"hello world"
'hello world'
>>> type(u"hello world")
<class 'str'>

When data is sent over the Internet, we need to send it in bytes... something your computer
easily understands. The rules for translating Unicode (which is what Python uses when it
stores a string) to bytes is called encoding. A popular encoding to use is UTF-8. We can
read and write in UTF-8 by using a simple keyword argument in our open function.

116
Input and Output

# encoding=utf-8
import io

f = io.open("abc.txt", "wt", encoding="utf-8")

f.write(u"Imagine non-English language here")
f.close()

text = io.open("abc.txt", encoding="utf-8").read()

print(text)

How It Works

We use io.open and then use the encoding argument in the first open statement to
encode the message, and then again in the second open statement when decoding the
message. Note that we should only use encoding in the open statement when in text mode.

Whenever we write a program that uses Unicode literals (by putting a u before the string)
like we have used above, we have to make sure that Python itself is told that our program
uses UTF-8, and we have to put # encoding=utf-8 comment at the top of our program.

You should learn more about this topic by reading:

"The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know
About Unicode and Character Sets"
Python Unicode Howto
Pragmatic Unicode talk by Nat Batchelder

Summary
We have discussed various types of input/output, about file handling, about the pickle
module and about Unicode.

Next, we will explore the concept of exceptions.

1
. Use a tuple (you can find a list of all punctuation marks here) to hold all the forbidden
characters, then use the membership test to determine whether a character should be
removed or not, i.e. forbidden = ( ! , ? , . , ...). ↩

117
Exceptions

Exceptions
Exceptions occur when exceptional situations occur in your program. For example, what if
you are going to read a file and the file does not exist? Or what if you accidentally deleted it
when the program was running? Such situations are handled using exceptions.

Similarly, what if your program had some invalid statements? This is handled by Python
which raises its hands and tells you there is an error.

Errors
Consider a simple print function call. What if we misspelt print as Print ? Note the
capitalization. In this case, Python raises a syntax error.

>>> Print("Hello World")

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'Print' is not defined
>>> print("Hello World")
Hello World

Observe that a NameError is raised and also the location where the error was detected is
printed. This is what an error handler for this error does.

Exceptions
We will try to read input from the user. Enter the first line below and hit the Enter key.
When your computer prompts you for input, instead press [ctrl-d] on a Mac or [ctrl-z]

with Windows and see what happens. (If you're using Windows and neither option works,
you can try [ctrl-c] in the Command Prompt to generate a KeyboardInterrupt error
instead).

>>> s = input('Enter something --> ')

Enter something --> Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
EOFError

Python raises an error called EOFError which basically means it found an end of file symbol
(which is represented by ctrl-d ) when it did not expect to see it.

118
Exceptions

Handling Exceptions
We can handle exceptions using the try..except statement. We basically put our usual
statements within the try-block and put all our error handlers in the except-block.

Example (save as exceptions_handle.py ):

try:
text = input('Enter something --> ')
except EOFError:
print('Why did you do an EOF on me?')
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print('You cancelled the operation.')
else:
print('You entered {}'.format(text))

Output:

# Press ctrl + d
$ python exceptions_handle.py
Enter something --> Why did you do an EOF on me?

# Press ctrl + c
$ python exceptions_handle.py
Enter something --> ^CYou cancelled the operation.

$ python exceptions_handle.py
Enter something --> No exceptions
You entered No exceptions

How It Works

We put all the statements that might raise exceptions/errors inside the try block and then
put handlers for the appropriate errors/exceptions in the except clause/block. The except

clause can handle a single specified error or exception, or a parenthesized list of

errors/exceptions. If no names of errors or exceptions are supplied, it will handle all errors
and exceptions.

Note that there has to be at least one except clause associated with every try clause.
Otherwise, what's the point of having a try block?

If any error or exception is not handled, then the default Python handler is called which just
stops the execution of the program and prints an error message. We have already seen this
in action above.

