Python Language

&
Library
By

Srikanth Pragada
2 Python Language and Library
COPYRIGHT
Copyright @ 2020 by Srikanth Technologies. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any

means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the author & publisher – Srikanth Pragada, with the exception
that the programs may be entered, stored, and executed in a computer system,
but they may not be reproduced for publication.

Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the
author assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability
assumed for damages resulting from the use of information contained therein.

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Python Language and Library 3
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Srikanth Pragada is the director of Srikanth Technologies, a software training
company. He started programming in early 90s and worked with more than 15
different programming languages.

Srikanth Pragada holds the following certifications:

❑ Sun Certified Java Programmer

❑ Sun Certified Web Component Developer
❑ Sun Certified Business Component Developer
❑ Oracle Database SQL Certified Expert
❑ Oracle PL/SQL Developer Certified Associate
❑ Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist for .NET 4.0 (Web Applications)

He currently conducts online, classroom and onsite training on C, Java, Oracle,

Microsoft.NET, Python, Data Science and Angular technologies.

His website www.srikanthtechnologies.com provides online examinations,

programs, projects, articles and his blog.

He provides a lot of source code regarding various languages and technologies

using https://github.com/srikanthpragada.

When he is not teaching or learning, he would like to visit new places, read
books, play sports and listen to music.

He can be reached through his email address [email protected].

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4 Python Language and Library
HOW TO USE THIS MATERIAL
This is to be carried to classroom everyday as long as the contents of this
material are being discussed.

You are suggested to read relevant content before and after attending the
class.

Use picture and text to grasp the concept. Programs are to illustrate how to
implement the concepts. Try the programs given in this material in your
system.

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK

We have taken considerable effort to ensure accuracy of the contents of this
material. However, if you come across any mistakes or have any suggestions to
improve the quality of this material, please take a few minutes of your valuable
time to send mail to me at [email protected].

Alternatively, you can visit my website

www.srikanthtechnologies.com/feedback.aspx and provide feedback there.

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Python Language and Library 5
TABLE OF CONTENT
Copyright........................................................................................................................... 2
About the Author .............................................................................................................. 3
How to use this material ................................................................................................... 4
Request for Feedback ....................................................................................................... 4
Table of Content ............................................................................................................... 5
Python Language ............................................................................................................ 11
Installation of python...................................................................................................... 12
Using Python Interpreter - REPL ..................................................................................... 14
Interactive Mode ............................................................................................................ 14
Variables ......................................................................................................................... 15
Rules for Identifier .......................................................................................................... 15
Operators ........................................................................................................................ 16
Assignment operator (=) ............................................................................................. 16
Arithmetic Operators .................................................................................................. 17
Relational Operators ................................................................................................... 18
Logical Operators ........................................................................................................ 18
Built-in Data Types .......................................................................................................... 19
Keywords ........................................................................................................................ 21
Built-in Functions ............................................................................................................ 22
function input() ............................................................................................................... 25
Using print() function .................................................................................................. 25
Formatted output ....................................................................................................... 26
The f-string .................................................................................................................. 27
The if statement.............................................................................................................. 28
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Conditional Expression ................................................................................................... 29
The while loop ................................................................................................................ 30
The range() function ....................................................................................................... 31
The pass Statement ........................................................................................................ 31
The for statement ........................................................................................................... 32
break, CONTINUE and else ............................................................................................. 33
Strings ............................................................................................................................. 35
The List Data Structure ................................................................................................... 40
List Comprehension .................................................................................................... 42
The del statement ........................................................................................................... 43
Looping sequence ........................................................................................................... 46
Operations related to Sequence Types .......................................................................... 44
The Tuple data structure ................................................................................................ 45
The Set data structure .................................................................................................... 46
Set Comprehension .................................................................................................... 49
List vs. Set vs. Tuple ........................................................................................................ 49
The Dictionary data structure ......................................................................................... 50
Dictionary Comprehension ......................................................................................... 52
Functions......................................................................................................................... 53
Default Argument Values................................................................................................ 54
Varying Arguments ......................................................................................................... 55
Keyword Arguments ....................................................................................................... 56
Keyword-Only Arguments............................................................................................... 57
Positional-Only Arguments ............................................................................................. 58
Passing function as a parameter..................................................................................... 59
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Using filter, sorted and map functions ........................................................................... 60
Filter function ............................................................................................................. 60
Sorted function ........................................................................................................... 61
Map function .............................................................................................................. 62
Lambda Expression ......................................................................................................... 63
Passing Arguments - Pass by value and reference ......................................................... 64
Local Functions ............................................................................................................... 66
Variable’s Scope .............................................................................................................. 67
Modules .......................................................................................................................... 68
The import statement ..................................................................................................... 69
The dir() function ............................................................................................................ 70
The help() function ......................................................................................................... 70
Module search path ........................................................................................................ 71
Setting PYTHONPATH.................................................................................................. 71
Executing Module as Script............................................................................................. 72
Using command line arguments ..................................................................................... 74
Documentation ............................................................................................................... 75
Packages ......................................................................................................................... 76
Importing with * ......................................................................................................... 77
PIP and PyPI .................................................................................................................... 78
Classes............................................................................................................................. 79
__init__ method ......................................................................................................... 79
Private members (Name Mangling) ............................................................................ 80
Static methods and variables .......................................................................................... 82
Class Methods ................................................................................................................. 83
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Comparison of methods ............................................................................................. 83
Built-in methods related to Attributes ........................................................................... 84
Built-In Class Attributes .................................................................................................. 85
Special Methods ............................................................................................................. 86
Relational operators ................................................................................................... 86
Unary operators .......................................................................................................... 86
Binary operators ......................................................................................................... 89
Extended assignments ................................................................................................ 90
Properties ....................................................................................................................... 91
Inheritance ...................................................................................................................... 92
Overriding ................................................................................................................... 95
Functions isinstance() and issubclass() ....................................................................... 95
Multiple Inheritance ....................................................................................................... 96
Method mro() ............................................................................................................. 98
Abstract class and methods ............................................................................................ 99
Exception Handling ....................................................................................................... 100
Predefined Exceptions .............................................................................................. 105
The raise statement .................................................................................................. 107
User-defined exception and raise statement ........................................................... 107
The Iterator ................................................................................................................... 108
The Generator............................................................................................................... 111
Generator Expression ............................................................................................... 112
File Handling ................................................................................................................. 113
Method open().......................................................................................................... 113
The with statement................................................................................................... 114
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File object.................................................................................................................. 114
Pickle – Python Object Serialization ............................................................................. 117
Json Module .................................................................................................................. 119
sys module .................................................................................................................... 121
os Module ..................................................................................................................... 122
Using Re (Regular expression) module ......................................................................... 124
Match Object ............................................................................................................ 128
The datetime module ................................................................................................... 130
The date type ............................................................................................................ 130
The time type ............................................................................................................ 132
The timedelta type.................................................................................................... 133
Multithreading .............................................................................................................. 136
Methods in threading module .................................................................................. 137
Thread Class .............................................................................................................. 137
requests module ........................................................................................................... 139
The requests.Response object .................................................................................. 139
BeautifulSoup module .................................................................................................. 141
Tag Object ................................................................................................................. 142
Methods find() and find_all() .................................................................................... 143
Database Programming ................................................................................................ 144
SQLite3 Database ...................................................................................................... 145
Module sqlite3 .............................................................................................................. 146
Method connect() ..................................................................................................... 146
Connection object ..................................................................................................... 146
Cursor Object ............................................................................................................ 147
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Inserting row into table ............................................................................................ 149
Retrieving rows from table ....................................................................................... 150
Updating row in table ............................................................................................... 151
Deleting row from table............................................................................................ 152
Working with Oracle ..................................................................................................... 153

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PYTHON LANGUAGE
❑ Easy and powerful language.
❑ Supports different programming paradigms like Structured programming
and Object-oriented programming.
❑ Is an interpreted language.
❑ Ideal for scripting and rapid application development.
❑ Supports high-level data structures like List, Set, Dictionary and Tuple.
❑ Python has a design philosophy that emphasizes code readability, and a
syntax that allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code.
❑ Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991.
❑ Python features a dynamic type system and automatic memory
management.
❑ Python 2.0 was released on 16th October 2000.
❑ Python 3.0 (initially called Python 3000 or py3k) was released on 3rd
December 2008.
❑ Python 3.8 was released on October, 14th 2019.

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12 Python Language and Library
INSTALLATION OF PYTHON
1. Go to python.org (https://www.python.org/downloads).
2. Click on Downloads menu and select your platform.
3. It will take you to related downloads page. For example, for Windows it
takes you to https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/
4. Select Windows x86-64 executable installer and download the installer
(python-3.8.2-amd64.exe).
5. Run installer and opt for Custom installation.
6. Change directory into which installer installs Python to something like
c:\python.
7. Also make sure you select Add Python 3.8 to PATH option in installation
window.
8. Installer installs all required files into selected folder. Installer automatically
sets python installation folder in system path.

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14 Python Language and Library
USING PYTHON INTERPRETER - REPL
❑ Go to command prompt.
❑ Make sure system PATH is set to folder where Python was installed. If that
is not the case then you need to be in the folder into which you installed
Python (for example, c:\python)
❑ Run python.exe to start interpreter. It is also known as Read Evaluate Print
Loop (REPL).

c:\classroom>python
Python 3.8.2 (tags/v3.8.2:6f8c832, May 13 2020, 22:37:02)
[MSC v.1924 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
information.
>>>

❑ Use CTRL-Z or exit() to end interpreter and come back to command prompt.
❑ The interpreter’s line-editing features include interactive editing, history
substitution and code completion on systems that support reading line.

INTERACTIVE MODE
❑ When commands are read from keyboard, the interpreter is said to be
in interactive mode.
❑ It prompts for the next command with the primary prompt, usually three
greater-than signs (>>>); for continuation lines it prompts with
the secondary prompt, by default three dots (...).
❑ In the interactive interpreter, the output string is enclosed in quotes and
special characters are escaped with backslashes.
❑ The print() function produces a more readable output, by omitting the
enclosing quotes and by printing escape and special characters.
❑ Two or more string literals (i.e. the ones enclosed between quotes) next to
each other are automatically concatenated.

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Python Language and Library 15
VARIABLES
❑ Python is a dynamic language where variable is created by directly assigning
value to it.
❑ Based on the value assigned to a variable, its datatype is determined.
❑ Built-in function type () can be used to find out the type of a variable.

>>> a = 10
>>> type(a)
<class 'int'>
>>> b = "Python"
>>> type(b)
<class 'str'>
>>>

NOTE: We can find out data type of any variable using type () built-in function.

RULES FOR IDENTIFIER

While creating names for variables, function and other identifiers, we need to
follow the rules given below:

❑ Can contain 0-9, a-z, A-Z and underscore

❑ Cannot start with a digit
❑ Length is unlimited
❑ Case is significant

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16 Python Language and Library
OPERATORS
The following are different types of operators available in Python.

Assignment operator (=)

❑ Assignment operator is used to assign a value to a variable.
❑ It creates variables if not already present otherwise it changes its current
value.
❑ It is possible to assign multiple values to multiple variables in single
assignment statement.

>>> # create variables

>>> a = 10
>>> a = 20.50
>>>
>>> # Assign multiple values to multiple variables
>>> a, b = 0, 1
>>>
>>> # swap two variables
>>> a, b = b, a
>>>
>>> # Assign 10 to a, b and c
>>> a = b = c = 10

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Python Language and Library 17
Arithmetic Operators
The following are available arithmetic operators:

Operator Meaning
+ Addition
- Subtraction
* Multiplication
** Exponentiation
/ Division
// Integer Division
% Modulus

>>> a, b = 10, 4
>>> a / b, a // b
(2.5, 2)
>>> a ** b
10000
>>> a % 4
2

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18 Python Language and Library
Relational Operators
The following relational operators are available:

Operator Meaning
< Less than
> Greater than
<= Less than or equal to
>= Greater than or equal to
== Equal to
!= Not equal to

Logical Operators
The following are logical operators used to combine conditions:

Operator Meaning
and Anding
or Oring
not Negates condition

>>> a, b, c = 10, 20, 30

>>> a < b and a < c
True
>>> a < b < c # same as a < b and b < c
True
>>> a != b or b != c
True

Note: The Boolean operators and & or are known as short-circuit operators:
their arguments are evaluated from left to right, and evaluation stops as soon
as the outcome is determined.

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Python Language and Library 19
BUILT-IN DATA TYPES
The following are built-in data types in Python.

DataType Meaning
None There is a single object with this value. This object is
accessed through the built-in name None. It is used to
signify the absence of a value in many situations, e.g., it
is returned from functions that don’t explicitly return
anything. Its truth value is false.
NotImplemented There is a single object with this value. This object is
accessed through the built-in name NotImplemented.
Numeric methods and rich comparison methods should
return this value if they do not implement the operation
for the operands provided. Its truth value is true.
Integers (int) These represent numbers in an unlimited range, subject
to available (virtual) memory only.
Booleans (bool) These represent the truth values False and True. The two
objects representing the values False and True are the
only Boolean objects. The Boolean type is a subtype of
the integer type, and Boolean values behave like the
values 0 (False) and 1 (True), respectively, in almost all
contexts, the exception being that when converted to a
string, the strings "False" or "True" are returned,
respectively.
Real (float) These represent machine-level double precision floating
point numbers. You are at the mercy of the underlying
machine architecture for the accepted range and
handling of overflow. Python does not support single-
precision floating point numbers.

