’ CODING ACADEMY @2023 LEARN TO CODE FAST TODAY! * PYTHON + RUST » ERLANG * MONGO « REDIS * GO + RIAK 164 PAGES OF EXPERT GUIDES & TUTORIALS LEARN CORE CODING TECHNIQUES AND ADVANCED SKILLSapa de RARRRAARAAR I hme Ds Ds MN li lin Df is mi ehh ShabhadhhRAh : hin . a NN mi ie | a3 SSRSEREESESS » BARRA pee SESSEERERERESS BERERESESEEERERE SESSSeESRe a eA a ry rvPr|You holdin your handsa gateway tothe word of programming. nan era ‘when the onine word runs the world the people that can code that word, rule it. Just take afew of the bggest online names inthe wold fom the ‘creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg tothe quartet that created Twitter to ‘Google founders Lary Page and Sergey Brin ~ they are al programmes. ‘ut you dont need to aim to create the next bln pound startup tohavea lus for earning to code. Coding can be fun and entertaining: itcan open the {gates to creating amazing projects used online by entire communities, down ‘to small physical installations running at home ona Raspberry Pi the only limit yourimagination. Coding Academy takes you through the ‘fundamentals flaring to code, offers a hefty coding reference atthe back, and helps you lex your new programming muscles witha host of practical Python projects, introducing the basics of database interactions and covering the cutting-edge languages of Erang, Go, and Rust. Lets get coding!4 L FUTURE 4 rCODING ACADEMY 2023Contents CODING ACADEMY Fundamentals Projects 24 26 28 6 | Coding Academy Different types of data 32. Python 3: How to get started How Python handles various ‘re moving to Python 3! About time More Python data types 36 Python 3: Using functions Beyond the previous ones, of course The essentials of modules, classes and more ‘modules done quickly 44 break things apart Automate your scripts with scripts: Write your own UNIX program 48 Python: times, dates & numbers Rewriting cat for fun and (no) profit Essential processing of complex dates Neater code with modules 52 NumPy & SciPy: For science! Use them wisely for super-clean progra Embrace storage & persistence Deal with persistent data in Python Lock down with data encryption Look after your data and it will look after you “Coding can be fun and entertaining; it can open the gates to creating amazing projects”Databases 58 Python and SQLite Get started using databases 62. Get to grips with MariaDB. ‘The open source alternative to MySQL Mik maximum power from Mongo 74 —MongoDB: Build a blog Get your words collected in a database 78 Riak NoSQL. Just what isthe big deal about NoSQL? 82 Redis data store High-speed, in memory NoSQL Reference 140. Get to grips with Python lists Its one thing after another, isn'tit? 142. Understanding functions and objects All about things and what things do 144 Adapt and evolve with conditional Because change is inevitable 146. Variable scope of various variables There's a variety of variables, and they vary 148. Recursion: round and round we go Repetition is no bad thing 150 Super sorting algorithms Get everything orderly, and qui Contents Do more 88 94 100 104 108 uz u6 126 132 Program in Erlang: Introduction Get to grips with the Eriang language Erlang: Functions Discover functions and basic data types Rust: modules and cargo Get started with the hip new language Rust: functions and modules Go further tacking error handling Rust: file 1/0 Speed up your transfers Rust: networking Build a TCP-based client/server tool Rust: concurrency How to use Threads Go: Master Google's new programming language Get yourself familiar with the fundamentals Go: Data types Get to grips with Go's composite data types Go: Explore functions Learn how you can develop and use functions Hidden secrets of numbers Integers thoroughly demystified Using loops and using loops And using loops and using loops ‘The magic of compilers How they translate your code Avoid common coding mistakes Getit right the first time Coding Academy | 7CODING ACADEMYUsing Python, we'll take you through essential coding steps Different types of data How Python handles various variables More Python data types Beyond the previous ones, of course Reliability by abstraction Open your coding mind and think diferently Files and modules done quickly ‘The easy way to break things apart Write your own UNIX program Rewriting cat for fun and (no) profit Neater code with modules Use them wisely for super-clean programs Embrace storage & persistenct Deal with persistent data using Python Lock down with data encryption Look after your data and it will look after you Coding Academy | 9Fundamentals Different types of Python data Functions tell programs how to work, but it’s data that they operate on. Let's go through the basics of data in Python fundamental concepts of coding Here we look at basic datatypes: nlater articles, wallock at a few ‘more advanced topics that bul on wht we do ere: data abstraction fancy structures such as trees, and mere. What is data? Inthe word andin the programs that wel wrt, there's an amazin varety of dierent types of data. na mortage calculator. fr example, the value of the mortgage the interest rate andthe term ofthe loan ar all types of data ina shoping list program, there areal te ferent types ‘food andthe ist tat stores them ~ each of which has its own kind of data, ‘The computer's words alt mor ite. Itdoesnit know theeiffrence between althese datatypes. but that oesnt stop rom working with them, The computer has ‘afew basic ones can werk wth, and that you have to use creatively to represent athe varity n the world ‘ell begin by highighting thre data types: frst. we I nthis section, we be using Python to broach many ofthe Date wee Roemer 103 nd 580 ea rapes hese tctigcnyy_Thoprtcr roberts oop’ thon knows Stoesarts abate types clues ta nein ong Core Sreninveal gu ats (bers wh cma pont sacha 1035 brows tng S913) onl comple crlexrmbe) These do few Ss suchas Mllo Wort "Banana ona’ Tess Sea are identified as a sequence of characters enclosed within 7 ‘quotation marks. You can use either double or single quotes. ae case youll tt ts uch {Bananas Oranges) ‘accidentally caught by code that catches txcertion propagate up and cause the interpreter to exit (Changed in version 2.5: Changed to inherit from ease Ralsed when an operation or function is applied to| associated value is a string giving details about the t ‘exception UnboundLocalerror Ralsed when a reference is made to a local variable has been bound to that variable, This is a subclass of New in version 2.0. exception unicodeérror Ralsed when a Unicode-related encoding or decoa| 10 | Coding Academy In some ways these are tke astrng in tha they area sequence, What makes them iferentis thatthe elements that make up alist canbe of ny type Inthis example, te elements areal strings. but ou could create another list that mses cert types, such as [PBanaras; 1,2] Lists are enti’ by the square brackets that enclose them. andeach em or element within them is separated by a comme, Working with data There seb of hing youcan do wth the ferent yes dno Python For stoce yovean a sec Sl ord mut wo nantes and rhon itn ees were & pan 2 yaa corte ferent ype ofrumbers suchas anit and aoa. teva eure Plone ol uhatver te etn the mos eta thet toy youn Sata. he reurnedvae bea fo Yovcantest ths byusre the ped ncn tretars theta pect watever anette pesto > pa “pert sree) ‘ope oat sepa +2300 ‘ope oats Moca lose he srr persons srg adits, but they he tere fet Te epertr concatenate thaiscombnestepter tw Snes ook whl the? pert open thecontrs ofthe sonar peo” +r” ao Wo >>topee)*2 Cals ae Surreal aso have teow speci sett operat, ising ses Tse este yout ek Spartator par othe sence yt rumen wich begs tom 0. per Hela =a = >> wor ana cake tit) > lata ‘iioIndexes workin verse too. I you want to reference the last clement of alist or the ast characterin a string, you can use the same notation with a Las the index. -2 wil eerence the second to last character, 3th thd, and soon. Note that ‘when working backwards. theindexes don't star at Methods st and strings lsc have a range of ther special operations, each unique to that particular type. These are noun as methods. They similar to functions such as ‘typed in that they performa procedure What makes them dferetis that they're associated witha particular piece of data, and hence havea cterent syntax for execution For example, among the ist type's methods ae append andinsert, >»vlist append chicken) >>list (banana ‘cake tii chicken] >listinsert(, pasta) >>list (Pbanana}past cake tifin chicken] ‘As you can see, a method is invoked by placing a period between the pice of data that you're applying the method ‘toandthe name ofthe method Then you pass any arguments between round brackets, jst a5 you would with anormal function. works the sare wth stig and any other data object, to: >> word = "HELLO" >» wordower) “hallo ‘There ae lots of ciferent methods that canbe apples to lists and strings and to tuples and dictionaries (which we're aut tolook at. To see the oder of the arguments andthe fulrange of methods avalabe. youl need to consult the Python documentation Variables Inthe previous examples, we used the idea of variables to mare aber to work wth our data. Variables are away to name ferent values ~ itferent pieces of data, They make iteasy to manage athe bts of data you're workingth and greatly reduce the complexity of development (when {you use sensible names) ‘As we saw above. in Python youcreate anew variable with an assignment statement. Fst comes the name ofthe variable thena singe equals sign followed bythe piece of data that you want to assign to that variable From that point on, whenever ou use the name assigned tothe vail, you ae actualy refering to the datathat you assigned tit nthe examples. we saw this in action when \werelerence the secondcharacterina sing or the third elementin alist by appending indexrotationto the variable rare You can also see thsin action yeu 300th ye) function to avarble name: >» typetnord) >>read stypetist> Other data types There ae two other commen types of data that are used by Python: tuples and ctionare. Tues are very sma to lists ~they'ea sequence data type, are they can contain elements of mixed types The bg derence is that tuples are immutable — tats to say. once you create tuple you Data types pn@eve= senseve -18 rvthen pancakes, ‘sauzage='] >the Python corratchnge t-andthatunesareeniedbyround terete bent as eppoststo sine rset (Hanan; gent loce to ‘creat Ocsonaresaesmisrtoaistr stipe mn pene wih eyeotanacaectonoeteaitons They nth thon cade an trelorets antec aro batho andre ae how arnt creed whch steele language ditonary The key the word that you'e looking up. andthe value ithe defition ofthe word With Python dictionaries however, youcan use any immutable data type asthe key (strings ae immutable, 00), solong ats unique within that cctionay. yout to use anakeady existing key ts previous association i forgotten completely and that data lst forever. >> english = (Yess in ber tinux’“operating system) >> english tree] “asin beer > english! ="asin ibery” >> english ee] “asin iberty Looping sequences (ne commen operation hat yournay want performon any of the sequence ypesis looping over their contents toapplyan operation to every element contained thin. Consider this smal Python program: Uist = banana tii burt] foriterin i print item Frat. we created thet as we woud normaly, hen we ued the for. construct perform te pin uncton eneachitem nthe it.The second worn that constr oesn' have tobe tem that's just a varabe name that sts assigned terporaiy to each element contained within the sequence spected atthe end We could ust 35 wo row wien for letter word ae would have worked iustasvel ‘nce you have mastered these sic ata types, you be ready olook t how youcan put his knowledge to use when ‘modeling rea-word problems in ater ates. nthe ‘meantime. eae Python documentation to becorne farior th some of he ctr methods tat provide for the