Python 101

2nd Edition

Michael Driscoll
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Also By Michael Driscoll
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Contents

About the Technical Reviewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Ethan Furman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Martin Breuss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Part I - The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Part II - Intermediate Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Part III - Tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Part IV - Python Packaging and Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Target Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Book Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Reader Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Errata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Part I - The Python Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 1 - Installing Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Installing on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Installing on Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Installing on Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Android / iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Other Operating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Other Python Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Chapter 2 - Python Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

What About the REPL? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Getting Started with IDLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Getting Started with PyCharm Community Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Getting Started with Wing Personal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
CONTENTS

Getting Started with Visual Studio Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

What are Comments? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Commenting Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Multiline Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Learning About docstrings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Python’s Style Guide: PEP8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Tools that can help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Chapter 4 - Working with Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Creating Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
String Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
String Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Formatting Strings Using %s (printf-style) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Formatting Strings Using .format() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Formatting Strings with f-strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
String Concatenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
String Slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Chapter 5 - Numeric Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Integers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Floats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Complex Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Numeric Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Augmented Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Creating Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
List Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
List Slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Copying a List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Creating Tuples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
CONTENTS

Working With Tuples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Concatenating Tuples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Special Case Tuples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Creating Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Accessing Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Dictionary Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Modifying Your Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Deleting Items From Your Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Creating a Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Accessing Set Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Changing Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Adding Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Removing Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Clearing or Deleting a Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Set Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Chapter 10 - Boolean Operations and None . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

The bool() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
What About None? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Chapter 11 - Conditional Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Comparison Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Creating a Simple Conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Branching Conditional Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Nesting Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Logical Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Special Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Chapter 12 - Learning About Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Creating a for Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
CONTENTS

Looping Over a String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Looping Over a Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Extracting Multiple Values in a Tuple While Looping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Using enumerate with Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Creating a while Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Breaking Out of a Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Using continue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Loops and the else Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Nesting Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Chapter 13 - Python Comprehensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

List Comprehensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Nested List Comprehensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Dictionary Comprehensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Set Comprehensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Chapter 14 - Exception Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

The Most Common Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Handling Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Raising Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Examining the Exception Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Using the finally Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Using the else Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Chapter 15 - Working with Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

The open() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Reading Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Reading Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Seeking Within a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Appending to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Catching File Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Chapter 16 - Importing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Using import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Using from to Import Specific Bits & Pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
CONTENTS

Using as to assign a new name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Importing Everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Chapter 17 - Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Creating a Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Calling a Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Passing Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Type Hinting Your Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Passing Keyword Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Required and Default Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
What are *args and **kwargs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Positional-only Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Chapter 18 - Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Class Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Figuring Out self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Public and Private Methods / Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Subclass Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Polymorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Making the Class Nicer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Part II - Beyond the Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Chapter 19 - Introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Using the type() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Using the dir() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Getting help() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Other Built-in Introspection Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Chapter 20 - Installing Packages with pip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Installing a Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Exploring Command Line Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Installing with requirements.txt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Upgrading a Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Checking What’s Installed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
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Uninstalling Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Alternatives to pip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Chapter 21 - Python Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Python’s venv Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
The virtualenv Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Other Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Chapter 22 - Type Checking in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Pros and Cons of Type Hinting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Built-in Type Hinting / Variable Annotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Collection Type Hinting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Hinting Values That Could be None . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Type Hinting Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
What To Do When Things Get Complicated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Aliasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Other Type Hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Type Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Static Type Checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Chapter 23 - Creating Multiple Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Pros of Using Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Cons of Using Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Creating Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Subclassing Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Writing Multiple Files with Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Chapter 24 - Creating Multiple Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Pros of Using Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Cons of Using Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Creating Processes with multiprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Subclassing Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Creating a Process Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
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Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

Chapter 25 - Launching Subprocesses with Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

The subprocess.run() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
The subprocess.Popen() Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
The subprocess.Popen.communicate() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Reading and Writing with stdin and stdout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Chapter 26 - Debugging Your Code with pdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Starting pdb in the REPL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Starting pdb on the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Stepping Through Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Adding Breakpoints in pdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Creating a Breakpoint with set_trace() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Using the built-in breakpoint() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Chapter 27 - Learning About Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Creating a Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Creating a Decorator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Applying a Decorator with @ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Creating a Decorator for Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Stacking Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Passing Arguments to Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Using a Class as a Decorator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Python’s Built-in Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Python Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Chapter 28 - Assignment Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Using Assignment Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
What You Cannot Do With Assignment Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Chapter 29 - Profiling Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Learning How to Profile with cProfile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Profiling a Python Script with cProfile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Working with Profile Data Using pstats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
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Other Profilers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Chapter 30 - An Introduction to Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Using doctest in the Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Using doctest in Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Using doctest From a Separate File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Using unittest For Test Driven Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Chapter 31 - Learning About the Jupyter Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Installing The Jupyter Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Creating a Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Adding Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Adding an Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Exporting Notebooks to Other Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Part III - Practical Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Chapter 32 - How to Create a Command-line Application with argparse . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Parsing Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Creating Helpful Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Adding Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Using Mutually Exclusive Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Creating a Simple Search Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Chapter 33 - How to Parse XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Parsing XML with ElementTree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Creating XML with ElementTree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Editing XML with ElementTree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Manipulating XML with lxml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Chapter 34 - How to Parse JSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Encoding a JSON String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Saving JSON to Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Decoding a JSON String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
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Loading JSON from Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Validating JSON with json.tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Chapter 35 - How to Scrape a Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Rules for Web Scraping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Preparing to Scrape a Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Scraping a Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Downloading a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Chapter 36 - How to Work with CSV files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Reading a CSV File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Reading a CSV File with DictReader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Writing a CSV File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Writing a CSV File with DictWriter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Chapter 37 - How to Work with a Database Using sqlite3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Creating a SQLite Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Adding Data to Your Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Searching Your Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Editing Data in Your Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Deleting Data From Your Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Chapter 38 - Working with an Excel Document in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Python Excel Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Getting Sheets from a Workbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Reading Cell Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Iterating Over Rows and Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Writing Excel Spreadsheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Adding and Removing Sheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Adding and Deleting Rows and Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Chapter 39 - How to Generate a PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Installing ReportLab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Creating a Simple PDF with the Canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
CONTENTS

Creating Drawings and Adding Images Using the Canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Creating Multi-page Documents with PLATYPUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Creating a Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Chapter 40 - How to Create Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Installing Matplotlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Creating a Simple Line Chart with PyPlot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Creating a Bar Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Creating a Pie Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Adding Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Adding Titles to Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Creating a Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Showing Multiple Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Chapter 41 - How to Work with Images in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Installing Pillow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Opening Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Cropping Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Using Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Adding Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Resizing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Chapter 42 - How to Create a Graphical User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Installing wxPython . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Learning About Event Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
How to Create Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
How to Lay Out Your Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
How to Add Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
How to Create an Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Part IV - Distributing Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Chapter 43 - How to Create a Python Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Creating a Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Creating a Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Packaging a Project for PyPI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
CONTENTS

Creating Project Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Creating setup.py . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Generating a Python Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Uploading to PyPI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Chapter 44 - How to Create an Exe for Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Installing PyInstaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Creating an Executable for a Command-Line Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Creating an Executable for a GUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Chapter 45 - How to Create an Installer for Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Installing Inno Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Creating an Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Testing Your Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Chapter 46 - How to Create an “exe” for Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Installing PyInstaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Creating an Executable with PyInstaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Appendix A - Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Version Control Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Distributed vs Centralized Versioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Common Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Python IDE Version Control Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Appendix B - Version Control with Git . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Installing Git . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Configuring Git . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Creating a Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Ignoring Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Initializing a Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Checking the Project Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Adding Files to a Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
CONTENTS

Committing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Viewing the Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Changing a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Reverting a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Checking Out Previous Commits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Pushing to Github . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Wrapping Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Review Question Answer Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Chapter 4 - Working with Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Chapter 5 - Numeric Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 10 - Boolean Operations and None . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Chapter 11 - Conditional Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Chapter 12 - Learning About Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Chapter 13 - Python Comprehensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Chapter 14 - Exception Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Chapter 15 - Working with Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Chapter 16 - Importing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Chapter 17 - Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Chapter 18 - Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Chapter 19 - Introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Chapter 20 - Installing Packages with pip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 21 - Python Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 22 - Type Checking in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Chapter 23 - Creating Multiple Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Chapter 24 - Creating Multiple Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Chapter 25 - Launching Subprocesses with Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Chapter 26 - Debugging Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Chapter 27 - Learning About Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Chapter 28 - Assignment Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Chapter 29 - Profiling Your Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Chapter 30 - An Introduction to Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Chapter 31 - Learning About the Jupyter Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Chapter 32 - How to Create a Command Line Application with argparse . . . . . . . . . . 198
Chapter 33 - How to Parse XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Chapter 34 - How to Parse JSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 35 - How to Scrape a Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 36 - How to Work with CSV files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
CONTENTS

Chapter 37 - How to Work with a Database Using sqlite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Chapter 38 - Working with an Excel Document in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Chapter 39 - How to Generate a PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Chapter 40 - How to Create Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Chapter 41 - How to Work with Images in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Chapter 42 - How to Create a Graphical User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Chapter 43 - How to Create a Python Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Chapter 44 - How to Create an Exe for Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Chapter 45 - How to Create an Installer for Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Chapter 46 - How to Create an “exe” for Mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
About the Technical Reviewers
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

Ethan Furman
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

Martin Breuss
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.
Acknowledgments
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.
Introduction
Welcome to the 2nd Edition of Python 101! The original Python 101 came out in the summer of
2014 and was written with Python 3.5 in mind. The 2nd Edition of this book has been completely
updated and rearranged for the latest version of Python, which at the time of writing is 3.8.
Some publishers / authors will only do minor updates when creating a new edition of a book. That
is not how I roll. I have personally gone through the entire book and updated every single chapter.
I have removed content that was either no longer relevant or could lead to confusion to readers. I
have also added several new chapters to the book that cover such things as using version control
and setting up projects.
Many programming books will only teach you the basics of the language. With Python 101, the
goal is to help you not only learn the basics of the language but to go beyond the basics and dig into
some intermediate level material. The reason for this is that you usually need to know more than
the basics to create something valuable.
Because of this, the book will be split up into the following four parts:

• Part one will cover Python’s basics

• Part two will be intermediate material
• Part three will be a series of small tutorials
• Part four will cover Python packaging and distribution

Note that not all sections will be the same length.

Let’s go ahead and talk about each of these sections in turn!

Part I - The Basics

This is the heart of the book. In this section you will learn all the basics that you need to know to
start using Python effectively. Each chapter will teach you something new and they are ordered in
such a way that they will build on each other. If you already know Python well, then you can skip
this section and move on to Part II.

Part II - Intermediate Materials

Now that you know how Python works, you can dive into more intermediate level material. In this
section, you will learn about the following topics:
Introduction 4

• Virtual environments
• Type hinting
• Threads and Processes
• Debugging
• Decorators
• Code profiling
• Basic testing

These topics cover some intermediate level Python and also help you learn some key software
development skills, like knowing how to debug your code, add basic unit tests, and use version
control.

Part III - Tutorials

This part of the book is where you will put it all together. You will learn how to use Python with
some real world scripts. These scripts will be basic, but they will demonstrate the power of Python
and what you can do with it.
Here is what will be covered:

• How to Create a Command Line Application

• How to Parse XML
• How to Parse JSON
• How to Scrape a Website
• How to Work with CSV Files
• How to Work with a SQLite Database
• How to Create an Excel Document
• How to Generate a PDF

Part IV - Python Packaging and Distribution

Now that you know how to write programs, you will probably want to know how to share them
with your friends. In this section, you will learn how to transform your code into something that
other developers or users can use.
Specifically you will learn how to:

• Create a Cross Platform Python Package

• Create an Exe for Windows
• Create an Installer for Windows
• Create an “exe” for Mac

By the end of this section, you should be able to confidently distribute your code all on your own!
 Introduction 5

Target Audience
This book is written for people that have used other programming languages or taken some computer
science or related classes. While this book won’t handhold you through all the terminology, it will
help you learn how to use Python effectively. It also covers some intermediate level topics that most
beginner books do not.

About the Author

Michael Driscoll has been programming with Python for more than a decade. He is active in multiple
Python communities and is a contributor for Real Python. Mike has also been blogging about Python
at http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/ for many years and has written several books about Python:

• Python 101 (1st Edition)

• Python 201: Intermediate Python
• wxPython Recipes
• Python Interviews
• ReportLab: PDF Publishing with Python
• Jupyter Notebook 101
• Creating GUI Applications with wxPython

Conventions
All technical books have their own conventions for how things are presented. In this book, new
topics will be in bold. When referring to Python related keywords or code in a sentence, they will
be in monospace.
Code blocks will look like this:

1 def greeter(name: str) -> None:

2 print(f'Hello {name}')
3
4 greeter('Mike')

There will also be blocks of code that represent Python’s interactive interpreter, also known as a
REPL:
 Introduction 6

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> print(f'My name is {name}')
3 My name is Mike

This demonstrates how the interpreter should behave.

Requirements
You will need the Python language to follow along in this book. See chapter 1 for installation details
or go get the official Python distribution for free at:

• http://python.org/download/

If you need anything beyond what comes with Python, the chapter will tell you how to install it.