119
Exceptions

You can also have an else clause associated with a try..except block. The else clause
is executed if no exception occurs.

In the next example, we will also see how to get the exception object so that we can retrieve
additional information.

Raising Exceptions
You can raise exceptions using the raise statement by providing the name of the
error/exception and the exception object that is to be thrown.

The error or exception that you can raise should be a class which directly or indirectly must
be a derived class of the Exception class.

Example (save as exceptions_raise.py ):

class ShortInputException(Exception):
'''A user-defined exception class.'''
def __init__(self, length, atleast):
Exception.__init__(self)
self.length = length
self.atleast = atleast

try:
text = input('Enter something --> ')
if len(text) < 3:
raise ShortInputException(len(text), 3)
# Other work can continue as usual here
except EOFError:
print('Why did you do an EOF on me?')
except ShortInputException as ex:
print(('ShortInputException: The input was ' +
'{0} long, expected at least {1}')
.format(ex.length, ex.atleast))
else:
print('No exception was raised.')

Output:

$ python exceptions_raise.py
Enter something --> a
ShortInputException: The input was 1 long, expected at least 3

$ python exceptions_raise.py
Enter something --> abc
No exception was raised.

120
Exceptions

How It Works

Here, we are creating our own exception type. This new exception type is called
ShortInputException . It has two fields - length which is the length of the given input, and
atleast which is the minimum length that the program was expecting.

In the except clause, we mention the class of error which will be stored as the variable
name to hold the corresponding error/exception object. This is analogous to parameters and
arguments in a function call. Within this particular except clause, we use the length and
atleast fields of the exception object to print an appropriate message to the user.

Try ... Finally

Suppose you are reading a file in your program. How do you ensure that the file object is
closed properly whether or not an exception was raised? This can be done using the
finally block.

Save this program as exceptions_finally.py :

import sys
import time

f = None
try:
f = open("poem.txt")
# Our usual file-reading idiom
while True:
line = f.readline()
if len(line) == 0:
break
print(line, end='')
sys.stdout.flush()
print("Press ctrl+c now")
# To make sure it runs for a while
time.sleep(2)
except IOError:
print("Could not find file poem.txt")
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print("!! You cancelled the reading from the file.")
finally:
if f:
f.close()
print("(Cleaning up: Closed the file)")

Output:

121
Exceptions

$ python exceptions_finally.py
Programming is fun
Press ctrl+c now
^C!! You cancelled the reading from the file.
(Cleaning up: Closed the file)

How It Works

We do the usual file-reading stuff, but we have arbitrarily introduced sleeping for 2 seconds
after printing each line using the time.sleep function so that the program runs slowly
(Python is very fast by nature). When the program is still running, press ctrl + c to
interrupt/cancel the program.

Observe that the KeyboardInterrupt exception is thrown and the program quits. However,
before the program exits, the finally clause is executed and the file object is always closed.

Notice that a variable assigned a value of 0 or None or a variable which is an empty

sequence or collection is considered False by Python. This is why we can use if f: in
the code above.

Also note that we use sys.stdout.flush() after print so that it prints to the screen
immediately.

The with statement

Acquiring a resource in the try block and subsequently releasing the resource in the
finally block is a common pattern. Hence, there is also a with statement that enables
this to be done in a clean manner:

Save as exceptions_using_with.py :

with open("poem.txt") as f:
for line in f:
print(line, end='')

How It Works

The output should be same as the previous example. The difference here is that we are
using the open function with the with statement - we leave the closing of the file to be
done automatically by with open .

What happens behind the scenes is that there is a protocol used by the with statement. It
fetches the object returned by the open statement, let's call it "thefile" in this case.

122
Exceptions

It always calls the thefile.__enter__ function before starting the block of code under it and
always calls thefile.__exit__ after finishing the block of code.

So the code that we would have written in a finally block should be taken care of
automatically by the __exit__ method. This is what helps us to avoid having to use explicit
try..finally statements repeatedly.

