Getting Started with Python

Python is a General Purpose high level Programming language used for developing application
softwares. Developed by Guido van Rossum in 1991.

Features of Python

• High Level

• Free and Open Source

• Case Sensitive

• Interpreted

• Platform Independent

• Rich library of functions

• Dynamic

• General Purpose

Working with Python

To write and run python programs we need Python Interpreter also called Python IDLE.

Execution Mode

We can use Python Interpreter in two ways:

• Interactive mode

• Script mode

Interactive Mode

• Instant execution of individual statement

• Convenient for testing single line of code

• We cannot save statements for future use

• Allows us to write and execute more than one Instruction together.

• We can save programs (python script) for future use

• Python scripts are saved as file with extension ".py"

Python Keywords

• These are predefined words which a specific meaning to Python Interpreter.

• These are reserve keywords

• Keywords in python are case sensitive

Example:- False, class, finally, is, return, None, continue, for, try, def, from, while, if, or etc…

Identifier

Identifiers are name used to identify a variable, function or any other entities in a programs.

Rules for naming Identifier

• The name should begin with an alphabet or and underscore sign and can be followed by any
combination of charaters a-z, A-Z, 0-9 or underscore.

• It can be of any length but we should keep it simple, short and meaningful.

• It should not be a python keyword or reserved word.

• We cannot use special symbols like !, @, #, $, % etc. in identifiers.

Variables

• It can be referred as an object or element that occupies memory space which can contain a value.

• Value of variable can be numeric, alphanumeric or combination of both.

• In python assignment statement is used to create variable and assign values to it.
Data types

These are keywords which determine the type of data stored in a variable. Following table show data
types used in python:

Comments

• These are statement ignored by python interpreter during execution.

• It is used add a remark or note in the source code.

• It starts with # (hash sign) in python.

Operators

These are special symbols used to perform specific operation on values. Different types of operator
supported in python are given below:

• Arithmetic operator ( +,-,*,/,%,//,**)

• Relational operator (= =,!=,>,<,<=,>=)

• Assignment operator

• Logical operator (and ,or ,not)

• Identity operator (is ,not is)

• Membership operator (in, not in)

• An expression is combination of different variables, operators and constant which is always

• A value or a standalone variable is also considered as an expression.

Example

56+ (23-13)+89%8 - 2*3

Sequence
**

* / // %

+ -

Evaluation:

= 56+ (23-13) + 89%8 - 2*3

#step1

= 56 + 10+ (89%8) - 2*3

#step2

= 56 + 10 + 1-(2*3)

#step3

= (56+10) +1-6

#step4

= (66 + 1) - 6

#step5

= 67-6

#step6

= 61
Statement

A statement is unit of code that the python interpreter can execute.

Example:

var1 = var2 #assignment statement

x = input ("enter a number") #input statement

print ("total = ", R) #output statement

How to input values in python?

In python we have input() function for taking user input.

Syntax:

Input([prompt])

How to display output in python?

In python we have print() function to display output.

Syntax:

print([message/value])

Example:

Python program to input and output your name

var = input("Enter your name")

print("Name you have entered is ", var)

Example:

Addition of two numbers

Var1 = int(input("enter no1"))

Var2 = int(input("enter no2"))

Total = Var1 + Var2

Print("Total = ", Total)

CHECKING CONDITIONS

if
a = 33
b = 200
if b > a:
print("b is greater than a")

a = 200
b = 33
c = 500
if a > b and c > a:
print("Both conditions are True")

if else
a = 200
b = 33
if b > a:
print("b is greater than a")
else:
print("b is not greater than a")

if ..... elif... elif .....else.....

nested if else
You can have if statements inside if statements, this is called nested if statements.

x = 41

if x > 10:
print("Above ten,")
if x > 20:
 print("and also above 20!")
else:
print("but not above 20.")

For Loops

A for loop is used for iterating over a sequence (that is either a list, a tuple, a dictionary, a set, or a
string).

This is less like the for keyword in other programming languages, and works more like an iterator
method as found in other object-orientated programming languages.

With the for loop we can execute a set of statements, once for each item in a list, tuple, set etc.

fruits = ["apple", "banana", "cherry"]

The range() Function

The range() function returns a sequence of numbers, starting from 0 by default, and increments
by 1 (by default), and ends at a specified number.

for x in range(2, 30, 3):

Nested Loops
A nested loop is a loop inside a loop.

The "inner loop" will be executed one time for each iteration of the "outer loop":

adj = ["red", "big", "tasty"]

for x in adj:
for y in fruits:
print(x, y)
Type Conversion

Type conversion refers to converting one type of data to another type.

Type conversion can happen in two ways:

• Explicit conversion

• Implicit conversion

Explicit Conversion

• Explicit conversion also refers to type casting.

• In explicit conversion, data type conversion is forced by programmer in program

Syntax:

(new_data_type) = (expression)

Explicit type conversion function

Example:

Program of explicit type conversion from float to int

x = 12

y=5

print(x/y) #output - 2.4

print(int(x/y)) #output - 2
Program of explicit type conversion from string to int

x = input("enter a number")

print(x+2) #output - produce error "can only concatenate str to str

x = int(input(Enter a number"))

print(x+2) #output - will display addition of value of x and 2

Implicit conversion

• Implicit conversion is also known as coercion.

• In implicit conversion data type conversion is done automatically.

• Implicit conversion allows conversion from smaller data type to wider size data type without any
loss of information

Example:

Program to show implicit conversion from int to float

var1 = 10 #var1 is integer

var2 = 3.4 #var2 is float

res = var1 var2 #res becomes float automatically after subtraction

print(res) #output - 6.6

print(type(res)) #output-class 'Float'

Strings

• String is basically a sequence which is made up of one or more UNICODE characters.

• Character in string can be any letter, digit, whitespace or any other symbol.

• String can be created by enclosing one or more characters in single, double or triple quotes.
Examples:

Accessing characters in a string (INDEX)

• Individual character in a string can be accessed using indexes.

• Indexes are unique numbers assigned to each character in a string to identify them

• Index always begins from 0 and written in square brackets "[]".

• Index must be an zero, positive or negative integer.

• We get IndexError when we give index value out of the range.

Negative Index

• Python allows negative indexing also.

• Negative indices are used when you want to access string in reverse order.

• Starting from the right side, the first character has the index as -1 and the last character (leftmost) has
the index -n where n is length of string.

Is string immutable?

• Yes, string is immutable data type. The content of string once assigned cannot be altered than.

• Trying to alter string content may lead an error.

String operations

String supports following operations:

• Concatenation

• Repetition

• Membership

• Slicing
Concatenation

• Concatenation refers to joining two strings.

• Plus ('+') is used as concatenation operator.

Repetition

• Repetition as it name implies repeat the given string.

• Asterisk (*) is used as repetition operator.

Membership

• Membership operation refers to checking a string or character is part or subpart of an existing string
or not.

• Python uses 'in' and 'not in' as membership operator.

• 'in' returns true if the first string or character appears as substring in the second string.

• 'not in' returns true if the first string or character does not appears as substring in the second string.

Slicing

• Extracting a specific part of string or substring is called slicing

• Subset occurred after slicing contains contiguous elements

• Slicing is done using index range like string[start_index: end_index: step_value

• End index is always excluded in resultant substring.

• Negative index can also be used for slicing.

Traversing a String

• Traversing a string refers to accessing each character of a given string sequentially.

• For or while loop is used for traversing a string

String Functions