Book Source Code

The book’s source code can be found on Github:

• https://github.com/driscollis/python101code

Reader Feedback
If you enjoyed the book or have any other kind of feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can
contact me at the following:

• [email protected]

Errata
I try my best not to publish errors in my writings, but it happens from time to time. If you happen
to see an error in this book, feel free to let me know by emailing me at the following:
* [email protected]
Now let’s get started!
Part I - The Python Language
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python
Depending on which operating system you are using, you may need to install the Python program-
ming language. This chapter will cover the primary ways to install Python.
First of all, there are several different versions of Python, which are called “distributions”. A
distribution is a word used to describe a collection of software. A Python distribution will include
the core Python language at a minimum and sometimes include extra 3rd party libraries.
The official version is called Python or CPython and you can get it from the following:

• https://www.python.org/

Another popular distribution of Python is called Anaconda and comes from the Anaconda company.
This variation of Python is focused on data science and includes many additional 3rd party packages
in addition to Python’s standard library. You can read more about it here:

• https://www.anaconda.com/

Anaconda is designed to use a command-line tool called conda for installing additional packages
whereas Python uses pip, although you can also use pip with Anaconda. Also note that the Anaconda
download is much larger than the official Python one is because it has so many extra packages
included with it.
If you are on a Windows PC and don’t have administrator privileges on your machine, then you
might want to check out WinPython, which can be run from a USB:

• https://winpython.github.io/

There are many other Python distributions to choose from. You can see a bunch more here:

• https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonDistributions

This book is focused on Python 3. The current version at the time of writing is Python 3.8. It is
recommended that you use the official Python distribution rather than Anaconda, although the
examples in this book should work for both. Any examples that use a specific feature only found in
3.8 or newer will be noted as such.
There are 32-bit and 64-bit distributions of Python. If you are unsure what your computer uses, you
should opt for the 32-bit version if that is available. Newer Macs no longer support 32-bit, so in that
case you only have one choice.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 9

Installing on Windows
The https://www.python.org/ website has a download section where you can download an installer
for Python.
After the installer is downloaded, double-click it and go through the installation wizard. Here is the
first screen you should see:

Fig. 1-1: Installing Python 3.8 via the installer

There is a checkbox in the wizard for adding Python to the path. If you don’t have an older version
of Python already installed or if you want to use the latest as your default Python, then I recommend
that you check that checkbox. It is unchecked by default, as shown in the image above.
If you install Python to your path, it will allow you to run Python from the command line
(cmd.exe) or Powershell by just typing python. If you install Python using the Windows Store, it
will automatically add Python to your path.
The next page of the installation wizard allows you to enable or disable optional features:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 10

Fig. 1-2: Enabling Optional Python features

You can leave the defaults enabled, but if you are short on space, you should untick the “Python Test
Suite” option. The next page of the wizard will allow you to enable Advanced Options:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 11

Fig. 1-3: Advanced Options

Here you can install Python for all users of the machine. You can also associate Python files with
Python, create shortcuts, add Python to your environment and more. Most of the time, the defaults
will be fine. However it’s a good idea to go ahead and check the “Precompile standard library” as
that can make Python run better on your machine.
When you press Next here, you will probably get a warning from Window’s User Access Control:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 12

Fig. 1-4: User Access Control Warning

This is a verification step that asks if you really want to proceed with installing Python. Go ahead
and press Yes. Now Python is being installed:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 13

Fig. 1-5: Installing Python

Once the install finishes, you will see this final dialog:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 14

Fig. 1-6: Setup Successful

You now have Python installed on your Windows machine! Try running Python by opening
cmd.exe:

Fig. 1-7: Running Python in cmd.exe

You should see something like the above. To exit, you can press CTRL+D on Linux and Mac, CTRL+Z
on Windows, or type exit() on any platform and press Enter.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 15

Installing on Mac
Macs usually come with Python pre-installed. However, if you want the latest version of Python,
then you may need to download Python.
The https://www.python.org/ website has a download section where you can also download a
Python installer for Mac. Once downloaded, you will need to double-click it to install Python. You
may need to tell your Mac to allow you to install Python as the system might bring up a dialog box
that warns you about installing programs downloaded from the internet.
Note that the App Store does not have Python in it, so using the Python website is the way to go.
Let’s take a moment to learn how to install Python on a Mac. Here’s the first thing you will see
when you double-click the downloaded pkg file:

Fig. 1-8: Installing Python on Mac OSX

This screen basically tells you what you are about to install and that you will need to install some
SSL certificates as well. Go ahead and press Continue:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 16

Fig. 1-9: Installing Python on Mac OSX (Read More)

This page gives you more information about the SSL certificate as well as general information
about using IDLE and Tkinter on a Mac. IDLE is Python’s built-in code editor. You will learn more
about that in the next chapter. Tkinter is a Python library that you can use to create cross-platform
graphical user interfaces.
Tkinter is the library that is used to create IDLE, the Python editor that comes with Python.
If you are interested, read through the information on this page. Otherwise, go ahead and Continue:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 17

Fig. 1-10: Installing Python on Mac OSX (License Agreement)

This is Python’s license agreement page. It also has a little bit of history about Python on it. Feel free
to check it out or skip it and press Continue:
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 18

Fig. 1-11: Installing Python on Mac OSX (Install Destination)

This page allows you to choose which disk on your computer you want to install Python. I usually
use the default, but if you want you can change it to some other location.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 19

Fig. 1-12: Installing Python on Mac OSX (Standard Install)

This page allows you to choose which folder to install Python to, in contrast to the previous page
which lets you pick which disk to install to.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 20

Fig. 1-13: Installing Python on Mac OSX (Actual Installation)

This page shows the installation as it happens. You can wait and watch Python get installed, or go
get something to drink. Either way, Python will be installed before too long.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 21

Fig. 1-14: Installing Python on Mac OSX (Finished)

Here is the last page of the installation wizard.

Installing on Linux
Linux also usually comes with Python pre-installed, although it will likely not be the latest version
of Python. The Python website has source downloads and directions that you can use to build the
latest Python for your Linux distribution.
The source download is Python source code with some build scripts included that will allow you to
build and install Python on Linux.
For full instructions, you should read the dev guide:

• https://devguide.python.org/setup/

Sometimes you can also install a pre-built copy of the latest Python using your package manager.
One good source for Python on Linux is the “deadsnakes” PPA. You will need to use Google to find
it, but that makes it much easier to install another version of Python on Linux.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 22

Android / iOS
You can also run Python on Android and iOS via downloadable applications. Pydroid is a popular
application for Android while Pythonista is one of the popular choices for iOS. Trying to write code
on a phone can be really problematic due to the on-screen keyboards. If you must go this route, you
may want to use a tablet.

Other Operating Systems

Python can run on Raspberry Pi as well. If you do not have a computer, this is one of the most cost
effective ways to get Python as a Raspberry Pi can cost as little as $10. Of course, you will need to
hook it up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Most of the time, a Raspberry Pi will also need an SD
card for storage. But they are a very feasible development environment.

Other Python Variants

In addition to Anaconda, Python has several other variants that are worth mentioning:

• Jython - an implementation of Python written in Java that allows you to use Java code in
Python
• IronPython - an implementation of Python written in .NET
• PyPy - written in RPython, PyPy has a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that makes it much faster
than regular Python

The main reason for trying out these other implementations of Python is for speed or flexibility. For
example, if you are already familiar with .NET or Java, then you might find IronPython or Jython a
bit easier to jump into. Another reason to use Jython or IronPython is because you have pre-existing
code in Java or .NET that you still need to use with Python.
In the case of PyPy, I usually recommend it if you have a slow Python program and you need a
simple way to speed it up. Try running it with PyPy and you might be surprised at the performance
improvement. Note that none of these variants are completely compatible with all of Python’s 3rd
party packages, so if your program uses one it may not work with these variants.

Wrapping Up
Most of the time, installing Python is straight-forward and easy to do. It can get tricky when you
need to have multiple versions of Python installed on your machine at the same time, but if you are
just starting out I think you’ll find the installation process pretty painless.
Chapter 1 - Installing Python 23

Now that you have Python installed, you can congratulate yourself. You have started on a new
endeavor and you have just taken the first step! However, before you try running Python, you may
want to read the next chapter where you will learn about additional tools that will help you get the
most out of your Python adventure!
Chapter 2 - Python Editors
The Python programming language comes with its own built-in Integrated Development Environ-
ment (IDE) called IDLE. The name, IDLE, supposedly came from the actor, Eric Idle, who was a part
of the Monty Python troupe, which is what Python itself is named after.
IDLE comes with Python on Windows and some Linux variants. You may need to install IDLE
separately on your particular flavor of Linux or on Mac if you plan to use the Python that came
with the operating system. You should check out the Python website for full instructions on how to
do so as each operating system is different.
Here are some of the reasons that Integrated Development Environments are useful:

• They provide syntax highlighting which helps prevent coding errors

• Autocomplete of variable names and built-in names
• Breakpoints and debugging.

On that last point, breakpoints tell the debugger where to pause execution. Debugging is the process
of going through your code step-by-step to figure out how it works or to fix an issue with your code.
IDLE itself has other attributes that are useful, such as access to Python documentation, easy access
to the source code via the Class Browser, and much more. However, IDLE is not the only way to
code in Python. There are many useful IDEs out there. You can also use a text editor if you prefer.
Notepad, SublimeText, Vim, etc., are examples of text editors. Text editors do not have all the features
that a full-fledged IDE has, but tend to have the advantage of being simpler to use.
Here is a shortlist of IDEs that you can use to program in Python:

• PyCharm
• Wing Python IDE
• VS Code (also called Visual Studio Code)
• Spyder
• Eclipse with PyDev

PyCharm and WingIDE both have free and paid versions of their programs. The paid versions have
many more features, but if you are just starting out, their free offerings are quite nice. VS Code and
Spyder are free. VS Code can also be used for coding in many other languages. Note that to use
VS Code effectively with Python, you will need to install a Python extension. You can also use the
PyDev plugin for Eclipse to program in Python.
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 25

Other popular editors for Python include SublimeText, vim, emacs, and even Notepad++. These
editors may not be 100% up-to-date on the syntax of the language, but you can use them for multiple
programming languages.
But let’s back up a bit and talk about Python’s basic console, also known as the REPL, which stands
for Read Evaluate Print Loop.

What About the REPL?

REPL or READ, EVAL, PRINT, LOOP is basically Python’s interpreter. Python allows you to type
code into an interpreter which will run your code live and let you learn about the language. You can
access the interpreter, or REPL, by running Python in your terminal (if you are on Mac or Linux) or
command console (if you are on Windows).
On Windows, you can go to the Start menu and search for cmd or “Command Prompt” to open the
console or terminal:

Fig. 2-1: Running the Command Prompt in Windows

Once you have the terminal open you can try typing python. You should see something like this:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 26

Fig. 2-2: Running Python in cmd.exe

If this doesn’t work and you get an “Unrecognized Command” or some other error, then Python may
not be installed or configured correctly. On Windows, you may need to add Python to your system’s
path or you can just type out the full path to Python in your command console. For example, if you
installed Python in C:\Python\Python38, then you can run it using cmd.exe like you did above, but
instead of typing python, you would type C:\Python\Python38\python.
If you need to get help in the REPL, you can type help():
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 27

Fig. 2-3: REPL Help

You can type live Python code into the REPL and it will be immediately evaluated, which means the
code will run as soon as you press enter.
Here’s how you would print out “Hello World” and add some numbers in the REPL:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 28

Fig. 2-4: REPL Example Code

Python comes with its own code editor called IDLE. Let’s learn about that next!

Getting Started with IDLE

IDLE is a good place to start learning Python. Once you have it installed, you can start it up and the
initial screen will look like this:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 29

Fig. 2-5: The IDLE Shell

This is a REPL. You can enter code here and it will be evaluated as soon as you press the Return or
Enter key.
If you want to actually write a full program, then you will need to open up the editor view by going
to File –> New.
You should now have the following dialog on your screen:

Fig. 2-6: The IDLE Editor

You can enter your code here and save it.

 Chapter 2 - Python Editors 30

Running Your Code

Let’s write a small bit of code in our code editor and then run it. Enter the following code and then
save the file by going to File –> Save.

1 print('Hello World')

To run this code in IDLE, go to the Run menu and choose the first option labeled Run Module:

Fig. 2-7: Running Code in IDLE

When you do this, IDLE will switch to the Shell and show you the output of your program, if there
is any:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 31

Fig. 2-8: Output of Code in IDLE

You can also use the Run menu’s Check Module option to check your code for syntax errors.

Accessing Help / Documentation

Sometimes you need help. Fortunately IDLE has some built-in help about itself and the Python
language, too! You can access help about IDLE by going to the Help menu and choosing IDLE Help:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 32

Fig. 2-9: IDLE Help

If you’d rather look up how something works in the Python language, then go to the Help menu
and choose Python Docs or press F1 on your keyboard:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 33

Fig. 2-10: IDLE Python Documentation

This will show you Python’s official documentation. Depending on your O/S this may load local
help files, or start a browser to show the official on-line help documents.

Restarting the Shell

Let’s go back to the Shell screen of IDLE rather than the editor. It has several other functions that
are worth going over. The first is that you can restart the shell.
Restarting the shell is useful when you need to start over with a clean slate but don’t want to close
and reopen the program. To restart the shell, go to the Shell menu and choose Restart Shell:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 34

Fig. 2-11: IDLE Restart Menu

If you haven’t restarted the shell before, then your screen will look like this:

Fig. 2-12: IDLE Restarted

This tells you that your shell has restarted.

Module Browser
IDLE comes with a handy tool called the Module Browser. This tool can be found in the File menu.
When you open it, you will see the following:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 35

Fig. 2-13: IDLE Opening Module Browser

Modules in Python are code that the Python core development team has created for you. You can
use the Module Browser to browse the source code of Python itself.
Try entering the following into the dialog above: os. Then press OK.
You should now see the following:

Fig. 2-14: IDLE Opening Module Browser

This allows you to browse the source code for os.py. You can double-click anything in the Module
Browser and it will jump to the beginning of where that code is defined in IDLE’s code editor.

Path Browser
Another useful tool that you can use in IDLE is the Path Browser. The Path Browser allows you
to see where Python is installed and also what paths Python uses to import modules from. You will
learn more about importing and modules later on in this book.
You can open it by going to File and then Path Browser:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 36

Fig. 2-15: IDLE Path Browser

The Path Browser is a good way to diagnose issues with importing modules. It can show you that
you might not have Python configured correctly. Or it might show you that you have installed a 3rd
party module in the wrong location.

Getting Started with PyCharm Community Edition

PyCharm is a commercial Python IDE from a company called JetBrains. They have a professional
version, which costs money, and a community edition, which is free. PyCharm is one of the most
popular choices for creating and editing Python programs.
PyCharm Professional has tons of features and a great debugger. However, if you are a beginner,
you may find all the functionality in this software to be a bit overwhelming.
To get a copy of PyCharm Community Edition, you can go to the following website:
https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/
The Community Edition does not have all the features that PyCharm Professional has. But that is
okay when you are new to Python. If you would like to try PyCharm, go ahead and download and
install the software.
When you run PyCharm it may ask you to import settings. You can ignore that or import settings if
you have used PyCharm previously and already have some.
Next, you will probably need to accept their privacy policy / EULA. Depending on the operating
system, you may also get asked what theme to apply. The default is Darkula on Windows.
At this point you should see the following Welcome banner:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 37

Fig. 2-16: PyCharm Welcome

PyCharm prefers that you work in a project rather than opening a simple file. Projects are typically
collections of related files or scripts. You can set up a new project here or open a pre-existing one.
Once you have gone through that process, your screen should look like this:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 38

Fig. 2-17: PyCharm Project

Creating a Python Script

To create a new Python script in PyCharm, you can go to File and choose New. Then pick Python
File from the choices presented:

Fig. 2-18: PyCharm New

Give the file a name, such as hello.py. Now PyCharm should look like this:
 Chapter 2 - Python Editors 39

Fig. 2-19: PyCharm Hello World

Running Code in PyCharm

Let’s add some code to your file:

1 print('Hello PyCharm')

To run your code, go to the Run menu and choose Run. PyCharm might ask you to set up a debug
configuration before running it. You can save the defaults and continue.
You should now see the following at the bottom of PyCharm:

Fig. 2-20: PyCharm Running Code Output

Chapter 2 - Python Editors 40

PyCharm Features
PyCharm has tons of features. In fact, it has so many that you could write an entire book on them.
For the purposes of this book, you should know that PyCharm will give you suggestions about your
code based on PEP8, which is Python’s code style guide. You will learn more about that in the next
chapter. It will also highlight many other things about your code.
You can usually hover over any code that looks weird to you and a tooltip will appear that will
explain the issue or warning.
The debugger that ships with PyCharm is useful for figuring out why your code doesn’t work. You
can use it to walk through your code line-by-line.
PyCharm’s documentation is quite good, so if you get stuck, check their documentation.