datatypes we've looked at before. You ilo of set t05 sich 3 srt od reverse Coding Academy | 11Fundamentals More Python data types Learn how different types of data come together to solve a real problem as we write some code that counts words >Haraly surprisingly. ‘our counting rogram, after being sorted, finds the'to be the most ‘common word in The Te ‘common datatypes: numbers (nts and float) strings, lists tuples and dictionaries. We demonstrated how they ‘work with ferent operators, and explained afew oftheir ‘mest useful methods We ddr, however, ive much sight ito how they might be used in el situations. n ths arte, were going tofixthat. Were going to write a program that counts the number coftimes each unique word oocurs ina tet fle, Punctuation marks wil be excluded, nd ifthe same word oceus but in diferent cases (fr example the and Te). they wilbe taken torepresent a single word, Fal the program wl print the results to the soreen. should look tke this: the 123 yourt0 22600 | ithe previous tutorial. we introduced Pythons most Asan example, we'lbe using The Time Machine. by HG ‘lls, hich you can dawnload fren Project Gutenberg ‘saving tin the same foter as your Python file under the ame tmemachine xt, As the program description suggests, theft thing we need to do is make the tet accessible from inside ou Python ‘rogram, Thisis done with the apeng function: flea: is but tes: came with ii: so 2 for 11: upon at 2: into flee iz: ittte me 112: one had 114: not is: att. it hie: he that ii: have ny 21: they in 22: from was 22: there to 129: his a 32: then of 32: you and 37: on i Si: this the s7: were 96: time 90: but 12| Coding Academy ‘tm = openCtimemachine. Inthis example, pend is passed two variables. The fests the name of the fl to oper: fit wereina diferent rectory from the Python soit the entire path would have tobe ven. The second argument species which mode te le shouldbe openedin: stands or read, but you can also use wor write or rw fr read-ite Notice we've also assigned the filets oun variable name. tm, so we can refer to tater inte program. With reterencet thee created, we aso need a way toaccess its contents. There are several waysto do this, but today wel be using afer. in. oop To ee how this works, try opening imemachine bet te interactive interpreter and then typing >> fo nein tm: Print tine The result shouldbe every neo the fe printed to the screen By puting ths code nto 2. fle, sy emp, ee got the start of ou Python program, Cleaning up ‘Theprogrars destin alo specie that we should exclude punctuation marks, consider the same word but indierent cases sone werd and tht we're courting individual words not ines. Ast stands, weave been abet readonly entice ines as strings. however th punetuation, strange whitespace characters (suchas Wn) and eerent cases ct. Looking atthe Python tng documentation nditat ttp:/ docs pythonorg/ibrary) we con see that there are four methods that an hep us corwert ine stags ito 2 fermat closer to that specie by the desertion tp, ‘translate, lower ard split). Each of these re methods, andae such theyre functions that are app topartclar Strings sing the dt notation, Fc example stip, which removes specledcharacters rom the beginning and end of strings used ike this: >> tin td shen passed wth no arguments, itremoves all whitespace characters, which sone of the bs we needed get done The function translated) isa method that can be used for removing 2 et of characters, such 25 al punctuation mars from string To se itn this capacity trees tobe passed {wo arguments the fst beng None ar the second being, the lst of characters tobe deleted >> line translatlNone, MASKENO* -/s¢=92@1N dower speaks for tse realy -Itcomerts every character inating to lower-case. sp spits distinc elementsinside a string ino separate strings returning thern asi By passing an argument to split is possible to specty \which character identifies the end of one element andthe start of another olin split’) Inthis example. we've passed. single space asthe character ‘split the string around With ll punctuation remove, tis \wicrate ast. ith each wordin the string stored as a separate element. Putalof thin the Python fle we started ‘working on eae inside the for loop and we've made considerable progres. shoud now look he ths ‘um = openttimemachinett Because alo the string methods return anew, modified ‘tring. rater than operating onthe exiting string, we've ‘assigned te line variable in each line to store the work of the previous step. Uniqueness Free bak at al ft wrk wee doe vith dt Byung he smgmetnos webs abetoronoeal ebiselcoattne wrt rested Wee coset cookery ereeingata isarabe curbahy conetiat tonic andntiepeces gato east sosact einen wee most wore ur staningpogess nde hells waka be rene vay rich wets ae chau arpa sin sb uth nye conan vat torte The Wt th tetsu pop ino youd wen then sbout aquest sacStonay, eheyaestore wasnt prrarise tout amralenste {Diy errno nerd esohey whine acre. wee guorataesture wort bean dupes ‘ats more necance he velo sore th runber cles tverher scares hewrentngies the progomcores acess nentstresol sacs Sorty coat the Scion, arse t perth aa ot uta ney ace ‘Note sre he start othe oe ry Thane ane deters wr eco ron crworis Not vane oieksboawey oat coxrwerdina hectare A We saws te ora trample asaperentstaeret vob reughinada fen wordt doa We cotter tortor it teed ate (ose arth fro, tong athe) ‘Govcacteor winovoleofl (ores tht aes conured on nie) ‘eevee ‘twor extremes tke eo ests the late s cseretonon tear set To get ur can pave aniee douse sie hep “Another data type wrestled with, another step closer to our goal” More Python data types Rerun a tof te worden the srg, using sp 0 te delete sting. most maepat spits we cane us tha bt have most mene ere ot specie a, then there sh it on the ruber ef Spts (al possbe | HY sep gen, consecutive deters are not grouped together and are fevpty stings (for example, “ht-aite Tturne anak of utile characters (for example, ‘sososaito") Fetus Spting an emery stg wih a specied separator return "1 tp not specie orf mm eer eng agorthn sapped rn ferpty sing a a tng conang of ust whitespace Wh a wee Sepa Fo ‘count sictvord] = count lee ictvord) “Tnsisalite bt confusing because dlet{word] being used in two diterent ways. inte secondine i returns the valve ‘and assigns tothe variable count. whileinthefourth and are avalable and Seventh nes, count and are assigned to that Key's how to use them vale. respectively Notice. oo, that fa wards ready inthe ‘detonary, woincrement the county 1 epresentng another ccurence Putting it together Another data type wrestled vith another stop cser to ‘our goa. At ths pinta that's tt dis insert some code topnnt te dictionary and putitall together and ran the rogram. The pent ston shoul look ike tis and be t thevery endo thee, outside of thelneecpng code. for wordcount in dct iteritems print word ++ st(count “Tri for loop lok ferent to what you've seen before By Usinatheitertems method ofthe dctonay, we can aonss both the key (word) and valve (un) n ase loop What's more ve had to use te tr futon o ‘convert eount. a ntege into a sting asthe + operate ‘antconcatenate aninteger anda sng running it and youshould see your terminal sereen filed ith ines tke other: 20 sick ventilating:2 Data everywhere! Thats we paedto scents parca or ats ectioly umoxttobeqate abt As wo shawna hada chance soo seater typeset dts the ther thd cabe pedo save area rele wehope wu ntced hor pratt ose he aporoprte ype for epresering arent aac Concepts Aso rhe pewamng exrose hy took tosoring te est cna ederto se wich wore cer mst equ You ase wate cnr wing theres oe encerttyon atin ose tre tft our bout Coding Academy | 13,Fundamentals Reliabili ab ty by straction Think your code is solid? Perhaps it's a bit too lumpy. Creating abstractions can make code much easier to maintain nthe prove tora. ne ve been king. [zsisrsieamssine tyrone ce sasbes faveniacarnabetiaat hapa ieptaae a ssurgare om Toe ose tp we art ‘curator assertion nutetre weston were rage boom atchacen bot ngromadest topes topovetrs cu th teeters tomcat bre hragt rs ral Square roots Toget ou heads around the concept of abstraction, a's start ty thinking about square rts and ferent techni for finding them. One ofthese was discovered by Newton, ands thus kown as Newton's method, Newton's method stats that when tying to find the ‘square root of anumber (x), we shoud start with guess () ots square rot we can then improve upon that result by averaging our guess () wit the esuit of avg the number (by ou guess). As We repeat thes procedure, we get closer and closer tothe square rot. in most attempts, \wellnever reach a definite result, well only make our Ruess moce and more accurate Eventually, ve'l each level of ‘2ccuracy thats good enough fr our needs and then give up Just tobe clear about what is volved, take ook atthe {abe below or how you would appl this meted to find the square aot of 2 (for example). ItSalot of werkjustto find the square oot of ‘anumber. magne if when you were in school every time youhadto fda square root youadto doa these steps manualy Solveg problems involving Pythagoras’ theorer for instance, would be much more unvely. Luckily assuming you were alowed to use calculators ‘when you were at schoo there's another, much easier method you can use tnd square roots. Caleulators come wth button marked with the square oot symbol and all 1 2 @riy2=18 15 AS=1s8 (35+15/2=1467 1467 2raer=1ans [ang +Laer/2=1402 14 | Coding Academy “This is a very powerful technique that makes programming easier” you have todois pres this button once ~ much easier. This second approach is what's known as an abstraction. When working on problems such as those involving, Pythagoras theorem, we don't care about how to caeulate the square root. only that we can do it and ge the correct result, We can treat the square rect button on our calculator as black box we neve lodkinsde ite dor know how ‘does what does, al that mater that we know how to seit an that gives the correct es This very powerful technique, one which can make programing alot easier because t helps us to manage ‘complet. To demonstrate how abstraction can help us consider the Python code below fr finding the longest sie of aright angled tangle Import math det pythagla, a262= (aa) +(0*B) ‘pess =10 while (math fabs\guess * guess) 2262) > 001): guess =((a2b2 /uess)+ guess) /2) return guess “The fist thing to notes that i's not inthe least it readable Sure with apiece of code tis short. you can read through it reasonably quickly and igure out what's going on but ata lancet’ not ctwous, and were longer and writen ike thisyou'dhave a teri time fguring out what on earth it ‘was ding. What's mre. woul be very dificult to test the diferent pars ofthis ‘ode as you go along aka sncremental development vita for bung robust software) Forinstance, how woul you breakout the code for testing whether or not 2 guess is close enough tthe actual result. or the code for improving a guess, to check that it works? What this ‘unction et return the expected results —how would you star testing athe parts to find where the error was? Final, there's usetl code i here that coud be reused in other functions, suchas that for squaring a number. for taking an average of two numbers, and even for finding the ‘square oot a a number, but rane oft reusable because cf the way its writen You could type ital cut again. or copy and paste but the more typing you have todo, the more ‘obscure code you have to copy and paste and the mere ely mistakes are to make tin to your programming Let's wie that cade again tis tine with some abstractions to fixthe problems listed above Wehaven't sted the contents ofeach new function we've crested, leaving them for yout ili,limport math of squarele: def closeEnough guess ef improveGuessts, guess: ef aarti gues: of pythagla, bi: 22 = square) + squartt) return sqrs2b2) Here, we've split the code into several smaller unctons, each