Dive Into Python

Chapter 1. Installing Python

• 1.3. Python on Mac OS X
  • Example 1.1. Two versions of Python

• 1.5. Python on RedHat Linux
  • Example 1.2. Installing on RedHat Linux 9

• 1.6. Python on Debian GNU/Linux
  • Example 1.3. Installing on Debian GNU/Linux

• 1.7. Python Installation from Source
  • Example 1.4. Installing from source

• 1.8. The Interactive Shell
  • Example 1.5. First Steps in the Interactive Shell

Chapter 2. Your First Python Program

• 2.1. Diving in
  • Example 2.1. odbchelper.py

• 2.3. Documenting Functions
  • Example 2.2. Defining the buildConnectionString Function's doc string

• 2.4. Everything Is an Object
  • Example 2.3. Accessing the buildConnectionString Function's doc string

• 2.4.1. The Import Search Path
  • Example 2.4. Import Search Path

• 2.5. Indenting Code
  • Example 2.5. Indenting the buildConnectionString Function
  • Example 2.6. if Statements

Chapter 3. Native Datatypes

• 3.1.1. Defining Dictionaries
  • Example 3.1. Defining a Dictionary

• 3.1.2. Modifying Dictionaries
  • Example 3.2. Modifying a Dictionary
  • Example 3.3. Dictionary Keys Are Case-Sensitive
  • Example 3.4. Mixing Datatypes in a Dictionary

• 3.1.3. Deleting Items From Dictionaries
  • Example 3.5. Deleting Items from a Dictionary

• 3.2.1. Defining Lists
  • Example 3.6. Defining a List
  • Example 3.7. Negative List Indices
  • Example 3.8. Slicing a List
  • Example 3.9. Slicing Shorthand

• 3.2.2. Adding Elements to Lists
  • Example 3.10. Adding Elements to a List
  • Example 3.11. The Difference between extend and append

• 3.2.3. Searching Lists
  • Example 3.12. Searching a List

• 3.2.4. Deleting List Elements
  • Example 3.13. Removing Elements from a List

• 3.2.5. Using List Operators
  • Example 3.14. List Operators

• 3.3. Introducing Tuples
  • Example 3.15. Defining a tuple
  • Example 3.16. Tuples Have No Methods

• 3.4. Declaring variables
  • Example 3.17. Defining the myParams Variable

• 3.4.1. Referencing Variables
  • Example 3.18. Referencing an Unbound Variable

• 3.4.2. Assigning Multiple Values at Once
  • Example 3.19. Assigning multiple values at once
  • Example 3.20. Assigning Consecutive Values

• 3.5. Formatting Strings
  • Example 3.21. Introducing String Formatting
  • Example 3.22. String Formatting vs. Concatenating
  • Example 3.23. Formatting Numbers

• 3.6. Mapping Lists
  • Example 3.24. Introducing List Comprehensions
  • Example 3.25. The keys, values, and items Functions
  • Example 3.26. List Comprehensions in buildConnectionString, Step by Step

• 3.7. Joining Lists and Splitting Strings
  • Example 3.27. Output of odbchelper.py
  • Example 3.28. Splitting a String

Chapter 4. The Power Of Introspection

• 4.1. Diving In
  • Example 4.1. apihelper.py
  • Example 4.2. Sample Usage of apihelper.py
  • Example 4.3. Advanced Usage of apihelper.py

• 4.2. Using Optional and Named Arguments
  • Example 4.4. Valid Calls of info

• 4.3.1. The type Function
  • Example 4.5. Introducing type

• 4.3.2. The str Function
  • Example 4.6. Introducing str
  • Example 4.7. Introducing dir
  • Example 4.8. Introducing callable

• 4.3.3. Built-In Functions
  • Example 4.9. Built-in Attributes and Functions

• 4.4. Getting Object References With getattr
  • Example 4.10. Introducing getattr

• 4.4.1. getattr with Modules
  • Example 4.11. The getattr Function in apihelper.py

• 4.4.2. getattr As a Dispatcher
  • Example 4.12. Creating a Dispatcher with getattr
  • Example 4.13. getattr Default Values

• 4.5. Filtering Lists
  • Example 4.14. Introducing List Filtering

• 4.6. The Peculiar Nature of and and or
  • Example 4.15. Introducing and
  • Example 4.16. Introducing or

