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 The debugging section is truly excellent. I know several practicing pro-
grammers who’d be rightfully offended by a suggestion to study the
whole book but who could really do with brushing up on this section
(and many others) once in a while.
Alex Martelli
Author, Python in a Nutshell

This book succeeds in two different ways. It is both a science-focused

CS1 text and a targeted Python reference. Even as it builds students’
computational insights, it also empowers and encourages them to
immediately apply their newfound programming skills in the lab or
on projects of their own.
Zachary Dodds
Associate professor of computer science, Harvey Mudd College

Prepared exclusively for Trieu Nguyen

Prepared exclusively for Trieu Nguyen
 Practical Programming
An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python

Jennifer Campbell
Paul Gries
Jason Montojo
Greg Wilson

The Pragmatic Bookshelf

Raleigh, North Carolina Dallas, Texas

Prepared exclusively for Trieu Nguyen

 Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their prod-
ucts are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and The
Pragmatic Programmers, LLC was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have
been printed in initial capital letters or in all capitals. The Pragmatic Starter Kit, The
Pragmatic Programmer, Pragmatic Programming, Pragmatic Bookshelf and the linking g
device are trademarks of The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.

Every precaution was taken in the preparation of this book. However, the publisher
assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages that may result from
the use of information (including program listings) contained herein.

Our Pragmatic courses, workshops, and other products can help you and your team
create better software and have more fun. For more information, as well as the latest
Pragmatic titles, please visit us at

http://www.pragprog.com

Copyright © 2009 Jennifer Campbell, Paul Gries, Jason Montojo, and Greg Wilson.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmit-

ted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN-10: 1-934356-27-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-934356-27-2
Printed on acid-free paper.
P1.0 printing, April 2009
Version: 2009-5-6

Prepared exclusively for Trieu Nguyen

 Contents
1 Introduction 11
1.1 Programs and Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2 A Few Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3 What to Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.4 For Instructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2 Hello, Python 17
2.1 The Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3 What Is a Type? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4 Variables and the Assignment Statement . . . . . . . . 25
2.5 When Things Go Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.6 Function Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.7 Built-in Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.8 Style Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.10 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

3 Strings 39
3.1 Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2 Escape Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.3 Multiline Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.4 Print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.5 Formatted Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.6 User Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.8 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

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 CONTENTS 8

4 Modules 50
4.1 Importing Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.2 Defining Your Own Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3 Objects and Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.4 Pixels and Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.5 Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.6 Style Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.8 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

5 Lists 81
5.1 Lists and Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.2 Modifying Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.3 Built-in Functions on Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.4 Processing List Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.5 Slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.6 Aliasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.7 List Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.8 Nested Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.9 Other Kinds of Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.10 Files as Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.11 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.12 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.13 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

6 Making Choices 108

6.1 Boolean Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.2 if Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
6.3 Storing Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

7 Repetition 131
7.1 Counted Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7.2 while Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
7.3 User Input Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
7.4 Controlling Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
7.5 Style Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
7.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

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 CONTENTS 9

8 File Processing 159

8.1 One Record per Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.2 Records with Multiple Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
8.3 Positional Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
8.4 Multiline Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
8.5 Looking Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
8.6 Writing to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
8.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
8.8 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

9 Sets and Dictionaries 185

9.1 Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
9.2 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
9.3 Inverting a Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
9.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
9.5 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

10 Algorithms 203
10.1 Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
10.2 Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
10.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
10.4 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

11 Searching and Sorting 214

11.1 Linear Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
11.2 Binary Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
11.3 Sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
11.4 More Efficient Sorting Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
11.5 Mergesort: An N log2 N Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
11.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
11.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

12 Construction 237
12.1 More on Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
12.2 Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
12.3 Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
12.4 Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
12.5 Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
12.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
12.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

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 CONTENTS 10

13 Object-Oriented Programming 270

13.1 Class Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
13.2 Special Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
13.3 More About dir and help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
13.4 A Little Bit of OO Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
13.5 A Longer Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
13.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
13.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

14 Graphical User Interfaces 294

14.1 The Tkinter Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
14.2 Basic GUI Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
14.3 Models, Views, and Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
14.4 Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
14.5 A Few More Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
14.6 Object-Oriented GUIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
14.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
14.8 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

15 Databases 321
15.1 The Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
15.2 First Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
15.3 Retrieving Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
15.4 Updating and Deleting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
15.5 Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
15.6 Using NULL for Missing Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
15.7 Using Joins to Combine Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
15.8 Keys and Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
15.9 Advanced Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
15.10 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
15.11 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

