M110: Python Programming

Meeting #2

Fundamentals of Python
Programming

Prepared by Dr. Ahmad Mikati

 Content

• Introduction to Python
• Running Python Programs
• Data Types and Variables
• Using Numeric and String Variables
• Printing with Parameters
• Getting Input from a User

AOU-M110 2
 Why Python?
Python is object-oriented
• Supports concepts such as polymorphism, operation overloading, and multiple
inheritance
It's free (open source)
• Downloading and installing Python is free and easy
• Source code is easily accessible
• Free doesn't mean unsupported! Online Python community is huge
It's portable
• Python runs virtually on major platforms used today
• As long as you have a compatible Python interpreter installed, Python programs will run in
exactly the same manner, irrespective of platform
It's powerful
• Dynamic typing
• Built-in types and tools
• Library utilities
• Third party utilities (e.g. Numeric, NumPy, SciPy)
• Automatic memory management

3
AOU-M110
 Python IDLE

• IDLE: Integrated DeveLopment Environment

• After installing the IDLE, you can start writing your Python
programs.

4
AOU-M110
 Programming Modes in Python

• Interactive Mode
• gives you immediate feedback
• Not designed to create programs to be saved and run later

• Script Mode
• Write, edit, save, and run (later)
• Save your file using the “.py” extension

5
AOU-M110
 Create and run programs in Script
Mode

1. Go to the File menu.

2. Make a new file.
3. Give a name for the new file such as:
firstProgram.py and then save with .py extension.
4. You can now start writing your code.
5. To run your code, save it first and then go to the run menu 
choose run Module or press F5.

6
AOU-M110
The Program Development Cycle

Programs must be carefully designed before they are written. During the design
process, programmers use tools such as pseudocode and flowcharts to create
models of programs (as we have seen in lecture one).
The process of creating a program that works correctly typically requires the five
phases shown in the below Figure.
The entire process is known as the program development cycle.

7
AOU-M110
The Program Development Cycle

1. Design the Program: A program should be carefully designed before the code
is written.
2. Write the Code: After designing the program, the programmer begins writing
code in a high-level language such as Python, considering the proper syntax.
3. Correct Syntax Errors: If the program contains a syntax error, the compiler or
interpreter will display an error message indicating what the error is.
4. Test the Program: Once the code is in an executable form, it is then tested to
determine whether any logic errors exist.
A logic error is a mistake that does not prevent the program from running but causes
it to produce incorrect results.
5. Correct Logic Errors: If the program produces incorrect results, the
programmer debugs the code.

8
AOU-M110
 Data Types in Python
Python supports different Data types:
• integer (signed integers): positive or negative whole numbers with no
decimal point.
• float (floating point real values): real numbers and are written with a
decimal point dividing the integer and fractional parts. Floats may also
be in scientific notation, with E or e indicating the power of 10 (2.5e2 =
2.5 x 102 = 250).
• complex (complex numbers): are of the form a + bJ, where a and b are
floats and J (or j) represents the square root of -1 (which is an imaginary
number). The real part of the number is a, and the imaginary part is b.
Complex numbers are not used much in Python programming.

9
AOU-M110
 Data Types in Python
Python supports different Data types (cont’d):
• Boolean: The Boolean data type is represented in Python as type bool.
It has one of the two values True or False. This type is used to compare
two values.
>>5==4
False
>>5>=4
True
• String: A string in Python can be created using single,
double, and triple quotes.
• Sequence Types: list, tuple, range (to be discussed
later)
N.B: The two consecutive equal marks operator ( == ) returns true
if both operands have the same value; otherwise, it returns false .

10
AOU-M110
 Python print() Function
A function is a piece of prewritten code that performs an operation. Python has
numerous built-in functions that perform various operations. One of the most
fundamental built-in functions is the print function.
The print() function prints the specified message to the screen, or other standard
output device.
The message can be a string, or any other object, the object will be converted into
a string before written to the screen.
print("Hello!", “How are you?") Hello! How are you?

x = ("apple", "banana", "cherry") ('apple', 'banana', 'cherry')

print(x)

These pieces of data are sequences of characters. In programming terms, a sequence

of characters that is used as data is called a string. When a string appears in the actual
code of a program, it is called a string literal. In Python code, string literals must be
enclosed in quote marks (e.g:"apple") .
Literals are numbers or strings that appear directly in a program.