• 4.6.1. Using the and-or Trick
  • Example 4.17. Introducing the and-or Trick
  • Example 4.18. When the and-or Trick Fails
  • Example 4.19. Using the and-or Trick Safely

• 4.7. Using lambda Functions
  • Example 4.20. Introducing lambda Functions

• 4.7.1. Real-World lambda Functions
  • Example 4.21. split With No Arguments

• 4.8. Putting It All Together
  • Example 4.22. Getting a doc string Dynamically
  • Example 4.23. Why Use str on a doc string?
  • Example 4.24. Introducing ljust
  • Example 4.25. Printing a List

Chapter 5. Objects and Object-Orientation

• 5.1. Diving In
  • Example 5.1. fileinfo.py

• 5.2. Importing Modules Using from module import
  • Example 5.2. import module vs. from module import

• 5.3. Defining Classes
  • Example 5.3. The Simplest Python Class
  • Example 5.4. Defining the FileInfo Class

• 5.3.1. Initializing and Coding Classes
  • Example 5.5. Initializing the FileInfo Class
  • Example 5.6. Coding the FileInfo Class

• 5.4. Instantiating Classes
  • Example 5.7. Creating a FileInfo Instance

• 5.4.1. Garbage Collection
  • Example 5.8. Trying to Implement a Memory Leak

• 5.5. Exploring UserDict: A Wrapper Class
  • Example 5.9. Defining the UserDict Class
  • Example 5.10. UserDict Normal Methods
  • Example 5.11. Inheriting Directly from Built-In Datatype dict

• 5.6.1. Getting and Setting Items
  • Example 5.12. The __getitem__ Special Method
  • Example 5.13. The __setitem__ Special Method
  • Example 5.14. Overriding __setitem__ in MP3FileInfo
  • Example 5.15. Setting an MP3FileInfo's name

• 5.7. Advanced Special Class Methods
  • Example 5.16. More Special Methods in UserDict

• 5.8. Introducing Class Attributes
  • Example 5.17. Introducing Class Attributes
  • Example 5.18. Modifying Class Attributes

• 5.9. Private Functions
  • Example 5.19. Trying to Call a Private Method

Chapter 6. Exceptions and File Handling

• 6.1. Handling Exceptions
  • Example 6.1. Opening a Non-Existent File

• 6.1.1. Using Exceptions For Other Purposes
  • Example 6.2. Supporting Platform-Specific Functionality

• 6.2. Working with File Objects
  • Example 6.3. Opening a File

• 6.2.1. Reading Files
  • Example 6.4. Reading a File

• 6.2.2. Closing Files
  • Example 6.5. Closing a File

• 6.2.3. Handling I/O Errors
  • Example 6.6. File Objects in MP3FileInfo

• 6.2.4. Writing to Files
  • Example 6.7. Writing to Files

• 6.3. Iterating with for Loops
  • Example 6.8. Introducing the for Loop
  • Example 6.9. Simple Counters
  • Example 6.10. Iterating Through a Dictionary
  • Example 6.11. for Loop in MP3FileInfo

• 6.4. Using sys.modules
  • Example 6.12. Introducing sys.modules
  • Example 6.13. Using sys.modules
  • Example 6.14. The __module__ Class Attribute
  • Example 6.15. sys.modules in fileinfo.py

• 6.5. Working with Directories
  • Example 6.16. Constructing Pathnames
  • Example 6.17. Splitting Pathnames
  • Example 6.18. Listing Directories
  • Example 6.19. Listing Directories in fileinfo.py
  • Example 6.20. Listing Directories with glob

• 6.6. Putting It All Together
  • Example 6.21. listDirectory

Chapter 7. Regular Expressions

• 7.2. Case Study: Street Addresses
  • Example 7.1. Matching at the End of a String
  • Example 7.2. Matching Whole Words

• 7.3.1. Checking for Thousands
  • Example 7.3. Checking for Thousands

• 7.3.2. Checking for Hundreds
  • Example 7.4. Checking for Hundreds

• 7.4. Using the {n,m} Syntax
  • Example 7.5. The Old Way: Every Character Optional
  • Example 7.6. The New Way: From n o m

• 7.4.1. Checking for Tens and Ones
  • Example 7.7. Checking for Tens
  • Example 7.8. Validating Roman Numerals with {n,m}

• 7.5. Verbose Regular Expressions
  • Example 7.9. Regular Expressions with Inline Comments