More discussion on this topic is beyond scope of this book, so please refer PEP 343 for a
comprehensive explanation.

Summary
We have discussed the usage of the try..except and try..finally statements. We have
seen how to create our own exception types and how to raise exceptions as well.

Next, we will explore the Python Standard Library.

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Standard Library

Standard Library
The Python Standard Library contains a huge number of useful modules and is part of every
standard Python installation. It is important to become familiar with the Python Standard
Library since many problems can be solved quickly if you are familiar with the range of
things that these libraries can do.

We will explore some of the commonly used modules in this library. You can find complete
details for all of the modules in the Python Standard Library in the 'Library Reference'
section of the documentation that comes with your Python installation.

Let us explore a few useful modules.

CAUTION: If you find the topics in this chapter too advanced, you may skip this chapter.
However, I highly recommend coming back to this chapter when you are more
comfortable with programming using Python.

sys module
The sys module contains system-specific functionality. We have already seen that the
sys.argv list contains the command-line arguments.

Suppose we want to check the version of the Python software being used, the sys module
gives us that information.

>>> import sys

>>> sys.version_info
sys.version_info(major=3, minor=6, micro=0, releaselevel='final', serial=0)
>>> sys.version_info.major == 3
True

How It Works

The sys module has a version_info tuple that gives us the version information. The first
entry is the major version. We can pull out this information to use it.

logging module

124
Standard Library

What if you wanted to have some debugging messages or important messages to be stored
somewhere so that you can check whether your program has been running as you would
expect it? How do you "store somewhere" these messages? This can be achieved using the
logging module.

Save as stdlib_logging.py :

import os
import platform
import logging

if platform.platform().startswith('Windows'):
logging_file = os.path.join(os.getenv('HOMEDRIVE'),
os.getenv('HOMEPATH'),
'test.log')
else:
logging_file = os.path.join(os.getenv('HOME'),
'test.log')

print("Logging to", logging_file)

logging.basicConfig(
level=logging.DEBUG,
format='%(asctime)s : %(levelname)s : %(message)s',
filename=logging_file,
filemode='w',
)

logging.debug("Start of the program")

logging.info("Doing something")
logging.warning("Dying now")

Output:

$ python stdlib_logging.py
Logging to /Users/swa/test.log

$ cat /Users/swa/test.log
2014-03-29 09:27:36,660 : DEBUG : Start of the program
2014-03-29 09:27:36,660 : INFO : Doing something
2014-03-29 09:27:36,660 : WARNING : Dying now

The cat command is used in the command line to read the 'test.log' file. If the cat

command is not available, you can open the test.log file in a text editor instead.

How It Works

125
Standard Library

We use three modules from the standard library - the os module for interacting with the
operating system, the platform module for information about the platform i.e. the operating
system and the logging module to log information.

First, we check which operating system we are using by checking the string returned by
platform.platform() (for more information, see import platform; help(platform) ). If it is
Windows, we figure out the home drive, the home folder and the filename where we want to
store the information. Putting these three parts together, we get the full location of the file.
For other platforms, we need to know just the home folder of the user and we get the full
location of the file.

We use the os.path.join() function to put these three parts of the location together. The
reason to use a special function rather than just adding the strings together is because this
function will ensure the full location matches the format expected by the operating system.
Note: the join()' method we use here that's part of the os module is different from the

string method join()` that we've used elsewhere in this book.

We configure the logging module to write all the messages in a particular format to the file
we have specified.

Finally, we can put messages that are either meant for debugging, information, warning or
even critical messages. Once the program has run, we can check this file and we will know
what happened in the program, even though no information was displayed to the user
running the program.

Module of the Week Series

There is much more to be explored in the standard library such as debugging, handling
command line options, regular expressions and so on.

The best way to further explore the standard library is to read Doug Hellmann's excellent
Python Module of the Week series (also available as a book) and reading the Python
documentation.