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20 Python Language and Library

Complex (complex) These represent complex numbers as a pair of

machine-level double precision floating point numbers.
String (str) A string is a sequence of values that represent Unicode
codes.
Tuple (tuple) The items of a tuple are arbitrary Python objects.
Tuples of two or more items are formed by comma-
separated lists of expressions.
Bytes (bytes) A bytes object is an immutable array. The items are 8-
bit bytes, represented by integers in the range 0 <= x <
256.
List (list) The items of a list are arbitrary Python objects. Lists are
formed by placing a comma-separated list of
expressions in square brackets.
Byte Array A bytearray object is a mutable array. They are created
(bytearray) by the built-in bytearray() constructor.
Set (set) These represent a mutable set of unique values created
by set() constructor.
Frozen set These represent an immutable set created by built-in
(frozenset) frozenset() constructor.
Dictionary (dict) These represent finite sets of objects indexed by nearly
arbitrary values.

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Python Language and Library 21

>>> v1 = 10
>>> v2 = 10.50
>>> v3 = "Python"
>>> v4 = True
>>> type(v1)
<class 'int'>
>>> type(v2)
<class 'float'>
>>> type(v3)
<class 'str'>
>>> type(v4)
<class 'bool'>

KEYWORDS
The following are important keywords in Python.

False class finally is return

None continue for lambda try
True def from nonlocal while
and del global not with
as elif if or yield
assert else import pass break
except in raise

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22 Python Language and Library
BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS
The following are built-in functions in Python.

Function Meaning
abs(x) Returns the absolute value of a number.
all(iterable) Returns True if all elements of the iterable are true
(or if the iterable is empty).
any(iterable) Returns True if any element of the iterable is true. If
the iterable is empty, returns False.
bin(x) Converts an integer number to a binary string
prefixed with “0b”.
chr(i) Returns the string representing a character whose
Unicode code point is the integer i.
dir([object]) Without arguments, returns the list of names in the
current local scope. With an argument, attempts to
return a list of valid attributes for that object.
filter(function, Constructs an iterator from those elements of
iterable) iterable for which function returns true.
format(value[, Converts a value to a “formatted” representation, as
format_spec]) controlled by format_spec.
getattr(object, Returns the value of the named attribute of object.
name[, default])
hex(x) Converts an integer number to a lowercase
hexadecimal string prefixed with “0x”.
id(object) Returns the “identity” of an object. This is an integer
which is guaranteed to be unique and constant for
this object during its lifetime.
len(s) Returns the length (the number of items) of an
object.

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Python Language and Library 23

max(iterable) Returns the largest item in an iterable or the largest

max(arg1, of two or more arguments.
arg2,*args)
input([prompt]) If the prompt argument is present, it is written to
standard output without a trailing newline. The
function then reads a line from input, converts it to
a string (stripping a trailing newline), and returns
that. When EOF is read, EOFError is raised.
min(iterable) Returns the smallest item in an iterable or the
min(arg1, arg2, smallest of two or more arguments.
*args)
oct(x) Converts an integer number to an octal string
prefixed with “0o”.
ord(c) Given a string representing one Unicode character,
returns an integer representing the Unicode code
point of that character.
print(*objects, Prints objects to the text stream file, separated by
sep=' ',end='\n', sep and followed by end. sep, end, file and flush, if
file=sys.stdout, present, must be given as keyword arguments.
flush=False)
reversed(seq) Returns a reverse iterator.
round(number[, Returns number rounded to ndigits precision after
ndigits]) the decimal point.
sorted(iterable, *, Returns a new sorted list from the items in iterable.
key=None,
reverse=False)
sum(iterable[, Sums start and the items of an iterable from left to
start]) right and returns the total. start defaults to 0.
type(object) With one argument, returns the type of an object.

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24 Python Language and Library

>>> abs(-10)
10
>>> bin(10)
'0b1010'
>>> chr(65)
'A'
>>> a = 10
>>> id(a)
140728047310784
>>> max(10, 20, 30)
30
>>> ord('a')
97
>>> round(10.566)
11
>>> type(True)
<class 'bool'>
>>>

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Python Language and Library 25
FUNCTION INPUT()
❑ Built-in function input() is used to take input from user.
❑ It always returns a string, so we need to convert it to required type using
other built-in functions like int().

>>> num = int(input("Enter a number :"))

Enter a number :25
>>> print("Square of", num, "is", num * num)
Square of 25 is 625
>>>

Using print() function

❑ Built-in function print() is used to print one or more values.
❑ It is possible to specify separator and end characters.

>>> print(1, 2, 3)
1 2 3
>>> print(1, 2, 3, sep = '-')
1-2-3
>>> print(1, 2, 3, end = '\n\n')
1 2 3
>>> print("Python", 3.8, sep= " - ", end = "\n\n")
Python - 3.8

>>>

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26 Python Language and Library
Formatted output
❑ It is possible to print formatted output using % with conversion characters
like %d and %s.
❑ Method format() of string can be used to format output. String on which
this method is called can contain literal text or replacement fields delimited
by braces {}.
❑ Each replacement field contains either the numeric index of a positional
argument, or the name of a keyword argument. Returns a copy of the string
where each replacement field is replaced with the string value of the
corresponding argument.

str % (values)

str.format(*args, **kwargs)

>>> name = "Srikanth"

>>> mobile = "9059057000"
>>> print("%s %s" % (name,mobile))
Srikanth 9059057000
>>> print("Name = {0}".format(name))
Name = Srikanth
>>> print("Name = {}, Mobile = {}".format(name,mobile))
Name = Srikanth, Mobile = 9059057000
>>> print("{name} {ver}".format(name="Python",ver=3.9))
Python 3.9
>>>

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Python Language and Library 27
The f-string
❑ F-string is a string prefixed with f and inserts values of variables when
variables are enclosed in {} inside the string.
❑ New feature of Python 3.6.

>>> name = "Srikanth"

>>> lang = "Python"
>>> f"{name} is a {lang} trainer"
'Srikanth is a Python trainer'

It is possible to format values as follows:

>>> mode = "Cash"

>>> amount = 251.567
>>> print(f"{mode:10} {amount:8.2f} {amount*0.20:5.2f}")
Cash 251.57 50.31

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THE IF STATEMENT
❑ It is used for conditional execution.
❑ It selects exactly one of the suites by evaluating the expressions one by one
until one is found to be true.
❑ There can be zero or more elif parts, and the else part is optional.

if boolean_expression:
statements
[elif boolean_expression:
statements] ...
[else:
statements]

if a > b:
print(a)
else:
print(b)

if a > 0:
print("Positive")
elif a < 0:
print("Negative")
else:
print("Zero")

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Python Language and Library 29
CONDITIONAL EXPRESSION
❑ It returns either true value or false value depending on the condition.
❑ If condition is true then it returns true_value otherwise it returns
false_value.

true_value if condition else false_value

>>> a = 10
>>> b = 20
>>> a if a > b else b
20

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THE WHILE LOOP
The while statement is used for repeated execution as long as the boolean
expression is true:

while boolean_expression:
statements
[else:
statements]

Note: The else part of while is executed only when loop is terminated normally,
i.e. without break statement.

01 # Program to print numbers from 1 to 10

02 i = 1
03 while i <= 10:
04 print(i)
05 i += 1
06

01 # Program to print digits in a number in reverse order

02 num = int(input("Enter a number :"))
03 while num > 0:
04 digit = num % 10 # Take rightmost digit
05 print(digit)
06 num = num // 10 # Remove rightmost digit
07

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THE RANGE() FUNCTION
❑ We can use range() function to generate numbers between the given start
and end (exclusive).
❑ If you do need to iterate over a sequence of numbers, the built-in
function range() comes in handy. It generates arithmetic progressions.
❑ In many ways the object returned by range() behaves as if it is a list, but in
fact it isn’t. It is an object which returns the successive items of the desired
sequence when you iterate over it, but it doesn’t really make the list, thus
saving space.

range([start,] end [, step])

If start is not given then 0 is taken, if step is not given then 1 is taken.

range (10) # will produce 0 to 9

range (1,10,2) # will produce 1,3,5,7,9

THE PASS STATEMENT

The pass statement does nothing. It can be used when a statement is required
syntactically but the program requires no action.

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THE FOR STATEMENT
Executes given statements until list is exhausted.

for target in expression_list:

statements
[else:
statements]

The expression list is evaluated once; it should yield an iterable object. An

iterator is created for the result of the expression_list. The set of statements is
then executed once for each item provided by the iterator, in the order
returned by the iterator.

When the items are exhausted (which is immediately when the sequence is
empty or an iterator raises a StopIteration exception), the statements in
the else clause, if present, are executed, and the loop terminates.

01 # Print numbers from 1 to 10

02 for n in range(1, 11):
print(n)

01 # program to take a number and display its factorial

02 num = int(input("Enter a number :"))
03 fact = 1
04 for i in range(2, num + 1):
05 fact *= i
06
07 print(f"Factorial of {num} is {fact}")

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BREAK, CONTINUE AND ELSE
❑ The break statement, like in C, breaks out of the innermost
enclosing for or while loop.
❑ Loop statements may have an else clause; it is executed when the loop
terminates through exhaustion of the list (with for) or when the condition
becomes false (with while), but not when the loop is terminated by
a break statement.
❑ The continue statement, also borrowed from C, continues with the next
iteration of the loop.

01 # Check whether the number is prime

02 num = int(input("Enter a number :"))
03 for i in range(2, num//2 + 1):
04 if num % i == 0:
05 print('Not a prime number')
06 break
07 else:
08 print('Prime number')

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01 # program to print prime numbers from 1 to 100

02 for num in range(1, 101):
03 for i in range(2, num//2 + 1):
04 if num % i == 0:
05 break
06 else:
07 print(num)

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Python Language and Library 35
STRINGS
❑ Strings can be enclosed either in single quotes or double quotes.
❑ Python strings cannot be changed — they are immutable.
❑ Built-in len() function returns length of the string.
❑ Strings can be indexed (subscripted), with the first character having index 0.
❑ There is no separate character type; a character is simply a string of size
one.
❑ Indices may also be negative numbers, to start counting from the right.
❑ In addition to indexing, slicing is also supported. While indexing is used to
obtain individual characters, slicing allows you to obtain substring.
❑ Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted first index defaults to zero, an
omitted second index defaults to the size of the string being sliced.

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36 Python Language and Library

Method Description
capitalize() Returns a copy of the string with its first
character capitalized and the rest lowercased.
count(sub[, start[, Returns the number of non-overlapping
end]]) occurrences of substring sub in the range [start,
end].
endswith(suffix[, start[, Returns True if the string ends with the specified
end]]) suffix, otherwise returns False.
find(sub[, start[, end]]) Returns the lowest index in the string where
substring sub is found within the slice
s[start:end]. Returns -1 if sub is not found.
format(*args, Performs a string formatting operation.
**kwargs)
index(sub[, start[, Like find(), but raise ValueError when the
end]]) substring is not found.
isalnum() Returns true if all characters in the string are
alphanumeric and there is at least one character,
false otherwise.
isalpha() Returns true if all characters in the string are
alphabetic and there is at least one character,
false otherwise.
isdecimal() Returns true if all characters in the string are
decimal characters and there is at least one
character, false otherwise.
isdigit() Returns true if all characters in the string are
digits and there is at least one character, false
otherwise.
islower() Returns true if all characters in the string are
lowercase and there is at least one cased
character, false otherwise.

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Python Language and Library 37

isupper() Returns true if all characters in the string are

uppercase and there is at least one cased
character, false otherwise.
join(iterable) Returns a string which is the concatenation of the
strings in iterable.
lower() Returns a copy of the string with all the
characters converted to lowercase.
partition(sep) Splits the string at the first occurrence of sep, and
returns a 3-tuple containing the part before the
separator, the separator itself, and the part after
the separator.
replace Returns a copy of the string with all occurrences
(old, new[, count]) of substring old replaced by new. If the optional
argument count is given, only the first count
occurrences are replaced.
split(sep=None, Returns a list of the words in the string, using sep
maxsplit=-1) as the delimiter string. If maxsplit is given, at
most maxsplit splits are done (thus, the list will
have at most maxsplit+1 elements). If maxsplit is
not specified or -1, then there is no limit on the
number of splits (all possible splits are made).
startswith Returns True if string starts with the prefix,
(prefix[, start[, end]]) otherwise returns False.
strip([chars]) Returns a copy of the string with the leading and
trailing characters removed.
upper() Returns a copy of the string with all the
characters converted to uppercase.
zfill(width) Returns a copy of the string left filled with ASCII
'0' digits to make a string of length width.

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38 Python Language and Library
The following are examples for indexing and slicing:

>>>name="Python"
>>>name[0]
'P'
>>>name[-1] # Last char
'n'
>>> name[-3:] # Take chars from 3rd char from end
'hon'
>>>name[0:2] # Take from 0 to 1
'Py'
>>>name[4:] # Take chars from 4th position
'on'
>>> name[::-1] # Take chars in reverse
'nohtyP'

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Python Language and Library 39

>>> name = "Srikanth Technologies"

>>> year = 1998
>>> print(name.upper())
SRIKANTH TECHNOLOGIES
>>> print(name.partition(" "))
('Srikanth', ' ', 'Technologies')
>>> print(name.split())
['Srikanth', 'Technologies']
>>> print(name.count("i"))
2
>>> lang = "Python"
>>> for c in lang:
... print(c)
...
P
y
t
h
o
n
>>>

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40 Python Language and Library
THE LIST DATA STRUCTURE
❑ Represents a list of values.
❑ Supports duplicates and maintains order of the elements.
❑ List can be modified (Mutable).
❑ Elements can be accessed using index.