A Bibliography 351

Index 353

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 Chapter 1

Introduction
Take a look at the pictures in Figure 1.1, on the following page. The
first one shows forest cover in the Amazon basin in 1975. The second
one shows the same area 26 years later. Anyone can see that much of
the rainforest has been destroyed, but how much is “much”?
Now look at Figure 1.2, on page 13.
Are these blood cells healthy? Do any of them show signs of leukemia?
It would take an expert doctor a few minutes to tell. Multiply those
minutes by the number of people who need to be screened. There simply
aren’t enough human doctors in the world to check everyone.
This is where computers come in. Computer programs can measure the
differences between two pictures and count the number of oddly shaped
platelets in a blood sample. Geneticists use programs to analyze gene
sequences; statisticians, to analyze the spread of diseases; geologists, to
predict the effects of earthquakes; economists, to analyze fluctuations
in the stock market; and climatologists, to study global warming. More
and more scientists are writing programs to help them do their work. In
turn, those programs are making entirely new kinds of science possible.
Of course, computers are good for a lot more than just science. We used
computers to write this book; you have probably used one today to chat
with friends, find out where your lectures are, or look for a restaurant
that serves pizza and Chinese food. Every day, someone figures out how
to make a computer do something that has never been done before.
Together, those “somethings” are changing the world.
This book will teach you how to make computers do what you want
them to do. You may be planning to be a doctor, linguist, or physicist

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 C HAPTER 1. I NTRODUCTION 12

Figure 1.1: The Rainforest Retreats (Photo credit: NASA/Goddard Space

Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

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 P ROGRAMS AND P ROGRAMMING 13

Figure 1.2: Healthy blood cells—or are they? (Photo credit: CDC)

rather than a full-time programmer, but whatever you do, being able
to program is as important as being able to write a letter or do basic
arithmetic.
We begin in this chapter by explaining what programs and program-
ming are. We then define a few terms and present a few boring-but-
necessary bits of information for course instructors.

1.1 Programs and Programming

A program is a set of instructions. When you write down directions to
your house for a friend, you are writing a program. Your friend “exe-
cutes” that program by following each instruction in turn.
Every program is written in terms of a few basic operations that its
reader already understands. For example, the set of operations that
your friend can understand might include the following: “Turn left at
Darwin Street,” “Go forward three blocks,” and “If you get to the gas
station, turn around—you’ve gone too far.”
Computers are similar but have a different set of operations. Some
operations are mathematical, like “Add 10 to a number and take the
square root,” while others include “Read a line from the file named
data.txt,” “Make a pixel blue,” or “Send email to the authors of this
book.”
The most important difference between a computer and an old-
fashioned calculator is that you can “teach” a computer new opera-
tions by defining them in terms of old ones. For example, you can teach
the computer that “Take the average” means “Add up the numbers in
a set and divide by the set’s size.” You can then use the operations you
have just defined to create still more operations, each layered on top of
the ones that came before. It’s a lot like creating life by putting atoms
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 A F EW D EFINITIONS 14

together to make proteins and then combining proteins to build cells

and giraffes.
Defining new operations, and combining them to do useful things, is
the heart and soul of programming. It is also a tremendously powerful
way to think about other kinds of problems. As Prof. Jeannette Wing
wrote [Win06], computational thinking is about the following:
• Conceptualizing, not programming. Computer science is not com-
puter programming. Thinking like a computer scientist means
more than being able to program a computer. It requires think-
ing at multiple levels of abstraction.
• A way that humans, not computers, think. Computational thinking
is a way humans solve problems; it is not trying to get humans
to think like computers. Computers are dull and boring; humans
are clever and imaginative. We humans make computers exciting.
Equipped with computing devices, we use our cleverness to tackle
problems we would not dare take on before the age of computing
and build systems with functionality limited only by our imagina-
tions.
• For everyone, everywhere. Computational thinking will be a reality
when it is so integral to human endeavors it disappears as an
explicit philosophy.
We hope that by the time you have finished reading this book, you will
see the world in a slightly different way.

1.2 A Few Definitions

One of the pieces of terminology that causes confusion is what to call
certain characters. The Python style guide (and several dictionaries) use
these names, so this book does too:
() Parentheses
[] Brackets
{} Braces

1.3 What to Install

For current installation instructions, please download the code from
the book website and open install/index.html in a browser. The book URL
is http://pragprog.com/titles/gwpy/practical-programming.