Getting Started with Wing Personal

Wingware’s Python IDE is written in Python and PyQt. It is my personal favorite IDE for Python.
You can get it in Professional (paid), Personal (free) or 101 (really stripped-down version, but also
free). Their website explains the differences between the 3 versions.
You can get Wingware here:
https://wingware.com/
After you have downloaded and installed the software, go ahead and run it. You will need to accept
the License Agreement to load up the IDE.
Once it is fully loaded, you will see something like this:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 41

Fig. 2-21: Wingware Python IDE Main Screen

Running Code in Wingware

Let’s create some code in Wing. You can open a new file by going to the File menu and choosing
New:

Fig. 2-22: Wingware Python IDE - Adding Code

 Chapter 2 - Python Editors 42

Now enter the following code:

1 print('Hello Wingware')

Save the code to disk by going to File and then Save.

To run this code, you can go to the Debug menu, press F5 or click the green “play” button in the
toolbar. You will see a debug message dialog:

Fig. 2-23: Wingware Python IDE - Code Output

Hit OK and the code will run. You will see the output in the Debug I/O tab if there is any.
Note that Wing does not require you to create a project to run a single Python file. You can create
projects if you want to though.

Wing Features
Wing has an incredible debugger. However, you cannot use it to its full extent in the free versions of
the software. But there is a Source Assistant tab in the Personal edition that is very useful. It will
show you information about the functions / modules that you have loaded as you use them. This
makes learning new modules much easier.
Wing will also show you various issues with your code while you type, although PyCharm seems
to do more in this area than Wing does.
Both products have plugins and you can write your own for both IDEs as well.

Getting Started with Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code, or VS Code for short, is a general-purpose programming editor. Unlike PyCharm
and WingIDE, it is designed to work with lots of languages. PyCharm and WingIDE will let you
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 43

write in other languages too, but their primary focus is on Python.

VS Code is made by Microsoft and it is free. You can download it here:
https://code.visualstudio.com/
Once you have it downloaded and installed, you will need to install support for Python from the VS
Code marketplace.
If you open up VS Code, the screen will look something like this:

Fig. 2-24: VS Code - Main Screen

Under Customize you can see there is an option for installing Python. If that isn’t there, you can
click on the Extensions button that is on the left and search for Python there:
 Chapter 2 - Python Editors 44

Fig. 2-25: VS Code - Adding the Python Extension

Go ahead and install the Python extension so that VS Code will recognize Python correctly.

Running Code in VS Code

Open a folder in the File Explorer tab and then you can right-click in there to create a new file.
Alternatively, you can go to the File menu and choose New File and do it that way.
Once that is done, you can enter the following code and save it:

1 print('Hello VS Code')

Then right-click anywhere in the editor and select the Run Python File in Terminal selection. This
will cause your code to run and you will see the following:
Chapter 2 - Python Editors 45

Fig. 2-26: VS Code - Running Code

Note: I didn’t have the PSReadline module installed when I ran this code which is why you see the
error in the console above.

VS Code Features
VS Code can run all kinds of different languages. However, for the purposes of Python, Microsoft
has a team of Python developers that are constantly improving this IDE and adding new features.
There are tons of extensions that you can install to enhance the editor’s functionality.
One of the coolest extensions that you can install is Live Share, which lets you do real-time
collaboration between developers. It basically shares your coding session with others. Since this
IDE is the newest of the bunch and its feature set is changing a lot, you will need to research it on
your own time.

Wrapping Up
There are lots of Python code editors to choose from. IDLE is nice in that it comes with Python and
is written in Python, so you can actually learn a lot just by looking at its source code. PyCharm and
VS Code are very popular right now. Wing IDE used to be more popular than it is today, but I think
it is still really great. All of these tools are good, but you should give them a try to see which one
works the best for you.
Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code
Documenting your code early on is quite a bit more important than most new developers realize.
Documentation in software development refers to the idea of giving your variables, functions and
other identifiers descriptive names. It also refers to adding good comments. When you are immersed
in developing your latest creation, it is easy to create variables and functions with non-descriptive
names. A month or a year later, when you inevitably come back to your code, you will spend an
inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what your code does.
By making your code self-documenting (i.e. using descriptive names) and adding comments when
necessary, you will make your code more readable for yourself and for anyone else who may use
your code. This will make updating your code and refactoring your code easier too!
In this chapter you will learn about the following topics:

• Comments
• Docstrings
• PEP8 - The Python Style Guide
• Other Tools Useful for Documenting Your Code

Let’s get started by learning about comments.

What are Comments?

Comments are code that is for you, not for your computer. What I mean by that is that a comment
is basically a note to yourself that explains what is happening in that portion of your code. You use
comments to explain why you did something or how a piece of code works. When you are starting
out as a new developer, it is good to leave yourself lots of comments to refer back to. But once
you learn how to properly name your functions and variables, you will find that you don’t need
comments as much.
However, comments are still recommended, especially for code that is complex and not easy to
understand at first glance. Depending on the company you work for, you may also use comments
to document bug fixes. For example, if you are fixing a bug, you might include a comment that
mentions which bug you are fixing to help explain why you had to change it.
You can create comments by using the # sign followed by some descriptive text.
Here is an example
 Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code 47

1 # This is a bad comment

2 x = 10

In the code above, the first line demonstrates how to create a simple comment. When Python goes
to execute this code, it will see the # symbol and ignore all the text that follows it. In effect, Python
will skip that line and try to execute the second line.
This comment is marked as a “bad comment”. While it is good for demonstration purposes, it does
not describe the code that follows it at all. That is why it is not a good comment. Good comments
describe the code that follows. A good comment may describe the purpose for the Python script,
the code line or something else. Comments are your code’s documentation. If they don’t provide
information, then they should be removed.
You can also create in-line comments:

1 x = 10 # 10 is being assigned to x

Here you once again assign 10 to the variable x, but then you add two spaces and the # symbol, which
allows you to add a comment about the code. This is useful for when you might need to explain a
specific line of code. If you named your variable something descriptive, then you most likely won’t
need a comment at all.

Commenting Out
You will hear the term “commenting out code” fairly often. This is the practice of adding the # symbol
to the beginning of your code. This will effectively disable your code.
For example, you might have this line of code:

1 number_of_people = 10

If you want to comment it out, you can do the following:

1 # number_of_people = 10

You comment code out when you are trying out different solutions or when you’re debugging your
code, but you don’t want to delete the code. Python will ignore code that is commented out, allowing
you to try something else. Most Python code editors (and text editors) provide a way to highlight
multiple lines of code and comment out or uncomment out the entire block of code.
 Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code 48

Multiline Comments
Some programming languages, such as C++, provide the ability to create multi-line comments. The
Python style guide (PEP8) says that the pound sign is preferred. However, you can use triple quoted
strings as a multiline comment.
Here’s an example:

1 >>> '''This is a
2 multiline comment'''
3 >>> """This is also a
4 multiline comment"""

When you create triple quoted strings you may be creating a docstring.
Let’s find out what docstrings are and how you can use them!

Learning About docstrings

Python has the concept of the PEP, or Python Enhancement Proposal. These PEPs are suggestions
or new features for the Python language that get discussed and agreed upon by the Python Steering
Council.
PEP 257 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/) describes docstring conventions. You can go
read that if you’d like the full story. Suffice to say, a docstring is a string literal that should occur as
the first statement in a module, function, class or method definition. You don’t need to understand
all these terms right now. In fact, you’ll learn more about them later on in this book.
A docstring is created by using triple double-quotes.
Here is an example:

1 """
2 This is a docstring
3 with multiple lines
4 """

Docstrings are ignored by Python. They cannot be executed. However, when you use a docstring as
the first statement of a module, function, etc, the docstring will become a special attribute that can
be accessed via __doc__. You will learn more about attributes and docstrings in the chapter about
classes.
Docstrings may be used for one-liners or for multi-line strings.
Here is an example of a one-liner:
 Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code 49

1 """This is a one-liner"""

A one-liner docstring is simply a docstring with only one line of text.

Here is an example of a docstring used in a function:

1 def my_function():
2 """This is the function's docstring"""
3 pass

The code above shows how you can add a docstring to a function. You can learn more about functions
in chapter 14. A good docstring describes what the function is supposed to accomplish.
Note: While triple double-quotes are the recommended standard, triple single-quotes, single double-
quotes, and single single-quotes all work as well (but single double- and single single-quotes can only
contain one line, not multiple lines).
Now let’s learn about coding according to Python’s style guide.

Python’s Style Guide: PEP8

A style guide is a document that describes good programming practices, usually with regard to a
single language. Some companies have specific style guides for the company that developers must
follow no matter what programming language they are using.
Back in 2001, the Python style guide was created as PEP8 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-
0008/). It documents coding conventions for the Python programming language and has been
updated several times over the years.
If you plan to use Python a lot, you should really check out the guide. It will help you write better
Python code.
Also if you want to contribute to the Python language itself, all your code must conform to the style
guidelines or your code will be rejected.
Following a style guide will make your code easier to read and understand. This will help you and
anyone else who uses your code in the future.
Remembering all the rules can be hard, though. Fortunately, some intrepid developers have created
some utilities that can help!

Tools that can help

There are lots of neat tools that you can use to help you write great code. Here are just a few:
Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code 50

• pycodestyle - https://pypi.org/project/pycodestyle/ - Checks if your code follows PEP8

• Pylint - https://www.pylint.org/ - An in-depth static code testing tool that finds common issues
with code
• PyFlakes - https://pypi.org/project/pyflakes/ - Another static code testing tool for Python
• flake8 - https://pypi.org/project/flake8/ - A wrapper around PyFlakes, pycodestyle and a Mc-
Cabe script
• Black - https://black.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ - A code formatter that mostly follows PEP8

You can run these tools against your code to help you find issues with your code. I have found Pylint
and PyFlakes / flake8 to be the most useful. Black is helpful if you are working in a team and you
want everyone’s code to follow the same format. Black can be added to your toolchain to format
your code for you.
The more advanced Python IDEs provide some of the checks that Pylint, etc. provide in real-time.
For example, PyCharm will automatically check for a lot of the issues that these tools will find.
WingIDE and VS Code provide some static code checking as well. You should check out the various
IDEs and see which one works the best for you.

Wrapping Up
Python comes with several different ways to document your code. You can use comments to explain
one or more lines of code. These should be used in moderation and where appropriate. You can also
use docstrings to document your modules, functions, methods, and classes.
You should also check out Python’s style guide that can be found in PEP8. This will help you develop
good Python coding practices. There are several other style guides for Python. For example, you
might want to look up Google’s style guide or possibly NumPy’s Python style guide. Sometimes
looking at different style guides will help you develop good practices as well.
Finally, you learned about several tools you can use to help you make your code better. If you have
the time, I encourage you to check out PyFlakes or Flake8 especially as they can be quite helpful in
pointing out common coding issues in your code.

Review Questions
1. How do you create a comment?

2. What do you use a docstring for?

3. What is Python’s style guide?

4. Why is documenting your code important?

 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings
You will be using strings very often when you program. A string is a series of letters surrounded by
single, double or triple quotes. Python 3 defines string as a “Text Sequence Type”. You can cast other
types to a string using the built-in str() function.
In this chapter you will learn how to:

• Creating strings
• String methods
• String formatting
• String concatenation
• String slicing

Let’s get started by learning the different ways to create strings!

Creating Strings
Here are some examples of creating strings:

1 name = 'Mike'
2 first_name = 'Mike'
3 last_name = "Driscoll"
4 triple = """multi-line
5 string"""

When you use triple quotes, you may use three double quotes at the beginning and end of the string
or three single quotes. Also, note that using triple quotes allows you to create multi-line strings. Any
whitespace within the string will also be included.
Here is an example of converting an integer to a string:

1 >>> number = 5
2 >>> str(number)
3 '5'

In Python, backslashes can be used to create escape sequences. Here are a couple of examples:

• \b - backspace
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 52

• \n - line feed
• \r - ASCII carriage return
• \t - tab

There are several others that you can learn about if you read Python’s documentation.
You can also use backslashes to escape quotes:

1 >>> 'This string has a single quote, \', in the middle'

2 "This string has a single quote, ', in the middle"

If you did not have the backslash in the code above, you would receive a SyntaxError:

1 >>> 'This string has a single quote, ', in the middle'

2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 Python Shell, prompt 59, line 1
4 invalid syntax: <string>, line 1, pos 38

This occurs because the string ends at that second single quote. It is usually better to mix double
and single quotes to get around this issue:

1 >>> "This string has a single quote, ', in the middle"

2 "This string has a single quote, ', in the middle"

In this case, you create the string using double quotes and put a single quote inside of it. This is
especially helpful when working with contractions, such as “don’t”, “can’t”, etc.
Now let’s move along and see what methods you can use with strings!

String Methods
In Python, everything is an object. You will learn how useful this can be in chapter 18 when you
learn about introspection. For now, just know that strings have methods (or functions) that you can
call on them.
Here are three examples:
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 53

1 >>> name = 'mike'

2 >>> name.capitalize()
3 'Mike'
4 >>> name.upper()
5 'MIKE'
6 >>> 'MIke'.lower()
7 'mike'

The method names give you a clue as to what they do. For example, .capitalize() will change the
first letter in the string to a capital letter.
To get a full listing of the methods and attributes that you can access, you can use Python’s built-in
dir() function:

1 >>> dir(name)
2 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__doc__',
3 '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__',
4 '__getnewargs__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__',
5 '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__',
6 '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__',
7 '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'capitalize',
8 'casefold', 'center', 'count', 'encode', 'endswith', 'expandtabs', 'find',
9 'format', 'format_map', 'index', 'isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isascii', 'isdecimal',
10 'isdigit', 'isidentifier', 'islower', 'isnumeric', 'isprintable', 'isspace',
11 'istitle', 'isupper', 'join', 'ljust', 'lower', 'lstrip', 'maketrans',
12 'partition', 'replace', 'rfind', 'rindex', 'rjust', 'rpartition', 'rsplit',
13 'rstrip', 'split', 'splitlines', 'startswith', 'strip', 'swapcase', 'title',
14 'translate', 'upper', 'zfill']

The first third of the listing are special methods that are sometimes called “dunder methods” (AKA
double-underscore methods) or “magic methods”. You can ignore these for now as they are used
more for intermediate and advanced use-cases. The items in the list above that don’t have double-
underscores at the beginning are the ones that you will probably use the most.
You will find that the .strip() and .split() methods are especially useful when parsing or
manipulating text.
You can use .strip() and its variants, .rstrip() and .lstrip() to strip off white space from the
string, including tab and new line characters. This is especially useful when you are reading in a
text file that you need to parse.
In fact, you will often end up stripping end-of-line characters from strings and then using .split()
on the result to parse out sub-strings.
Let’s do a little exercise where you will learn how to parse out the 2nd word in a string.
To start, here’s a string:
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 54

1 >>> my_string = 'This is a string of words'

2 'This is a string of words'

Now to get the parts of a string, you can call .split(), like this:

1 >>> my_string.split()
2 ['This', 'is', 'a', 'string', 'of', 'words']

The result is a list of strings. Now normally you would assign this result to a variable, but for
demonstration purposes, you can skip that part.
Instead, since you now know that the result is a string, you can use list indexing to get the second
element:

1 >>> 'This is a string of words'.split()[1]

2 'is'

Remember, in Python, lists elements start at 0 (zero), so when you tell it you want element 1 (one),
that is the second element in the list.
When doing string parsing for work, I personally have found that you can use the .strip() and
.split() methods pretty effectively to get almost any data that you need. Occasionally you will
find that you might also need to use Regular Expressions (regex), but most of the time these two
methods are enough.