Method Meaning
append(x) Adds an item to the end of the list. Equivalent
to a[len(a):] = [x].
extend(iterable) Extends the list by appending all the items from the
iterable. Equivalent to a[len(a):] = iterable.
insert(i, x) Inserts an item at a given position. The first argument is
the index of the element before which to insert, so
a.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and
a.insert(len(a), x) is equivalent to a.append(x).
remove(x) Removes the first item from the list whose value is x. It is
an error if there is no such item.
pop([i]) Removes the item at the given position in the list, and
returns it. If no index is specified, a.pop() removes and
returns the last item in the list. The square brackets
around the i in the method signature denote that the
parameter is optional, not that you should type square
brackets at that position.
clear() Removes all items from the list. Equivalent to del a[:].
index(x[, start Returns zero-based index in the list of the first item
[, end]]) whose value is x. Raises a ValueError if there is no such
item. Optional arguments start and end are interpreted
as in the slice notation and are used to limit the search
to a particular subsequence of the list. The returned
index is computed relative to the beginning of the full
sequence rather than the start argument.

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Python Language and Library 41

count(x) Returns the number of times x appears in the list.

sort(key=None, Sorts the items of the list in place (the arguments can be
reverse=False) used for sort customization, see sorted() for their
explanation).
reverse() Reverses the elements of the list in place.
copy() Returns a shallow copy of the list. Equivalent to a[:].

>>>fruits = ['orange', 'apple', 'grape',

... 'banana','mango', 'apple']
>>>print(fruits.count('apple')) # count of apple
2
>>>print(fruits.index('banana')) # index of banana
3
>>>print(fruits.index('apple',3)) # search from 3rd index
5
>>>
>>>fruits.reverse()
>>>print(fruits)
['apple', 'mango', 'banana', 'grape', 'apple', 'orange']
>>>
>>>fruits.append('kiwi')
>>>fruits.sort()
>>> print(fruits.pop())
orange
>>>

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42 Python Language and Library
List Comprehension
❑ List comprehensions provide a concise way to create lists.
❑ A list comprehension consists of brackets containing an expression followed
by a for clause, then zero or more for or if clauses.

[value for v in iterable [if condition]]

>>> [n * n for n in range(1,10)]

[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

>>> nums = [5,3,4,7,8]

>>> [n * n for n in nums if n % 2 == 0]
[16, 64]

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Python Language and Library 43
THE DEL STATEMENT
Removes one or more items from the list.

del item

>>> a = [10,20,30,40,50]
>>> del a[0]
>>> a
[20, 30, 40, 50]
>>> del a[1:3]
>>> a
[20, 50]
>>> del a[:]
>>> a
[]
>>> del a
>>> a # Throws error

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44 Python Language and Library
OPERATIONS RELATED TO SEQUENCE TYPES
List, Tuple and Range provide the following common operations:

Operation Result
x in s True if an item of s is equal to x, else False
x not in s False if an item of s is equal to x, else True
s+t the concatenation of s and t
s * n or n * s equivalent to adding s to itself n times
s[i] ith item of s, origin 0
s[i:j] slice of s from i to j
s[i:j:k] slice of s from i to j with step k
len(s) length of s
min(s) smallest item of s
max(s) largest item of s

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Python Language and Library 45
THE TUPLE DATA STRUCTURE
❑ A tuple consists of a number of values separated by commas.
❑ It is not possible to assign to the individual items of a tuple, however it is
possible to create tuples which contain mutable objects, such as lists.
❑ Membership operator in and not in can be used to check whether an object
is member of tuple.
❑ A function can return multiple values using a tuple.
❑ Tuples are immutable, and usually contain a heterogeneous sequence of
elements that are accessed via unpacking or indexing.
❑ Empty tuples are constructed by an empty pair of parentheses; a tuple with
one item is constructed by following a value with a comma (it is not
sufficient to enclose a single value in parentheses).

>>> t1 = () # Empty tuple

>>> t2 = (10,) # single value tuple
>>> t3 = ("Python","Language",1991)# Tuple with 3 values
>>> t4 = ((1,2), (10,20)) # Nested tuple
>>> t1
()
>>> t2
(10,)
>>> t3
('Python', 'Language', 1991)
>>> t3[0] # prints first element
Python
>>> n,t,y = t3 # Unpacking of tuple
>>> print(n,t,y)
Python Language 1991
>>>

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46 Python Language and Library
LOOPING SEQUENCE
❑ When looping through a sequence, the position index and corresponding
value can be retrieved at the same time using the enumerate() function.
❑ To loop over two or more sequences at the same time, the entries can be
paired with the zip() function.
❑ To loop over a sequence in sorted order, use the sorted() function which
returns a new sorted list while leaving the source unaltered.

01 l1 = [10,20,30,40]
02 l2 = [100,200,300]
03
04 for i, n in enumerate(l1):
05 print(i, n)
06
07 for n in zip(l1, l2):
08 print(n)

Output
0 10
1 20
2 30
3 40
(10, 100)
(20, 200)
(30, 300)

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Python Language and Library 47
THE SET DATA STRUCTURE
❑ A set is an unordered collection with no duplicate elements.
❑ Set objects also support mathematical operations like union, intersection,
difference, and symmetric difference.
❑ Curly braces or the set() function can be used to create sets.
❑ To create an empty set you have to use set(), not {}; the latter creates an
empty dictionary.
❑ Items cannot be accessed using index, i.e., not subscriptable.

Method Meaning
isdisjoint(other) Returns True if the set has no elements in common
with other.
issubset(other) or Tests whether every element in the set is in other.
set <= other
set < other Tests whether the set is a proper subset of other,
that is, set <= other and set != other.
issuperset(other) or Tests whether every element in other is in the set.
set >= other
set > other Tests whether the set is a proper superset of other,
that is, set >= other and set != other.
union(*others) or Returns a new set with elements from the set and
set | other | ... all others.
intersection(*others) Returns a new set with elements common to the set
or and all others.
set & other & ...
difference(*others) or Returns a new set with elements in the set that are
set - other - ... not in the others.
symmetric_difference Returns a new set with elements in either the set or
(other) or set ^ other other but not both.
update(*others) or Updates the set, adding elements from all others.
set |= other

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48 Python Language and Library

add(elem) Adds element elem to the set.

remove(elem) Removes element elem from the set. Raises KeyError if elem
is not contained in the set.
discard(elem) Removes element elem from the set if it is present.
pop() Removes and returns an arbitrary element from the set.
Raises KeyError if the set is empty.
clear() Removes all elements from the set.

>>> langs = {"Python","Java","C#","C","Pascal"}

>>> old_langs = {"C","Pascal","COBOL"}
>>> print("Java" in langs)
True
>>> letters = set("Python")
>>> print(letters)
{'t', 'o', 'h', 'y', 'P', 'n'}
>>> print("Union:", langs | old_langs)
Union: {'C#', 'COBOL', 'Python', 'C', 'Java', 'Pascal'}
>>> print("Minus:", langs - old_langs)
Minus: {'C#', 'Java', 'Python'}
>>> print("Intersection:", langs & old_langs)
Intersection: {'C', 'Pascal'}
>>> print("Exclusive Or:", langs ^ old_langs)
Exclusive Or: {'C#', 'COBOL', 'Python', 'Java'}

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Python Language and Library 49
Set Comprehension
It is used to create a set from the given iterable, optionally based on condition.

{value for v in iterable [if condition]}

>>> {c for c in "abc123acdef456" if c.isalpha() }

{'c', 'd', 'b', 'f', 'e', 'a'}

LIST VS. SET VS. TUPLE

The following table compares features of different data structures.

Feature List Set Tuple

Supports Duplicates Yes No Yes
Mutable Yes Yes No
Indexable Yes No Yes
Insertion Order Yes No Yes
Iterable Yes Yes Yes

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50 Python Language and Library
THE DICTIONARY DATA STRUCTURE
❑ Dictionaries are indexed by keys, which can be any immutable type; strings
and numbers can always be keys.
❑ It is best to think of a dictionary as an unordered set of key: value pairs,
with the requirement that the keys are unique (within one dictionary).
❑ Placing a comma-separated list of key:value pairs within the braces adds
initial key:value pairs to the dictionary.
❑ It is an error to extract a value using a non-existent key.
❑ The dict() constructor builds dictionaries directly from sequences of key-
value pairs.
❑ When looping through dictionaries, the key and corresponding value can be
retrieved at the same time using the items() method.

>>> dict1 = {"k1": "Value1", "k2": "Value2"}

>>> print(dict1)
{'k1': 'Value1', 'k2': 'Value2'}
>>> print(dict1.keys())
dict_keys(['k1', 'k2'])
>>> for k in dict1.keys():
... print( k, ':', dict1[k])
...
k1 : Value1
k2 : Value2
>>> print('k3' in dict1)
False
>>> for k,v in dict1.items():
... print( k,':', v)
...
k1 : Value1
k2 : Value2

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Python Language and Library 51

Method Meaning
d[key] Returns the item of d with key key. Raises a KeyError
if key is not in the map.
d[key] = value Sets d[key] to value.
del d[key] Removes d[key] from d. Raises a KeyError if key is not
in the map.
key in d Returns True if d has a key key, else False.
key not in d Equivalent to not key in d.
iter(d) Returns an iterator over the keys of the dictionary.
This is a shortcut for iter(d.keys()).
clear() Removes all items from the dictionary.
copy() Returns a shallow copy of the dictionary.
get(key[,default]) Returns the value for key if key is in the dictionary,
else default. If default is not given, it defaults to
None, so that this method never raises a KeyError.
items() Returns a new view of the dictionary’s items ((key,
value) pairs).
keys() Returns a new view of the dictionary’s keys.
pop(key[,default]) If key is in the dictionary, removes it and returns its
value, else returns default. If default is not given and
key is not in the dictionary, a KeyError is raised.
setdefault If key is in the dictionary, returns its value. If not,
(key[, default]) inserts key with a value of default and returns
default. default defaults to None.
update([other]) Updates the dictionary with the key/value pairs from
other, overwriting existing keys. Returns None.
values() Returns a new view of the dictionary’s values.

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52 Python Language and Library
Dictionary Comprehension
It is possible to create a dictionary by taking values from an iterable.

The following is general syntax for dictionary comprehension.

{key:value for v in iterable}

>>> # Create a dictionary from a list

>>> nums = [10,4,55,23,9]
>>> squares = {n:n*n for n in nums}
>>> print(squares)
{10: 100, 4: 16, 55: 3025, 23: 529, 9: 81}
>>> # Create a dictionary from a string
>>> name = "Srikanth"
>>> codes = {ch:ord(ch) for ch in name}
>>> print(codes)
{'S': 83, 'r': 114, 'i': 105, 'k': 107, 'a': 97, 'n': 110,
't': 116, 'h': 104}
>>>

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Python Language and Library 53
FUNCTIONS
❑ The keyword def introduces a function definition. It must be followed by
the function name and the parenthesized list of formal parameters. The
statements that form the body of the function start at the next line, and
must be indented.
❑ The first statement of the function body can optionally be a string literal;
this string literal is the function’s documentation string, or docstring.
❑ Variable references first look in the local symbol table, then in the local
symbol tables of enclosing functions, then in the global symbol table, and
finally in the table of built-in names.
❑ Arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always an
object reference, not the value of the object).
❑ In fact, even functions without a return statement do return a value – None.

[decorators] "def" funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")"

["->" expression] ":" suite

01 # Function to return sum of two numbers

02 def add(a,b):
03 return a + b

01 # Function to return factorial of the given number

02 def factorial(num):
03 fact=1
04 for i in range(1,num + 1):
05 fact *= i
06
07 return fact

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54 Python Language and Library
DEFAULT ARGUMENT VALUES
❑ It is possible to specify default value for one or more parameters.
❑ The default values are evaluated at the point of function definition in
the defining scope and not at the time of running it.

01 def print_line(len=10, ch='-'):

02 for i in range(len):
03 print(ch,end='')
04 else:
05 print() # come to next line at the end

01 print_line(30,'*') # Passing values by position

02 print_line(20) # Draw a line using hyphens(-)
03 print_line() # Draws line using default values
04 print_line(ch='*') # Passing value by keyword
05
06 # Passing values using keywords
07 print_line(ch='*',len=15)

NOTE: The default value is evaluated only once. This makes a difference when
the default is a mutable object such as a list, dictionary, or instances of most
classes.

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Python Language and Library 55
VARYING ARGUMENTS
❑ A function can take any number of arguments by defining formal parameter
with prefix *.
❑ When a function has a varying formal parameter then it can take any
number of actual parameters.
❑ A function can mix varying parameters with normal parameters.
❑ However, normal parameters can be passed values by name or they should
appear before varying argument.

01 def print_message(*names, message = "Hi"):

02 for n in names:
03 print(message, n)
04
05 #Call function
06 print_message("Bill","Larry","Tim")
07 print_message("Steve","Jeff",message="Good Morning")

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56 Python Language and Library
KEYWORD ARGUMENTS
❑ A function can be defined to take arbitrary sequence of keyword arguments
by defining a parameter with ** as prefix.
❑ Function treats this parameter as a dictionary and provides all keyword
arguments as keys in dictionary.
❑ A function can be called with keyword arguments using kwarg=value,
where kwarg is keyword and value is value.
❑ In a function call, keyword arguments must follow positional arguments, if
any are present.

01 def print_details(**properties): # Keyword arguments

02 for (name,value) in properties.items():
03 print (name,value)
04
05
06 print_details(name="Srikanth",
07 email="[email protected]")

The above program will display:

name Srikanth
email [email protected]

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Python Language and Library 57
KEYWORD-ONLY ARGUMENTS
❑ It is possible to define parameters as keyword only parameters by giving an
* before them.
❑ All parameters after * must be passed values only by using keywords and
not by position.