Summary
We have explored some of the functionality of many modules in the Python Standard
Library. It is highly recommended to browse through the Python Standard Library
documentation to get an idea of all the modules that are available.

Next, we will cover various aspects of Python that will make our tour of Python more
complete.

126
Standard Library

127
More

More
So far we have covered a majority of the various aspects of Python that you will use. In this
chapter, we will cover some more aspects that will make our knowledge of Python more
well-rounded.

Passing tuples around

Ever wished you could return two different values from a function? You can. All you have to
do is use a tuple.

>>> def get_error_details():

... return (2, 'details')
...
>>> errnum, errstr = get_error_details()
>>> errnum
2
>>> errstr
'details'

Notice that the usage of a, b = <some expression> interprets the result of the expression as
a tuple with two values.

This also means the fastest way to swap two variables in Python is:

>>> a = 5; b = 8
>>> a, b
(5, 8)
>>> a, b = b, a
>>> a, b
(8, 5)

Special Methods
There are certain methods such as the __init__ and __del__ methods which have special
significance in classes.

Special methods are used to mimic certain behaviors of built-in types. For example, if you
want to use the x[key] indexing operation for your class (just like you use it for lists and
tuples), then all you have to do is implement the __getitem__() method and your job is

128
More

done. If you think about it, this is what Python does for the list class itself!

Some useful special methods are listed in the following table. If you want to know about all
the special methods, see the manual.

__init__(self, ...)

This method is called just before the newly created object is returned for usage.
__del__(self)

Called just before the object is destroyed (which has unpredictable timing, so avoid
using this)
__str__(self)

Called when we use the print function or when str() is used.

__lt__(self, other)

Called when the less than operator (<) is used. Similarly, there are special methods
for all the operators (+, >, etc.)
__getitem__(self, key)

Called when x[key] indexing operation is used.

__len__(self)

Called when the built-in len() function is used for the sequence object.

Single Statement Blocks

We have seen that each block of statements is set apart from the rest by its own indentation
level. Well, there is one caveat. If your block of statements contains only one single
statement, then you can specify it on the same line of, say, a conditional statement or
looping statement. The following example should make this clear:

>>> flag = True

>>> if flag: print('Yes')
...
Yes

Notice that the single statement is used in-place and not as a separate block. Although, you
can use this for making your program smaller, I strongly recommend avoiding this short-cut
method, except for error checking, mainly because it will be much easier to add an extra
statement if you are using proper indentation.

129
More

Lambda Forms
A lambda statement is used to create new function objects. Essentially, the lambda takes a
parameter followed by a single expression. Lambda becomes the body of the function. The
value of this expression is returned by the new function.

Example (save as more_lambda.py ):

points = [{'x': 2, 'y': 3},

{'x': 4, 'y': 1}]
points.sort(key=lambda i: i['y'])
print(points)

Output:

$ python more_lambda.py
[{'y': 1, 'x': 4}, {'y': 3, 'x': 2}]

How It Works

Notice that the sort method of a list can take a key parameter which determines how
the list is sorted (usually we know only about ascending or descending order). In our case,
we want to do a custom sort, and for that we need to write a function. Instead of writing a
separate def block for a function that will get used in only this one place, we use a lambda
expression to create a new function.

List Comprehension
List comprehensions are used to derive a new list from an existing list. Suppose you have a
list of numbers and you want to get a corresponding list with all the numbers multiplied by 2
only when the number itself is greater than 2. List comprehensions are ideal for such
situations.

Example (save as more_list_comprehension.py ):

listone = [2, 3, 4]
listtwo = [2*i for i in listone if i > 2]
print(listtwo)

Output:

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More

$ python more_list_comprehension.py
[6, 8]

How It Works

Here, we derive a new list by specifying the manipulation to be done ( 2*i ) when some
condition is satisfied ( if i > 2 ). Note that the original list remains unmodified.