String Formatting
String formatting or string substitution is where you have a string that you would like to insert into
another string. This is especially useful when you need to create a template, such as a form letter.
But you will use string substitution a lot for debugging output, printing to standard out and much
more.
Standard out (or stdout) is a term used for printing to the terminal. When you run your program
from the terminal and you see output from your program, that is because your program “prints” to
standard out or standard error (stderr).
Python has three different ways to accomplish string formatting:

• Using the % Method

• Using .format()
• Using formatted string literals (f-strings)

This book will focus on f-strings the most and also use .format() from time-to-time. But it is good
to understand how all three work.
Let’s take a few moments to learn more about string formatting.
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 55

Formatting Strings Using %s (printf-style)

Using the % method is Python’s oldest method of string formatting. It is sometimes referred to as
“printf-style string formatting”. If you have used C or C++ in the past, then you may already be
familiar with this type of string substitution. For brevity, you will learn the basics of using % here.
Note: This type of formatting can be quirky to work with and has been known to lead to common
errors such as failing to display Python tuples and dictionaries correctly. Using either of the other
two methods is preferred in that case.
The most common use of using the % sign is when you would use %s, which means convert any
Python object to a string using str().
Here is an example:

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> print('My name is %s' % name)
3 My name is Mike

In this code, you take the variable name and insert it into another string using the special %s syntax.
To make it work, you need to use % outside of the string followed by the string or variable that you
want to insert.
Here is a second example that shows that you can pass in an int into a string and have it
automatically converted for you:

1 >>> age = 18
2 >>> print('You must be at least %s to continue' % age)
3 You must be at least 18 to continue

This sort of thing is especially useful when you need to convert an object but don’t know what type
it is.
You can also do string formatting with multiple variables. In fact, there are two ways to do this.
Here’s the first one:

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> age = 18
3 >>> print('Hello %s. You must be at least %i to continue!' % (name, age))
4 Hello Mike. You must be at least 18 to continue!

In this example, you create two variables and use %s and %i. The %i indicates that you are going to
pass an integer. To pass in multiple items, you use the percent sign followed by a tuple of the items
to insert.
You can make this clearer by using names, like this:
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 56

1 >>> print('Hello %(first_name)s. You must be at least %(age)i to continue!'

2 % {'first_name': name, 'age': age})
3 Hello Mike. You must be at least 18 to continue!

When the argument on the right side of the % sign is a dictionary (or another mapping type), then
the parenthesized formats in the string must refer to the keys in the dictionary. In other words, if
you see %(name)s, then the dictionary to the right of the % must have a name key.
If you do not include all the keys that are required, you will receive an error:

1 >>> print('Hello %(first_name)s. You must be at least %(age)i to continue!'

2 % {'age': age})
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 Python Shell, prompt 23, line 1
5 KeyError: 'first_name'

For more information about using the printf-style string formatting, you should see the following
link:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting
Now let’s move on to using the .format() method.

Formatting Strings Using .format()

Python strings have supported the .format() method for a long time. While this book will focus on
using f-strings, you will find that .format() is still quite popular.
For full details on how formatting works, see the following:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#formatstrings
Let’s take a look at a few short examples to see how .format() works:

1 >>> age = 18
2 >>> name = 'Mike'
3 >>> print('Hello {}. You must be at least {} to continue!'.format(
4 name, age))
5 Hello Mike. You must be at least 18 to continue!

This example uses positional arguments. Python looks for two instances of {} and will insert the
variables accordingly. If you do not pass in enough arguments, you will receive an error like this:
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 57

1 >>> print('Hello {}. You must be at least {} to continue!'.format(

2 age))
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 Python Shell, prompt 33, line 1
5 IndexError: tuple index out of range

This error indicates that you do not have enough items inside the .format() call.
You can also use named arguments in a similar way to the previous section:

1 >>> age = 18
2 >>> name = 'Mike'
3 >>> print('Hello {first_name}. You must be at least {age} to continue!'.format(
4 first_name=name, age=age))
5 Hello Mike. You must be at least 18 to continue!

Instead of passing a dictionary to .format(), you can pass in the parameters by name. In fact, if you
do try to pass in a dictionary, you will receive an error:

1 >>> print('Hello {first_name}. You must be at least {age} to continue!'.format(

2 {'first_name': name, 'age': age}))
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 Python Shell, prompt 34, line 1
5 KeyError: 'first_name'

There is a workaround for this though:

1 >>> print('Hello {first_name}. You must be at least {age} to continue!'.format(

2 **{'first_name': name, 'age': age}))
3 Hello Mike. You must be at least 18 to continue!

This looks a bit weird, but in Python when you see a double asterisk (**) used like this, it means
that you are passing named parameters to the function. So Python is converting the dictionary to
first_name=name, age=age for you.

You can also repeat a variable multiple times in the string when using .format():

1 >>> first_name = 'Mike'

2 >>> print('Hello {first_name}. Why do they call you {first_name}?'.format(
3 first_name=first_name))
4 Hello Mike. Why do they call you Mike?

Here you refer to {first_name} twice in the string and Python replaces both of them with the
first_name variable.

If you want, you can also interpolate values using numbers:

 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 58

1 >>> print('Hello {1}. You must be at least {0} to continue!'.format(

2 first_name, age))
3 Hello 18. You must be at least Mike to continue!

Because most things in Python start at 0 (zero), in this example you ended up passing the age to {1}
and the name to {0}.
A common coding style when working with .format() is to create a formatted string and save it to
a variable to be used later:

1 >>> age = 18
2 >>> first_name = 'Mike'
3 >>> greetings = 'Hello {first_name}. You must be at least {age} to continue!'
4 >>> greetings.format(first_name=first_name, age=age)
5 'Hello Mike. You must be at least 18 to continue!'

This allows you to reuse greetings and pass in updated values for first_name and age later on in
your program.
You can also specify the string width and alignment:

1 >>> '{:<20}'.format('left aligned')

2 'left aligned '
3 >>> '{:>20}'.format('right aligned')
4 ' right aligned'
5 >>> '{:^20}'.format('centered')
6 ' centered '

Left aligned is the default. The colon (:) tells Python that you are going to apply some kind of
formatting. In the first example, you are specifying that the string be left aligned and 20 characters
wide. The second example is also 20 characters wide, but it is right aligned. Finally the ^ tells Python
to center the string within the 20 characters.
If you want to pass in a variable like in the previous examples, here is how you would do that:

1 >>> '{example:^20}'.format(example='centered')
2 ' centered '

Note that the example must come before the : inside of the {}.
At this point, you should be pretty familiar with the way .format() works.
Let’s go ahead and move along to f-strings!
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 59

Formatting Strings with f-strings

Formatted string literals or f-strings are strings that have an “f” at the beginning and curly braces
inside of them that contain expressions, much like the ones you saw in the previous section. These
expressions tell the f-string about any special processing that needs to be done to the inserted string,
such as justification, float precision, etc.
The f-string was added in Python 3.6. You can read more about it and how it works by checking out
PEP 498 here:
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0498/
Let’s go ahead and look at a simple example:

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> age = 20
3 >>> f'Hello {name}. You are {age} years old'
4 'Hello Mike. You are 20 years old'

Here you create the f-string by putting an “f” right before the single, double or triple quote that
begins your string. Then inside of the string, you use the curly braces, {}, to insert variables into
your string.
However, your curly braces must enclose something. If you create an f-string with empty braces,
you will get an error:

1 >>> f'Hello {}. You are {} years old'

2 SyntaxError: f-string: empty expression not allowed

The f-string can do things that neither %s nor .format() can do, though. Because of the fact that
f-strings are evaluated at runtime, you can put any valid Python expression inside of them.
For example, you could increase the displayed value of the age variable:

1 >>> age = 20
2 >>> f'{age+2}'
3 '22'

Or call a method or function:

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> f'{name.lower()}'
3 'mike'

You can also access dictionary values directly inside of an f-string:

 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 60

1 >>> sample_dict = {'name': 'Tom', 'age': 40}

2 >>> f'Hello {sample_dict["name"]}. You are {sample_dict["age"]} years old'
3 'Hello Tom. You are 40 years old'

However, backslashes are not allowed in f-string expressions:

1 >>> print(f'My name is {name\n}')

2 SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot include a backslash

But you can use backslashes outside of the expression in an f-string:

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> print(f'My name is {name}\n')
3 My name is Mike

One other thing that you can’t do is add a comment inside of an expression in an f-string:

1 >>> f'My name is {name # name of person}'

2 SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot include '#'

In Python 3.8, f-strings added support for =, which will expand the text of the expression to include
the text of the expression plus the equal sign and then the evaluated expression. That sounds kind
of complicated, so let’s look at an example:

1 >>> username = 'jdoe'

2 >>> f'Your {username=}'
3 "Your username='jdoe'"

This example demonstrates that the text inside of the expression, username= is added to the output
followed by the actual value of username in quotes.
f-strings are very powerful and extremely useful. They will simplify your code quite a bit if you use
them wisely. You should definitely give them a try.
Let’s find out what else you can do with strings!

String Concatenation
Strings also allow concatenation, which is a fancy word for joining two strings into one.
To concatenate strings together, you can use the + sign:
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 61

1 >>> first_string = 'My name is'

2 >>> second_string = 'Mike'
3 >>> first_string + second_string
4 'My name isMike'

Oops! It looks like the strings merged in a weird way because you forgot to add a space to the end
of the first_string. You can change it like this:

1 >>> first_string = 'My name is '

2 >>> second_string = 'Mike'
3 >>> first_string + second_string
4 'My name is Mike'

Another way to merge strings is to use the .join() method. The .join() method accepts an iterable,
such as a list, of strings and joins them together.

1 >>> first_string = 'My name is' # no ending space

2 >>> second_string = 'Mike'
3 >>> ''.join([first_string, second_string])
4 'My name isMike'

This will make the strings join right next to each other, just like + did. However, you can put
something inside of the string that you are using for the join, and it will be inserted between each
string in the list:

1 >>> ' '.join([first_string, second_string]) # a space is in the join string

2 'My name is Mike'
3 >>> '--'.join([first_string, second_string]) # a dash dash is in the join string
4 'My name is--Mike'

More often than not, you can use an f-string rather than concatenation or .join() and the code will
be easier to follow.

String Slicing
Slicing in strings works in much the same way that it does for Python lists. Let’s take the string
“Mike”. The letter “M” is at position zero and the letter “e” is at position 3.
If you want to grab characters 0-3, you would use this syntax: my_string[0:4]
What that means is that you want the substring starting at position zero up to but not including
position 4.
Here are a few examples:
 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 62

1 >>> 'this is a string'[0:4]

2 'this'
3 >>> 'this is a string'[:4]
4 'this'
5 >>> 'this is a string'[-4:]
6 'ring'

The first example grabs the first four letters from the string and returns them. If you want to, you
can drop the zero as that is the default and use [:4] instead, which is what example two does.
You can also use negative position values. So [-4:] means that you want to start at the end of the
string and get the last four letters of the string. You will learn more about slicing in chapter 6, which
is about the list data type.
You should play around with slicing on your own and see what other slices you can come up with.

Wrapping Up
Python strings are powerful and useful. They can be created using single, double, or triple quotes.
Strings are objects, so they have methods. You also learned about string concatenation, string slicing,
and three different methods of string formatting.
The newest flavor of string formatting is the f-string. It is also the most powerful and the currently
preferred method for formatting strings.

Review Questions
1. What are 3 ways to create a string?

2. Run dir(""). This lists all the string methods you can use. Which of these methods will
capitalize each of the words in a sentence?

3. Change the following example to use f-strings:

1 >>> name = 'Mike'

2 >>> age = 21
3 >>> print('Hello %s! You are %i years old.' % (name, age))
4 Hello Mike! You are 21 years old.

4. How do you concatenate these two strings together?

 Chapter 4 - Working with Strings 63

1 >>> first_string = 'My name is'

2 >>> second_string = 'Mike'

5. Use string slicing to get the substring, “is a”, out of the following string:

1 >>> 'this is a string'

Chapter 5 - Numeric Types
Python is a little different than some languages in that it only has three built-in numeric types. A
built-in data type means that you don’t have to do anything to use them other than typing out their
name.
The built-in numeric types are:

• int
• float
• complex

Python 2 also had the long numeric type, which was an integer able to represent values larger than
an int could. In Python 3, int and long were combined so that Python 3 only has int. You can create
an int by simply typing the number or by using int(). 2, 3, int(4), and int("5") are all integers.
If you are familiar with C++, you probably know that floating-point numbers are defined using the
double keyword. In Python, you can create a float by typing it or by using float(). 3.14, 5.0,
float(7.9), and float("8.1") are all floating point numbers.

A complex number has a real and an imaginary part. The real and imaginary parts are accessed using
attribute notation: .real and .imag, respectively. Complex numbers can be created by either typing
them or using complex(). 2+1j, 2-1j, 5j, complex(7+2j), complex("7+2j"), and complex(7, 2)‘ are
all complex numbers.
There are two other numeric types that are included with Python in its standard library. They are
as follows:

• decimal - for holding floating-point numbers that allow the user to define their precision
• fractions - rational numbers

You can import these libraries using Python’s import keyword, which you will learn about in chapter
16. You might also be interested in checking out Python’s round() keyword or its math module.
Let’s go ahead and learn a little bit more about how you can create and use numeric types in Python!