01 # Parameters name & age can be passed only as keyword

02 # arguments and NOT as positional
03
04 def details(*,name,age=30):
05 print(name)
06 print(age)
07
08 # Call details()
09 details(name="Bill",age=60)
10 details(age = 50, name="Scott")
11 details(name="Tom")
12 details("Bill") # Error

When you try to call details("Bill") with positional arguments, Python throws
error as follows:

TypeError: details() takes 0 positional arguments but 1 was

given

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58 Python Language and Library
POSITIONAL-ONLY ARGUMENTS
❑ Starting from Python 3.8, it is possible to create a function that takes
parameters only by position and not by keywords.
❑ Give a / (slash) after all parameters that are to be positional only.

01 def add(n1, n2, /):

02 return n1 + n2
03
04 print(add(10,20)) # parameters are passed by position
05 print(add(n1=10, n2=20)) # Can’t use keyword args

30
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: add() got some positional-only arguments passed
as keyword arguments: 'n1, n2'

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Python Language and Library 59
PASSING FUNCTION AS A PARAMETER
❑ It is possible for a function to receive another function as a parameter.
❑ This is possible because a function is treated as an object in Python, so just
like any other object, even a function can be passed as parameter to
another function.

01 def add(n1, n2):

02 return n1 + n2
03
04 def mul(n1, n2):
05 return n1 * n2
06
07 def math_operation(a, b, operation):
08 return operation(a, b)
09
10 print(math_operation(10, 20, add))
11 print(math_operation(10, 20, mul))

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60 Python Language and Library
USING FILTER, SORTED AND MAP FUNCTIONS
The following examples show how to use a function as a parameter with built-
in functions filter, sorted and map.

Filter function
Function filter is used to select a set of elements from an iterable for which
function returns true. The given function must take a value and return true or
false. When function returns true, value is selected, otherwise value is ignored.

filter(function, iterable)

The following example selects all even numbers from the given list of numbers.

01 def iseven(n):
02 return n % 2 == 0
03
04 nums = [1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 2]
05
06 # filter calls iseven and selects even numbers
07 for n in filter (iseven, nums):
08 print(n)

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Python Language and Library 61
Sorted function
Sorts the given iterable and returns a list with sorted values.

sorted(iterable, *, key=None, reverse=False)

Key parameter represents a function that returns a value.

The following code sorts names by length of the name and not by characters.

Built-in function sorted() uses function passed to key argument to extract

values for elements in the collection. If no key is passed, it uses elements
directly.

01 names = ["Php","Java","C","Python","JavaScript","C#"]
02 for n in sorted(names, key=len):
03 print(n)

C
C#
Php
Java
Python
JavaScript

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62 Python Language and Library
Map function
Returns an iterator that applies the given function to each element in iterable,
yielding new values.

map (function, iterable, ...)

Function given as first parameter must return a value.

The following example shows how to use map() function to return next even
number for the given value.

01 def next_even(n):
02 return n + 2 if n % 2 == 0 else n + 1
03
04 nums = [10, 11, 15, 20, 25]
05 for n in map(next_even,nums):
06 print(n)

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LAMBDA EXPRESSION
❑ Lambda expression refers to an anonymous function.
❑ Where a function is needed, we can use lambda expression.
❑ Keyword lambda is used to create lambda expressions.

lambda parameters: expression

Parameters are separated by comma (,) and they represent parameters of the
function in question. Expression given after colon (:) represents the required
action.

The following example shows how we can use lambda in conjunction with
filter() function, which returns a list of values that are selected by the given
function from the given list.

01 nums = [10,11,33,45,44]
02
03 # with lambda, get all odd numbers
04 for n in filter (lambda v: v % 2 == 1, nums):
05 print(n)

The following example sorts all names by stripping all whitespaces and then
converting them to lowercase (for case insensitivity) using lambda expression
passed to key parameter of sorted () function.

01 names = [" PHP", " JAVA", "c", "Python ",

02 " JavaScript", "C# ", "cobol"]
03
04 for n in sorted(names,
05 key=lambda s: s.strip().lower()):
06 print(n)

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64 Python Language and Library
PASSING ARGUMENTS - PASS BY VALUE AND
REFERENCE
❑ In Python everything is an object.
❑ An int is an object, string is an object and list is an object.
❑ Some objects are mutable, some are immutable.
❑ All objects are passed by reference to a function. That means we pass
reference of the object and not the object itself.
❑ But whether the function can modify the value of the object depends on
the mutability of the object.
❑ So, if you pass a string, it behaves like pass by value as we can’t change
actual parameter with formal parameter.
❑ If you pass a list (mutable object) then it behaves like pass by reference as
we can use formal parameter to change actual parameter.

01 # Effectively pass by reference

02 def add_num(v, num):
03 v.append(num) # modify list
04
05 nums = []
06 # Call function with a list and value to add to list
07 add_num(nums, 10)
08 add_num(nums, 20)
09 print(nums)

[10, 20]

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Python Language and Library 65

01 # Effectively pass by value

02 def swap(n1, n2):
03 n1,n2 = n2, n1
04 print('Inside swap() :','id(n1)', id(n1),
05 'id(n2)', id(n2))
06 print('Values : ', n1, n2)
07
08 # call swap with two int variables
09 a = 10
10 b = 20
11 print('Original Ids:','id(n1)',id(a),'id(n2)', id(b))
12 swap(a, b)
13 print('Values after swap :', a, b)

Output:
Original Ids : id(n1) 503960768 id(n2) 503960928
Inside swap() : id(n1) 503960928 id(n2) 503960768
Values : 20 10
Values after swap : 10 20

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66 Python Language and Library
LOCAL FUNCTIONS
❑ Functions defined inside another function are called local functions.
❑ Local functions are local to function in which they are defined.
❑ They are defined each time the enclosing function is called.
❑ They are governed by same LEGB (Local, Enclosing, Global, Built-in) rule.
❑ They can access variables that are in enclosing scope.
❑ Cannot be called from outside outer function using notation outerfunction.
Localfunction.
❑ They can contain multiple statements whereas lambdas can have only one
statement.
❑ Local function can be returned from outer function and then can be called
from outside.
❑ Local function can refer to variables in global namespace using global
keyword and enclosing namespace using nonlocal keyword.

01 gv = 100 # Global variable

02 def f1():
03 v = 200 # enclosing variable
04
05 # Local function f2
06 def f2():
07 lv = 300 # local variable
08 # Local, Enclosing, Global, Built-in name
09 print(lv, v, gv, True)
10
11
12 f2() #call local fun from enclosing fun
13
14
15 f1()

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Python Language and Library 67
VARIABLE’S SCOPE
❑ Variables that are defined outside all functions in a module are called global
variables and can be accessed from anywhere in the module.
❑ Variables created inside a function can be used only inside the function.
❑ Keyword global is used to access a global variable from a function so that
Python doesn’t create a local variable with the same name when you assign
a value to a variable.
❑ Python looks in the order – local, enclosing, global and built-in (LEGB)
variables.

01 sum = 0 # Global variable

02 def add_square(value):
03 square = value * value # Square is local variable
04 global sum # Refer to global variable
05 sum += square # Add square to global sum
06
07 def outerfun():
08 a = 10
09 def innerfun():
10 nonlocal a
11 a = a + 1 # Increment nonlocal a
12
13 innerfun()
14 print(a)
15
16 add_square(4)
17 add_square(5)
18 print(sum)
19 outerfun()

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68 Python Language and Library
MODULES
❑ A module is a file containing Python definitions (functions and classes) and
statements.
❑ It can be used in a script (another module) or in an interactive instance of
the interpreter.
❑ A module can be imported into other modules or run as a script.
❑ The file name is the module name with the suffix .py appended. Within a
module, the module’s name (as a string) is available as the value of the
global variable __name__.
❑ A module can contain executable statements as well as function and class
definitions. These statements are intended to initialize the module. They
are executed only the first time the module name is encountered in an
import statement.

num_funs.py
01 def is_even(n):
02 return n % 2 == 0
03
04 def is_odd(n):
05 return n % 2 == 1
06
07 def is_positive(n):
08 return n > 0

use_num_funs.py
01 import num_funs # import module
02
03 print(num_funs.__name__)
04 print(num_funs.is_even(10))

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THE IMPORT STATEMENT
❑ In order to make use of classes and functions in a module, we must first
import module using import statement.
❑ The system maintains a table of modules that have been initialized, indexed
by module name. This table is accessible as sys.modules.
❑ If no matching file is found, ImportError is raised. If a file is found, it is
parsed, yielding an executable code block. If a syntax error
occurs, SyntaxError is raised.
❑ Whenever module is imported, code in module (not classes and functions)
is executed.

import module [as name] (, module [as name] )*

from module import identifier [as name](,identifier [as
name])*
from module import *

The following are examples of import statement:

01 # import num_funs and refer to it by alias nf

02 import num_funs as nf
03
04 print(nf.is_even(10))

01 # import all definitions of module num_funs

02 from num_funs import *
03
04 print(is_even(10)

01 # import specific function from num_funs module

02 from num_funs import is_even, is_odd
03
04 print(is_odd(10))

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70 Python Language and Library
THE DIR() FUNCTION
It is used to find out which names a module defines. It returns a sorted list of
strings.

The following shows members of num_funs module.

import num_funs
print(dir(num_funs))

Output:
['__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__',
'__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__',
'is_even', 'is_odd', 'is_positive']

NOTE: When dir() and __name__ are used in a module they refer to current
module.

THE HELP() FUNCTION

❑ It invokes the built-in help system.
❑ If no argument is given, the interactive help system starts on the interpreter
console.
❑ If the argument is any other kind of object, a help page on the object is
generated.

help([object])

Use SPACE key to go to next page and Q to quit the help system.

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Python Language and Library 71
MODULE SEARCH PATH
When a module is imported, the interpreter first searches for a built-in module
with that name. If not found, it then searches for a file named modulename.py
in a list of directories given by the variable sys.path.

The sys.path is initialized from these locations:

❑ The directory containing the input script (or the current directory when no
file is specified).
❑ PYTHONPATH (a list of directory names, with the same syntax as the shell
variable PATH).
❑ The installation-dependent default.

>>> import sys

>>> sys.path
['', 'C:\\python\\python38.zip', 'C:\\python\\DLLs',
'C:\\python\\lib', 'C:\\python', 'C:\\python\\lib\\site-
packages']
>>>

Setting PYTHONPATH
The following example sets PYTHONPATH to a few directories so that they are
added to module search path.

c:\python>set PYTHONPATH=c:\dev\python;c:\dev\projects

NOTE: It is possible to add entries to sys.path as it is a list. Use r as prefix to

indicate it is raw string so that \ (backslash) is treated as a normal character and
not special character.

sys.path.append(r'c:\dev\python\projects')

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72 Python Language and Library
EXECUTING MODULE AS SCRIPT
❑ A module can contain executable statements as well as function and class
definitions. These statements are intended to initialize the module.
❑ Executable statements in a module are executed whenever you run module
as a script and when you import module into another module using import
statement.
❑ When you run a Python module using python filename.py then the code in
the module will be executed, but with the __name__ set to __main__.
❑ But if we want to execute code only when module is run as script then we
need to check whether name of the module is set to __main__.

module1.py
01 # this is simple module
02 def print_info():
03 print("I am in module1.print_info()")
04
05 # code executed when imported and when run as script
06 print("Code in Module1")
07
08 # code executed only when run as script
09 if __name__ == "__main__":
10 print("Running as script")

When you run the above code as script (python.exe module1.py) the following
output is generated:

Code in Module1
Running as script

But when you import this module into another file as shown below then the
output shown below is generated.

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Python Language and Library 73
use_module1.py
01 import module1
02
03 module1.print_info()

Output when module is just imported and function is called:

Code in Module1
I am in module1.print_info()

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74 Python Language and Library
USING COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS
❑ It is possible to pass command line arguments while invoking a module
from command line.
❑ Command line arguments are placed in argv list, which is present in sys
module.
❑ First element in sys.argv is always name of the module that is being
executed.

argv_demo.py
01 import sys
02 print("No. of arguments:", len(sys.argv))
03 print("File: ", sys.argv[0])
04 for v in sys.argv[1:]:
05 print(v)

Run argv_demo.py as script using python as follows:

C:\python>python argv_demo.py first second

No. of arguments: 3
File: argv_demo.py
first
second

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Python Language and Library 75
DOCUMENTATION
❑ By convention, every function must be documented using documentation
conventions.
❑ Documentation is provided between three double quotes (""").
❑ The first line should always be a short, concise summary of the object’s
purpose. This line should begin with a capital letter and end with a period.

01 def add(n1,n2):
02 """Adds two numbers and returns the result.
03
04 Args:
05 n1(int) : first number.
06 n2(int) : second number.
07
08 Returns:
09 int : Sum of the given two numbers.
10 """
11
12 return n1 + n2
13
14 help(add) # prints documentation for add()
15 print(add.__doc__) # prints documentation

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76 Python Language and Library
PACKAGES
❑ Package is a collection of modules.
❑ When importing the package, Python searches through the directories
on sys.path looking for the package subdirectory.
❑ Generally, __init__.py file is used to make Python treat the directory as
package; this is done to prevent directories with a common name, such
as string, from unintentionally hiding valid modules that occur later on the
module search path. However, __init__.py is optional.
❑ File __init__.py can just be an empty file, but it can also execute
initialization code for the package or set the __all__ variable.
❑ Users of the package can import individual modules from the package.

