THE PYTHON CHEATSHEET

STRUCTURES
STRING
s=’’ or s=””
Action Method Comments
replace string.replace(s,’search’, ‘replace’)
split s.split(s,’sep’)
find string.find(s,’search’) requires ‘import string’
Index of the first occurrence
count string.count(s, ‘search’) Number of occurrences
find (regexp) [m.start() for m in re.finditer('regexp', s)] requires ‘import re’
[m.start() for m in re.finditer('(?=regexp)', s)] for overlapping occurrences
upper/lower s.upper()/s.lower() returns the string in upper/lowercase

LIST
a=[]
Action Method Comments
access a[i]
slice a[i:j]
length len(a)
remove del a[i]
add f.append(v)
sort f.sort or sorted(f) more here: https://wiki.python.org/moin/HowTo/Sorting
merge ‘glue’.join(a) returns ‘a[0]gluea[1]gluea[2]…’
deep copy a2=copy.deepcopy(f) requires ‘import copy’
pop a.pop() returns and removes the last element of the list
range range([s],e) returns [s,s+1,s+2,…, e-1]
range(e,s,-1) returns [s-1,s-2,…,e+1,e]
xrange as in range returns an iterator instead (better for loops with >106 iterations)
unique list(set(a))
difference list(set(a)-set(b)) returns elements in a that are not in b
index a.index(v) returns the position of the first occurence of v in a

DICTIONARY
d={}
Action Method Comments
keys d.keys()
values d.values()
access d[k]
set d[k]=v
 COMMENTS
‘’’ single line comment
# single line comment too
‘’’ multiple
line comment ’’’
I/O
PRINT
print v #can be a single value or any structure (e.g. string, list, dictionary)

FORMAT
‘{0} any text {1} any text {2} …’.format(v0,v1,v2…)
#returns a string formed by the values of the variables instead of {n}

FILE
f=open(path, ‘access’)#access is usually ‘r’ or ‘w’
Action Method Comments
read f.readlines() returns an array of strings
write f.write(string) use ‘\n’ for newline
save f.close()

CONTROL
LOOP
for index in list:
do_lines #indentation marks what’s inside the loop

one-line form: [do_line for index in list] #results are returned in a new list
#this is equivalent to a flexible map (see http://www.bogotobogo.com/python/python_fncs_map_filter_reduce.php)

while(condition):
do_lines

METHOD
def method(arguments):
method_lines
return value #optional

yield: returns at this point, but for the next call to the method, it will resume from this point
(see http://www.prasannatech.net/2009/07/introduction-python-generators.html)
 STATISTICS
import numpy as np
Action Method Comments
mean np.mean(a) a is a list of numbers. nanmean to ignore NaNs
standard np.std(a) nanstd to ignore NaNs
dev.
min/max np.amin(a) / np.amax(a) nanmin/nanmax to ignore NaNs
percentile np.percentile(a,g) computes the qth percentile
more at:
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/routines.statistics.html

floor/ceil np.floor(x)/np.ceil(x) nearest above/below integer

round np.fix(a[,decimals]) rounds array to the nearest integer (or given number of decimals)
sum/prod np.sum(a)/np.prod(a) sum/prod of all the elements in the array
more at: http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/routines.math.html

NUMPY.ARRAY
import numpy as np
matrix m=np.array([[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]) more at:
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/arrays.ndarray.html
dimension m.shape() (2,3)
access m[1,2] element at second row, third column
slicing m[:,1] whole first column as an array
append m=np.append(m,[34]) appends at the end of matrix
table t=np.empty(#rows,dtype=[(“name”,”type”),…] dtype is a list of as many pairs as columns. Each pair contains
the name of the column and the type (a-character, f-float, i-
integer) and size (in bytes) of data in it:
np.empty([53,dtype=[("pos", "i4"),("text", "a10”)])
init t=np.zeroes(#rows,dtype=[(“name”,”type”),…] As empty, but fills each element in the table with zeroes
access t[pos] for rows; t[“name”] for cols
sort t=np.sort(t,order=(”name”…)) Sorts t rows by column “name” (additional columns can be set)
search np.where(t[“name”]==”pattern”)
np.where(m>5)
np.seachsorted(t[“name”], “pattern”) Search on a sorted column (faster than where)

numpy.array is a direct C array wrapper, and is recommended with long (>106 elements) arrays for better memory usage
 TIME
import time
t0=time.clock()
operation_lines
print ‘it took {0}s to make the operation’.format(time.clock()-t0)

LAMBDA FUNCTION

http://www.secnetix.de/olli/Python/lambda_functions.hawk

Action Method Comments

lambda lambda x:x+3 equivalent to def f(x): return x+3
foo=[2, 18, 9, 22, 17, 24, 8, 12, 27]
filter filter(lambda x:x>=10, foo) gets a list only with the values >10 in foo

map map(lambda x:x*2+10, foo) Applies lambda to the values in foo

reduce reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,foo) Applies lambda to the first two values in foo
and then aggregates each following value