Integers
You can create an integer in two ways in Python. The most common way is to assign an integer to
a variable:
 Chapter 5 - Numeric Types 65

1 my_integer = 3

The equals sign (=) is Python’s assignment operator. It “assigns” the value on the right to the variable
name on the left. So in the code above, you are assigning the value 3 to the variable my_integer.
The other way to create an integer is to use the int callable, like this:

1 my_integer = int(3)

Most of the time, you won’t use int() to create an integer. In fact, int() is usually used for converting
a string or other type to an integer. Another term for this is casting.
A little known feature about int() is that it takes an optional second argument for the base in which
the first argument is to be interpreted. In other words, you can tell Python to convert to base2, base8,
base16, etc.
Here’s an example:

1 >>> int('10', 2)
2 2
3 >>> int('101', 2)
4 5

The first argument has to be a string while the second argument is the base, which in this case is 2.
Now let’s move on and learn how to create a float!

Floats
A float in Python refers to a number that has a decimal point in it. For example, 2.0 is a float while
2 is an int.
You can create a float in Python like this:

1 my_float = 2.0

This code will assign the number, 2.0, to the variable my_float.
You can also create a float like this:

1 my_float = float(2.0)

Python’s float() built-in will convert an integer or even a string into a float if it can. Here’s an
example of converting a string to a float:
 Chapter 5 - Numeric Types 66

1 my_float = float("2.0")

This code converts the string, “2.0”, to a float. You can also cast string or floats to int using the
int() built-in from the previous section.

Note: The float numeric type is inexact and may differ across platforms. You shouldn’t use the
float type when dealing with sensitive numeric types, such as money values, due to rounding
issues. Instead it is recommended that you use Python’s decimal module.

Complex Numbers
A complex number has a real and an imaginary part, which are each a floating-point number. Let’s
look at an example with a complex number object named comp to see how you can access each of
these parts by using comp.real and comp.imag to extract the real and imaginary parts, respectively,
from the number:

1 >>> comp = 1 + 2j
2 >>> type(comp)
3 <class 'complex'>
4 >>> comp.real
5 1.0
6 >>> comp.imag
7 2.0

In the code sample above, you created a complex number. To verify that it is a complex number, you
can use Python’s built-in type function on the variable. Then you extract the real and imag parts
from the complex number.
You can also use the complex() built-in callable to create a complex number:

1 >>> complex(10, 12)

2 (10+12j)

Here you created a complex number in the interpreter, but you don’t assign the result to a variable.

Numeric Operations
All the numeric types, with the exception of complex, support a set of numeric operations.
Here is a list of the operations that you can do:
 Chapter 5 - Numeric Types 67

Operation Result
a+b The sum of a and b
a-b The difference of a and b
a*b The product of a and b
a/b The quotient of a and b
a // b The floored quotient of a and b
a%b The remainder of a / b
-a a negated (multiply by -1)
+a a unchanged
abs(a) absolute value of a
int(a) a converted to integer
float(x) a converted to a floating-point number
complex(re, im) A complex number with real and imaginary
c.conjugate() The conjugate of the complex number c
divmod(a, b) The pair: (a // b, a % b)
pow(a, b) a to the power of b
a ** b a to the power of b

You should check out the full documentation for additional details about how numeric types work
(scroll down to the Numeric Types section):

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html

Augmented Assignment
Python supports doing some types of arithmetic using a concept called Augmented Assignment.
This idea was first proposed in PEP 203:

• https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0203/

The syntax allows you to do various arithmetic operations using the following operators:
+= -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=

This syntax is a shortcut for doing common arithmetic in Python. With it you can replace the
following code:

1 >>> x = 1
2 >>> x = x + 2
3 >>> x
4 3

with this:
 Chapter 5 - Numeric Types 68

1 >>> x = 1
2 >>> x += 2
3 >>> x
4 3

This code is the equivalent of the previous example.

Wrapping Up
In this chapter, you learned the basics of Python’s Numeric types. Here you learned a little about how
Python handles int, float, and complex number types. You can use these types for working with
most operations that involve numbers. However, if you are working with floating-point numbers
that need to be precise, you will want to check out Python’s decimal module. It is tailor-made for
working with that type of number.

Review Questions
1. What 3 numeric types does Python support without importing anything?

2. Which module should you use for money or other precise calculations?

3. Give an example of how to use augmented assignment.

 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists
Lists are a fundamental data type in the Python programming language. A list is a mutable
sequence that is typically a collection of homogeneous items. Mutable means that you can change
a list after its creation. You will frequently see lists that contain other lists. These are known as
nested lists. You will also see lists that contain all manner of other data types, such as dictionaries,
tuples, and other objects.
In this chapter, you will learn the following:

• Creating Lists
• List Methods
• List Slicing
• List Copying

Let’s find out how you can create a list!

Creating Lists
There are several ways to create a list. You may construct a list in any of the following ways:

• Using a pair of square brackets with nothing inside creates an empty list: []
• Using square brackets with comma-separated items: [1, 2, 3]
• Using a list comprehension (see Chapter 13 for more information): [x for x in iterable]
• Using the list() function: list(iterable)

An iterable is a collection of items that can return its members one at a time; some iterables have
an order (i.e. sequences), and some do not. Lists themselves are sequences. Strings are sequences as
well. You can think of strings as a sequence of characters.
Let’s look at a few examples of creating a list so you can see it in action:

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> my_list
3 [1, 2, 3]

This first example is pretty straight-forward. Here you create a list with 3 numbers in it. Then you
print it out to verify that it contains what you think it should.
The next way to create a list is by using Python’s built-in list() function:
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 70

1 >>> list_of_strings = list('abc')

2 >>> list_of_strings
3 ['a', 'b', 'c']

In this case, you pass a string of three letters to the list() function. It automatically iterates over
the characters in the string to create a list of three strings, where each string is a single character.
The last example to look at is how to create empty lists:

1 >>> empty_list = []
2 >>> empty_list
3 []
4 >>> another_empty_list = list()
5 >>> another_empty_list
6 []

The quickest way to create an empty list is by using the square brackets without putting anything
inside them. The second easiest way is to call list() without any arguments. The nice thing about
using list() in general is that you can use it to cast a compatible data type to a list, as you did
with the string “abc” in the example earlier.

List Methods
You haven’t learned about methods yet, but it is important to cover list methods now. Don’t worry.
You will be learning more about methods throughout this book and by the end you will understand
them quite well!
A Python list has several methods that you can call. A method allows you to do something to the
list.
Here is a listing of the methods you can use with a list:

• append()
• clear()
• copy()
• count()
• extend()
• index()
• insert()
• pop()
• remove()
• reverse()
• sort()
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 71

Most of these will be covered in the following sections. Let’s talk about the ones that aren’t covered
in a specific section first.
You can use count() to count the number of instances of the object that you passed in.
Here is an example:

1 >>> my_list = list('abcc')

2 >>> my_list.count('a')
3 1
4 >>> my_list.count('c')
5 2

This is a simple way to count the number of occurrences of an item in a list.

The index() method is useful for finding the first instance of an item in a list:

1 >>> my_list = list('abcc')

2 >>> my_list.index('c')
3 2
4 >>> my_list.index('a')
5 0

Python lists are zero-indexed, so “a” is in position 0, “b” is at position 1, etc.

You can use the reverse() method to reverse a list in-place:

1 >>> my_list = list('abcc')

2 >>> my_list.reverse()
3 >>> my_list
4 ['c', 'c', 'b', 'a']

Note that the reverse() method returns None. What that means is that if you try to assign the
reversed list to a new variable, you may end up with something unexpected:

1 >>> x = my_list.reverse()
2 >>> print(x)
3 None

Here you end up with None instead of the reversed list. That is what in-place means. The original
list is reversed, but the reverse() method itself doesn’t return anything.

Now let’s find out what you can do with the other list methods!
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 72

Adding to a List
There are three list methods that you can use to add to a list. They are as follows:

• append()
• extend()
• insert()

The append() method will add an item to the end of a pre-existing list:

1 >>> my_list = list('abcc')

2 >>> my_list
3 ['a', 'b', 'c', 'c']
4 >>> my_list.append(1)
5 >>> my_list
6 ['a', 'b', 'c', 'c', 1]

First you create a list that is made up of four one-character strings. Then you append an integer to
the end of the list. Now the list should have 5 items in it with the 1 on the end.
You can use Python’s built-in len() function to check the number of items in a list:

1 >>> len(my_list)
2 5

So this tells you that you do in fact have five items in the list. But what if you wanted to add an
element somewhere other than the end of the list?
You can use insert() for that:

1 >>> my_list.insert(0, 'first')

2 >>> my_list
3 ['first', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'c', 1]

The insert() method takes two arguments:

• The position at which to insert

• The item to insert

In the code above, you tell Python that you want to insert the string, “first”, into the 0 position, which
is the first position in the list.
There are two other ways to add items to a list. You can add an iterable to a list using extend():
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 73

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> other_list = [4, 5, 6]
3 >>> my_list.extend(other_list)
4 >>> my_list
5 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Here you create two lists. Then you use my_list’s extend() method to add the items in other_list
to my_list.
The extend() method will iterate over the items in the passed in list and add each of them to the
list.

You can also combine lists using concatenation:

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> other_list = [4, 5, 6]
3 >>> combined = my_list + other_list
4 >>> combined
5 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

In this case, you create two lists and then combine them using Python’s + operator. Note that my_list
and other_list have not changed.
You can also use += with Python lists:

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> other_list = [4, 5, 6]
3 >>> my_list += other_list
4 >>> my_list
5 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

This is a somewhat simpler way to combine the two lists, but it does change the original list in the
same way that using the extend() method does.
Now let’s learn how to access and change elements within a list.

Accessing and Changing List Elements

Lists are made to be worked with. You will need to learn how to access individual elements as well
as how to change them.
Let’s start by learning how to access an item:
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 74

1 >>> my_list = [7, 8, 9]

2 >>> my_list[0]
3 7
4 >>> my_list[2]
5 9

To access an item in a list, you need to use square braces and pass in the index of the item that you
wish to access. In the example above, you access the first and third elements.
Lists also support accessing items in reverse by using negative values:

1 >>> my_list[-1]
2 9

This example demonstrates that when you pass in -1, you get the last item in the list returned. Try
using some other values and see if you can get the first item using negative indexing.
If you try to use an index that does not exist in the list, you will get an IndexError:

1 >>> my_list[-5]
2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 Python Shell, prompt 41, line 1
4 builtins.IndexError: list index out of range

Now let’s learn about removing items!

Deleting From a List

Deleting items from a list is pretty straight-forward. There are 4 primary methods of removing
items from a list:

• clear()
• pop()
• remove()
• del

You can use clear() to remove everything from the list. Let’s see how that works:
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 75

1 >>> my_list = [7, 8, 9]

2 >>> my_list.clear()
3 >>> my_list
4 []

After calling clear(), the list is now empty. This can be useful when you have finished working
on the items in the list and you need to start over from scratch. Of course, you could also do this
instead of clear():

1 >> my_list = []

This will create a new empty list. If it is important for you to always use the same object, then
using clear() would be better. If that does not matter, then setting it to an empty list will work
well too.
If you would rather remove individual items, then you should check out pop() or remove(). Let’s
start with pop():

1 >>> my_list = [7, 8, 9]

2 >>> my_list.pop()
3 9
4 >>> my_list
5 [7, 8]

You can pass an index to pop() to remove the item with that specific index and return it. Or you can
call pop() without an argument, like in the example above, and it will default to removing the last
item in the list and returning it. pop() is the most flexible way of removing items from a list.
If the list is empty or you pass in an index that does not exist, pop() will throw an exception:

1 >>> my_list.pop(10)
2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 Python Shell, prompt 50, line 1
4 builtins.IndexError: pop index out of range

Now let’s take a look at how remove() works:

1 >>> my_list = [7, 8, 9]

2 >>> my_list.remove(8)
3 >>> my_list
4 [7, 9]

remove() will delete the first instance of the passed in item. So in this case, you tell the list to
remove the first occurrence of the number 8.
If you tell remove() to delete an item that is not in the list, you will receive an exception:
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 76

1 >>> my_list.remove(4)
2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 Python Shell, prompt 51, line 1
4 builtins.ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list

You can also use Python’s built-in del keyword to delete items from a list:

1 >>> my_list = [7, 8, 9]

2 >>> del my_list[1]
3 >>> my_list
4 [7, 9]

You will receive an error if you try to remove an index that does not exist:

1 >>> my_list = [7, 8, 9]

2 >>> del my_list[6]
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 Python Shell, prompt 296, line 1
5 builtins.IndexError: list assignment index out of range

Now let’s learn about sorting a list!

Sorting a List
Lists in Python can be sorted. You can use the built-in sort() method to sort a list in-place or you
can use Python’s sorted() function to return a new sorted list.
Let’s create a list and try sorting it:

1 >>> my_list = [4, 10, 2, 1, 23, 9]

2 >>> my_list.sort()
3 >>> my_list
4 [1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 23]

Here you create a list with 6 integers in a pretty random order. To sort the list, you call its sort()
method, which will sort it in-place. Remember that in-place means that sort() does not return
anything.
A common misconception with Python is that if you call sort(), you can assign the now-sorted list
to a variable, like this:
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 77

1 >>> sorted_list = my_list.sort()

2 >>> print(sorted_list)
3 None

However, when you do that, you will see that sort() doesn’t actually return the sorted list. It always
returns None.
Fortunately you can use Python’s built-in sorted() method for this:

1 >>> my_list = [4, 10, 2, 1, 23, 9]

2 >>> sorted_list = sorted(my_list)
3 >>> sorted_list
4 [1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 23]

If you use sorted(), it will return a new list, sorted ascending by default.
Both the sort() method and the sorted() function will also allow you to sort by a specified key
and you can tell them to sort ascending or descending by setting its reversed flag.
Let’s sort this list in descending order instead:

1 >>> my_list = [4, 10, 2, 1, 23, 9]

2 >>> sorted_list = sorted(my_list, reverse=True)
3 >>> sorted_list
4 [23, 10, 9, 4, 2, 1]

When you have a more complicated data structure, such as a nested list or a dictionary, you can
use sorted() to sort in special ways, such as by key or by value.

List Slicing
Python lists support the idea of slicing. Slicing a list is done by using square brackets and entering a
start and stop value. For example, if you had my_list[1:3], you would be saying that you want to
create a new list with the element starting at index 1 through index 3 but not including index 3.
Here is an example:

1 >>> my_list = [4, 10, 2, 1, 23, 9]

2 >>> my_list[1:3]
3 [10, 2]

This slice returns index 1 (10) and index 2 (2) as a new list.
You can also use negative values to slice:
 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 78

1 >>> my_list = [4, 10, 2, 1, 23, 9]

2 >>> my_list[-2:]
3 [23, 9]

In this example, you didn’t specify an end value. That means you want to start at the second to last
item in the list, 23, and take it to the end of the list.
Let’s try another example where you specify only the end index:

1 >>> my_list = [4, 10, 2, 1, 23, 9]

2 >>> my_list[:3]
3 [4, 10, 2]

In this example, you want to grab all the values starting at index 0 up to but not including index 3.