Folder Structure
use_st_lib.py
stlib
__init__.py
str_funs.py

stlib\str_funs.py
01 def has_upper(st):
02 # code
03 def has_digit(st):
04 # code

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Python Language and Library 77
use_st_lib.py
01 # Import module from package
02 import stlib.str_funs
03
04 # call a function in module
05 print(stlib.str_funs.has_upper("Python"))
06
07 # import a function from a module in a package
08 from stlib.str_funs import has_digit
09
10 # call function after it is imported
11 print(has_digit("Python 3.8"))

Importing with *
❑ In order to import specific modules when * is used for module with
package, we must define variable __all__ in package’s __init__.py to list
modules that are to be imported.
❑ If variable __all__ is not defined in __init__.py then Python ensures that the
package has been imported (running initialization code in __init__.py) and
then imports whatever names are defined in the package but no modules
are imported.

stlib\__init__.py
__all__ = ["num_funs", "str_funs"]

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78 Python Language and Library
PIP AND PYPI
❑ PyPI (Python Package Index) is a repository of python packages.
❑ URL https://pypi.org/ lists all python packages that we can download and
use.
❑ PIP is a general-purpose installation tool for Python packages.
❑ Run pip.exe from python\scripts folder.

The following are some of the important options available with PIP:

pip install requests # Installs requests package

pip search oracle # Searches for oracle
pip show cx-oracle # Displays information
pip uninstall requests # Uninstalls requests package
pip list # Lists all installed packages

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Python Language and Library 79
CLASSES
❑ A class contains data (data attributes) and code (methods) encapsulated.
❑ Creating a new class creates a new type, allowing new instances of that type
to be made.
❑ Data attributes need not be declared; like local variables, they spring into
existence when they are first assigned a value.
❑ Class instantiation uses function notation. Just pretend that the class object
is a parameter-less function that returns a new instance of the class.
❑ The special thing about methods is that the instance object is passed as the
first argument (called self) of the function.

class className:
definition

__init__ method
❑ When a class defines an __init__() method, class instantiation automatically
invokes __init__() for the newly-created class instance.
❑ Arguments given to the class instantiation operator are passed on
to __init__().

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80 Python Language and Library

01 class Product:
02 def __init__(self, name, price):
03 # Object attributes
04 self.name = name
05 self.price = price
06
07 def print_details(self):
08 print("Name : ", self.name)
09 print("Price : ", self.price)
10
11 p = Product("iPhone 11",80000) # create object
12 p.print_details()

Private members (Name Mangling)

❑ Python doesn’t have private variables concept.
❑ However, a convention followed by most Python programmers is, an
attribute prefixed with an underscore (e.g. _salary) should be treated as
non-public part of the API.
❑ Any identifier of the form __salary (two leading underscores) is textually
replaced with _classname__salary, where classname is the current class
name with leading underscore(s) stripped. This process is called as name
mangling.
❑ It still is possible to access or modify a variable that is considered private
from outside the class.

Name Notation Behaviour

name Public Can be accessed from inside and outside.
_name Protected Like a public member, but they shouldn't be directly
accessed from outside.
__name Private Can't be seen and accessed from outside.

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Python Language and Library 81

01 class Product:
02 def __init__(self, name, price):
03 self.__name = name
04 self.__price = price
05
06 def print_details(self):
07 print("Name : ", self.__name)
08 print("Price : ", self.__price)

As attributes name and price are prefixed with __ (double underscore) they are
to be treated as private members of the class. Python will prefix classname to
those attributes.

The following code fails to access __name attribute because due to name
mangling its name is prefixed with class name.

p = Product("iPhone 11", 80000)

print(p.__name) # will throw error

AttributeError : 'Product' object has no attribute '__name'

However, you can access private attributes from outside if you use _classname
as prefix as shown below:

p = Product("iPhone 11", 80000)

print(p._Product__name)

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82 Python Language and Library
STATIC METHODS AND VARIABLES
❑ Any variable declared in the class is made static variable.
❑ Any method created with @staticmethod decorator becomes static
method.
❑ Static methods are not passed any parameter by default.
❑ They are called with class name.
❑ They are used for utility methods that are related to class.

01 class Point:
02 # Static attributes
03 max_x = 100
04 max_y = 50
05 def __init__(self, x, y):
06 self.x = x
07 self.y = y
08
09 @staticmethod
10 def isvalid(x,y):
11 return x <= Point.max_x and y <= Point.max_y

In order to call a static method, we need to use classname as follows:

print(Point.isvalid(10,20))

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Python Language and Library 83
CLASS METHODS
❑ When a method in the class is decorated with @classmethod, it is called as
a class method.
❑ Class methods are used as factory methods to create and return objects of
class.
❑ They are always passed the class that is invoking them, as first parameter.

01 class Time:
02 @classmethod
03 def create(cls):
04 return cls(0,0,0)
05
06 def __init__(self,h,m,s):
07 self.h = h
08 self.m = m
09 self.s = s
10
11 # create an object
12 t = Time.create() # Time is passed to create()

Comparison of methods
Here is a table listing different types of methods that can be created in a class
and their characteristics.

Instance Method Static Method Class Method

Decorator used None @staticmethod @classmethod
Invoked by Object Classname Classname
Must return None None An object
Mandatory param Self None Class

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84 Python Language and Library
BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS RELATED TO ATTRIBUTES
❑ It is possible to create new attributes any time by just assigning value to
attribute using an object.
❑ If class name is used with attribute, it becomes class attribute.
❑ If object is used with attribute, it becomes object attribute.
❑ We can also use the following predefined methods to manipulate attributes
of class or object.

Function Meaning
getattr (object, name [, Returns the value of the named attribute of
default]) object If attribute is found otherwise returns
default value, if given, else raises error.
hasattr (object, name) Returns True if object has the attribute.
setattr (object, name, Creates or modifies an attribute with the given
value) value.
delattr (object, name) Deletes the specified attribute from the given
object.

01 class Product:
02 tax = 10
03 def __init__(self,name):
04 self.name = name

>>> p = Product("iPad Air 2")

>>> getattr(p,'name')
'iPad Air 2'
>>> setattr(p,'price',45000)
>>> hasattr(p,'price')
True
>>> delattr(p,'price')
>>> hasattr(p,'price')
False

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Python Language and Library 85
BUILT-IN CLASS ATTRIBUTES
Every Python class has the following built-in attributes.

Attribute Description
__dict__ Dictionary containing the members.
__doc__ Class documentation string or none, if undefined.
__name__ Class name.
__module__ Module name in which the class is defined. This attribute is
"__main__" when module is run as a script.
__bases__ A tuple containing the base classes, in the order of their
occurrence in the base class.

>>> Product.__module__
'__main__'
>>> Product.__bases__
(<class 'object'>,)
>>> Product.__dict__
mappingproxy({'__module__': '__main__', 'tax': 10,
'__init__': <function Product.__init__ at
0x00000269FF186280>, '__dict__': <attribute '__dict__' of
'Product' objects>, '__weakref__': <attribute '__weakref__'
of 'Product' objects>, '__doc__': None})

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86 Python Language and Library
SPECIAL METHODS
❑ Python allows us to overload different operators and operations related to
our class by implementing special methods.
❑ Objects related to operation are passed as parameter to function.

Relational operators
The following special methods represent relational operators. By implementing
these methods, we provide support for those operators in our user-defined
class.
Operator Method
< object.__lt__(self, other)
<= object.__le__(self, other)
== object.__eq__(self, other)
!= object.__ne__(self, other)
>= object.__ge__(self, other)
> object.__gt__(self, other)

Unary operators
The following are special methods for unary operators.

Operator Method
- object.__neg__(self)
+ object.__pos__(self)
abs() object.__abs__(self)
~ object.__invert__(self)
complex() object.__complex__(self)
int() object.__int__(self)
long() object.__long__(self)
float() object.__float__(self)
oct() object.__oct__(self)
hex() object.__hex__(self

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Python Language and Library 87

The following program shows how to implement special methods.

01 class Time:
02 def __init__(self, h=0, m = 0, s =0):
03 """ Initializes hours, mins and seconds """
04 self.h = h
05 self.m = m
06 self.s = s
07
08 def total_seconds(self):
09 """Returns total no. of seconds """
10 return self.h * 3600 + self.m * 60 + self.s
11
12 def __eq__(self, other):
13 return self.total_seconds() == \
14 other.total_seconds()
15
16 def __str__(self):
17 return f"{self.h:02}:{self.m:02}:{self.s:02}"
18
19
20 def __bool__(self):
21 """Returns false if hours, mins and seconds
22 are 0 otherwise true
23 """
24 return self.h != 0 or self.m != 0 \
25 or self.s != 0
26
27 def __gt__(self,other):
28 return self.total_seconds() > \
29 other.total_seconds()
30

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88 Python Language and Library

31 def __add__(self, other):

32 return Time(self.h + other.h,
33 self.m + other.m, self.s + other.s)
34
35 t1 = Time(1, 20, 30)
36 t2 = Time(10, 20, 30)
37 print(t1)
38 print(t1 == t2)
39
40 t3 = Time() # h,m,s are set to zeros
41 if t3:
42 print("True")
43 else:
44 print("False")
45
46 print (t1 < t2)
47
48 t4 = t1 + t2
49 print(t4)

01:20:30
False
False
True
11:40:60

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Python Language and Library 89
Binary operators
The following are special methods related to binary operators.

Operator Method
+ object.__add__(self, other)
- object.__sub__(self, other)
* object.__mul__(self, other)
// object.__floordiv__(self, other)
/ object.__truediv__(self, other)
% object.__mod__(self, other)
** object.__pow__(self, other[, modulo])
<< object.__lshift__(self, other)
>> object.__rshift__(self, other)
& object.__and__(self, other)
^ object.__xor__(self, other)
| object.__or__(self, other)

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90 Python Language and Library
Extended assignments
Here are special methods related to extended operators.

Operator Method
+= object.__iadd__(self, other)
-= object.__isub__(self, other)
*= object.__imul__(self, other)
/= object.__idiv__(self, other)
//= object.__ifloordiv__(self, other)
%= object.__imod__(self, other)
**= object.__ipow__(self, other[, modulo])
<<= object.__ilshift__(self, other)
>>= object.__irshift__(self, other)
&= object.__iand__(self, other)
^= object.__ixor__(self, other)
|= object.__ior__(self, other)

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Python Language and Library 91
PROPERTIES
❑ It is possible to create a property in Python using two decorators -
@property and @setter.
❑ A property is used like an attribute, but it is internally implemented by two
methods – one to get value and one to set value.
❑ Properties provide advantages like validation, abstraction and lazy loading.

01 class Person:
02 def __init__(self, first='', last=''):
03 self.__first = first
04 self.__last = last
05
06 @property # Getter
07 def name(self):
08 return self.__first + " " + self.__last
09
10 @name.setter # Setter
11 def name(self, value):
12 self.__first, self.__last = value.split(" ")
13
14
15 p = Person("Srikanth", "Pragada")
16 print(p.name) # Calls @property getter method
17 p.name="Pragada Srikanth" #Calls @name.setter method

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92 Python Language and Library
INHERITANCE
❑ When a new class is created from an existing class, it is called as
inheritance. It enables us to reuse existing classes while creating new
classes.
❑ A new class can be created from one or more existing classes.
❑ If a requested attribute is not found in the class, the search proceeds to
look in the base class. This rule is applied recursively if the base class itself is
derived from some other class.
❑ New class is called subclass and the class being inherited is called
superclass.
❑ Subclass can override a method of superclass to enhance or change
functionality of superclass method.
❑ Function super() is used to access superclass from subclass.
❑ It is possible to call methods of superclass using super() function –
super().methodname(arguments)
❑ It is also possible to call superclass method directly -
superclassname.methodname(self, arguments). We must send self as first
argument.

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Python Language and Library 93

class SubclassName (superclass [,superclass]…):

<statement-1>
…
<statement-N>

Note: Every class that is not a subclass of another class is implicitly inheriting
object class.

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94 Python Language and Library

01 class Employee:
02 def __init__(self,name, salary):
03 self.__name = name
04 self.__salary = salary
05 def print(self):
06 print(self.__name)
07 print(self.__salary)
08 def get_salary(self):
09 return self.__salary

01 class Manager(Employee):
02 def __init__(self,name, salary, hra):
03 super().__init__(name,salary)
04 self.__hra = hra
05 def print(self): # Overrides print()
06 super().print()
07 print(self.__hra)
08 def get_salary(self): # Overrides get_salary()
09 return super().get_salary() + self.__hra
10
11
12 e = Employee("Scott",100000)
13 m = Manager("Mike",150000,50000)
14 e.print()
15 print("Net Salary : ", e.get_salary())
16 m.print()
17 print("Net Salary : ", m.get_salary())

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Python Language and Library 95
Output:
Scott
100000
Net Salary : 100000
Mike
150000
50000
Net Salary : 200000

Overriding
❑ When a method in subclass is created with same name as a method in
superclass, it is called as overriding.
❑ Subclass method is said to override method in superclass.
❑ Overriding is done to change the behavior of inherited method of
superclass by creating a new version in subclass.

Functions isinstance() and issubclass()

❑ Function isinstance() checks whether an object is an instance of a class.
❑ Function issubclass() checks whether a class is a subclass of another class.

isinstance(object, class)
issubclass(class, class)

e = Employee(…)
print("Employee ?? ", isinstance(e, Employee)) # True
print("Manager subclass of Employee ?? ",
issubclass(Manager, Employee)) # True

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96 Python Language and Library
MULTIPLE INHERITANCE
Python supports a form of multiple inheritance as well. A class definition with
multiple super classes looks like this:

class SubclassName(superclass1,superclass2,…):
. . .

Python searches for attributes in SubClass first. If not found it searches in

superclass1, then (recursively) in the super classes of superclass1, and if it was
not found there, it searches in superclass2, and so on.

Let’s consider the following examples:

In the following example, as method process() is not found in class C, Python

calls process() method in class A as it is the first superclass.

01 class A:
02 def process(self):
03 print('A process()')
04
05
06 class B:
07 def process(self):
08 print('B process()')
09
10 class C(A, B):
11 pass
12
13 obj = C()
14 obj.process() # will call process() of A

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Python Language and Library 97
Python always considers subclass version, if one is present. In the following
example, process() from class C is called because Python considers subclass
version ahead of super class version. So, it will not consider process() method
in A as class A is superclass of C and method is present in class C.