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 F OR I NSTRUCTORS 15

1.4 For Instructors

This book uses the Python programming language to introduce stan-
dard CS1 topics and a handful of useful applications. We chose Python
for several reasons:
• It is free and well documented. In fact, Python is one of the largest
and best-organized open source projects going.
• It runs everywhere. The reference implementation, written in C, is
used on everything from cell phones to supercomputers, and it’s
supported by professional-quality installers for Windows, Mac OS,
and Linux.
• It has a clean syntax. Yes, every language makes this claim, but in
the four years we have been using it at the University of Toronto,
we have found that students make noticeably fewer “punctuation”
mistakes with Python than with C-like languages.
• It is relevant. Thousands of companies use it every day; it is one of
the three “official languages” at Google, and large portions of the
game Civilization IV are written in Python. It is also widely used
by academic research groups.
• It is well supported by tools. Legacy editors like Vi and Emacs all
have Python editing modes, and several professional-quality IDEs
are available. (We use a free-for-students version of one called
Wing IDE.)
We use an “objects first, classes second” approach: students are shown
how to use objects from the standard library early on but do not create
their own classes until after they have learned about flow control and
basic data structures. This compromise avoids the problem of explain-
ing Java’s public static void main(String[ ] args) to someone who has never
programmed.
We have organized the book into two parts. The first covers fundamen-
tal programming ideas: elementary data types (numbers, strings, lists,
sets, and dictionaries), modules, control flow, functions, testing, debug-
ging, and algorithms. Depending on the audience, this material can be
covered in nine or ten weeks.
The second part of the book consists of more or less independent chap-
ters on more advanced topics that assume all the basic material has
been covered. The first of these chapters shows students how to create
their own classes and introduces encapsulation, inheritance, and poly-
morphism; courses for computer science majors will want to include

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 S UMMARY 16

this material. The other chapters cover application areas, such as 3D

graphics, databases, GUI construction, and the basics of web program-
ming; these will appeal to both computer science majors and students
from the sciences and will allow the book to be used for both.
Lots of other good books on Python programming exist. Some are acces-
sible to novices [Guz04, Zel03], and others are for anyone with any
previous programming experience [DEM02, GL07, LA03]. You may also
want to take a look at [Pyt], the special interest group for educators
using Python.

1.5 Summary
In this book, we’ll do the following:
• We will show you how to develop and use programs that solve real-
world problems. Most of its examples will come from science and
engineering, but the ideas can be applied to any domain.
• We start by teaching you the core features of a programming lan-
guage called Python. These features are included in every modern
programming language, so you can use what you learn no matter
what you work on next.
• We will also teach you how to think methodically about program-
ming. In particular, we will show you how to break complex prob-
lems into simple ones and how to combine the solutions to those
simpler problems to create complete applications.
• Finally, we will introduce some tools that will help make your pro-
gramming more productive, as well as some others that will help
your applications cope with larger problems.

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 Chapter 2

Hello, Python
Programs are made up of commands that a computer can understand.
These commands are called statements, which the computer executes.
This chapter describes the simplest of Python’s statements and shows
how they can be used to do basic arithmetic. It isn’t very exciting in its
own right, but it’s the basis of almost everything that follows.

2.1 The Big Picture

In order to understand what happens when you’re programming, you
need to have a basic understanding of how a program gets executed on
a computer. The computer itself is assembled from pieces of hardware,
including a processor that can execute instructions and do arithmetic,
a place to store data such as a hard drive, and various other pieces such
as computer monitor, a keyboard, a card for connecting to a network,
and so on.
To deal with all these pieces, every computer runs some kind of operat-
ing system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. An oper-
ating system, or OS, is a program; what makes it special is that it’s the
only program on the computer that’s allowed direct access to the hard-
ware. When any other program on the computer wants to draw on the
screen, find out what key was just pressed on the keyboard, or fetch
data from the hard drive, it sends a request to the OS (see Figure 2.1,
on the following page).
This may seem a roundabout way of doing things, but it means that
only the people writing the OS have to worry about the differences
between one network card and another. Everyone else—everyone ana-
lyzing scientific data or creating 3D virtual chat rooms—only has to

Prepared exclusively for Trieu Nguyen

 T HE B IG P ICTURE 18

User Program

Operating System

Hard Drive Monitor

Figure 2.1: Talking to the operating system

learn their way around the OS, and their programs will then run on
thousands of different kinds of hardware.
Twenty-five years ago, that’s how most programmers worked. Today,
though, it’s common to add another layer between the programmer and
the computer’s hardware. When you write a program in Python, Java,
or Visual Basic, it doesn’t run directly on top of the OS. Instead, another
program, called an interpreter or virtual machine, takes your program
and runs it for you, translating your commands into a language the OS
understands. It’s a lot easier, more secure, and more portable across
operating systems than writing programs directly on top of the OS.
But an interpreter alone isn’t enough; it needs some way to interact
with the world. One way to do this is to run a text-oriented program
called a shell that reads commands from the keyboard, does what they
ask, and shows their output as text, all in one window. Shells exist for
various programming languages as well as for interacting with the OS;
we will be exploring Python in this chapter using a Python shell.
The more modern way to interact with Python is to use an integrated
development environment, or IDE. This is a full-blown graphical inter-
face with menus and windows, much like a web browser, word proces-
sor, or drawing program.
Our favorite IDE for student-sized programs is the free Wing 101, a
“lite” version of the professional tool.1

1. See http://www.wingware.com for details.

Report erratum
Prepared exclusively for Trieu Nguyen this copy is (P1.0 printing, April 2009)
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