Copying a List
Occasionally you will want to copy a list. One simple way to copy your list is to use the copy
method:

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> new_list = my_list.copy()
3 >>> new_list
4 [1, 2, 3]

This successfully creates a new list and assigns it to the variable, new_list.
However note that when you do this, you are creating what is known as a “shallow copy”. What that
means is that if you were to have mutable objects in your list, they can be changed and it will affect
both lists. For example, if you had a dictionary in your list and the dictionary was modified, both
lists will change, which may not be what you want. You will learn about dictionaries in chapter 8.

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> new_list = my_list.copy()
3 >>> my_list
4 [1, 2, 3]
5 >>> new_list
6 [1, 2, 3]

You can also copy a list by using this funny syntax:

 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 79

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> new_list = my_list[:]
3 >>> new_list
4 [1, 2, 3]

This example is telling Python to create a slice from the 0 (first) element to the last, which in effect
is the whole list.
Finally, you could also use Python’s list() function to copy a list:

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> new_list = list(my_list)
3 >>> new_list
4 [1, 2, 3]

No matter which method you choose though, whether you duplicate a list by using [:], copy() or
list(), all three will create a shallow copy. To avoid running into weird issues where changing one
list affects the copied list, you should use the deepcopy method from the copy module instead.

Wrapping Up
In this chapter, you learned all about Python’s wonderful list data type. You will be using lists
extensively when you are programming in Python.
You learned the following in this chapter:

• Creating Lists
• List Methods
• List Slicing
• List Copying

Now you are ready to move on and learn about tuples!

Review Questions
1. How do you create a list?

2. Create a list with 3 items and then use append() to add two more.

3. What is wrong with this code?

 Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists 80

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

2 >>> my_list.remove(4)

4. How do you remove the 2nd item in this list?

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3]

5. Create a list that looks like this: [4, 10, 2, 1, 23]. Use string slicing to get only the middle
3 items.
 Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples
Tuples are another sequence type in Python. Tuples consist of a number of values that are separated
by commas. A tuple is immutable whereas a list is not. Immutable means that the tuple has a fixed
value and cannot change. You cannot add or delete items in a tuple. Immutable objects are useful
when you need a constant hash value. The most popular example of a hash value in Python is the
key to a Python dictionary, which you will learn about in chapter 8.
In this chapter, you will learn how to:

• Create tuples
• Work with tuples
• Concatenate tuples
• Special case tuples

Let’s find out how to create tuples!

Creating Tuples
You can create tuples in several different ways. Let’s take a look:

1 >>> a_tuple = 4, 5
2 >>> type(a_tuple)
3 <class 'tuple'>

One of the simplest methods of creating a tuple is to have a sequence of values separated by commas.
Those values could be integers, lists, dictionaries, or any other object.
Depending on where in the code you are trying to create a tuple, just using commas might be
ambiguous; you can always use parentheses to make it explicit:

1 >>> a_tuple = (2, 3, 4)

2 >>> type(a_tuple)
3 <class 'tuple'>

However, parentheses by themselves do not make a tuple!

 Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples 82

1 >>> not_a_tuple = (5)

2 >>> type(not_a_tuple)
3 <class 'int'>

You can cast a list into a tuple using the tuple() function:

1 >>> a_tuple = tuple(['1', '2', '3'])

2 >>> type(a_tuple)
3 <class 'tuple'>

This example demonstrates how to convert or cast a Python list into a tuple.

Working With Tuples

There are not many ways to work with tuples due to the fact that they are immutable. If you were
to run dir(tuple()), you would find that tuples have only two methods:

• count()
• index()

You can use count() to find out how many elements match the value that you pass in:

1 >>> a_tuple = (1, 2, 3, 3)

2 >>> a_tuple.count(3)
3 2

In this case, you can find out how many times the integer 3 appears in the tuple.
You can use index() to find the first index of a value:

1 >>> a_tuple = (1, 2, 3, 3)

2 >>> a_tuple.index(2)
3 1

This example shows you that the number 2 is at index 1, which is the second item in the tuple.
Tuples are zero-indexed, meaning that the first element starts at zero.
You can use the indexing methodology that you learned about in the previous chapter to access
elements within a tuple:
 Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples 83

1 >>> a_tuple = (1, 2, 3, 3)

2 >>> a_tuple[2]
3 3

The first “3” in the tuple is at index 2.

Let’s try to modify an element in your tuple:

1 >>> a_tuple[0] = 8
2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 Python Shell, prompt 92, line 1
4 TypeError: 'tuple' object does not support item assignment

Here you try to set the first element in the tuple to 8. However, this causes a TypeError to be raised
because tuples are immutable and cannot be changed.

Concatenating Tuples
Tuples can be joined together, which in programming is called “concatenation”. However, when you
do that, you will end up creating a new tuple:

1 >>> a_tuple = (1, 2, 3, 3)

2 >>> id(a_tuple)
3 140617302751760
4 >>> a_tuple += (6, 7)
5 >>> id(a_tuple)
6 140617282270944

Here you concatenate a second tuple to the first tuple. You can use Python’s id() function to see
that the variable, a_tuple, has changed. The id() function returns the id of the object. An object’s
ID is equivalent to an address in memory. The ID number changed after concatenating the second
tuple. That means that you have created a new object.

Special Case Tuples

There are two special-case tuples. A tuple with zero items and a tuple with one item. The reason
they are special cases is that the syntax to create them is a little different.
To create an empty tuple, you can do one of the following:
 Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples 84

1 >>> empty = tuple()

2 >>> len(empty)
3 0
4 >>> type(empty)
5 <class 'tuple'>
6 >>> also_empty = ()
7 >>> len(also_empty)
8 0

You can create an empty tuple by calling the tuple() function with no arguments or via assignment
when using an empty pair of parentheses.
Now let’s create a tuple with a single element:

1 >>> single = 2,
2 >>> len(single)
3 1
4 >>> type(single)
5 <class 'tuple'>

To create a tuple with a single element, you can assign a value with a following comma. Note the
trailing comma after the 2 in the example above.
While the parentheses are usually optional, I highly recommend them for single-item tuples as the
comma can be easy to miss.

Wrapping Up
The tuple is a fundamental data type in Python. It is used quite often and is certainly one that you
should be familiar with. You will be using tuples in other data types. You will also use tuples to
group related data, such as a name, address and country.
In this chapter, you learned how to create a tuple in three different ways. You also learned that
tuples are immutable. Finally, you learned how to concatenate tuples and create empty tuples. Now
you are ready to move on to the next chapter and learn all about dictionaries!

Review Questions
1. How do you create a tuple?

2. Can you show how to access the 3rd element in this tuple?
 Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples 85

1 >>> a_tuple = (1, 2, 3, 4)

3. Is it possible to modify a tuple after you create it? Why or why not?

4. How do you create a tuple with a single item?

 Chapter 8 - Learning About
Dictionaries
Dictionaries are another fundamental data type in Python. A dictionary is a (key, value) pair. Some
programming languages refer to them as hash tables. They are described as a mapping that maps
keys (hashable objects) to values (any object). Immutable objects are hashable (immutable means
unable to change).
Starting in Python 3.7, dictionaries are ordered. What that means is that when you add a new (key,
value) pair to a dictionary, it remembers what order they were added. Prior to Python 3.7, this was
not the case and you could not rely on insertion order.
You will learn how to do the following in this chapter:

• Creating dictionaries
• Accessing dictionaries
• Dictionary methods
• Modifying dictionaries
• Deleting items from your dictionary

Let’s start off by learning about creating dictionaries!

Creating Dictionaries
You can create a dictionary in a couple of different ways. The most common method is by placing
a comma-separated list of key: value pairs within curly braces.
Let’s look at an example:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict
4 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

You can also use Python’s built-in dict() function to create a dictionary. dict() will accept a series
of keyword arguments (i.e. 1=’one’, 2=’two’, etc), a list of tuples, or another dictionary.
Here are a couple of examples:
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 87

1 >>> numbers = dict(one=1, two=2, three=3)

2 >>> numbers
3 {'one': 1, 'two': 2, 'three': 3}
4 >>> info_list = [('first_name', 'James'), ('last_name', 'Doe'),
5 ('email', '[email protected]')]
6 >>> info_dict = dict(info_list)
7 >>> info_dict
8 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

The first example uses dict() on a series of keyword arguments. You will learn more about these
when you learn about functions. You can think of keyword arguments as a series of keywords with
the equals sign between them and their value.
The second example shows you how to create a list that has 3 tuples inside of it. Then you pass that
list to dict() to convert it to a dictionary.

Accessing Dictionaries
Dictionaries’ claim to fame is that they are very fast. You can access any value in a dictionary via
the key. If the key is not found, you will receive a KeyError.
Let’s take a look at how to use a dictionary:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict['first_name']
4 'James'

To get the value of first_name, you must use the following syntax: dictionary_name[key]
Now let’s try to get a key that doesn’t exist:

1 >>> sample_dict['address']
2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 Python Shell, prompt 118, line 1
4 builtins.KeyError: 'address'

Well that didn’t work! You asked the dictionary to give you a value that wasn’t in the dictionary!
You can use Python’s in keyword to ask if a key is in the dictionary:
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 88

1 >>> 'address' in sample_dict

2 False
3 >>> 'first_name' in sample_dict
4 True

You can also check to see if a key is not in a dictionary by using Python’s not keyword:

1 >>> 'first_name' not in sample_dict

2 False
3 >>> 'address' not in sample_dict
4 True

Another way to access keys in dictionaries is by using one of the dictionary methods. Let’s find out
more about dictionary methods now!

Dictionary Methods
As with most Python data types, dictionaries have special methods you can use. Let’s check out
some of the dictionary’s methods!

d.get(key[, default])

You can use the get() method to get a value. get() requires you to specify a key to look for. It
optionally allows you to return a default if the key is not found. The default for that value is None.
Let’s take a look:

1 >>> print(sample_dict.get('address'))
2 None
3 >>> print(sample_dict.get('address', 'Not Found'))
4 Not Found

The first example shows you what happens when you try to get() a key that doesn’t exist without
setting get’s default. In that case, it returns None. Then the second example shows you how to set
the default to the string “Not Found”.

d.clear()

The clear() method can be used to remove all the items from your dictionary.
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 89

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict
4 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}
5 >>> sample_dict.clear()
6 >>> sample_dict
7 {}

d.copy()

If you need to create a shallow copy of the dictionary, then the copy() method is for you:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> copied_dict = sample_dict.copy()
4 >>> copied_dict
5 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

If your dictionary has objects or dictionaries inside of it, then you may end up running into logic
errors as a result of using this method, because changing one dictionary will affect the other. In
this case you should use Python’s copy module, which has a deepcopy function that will create a
completely separate copy for you.
You may remember this issue being mentioned back in the chapter on lists. These are common
problems with creating “shallow” copies.

d.items()

The items() method will return a new view of the dictionary’s items:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict.items()
4 dict_items([('first_name', 'James'), ('last_name', 'Doe'),
5 ('email', '[email protected]')])

This view object will change as the dictionary object itself changes.

d.keys()

If you need to get a view of the keys that are in a dictionary, then keys() is the method for you. As
a view object, it will provide you with a dynamic view of the dictionary’s keys. You can iterate over
a view and also check membership via the in keyword:
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 90

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> keys = sample_dict.keys()
4 >>> keys
5 dict_keys(['first_name', 'last_name', 'email'])
6 >>> 'email' in keys
7 True
8 >>> len(keys)
9 3

d.values()

The values() method also returns a view object, but in this case it is a dynamic view of the
dictionary’s values:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> values = sample_dict.values()
4 >>> values
5 dict_values(['James', 'Doe', '[email protected]'])
6 >>> 'Doe' in values
7 True
8 >>> len(values)
9 3

d.pop(key[, default])

Do you need to remove a key from a dictionary? Then pop() is the method for you. The pop()
method takes a key and an option default string. If you don’t set the default and the key is not found,
a KeyError will be raised.
Here are some examples:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict.pop('something')
4 Traceback (most recent call last):
5 Python Shell, prompt 146, line 1
6 builtins.KeyError: 'something'
7 >>> sample_dict.pop('something', 'Not found!')
8 'Not found!'
9 >>> sample_dict.pop('first_name')
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 91

10 'James'
11 >>> sample_dict
12 {'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

d.popitem()

The popitem() method is used to remove and return a (key, value) pair from the dictionary. The
pairs are returned in last-in first-out (LIFO) order, which means that the last item added will also be
the first one that is removed when you use this method. If called on an empty dictionary, you will
receive a KeyError.

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict.popitem()
4 ('email', '[email protected]')
5 >>> sample_dict
6 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe'}

d.update([other])

Update a dictionary with the (key, value) pairs from other, overwriting existing keys. The other
can be another dictionary, a list of tuples, etc.
update() will return None when called.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict.update([('something', 'else')])
4 >>> sample_dict
5 {'first_name': 'James',
6 'last_name': 'Doe',
7 'email': '[email protected]',
8 'something': 'else'}

Let’s try using update() to overwrite a pre-existing key:

 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 92

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict.update([('first_name', 'Mike')])
4 >>> sample_dict
5 {'first_name': 'Mike', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

Modifying Your Dictionary

You will need to modify your dictionary from time to time. Let’s assume that you need to add a new
(key, value) pair:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict['address'] = '123 Dunn St'
4 >>> sample_dict
5 {'first_name': 'James',
6 'last_name': 'Doe',
7 'email': '[email protected]',
8 'address': '123 Dunn St'
9 }

To add a new item to a dictionary, you can use the square braces to enter a new key and set it to a
value.
If you need to update a pre-existing key, you can do the following:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict['email'] = '[email protected]'
4 >>> sample_dict
5 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

In this example, you set sample_dict['email'] to [email protected]. Whenever you set a pre-existing
key to a new value, you will overwrite the previous value.
You can also use the update() method from the previous section to modify your dictionary.

Deleting Items From Your Dictionary

Sometimes you will need to remove a key from a dictionary. You can use Python’s del keyword for
that:
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 93

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> del sample_dict['email']
4 >>> sample_dict
5 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe'}

In this case, you tell Python to delete the key “email” from sample_dict
The other method for removing a key is to use the dictionary’s pop() method, which was mentioned
in the previous section:

1 >>> sample_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe',

2 'email': '[email protected]'}
3 >>> sample_dict.pop('email')
4 '[email protected]'
5 >>> sample_dict
6 {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe'}

When you use pop(), it will remove the key and return the value that is being removed.