of which ula particule. Thishas mary bereits, For starters haw rach easier she pythagQ funtion to read? nthe fist ine. you can see clea that a2bis the result of squaring two numbers, and everthing below that has been consolidatedin toa single function call the purpose cof hicis also obvious. What's more, because each part ofthe code has been slit intoaetferet function we can easly tet. Fo example testing whether improveGuess() ws doing the Fight thing woud be very easy — come up witha few values for cand guess, do the Improvement by hand, ad then ‘compare your results with those returned by the function, pythagg itself was found rt to return the corect result, we could quick test all these aur functions to narrow down where te bug was. ‘Ad, ofcourse, we can easly reuse ary ofthese new function. you were nding the square rot ofa number inadifferet function, for instance, you could just call the srt0 function - si characters instead of four ines means there's farless opportunity to make mistakes. (ne tinal point because our sat code is now abstracted, we could change the implementation completly, but slong ‘as we kept the function call and arguments the same, all “This code can be improved by taking advantage of scope” code that ris ont would continue to work property ‘This means that fyou come across a much more ficient way of calculating square roots, you'enot stuck with working through thousands of ines of code, manually changing every section that finds a square reo; you do it ‘once, ands done everywhere. This code can be improved sti urther by taking advantage of scope. eloseEnough) Object code > There ae layers of abstraction underneath everything you do on a PC ~ you just don't often think of them s s 3 Ss a a = Reliability by abstraction rt math def square(x) : return x * x def sqrt(x, guess) : def closeEnough(x, guess) : Af math. fabs(square(guess) - x) > 0.01: return True else: return False def improveGuess(x, guess) : return (((x / guess) + guess) / 2) while closeEnough(x, guess) : guess = improvaGuess(x, guess) return guess def pythagta, b): 2262 = square(a) + square(b) return sqrt(a2b2, 1.6) print pyfhag(2, 3) > Our fina code ard improveGuess() ar particular tothe sar functon- for fining the that stosay. other functions ae unlikely torely on longest side of their services. atiangles Tohelp keep ourcodeclean,andmakethereationship longer than between these functions and sqrt clear we can pace ther what we had to ‘efntions inside the definition of sqrt ‘awk i ‘more readable, of arts aves: een ef closeEnoughis, uessi: poser eFimproveGuessts, guess: ‘These functions are now vsble only to code within the sa) efntion - we say theyre inthe scope of sqrt. Arything utsdeof thas na idea that they even ext This way. we ater nee to define similar unetions for improving a guess ina diferent context, we wort face the Issue of calling names or the headache of fring out what improveGuessi0 animproveGuess20 co. Layers of abstraction Hopefully this example has demonstrated how powerful technique abstraction is Bear in mind that there are ‘many layers of abstraction present in everthing you do ‘ona computer that you never thik of For instance. when you'te programming do you know how Python represents integers inthe computer's memory? Crow the CPU performs arithmetic operations such as addtional subtraction? The answer's probably ro. You just accept te fact that ‘yping2 # 3into the Python interpreter returns the correct result, and you never have to wery about how does his You reat sa black box “Think how much longer i would take yout program ityouhad to manualy take care of what data wet in which memory location. to werk with inary pumbers,andtranslate alphabetic characters into their meric representations — thank goodness for abstraction mt Coding Academy | 15,Fundamentals Files and modules done quickly It's time to expand your library of functions and grab external data with just two simple lines of Python > When you read a fle, most languages will step through its data from the begining to the fend in chunks you specity. In this example, we're reading a Tine at time et for before facing the age-old problem ofhow to set data into and out of your application Whether i's ‘using punched cards to get patterns into 19th century Jacquard textile oom or Google's bats skimming websites for data to feed ts search engine dealing with exteral input isas fundamental as programming ital ‘Adit’ problem anda concep that yourmay be more fami with onthe Linux commandline. When you ype Isto lst the contents ofthe currant rectory for example the commands, readingin the contents of a fhe te current directory then outputting the contents to another: the terminal Of course the inputs and outputs aren fle inthe sense ‘most people would recognise but that's the way the Linux flesystom has been designed ~ nearly everything safle This Relps when you want to save the output ofa command, cor use that output asthe input to another. ‘You may areadykrow thet typing is ist ill ecrect the utput rom the command toa fecal iste, but you can take this much further because the output canbe treated exact thea fle. 1 | sort-r ill pipe that's the vertical bar character) the output os into the nut of sort tocreate a reversed alphabetical ist of flde's contents Fe: majority of programming projects. you don't 16 | Coding Academy “If the filesystem knows the file is being changed, it won't allow access” ‘The complexty ofhow data input and output can be complished sentiely down to your programing. cevcreent Every language villnclude function t lead ‘and save data. forinstance, but this can ether beet or ‘25y depending on how many assumptions the language ‘sing to make on your bea However, there's aways logical sequence of events that need to occur ‘You willis ned to open aie, creating one iit doesn't ‘stand then ether read data rom ths fle, or write data to Ibetore expty closing the le again so that other processes can useit Most languages requre youtospectyaread mode when you opena file because this tls the fiesystem whether to expect le modifications or nt ‘Thisis important because mary diferent processes may ‘also want to access the fle, andi thefesystem kno the fie is being changed won't usually alow access. However, many processes can access areaxonl file without needing ta worry about the tego the datait holds, because nothing sable to change It you know about databases, its the same kindof prblem you face with muliple users 2ocessing the same table In Pytnon as with most other languages. opening. fe to vite ors read-only canbe dane with a sing ine pen(st.xt =r) Ifthe fle does exist, Python vill generate a"No such feo directory" error Te avoid this, we've used the output ‘tom aur cornmand ine example to create atetlecalled ste. This is within the folder from where we launched the Python interpreter, Environment variables Dealing with paths, folders a fle locations can quickly become complicated, andt's one of the more tecous issues youl face with your own projets Youl find that ferent “envorments have different skations for finding fs, wth some creating keyword or common locations and others leaving tothe programmer. Tis tn'so had when you only dal with fs created ty your projects. butt becomes ficult when yeu nee to know where to store aconfguration feo load a detat icon, ‘These locations may be diferent depencing on your Linux lstriaution or desktop, but witha crosplatorm language suchas Python, theyaso be diferent foreach operating system. For that reason, you might want to consider using ceaveonement variables, These are simi t variables atha gobal scope in many programming languages but they analy to any one user's Linx session rather than within your ‘oun code. you type envon the commend line, for instance, youll see ito the environmental variables current set for your terminal session Look dosely, and you'l se a ew ‘that apoly to default cations and, most important, one called HOME The value assigned to this environmental variabe willbe the location of your hore folder en your Linux system, and fe want to use this within ou Python sori weirs ned to ad aline to import te operating ster spect module The ne to do this i: import os This command also opening ale, but notin the same vay we opened lst xt This les known as a module in Pytnon terms, and modules tke ths impor functionality. incu statements and definitions, so that programmes doesn't have to keep eventing the whet, Modis extend the simple constructs ofa language to add portable shortcuts and solution, whichis why other languages might cal them ibrar. Libraries and medules area ite ke copying and pasting someone's ov research and insight into you onn project. Ont’ better than tat. because modules such as 9 are used by everyone, tursng ‘the way they do things into a standard Setting the standard “There are even bares cal tad these embed standard ways of eing many thangs language doesn’ provide by deat, such a5 common mathematica unctons, data ypes are sting services 35 wel 3 fle nput/output od support for speci ie types You wl find the documentation or what ibary does within an AP. This willis each urction, what oes. ana what requires a an put ar an out. "eu shoud aso be able to find the source es used the impo (ancy inetd othr language). On most Linux systems for example. ib/eython2x wilt athe modules. fyouload espy it ate eto youl see the code you've just added to your project. a well as which functions re nom acessibe to you “There are many, mary iferent modules for Python ~its ene the best reasons to choose over ary ater onguage and more can usualy be installed wth usta coupe of cloks, from yur package manager But his wher the uly spectro dependencies can start tohave anetect on your project because you want {ogneyour code to someone else, you nee to make sure that person has also got the samemodules instal ityou were programming in Gor C+ for example. where ‘your codes compe ad ke against binary rare, those binary lars wills ned tobe present on any other syste that runs your code. They wibecome dependencies for your project. which is what package ‘managers do when yu instal a complex package, The os module Getting back to our project the os module designed to provide portale way of accessing operating system dependent functional so that you can write mut platform applications without worrying about where files should be laced, This includes knowing where yourhome directory ght be. To see what we mean, add ths code: “If you load os.py into a text editor, you'll see the code you've just added” Files and modules done quickly > Binary files = openfostnvronHOME"I "ist ") hhave no contest ‘Ths ine will open the fe stein your home folder Python without an ‘esociated fle knows which home folder i yours because the eseviron unetion fom the es module retums a sting ‘from an erwironmental variable, and the one we have asked handling therm. MoreumsHOME Butaveveconelsonn thei WM wy 308 SeveneyeteatawattscortetsThsmgttecm gether ata Coutectate batts onhtreltrowacktotheway tha files usedto be stored, whichis why this i alo the way nearly al languages work ts ony ater fle as been ‘pened that you can start to read its contents: readline) The above instruction wlread a single ie ofthe text fie andoutput tis othe interpreter as string. Repeating ‘the command wil rea the net ine, because Pythons remembering how tar through the fe thas read, Internal this is being done using something called a pointer ands, too, commento the vast majo of languages Ateratively you wanted to readthe entire fle, you coud use fread, Because our le contains only text copying the cantents toa Python strings an easy conversion The same set tue of binary fe. Rather than being treated as tet. the organisation of the bits and bytes that make up binary fe are organised according tothe fle type used by te fle ~ orne filetype at lif’ raw data. Asaresut Python or anyother programming