• 7.6. Case study: Parsing Phone Numbers
  • Example 7.10. Finding Numbers
  • Example 7.11. Finding the Extension
  • Example 7.12. Handling Different Separators
  • Example 7.13. Handling Numbers Without Separators
  • Example 7.14. Handling Leading Characters
  • Example 7.15. Phone Number, Wherever I May Find Ye
  • Example 7.16. Parsing Phone Numbers (Final Version)

Chapter 8. HTML Processing

• 8.1. Diving in
  • Example 8.1. BaseHTMLProcessor.py
  • Example 8.2. dialect.py
  • Example 8.3. Output of dialect.py

• 8.2. Introducing sgmllib.py
  • Example 8.4. Sample test of sgmllib.py

• 8.3. Extracting data from HTML documents
  • Example 8.5. Introducing urllib
  • Example 8.6. Introducing urllister.py
  • Example 8.7. Using urllister.py

• 8.4. Introducing BaseHTMLProcessor.py
  • Example 8.8. Introducing BaseHTMLProcessor
  • Example 8.9. BaseHTMLProcessor output

• 8.5. locals and globals
  • Example 8.10. Introducing locals
  • Example 8.11. Introducing globals
  • Example 8.12. locals is read-only, globals is not

• 8.6. Dictionary-based string formatting
  • Example 8.13. Introducing dictionary-based string formatting
  • Example 8.14. Dictionary-based string formatting in BaseHTMLProcessor.py
  • Example 8.15. More dictionary-based string formatting

• 8.7. Quoting attribute values
  • Example 8.16. Quoting attribute values

• 8.8. Introducing dialect.py
  • Example 8.17. Handling specific tags
  • Example 8.18. SGMLParser
  • Example 8.19. Overriding the handle_data method

• 8.9. Putting it all together
  • Example 8.20. The translate function, part 1
  • Example 8.21. The translate function, part 2: curiouser and curiouser
  • Example 8.22. The translate function, part 3

Chapter 9. XML Processing

• 9.1. Diving in
  • Example 9.1. kgp.py
  • Example 9.2. toolbox.py
  • Example 9.3. Sample output of kgp.py
  • Example 9.4. Simpler output from kgp.py

• 9.2. Packages
  • Example 9.5. Loading an XML document (a sneak peek)
  • Example 9.6. File layout of a package
  • Example 9.7. Packages are modules, too

• 9.3. Parsing XML
  • Example 9.8. Loading an XML document (for real this time)
  • Example 9.9. Getting child nodes
  • Example 9.10. toxml works on any node
  • Example 9.11. Child nodes can be text
  • Example 9.12. Drilling down all the way to text

• 9.4. Unicode
  • Example 9.13. Introducing unicode
  • Example 9.14. Storing non-ASCII characters
  • Example 9.15. sitecustomize.py
  • Example 9.16. Effects of setting the default encoding
  • Example 9.17. Specifying encoding in .py files
  • Example 9.18. russiansample.xml
  • Example 9.19. Parsing russiansample.xml

• 9.5. Searching for elements
  • Example 9.20. binary.xml
  • Example 9.21. Introducing getElementsByTagName
  • Example 9.22. Every element is searchable
  • Example 9.23. Searching is actually recursive

• 9.6. Accessing element attributes
  • Example 9.24. Accessing element attributes
  • Example 9.25. Accessing individual attributes

Chapter 10. Scripts and Streams

• 10.1. Abstracting input sources
  • Example 10.1. Parsing XML from a file
  • Example 10.2. Parsing XML from a URL
  • Example 10.3. Parsing XML from a string (the easy but inflexible way)
  • Example 10.4. Introducing StringIO
  • Example 10.5. Parsing XML from a string (the file-like object way)
  • Example 10.6. openAnything
  • Example 10.7. Using openAnything in kgp.py

• 10.2. Standard input, output, and error
  • Example 10.8. Introducing stdout and stderr
  • Example 10.9. Redirecting output
  • Example 10.10. Redirecting error information
  • Example 10.11. Printing to stderr
  • Example 10.12. Chaining commands
  • Example 10.13. Reading from standard input in kgp.py

• 10.3. Caching node lookups
  • Example 10.14. loadGrammar
  • Example 10.15. Using the ref element cache

• 10.4. Finding direct children of a node
  • Example 10.16. Finding direct child elements

• 10.5. Creating separate handlers by node type
  • Example 10.17. Class names of parsed XML objects
  • Example 10.18. parse, a generic XML node dispatcher
  • Example 10.19. Functions called by the parse dispatcher

