Mark Lutz - Programming Python

This book explores ways to apply the Python programming language in common application domains and realistically scaled tasks. Its about what you can do with the language once youve mastered its fundamentals.

This book assumes you are relatively new to each of the application domains it covers GUIs, the Internet, databases, systems programming, and so onand presents each from the ground up, in tutorial fashion. Along the way, it focuses on commonly used tools and libraries, rather than language fundamentals. The net result is a resource that provides readers with an in-depth understanding of Pythons roles in practical, real-world programming work.

As a subtheme, this book also explores Pythons relevance as a software development toola role that many would classify as well beyond those typically associated with scripting. In fact, many of this books examples are scaled specifically for this purpose; among these, well incrementally develop email clients that top out at thousands of lines of code. Programming at this full scale will always be challenging work, but well find that its also substantially quicker and easier when done with Python.

This Fourth Edition has been updated to present the language, libraries, and practice of Python 3.X. Specifically, its examples use Python 3.1the most recent version of Python at the time of writingand its major examples were tested successfully under the third alpha release of Python 3.2 just prior to publication, but they reflect the version of the language common to the entire 3.X line. This edition has also been reorganized in ways that both streamline some of its former material and allow for coverage of newly emerged tools and topics.

Because this editions readership will include both newcomers as well as prior edition veterans, I want to use this Preface to expand on this books purpose and scope before we jump into code.

This book is a tutorial introduction to using Python in common application domains and tasks. It teaches how to apply Python for system administration, GUIs, and the Web, and explores its roles in networking, databases, frontend scripting layers, text processing, and more. Although the Python language is used along the way, this books focus is on application to real-world tasks instead of language fundamentals.