language) would be abe to extract any context roma binary fle, causing an eter youtry tread it intoa string, The soliton, atleast forthe nal np isto ‘adda ag when you frst open te le, because his was Python to expect raw binary. When you then try to read the input youl see the hexadeciral values of the fe ouput to the cspay. “Tomake tis data useful youll need todo some extra ‘work, which welll at next but rst, make sue you close the open flea this should ensure the integnity of your ‘system. AS you might guess. the command looks tke this: close ‘Andis a5 easy as that a Coding Academy | 17Write your own UNIX program Try re-implementing classic Unix tools to bolster your Python knowledge and learn how to build real programs ringto do: get Our galforthe pro you writing eal programs O to create 2Py nents accepts user input onthe standard input pi Popular Unie tool eat. Like all Unixtools. eats agreat target _unblan end of ine characteris reached, at whic pont it because it's smal and focused ona single task while using the net few tutors, Create aPython program. eat that when called I nthe next ew pages, that's imelementaton ofthe vealed wth fe names features, nclusing access gurmentseatpy should reach ine ofthe fle to standard utp, “You now know more eof the than enough to start ee writing real programs” your chosen lang aching and which vith ral work number a the beginnn i put $ signs at the end of wecurrent ine th any numberof les pas the command in you want foo along, mak version, because some fet Python2, Python files Let srt ithe ess part ofthe robles cortorscfafe ney ne tostonarsou nF fom thervse mene pentheltat"") this, not write t because suent to the open function. ould be opened in reae-oly mode 0 the flenow provide through the ney the nent tasks to dsp tyne on standard output. This because in Python fi eobjects her tuple ddctiona 2 ther navi member fie this puting tina fri forling in fil Printing) function then atever argument you pass output The final program we'll be implementing. I's not long, but it makes use ofa ot ‘of core language features youl beable to re-use time and again 18 | Coding Academyyou put al hisin fle, make t executable a create hella tien the same drectory, youl see that works rather wel There is one ay, however ~ there's an empty Ine between each ine of output “Te reason this happens shat pent automaticaly ads a newine characte tothe endaf each ine, Because there's aready a newline character a the endo each ne inhellatet tree's, even ityoucant see it otherwise everything woud be on one line), the second newline character leads oan empty ine. ‘oucan fx this by caling print with a second named argument such as: printing, end=™) Ths tls pint to put an empty string oF no character at the end of each ine Instead of anewine character Passing arguments Ts alr compared the elem command thanisa glaring onion bre we wad hae teh progr crete to change wih fe sing apo toetandad au Wt we neds some wey topos arguments onthe conand ine, otha we aclu new program y pine ety halla one cormars ine Se Python as‘ batteries cused! thts a aly Slgionerd ask 0 el The Python terpeter tora captures all angers paseo the coneand nm arcane Caled sys wchis part ofthe Standard Libr. mates this vail to your cage Een though ay part te Standard bray itt avaible to your code by deta nad you ts a to impor to your program andthn access coer wih cetretaton cont wary wT expan Fis nomoment Fist trnprtt to our rogar s ine oy sothetopof your ety ie The part he eye mode that wee interested inthe ang object. Tis odyet stores ofthe arguments passed cre conmand nein a Python it wih rneansyoucan tome arirmripdatn tuo vrntecvigues vse seenin prev or nd show hue ones Ther ae ony two tres youreatynedtokrow oaths Ty are Doh rs lamer of the fats the nae othe prewar sat- all aramerts oo is. 2 To access thelst you needto use dt notation thats tosay ang sstoredvithinay. 500 aces you ee totvpe sysang or sysarzvl ose the rst puerto your roger Knowing ths youshould ow be able toast the cade we ented prey y replacing bala wth arg (When you call etpy on te comenae ine. yo an fen poss the name cf tet le ordi werkt te some Many files Ofeoute our our smart toacept mor than eee andaututal hr cote to sanrd out one oer anata tes tgs san our pegam eo at crefiessahorgamert. Totti pra problem you ead oop rahe tes re ng st Thon ttt youre be cae brnenyoudothslstayoerae te ey rs comer, “The part of the sys module we're interested in is the argv object” Write your own UNIX program > The output of the real Unix command, cat, and our Python r-implementation, ‘are exactly the same inthis simple example because thi the name of the program sal fyou think back to our previous article on data types and common list operations. youl realise hiss easly done with a soe This is just one tine for file in sysargit Because operating onal the fs passed as arguments toa programs sucha common operation, Python provides ashorteut for doing thin the Standard Library called fleinput Inorcer to use this shortcut, you must ist import by putin import fleinput 2 the top of your code You wl ‘then be abe to ust to recreate the rest of our ea program so a 28 follows: {or line in filsinputnput: Printine, end This simple shortcut function takes care of opening ‘2ch'ilein urn and makingll ther nes accessible through angle iterator. Thats about all that wehave space forin this tutorial. though there has not been much code in ths particular ‘example, we hope you have started to get a sense for how ‘much savalablen Python's Standard Library (and therefore how much works avaiable fer you to recycle). and how good knowledge ofits contents can save you alot of work ‘when implementing new progres. Coding Academy | 19Fundamentals Enhance your UNIX program Our tour of the Python programming language continues, as we continue our clone of the Unix cat command he previous tutorial showed you how to bud a simple ‘eat cone in Python. In this guide, were gong to acd some mere features to cur program inciuding the abt to rea rom the standard input pipe, just ke the real cat and the ability to pass options to your eat clone, So, without further delay, at's vein Fortunately, you aeady know everything youre to interact with the standard input pipe. In Linux, allpipes are treated ke files youcan pass ale as an argumer ‘command or you can pe pipe as an argument. It doesnt matter which you o, because they basically the same thing In Python. the same itu. Allyou need to get to work with the standardinout pipes access to the sysibrary, which ifyoufolowed along last time you aleady have Let's write a Inte sample program fist to demonstrate: impor sy forline in syestin printine,end=™) Theft ine imports the gys module. The nes that olow are almost identical to those tat we had last time. Rather than spectyng the name of a file, however, we specie the name of he le-object. stn, which sound inside the sys module Jus ike areal len Python the standard input pipe ts an erable object. owe use afr lop to walk through ‘ou might be wondering how this works, though because standard input stars off empty tyourun the program. you will see what happens Rather than printing out everything that’s present straightaway t wil simply wait Every time a newline character's passed to standard input (by pressing to “Python provides us with amuch more powerful alternative to sys.argv” [Retur,twilthen print everything that came before itto standard output Right, now we have to modes that our program can ‘operate in. but we need to put them together inte a single program. fe call our program with arguments, we want i to worklke las time ~ thats, by concatenating the fles contents together: it's called without ary arguments, we ‘want cur program to work by repeating each line entered ito standard input. We could easy do ths with what we have learned so far ~simaly check to see what the length ofthe sysargv arrays Hits ‘reat than L then do last lessons version, otherwise do this version: iflenaye are > last month. lee [this month. Pretty straigtforwaca The only point of interest heres the se of the len function, seeing 2s were on aourney to discover different Python functions. This funtion suit into Python. andcan be applied to ay type of sequence cbect (a string, tuple or st) or aap (ikea detonary). and it tay tells you how many elements ae in that abet, There are more useful functions ike this, which you can ‘ind at http://does python.org/3 library functions html Parsing arguments and options “Tite spit appronch, however. and Python Ectily prondes swe ch more owetlcReatheto fysarg To demonstrte ths eae ging tad two pinto or progam that al ody ct erat byour progam You may rote relsedt, bt eat does inact havea ange of opto Wega to plement the which ‘Hows dolar srs ath ndefnes adn hich Gol ine rues the bepangf es Toots wel start by sting upon OpionParer, This ssa specal object provided os part te eptparea mode whch wild most of thehard work br you Fs wala, nica) datecng ots ders owerayoom lt of hor werk OptonParser vil automaticaly ponerse heb tod foryour srs ert a hey us your prowam incorrect reas help hats > The Python language comes with all the bells nd whistles you need to write "useful programs. n this example, you can see the replace method applied to 2 string inorder to remove all white space ~ in the tutorial, we used the rstrip ‘method fora similar purpose Ujone@tT04304 -18 cat py help Usage:catpy [OPTION}..[FLEL Options: 20 | Coding Academyh,~-elp show this help message and ext -E Show $.at lineendings sn Show tine numbers Just ike areal program! To get started with OptionParser. youtist need to import the necessary components {rom optparse import OptionParser ‘You may notice tha his looks bit erent fom what we saw before Instead of importing the entre module we're only importing the OptionParser object Next you need to create anew instance of the object. acd sorne new options foritto detect wth the adoption method, and passit a usage string to splay: usage ="usage:%pog option..." parser = OptionParserlusage=usage) parsoraddoption-E7 dest="showend action="tore ‘rust help="Show Sat ine cencings?) parseradd_option- dest="shownumaction="store_ ‘rue’ help="Show ine number”) ‘The Moprog port ofthe usage string wil be replaced withthe ‘ame of your program. The dast argument species what fname youl be able to use to access the valve of an argument once the parsing has Enhance your UNIX program >The Python 3 website provides ‘icelent ‘documentation {for aweaith of builtin functions the code that will run when a particular options set. noth cases, wel be measting the string of tet that's output by the program, which means you need to know litle it about Pythons builtin sting editing functions Let's think about the-E or showend, option rst. Allwe want ths todo Is remove the iisibe ne break that's atthe end of every fle (ex every line of the standard input pe, as implied by pressing [Retur), and replace it witha dla symbol folowed by aline beak The fst pat removing the existing new tne, can be achieved ty the stringestripO method. Ths removes a whitespace characters by default atthe righthand edgeofasteng you pass astring tt as an argument il stip those characters fom te righthand edge instead of whitespace. nour case, just white space wll do, Completing the job “The second part of the ods 35 simple as seting the end variable in the print statement othe sting $\n and the job is almost complete. We say “almost complete because we stileedto wit some more loge to further controthe ow ‘ofthe program based on what Sicwatatcs” {| “Don’t confuse yourself Shs "fscsy wamens cekMmeacese | Dy putting the variables "92 au. todertwasstomeen § the other way around!” — wes iobssitiere ‘arguments present. ond False iftis nt. You can read about othe actions at htp:/ docs python.org/3 /ibrary/optparse htm Final wth everything set. you ust need to parse the arguments that were passed to your program and assign