11
AOU-M110
 Your First Python Program

• Python is "case-sensitive":
• print("hello") #correct
• print('hello’) #correct
• Print("hello") #error
• PRINT("hello") #error

• "hello" is a String literal.

• When the computer does not recognize the statement to be
executed, a syntax error is generated.

12
AOU-M110
 String Literals
• String literals in python are immutable, which means once they are
created, they cannot be changed. Strings are surrounded by either
single quotation marks, or double quotation marks.
• 'hello' is the same as "hello".
• Strings can be output to screen using the print function. For
example: print("hello").
• If you want a string literal to contain either a single-quote or an
apostrophe as part of the string, you can enclose the string literal in
double-quote marks.
print("Don’t panic!") Don’t panic!

• Likewise, you can use single-quote marks to enclose a string literal

that contains double quotes as part of the string.
print('Your TMA is about “ ICT Your TMA is about "ICT Tech"
Tech" ')

13
AOU-M110
 String Literals

• Strings in Python are arrays of bytes representing Unicode

characters.
• Python does not have a character data type.
• A single character is simply a string with a length of 1.
• Square brackets can be used to access elements of the
Example:
string.
Get the first character of a string (In Python, the 1st character has position 0):
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Index/position
H e l l o , A O U s t u d e n t s !
s = "Hello, AOU students!"
e
print(s[1])

• To get the length of a string, use the len() function,

which returns the length of the string.
s = "Hello, AOU 20
students!"
print (len(s))
September 12, 2024 14
AOU-M110
 String Literals

• To check if a certain phrase or character is present in a string,

we can use the keyword in.
s = "Hello, AOU students!"
print('AOU' in s) True

• You can return a range of characters using Slicing.

• Slicing format: string[start: stop: step]
• It will return a string containing a copy of the characters
from start up to, but not including, stop. The step is the
steps to take from start to end

September 12, 2024 15

AOU-M110
 String Literals

Index/position 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

H e l l o , A O U s t u d e n t s !
Examples:
• Get the characters from position 1 to position 4:
s = "Hello, AOU
ello
students!"
• You
print(s[1:5])
can specify the steps:
s = "Hello, AOU Hlo
students!"
print(s[0:5:2])
• By leaving out the start index, the range will start at the first character.
s = "Hello, AOU
students!" Hello
print(s[:5])
• By leaving out the stop index, the range will go to the end.
s = "Hello, AOU
AOU students!
students!"
print(s[7:])
September 12, 2024 16
AOU-M110
 String Literals

• You can use negative indexes to start the slice from the end of the string.

b = “Students!"
dents
print(b[-6:-1])

Using step value 2

b = “Students!"
print(b[-6:-1:2]) dns

Positive indexing

Negative indexing

September 12, 2024 17

AOU-M110
More about the Print function
You will learn now more details about the Python print function, and you’ll
see techniques for formatting output in specific ways.
Overpowering the print Function’s Ending Newline
• By default, the value of this parameter is ‘\n’ (the new line character).
• Python’s print() function comes with a parameter called ‘end’.
• You can end a print statement with any character or string using this parameter.

print('I', end='')
print('Love', end='') ILovePython
print('Python')
Notice in the argument end='' there is no space between the quote marks.
This specifies that the print function should print nothing at the end of its
output.
However, you can include whatever you want between the quotes if you
print('I', end='*')
want so.
print('Love', end=' ') I*Love Python
print('Python')

18
AOU-M110
More about the Print function
Specifying an Item Separator
When multiple arguments are passed to the print function, they are automatically
separated by a space when they are displayed on the screen.