Wrapping Up
The dictionary data type is extremely useful. You will find it handy to use for quick lookups of all
kinds of data. You can set the value of the key: value pair to any object in Python. So you could
store lists, tuples, and other objects as values in a dictionary.
You learned the following topics in this chapter:

• Creating dictionaries
• Accessing dictionaries
• Dictionary methods
• Modifying dictionaries
• Deleting items from your dictionary

It is fairly common to need a dictionary that will create a key when you try to access one that does
not exist. If you have such a need, you should check out Python’s collections module. It has a
defaultdict class that is made for exactly that use case.

Review Questions
1. How do you create a dictionary?

2. You have the following dictionary. How do you change the last_name field to ‘Smith’?
 Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries 94

1 >>> my_dict = {'first_name': 'James', 'last_name': 'Doe', 'email': '[email protected]'}

3. Using the dictionary above, how would you remove the email field from the dictionary?

4. How do you get just the values from a dictionary?

Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets
A set data type is defined as an “unordered collection of distinct hashable objects” according
to the Python 3 documentation. You can use a set for membership testing, removing duplicates
from a sequence and computing mathematical operations, like intersection, union, difference, and
symmetric difference.
Due to the fact that they are unordered collections, a set does not record element position or order of
insertion. Because of that, they also do not support indexing, slicing or other sequence-like behaviors
that you have seen with lists and tuples.
There are two types of set built-in to the Python language:

• set - which is mutable

• frozenset - which is immutable and hashable

This chapter will focus on set.

You will learn how to do the following with sets:

• Creating a set
• Accessing set members
• Changing items
• Adding items
• Removing items
• Deleting a set

Let’s get started by creating a set!

Creating a Set
Creating a set is pretty straight-forward. You can create them by adding a series of comma-separated
objects inside of curly braces or you can pass a sequence to the built-in set() function.
Let’s look at an example:
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 96

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set
3 {'c', 'a', 'b'}
4 >>> type(my_set)
5 <class 'set'>

A set uses the same curly braces that you used to create a dictionary. Note that instead of key:
value pairs, you have a series of values. When you print out the set, you can see that duplicates
were removed automatically.
Now let’s try creating a set using set():

1 >>> my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4]

2 >>> my_set = set(my_list)
3 >>> my_set
4 {1, 2, 3, 4}
5 >>> type(my_set)
6 <class 'set'>

In this example, you created a list and then cast it to a set using set(). If there had been any
duplicates in the list, they would have been removed.
Now let’s move along and see some of the things that you can do with this data type.

Accessing Set Members

You can check if an item is in a set by using Python’s in operator:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> "a" in my_set
3 True

Sets do not allow you to use slicing or the like to access individual members of the set. Instead, you
need to iterate over a set. You can do that using a loop, such as a while loop or a for loop.
You won’t be covering loops until chapter 12, but here is the basic syntax for iterating over a
collection using a for loop:
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 97

1 >>> for item in my_set:

2 ... print(item)
3 ...
4 c
5 a
6 b

This will loop over each item in the set one at a time and print it out.
You can access items in sets much faster than lists. A Python list will iterate over each item in a
list until it finds the item you are looking for. When you look for an item in a set, it acts much like
a dictionary and will find it immediately or not at all.

Changing Items
While both dict and set require hashable members, a set has no value to change. However, you
can add items to a set as well as remove them. Let’s find out how!

Adding Items
There are two ways to add items to a set:

• add()
• update()

Let’s try adding an item using add():

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.add('d')
3 >>> my_set
4 {'d', 'c', 'a', 'b'}

That was easy! You were able to add an item to the set by passing it into the add() method.
If you’d like to add multiple items all at once, then you should use update() instead:
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 98

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.update(['d', 'e', 'f'])
3 >>> my_set
4 {'a', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'b', 'f'}

Note that update() will take any iterable you pass to it. So it could take, for example, a list, tuple
or another set.

Removing Items
You can remove items from sets in several different ways.
You can use:

• remove()
• discard()
• pop()

Let’s go over each of these in the following sub-sections!

Using .remove()
The remove() method will attempt to remove the specified item from a set:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.remove('a')
3 >>> my_set
4 {'c', 'b'}

If you happen to ask the set to remove() an item that does not exist, you will receive an error:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.remove('f')
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 Python Shell, prompt 208, line 1
5 builtins.KeyError: 'f'

Now let’s see how the closely related discard() method works!

Using .discard()
The discard() method works in almost exactly the same way as remove() in that it will remove the
specified item from the set:
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 99

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.discard('b')
3 >>> my_set
4 {'c', 'a'}

The difference with discard() though is that it won’t throw an error if you try to remove an item
that doesn’t exist:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.discard('d')
3 >>>

If you want to be able to catch an error when you attempt to remove an item that does not exist, use
remove(). If that doesn’t matter to you, then discard() might be a better choice.

Using .pop()
The pop() method will remove and return an arbitrary item from the set:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.pop()
3 'c'
4 >>> my_set
5 {'a', 'b'}

If your set is empty and you try to pop() an item out, you will receive an error:

1 >>> my_set = {"a"}

2 >>> my_set.pop()
3 'a'
4 >>> my_set.pop()
5 Traceback (most recent call last):
6 Python Shell, prompt 219, line 1
7 builtins.KeyError: 'pop from an empty set'

This is very similar to the way that pop() works with the list data type, except that with a list,
it will raise an IndexError. Also lists are ordered while sets are not, so you can’t be sure what you
will be removing with pop() since sets are not ordered.

Clearing or Deleting a Set

Sometimes you will want to empty a set or even completely remove it.
To empty a set, you can use clear():
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 100

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> my_set.clear()
3 >>> my_set
4 set()

If you want to completely remove the set, then you can use Python’s del built-in:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

2 >>> del my_set
3 >>> my_set
4 Traceback (most recent call last):
5 Python Shell, prompt 227, line 1
6 builtins.NameError: name 'my_set' is not defined

Now let’s learn what else you can do with sets!

Set Operations
Sets provide you with some common operations such as:

• union() - Combines two sets and returns a new set

• intersection() - Returns a new set with the elements that are common between the two sets
• difference() - Returns a new set with elements that are not in the other set

These operations are the most common ones that you will use when working with sets.
The union() method is actually kind of like the update() method that you learned about earlier, in
that it combines two or more sets together into a new set. However the difference is that it returns
a new set rather than updating the original set with new items:

1 >>> first_set = {'one', 'two', 'three'}

2 >>> second_set = {'orange', 'banana', 'peach'}
3 >>> first_set.union(second_set)
4 {'two', 'banana', 'three', 'peach', 'orange', 'one'}
5 >>> first_set
6 {'two', 'three', 'one'}

In this example, you create two sets. Then you use union() on the first set to add the second set to it.
However union doesn’t update the set. It creates a new set. If you want to save the new set, then
you should do the following instead:
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 101

1 >>> united_set = first_set.union(second_set)

2 >>> united_set
3 {'two', 'banana', 'three', 'peach', 'orange', 'one'}

The intersection() method takes two sets and returns a new set that contains only the items that
are the same in both of the sets.
Let’s look at an example:

1 >>> first_set = {'one', 'two', 'three'}

2 >>> second_set = {'orange', 'banana', 'peach', 'one'}
3 >>> first_set.intersection(second_set)
4 {'one'}

These two sets have only one item in common: the string “one”. So when you call intersection(),
it returns a new set with a single element in it. As with union(), if you want to save off this new
set, then you would want to do something like this:

1 >>> intersection = first_set.intersection(second_set)

2 >>> intersection
3 {'one'}

The difference() method will return a new set with the elements in the set that are not in the other
set. This can be a bit confusing, so let’s look at a couple of examples:

1 >>> first_set = {'one', 'two', 'three'}

2 >>> second_set = {'three', 'four', 'one'}
3 >>> first_set.difference(second_set)
4 {'two'}
5 >>> second_set.difference(first_set)
6 {'four'}

When you call difference() on the first_set, it returns a set with “two” as its only element. This
is because “two” is the only string not found in the second_set. When you call difference() on the
second_set, it will return “four” because “four” is not in the first_set.

There are other methods that you can use with sets, but they are used pretty infrequently. You should
go check the documentation for full details on set methods should you need to use them.

Wrapping Up
Sets are a great data type that is used for pretty specific situations. You will find sets most useful for
de-duplicating lists or tuples or by using them to find differences between multiple lists.
In this chapter, you learned about the following:
 Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets 102

• Creating a set
• Accessing set members
• Changing items
• Adding items
• Removing items
• Deleting a set

Any time you need to use a set-like operation, you should take a look at this data type. However, in
all likelihood, you will be using lists, dictionaries, and tuples much more often.

Review Questions
1. How do you create a set?

2. Using the following set, how would you check to see if it contains the string, “b”?

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

3. How do you add an item to a set?

4. Remove the letter “c” from the following set using a set method:

1 >>> my_set = {"a", "b", "c", "c"}

5. How do you find the common items between two sets?

Chapter 10 - Boolean Operations and
None
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The bool() Function

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What About None?

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Chapter 11 - Conditional Statements
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Comparison Operators
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Creating a Simple Conditional

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Logical Operators
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Special Operators
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Chapter 11 - Conditional Statements 105

Wrapping Up
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Chapter 12 - Learning About Loops
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Creating a for Loop

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Looping Over a String

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Looping Over a Dictionary

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Creating a while Loop

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Chapter 12 - Learning About Loops 107

Breaking Out of a Loop

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Nesting Loops
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Chapter 13 - Python Comprehensions
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List Comprehensions
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Filtering List Comprehensions

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Dictionary Comprehensions
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Set Comprehensions
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Chapter 13 - Python Comprehensions 109

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Chapter 14 - Exception Handling
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The Most Common Exceptions

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Handling Exceptions
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Raising Exceptions
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Chapter 14 - Exception Handling 111

Wrapping Up
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Chapter 15 - Working with Files
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The open() Function

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Reading Files
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Reading Binary Files

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Writing Files
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Seeking Within a File

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Appending to Files
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Chapter 15 - Working with Files 113

Catching File Exceptions

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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 16 - Importing
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Using import
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Using from to Import Specific Bits & Pieces

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Using as to assign a new name

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Importing Everything
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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 17 - Functions
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Creating a Function
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Calling a Function
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Passing Arguments
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Type Hinting Your Arguments

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Passing Keyword Arguments

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Required and Default Arguments

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Chapter 17 - Functions 116

What are *args and **kwargs?

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Positional-only Parameters
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Scope
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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 18 - Classes
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Class Creation
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Figuring Out self

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Public and Private Methods / Attributes

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Subclass Creation
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Polymorphism
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Making the Class Nicer

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Chapter 18 - Classes 118

Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Part II - Beyond the Basics
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Chapter 19 - Introspection
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Using the type() Function

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Using the dir() Function

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Getting help()
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Other Built-in Introspection Tools

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Using callable()
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Using len()
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Chapter 19 - Introspection 121

Using locals()
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Using globals()
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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 20 - Installing Packages with
pip
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Installing a Package
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Exploring Command Line Options

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Installing with requirements.txt

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Upgrading a Package
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Checking What’s Installed

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Chapter 20 - Installing Packages with pip 123

Uninstalling Packages
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Alternatives to pip
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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 21 - Python Virtual
Environments
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Python’s venv Library

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The virtualenv Package

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Other Tools
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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 22 - Type Checking in Python
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Pros and Cons of Type Hinting

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Built-in Type Hinting / Variable Annotation

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Collection Type Hinting

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Hinting Values That Could be None

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Type Hinting Functions

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What To Do When Things Get Complicated

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Chapter 22 - Type Checking in Python 126

Classes
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Decorators
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Aliasing
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Other Type Hints

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Type Comments
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Static Type Checking

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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 23 - Creating Multiple
Threads
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Pros of Using Threads

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Cons of Using Threads

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Creating Threads
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Subclassing Thread
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Writing Multiple Files with Threads

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Chapter 23 - Creating Multiple Threads 128

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 24 - Creating Multiple
Processes
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Pros of Using Processes

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Cons of Using Processes

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Creating Processes with multiprocessing

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Subclassing Process
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Creating a Process Pool

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Chapter 24 - Creating Multiple Processes 130

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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Chapter 25 - Launching Subprocesses
with Python
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The subprocess.run() Function

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Getting the Output

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The subprocess.Popen() Class

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The subprocess.Popen.communicate() Function

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Reading and Writing with stdin and stdout

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Wrapping Up
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Chapter 25 - Launching Subprocesses with Python 132

Review Questions
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Chapter 26 - Debugging Your Code
with pdb
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Starting pdb in the REPL

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Starting pdb on the Command Line

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Stepping Through Code

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Adding Breakpoints in pdb

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Creating a Breakpoint with set_trace()

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Chapter 26 - Debugging Your Code with pdb 134

Using the built-in breakpoint() Function

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Getting Help
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 27 - Learning About
Decorators
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Creating a Function
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Creating a Decorator
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Applying a Decorator with @

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Creating a Decorator for Logging

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Stacking Decorators
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Chapter 27 - Learning About Decorators 136

Passing Arguments to Decorators

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Using a Class as a Decorator

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Python’s Built-in Decorators

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Python Properties
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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 28 - Assignment Expressions
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Using Assignment Expressions

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What You Cannot Do With Assignment Expressions

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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 29 - Profiling Your Code
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Learning How to Profile with cProfile

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Profiling a Python Script with cProfile

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Working with Profile Data Using pstats

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Other Profilers
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line_profiler
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memory_profiler
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Chapter 29 - Profiling Your Code 139

profilehooks
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scalene
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snakeviz
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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 30 - An Introduction to
Testing
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Using doctest in the Terminal

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Using doctest in Your Code

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Using doctest From a Separate File

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Using unittest For Test Driven Development

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The Fizz Test

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The Buzz Test

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Chapter 30 - An Introduction to Testing 141

The FizzBuzz Test

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The Final Test

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Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 31 - Learning About the
Jupyter Notebook
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Installing The Jupyter Notebook

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Creating a Notebook
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Naming Your Notebook

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Running Cells
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Learning About the Menus

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Adding Content
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Chapter 31 - Learning About the Jupyter Notebook 143

Creating Markdown Content

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Formatting Your Text

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Using Headings
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Adding a Listing
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Highlighting Code Syntax

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Creating a Hyperlink
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Adding an Extension
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Exporting Notebooks to Other Formats

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Chapter 31 - Learning About the Jupyter Notebook 144

Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Part III - Practical Python
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Chapter 32 - How to Create a
Command-line Application with
argparse
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Parsing Arguments
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Creating Helpful Messages

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Adding Aliases
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Using Mutually Exclusive Arguments

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Creating a Simple Search Utility

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Chapter 32 - How to Create a Command-line Application with argparse 147

Wrapping Up
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Review Questions
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Chapter 33 - How to Parse XML
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Parsing XML with ElementTree

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Creating XML with ElementTree

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Editing XML with ElementTree

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Manipulating XML with lxml

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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 34 - How to Parse JSON
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Encoding a JSON String

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Saving JSON to Disk

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Decoding a JSON String

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Loading JSON from Disk

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Validating JSON with json.tool

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 34 - How to Parse JSON 150

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 35 - How to Scrape a Website
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Rules for Web Scraping

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Preparing to Scrape a Website

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Scraping a Website
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Downloading a File
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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 36 - How to Work with CSV
files
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Reading a CSV File

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Reading a CSV File with DictReader

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Writing a CSV File

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Writing a CSV File with DictWriter

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Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 37 - How to Work with a
Database Using sqlite3
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a SQLite Database

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Adding Data to Your Database

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Searching Your Database

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Editing Data in Your Database

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Deleting Data From Your Database

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Chapter 37 - How to Work with a Database Using sqlite3 154

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 38 - Working with an Excel
Document in Python
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Python Excel Packages

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Getting Sheets from a Workbook

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Reading Cell Data

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Iterating Over Rows and Columns

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Writing Excel Spreadsheets

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 38 - Working with an Excel Document in Python 156

Adding and Removing Sheets

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Adding and Deleting Rows and Columns

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 39 - How to Generate a PDF
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing ReportLab
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Simple PDF with the Canvas

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating Drawings and Adding Images Using the

Canvas
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating Multi-page Documents with PLATYPUS

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Table
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 39 - How to Generate a PDF 158

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 40 - How to Create Graphs
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing Matplotlib
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Simple Line Chart with PyPlot

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Bar Chart

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Pie Chart

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Adding Labels
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Adding Titles to Plots

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 40 - How to Create Graphs 160

Creating a Legend
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Showing Multiple Figures

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 41 - How to Work with
Images in Python
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing Pillow
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Opening Images
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Cropping Images
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Using Filters
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Adding Borders
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 41 - How to Work with Images in Python 162

Resizing Images
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 42 - How to Create a
Graphical User Interface
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing wxPython
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Learning About Event Loops

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//leanpub.com/py101.

How to Create Widgets

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//leanpub.com/py101.

How to Lay Out Your Application

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//leanpub.com/py101.

How to Add Events

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 42 - How to Create a Graphical User Interface 164

How to Create an Application

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Part IV - Distributing Your Code
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 43 - How to Create a Python
Package
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Module
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Package
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Packaging a Project for PyPI

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating Project Files

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating setup.py
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 43 - How to Create a Python Package 167

Generating a Python Wheel

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Uploading to PyPI
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 44 - How to Create an Exe for
Windows
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing PyInstaller
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating an Executable for a Command-Line

Application
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating an Executable for a GUI

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 45 - How to Create an
Installer for Windows
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing Inno Setup

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating an Installer
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Testing Your Installer

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Chapter 46 - How to Create an “exe”
for Mac
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing PyInstaller
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating an Executable with PyInstaller

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Review Questions
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Afterword
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix A - Version Control
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Version Control Systems

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Distributed vs Centralized Versioning

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Common Terminology
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Branch
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Changelist / Changeset
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Checkout
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix A - Version Control 173

Clone
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Commit
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Diff
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Fork
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Head
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Initialize
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Mainline
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Merge
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix A - Version Control 174

Pull / Push
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Pull Request
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Repository
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Resolve
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Stream
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Tag
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Trunk
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Python IDE Version Control Support

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix A - Version Control 175

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix B - Version Control with Git
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing Git
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing on Windows
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing on MacOS
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Installing on Linux
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Configuring Git
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

Creating a Project
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix B - Version Control with Git 177

Ignoring Files
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Initializing a Repository
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Checking the Project Status

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Adding Files to a Repository

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Committing Files
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Viewing the Log

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Changing a File
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Appendix B - Version Control with Git 178

Reverting a File
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Checking Out Previous Commits

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Pushing to Github
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Wrapping Up
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Review Question Answer Key
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 3 - Documenting Your Code

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

1) How do you create a comment?

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What do you use a docstring for?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) What is Python’s style guide?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) Why is documenting your code important?

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 4 - Working with Strings

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Review Question Answer Key 180

1) What are 3 ways to create a string?

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Run dir(""). This lists all the string methods you can use. Which
of these methods will capitalize each of the words in a sentence?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Change the following example to use f-strings:

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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) How do you concatenate these two strings together?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 5 - Numeric Types

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What 3 numeric types does Python support without importing

anything?
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Which module should you use for money or other precise

calculations?
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//leanpub.com/py101.
Review Question Answer Key 181

3) Give an example of how to use augmented assignment.

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 6 - Learning About Lists

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) How do you create a list?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Create a list with 3 items and then use append() to add two more.
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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) What is wrong with this code?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) How do you remove the 2nd item in this list?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

5) Create a list that looks like this: [4, 10, 2, 1, 23]. Use string
slicing to get only the middle 3 items.
This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 7 - Learning About Tuples

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Review Question Answer Key 182

1) How do you create a tuple?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Can you show how to access the 3rd element in this tuple?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Is it possible to modify a tuple after you create it? Why or why

not?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) How do you create a tuple with a single item?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 8 - Learning About Dictionaries

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) How do you create a dictionary?

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
//leanpub.com/py101.

2) You have the following dictionary. How do you change the

last_name field to ‘Smith’?

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//leanpub.com/py101.
Review Question Answer Key 183

3) Using the dictionary above, how would you remove the email
field from the dictionary?
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4) How do you get just the values from a dictionary?

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Chapter 9 - Learning About Sets

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1) How do you create a set?

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2) Using the following set, how would you check to see if it

contains the string, “b”?
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3) How do you add an item to a set?

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4) Remove the letter “c” from the following set using a set
method:
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Review Question Answer Key 184

5) How do you find the common items between two sets?

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Chapter 10 - Boolean Operations and None

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1) What number does True equal?

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2) How do you cast other data types to True or False?

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3) What is Python’s null type?

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Chapter 11 - Conditional Statements

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1) Give a couple of examples of comparison operators:

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2) Why does indentation matter in Python?

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Review Question Answer Key 185

3) How do you create a conditional statement?

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4) How do you use logical operators to check more than one thing
at once?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

5) What are some examples of special operators?

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6) What is the difference between these two?

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Chapter 12 - Learning About Loops

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1) What two types of loops does Python support?

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2) How do you loop over a string?

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3) What keyword do you use to exit a loop?

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Review Question Answer Key 186

4) How do you “skip” over an item when you are iterating?

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5) What is the else statement for in loops?

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6) What are the flow control statements in Python?

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Chapter 13 - Python Comprehensions

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1) How do you create a list comprehension?

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2) What is a good use case for a list comprehension?

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3) Create a dictionary using a dict comprehension.

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4) Create a set using a set comprehension.

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Review Question Answer Key 187

Chapter 14 - Exception Handling

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1) What are a couple of common exceptions?

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2) How do you catch an exception in Python?

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3) What do you need to do to raise a run time error?

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4) What is the finally statement for?

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5) How is the else statement used with an exception handler?

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Chapter 15 - Working with Files

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1) How do you open a file?

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Review Question Answer Key 188

2) What do you need to do to read a file?

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3) Write the following sentence to a file named test.txt:

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4) How do you append new data to a pre-existing file?

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5) What do you need to do to catch a file exception?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 16 - Importing
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1) How do you include the math library from Python’s standard

library in your code?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you include cos from the math library in your own code?
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3) How do you import a module/function/etc. with a different

name?
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Review Question Answer Key 189

4) Python has a special syntax you can use to include everything.

What is it?
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Chapter 17 - Functions
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1) How do you create a function that accepts two positional

arguments?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Create a function named address_builder that accepts the

following and add type hints:
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3) Using the function from question 2, give the zip code a default
of 55555
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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) How do you allow an arbitrary number of keyword arguments

to be passed to a function?
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5) What syntax do you use to force a function to use

positional-only parameters?
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Review Question Answer Key 190

Chapter 18 - Classes
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1) How do you create a class in Python?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What do you name a class initializer?

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3) Explain the use of self in your own words

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4) What does overriding a method do?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

5) What is a subclass?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 19 - Introspection
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1) What is introspection?
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Review Question Answer Key 191

2) What is the type() function used for?

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3) How is dir() helpful?

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Chapter 20 - Installing Packages with pip

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) How do you install a package with pip?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What command do you use to see the version of the packages

you installed?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) How do you uninstall a package?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 21 - Python Virtual Environments

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1) How do you create a Python virtual environment?

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Review Question Answer Key 192

2) What do you need to do after creating a virtual environment to

use it?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Why would you use a Python virtual environment?

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Chapter 22 - Type Checking in Python

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What is type hinting in your own words?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Why would you use type hinting?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Demonstrate your understanding of type hinting by adding

type annotations to the variables as well as the function. Don’t
forget the return type!
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Chapter 23 - Creating Multiple Threads

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Review Question Answer Key 193

1) What are threads good for?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Which module do you use to create a thread in Python?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) What is the Global Interpreter Lock?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 24 - Creating Multiple Processes

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What are processes good for?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you create a process in Python?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Can you create a process pool in Python? How?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) What effect, if any, does the Global Interpreter Lock have on

processes?
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Review Question Answer Key 194

5) What happens if you don’t use process.join()?

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Chapter 25 - Launching Subprocesses with Python

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) How would you launch Microsoft Notepad or your favorite text

editor with Python?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Which method do you use to get the result from a process?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) How do you get subprocess to return strings instead of bytes?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 26 - Debugging Your Code

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What is pdb?
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2) How do you use pdb to get to a specific location in your code?

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Review Question Answer Key 195

3) What is a breakpoint?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) What is a callstack?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 27 - Learning About Decorators

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What is a decorator?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What special syntax do you use to apply a decorator?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Name at least two of Python’s built-in decorators

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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) What is a Python property?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 28 - Assignment Expressions

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Review Question Answer Key 196

1) What is an assignment expression?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you create an assignment expression?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) Why would you use assignment expressions?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 29 - Profiling Your Code

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What does “profiling” mean in a programming context?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Which Python library do you use to profile your code?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) How do you extract data from saved profile statistics?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 30 - An Introduction to Testing

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Review Question Answer Key 197

1) How do you add tests to be used with doctest?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Are tests for doctest required to be in the docstring? If not, how

would you execute it?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) What is a unit test?

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4) What is test driven development?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 31 - Learning About the Jupyter Notebook

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What is Jupyter Notebook?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Name two Notebook cell types

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) What markup language do you use to format text in Jupyter

Notebook?
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Review Question Answer Key 198

4) How do you export a Notebook to another format?

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Chapter 32 - How to Create a Command Line

Application with argparse
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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) Which module in the standard library can you use to create a

command-line application?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you add arguments to the ArgumentParser()?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) How do you create helpful messages for your users?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

4) Which method do you use to create a mutually exclusive group

of commands?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 33 - How to Parse XML

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Review Question Answer Key 199

1) What XML modules are available in Python’s standard library?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you access an XML tag using ElementTree?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) How do you get the root element using the ElementTree API?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 34 - How to Parse JSON

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What is JSON?
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2) How do you decode a JSON string in Python?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

3) How do you save JSON to disk with Python?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 35 - How to Scrape a Website

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Review Question Answer Key 200

1) What are some popular Python web scraping packages?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you examine a web page with your browser?

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3) Which Python module from the standard library do you use to

download a file?
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Chapter 36 - How to Work with CSV files

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) How do you read a CSV file with Python’s standard library?

This content is not available in the sample book. The book can be purchased on Leanpub at http:
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2) If your CSV file doesn’t use commas as the delimiter, how do

you use the csv module to read it?
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3) How do you write a row of CSV data using the csv module?
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Chapter 37 - How to Work with a Database Using sqlite

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Review Question Answer Key 201

1) How do you create a database with the sqlite3 library?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) Which SQL command is used to add data to a table?

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3) How do you change a field in a database with SQL?

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4) What are SQL queries used for?

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5) By default, how many records in a table will DELETE affect?

How about UPDATE and SELECT?
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6) The delete_author function above is susceptible to an SQL

Injection attack. Why, and how would you fix it?
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Chapter 38 - Working with an Excel Document in

Python
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Review Question Answer Key 202

1) What Python package can you use to work with Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you open an Excel spreadsheet with Python?

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3) Which class do you use to create an Excel spreadsheet with

OpenPyXL?
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Chapter 39 - How to Generate a PDF

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1) What class in ReportLab do you use to draw directly on the PDF

at a low-level?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What does PLATYPUS stand for?

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3) How do you apply a stylesheet to a Paragraph?

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Review Question Answer Key 203

4) Which method do you use to apply a TableStyle?

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Chapter 40 - How to Create Graphs

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1) Which module in Matplotlib do you use to create plots?

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2) How do you add a label to the x-axis of a plot?

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3) Which functions do you use to create titles and legends for

plots?
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Chapter 41 - How to Work with Images in Python

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1) How do you get the width and height of a photo using Pillow?
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2) Which method do you use to apply a border to an image?

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Review Question Answer Key 204

3) How do you resize an image with Pillow while maintaining its

aspect ratio?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 42 - How to Create a Graphical User Interface

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1) What is a GUI?
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What is an event loop?

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3) How do you layout widgets in your application?

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//leanpub.com/py101.

Chapter 43 - How to Create a Python Package

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1) What is a module?
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2) How is a package different from a module?

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Review Question Answer Key 205

3) Name at least two tools that are required for packaging a

project?
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4) What are some of the files you need to include in a package

that are not Python files?
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Chapter 44 - How to Create an Exe for Windows

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1) Name 3 different tools you can use to create a Windows

executable out of Python code.
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) What command do you use with PyInstaller to create an

executable?
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3) How do you create a single file executable with PyInstaller?

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4) Which flag do you use with PyInstaller to suppress the console

window?
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Review Question Answer Key 206

Chapter 45 - How to Create an Installer for Windows

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) Name two programs you can use to create installers for

Windows.
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//leanpub.com/py101.

2) How do you modify an Inno Setup compiler script?

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3) Why should you test your installers?

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Chapter 46 - How to Create an “exe” for Mac

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//leanpub.com/py101.

1) What tools can you use to create executables for Python on

MacOS?
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2) What is an executable called on MacOS?

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//leanpub.com/py101.