the resus to two array variables (options, args) = parserparser_args) ‘The options variable wil contain all user-defined options ssuchas-£ orm while args wil contain al positonal ‘arguments lft ver after parsing out the options. You can call these variables whatever you tke, but the two wil bays ‘be setin the same order, 0 don't conse yourself puting the variables the other way round! With the argument parsing code write, you next wantt start implementing ‘complicated than it orinanly would be because we need to maintain a cumulatwe count of lines that have been printed as the program un to implement the second-n, or showmum, option Wii there are several ways you coukl achieve ths, the next tutorial wee going to introduce you toa bo objec: oriented programming in Python andenplement this functionality in cass. Wel also introduce you toa very important Python convention =the main function and the name variable In the meantime, you can keep yourself busy by imestigating the string format() method and see whether you can figure out how you can append anumber to the begining ofeach ine. Coding Academy | 21Fundamentals Finish up your UNIX program Our guide to the Python programming language continues. This tutorial, we're going to finish our & lone of cat Jevecomecute orgy ar helt 0 VW iscsstoemeneteny cote sting stot er treaty nerhostada patos ade ‘Big oct and tp cptes passed ese ot Seeeen Atharener torus torpemat hte uber pon ano tether gat vying ob we even tos Sovwntteraren Objects Last tine we ended saying hare are many way 8 could gent ee costrg opten meu per Wereorgtoshow youow tocb itn anobectaneted She teense tgwes won ecse ovo outs deoect offen pragranring You ca howe tha “It’s a very natural way of thinking because it mirrors the real world” ltl careful thought implement the same function with some nested for oops, anough they re not nearly as redable as object oriented code ‘When bul complicated programs, fguring out howto ‘organise them so they remain 2s) toread, easy to track ‘which vanables ae being used ‘by which functions, and easy to update, extend or add new features, canbe challenging Tomake ths easier, there ae various paradigms that provide ‘techniques fr managing complet ‘One ofthese paradigms the concept of object-oriented programming, in object erent programming the elements ‘ofthe pragram are broken down int abject which contain sate variable, nother words = that describe the current Concition a the abject, and methods that allow us to perform actions on those variables or wth tat object. tes avery natural way of thinking because it mirors the real worl so closely. We can describe a set of properties ‘bout your hand, such as having fve fingers that arein ‘certain locations and we can desenbe certain methods or things yeu can da with your hand, suchas moving one fier to press akey. orholdng a cup. Yeurhandis an object. ‘complete with state anc methods tha lt you work wth We're going to turn our eat program into an object where its state records how many ines have been displayed, and its methods perform the action ofthe ea program ~ edsplaying le contents tothe screen. Python objects ‘than implements objects tough acs system Acasis tum, andan object a parce stance ofthat as. ‘redaedon tetera Me tine aw clas with Skeyord much ike we defnea new function clas catommand: Inside the cise otc the methods (unto) an lata that we want to asciate with eerste othe sje Thr are som spec methods However that are freq used One ofthese thei etd sis ran wen the ass rst nstantated eto partiour cet. dala yout sat pectic arable ta you watt trlora that obec. def int Selteount= 1 Intiscase weve assigned tothe count varia wl betning ths recordhow many nes ate een depo Yeu proba noted he sel variate seed asthe frst xgumentt the method. end wondered what on ert at > dust to prove that it work, here's our eat implementation, with al ofthe ‘options being put touse 22| Coding Academywas about. Wel ts the main distinguishing feature between ‘methods and ordinary funetons. ‘Methods even those that have nother arguments, must have the self variable ti an automatiealy populated ‘variable wich wilalvays point tothe particular instance of the object that you're working with. So selfcount i count ‘viable tats exclusive to indvcual instances ofthe catCommand obit The run method Werext ned to writea method that wil eco the appropriatelogic depending on whether certain options ae St ee cal thst um metho def rune options fet dau options for tine ini: ‘imodiy printed line according to options ifoptions showed (last time) ‘options shown: line = (0) 1)"frmat(selécount, tne) setfcount + rintie,end=2) Notice that weve passed the self erable to tis method too. ‘The two other arguments passed to this function re arguments that well pass when we all the method later on, [ust ke witha normal function. The fst. Lis ging to bea reference to whichever fils beng displayed at this moment. le the options variable a elerence to the options ‘decoded by the OptParse module. ‘The logic ater thats clear foreach nein the current fle, city the ine depending on what options have been set Ether we do as lst tine, anc mexiy the end character tobe *$\n" or we mod the line, using the format method that we suggested you research lst time, o append the count ‘variable defined inthe lnethod to the est ofthe ine. We thenincrement the count and print thee ‘The mestimportant partis the useo sl. Iletsusreler tovvariabies stored within the curent instance ofthe object Because it’s stored as part ofthe objec wil persist ater the current execution ofthe run method ends. As ong as we Use the an method attached othe same abject each te weeat anew fe inthe argument ist, the count wll remember hon many ines were displayed inthe last fe, and contin to count carrecty might seern more natural ~ ven the description of ‘methods as individual actions “The last thing to do is Finish up your UNIX program > The completed program isnt very long, but it has given usa chance to Introduce you to many different aspects of the Python language penta") cru, options) ee ccrunys.stin, options) ‘We haven filed in the object parsing code from the previous tutorial because that hast changed. Whatisnew shee = ‘catCommand ine. Tis show we create an instance of lass ~ how we create anew abject. The ecbect naw has a ‘arable, count. which is accessible by llits methods asthe ‘seltcount variable This 's what will enable us to track the Ine rumbers. We then check to see whether ary arguments have been passed Ifthe have, then we cllthe run method of the ‘object for each fe that was passed as an argument passing inany options extracted by OptParse along the way Irthere werent any ‘arguments. though. we snply cal he run method Satna call the main function shamans Srgument int a diferent when the program runs” ‘The fal hing weneed ‘method. and this fine way ta approach the prablem, ‘Te reason weve donet this way, though s that we found it meant we could re-use mare code, making it more readable and ess error-rone ‘Nowallthat's et todo i tote everything together. We are going todo this by wring aman function This isn't actually required in Python, but many programs oll this Ichom, so we wil too det main: [option parsing code.) todohereis actus cal the main funetion when the program iru: fname 22" main main These ast two lines are the strangest of al. but quite useflin alot of ereumstances. The name variable especial when the programs run on the cormmardiine.oratherwise asa standalone application itis eto male; however, when itsimported as an external module to other Python programs i’ nt Inthis way. we can automatically xecute main when run ‘as a standalone program, but not when were importing as ‘amodule.m Coding Academy | 23,Fundamentals Neater code with modules Untangle the horrible mess of code that you've made and add coherent structure to your programs. “As your programs grow in programing isall about managing complesity and we veintroduced yeutoqute a few af thetols and techniques that help programmers do this. From variables te function defintions or abject orentation, they all help (One tool we've yet to cover n pat because you doit start to come across tun you're witing larger programs.is the idea of moles and name spaces. Yeti youve wien a program of ary length, even just fen hundred lines, this tol youre no doubt desperate for naleng fe of code, youl havenoticed how quickly it becomes more ficult to read Functions seem to blur into ‘one another and when you're trying hunt down the cause ‘ofthe latest error you fit etc to remember exactly ‘where you deine that aimportant variable, These problems ae causedby a lack of structure. Wiha your code ina single ie. is more ecu to determine the ‘dependencies between elements of your program ~ that \wbich pats rely on each other to get wore dane ~ andt’s more dificult to sualie the fw | our previous tutorials, wehave mentioned how fata though length, there are other Ti problems that occur” programs Brown length, too, there ae other problems that begin te accu: or instance, you may find yoursel with nang confit, 3s. two cert parts of your program require functions calles ‘add (for example acing integers or adding actions in _amatheratics program).or you may have writen a useful function that you want to share wit other programs that youre weting, and the enly too you have to do that i boxing ‘and ertor prone copy and pasting Untangling the mess Modules area great way to sohe alot these probems, nabing you to put structure bck nt your code, ting you mod naming confit, rd making easier or outa share useful churks of code between programs. "oul no dou been using them theme your code _syouive led on Python buat nr the party modules to provdelots of extra furctonaty AS an ample, remember {he optparse mockle we used before We clued tin our program along wth the import statementike so: importoptparse _Aer puting ts ine atthe top of our Python prosram. we magealy got access toa whole loadof othe functions that ‘automaticaly parsed commande options We could 24 | Coding Academy access them by fyping the module's name, flowed by the ame ofthe function we wanted to execute: ‘optparse OptionParsert) ‘This was great roma eadabilty perspective n our eat clone, we didnt have to wade through ots of cade about parsing command ine arguments; stead we coud focus ‘onthe cade that deal with the lage of echoing fe contents tothe seeen andto the standard output pipe. What's more, we dt have to worry about using names nour own program that might colle with those nthe optparse ‘mdul, because they were al hidden inside the optparse namespace, and reusing ths code was. as easy as typing Import optparse no messy copy and pasting here How modules work Morkdes sound fancy and you might think theyre ccompcated but -in Python atleast ~they'e realy just plain odes Youcan ty itaut or yoursel Create anew ‘rectory andinsde ereate a factpy fle, Insde it. deine function to etu the factorial of given number: ‘def factorial result =1 whiten 0: itn==1 result lao result *= n= Create a second Python fle called doMatapy Inside this firstimport the modkie you ust created and then execute the factorial function, prtng the result tthe sreen import tact print fact factorial’s) "Now when yourun the deMath.py fle, you should see120 printed on the screen You should notice that thename ‘ofthe madul is just the name ofthe fe, inthe same rectory with the extension removed. We can then call any function defined in that module by ‘ypingthe module's name, folowed by adot, flowed bythe function name, The Python path Tebgeston hase how oes yon now where {bloke your nae? Tre aoe tat Pho as re dete set lcatoathtteesinfo te testat math fe nae spect nyourtmpot ates ist os nce alt Srebuttin mss elector of wha ceed whenNeater code with modules your insta Python then searches through alist of dlrectores known asthe pat That s much he the Linux Bash shes SPATH ceavconment