01 class A:
02 def process(self):
03 print('A process()')
04
05
06 class B(A):
07 pass
08
09
10 class C(A):
11 def process(self):
12 print('C process()')
13
14
15 class D(B, C):
16 pass
17
18
19 obj = D()
20 obj.process() # Calls method from class C

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98 Python Language and Library
Method mro()
Method mro() returns method resolution order, which is the order of the
classes that Python searches for a method.

For the above example, calling method mro() on class D will return the
following:

[<class '__main__.D'>, <class '__main__.B'>, <class

'__main__.C'>, <class '__main__.A'>, <class 'object'>]

NOTE: Please refer to my blog at

http://www.srikanthtechnologies.com/blog/python/mro.aspx for more details
about MRO or my video tutorial at https://youtu.be/tViLEZXUO3U

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Python Language and Library 99
ABSTRACT CLASS AND METHODS
❑ An abstract method is a method that must be implemented by subclass.
❑ When an abstract method is present in a class then the class must be
declared as abstract.
❑ No instances of abstract class can be created.
❑ Support for abstract class and methods is provided by module abc.
❑ Any class that is to be abstract must extend class ABC (Abstract Base Class)
in abc module.
❑ Methods marked with @abstractmethod decorator of abc module are
made abstract.

01 from abc import ABC, abstractmethod

02 class Student(ABC):
03 @abstractmethod
04 def getsubject(self):
05 pass
06
07 class PythonStudent(Student):
08 def getsubject(self):
09 return "Python"
10
11 s = Student() # throws error as shown below
12 ps = PythonStudent()

TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class Student with

abstract methods getsubject

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100 Python Language and Library
EXCEPTION HANDLING
❑ Errors detected during execution are called exceptions.
❑ Exceptions come in different types, and the type is printed as part of the
message: the types are ZeroDivisionError, KeyError and AttributeError.
❑ BaseException is base class for all built-in exceptions.
❑ Exception is base class for all built-in, non-system-exiting exceptions. All
user-defined exceptions should also be derived from this class.
❑ After try block, at least one except block or finally block must be given.

try:
statements
[except (exception [as identifier] [, exception] …)] … :
Statements]
[else:
statements]
[finally:
Statements]

Clause Meaning
try Specifies exception handlers and/or cleanup code for a group of
statements.
except Specifies one or more exception handlers. It is possible to have
multiple except statements for a single try statement. Each except
can specify one or more exceptions that it handles.
else Executed when try exits successfully.
finally Executed at the end of try whether try succeeds or fails.

Note: After try one except block or finally block must be given.

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01 a = 10
02 b = 20
03
04 try:
05 c = a / b
06 print(c)
07 except:
08 print("Error")
09 else:
10 print("Job Done!")
11 finally:
12 print("The End!")

Output:
0.5
Job Done!
The End!

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The following example produces a different result as value of b is 0. We are
catching exception and referring to it using ex in except block. As ex contains
error message, printing ex will produce error message. The else block is not
executed as try failed with error.

01 a = 10
02 b = 0
03
04 try:
05 c = a/b
06 print(c)
07 except Exception as ex:
08 print("Error :", ex)
09 else:
10 print("Job Done!")
11 finally:
12 print("The End!")

Output:
Error : division by zero
The End!

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The following program takes numbers from user until 0 is given and then
displays sum of given numbers.

01 sum = 0
02 while True:
03 num = int(input("Enter number [0 to stop] :"))
04 if num == 0:
05 break
06
07 sum += num
08
09 print(f"Sum = {sum}")

But the program is fragile as any invalid input will crash programs as shown in
output below:

Enter number [0 to stop] :10

Enter number [0 to stop] :abc
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/dev/python/sum_demo.py", line 3, in <module>
num = int(input("Enter number [0 to stop] :"))
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'abc'

In order to make program more robust so that it can continue in spite of invalid
input from user, we need to enclose sensitive part of the program in try block
and continue after displaying error message regarding invalid input.

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01 total = 0
02 while True:
03 try:
04 num = int(input("Enter number [0 to stop] :"))
05 if num == 0:
06 break
07 total += num
08 except:
09 print("Invalid Number!")
10
11 print(f"Sum = {total}")

In the output below, whenever invalid input is given an error is displayed and
program continues till end.

Enter number [0 to stop] :10

Enter number [0 to stop] :abc
Invalid Number!
Enter number [0 to stop] :30
Enter number [0 to stop] :xyz
Invalid Number!
Enter number [0 to stop] :50
Enter number [0 to stop] :0
Sum = 90

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Predefined Exceptions
The following are predefined exceptions in Python.

BaseException
+-- SystemExit
+-- KeyboardInterrupt
+-- GeneratorExit
+-- Exception
+-- StopIteration
+-- StopAsyncIteration
+-- ArithmeticError
| +-- FloatingPointError
| +-- OverflowError
| +-- ZeroDivisionError
+-- AssertionError
+-- AttributeError
+-- BufferError
+-- EOFError
+-- ImportError
| +-- ModuleNotFoundError
+-- LookupError
| +-- IndexError
| +-- KeyError
+-- MemoryError
+-- NameError
| +-- UnboundLocalError

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+-- OSError
| +-- BlockingIOError
| +-- ChildProcessError
| +-- ConnectionError
| | +-- BrokenPipeError
| | +-- ConnectionAbortedError
| | +-- ConnectionRefusedError
| | +-- ConnectionResetError
| +-- FileExistsError
| +-- FileNotFoundError
| +-- InterruptedError
| +-- IsADirectoryError
| +-- NotADirectoryError
| +-- PermissionError

| +-- ProcessLookupError
| +-- TimeoutError
+-- ReferenceError
+-- RuntimeError
| +-- NotImplementedError
| +-- RecursionError
+-- SyntaxError
| +-- IndentationError
| +-- TabError
+-- SystemError
+-- TypeError
+-- ValueError
| +-- UnicodeError
| +-- UnicodeDecodeError
| +-- UnicodeEncodeError
| +-- UnicodeTranslateError

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The raise statement
❑ Used to raise an exception
❑ If no exception is given, it re-raises the exception that is active in the
current scope.

raise [expression]

The given expression must be an object of a class that is a subclass of

BaseException.

User-defined exception and raise statement

❑ A user-defined exception is an exception created by our program.
❑ Use raise statement to raise an exception, which is an object of exception
class.
❑ User-defined exception class must be a subclass of Exception class.
❑ Subclass of Exception class can create its own attributes and methods.

01 # User-defined exception
02 class AmountError(Exception):
03 def __init__(self, message):
04 self.message = message
05 def __str__(self):
06 return self.message

01 try:
02 if amount < 1000:
03 raise AmountError("Invalid Amount!") #Raise Ex
04 except Exception as ex:
05 print("Error : ", ex)

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THE ITERATOR
❑ An iterator is an object representing a stream of data; this object returns
the data one element at a time.
❑ Several of Python’s built-in data types support iteration, the most common
being lists and dictionaries.
❑ An object is called iterable if you can get an iterator for it.
❑ Method iter() of an object returns iterator object that defines __next__()
method.
❑ Method __next__() is used to return next element and raises StopIteration
exception when there are no more elements to return.

The following example shows how list class provides list_iterator to iterate
over elements of list.

>>> l = [1,2,3]
>>> li = iter(l)
>>> type(l), type(li)
(<class 'list'>, <class 'list_iterator'>)
>>> next(li)
1
>>> next(li)
2
>>> next(li)
3
>>> next(li)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
StopIteration
>>>

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It is possible to create an iterable class, which provides an iterator that provides
one element at a time.

In the following example Marks is an iterable class that provides Marks_Iterator

class to iterate over it.

01 class Marks_Iterator:
02 def __init__(self,marks):
03 self.marks = marks
04 self.pos = 0
05
06 def __next__(self):
07 if self.pos == len(self.marks):
08 raise StopIteration
09 else:
10 value = self.marks[self.pos]
11 self.pos += 1 # move to next element
12 return value
13

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14 class Marks:
15 def __init__(self):
16 self.marks = [20,30,40,25,66]
17
18 def __iter__(self):
19 return Marks_Iterator(self.marks)

It is possible to use an object of Marks.

01 m = Marks()
02 for v in m:
03 print(v)

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THE GENERATOR
❑ Generator is a simple and powerful tool for creating iterators.
❑ They are written like regular functions but use the yield statement
whenever they want to return data.
❑ Each time next() is called on it, the generator resumes where it left off.
❑ Generator can be thought of as resumable functions.

01 def leap_years(start, end):

02 for year in range(start, end + 1):
03 if year % 4 == 0 and year % 100 != 0 \
04 or year % 400 == 0:
05 yield year
06
07 def alphabets(st):
08 for ch in st:
09 if ch.isalpha():
10 yield ch
11
12 # Get all leap years in the range 2000 and 2050
13 for year in leap_years(2000, 2050):
14 print(year)
15
16 # Get all alphabets from the given string
17 for ch in alphabets ("Python 3.8 version"):
18 print (ch, end=' ')

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Generator Expression
Generator expression creates a generator object that returns a value at a time.

(expression for expr in sequence if condition)

>>> st = "Python 3.8"

>>> digits = (ch for ch in st if ch.isdigit())
>>> digits
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x0000026347C520B0>
>>> for d in digits:
... print(d)
...
3
8
>>>

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FILE HANDLING
The following are important functions related to file handling.

Function open()
Opens the specified file in the given mode and returns file object. If the file
cannot be opened, an OSError is raised.

open(file, mode='r')

Mode Meaning
'r' Open for reading (default).
'w' Open for writing, truncating the file first.
'x' Open for exclusive creation, failing if the file already exists.
'a' Open for writing, appending to the end of the file if it exists.
'b' Binary mode.
't' Text mode (default).
'+' Open a disk file for updating (reading and writing).

Note: Python doesn’t depend on the underlying operating system’s notion of

text files; all the processing is done by Python itself, and is therefore platform-
independent.

Note: When a string is prefixed with r, it is called as raw string. In raw string,
even character like \ is treated as simple character and not escape sequence
character.

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01 f = open(r"c:\python\names.txt","wt")
02 names = ["Python","C#","Java","JavaScript","C++"]
03
04 for name in names:
05 f.write(name + "\n")
06 f.close()

The with statement

It is a good practice to use the with keyword when dealing with file objects. The
advantage is that the file is properly closed after its suite finishes, even if an
exception is raised at some point.

with expression [as variable]:

with-block

File object
File object represents an open file. Built-in function open() returns File object
on success.

The following are important attributes of file object.

Attribute Meaning
file.closed Returns true if file is closed, false otherwise.
file.mode Returns access mode with which file was opened.
file.name Returns name of the file.

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The following are important methods of File object.

Method Meaning
read([count]) Reads everything until end of file unless count is
specified, otherwise only count number of chars.
readline() Reads a single line. Returns empty string on EOF.
readlines() Reads all lines and returns a list of lines.
close() Closes and flushes content to file.
write(value) Writes the given content to file.
tell() Returns current position of file.
seek(offset, base) Takes file pointer to the required location from the given
base.

The following program displays all lines along with line numbers.

01 with open(r"c:\python\names.txt","r") as f:
02 for idx, name in enumerate(f.readlines(), start = 1):
03 print(f"{idx:03} : {name.strip()}")

Note: While reading lines from file, readlines() reads line along with new line
(\n) character at the end of the line.

Use strip() function of str class to get rid of it, if necessary.

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The following program displays all customer names and phone numbers in the
sorted order of customer name.

File phones.txt contains the following data:

Steve,9339933390
Jason,3939101911
Ben,2939991113
George,3939999999
Larry
Ellison,39393999393

01 f = open("phones.txt","rt")
02 phones = {} # Empty dictionary
03 for line in f:
04 # Split line into two parts – name and phone
05 parts = line.split(",")
06
07 # Ignore line if it doesn’t contain 2 parts
08 if len(parts) != 2:
09 continue
10
11 # Add entry to dictionary
12 phones[parts[0]]= parts[1].strip()
13
14 # sort by names and print along with phone number
15 for name,phone in sorted(phones.items()):
16 print(f"{name:20} - {phone}")

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PICKLE – PYTHON OBJECT SERIALIZATION
❑ The pickle module is used to serialize and de-serialize Python objects.
❑ It provides methods like dump() for pickling and load() for unpickling.
❑ It uses binary protocol.

The following are functions in pickle module.

Function Meaning
dump(obj, file) Writes a pickled representation of obj to the open file
object file.
dumps(obj) Returns the pickled representation of the object as a
bytes object, instead of writing it to a file.
load(file) Reads a pickled object representation from the open
file object file and returns the reconstituted object
hierarchy specified therein.
loads(bytes_object) Reads a pickled object hierarchy from a bytes object
and returns the reconstituted object hierarchy
specified therein.

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01 import pickle
02 class Person:
03 def __init__(self, name, email):
04 self.name = name
05 self.email = email
06 def __str__(self):
07 return f"{self.name}-{self.email}"
08
09
10 f = open("person.dat","wb")
11 p1 = Person("Srikanth","[email protected]")
12 pickle.dump(p1,f) #pickle object
13 print("Dumped object to file!")
14 f.close()

The following program opens person.dat and retrieves (unpickles) object

pickled to it.

01 # Unpickle object from person.dat

02 f = open("person.dat","rb")
03 p1 = pickle.load(f)
04 print(p1)

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JSON MODULE
❑ It allows serializing and deserializing object to and from JSON format.
❑ JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation.
❑ It converts a dict in Python to JSON object.
❑ It converts a JSON object back to dict object in Python.
❑ JSON array is converted to Python list.
❑ Any Python iterable is converted to JSON array.