print('I', 'Love', 'Python') I Love Python

If you do not want a space printed between the items (or want anything else to
be inserted, you can pass the argument sep='' to the print function, as shown
below:

print('I', 'Love', 'Python', sep='') ILovePython

print('I', 'Love', 'Python', sep=‘*') I*Love*Python

19
AOU-M110
More about the Print function
Escape Characters
An escape character is a special character that is preceded with a backslash (\),
appearing inside a string literal. When a string literal that contains escape
characters is printed, the escape characters are treated as special commands that
are embedded in the string. For example, \n is the newline escape character.
Several escape characters are recognized by Python, some of
which are listed below:
\n: Causes output to be advanced to the next line.
\t: Causes output to skip over to the next horizontal tab position.
\’: Causes a single quote mark to be printed.
\“: Causes a double quote mark to be printed.
\\: Causes a backslash character to be printed.
I
print('I\nLove\nPython') Love
Python
print('I\tLove\tPython') I Love Python

20
AOU-M110
More about the Print function
Displaying Multiple Items with the + Operator
When the + operator is used with two strings, however, it performs string
concatenation.

print('This is ' + 'one string.') This is one string.

Formatting Numbers
When a floating-point number is displayed by the print function, it can appear
with up to 12 significant digits. When you call the built-in format function, you
pass two arguments to the function: a numeric value and a format specifier.
The format specifier is a string that contains special characters specifying how
the numeric value should be formatted.
print(format(12345.6789, '.2f')) 12345.68

21
AOU-M110
 Program Documentation

• Comments are short notes placed in different parts of a

program, explaining how those parts of the program work.
• Comment lines provide documentation about your program.
• Anything after the “#” symbol is a comment
• Ignored by the computer

# First Python Program

# January 30, 2022

22
AOU-M110
 Variables
• A variable is a name that represents a value stored in the computer’s
memory.
• Variables let us store and reuse values in several places.
• Programs use variables to access and manipulate data that is stored in
memory.
• To do this we need to define the variable and then tell it to refer to a
value.
• We do this using an assignment statement. variable =
expression
Example:
y = 3
3
print(y)

23
AOU-M110
 Variables
• You can also assign to multiple names at the same time.

• Example1:
>>> x,y = 2,3
>>> x
2
>>> y
3

• Example2:
>>> x = 5; y = 4;

24
AOU-M110
 Variables- Rules
• Variable names can contain letters, numbers, and the underscore
(the dollar sign is NOT accepted!).
• Variable names cannot contain spaces.
• Variable names cannot start with a number.
• Variable name cannot be a reserved word.
• Case matters: temp and Temp are different variables.
• There are many reserved words such as:
and, not, or, assert, break, class, continue, def, del, elif, else, except,
exec, finally, for, from, global, if, import, in, is, lambda, pass, print,
raise, return, try, while
WARNING! You cannot use a variable until you have assigned a value to it. An
error will occur if you try to perform an operation on a variable, such as
printing it, before it has been assigned a value.

25
AOU-M110
 Displaying Multiple Items with the print
Function

Python allows us to display multiple items with one call to the print
function.
We simply need to separate the items with commas as shown in the
following program:

# Displaying multiple items with one call

Course_Name="Python Programming"
Course_Section=210
print("The course is",Course_Name,“, and my section is",Course_Section )

Output:
The course is Python Programming , and my section is 210

26
AOU-M110
 Reading from the keyboard
• To read from the keyboard, you normally use the input function in an
assignment statement that follows this general format:

variable = input(prompt)
x=input(“enter your text: ” )#Hello Ahmad
print(x)
Enter your text: Hello Ahmad
Hello Ahmad

• For reading values (numbers) from the keyboard we can use “eval()” which
converts the string to values.
x =eval(input("enter a number: ")) enter a number: 5
y =eval(input("enter another number: ")) enter another number: 10
print("The sum of both numbers is:",x+y) The sum of both numbers is: 15

27
AOU-M110
 Math Operators
Name Meaning Example Result
+ Addition 34 + 1 35
Can be used also for
string concatenation:
y="hello" - Subtraction 34.0 - 0.1 33.9
print(y+" world!")
==> hello world! * Multiplication 300 * 30 9000
Can be used also for
string repetition:
/ Float Division 1/2 0.5
print("Hi " * 3)
==> Hi Hi Hi // Integer Division 1 // 2 0