variable ~ tutes the same syntax, an serves exactly the same function. Ivars, however in how the content ofthe Python path ae generated Intl ‘thelocatonsstoed inthe path cans of teflon two lations: The rectory containing the script doing the importing The PYTHONPATH, which sa set of ciectories pre detinedin your default instalation, ‘ou an inspect the path in your Python environment by importing the sys module ar then inspecting the path attribute typing sysipath wll do te rick). Once a program has started, can even modky the path tse and add other ications toit Variable scope in modules Before you head off and start merry wring your om modes, there is one more thing that youneed to know about variable scope. We have touched uoon scope as a concept before, but _aquickrelresher, scope refers tothe part ofa program from which particular variables canbe accessed, Fr instance, a single Python module might contan the fling code food = apples’ oranges’ "pears" whe many peopl think Python as toformat your coset readable fo co worker your tr a) youre intrest there are to vary use 2g actualy been Srundsnce the early 1990s. As wth ary prograrenng language thats been aroun for any length f tine people who often have learned ot about he waysto do ings in he langues By splitting your code up placed inits ixf-example rectory, you ‘an bring order to your projects and make future ‘maintenance aot easier print food ef show chocd food = snickers print food show cho print food you ran that you see that outside the function the variable food refers toa isto ut, whl inside the uneton. refers toa of chocolate bars, This demonstrates to diferent ne global scope of the curent module. in which food that “iry milk] scopes refers toalisto rut and the local scope of the function. which foodreters toa tof chocolate, When loking una variable, Python starts with the innermost variable and wors its way out starting wth the Immediately enclosing function, and then ay functions enclosing that, and then the module's global scope, and hen finaly it illook at al the buiin names. n simple, single programs, iis a bad ea to put variables nthe global cope can cause confusion and subtle erors elsewhere in your program: Using modules car helo with this problem, because each medule has ts own bal scape. As we sar above when we impart a maddie its contents areal stored as attributes of the module's ame, accessed via dat notation. Ths makes global variables ‘somehat ess troublesome although you should stil be rake suet itp: /python.net/“goodger? sandanyere else projeets/pycon/2007/idiomatic/ anyouncuting —Randouttmt rn python ong /dev/peps/ infecngout mere pep-0008 ead thse and youre sue togain some deeper sight int the arguage Coding Reademy | 25Fundamentals Embrace storage and persistence Deal with persistent data and store your files in Python to make your programs more permanent and less transient tras chee cebu 5008 ae Se 5 ts dys wo wen Smarhores come wha est 8 of sora nd raryareasyerpndleup 128 fr ene pre tapos ano srr tan tat aest vy rode sopaon ce anor ay or oe arts Srterten dea coed asp aes ‘Sed ges too itor pets Tels goes nao Within prong tos grt dernastatato ode wiper tno a.ngs otehoce Pon Ths cine eprint ch tate aragonite storage appr Ris ined intr sacra anyone a Inouye totae asorage pepe rms nbc wan cry hat ver ourane yan eta omer 9e wr oheryoulahodte arash she open fino “Almost everymodern = eee" application storesdata e".. iste tena in one way or another” —stwsiensm spectes which mede the fle shouldbe opened nin this case i's write, but other valid options include read-only (F) and append (a). Inprevious tutorials, we've shawn you that this fle object isin fact aniterator, which means you can use the inkeywerd toloop through each nein the fle and deal wth its contents, one lineata time, Beoce reviewing tat nfrmation, however, let's look at haw to write data ta fle Writing to files Suppose you'e wrt your own RSS application to deal with your favour feeds. You've already got some way to ak Userstoenterina is of fees (perhaps using aw. Input, or perhaps using a web form and but now you want Yo Store that st feeds on disk so you can re-set ater when yeni checking for new updates. tthe momen, the feds dre et storedina Python it foods = "htp/newsss bbe.co.k/ssinewsonineok. eition/rontpagtssxmt http: trradarcoms"] Toget te feds ta thefe is asp process. dist use the write metho {or feed in feeds: filet YO" format ond) 25 | Coding Academy Easy! Notice how we used the format string function ‘aad anew ine to the end ofeach string, otherwise we would end up with everything on oneline ~ which would have made it harder to use later, Re-using the contents of ths le would be ust as simple Using the file 2s an teratr oad each in turn into st ‘ripping ff the traiing new ine character Wl eave you terfigure this one out When using flesin you Python code there are two things that you need to keep in mind, The fists that you need to comert whatever you want to write othe letoa sting rst ‘This is easy, though because you can ust use the buat in ‘strQ function — for example ste(A2) => "42", The secondis that you have to cose the fle ater you have frished using it~ you dono this yours lasing datathat youthought had been committed to disk but that had not yet been Rushed. You can do this manualy wth the else methodat fle obec. In ou exampl ths woud translate to ‘adding fleclosed) to our program: I'sbetter however, to vee the with keys with opentf-tet.bt a) a le foods = line.strip( "for tine inf This simple piace of Python code has opening the fie object and when the blockinsde the wth statement isfnished, automaticaly closest fr us, 5 wel you are unsure what the second line does try looking up Python Ist comprehensions ~ they'ea great way to write tficient, concise code, and to bringa modicum of functional style into your work. Serialising tring wits woud bemuchcsertyoudirithve {pwery au comerg art (or deboay. t et inti) toa sgt Scere Toco et mesy orate Pinon poe oto tomate tho enoer rus Theft hse ote plea mode Pek accoptsnry fleet nds tte cts ae ean then Smet eto achat rg and apa, uo hv o dhe Ne pein eg bayoura re hove to wey abu tqug ten propa sg reese your cee Topol with open f-test.b "a as fle: Pickle dumpifeods file) with open bf-tet.b feeds = pickle oad(S zone Table Of Content: Overview Embrace storage and persistence ZODB - a native object database for Python Dont squeeze yourctets ito tables sore tein an objet database Pyton programs are witlon wih he ctoct aera paradigm. You use jects that reference each ot haste adhereto a specc schema and can hol arta internation ‘String those objects in reltona dlabases requires you fo ve up onthe feedom cf reference reduces your aby own object reted code The Z0D8 is nave object database tat stores yur ejects while alowing youto wot wih ay paraq cade becomes sirpe, moerobust and ease fo understand ‘Also, teres no gap between the dalabase an your program ge codeto wit, ro mappingsto co Some a he fetus that ZODB rings to you + Transparent persistence for Python objets + FuIAGO. compe ansacton sap (ncusng savepos) * Historyundo abit fice suppor fer binary large ebjers (BLOB) + Pupil Sages > It you're intrested in persistent data in Python, a good next stopping point isthe ZODB object database's much easier and more natural in Python than a relational database engine (www.2odhorg) ‘This is much ease and thas other applications outside of persisting data nfs. too. For example you want transfer your fed st across the network you would rst have to make t into character string oo, which you could co with pickle ‘The problem with thsisthatit wi only workin Python = that's to say. other programming languages dont support the pickle data format you ke the concept of picking (more generically serialising) there's anther option that ‘oes have unport in other languages, to: JSON, ‘Yu may have heard of SON — it stands for JvaScriot Object Notation. ands way of converting objects into human-readable string representations wich look almost identical to objects fund in the JavaScript programing language t's great because it’s human readable, and so becauseit's weely supported in mary ciflerentanguages, largely because thas become so popular wit fancy web 20 applications. Inython. you use itn exactly the same way s pele — in the above example, replace pickle with json throughout. and youl be wring interoperable, srased code! Shelves Ofcourse. some cede bases have mary diferent abects that you wantto store persistently between uns, and keeping ‘rack of many ferent peed fs can get rey. There's rather Python standard module, ome that ses pele \eiderreat, butmakes access tothe stored objects mare intutive and corwertent the shelve mode. Essent shelf a persistent cctonary thats to say, a persistent way to store key-value pas. The eat thing about sheles honever that the valu an be any Python cbject that pee can serials. Let's take afook at ho you canst Thinking back ocr RSS reader appliation, imagine that aswel the ist feeds to check, you wanted tokeep track of how many unread ites each feed had, and ‘which item was the lat to be rad, Your this witha ‘dictionary or example: tracker = {"bbecouk": ——("last-read” “oot ‘num-unread”: 10 inucormatcom': (last-read""ar “num-unread”: 5,3) ‘You coud then store the tof feeds andthe tracking deta for eachina single fie by using the shelve medul, he so import shelve shelf = shelve open("c-test”) shetffeeds"| = feeds shelftracker"] = tracker shetéclosed) “There ae afew important things that you shouldbe aware of about the shelve module >The shelve madule has its oon operations for opening and Closing fies so you can't use the standard open function, To save some data tothe shel, yourmust frst use 2 standard Python asignment operation ose the valve ofa particular key to the object you want o save. 2»As with les you must clse the shel object once rished ith otherwise your changes may not be stored Accessing data nse the shes just as easy Rather than assigning key inthe shel detonary toa value, you assign 9 ‘vale to that stored inthe dictionary ata particular key: feeds = shol[“feeds"] Ifyou want to modify the data that was stored in the shel, modify tn the temporary value you assigneditta, then re-asign that temporary value backto the she before closing agin That's about allwe have space fortis tutorial, but keep reading, because wel cscs one inal option for persistent data: relational databases (or example, MySQL). Coding Academy | 27Fundamentals Lock down with data encryption Learn the principles behind encryption — we unpack the details of how it prevents snoopers from reading your data “The first rule of data png rg ne lyse tthe VN reece ncn trytofecurdotatem then nit werormaly yt wrt nao atta pars can ed Moe tet encodes and ahs mate sc bj dors Home therere tres ver we vent ep our rato suri Poura we mds tant tna an rac net putt ona USB tht cods ext Water, thecae wereoomae seta pos escort ee wt is nd fetus erenyton encryption is this: never to. ,.