• 10.6. Handling command-line arguments
  • Example 10.20. Introducing sys.argv
  • Example 10.21. The contents of sys.argv
  • Example 10.22. Introducing getopt
  • Example 10.23. Handling command-line arguments in kgp.py

Chapter 11. HTTP Web Services

• 11.1. Diving in
  • Example 11.1. openanything.py

• 11.2. How not to fetch data over HTTP
  • Example 11.2. Downloading a feed the quick-and-dirty way

• 11.4. Debugging HTTP web services
  • Example 11.3. Debugging HTTP

• 11.5. Setting the User-Agent
  • Example 11.4. Introducing urllib2
  • Example 11.5. Adding headers with the Request

• 11.6. Handling Last-Modified and ETag
  • Example 11.6. Testing Last-Modified
  • Example 11.7. Defining URL handlers
  • Example 11.8. Using custom URL handlers
  • Example 11.9. Supporting ETag/If-None-Match

• 11.7. Handling redirects
  • Example 11.10. Accessing web services without a redirect handler
  • Example 11.11. Defining the redirect handler
  • Example 11.12. Using the redirect handler to detect permanent redirects
  • Example 11.13. Using the redirect handler to detect temporary redirects

• 11.8. Handling compressed data
  • Example 11.14. Telling the server you would like compressed data
  • Example 11.15. Decompressing the data
  • Example 11.16. Decompressing the data directly from the server

• 11.9. Putting it all together
  • Example 11.17. The openanything function
  • Example 11.18. The fetch function
  • Example 11.19. Using openanything.py

Chapter 12. SOAP Web Services

• 12.1. Diving In
  • Example 12.1. search.py
  • Example 12.2. Sample Usage of search.py

• 12.2.1. Installing PyXML
  • Example 12.3. Verifying PyXML Installation

• 12.2.2. Installing fpconst
  • Example 12.4. Verifying fpconst Installation

• 12.2.3. Installing SOAPpy
  • Example 12.5. Verifying SOAPpy Installation

• 12.3. First Steps with SOAP
  • Example 12.6. Getting the Current Temperature

• 12.4. Debugging SOAP Web Services
  • Example 12.7. Debugging SOAP Web Services

• 12.6. Introspecting SOAP Web Services with WSDL
  • Example 12.8. Discovering The Available Methods
  • Example 12.9. Discovering A Method's Arguments
  • Example 12.10. Discovering A Method's Return Values
  • Example 12.11. Calling A Web Service Through A WSDL Proxy

• 12.7. Searching Google
  • Example 12.12. Introspecting Google Web Services
  • Example 12.13. Searching Google
  • Example 12.14. Accessing Secondary Information From Google

• 12.8. Troubleshooting SOAP Web Services
  • Example 12.15. Calling a Method With an Incorrectly Configured Proxy
  • Example 12.16. Calling a Method With the Wrong Arguments
  • Example 12.17. Calling a Method and Expecting the Wrong Number of Return Values
  • Example 12.18. Calling a Method With An Application-Specific Error

Chapter 13. Unit Testing

• 13.3. Introducing romantest.py
  • Example 13.1. romantest.py

• 13.4. Testing for success
  • Example 13.2. testToRomanKnownValues

• 13.5. Testing for failure
  • Example 13.3. Testing bad input to toRoman
  • Example 13.4. Testing bad input to fromRoman

• 13.6. Testing for sanity
  • Example 13.5. Testing toRoman against fromRoman
  • Example 13.6. Testing for case

Chapter 14. Test-First Programming

• 14.1. roman.py, stage 1
  • Example 14.1. roman1.py
  • Example 14.2. Output of romantest1.py against roman1.py

• 14.2. roman.py, stage 2
  • Example 14.3. roman2.py
  • Example 14.4. How toRoman works
  • Example 14.5. Output of romantest2.py against roman2.py

• 14.3. roman.py, stage 3
  • Example 14.6. roman3.py
  • Example 14.7. Watching toRoman handle bad input
  • Example 14.8. Output of romantest3.py against roman3.py

• 14.4. roman.py, stage 4
  • Example 14.9. roman4.py
  • Example 14.10. How fromRoman works
  • Example 14.11. Output of romantest4.py against roman4.py

• 14.5. roman.py, stage 5
  • Example 14.12. roman5.py
  • Example 14.13. Output of romantest5.py against roman5.py