** Exponentiation 4 ** 0.5 2.0

% Remainder 20 % 3 2

28
AOU-M110
 Operator Precedence
• You can write statements that use complex mathematical expressions involving
several operators.
• First, operations that are enclosed in parentheses are performed first. Then,
when two operators share an operand, the operator with the higher precedence
is applied first.
• Parts of a mathematical expression may be grouped with parentheses to force
some operations to be performed before others.
• The precedence of the math operators, from highest to lowest, are:
a. Parentheses ()
b. Exponentiation: **
c. Multiplication, division, and remainder: * / // %
d. Addition and subtraction: + −
5+2*4 //13
10 / 2 − 3 //2.0
8 + 12 * 2 − 4 //28
6−3*2+7−1 //6
(6 − 3) * (2 + 7) / 3 //9.0
29
AOU-M110
 Casting in Python
• Python converts numbers internally in an expression containing mixed types to a
common type for evaluation.
• Sometimes, you need to explicitly convert a number from one type to another. This is
called casting.
• int(x) to convert x to a plain integer.
• float(x) to convert x to a floating-point number.
• str() to construct string from a wide variety of data types, including strings, integer
literals and float literals
• complex(x) to convert x to a complex number with real part x and imaginary part
zero.
• complex(x,y) to convert x and y to a complex number with real part x and
imaginary part y. x and y are numeric expressions.

30
AOU-M110
 Casting in Python

>>> x = '100'
>>> y = '-90'
>>> print (x + y) Since they are strings, x and
100-90 y will be concatenated
>>> print (int(x) + int(y))
10
Since they have been casted, values of
x and y will be added

31
AOU-M110
 Casting in Python

• Casting to integers:
x=int(input(“enter the value”)) #5
y=int(input(“enter the value”)) #10
x+y = 15

• Casting to floats:
x=float(input(“enter the value”)) #5.0
y=float(input(“enter the value”)) #10.0
x+y= 15.0

• Casting to strings:
x = str("s1") # x will be 's1'
y = str(2) # y will be '2'
z = str(3.0) # z will be '3.0'

32
AOU-M110
 More about Strings
String Testing Methods

Method Description
Returns true if the string contains only alphabetic letters or digits and is at least one
isalnum()
character in length. Returns false otherwise.
Returns true if the string contains only alphabetic letters and is at least one character in
isalpha()
length. Returns false otherwise.
Returns true if the string contains only numeric digits and is at least one character in
isdigit()
length. Returns false otherwise.
Returns true if all of the alphabetic letters in the string are lowercase, and the string
islower()
contains at least one alphabetic letter. Returns false otherwise.
Returns true if the string contains only whitespace characters and is at least one
isspace() character in length. Returns false otherwise. (Whitespace characters are spaces,
newlines (\n), and tabs (\t).
Returns true if all the alphabetic letters in the string are uppercase, and the string
isupper()
contains at least one alphabetic letter. Returns false otherwise.

AOU-M110 33
 More about Strings
Modification Methods
Although strings are immutable, meaning they cannot be modified, they do have several
methods that return modified versions of themselves.
Method Description
Returns a copy of the string with all alphabetic letters converted to lowercase. Any
lower()
character that is already lowercase, or is not an alphabetic letter, is unchanged.
Returns a copy of the string with all leading whitespace characters removed. Leading
lstrip() whitespace characters are spaces, newlines (\n), and tabs (\t) that appear at the
beginning of the string.
The char argument is a string containing a character. Returns a copy of the string with
lstrip(char)
all instances of char that appear at the beginning of the string removed.
Returns a copy of the string with all trailing whitespace characters removed. Trailing
rstrip() whitespace characters are spaces, newlines (\n), and tabs (\t) that appear at the end of
the string.
The char argument is a string containing a character. The method returns a copy of the
rstrip(char)
string with all instances of char that appear at the end of the string removed.
Returns a copy of the string with all leading and trailing whitespace characters
strip()
removed.
Returns a copy of the string with all instances of char that appear at the beginning and
strip(char)
the end of the string removed.
Returns a copy of the string with all alphabetic letters converted to uppercase. Any
upper()
character that is already uppercase, or is not an alphabetic letter, is unchanged.

AOU-M110 34
Drill Examples

AOU-M110 35
Drill Examples

AOU-M110 36
Drill Examples

AOU-M110 37