°%:" try to create your own’ westadisy Asymmetric et rule of data eneryptin is never try to create your awn Unies, that's. youhavea PRD inthe appropiate area of ‘mathematics and plenty of experience. There are number of standars that are generally considered unbreakable, and most languages havea good set of encryption bras that suppor these. These libraries willbe fr more secure than any youcan create youre just make sure you read the dacumentation properly to 0d usinginsecure options. Here we're ging to break this ul but onto show how encryption woe ‘encryption starts with data you vat to hie. then applies some method of rendering that data unreadable. deal, t should have some method ofrecovering te data that only the orginal use ean perform, Usual thisis done witha password (when the passwordisa string of binary infoemation rather than an aipha-cureric word. refered toasa’tey but thease principal isthe same). There are ‘wo ferent types of encryption: symmetric key and asymmetric ey. The former uses the same key to decrypt formation asi used to encrypt it while the ter uses ‘ho ferent keys, Symmetric encryption Here woe going a take aloo ata spl and fly insecure) method of symmetric eneryption (380 known as private ey encryption for text that ues the XOR exis (OR) function. KOR takes two Binary gts a5 an input (which caneach be ether Oo") toutpus if ene of the snus a1. anda Oi ether nane or baths (See the XOR “ath Table. rah). We can XOR stings of data by XORe each tem in tun. That simp XOR provides we ned or our eneryption method which wel get onto in aminute Fist Welook at the formation we'e gong to encrypt “et ike all comptr data. stored in binary ass and 6s. SCI tot encoding stores each character a a sting of ght ts of binary evormation For example. is (01000010 is 1100101 ana is OLLI, ASC tet then s just chan of thse charac long." hereto is OL00001001100101010310. Nout back to our encryption method. ee going tse a password tha’ ust singe character (we told you it wasnt song be secur.Rcanbe any snl character: Ardour éenerytien methadisto XOR each tra cur ox vith our key (See XORng characters box, above ih). “That ciphertext i ur urveadable text Without knowing thekay. theres no way program ean read it. ors there? ‘We knon the kay its), but wean we use this to ge the orignal ext back? Actual realy simple Backin ‘Symmetric eneryion great or secur fins but thas some protlems when securing communion For tr way of sharing th keys th evanjone. you wanted Snencrypted comeancation th fr exo, Google, you's somehow need tan 3 ey, and thiskey would need tobe ciflerent fox evry person Googe communicated ith otherwise they dbe able eavesop. Tot arr this. we have asymmetric encryption (hich aleaknoum as public ey tn) nhs method are are to keys. 28 | Coding Academy onepriicand the athe: prste Anything that's | ecrypted withthe pub ey can ony be decrypted vith the pate ay and isa vers, Now fr exam you need an enryated cermunieaton ith Gece you ony need to ‘row Google's public kay. Using this publ kay encryption, you canextange 9 hele ue ke or a session of srmetric eneryptin For urher nfo and an example ofan asymmetric implementation, see Nel Bothcks itor ‘woratechradarcom/news/interet/data-prvacy- how safe s-yourdat-in the cloud-1170332/1Lock down with data encryption Dea ae Ue a eS) Text co 2 We can encrypt.a stream by XORing each character in tun with our Key school you may havelearned that (a+b) +e=a+(b++e) ‘That with action a east, tdoesnt matter which order youd the addition: you always gt the sare result. Welt tums out that the same thngis true of XOR. But before we can use that thre are two mere things we need to know anything thats XOR wth ise, and anything XOR'S with Ois unchanged, ‘So, key XOR key is O and text XOR O's text That means that text XOR (key XOR key) is teat. and we ve just eared that thsi the same as (text XOR hey) XOR Key. Soe our cyphertext sust text XOR key we raw know that cyphertext XOR keys our orignal text. Basicaly that's just a ely lrg way of sayin that we can decrypt something exacty the same way we encrypted Statistical attacks ‘We naw have our methed of enryption and decryption but It’snot very secure, Fist of al, there are only 256 possible ays (ie include alight bt strings and not jst the ones that have ASCII characters) t's perfectly feasible for an attacker to check everyone tum. However it tums out they don'thaveto, In Engish text. some characters are very commen. and thers are quite rare For example. the space character usualy makes up 15-20% of allthe characters in apiece o text andthe lowercase E about 1036 while lower-case Zan bbeas ite 2s 0.02% and capital almost never Since agven character nau text wil aways evaluate to the same character in oureyphertext these proportion vill ‘come across. For example, given the cyphertext ‘00001008 00011110 00000011 01110001 00110010 (00111000 00100001 00111001 0110100 00100011 ‘0010001001111101 01110001 01100001 o0100010 (01110001 00107000 00111110 00100100 0110001 ‘00100010 001 10100 0011010001111301 0110001 (00110000 00100011 00110100001110001 00111110 (00111110 00100101 01110001 09100010 00110100 ‘09110010 00100100 00700011 00110100 \We can see that the mast commen & bt strings: 01110001, po ee Reel ° 0 o ° 1 1 r o 1 T 0 ‘We can take a guess tha hiss the encrypted format the space character We know that text XOR tet is O and key XOR Os ky. “Therefore we know that (text HOR key) XOR text is ey. So.iveXOR the mast common character with space (00100000), we get the key. nti case, its 01010001 \wbich corresponds tothe ASCII character'Q! Using this, vwecan decrypt the whale txt to: XOR ciphers, 3s you see, are not secure “Ts is known as a statistical attack and is one of the ‘most common waysot attacking encryption. The simplest way to prevent your dataaling victim otis to use an encryption method that’ vellknown and been tested by ‘the best mind nthe business. AES, Two-fsh, Threessh ‘and Serpent are al good choices. As we mentioned athe stat, {you should nd alibrary thatimplements one or more them inyour language of choice, You may have aticeda sight aw inthis plan, How do yout outa server's pubic key nthe fst pace? Afterall ifanattacker could trick you intousing their public ey. they could read llth supposedly secure communications. We get around this by using cetfleates When you install web browser itll come wth pubic keys for anumber of trusted certificate autherties, A webste can then get re ofthese authorities to sig their public hey. When you go to ‘an encrypted webpage, the server sends youa certfcate (hich contains both ther public key. and the signature from the authority) and the encrypted methed ince you trust ‘the authonty you can now trust this oerticate and ead the page sate inthe kncwedge that's been securely transrtted ‘and not tampered wth “This method sit perfect First itrequres you totrusta range authors (ou can see how mary authoies you trast in your web browser For examen Feox, go to Edt > Preferences > Advanced > View Certificates > Authortis), Tes quite afew, and most ae probably companies youvenever heardof, much ss ust I ahacker or disgruntled employee getsint the computer systems at anyone af them they could intercept almost ary encrypted web rat they wanted, But ‘that’s atthe only way these oertificates canbe subverted fan attacker can find way of forging the ctl signature they can trick computer into thinking a communication comes roma particular source wen it doesn't in fat it was ths method ‘that alowed the Fame malware to getint raian computes. Mrosoft had usethe insecure MDS (rather than the mare secure SHA) hash and attackers were able fuse this to make the computer think something was signed when twast't. Be coxfull Coding Academy | 29eee ie ACADEMYProjects 32 Python 3: How to get started We're moving to Python 3! About time 36 40 FTP: Build a client & server Create your own network code f yster with scripts imes, dates & numbers sing of complex dates 52 NumPy & SciPy: For science! Become a data scientist Coding Academy | 31Projects Python 3: How to get started Join us as we investigate what is probably one of the least loved and disregarded sequels in the whole history of programming languages back Deer 2008 Pt 30 Wires b irre ce “ate wees ron bbs ea nee aesilrousrgtferbernstpen tbortoeane Python programmers and distribution maintainers are a Dec tlre san avy rt ram fo eompe roi ore ea ouppode sto) Windovox acres frost Pro we Caray thecdoftie ine sre antares sro cores buntl2000 Fathermore eit cf to apr on pro ory. tmry mina eres havent ben gre he 3 esr, tryna abe nts keds wna? Eaton scala projet Naan Dg ~ data ton hop waster oes noses kairgto naar Unotinse, th r haepen an estyton ce finda tre lune Pa a aon Pyten 27s tomnrs corps wih 3x oar eoes Fepablteconeupath caste lve oh ba sal megerrareathcistec ong hee ants cca rare agate Lint at cat alr, sata bya Grover afechon re pat corte tGyronocnde testy rear hyo Menno tt nts ate Wepre Ses start tht ight ave Ben out — prt Halo wor Great“ dos varkinPthon3 lit you tstpromse.) Treresonit dns was tht pit Hrrvior2avastret wer Pen Spt # hen and ancora whet cern aed wth DrcklsReraber that ctr dt eed en trong hee tt dot wc we cee pit irora eld hncion ch nissipe rn Ses esos Seas hat stngasto ost irae cig Inaserse youn eens nton Pyten2 Sey clitree ocse ns bracts staal Tsao eth honour onerecveshraharatcs when coming sovclatertsomunr bangs oyna At eral lun group beset oheptons areolapartol te Pon canon (Specs ioscan tba rue) costal cmap cs aquuncaar ppt 32 | Coding Academy ow more flexi for programmers ~as a bultn function, canbe replace, which might be sell youre into defying convention or making some kindof Unicode etecting/deying wrapper function, Your frst Python rogram should have been: print (Hello wor) which is perfect compatibie with Python 2 and 3. you were ‘fan of using a comma atthe end of your pint statements (Cosuporess the newline character), then sad news: this no longer works. Instead, we use the end parameter, which by Cefauit is ane ine, Fr example print (Allon end=**) print Cone tine) Print in Python 3 A siancant proportion of Python programs cau be mde compat wih sty aren the pt yt tee aremrary other a letra trys tht cu go wore “understand tem we must ist bea a th wat aly chargedin ton Testo the word does’ speak English, Infact. stot thawor dest evn use Latin charctr et eve those regs that tnd to use diferent eof acest decorate the charactors Asa rst bess he ASC Standard, numerous ders and ncompatble character tncodings have mand Each graphare (an abtracin cf ‘havi isso ocala aed ech capt assigned byte encoding sometimes eral nthe pas ityarwartedto share docurent wth org carats > The Greek ryptos grapha, which translates as ‘hidden writing followed by anew line using the correct scriptTrdtoaly tet was encoded in ASC hie cach character encoded as ot codepoint whit ees you 128 characters pay wth Some of theve characters are visible tetype codes (SCI ergnated nthe 19603). and once we've counted the familar phanumerc ‘characters there i eaty much room let Because we ike things tobe bytes, several 256 character entrstonsof the ASCI encore emerged. The most notorious ofthese ISO ‘88591 sometimes called Latin Ths widely used character st (and thereated Windows 1252) contains almost althe accents requre forthe Latin scripted languages 2 wel Python 3: How to get started The Unicode revolution asthe characters usedin the romansation of ‘ter langusges Asa esa ay common in the westor hemisphere, bul doesn rely solve the problem eseuhere “Te correct olution would be a tana encoding (er maybe a couple of thar) tat accounts for as many as posible ofthe st ot Characters anyone on earth might conceivably wht type Obvious his wilrequte many ‘more than 256 characters, so wellhave todo ‘ay with ane character encoding tone byte (fence the vergence of cdepotnts analyte encodings), but ts fora greater good Ferturatey al the wrahre abulating and ‘other rigmaralchas ben don, awe have an answer: Uncade Tis acount or ove 100000 characters, bdrectoral say ore Feature forms and mare Cent thee sre two encodings in use: UF which uses ane yt or ‘common characters (making tentrely backwards compatble with ASCI),andunto four tes forthe more cosmopeltan ones and UTF16, which uses two tes some characters and four bytes for ater. Uricade ras been widely adopted both as astrage encoding standard acer internally processing {ests Themainraeon ctr of Python 3s that is predecessor inet dothe late it. then plan ASC would hep, You could use one of the alternative encodings you knew the people you were sharing it with could da the same, butn genera you needed taturn toa word processor witha particular font which ast ‘moves the problem elsewhere. Thanifuly. we nowhave a \idely adopted standard: Unicode (see The Unicode Revoluton box, above) that covers al the