Chapter 15. Refactoring

• 15.1. Handling bugs
  • Example 15.1. The bug
  • Example 15.2. Testing for the bug (romantest61.py)
  • Example 15.3. Output of romantest61.py against roman61.py
  • Example 15.4. Fixing the bug (roman62.py)
  • Example 15.5. Output of romantest62.py against roman62.py

• 15.2. Handling changing requirements
  • Example 15.6. Modifying test cases for new requirements (romantest71.py)
  • Example 15.7. Output of romantest71.py against roman71.py
  • Example 15.8. Coding the new requirements (roman72.py)
  • Example 15.9. Output of romantest72.py against roman72.py

• 15.3. Refactoring
  • Example 15.10. Compiling regular expressions
  • Example 15.11. Compiled regular expressions in roman81.py
  • Example 15.12. Output of romantest81.py against roman81.py
  • Example 15.13. roman82.py
  • Example 15.14. Output of romantest82.py against roman82.py
  • Example 15.15. roman83.py
  • Example 15.16. Output of romantest83.py against roman83.py

• 15.4. Postscript
  • Example 15.17. roman9.py
  • Example 15.18. Output of romantest9.py against roman9.py

Chapter 16. Functional Programming

• 16.1. Diving in
  • Example 16.1. regression.py
  • Example 16.2. Sample output of regression.py

• 16.2. Finding the path
  • Example 16.3. fullpath.py
  • Example 16.4. Further explanation of os.path.abspath
  • Example 16.5. Sample output from fullpath.py
  • Example 16.6. Running scripts in the current directory

• 16.3. Filtering lists revisited
  • Example 16.7. Introducing filter
  • Example 16.8. filter in regression.py
  • Example 16.9. Filtering using list comprehensions instead

• 16.4. Mapping lists revisited
  • Example 16.10. Introducing map
  • Example 16.11. map with lists of mixed datatypes
  • Example 16.12. map in regression.py

• 16.6. Dynamically importing modules
  • Example 16.13. Importing multiple modules at once
  • Example 16.14. Importing modules dynamically
  • Example 16.15. Importing a list of modules dynamically

• 16.7. Putting it all together
  • Example 16.16. The regressionTest function
  • Example 16.17. Step 1: Get all the files
  • Example 16.18. Step 2: Filter to find the files you care about
  • Example 16.19. Step 3: Map filenames to module names
  • Example 16.20. Step 4: Mapping module names to modules
  • Example 16.21. Step 5: Loading the modules into a test suite
  • Example 16.22. Step 6: Telling unittest to use your test suite

Chapter 17. Dynamic functions

• 17.2. plural.py, stage 1
  • Example 17.1. plural1.py
  • Example 17.2. Introducing re.sub
  • Example 17.3. Back to plural1.py
  • Example 17.4. More on negation regular expressions
  • Example 17.5. More on re.sub

• 17.3. plural.py, stage 2
  • Example 17.6. plural2.py
  • Example 17.7. Unrolling the plural function

• 17.4. plural.py, stage 3
  • Example 17.8. plural3.py

• 17.5. plural.py, stage 4
  • Example 17.9. plural4.py
  • Example 17.10. plural4.py continued
  • Example 17.11. Unrolling the rules definition
  • Example 17.12. plural4.py, finishing up
  • Example 17.13. Another look at buildMatchAndApplyFunctions
  • Example 17.14. Expanding tuples when calling functions

• 17.6. plural.py, stage 5
  • Example 17.15. rules.en
  • Example 17.16. plural5.py

• 17.7. plural.py, stage 6
  • Example 17.17. plural6.py
  • Example 17.18. Introducing generators
  • Example 17.19. Using generators instead of recursion
  • Example 17.20. Generators in for loops
  • Example 17.21. Generators that generate dynamic functions

Chapter 18. Performance Tuning

• 18.1. Diving in
  • Example 18.1. soundex/stage1/soundex1a.py

• 18.2. Using the timeit Module
  • Example 18.2. Introducing timeit

• 18.3. Optimizing Regular Expressions
  • Example 18.3. Best Result So Far: soundex/stage1/soundex1e.py

• 18.4. Optimizing Dictionary Lookups
  • Example 18.4. Best Result So Far: soundex/stage2/soundex2c.py

• 18.5. Optimizing List Operations
  • Example 18.5. Best Result So Far: soundex/stage2/soundex2c.py