An Introduction to Python Guido van Rossum Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor Python Software Foundation November 2006 (Release 2.5) Copyright © 2001-2006 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2000 BeOpen.com. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum. All rights reserved.

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• Publisher's Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Whetting Your Appetite
• 2 Using the Python Interpreter
  • 2.1 Invoking the Interpreter
    • 2.1.1 Argument Passing
    • 2.1.2 Interactive Mode
  • 2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment
    • 2.2.1 Error Handling
    • 2.2.2 Executable Python Scripts
    • 2.2.3 Source Code Encoding
    • 2.2.4 The Interactive Startup File
• 3 An Informal Introduction to Python
  • 3.1 Using Python as a Calculator
    • 3.1.1 Numbers
    • 3.1.2 Strings
    • 3.1.3 Unicode Strings
    • 3.1.4 Lists
  • 3.2 First Steps Towards Programming
• 4 More Control Flow Tools
  • 4.1 if Statements
  • 4.2 for Statements
  • 4.3 The range() Function
  • 4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops
  • 4.5 pass Statements
  • 4.6 Defining Functions
  • 4.7 More on Defining Functions
    • 4.7.1 Default Argument Values
    • 4.7.2 Keyword Arguments
    • 4.7.3 Arbitrary Argument Lists
    • 4.7.4 Unpacking Argument Lists
    • 4.7.5 Lambda Forms
    • 4.7.6 Documentation Strings
• 5 Data Structures
  • 5.1 More on Lists
    • 5.1.1 Using Lists as Stacks
    • 5.1.2 Using Lists as Queues
    • 5.1.3 Functional Programming Tools
    • 5.1.4 List Comprehensions
  • 5.2 The del statement
  • 5.3 Tuples and Sequences
  • 5.4 Sets
  • 5.5 Dictionaries
  • 5.6 Looping Techniques
  • 5.7 More on Conditions
  • 5.8 Comparing Sequences and Other Types
• 6 Modules
  • 6.1 More on Modules
    • 6.1.1 The Module Search Path
    • 6.1.2 "Compiled" Python files
  • 6.2 Standard Modules
  • 6.3 The dir() Function
  • 6.4 Packages
    • 6.4.1 Importing From a Package
    • 6.4.2 Intra-package References
    • 6.4.3 Packages in Multiple Directories
• 7 Input and Output
  • 7.1 Fancier Output Formatting
  • 7.2 Reading and Writing Files
    • 7.2.1 Methods of File Objects
    • 7.2.2 The ‘pickle’ Module
• 8 Errors and Exceptions
  • 8.1 Syntax Errors
  • 8.2 Exceptions
  • 8.3 Handling Exceptions
  • 8.4 Raising Exceptions
  • 8.5 User-defined Exceptions
  • 8.6 Defining Clean-up Actions
  • 8.7 Predefined Clean-up Actions
• 9 Classes
  • 9.1 A Word About Terminology
  • 9.2 Python Scopes and Name Spaces
  • 9.3 A First Look at Classes
    • 9.3.1 Class Definition Syntax
    • 9.3.2 Class Objects
    • 9.3.3 Instance Objects
    • 9.3.4 Method Objects
  • 9.4 Random Remarks
  • 9.5 Inheritance
    • 9.5.1 Multiple Inheritance
  • 9.6 Private Variables
  • 9.7 Odds and Ends
  • 9.8 Exceptions Are Classes Too
  • 9.9 Iterators
  • 9.10 Generators
  • 9.11 Generator Expressions
• 10 Brief Tour of the Standard Library
  • 10.1 Operating System Interface
  • 10.2 File Wildcards
  • 10.3 Command Line Arguments
  • 10.4 Error Output Redirection and Program Termination
  • 10.5 String Pattern Matching
  • 10.6 Mathematics
  • 10.7 Internet Access
  • 10.8 Dates and Times
  • 10.9 Data Compression
  • 10.10 Performance Measurement
  • 10.11 Quality Control
  • 10.12 Batteries Included
• 11 Brief Tour of the Standard Library -- Part II
  • 11.1 Output Formatting
  • 11.2 Templating
  • 11.3 Working with Binary Data Record Layouts
  • 11.4 Multi-threading
  • 11.5 Logging
  • 11.6 Weak References
  • 11.7 Tools for Working with Lists
  • 11.8 Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic
• 12 What Now?
• A Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
  • 12.1 Line Editing
  • 12.2 History Substitution
  • 12.3 Key Bindings
  • 12.4 Commentary
• B Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations
  • 12.5 Representation Error
• C History and License
  • 12.6 History of the software
  • 12.7 Terms and conditions for Python
  • 12.8 Other licenses and acknowledgements
    • 12.8.1 Mersenne Twister
    • 12.8.2 Sockets
    • 12.8.3 Floating point exception control
    • 12.8.4 MD5 message digest algorithm
    • 12.8.5 Asynchronous socket services
    • 12.8.6 Cookie management
    • 12.8.7 Profiling
    • 12.8.8 Execution tracing
    • 12.8.9 UUencode and UUdecode functions
    • 12.8.10 XML Remote Procedure Calls
• D Glossary