Contents

• Whetting Your Appetite
  • Where From Here
• Using the Python Interpreter
  • Invoking the Interpreter
    • Argument Passing
    • Interactive Mode
  • The Interpreter and its Environment
    • Error Handling
    • The Module Search Path
    • ``Compiled'' Python files
    • Executable Python scripts
    • The Interactive Startup File
  • Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
    • Line Editing
    • History Substitution
    • Key Bindings
    • Commentary
• An Informal Introduction to Python
  • Using Python as a Calculator
    • Numbers
    • Strings
    • Lists
  • First Steps Towards Programming
• More Control Flow Tools
  • If Statements
  • For Statements
  • The range() Function
  • Break and Continue Statements, and Else Clauses on Loops
  • Pass Statements
  • Defining Functions
• Odds and Ends
  • More on Lists
  • The del statement
  • Tuples and Sequences
  • Dictionaries
  • More on Conditions
  • Comparing Sequences and Other Types
• Modules
  • More on Modules
  • Standard Modules
  • The dir() function
• Output Formatting
• Errors and Exceptions
  • Syntax Errors
  • Exceptions
  • Handling Exceptions
  • Raising Exceptions
  • User-defined Exceptions
  • Defining Clean-up Actions
• Classes
  • A word about terminology
  • Python scopes and name spaces
  • A first look at classes
    • Class definition syntax
    • Class objects
    • Instance objects
    • Method objects
  • Random remarks
  • Inheritance
    • Multiple inheritance
  • Odds and ends
• Recent Additions
  • The Last Printed Expression
  • String Literals
    • Double Quotes
    • Continuation Of String Literals
    • Triple-quoted strings
    • String Literal Juxtaposition
  • The Formatting Operator
    • Basic Usage
    • Referencing Variables By Name
  • Optional Function Arguments
    • Default Argument Values
    • Arbitrary Argument Lists
  • Lambda And Functional Programming Tools
    • Lambda Forms
    • Map, Reduce and Filter
      • Map.
      • Filter.
      • Reduce.
  • Continuation Lines Without Backslashes
  • Regular Expressions
  • Generalized Dictionaries
  • Miscellaneous New Built-in Functions
  • Else Clause For Try Statement
  • New Class Features in Release 1.1
    • New Operator Overloading
    • Trapping Attribute Access
    • Calling a Class Instance
• New in Release 1.2
  • New Class Features
  • Unix Signal Handling
  • Exceptions Can Be Classes
  • Object Persistency and Object Copying
    • Persistent Objects
    • Copying Objects
  • Documentation Strings
  • Customizing Import and Built-Ins
  • Python and the World-Wide Web
  • Miscellaneous
• New in Release 1.3
  • Keyword Arguments
  • Changes to the WWW and Internet tools
  • Other Language Changes
  • Changes to Built-in Operations
  • Library Changes
  • Other Changes
• About this document ...