The following are methods available in json module:

dump(object, file)
dumps(object)
load(file)
loads(str)

01 import json
02
03 class Contact:
04 def __init__(self, name, phone, email):
05 self.name = name
06 self.phone = phone
07 self.email = email
08
09 c = Contact("Srikanth",
10 "9059057000",
11 "[email protected]")
12 print(json.dumps(c.__dict__))

The above program will generate the following JSON:

{"name": "Srikanth", "phone": "9059057000", "email":

"[email protected]"}

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The following code converts each Contact object to dict object using map()
function and then converts the list of dict to an array of JSON objects.

01 contacts = (Contact("A","8888899999","[email protected]"),
02 Contact("B","9999988888","[email protected]"))
03 # convert each Contact object to dict using map()
04 clist = list(map(lambda c : c.__dict__, contacts))
05 print(json.dumps(clist))

Function map() is used to convert each Contact object to a dict. As map()

function returns only a map object, we need to convert that to list using list().
Eventually we give a list of dict objects to dumps() to generate an array of JSON
objects as follows:

[{"name": "A", "phone": "8888899999", "email":

"[email protected]"}, {"name": "B", "phone": "9999988888",
"email": "[email protected]"}]

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SYS MODULE
❑ This module provides access to some variables used or maintained by the
interpreter and to functions that interact strongly with the interpreter.
❑ It provides members to access command line arguments, exit program etc.

Member Meaning
argv The list of command line arguments passed to a
Python script. argv[0] is the script name.
exc_info() This function returns a tuple of three values that give
information about the exception that is currently
being handled.
exit([arg]) Exits from Python.
getsizeof Returns the size of an object in bytes.
(object [, default])
modules This is a dictionary that maps module names to
modules which have already been loaded.
path A list of strings that specifies the search path for
modules. Initialized from the environment variable
PYTHONPATH, plus an installation-dependent default.
platform This string contains a platform identifier.
stdin, stdout, stderr File objects used by the interpreter for standard
input, output and errors.
version A string containing the version number of the Python
interpreter plus additional information on the build
number and compiler used.

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OS MODULE
❑ This module provides a portable way of using operating system dependent
functionality.
❑ All functions in this module raise OSError in case of invalid or inaccessible
file names and paths, or other arguments that have the correct type, but
are not accepted by the operating system.

Function Meaning
chdir(path) Changes current directory.
getcwd() Returns current directory.
getenv(key, Returns the value of the environment variable key if it
default=None) exists, or default if it doesn’t. key, default and the result
are str.
putenv Sets the environment variable named key to the string
(key, value) value.
listdir(path='.') Returns a list containing the names of the entries in the
directory given by path.
mkdir(path) Creates a directory named path.
remove(path) Removes (deletes) the file path.
removedirs(name) Removes directories recursively.
rename(src, dst) Renames the file or directory src to dst.
rmdir(path) Removes directory.
walk(top) Generates the file names in a directory tree by walking
the tree either top-down or bottom-up.

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01 import os
02 # get all files from given folder
03 files = os.listdir(r"c:\python")
04 for file in files:
05 print(file) # print filename

01 import os
02
03 # Get all files and folders from the given path
04 allfiles = os.walk(r"c:\dev\python\lang")
05
06 for (dirname , directories , files) in allfiles:
07 # print directory name
08 print("Directory : ", dirname)
09 print("=============" + "=" * len(dirname))
10
11 # print files in that directory
12 for file in files:
13 print(file)

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USING RE (REGULAR EXPRESSION) MODULE
❑ Module re provides methods that use regular expressions.
❑ A regular expression (or RE) is a string with special characters that specifies
which strings would match it.
❑ Module re provides functions to search for a partial and full match for a
regular expression in the given string. It provides functions to split strings
and extract strings using regular expression.

The following are special characters (metacharacters) used in regular

expressions:

Character Description
[] A set of characters
\ Signals a special sequence (can also be used to escape special
characters)
. Any character (except newline character)
^ Starts with
$ Ends with
* Zero or more occurrences
+ One or more occurrences
{} Exactly the specified number of occurrences
| Either or
() Represents a group

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The following are special sequences that have special meaning in a regular
expression.

Character Description
\d Returns a match where the string contains digits (numbers from
0-9).
\D Returns a match where the string DOES NOT contain digits.
\s Returns a match where the string contains a white space
character.
\S Returns a match where the string DOES NOT contain a white
space character.
\w Returns a match where the string contains any word characters
(characters from a to Z, digits from 0-9, and the underscore _
character).
\W Returns a match where the string DOES NOT contain any word
characters.

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The following are functions provided by re module.

Function Meaning
compile(pattern, Compiles a regular expression pattern into a regular
flags=0) expression object, which can be used for matching
using its match(), search() and other methods.
search(pattern, Scans through string looking for the first location
string,flags=0) where the regular expression pattern produces a
match, and returns a corresponding match object.
Returns None if no position in the string matches the
pattern.
match(pattern, If zero or more characters at the beginning
string,flags=0) of string match the regular expression pattern,
returns a corresponding match object.
Returns None if the string does not match the
pattern.
fullmatch(pattern, If the whole string matches the regular
string,flags=0) expression pattern, returns a corresponding match
object.
Returns None if the string does not match the
pattern.
split(pattern,string, Splits string by the occurrences of pattern. If
maxsplit=0, capturing parentheses are used in pattern, then the
flags=0) text of all groups in the pattern are also returned as
part of the resulting list. If maxsplit is nonzero, at
most maxsplit splits occur, and the remainder of the
string is returned as the final element of the list.
findall(pattern, Returns all non-overlapping matches of pattern in
string, flags=0) string, as a list of strings. The string is scanned left-to-
right, and matches are returned in the order found.
sub(pattern, Replaces string that matches pattern with the given
replace, string) string.

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>>> import re
>>> st ="abc 123 xyz pqr 456"
>>> re.match(r'\w+',st) # Looks only at start of string
<re.Match object; span=(0, 3), match='abc'>
>>> re.match(r'\d+',st)

>>> re.search(r'\d+',st)
<re.Match object; span=(4, 7), match='123'>
>>>

>>> re.findall(r'\d+',st)
['123', '456']
>>> re.split(r'[a-z ]+',st)
['', '123', '456']

>>> re.sub(r'[0-9]','.',st)
'abc ... xyz pqr ...'

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Match Object
Match object is returned by match() and search() and fullmatch() functions of
re module.

Function Meaning
group Returns one or more subgroups of the match. If there is a
([group1, ...]) single argument, the result is a single string; if there are
multiple arguments, the result is a tuple with one item per
argument. Without arguments, group1 defaults to zero (the
whole match is returned). If the regular expression uses the
(?P<name>...) syntax, the groupN arguments may also be
strings identifying groups by their group name.
groups() Returns a tuple containing all the subgroups of the match,
from 1 up to however many groups are in the pattern. The
default argument is used for groups that did not participate
in the match; it defaults to None.
groupdict Returns a dictionary containing all the named subgroups of
(default=None) the match, keyed by the subgroup name.
start([group]), Returns the indices of the start and end of the substring
end([group]) matched by group.
span([group]) For a match m, returns the 2-tuple (m.start(group),
m.end(group)).
pos Returns the value of pos which was passed to the search()
or match() method of a regex object.
endpos Returns the value of endpos which was passed to the
search() or match() method of a regex object.
lastindex Returns the integer index of the last matched capturing
group, or None if no group was matched at all.

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lastgroup Returns the name of the last matched capturing group, or

None if the group didn’t have a name or if no group was
matched at all.
re Returns the regular expression object whose match() or
search() method produced this match instance.
string Returns the string passed to match() or search().

The following example uses grouping concept to extract name and phone
number from the given string.

>>> st = "Srikanth Pragada 9059057000"

>>> m = re.fullmatch(r'([A-Za-z ]+)(\d+)',st)
>>> m.group(1)
'Srikanth Pragada '
>>> m.group(2)
'9059057000'
>>> m.span(2)
(17, 27)
>>> m.groups()
('Srikanth Pragada ', '9059057000')

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THE DATETIME MODULE
❑ The datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and times in
both simple and complex ways.
❑ Provides classes like date, time, datetime and timedelta.
❑ A timedelta object represents a duration, the difference between two dates
or times.
❑ Modules calendar and time provide additional functionality related to dates
and times.
❑ Type date contains year, month and day.
❑ Type time contains hour, minute, second and microsecond.
❑ Type datetime is a composite of date and time.
❑ Type timedelta contains days, seconds, microseconds.
❑ They are all immutable.

The date type

A date object represents a date (year, month and day).

datetime.date(year, month, day)

All arguments are required. Arguments are integers, in the following ranges:

❑ MINYEAR <= year <= MAXYEAR

❑ 1 <= month <= 12
❑ 1 <= day <= number of days in the given month and year

The class method today() returns the current local date.

Class attributes date.min and date.max contain the earliest and latest
representable dates - date(MINYEAR, 1, 1) and date(MAXYEAR, 12, 31).

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Operation Result
date1 + timedelta Adds timedelta.days to date1.
date1 - timedelta Subtracts timedelta.days from date1.
date1 - date2 Subtracts date2 from date1 and returns timedelta to
represent period between dates.
date1 < date2 Returns true if date1 is less than date2.

Attribute Meaning
year Between MINYEAR and MAXYEAR inclusive.
month Between 1 and 12 inclusive.
day Between 1 and the number of days in the given month of
the given year.

Instance Method Meaning

replace (year, Returns a date with the same value, except for those
month, day) parameters given new values by whichever keyword
arguments are specified.
weekday() Returns the day of the week as an integer, where
Monday is 0 and Sunday is 6.
isoweekday() Returns the day of the week as an integer, where
Monday is 1 and Sunday is 7.
isocalendar() Returns a 3-tuple, (ISO year, ISO week number, ISO
weekday).
isoformat() Returns a string representing the date in ISO 8601
format, ‘YYYY-MM-DD’.
ctime() Returns a string representing the date.
strftime(format) Returns a string representing the date, controlled by an
explicit format string.

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The time type
A time object represents (local) time of day.

datetime.time(hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0)

Attribute Meaning
hour Hours between 0 to 23
minute Minutes between 0 to 59
second Seconds between 0 to 59
microsecond Microseconds between 0 and 999999

Instance Method Meaning

replace(hour, minute, Returns a time with the same value, except for those
second, microsecond) attributes given new values by whichever keyword
arguments are specified.
isoformat Returns a string representing the time in ISO 8601
(timespec='auto') format, HH:MM:SS.mmmmmm or, if microsecond is
0, HH:MM:SS.
strftime(format) Returns a string representing the time, controlled by
an explicit format string.

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The timedelta type
A timedelta object represents a duration, the difference between two dates or
times.

timedelta(days=0, seconds=0, microseconds=0,

milliseconds=0, minutes=0, hours=0, weeks=0)

Only days, seconds and microseconds are stored internally. Arguments are
converted to those units:

❑ A millisecond is converted to 1000 microseconds

❑ A minute is converted to 60 seconds
❑ An hour is converted to 3600 seconds
❑ A week is converted to 7 days

The following are instance attributes of timedelta type:

Attribute Value
days Between -999999999 and 999999999 inclusive
seconds Between 0 and 86399 inclusive
microseconds Between 0 and 999999 inclusive

>>> from datetime import *

>>> date.today()
datetime.date(2020, 3, 19)
>>> dob = date(1998,10,24)
>>> cd = date.today()
>>> cd - dob
datetime.timedelta(days=7817)
>>> cd + timedelta(days=10)
datetime.date(2020, 3, 29)

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# Convert string to datetime

>>> datetime.strptime("24-oct-1998","%d-%b-%Y")
datetime.datetime(1998, 10, 24, 0, 0)

Directive Meaning Example

%a Weekday as locale’s abbreviated name. Sun, Mon, …, Sat
%w Weekday as a decimal number, where 0 is 0, 1, …, 6
Sunday and 6 is Saturday.
%d Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal 01, 02, …, 31
number.
%b Month as locale’s abbreviated name. Jan, Feb, …, Dec
%m Month as a zero-padded decimal number. 01, 02, …, 12
%y Year without century as a zero-padded 00, 01, …, 99
decimal number.
%Y Year with century as a decimal number. 2018
%H Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded 00, 01, …, 23
decimal number.
%I Hour (12-hour clock) as a zero-padded 01, 02, …, 12
decimal number.
%p Locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM. AM, PM
%M Minute as a zero-padded decimal number. 00, 01, …, 59
%S Second as a zero-padded decimal number. 00, 01, …, 59
%j Day of the year as a zero-padded decimal 001, 002, …, 366
number.
%c Locale’s appropriate date and time Tue Aug 16
representation. 21:30:00 1988
(en_US)

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Python Language and Library 135

>>> cd = datetime.now()
>>> cd.strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%m:%S")
'19-03-2020 15:03:07'

The following program takes date of birth from user and displays age in years,
months and days.

01 from datetime import *

02
03 dobstr = input("Enter your date of birth (yyyymmdd) : ")
04 dob = datetime.strptime(dobstr,"%Y%m%d")
05 now = datetime.now()
06 diff = now – dob
07 years = diff.days // 365
08 months = diff.days % 365 // 30
09 days = diff.days - (years * 365 + months * 30)
10 print(f"{years} y {months} m {days} d")

Enter your date of birth (yyyymmdd) : 19981024

21 y 5 m 2 d

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136 Python Language and Library
MULTITHREADING
❑ Threading is a technique for decoupling tasks which are not sequentially
dependent.
❑ Threads can be used to improve the responsiveness of applications that
accept user input while other tasks run in the background.
❑ Use threading module and Thread class to implement multi-threading.
❑ In order to create a new thread, extend Thread class and provide required
code in run() method.
❑ Subclass of Thread class must call Thread.__init__() from subclass’s
__init__() if it overrides it in subclass.