bases, ands backwards compatible with ASC and as far as codepoints are concerned) ts Latin extension. We can even have Unicode in our domain names, though internally these are allstil encoded as ASCIl, via a system called Punyeode Pythan 2s far rom devoid of Unicade support, but ts handling ofits done fairly superficially (Unicode strings are sneaky e-encaded behind the scenes) and some third party modules stil went pay ricely wth Stringsin Python 2 can be of type st (which handles ASC fin, but wil behave unpredictably for codepoints ‘above 127 oF they canbe of type unicode. Strings of typestr ‘restored asbytes and, when printed toa terminal ce comerted to whichever encoding your systomslocale specied (trough the LANG and LC_* envionment variables in Linux) For any modem dro thes s probably UTF-8buti's defintely not somethingyou should take for grate, ‘Theunicode type shouldbe used fr textualintercourse finding the length of, sling or reversing a string, For ‘example the Unicode codepoint for the lmercase Greek letter iis 030 in hexnotation So we can define a unicode string from the Python console tke so, provided aur terminal can handle Unicode output ands using a suitable font > pi= uudseo” > print) >> typelo) «type ‘unicode> >> len However we were to try this on a terminal without Unicode support. things wal go wrong You can simulate such a scenari by tating Python with SLC-ALL=C python Now hen you ty to print the lowercase character. you il run ito a Unicode ncodeE:ror.Essontiay, Python trying ‘and faling to coerce this oan ASCI character (the ony type supported by the primitive locale), Python 2 alsa tries to > The PyStone benchmark wil ikely be slower in Python 3, but the same won't be true forall code. Don't be a PyBk efusenk without fist trying your code ete ET perform this coercion (regarcess of current lecale settings) ‘when printing tafe or apipe so dont use the unleode type for these operations, instead use str. The str type n Python 2's eal just aistof bytes corresponding to haw the strings encededon the machine This is what youshoud use if you're wring your strings to {dsk o sending them over a network o toa pipe. Python 2 wily and convert stings of type unicode to ASCII (ts enaabais defautencocnginthesestiatons whicncoudresutin aan tears Sowecanaogetafunepicharacerby sings Baan UTP bterepresentaten det There arrestor qlee comeing UncedecocepontstOUTFS(erUTFi6)btes, imam butts to imply accept tha the character comenee encodes tothetwobytes CFBDINUTFS Wecanescope mz) these with an Wxnotation in oxdertomake Python Understand bytes: >> step = "XCF x80" >> typetstep) ‘type'str’> >> lente) 2 So m apparently now has two letter. The point is your Python 2 code s doing stuf with Unicode characters, you need tohave al kinds of wrappers ad checks in place to take account ofthe localisation of whatever machine may en it Youll aso have tohandle your own convesionsbetween Coding Academy | 33Aleph, beth, simel..The 2t03 program Python 2 code for Python 3. Shalom str and unicode types, and use the codecs module to change encodings as required. Alo i you have Unicode strings ir uF cade, youl nee to ad the appropiate declaration at ne top of your code #tcoding:utt8-* “The main driving force for anew Python version was the need to rewnte rom the gr strings and thee representations to spy ths process, ‘Some argu that fas miserably (see Armin Ronacher's rant at http//bitly/UnicodelnPython3), burly ‘cepends on your purposes. Python 3 does away wth the od Unicode type ently s 1 3is naw se nee everything abou Unicode-rientate, The str typenow stores Uni codepoints. the language's default encoding is U eed forthe eadng decorator above) andthe ne bytes ject stores byte arrays ke the old str ype. Thenew str ype wil ned to be converted to bytes ifit'sto be used for ary kind of le /O.but this tra va the straneoded) ‘method. yu reading Unicode tet es, youinged to ‘open them in binary "fb mode and comert the bytes toa string using the converse bytes decodeQ) method (see ‘ordeals bottom lf Python 3 however brings ares besides al this Unicode malarkey, about many othe some ofthese are just the removal of legacy competiity code (Python 3.unlke 27 doesn't ned ta be cormpatible with 20), some of them prove new features, and some of them force programmers to do things aferenty Butwat there's more: fr example functions can now be passed keyword only arguments even f they use the fangs syntax to take variable length argument Ist, and catching able ow requres the as keyword, Also, you can nolonger use the uely <> comparison operator to test or nequalty ~ instead use the much more styish = which s aso avaiable in Python 2, Automating conversion with 2to3 For reasonably smal projects, and these that aren't gongto encounter any orgn characters ly that your th 2 cade can be automaticaly made Python 3. compatible using the 203 too. Thishelptl chap runs predefined set offers ‘Shall Not nni@jbmachine Par) fi Skipping Est str) Skipping implicit ipping implicit Precet) (original) teas implicit PL yetred 41,3 @@ POR Ce aCe err ies SerrOr ieee ns) Tur oreo es tc cert pete cote Caer PCH Peet Porras (ne changein Python 3that has the potenti! to fs, detuning a it. ths in th behaviour ofthe dase dvson operator as fummoris thatthe behaviour ofthe disin operator lands for integer cusn In we nares both nurertor and denominat operator /scterent Fereample,ere'san second example the numerator isaflatand arent, then anints returned lone dies fcerpt toma Python 2 seen trecperator ats a fasting pont the other otherwise afloat isretured th the a2 urnnguhat yousinuatvely expecta of crret deem remainder If test one ot 1 thre tobe, The third ne uses the erp oor arguments 3 Het (r compen, then he a2 cision operator 7 which wl return the behavoursunchanges 15 unde oom resus fat x ann “This means the / operator snow as close to 342 cepening onthe arguments. The ater rmathemateal vison proper ase can hope, 10 operators actualy backoertedto27.s0i% andissuesrwohing unexpected its wil “Trisshows the rst command operat 34 | Coding Academy‘on yur Python 2 code, wit the goal of emitting bons ide Python 3 cade, Using it can be as simple a: $ 208 mypy2code.py This will output cit of any changes agains the origina le, ‘You can aso use the -w option to averwite your fle dont ory till acked up frst Some fixers willl run if you specty them expt using the option. An example is buffer wrich wil replace al buffer types with memoryvews. ‘These two arerit entirely compatible, so same tweaking might necessary inorder to successfully migrate, Using whole heap of effort, because searching and replacing pln statements manualy fr stan crudgerou task. The picture hows the changes toa simple thre tne program =the uni function isnow eed, because Unicode s row impli and the print ine reworked, eve fuses ‘to format placeholders Parlez-vous Python Trois? wahoth yon 2rd Python's Why shed aly ny Carpet one pele Ptr ven ths mc our er re poring an tein or code mig cures an sans hv dy beenbasparte 27 sel hen For exam, you can get the new-argled pent syria sing the following: >> rom _future_import pint function This is used wit the fram inthis wo, and_future_coesatt Python 3: How to get started >The popular matplotib module has been Python $3compatie Since v2, fora your graphing and plotting requirements behave tke a standard module — nse ompiler ‘recive which n this case provide the moder print syntax \Wecan ikewise impor dvson to get the new syle dvson, ‘orunicode eras to make stings Unicode by deaut There tacts Is another madule,contusinly calle fut, which srt par ofthe standard brary, but can hep ease transition issues. When Python 30 was released twas general regarded as being about 10% slower than its predecessor, This wes ot surprising. because speed wa ‘ew version aed many special-ca removed in order to clean up the code base. Now that were Up to vecsion 35, 2018). woul be rice performance had since been improved Unfortunatly thishasn'tbeen the case. ich you can ising the PyStone benchmark, We testedit (see 3 really a priory for the plimsations were which was released in Decerb has now comeback ram the dead twice and hence possesses supernatural powers far beyond what ts dusty 2.3GHe processor would suggest ous machine inthe offie. which {tdort be misled: PyStone tests various Python Internals, of which your code may or may nat make extensive Uses important to test your code in both versions to get a more accuratepicture.Youcan always se Cython (mantained at htp://eython.org to speed up code thats amenable to C translation (loops. math, array access) othe bottleneck module ‘Guid van Rossum the author of Python, says that Python 27 willbe supperted unti’2020, but that's no 1se to postpone learning the new version pow. Python 3 adoptions increasing so you wer't be alone. Half the work isretraning your fingers to add parentheses. Coding Reademy | 35Projects Python 3: Using functions Everything you need to know to start using functions and developing classes, modules, packages and objects in Python 3 ‘eucanasoce ‘aretelants eyo tenabo crates at raat ‘orien a, is tutorial wilteach you about Python 3 functions, asses, objects, maduls ad package. ts main purpose sto cantyalthese terms by using smal examples that iustrate how to create and use themal. anda large part ofthe tutorials about namespaces, which are used ‘everywhere in Python 3 Functions do two very important tingsfirst they enable sto reuse cede and therefore reduce code repetition. which, inturn,alows us to write less code, Second, unetions offer way to Solve a big pcogram by sohing smaller components of that problem ‘The flowing Python code declares a function that is named aFunction: ef aFunction): printHello) > This is the output ofthe myFunctions.py Python 3 script. The ast statement ‘ofthe script causes the error message you see onthe screen because ‘timestring0 cannot use a string variable as an integer 36 | Coding Academy [As youcan se, a function defnton begins with the de keywor followed bythe function name, I'snot mandatory foraPython function to retuzn something or have a number of arguments Yeu can now use Function as flows: Function) | Despite the fat rin the same message al the time, the previous function takes no input and returns nothing. However, most ofthe me a function takes one oF more parameters as input ad returns one or mare values. Te next function, we've called timesSring, takes two parameters an integer and a string. as input and returns sting: def timesstrngtimes, text: sring="" for xin ange (0, times) string += text tum string You can use timesStrng 25 flows myString= timesString’3,"Hi) printtimesString2,"Hi™) However cling timesString®) as timesstringHis Hi vill ‘cause an ertor message because the frst parameter cannot bbe used as an integer inside the function ‘As you might be aware, when a function returns ‘something, ou shou take care oft and’ uit common to sve the retun value ofa function using variable. The proper way fra function toretucr a val is withthe return eywor. t's very important to remember that Python has no ‘ules about the types of the arguments athe return value of function. .e.they canbe whatever you want. However. its easy to forget that when a function works with integer ‘ales, wil now work when youpass a string instead You shouldbe very caret because improper argument types can be the source of nasty bugs. Although isnot mandatory to deciarethe types of the function arguments you are feeto do so. (See the screenshot. eft for more information) Now aquick mention of function declarations in Python 3. What the det kayo does is create anew abject and assien ‘aname tot Sa det creates anew funtion abject and its ‘ames used for referencing it Now that you know the basics offunctons, we can start aking about asses, A Python class Apyonclss aay ofsoupng tctons anvartes Core aj orertd ened thon cas pros tre roca fetresof obec orerted owrarnng sich