The advantage of using list comprehensions is that it reduces the amount of boilerplate code
required when we use loops to process each element of a list and store it in a new list.

Receiving Tuples and Dictionaries in Functions

There is a special way of receiving parameters to a function as a tuple or a dictionary using
the * or ** prefix respectively. This is useful when taking variable number of arguments
in the function.

>>> def powersum(power, *args):

... '''Return the sum of each argument raised to the specified power.'''
... total = 0
... for i in args:
... total += pow(i, power)
... return total
...
>>> powersum(2, 3, 4)
25
>>> powersum(2, 10)
100

Because we have a * prefix on the args variable, all extra arguments passed to the
function are stored in args as a tuple. If a ** prefix had been used instead, the extra
parameters would be considered to be key/value pairs of a dictionary.

The assert statement

The assert statement is used to assert that something is true. For example, if you are very
sure that you will have at least one element in a list you are using and want to check this,
and raise an error if it is not true, then assert statement is ideal in this situation. When the
assert statement fails, an AssertionError is raised. The pop() method removes and
returns the last item from the list.

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More

>>> mylist = ['item']

>>> assert len(mylist) >= 1
>>> mylist.pop()
'item'
>>> assert len(mylist) >= 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AssertionError

The assert statement should be used judiciously. Most of the time, it is better to catch
exceptions, either handle the problem or display an error message to the user and then quit.

Decorators
Decorators are a shortcut to applying wrapper functions. This is helpful to "wrap"
functionality with the same code over and over again. For example, I created a retry

decorator for myself that I can just apply to any function and if any exception is thrown
during a run, it is retried again, till a maximum of 5 times and with a delay between each
retry. This is especially useful for situations where you are trying to make a network call to a
remote computer:

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More

from time import sleep

from functools import wraps
import logging
logging.basicConfig()
log = logging.getLogger("retry")

def retry(f):
@wraps(f)
def wrapper_function(*args, **kwargs):
MAX_ATTEMPTS = 5
for attempt in range(1, MAX_ATTEMPTS + 1):
try:
return f(*args, **kwargs)
except Exception:
log.exception("Attempt %s/%s failed : %s",
attempt,
MAX_ATTEMPTS,
(args, kwargs))
sleep(10 * attempt)
log.critical("All %s attempts failed : %s",
MAX_ATTEMPTS,
(args, kwargs))
return wrapper_function

counter = 0

@retry
def save_to_database(arg):
print("Write to a database or make a network call or etc.")
print("This will be automatically retried if exception is thrown.")
global counter
counter += 1
# This will throw an exception in the first call
# And will work fine in the second call (i.e. a retry)
if counter < 2:
raise ValueError(arg)

if __name__ == '__main__':
save_to_database("Some bad value")

Output:

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More

$ python more_decorator.py
Write to a database or make a network call or etc.
This will be automatically retried if exception is thrown.
ERROR:retry:Attempt 1/5 failed : (('Some bad value',), {})
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "more_decorator.py", line 14, in wrapper_function
return f(*args, **kwargs)
File "more_decorator.py", line 39, in save_to_database
raise ValueError(arg)
ValueError: Some bad value
Write to a database or make a network call or etc.
This will be automatically retried if exception is thrown.

Follow me on LinkedIn for more:

How It Works Steve Nouri
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenouri/
See:

Video : Python Decorators Made Easy

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-cpdecor.html
http://toumorokoshi.github.io/dry-principles-through-python-decorators.html

Differences between Python 2 and Python 3

See:

"Six" library
Porting to Python 3 Redux by Armin
Python 3 experience by PyDanny
Official Django Guide to Porting to Python 3
Discussion on What are the advantages to python 3.x?

Summary
We have covered some more features of Python in this chapter and yet we haven't covered
all the features of Python. However, at this stage, we have covered most of what you are
ever going to use in practice. This is sufficient for you to get started with whatever programs
you are going to create.

Next, we will discuss how to explore Python further.

134