01 #Create a new thread to print numbers from 1 to 10

02
03 from threading import Thread
04 class PrintThread(Thread):
05 def run(self):
06 for i in range(1,11):
07 print(i)
08
09 t1 = PrintThread()
10 t1.start()

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Functions in threading module
The following are functions provided in multithreading module.

Function Meaning
active_count Returns the number of Thread objects currently alive.
current_thread Returns the current Thread object, corresponding to the
caller’s thread of control.
main_thread Returns the main Thread object. In normal conditions, the
main thread is the thread from which the Python
interpreter was started.
enumerate Returns a list of all Thread objects currently alive.

Thread Class
Thread object represents a thread. The following are important methods of
Thread class.

Method Meaning
start() Starts the thread's activity.
run() Method representing the thread's activity.
join() Waits until the thread terminates.
getName() Returns thread's name.
setName() Sets thread's name.
is_alive() Returns whether the thread is alive.

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The following program creates a thread to check whether the given number is
prime or not.

01 def isprime(num):
02 for n in range(2, math.floor(math.sqrt(num)) + 1):
03 if num % n == 0:
04 print(f"{num} is not a prime number!")
05 break
06 else:
07 print(f"{num} is a prime number!")
08
09 nums = [393939393, 12121212121, 29292939327,
10 38433828281, 62551414124111]
11
12 for n in nums:
13 t = Thread(target=isprime, args=(n,))
14 t.start()

393939393 is not a prime number!

29292939327 is not a prime number!
12121212121 is a prime number!
62551414124111 is not a prime number!
38433828281 is a prime number!

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Python Language and Library 139
REQUESTS MODULE
Requests is an elegant and simple HTTP library for Python, built for human
beings.

It is to be installed using pip as follows:

pip install requests

The following are important methods of requests module:

request(method, url, **kwargs)

get(url, params=None, **kwargs)
post(url, data=None, json=None, **kwargs)
put(url, data=None, **kwargs)
delete(url, **kwargs)

The requests.Response object

The Response object contains server’s response for an HTTP request. When a
request is made using requests module, it returns an object of Response class.

Property Meaning
content Content of the response, in bytes.
cookies A CookieJar of Cookies the server sent back.
headers Case-insensitive Dictionary of Response Headers. For
example, headers['content-encoding'] will return the
value of a 'Content-Encoding' response header.
json(**kwargs) Returns the json-encoded content of a response, if any.
reason Textual reason of responded HTTP Status, e.g. "Not
Found" or "OK".
request The PreparedRequest object to which this is a response.

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status_code Integer Code of responded HTTP Status, e.g. 404 or 200.

text Content of the response, in unicode.
url URL location of Response.

The following program retrieves information about countries from

restcountries.eu and displays country name, capital, borders and population.

01 import requests
02
03 code = input("Enter country code :")
04
05 resp = requests.get
06 (f"https://restcountries.eu/rest/v2/alpha/{code}")
07 if resp.status_code == 404:
08 print("Sorry! Country code not found!")
09 elif resp.status_code != 200:
10 print("Sorry! Could not get country details!")
11 else:
12 details = resp.json() # Convert JSON to dict
13 print("Country Information");
14 print("Name : " + details["name"])
15 print("Capital : " + details["capital"])
16 print("Population : " +
17 str(details["population"]))
18 print("Sharing borders with :")
19 for c in details["borders"]:
20 print(c)

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Python Language and Library 141
BEAUTIFULSOUP MODULE
❑ Beautiful Soup is a Python package for parsing HTML and XML documents.
❑ It creates a parse tree for parsed pages that can be used to extract data
from HTML and XML, which is useful for web scraping.

Install beautifulsoup using pip as follows:

pip install beautifulsoup4

To process XML document, install lxml package as follows and use xml as the
parser.

pip install lxml

Creating an object of BeautifulSoup

❑ We need to create a BeautifulSoup object with required content.
❑ The content may be XML or HTML. BeautifulSoup creates a parse tree.
❑ Methods like find_all() search in parse tree and return matching tags.

BeautifulSoup(content, type)

Type of the content specifies what type of content is being parsed and which
parse is to be used. Available options are:

Type Meaning
html.parser Uses Python’s HTML Parser
lxml Uses lxml’s HTML parser
lxml-xml or xml Uses lxml’s XML parser

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142 Python Language and Library

01 from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

02
03 with open("schedule.html") as f:
04 soup = BeautifulSoup(f, "html.parser")

The following program displays titles from RSS document at

www.srikanthtechnologies.com/rss.xml.

01 from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

02 import requests
03
04 resp = requests.get
05 ("http://www.srikanthtechnologies.com/rss.xml")
06
07 # must install lxml to use xml
08 soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, "xml")
09 for item in soup.find_all("item"):
10 print(item.find("title").text.strip())

Tag Object
Tag object corresponds to an XML or HTML tag in document.

Property Meaning
name Name of the tag
text Text of the tag
[attribute] Provides value for the given attribute
contents Provides all children of the tag
children Allows iteration over tag’s children
descendants Provides all descendants of the tag
parent Provides parent tag for the tag

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parents Provides all parents from tag to top

next_sibling Provides next sibling
previous_sibling Provides previous sibling
next_element Returns next element
previous_element Returns previous element
attrs Provides all attributes of the tag

Methods find() and find_all()

Parameter for these methods can be any of the following:

# A simple string
soup.find_all('b')

# A regular expression
soup.find_all(re.compile("^b"))

# Look for any value in list

soup.find_all(["a", "b"])

# Function has_details() takes a tag and returns T/F

soup.find_all(has_details)

# Looking for id with link2

soup.find_all(id='link2')

# Looking for CSS class bright

soup.find_all("a", class_="bright")

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144 Python Language and Library
DATABASE PROGRAMMING
❑ Python supports different databases.
❑ Python Database API Specification has been defined to provide similarity
between modules to access different databases.
❑ Database API is known as Python DB-API 2.0 with PEP 249 at
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249
❑ It enables code that is generally more portable across databases as all
database modules provide the same API.
❑ Modules required to access database are to be downloaded.
❑ Module sqlite3, which is used to access SQLite database, is provided along
with Python.

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Python Language and Library 145
SQLite3 Database
❑ SQLite is a C library that provides a lightweight disk-based database that
doesn’t require a separate server process and allows accessing the database
using a nonstandard variant of the SQL query language.
❑ It is possible to prototype an application using SQLite and then port the
code to a larger database such as Oracle.
❑ Python ships with SQLite Database.

Data types in SQLite3

The following are available data types in SQLite Database.

Datatype Meaning Python Type

NULL The value is a NULL value. None
INTEGER The value is a signed integer, stored in 1, 2, 3, 4, int
6, or 8 bytes depending on the magnitude of the
value.
REAL The value is a floating-point value, stored as an 8- float
byte IEEE floating point number.
TEXT The value is a text string, stored using the str
database encoding (UTF-8, UTF-16BE or UTF-
16LE).
BLOB The value is a blob of data, stored exactly as it bytes
was input.

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146 Python Language and Library
MODULE SQLITE3
❑ It is the interface for SQLite database.
❑ This module is part of Python standard library.
❑ It implements DB API 2.0 specifications (PEP 249).

Method connect()
❑ It is used to establish a connection to database with given parameters.
❑ Parameters is name of the database to connect to. If database is not
present, it is created.
❑ It returns Connection object.

connect(parameters...)

Connection object
Connection object represents a connection to database.

Method Meaning
close() Closes connection.
commit() Commits pending changes in transaction to database.
rollback() Causes the database to roll back to the start of any pending
transaction. Closing a connection without committing the
changes first will cause an implicit rollback to be performed.
cursor() Returns a cursor object using this connection.

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Python Language and Library 147
Cursor Object
❑ Cursor represents a database cursor, which is used to manage the context
of a fetch operation.
❑ Cursors created from the same connection are not isolated, i.e., any
changes done to the database by a cursor are immediately visible to other
cursors.

Method Meaning
close() Closes cursor.
execute(operation Prepare and execute a database operation.
[, parameters])
Executemany Prepare a database operation (query or
(operation, command) and then execute it against all
seq_of_parameters ) parameter sequences or mappings found in the
sequence seq_of_parameters.
fetchone() Fetch the next row of a query result set,
returning a single sequence, or None when no
more data is available.
fetchmany Fetch the next set of rows of a query result,
([size=cursor.arraysize]) returning a sequence of sequences (e.g. a list of
tuples). An empty sequence is returned when no
more rows are available.
fetchall() Fetch all (remaining) rows of a query result,
returning them as a sequence of sequences (e.g.
a list of tuples). Note that the cursor's arraysize
attribute can affect the performance of this
operation.

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Attribute Meaning
rowcount This read-only attribute specifies the number of rows that the
last execute() method retrieved or affected.
lastrowid Read-only attribute provides the rowid of the last modified
row.
arraysize Read/write attribute that controls the number of rows
returned by fetchmany(). The default value is 1, which means
a single row would be fetched per call.
connection This read-only attribute provides the SQLite
database Connection used by the Cursor object.

Note: Use SQLite Studio, which is a free GUI tool, to manage SQLite database.
Download it from https://sqlitestudio.pl/index.rvt

The following program shows how to connect to a database and create a table.

01 import sqlite3
02 con = sqlite3.connect(r"c:\dev\python\test.db")
03 cur = con.cursor()
04 # create a table
05 try:
06 cur.execute("create table expenses
07 (id integer, date text, desc text, amount real)")
08 print("Table EXPENSES created successfully!")
09 except Exception as ex:
10 print("Sorry! Error : ", ex.message)
11 finally:
12 con.close()

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Python Language and Library 149
Inserting row into table
The following program shows how to insert a row into EXPENSES table by
taking data from user.

01 import sqlite3
02 con = sqlite3.connect(r"c:\dev\python\test.db")
03 cur = con.cursor()
04
05 # insert a row
06 try:
07 # take data from user
08 des = input("Enter Description :")
09 amt = input("Enter Amount :")
10 row = (des, amt)
11 cur.execute("insert into expenses
12 (description, amount) values(?,?)", row)
13 con.commit()
14 print("Added successfully!")
15 except Exception as ex:
16 print("Sorry! Error: ", ex)
17 finally:
18 con.close()

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150 Python Language and Library
Retrieving rows from table
The following program shows how to list all rows from EXPENSES table.

01 import sqlite3
02
03 con = sqlite3.connect(r"c:\dev\python\test.db")
04 cur = con.cursor()
05
06 # List rows from EXPENSES
07 try:
08 cur.execute("select * from expenses order by id")
09 for row in cur.fetchall():
10 print(f"{row[0]:3d} {row[1]:30s} {row[2]:10.2f}")
11 else:
12 cur.close()
13 except Exception as ex:
14 print("Error : ", ex)
15 finally:
16 con.close()

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Python Language and Library 151
Updating row in table
The following program updates an existing row in EXPENSES table.

01 import sqlite3
02
03 con = sqlite3.connect(r"c:\dev\python\test.db")
04 cur = con.cursor()
05
06 # Update EXPENSES table
07 try:
08 # take data from user
09 id = input("Enter Id :")
10 amount = input("Enter Amount :")
11 cur.execute("update expenses set amount=?
12 where id = ?", (amount, id))
13 if cur.rowcount == 1:
14 con.commit()
15 print("Updated successfully!")
16 else:
17 print('Sorry! Id not found!')
18 except Exception as ex:
19 print("Sorry! Error: ", ex)
20 finally:
21 con.close()

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152 Python Language and Library
Deleting row from table
The following program deletes an existing row in EXPENSES table.

01 import sqlite3
02
03 con = sqlite3.connect(r"c:\dev\python\test.db")
04 cur = con.cursor()
05
06 # Delete row from EXPENSES table
07 try:
08 # take data from user
09 id = input("Enter Id :")
10 cur.execute("delete from expenses where id=?",(id,))
11 if cur.rowcount == 1:
12 con.commit()
13 print("Deleted successfully!")
14 else:
15 print('Sorry! Id not found!')
16 except Exception as ex:
17 print("Sorry! Error: ", ex)
18 finally:
19 con.close()

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Python Language and Library 153
WORKING WITH ORACLE
Follow the steps given below to connect to Oracle Database from Python.

❑ Install cx_Oracle package using:

pip install cx_Oracle

❑ Install Instant Client from below url:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-technologies/
instant-client/downloads/index.html

❑ Connect to Oracle Database using HR schema:

01 import os
02 import cx_Oracle
03
04 # Include Oracle Instant Client in System PATH
05 os.environ['PATH'] = 'c:\\oraclexe\\client'
06
07 # Connect using username hr and password hr
08 con = cx_Oracle.connect("hr/hr@localhost")
09 print("Connected to Oracle successfully!")
10 con.close()

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Program to insert a new row into JOBS table of HR schema.

01 import os
02 import cx_Oracle
03
04 os.environ['PATH'] = 'c:\\oraclexe\\client'
05 con = cx_Oracle.connect("hr/hr@localhost")
06 cur = con.cursor()
07
08 # using names for parameters
09 cur.execute
10 ("insert into jobs values(:id,:title,:min,:max)",
11 id='PP',title='Python Programmer',min=5000, max=1000);
12 print("Inserted Job Successfully!")
13
14 # Using numbers for parameters
15 cur.execute("insert into jobs values(:1,:2,:3,:4)",
16 ('PyP', 'Python Programmer', 5000, 1000));
17 print("Inserted Job Successfully!")
18 cur.close()
19 con.commit()
20 con.close()

For more information, check my blog at:

http://www.srikanthtechnologies.com/blog/python/using_cx_oracle.aspx

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