Articles and tutorials regarding Python http://www.troobloo.com/tech/python.shtml en-us http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2001/11/15/pythonnews.html 11/15/2001 Python programmers can sometimes feel a bit lonely. While growing in numbers, we aren't everywhere yet. The loneliness sometimes drove, Seattle's Mike Orr and Adam Feuer South to Portland, where they would attend the Portland Python interest group. It was a long way to drive for company, but it was good to meet other Python programmers. When programmer Steve Howell recently made the same drive, the PorPiggies pointed him back to Mike and Adam. Maybe three is critical mass, or... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2001/12/13/pythonnews.html 12/13/2001 While browsing KDE Dot News the other day, I saw some Python software listed in the Recent Software section. It led me to four small applications by Doug Bell : ConvertAll, a unit conversion program; FlyWay, a route planner for pilots; rpCalc, a reverse polish calculator; and TreeLine, a simple tree structured information storage program. Written with Python and PyQt, they all looked sharp. The code was clean and easy to understand if not heavily commented. They were my... http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/sdmcnf0204b/ April 2002 Bruce Eckel shifts gears with an overview of Python as a collective concern, selling the laissez-faire language to a class of neophytes. By Rick Wayne Perhaps it hasn't yet conquered the world, but Python proponents believe that it's only a matter of time. Developers typically see a tenfold productivity increase when they switch to Python, Bruce Eckel, president of MindView Inc., told Monday's "Design Patterns In Python" class at the SD West conference in San Jose, "Now... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/02/12/python10.html by Mark Lutz , author of Programming Python, 2nd Edition 02/12/2002 This year's Tenth International Python Conference (IPC10) served up the usual smorgasbord of cutting-edge Python applications and technology. Despite the economy, over 250 people gathered just outside Washington, D.C. to glimpse the future, exchange notes, and reaffirm remote friendships. As usual, the conference provided a full day of tutorials, two days of presentations, and a final day aimed at Python developers.... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2003/03/27/pythonian.html by Alex Martelli , author of Python in a Nutshell 03/27/2003 Editor's note: When Alex Martelli said he wanted to write an article about what he was "unable to include in Python in a Nutshell ," my first thought was "why would we want to tell readers what they will not find when they purchase this book?" But our In a Nutshell books do not purport to include everything about a subject. As Tim O'Reilly says: "These books aren't tutorials. They take a topic and drill down, expand, and, we... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/2191421 By Thomas Gutschmidt There are two, standard built-in ways of integrating Python with C/C++. The first is writing an extension, which involves creating a wrapper for C that Python imports, builds, and then can execute. The wrapper extension is the focus of this article. A second built-in way of integrating these languages is called embedding, and is where C and C++ are given direct access to the Python interpreter. Embedding is not part of this article. There are also third-party... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/2217941 By Thomas Gutschmidt An earlier article demonstrated creating an extension for Python. This article focuses on embedding, which is a second way of integrating C and Python. Embedding in Python is where C, or C++, or any program for that matter, is given direct access to the Python interpreter. This gives the program the power to load and execute Python scripts and services. In C, this enables you load in Python-specific modules, call Python functions, and access Python objects.... http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/18/py.html by Uche Ogbuji September 18, 2002 Welcome to the first Python-XML column. Every month I'll offer tips and techniques for XML processing in Python and close coverage of particular packages. Python is an excellent language for XML processing, and there is a wealth of tools and resources to help the intrepid developer be productive. In what follows I'll survey these tools and resources, giving a sense of how broadly Python supports XML technologies and giving you a head start on the more... http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/09/10/py.html by Uche Ogbuji September 10, 2003 It's now been a year since the first Python and XML article , in which I made a broad survey of all things Python-XML. Since then I have picked various techniques, packages, and other useful resources to examine in detail. I haven't, of course, been able to look at every interesting or useful package or technique, but stay tuned for the next year of articles. This month I update the overall Python-XML survey to encompass notable developments over the... http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/625901 By Richard Baldwin Preface Prerequisites Why Use Python Let's Write a Program Where Do We Go From Here? Review Preface What you will learn This is the first in a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. There is something for just about everyone here. Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further on. You simply need to enter the series of lessons at the point that best fits your prior... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/03/21/pythonnews.html 03/21/2002 Jim Bublitz recently announced a beta version of PyKDE2 , providing Python programmers access to high level widgets of the 2.x and 3.0beta versions of the K Desktop Environment . Phil Thompson, the maintainer of Sip, a tool for generating Python bindings from C++ code, and PyQt, the Qt bindings for Python, had made a set of KDE 1.x bindings way back a couple of years ago when he first created PyQt. He continued to maintain Sip and PyQt, but never got round to updating PyKDE.... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/06/27/pythonandperl.html by Aahz 06/27/2002 This article is based in part on my O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2002 tutorial, "Python for [Perl] Programmers/" However, this article includes more Perl and Python comparison than I've included in the tutorial. My tutorial targets experienced programmers of all sorts, with the non-Python examples drawn from Perl. In this article I'll be comparing Python's loop constructs to Perl's. Perl has two basic looping constructs: while and for/foreach. This doesn't count... http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/10/python.html by Uche Ogbuji March 10, 2004 I have covered a lot of tools for processing XML in Python. In general I have deferred discussion of each tool's handling of XML namespaces in order to stick to the basics in the individual treatments. In this article I start to examine the support for XML namespaces in these packages, with a look at SAX and DOM from the standard Python library. But first, a warning. XML namespaces are largely a matter of shrugging acceptance among most XML users, but they... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/04/11/jythontips.html by Noel Rappin , co-author of Jython Essentials 04/11/2002 In my first article about Jython , I discussed the features of the Python scripting language and its Jython implementation that would be of greatest interest to Java programmers. Jython is a complete implementation of the Python programming language written in 100 percent pure Java, and allows easy access to Java libraries. However, if you are already a Python programmer, then you know about the features of the Python... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2003/4/24/pythonnews.html by Stephen Figgins 04/24/2003 At last month's PyCon in Washington D.C. developers of the Twisted network application framework gave presentations. (Papers are available on the Python wiki .) In some ways, it was Twisted's big debut. Many attendees have made positive remarked the presentations. Once obscured, Twisted is stepping into the light. The conference also gave Twisted's developers a chance to meet in one place. The Twisted project was originally conceived on the OpenProjects... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/07/11/recipes.html 07/11/2002 by Robin Parma, Alex Martelli, Scott David Daniels, Ben Wolfson, Nick Perkins, Anurag Uniya, Tim Keating, Rael Dornfest and Jeremy Hylton, authors of the Python Cookbook 1. Simple Tests Using Exceptions Usually Python is straightforward, but there are a few unexpected exceptions. Credits: Robin Parma Problem You want to know if the contents of a string represent an integer, which is not quite the same thing as checking whether the string contains only digits. Solution #... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/628651 By Richard Baldwin Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of this online programming course. Program Construction Conceptually, programs are composed of statements, and statements are... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/628641 By Richard Baldwin Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Lesson 1 provides an overall description of this online programming course. Introduction What you have learned You have learned how to write some simple programs and execute them interactively. You have learned how to... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/07/11/pythonnews.html by Stephen Figgins 07/11/2002 Bruce Dawson, Director of Technology for Humongous Entertainment, recently published a paper he presented at the 2002 Game Developers Conference, " Game Scripting in Python ." Humongous Entertainment is probably best known to children and parents for their adventure and backyard sports games. Previously they used SCUMM , a scripting language and game engine Aric Wilmunder and Ron Gilbert created for Maniac Mansion, when they worked at LucasFilm Games.... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/1/31/pythonnews.html 01/31/2002 I am suffering from Mac lust. I feel irresistably drawn to the new iMac. That lovely TFT monitor has cast a spell on me. Yet I still have wits enough to wonder, what is the state of Python and OS X? On OS X, you have three, actually four Python choices now. The most obvious Python interpreter, MacPython , can be installed either as a classic application -- OS 9.1 in a virtual machine on OS X -- or as a Carbon application. Carbon is a runtime environment offering a streamlined... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/10/24/pythonnews.html by Stephen Figgins 10/24/2002 Early in 2000, not long after Guido announced the now defunct Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) project, the late Frank Willison interviewed Jeff Elkner , an inspired high school teacher at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia who was using Python instead of C++ to teach programming. He hoped to make programming more accessible to all students by using Python. The project has matured since then, reaching more students and reaching further out... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/apache/2003/04/10/apacheandpython.html by Peter Laurie , coauthor of Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition 04/10/2003 As part of the improvements we made to the third edition of Apache, the Definitive Guide , we covered the interface between Apache, the major scripting languages, and a database manager. For some reason, we left out Python--a perfectly good language, with some useful features of its own--so here is what we should have said in the book. Python is freeware and you can download it from www.python.org . I... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/626311 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is A Script? Getting Started What's Next Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of this online programming course. Introduction I have... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/629091 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction Some Sample Programs More Information on Lists Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of this online programming course. Introduction A... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/625911 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction Let's Program Complex Numbers Programming Errors Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone There is something for just about everyone here. Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/626321 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is A Variable Rules for Identifiers Let's Program Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone There is something for just about everyone here. Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/629381 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? Sample Program Listing of Sample Program What's Next? Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of this online programming... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/629291 By Richard G. Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? Sample Program Listing of Sample Program What's Next? Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of this online programming... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/629181 By Richard G. Baldwin fi Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? A Sample Program Complete Program Listing What's Next? Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description of this online programming... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630351 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? Sample Program Summary What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. The ultimate objective is to progress to JPython, forming the link between Python and Java. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window. That will make it easier for... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630501 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? Sample Program Summary What's Next? Listing of Sample Program Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. After we cover regular Python, the lessons will cover JPython. This will form a link between Python and Java. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window. That will... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/631121 By Richard G. Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Dictionary? Sample Program What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window. That will make it easier for you to scroll back and forth among the different listings while you are reading about them.... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630941 By Richard G. Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Dictionary? Sample Program What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window. That will make it easier for you to scroll back and forth among the different listings while you are reading about them.... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630101 By Richard G. Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? Sample Program Summary What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. The ultimate objective is to progress to JPython, forming the link between Python and Java. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window. That will make it easier... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630831 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Dictionary? Sample Program Summary What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. After we cover regular Python, the lessons will cover JPython. This will form a link between Python and Java. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate browser window. That... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630631 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Tuple? What Is Indirection? Sample Program Summary What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. After we cover regular Python, the lessons will cover JPython. This will form a link between Python and Java. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this lesson in a separate... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/626331 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is A String What Are Escape Sequences More Ways to Span Lines String Concatenation More on Strings Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Learn to Program using Python: Lesson 1, Getting Started provides an overall description... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/630721 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What Is a Dictionary? Summary of Dictionary Characteristics Sample Program Summary What's Next? Review Listing of Sample Program Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. After we cover regular Python, the lessons will cover JPython. This will form a link between Python and Java. Viewing tip You may find it useful to open another copy of this... http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/628971 By Richard Baldwin Preface Introduction What is a Subscription? What is a Sequence? What is a Mapping? What is a Slicing? What is a Mutable Sequence? What is a List? Some Sample Programs Review Preface This document is part of a series of online tutorial lessons designed to teach you how to program using the Python scripting language. Something for everyone Beginners start at the beginning, and experienced programmers jump in further along. Introduction What you have learned You have... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2003/04/17/metaclasses.html by David Mertz 04/17/2003 This series of articles by David Mertz assumes readers have a familiarity with basic object-oriented programming concepts: inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. We pick up where the basics leave off; how some "exotic" techniques can make applied programming tasks easier, more maintainable, and just plain more elegant. This series will primarily present examples in Python, but the concepts apply to other programming languages too. This first installment... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2003/02/27/simpy.html by Klaus Müller and Tony Vignaux 02/27/2003 Simulating complex real-world systems is now possible with SimPy , an open source simulation package. SimPy, originally developed by the authors of this article, has been developed to production quality by a small team of enthusiastic open sourcerers around the world. As far as we know, it is the only existing discrete event Python simulation package. Actually, it is one of a very small number of fully object oriented simulation systems. This... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/04/04/pythonnews.html 04/04/2002 Unix users understand the power of the command line. On the command line you can pass arguments to your applications as easily as you would pass an argument to a function. Standard Unix convention is to pass arguments prefixed by a - or -- . Some options can be specified in more than one way -f or --file , for example. Some can be combined, like GNU's tar, -xvfz , to verbosely expand a compressed file. The more options you have, the more code you need to parse them properly.... http://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2003/05/13/email.html by Jon Udell May 13, 2003 Related Reading Jython Essentials By Samuele Pedroni , Noel Rappin Table of Contents Index Sample Chapter A few days ago, during three different phone calls, I had to wait while somebody fumbled around in their email looking for a message. And one of the fumblers was me. Something had to give. Last fall, I wrote about ZOË , an innovative (and free) Java-based local web service that indexes your email in a client-independent fashion, building usefully... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2001/10/25/pythonnews.html 10/25/2001 Among the great questions of programming is the connection between programming, mathematics, and music. Although it is only anecdotal evidence, many brilliant programmers also have an aptitude for music. Listening to classical or rock music is said to temporarily improve your test scores (the Mozart effect). Eric Raymond even suggests an analytical ear for music -- along with reading science fiction and studying Zen -- is a common style point among hackers, something you... http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/01/19/amara.html by Uche Ogbuji January 19, 2005 As part of my roundup of Python data bindings, I introduced my own Anobind project. Over the column's history, I've also developed other code to meet some need emphasized in one of the previous articles. I recently collected all of these various little projects together into one open source package of XML processing add-ons, Amara XML Toolkit . Amara is meant to complement 4Suite in that 4Suite works towards fidelity to XML technical ideals, while Amara... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/06/04/guido.html by Bruce Stewart 06/04/2002 Guido van Rossum created the Python language in the early 1990s at CWI in Amsterdam, responding to an inner desire for a more elegant and powerful scripting language. He now leads the PythonLabs development team at Zope Corporation. Guido will be presenting a session on the State of the Python Union at O'Reilly's upcoming Open Source Convention. He recently took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about Python and open source... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/02/14/pythonnews.html 02/14/2002 Stackless was a controversial modification to Python, separating its execution stack from the C execution stack, the C-stack. With Stackless you could set up multiple execution chains, switch between them, change them, or restart them. Uncoupled from the C-stack, you could capture the control flow of your Python program and manipulate it any way you wanted to. Manipulating the execution stack is the basic idea behind continuations, a building block for many other obscure but... http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/25/py.html by Uche Ogbuji September 25, 2002 As you probably noticed in the table of Python software in the previous column , many of the Python tools for XML processing are available in the PyXML package. There are also XML libraries built into Python, but these are pretty well covered in the official documentation . Happenings... One of the things I'm going to do in these columns is provide brief information on significant new happenings relevant to Python-XML development, including significant... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/05/16/pythonnews.html 05/16/2002 When Bryan Richard wrote me a few months ago to ask if I thought a Python magazine would make it, I told him it probably would, if it were a labor of love. I didn't think he would make much money off the venture, but it would sure be great to have something out there. Maybe it could take off the way The Perl Journal did. Bryan decided it was love, and a few months later, the first issue Py was mailed out to early subscribers. Py 01.01 is printed on Electrobrite, a paper... http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/python/2002/07/18/pycrust.html by Patrick O'Brien 07/18/2002 Developing the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a Python application is often a tedious, time-consuming, and opaque process. This is the exact opposite of how Python programmers would describe most other aspects of software development using Python. So what is it about GUI applications that causes them to be so hard? Perhaps more importantly, can anything be done to improve the situation? This article attempts to answer that question and describe how the...