xxi, 422 p. : 23 cm Starting out -- About Python -- Why should I use it? -- A look at languages -- A comparison of Python and other languages -- What's the catch? -- Have your language and Python too! -- Python and open source software -- Learning Python by example -- Formatting conventions for code examples -- What you will find in this book -- Where to find more information -- Feedback -- Installing Python -- IDLE and the basic interactive mode -- Hello, world -- Using IDLE's Python Shell window -- The essentials -- The Quick Python overview -- About this chapter -- Python synopsis -- Built-in data types -- Control flow structures -- Module creation -- Object-oriented programming -- The absolute basics -- Indentation and block-structuring -- Comments -- Variables and assignments -- Expressions -- Strings -- Numbers -- The None value -- Built-in operators -- Lists and tuples -- Lists are like arrays -- List indices -- Modifying lists -- Sorting -- Other common list operations -- Nested lists and deep copies -- Tuples -- Strings -- Strings as sequences of characters -- Basic string operations -- Special characters and escape sequences -- The 'string' module -- Converting from objects to strings -- Formatting strings -- Dictionaries -- What is a dictionary? -- Other dictionary operations -- Word counting -- What can be used as a key? -- Sparse matrices -- Dictionaries as caches -- Efficiency of dictionaries -- Control flow -- The while loop -- The if-elif-else statement -- The for loop -- Statements, blocks, and indentation -- Boolean values and expressions -- Functions and procedures -- Basic function and procedure definitions -- Assigning functions to variables -- Lambda expressions -- Function parameter options -- Mutable objects as arguments -- Local and global variables -- Modules and scoping rules -- What is a module? -- A first module -- The import statement -- The module search path -- Private names in modules -- Library and third-party modules -- Python scoping rules and namespaces -- Using the filesystem -- Paths and pathnames -- Getting information about files -- More filesystem operations -- Processing all files in a directory subtree -- Reading and writing files -- Opening files and file objects -- Closing files -- Opening files in write or other modes -- Functions to read and write text or binary data -- Screen input/output and redirection -- The struct module -- Pickling objects into files -- Shelving objects -- Exceptions -- Introduction to exceptions -- Exceptions in Python -- Scripts -- Creating a very basic script -- Making a script directly executable on UNIX -- Script execution options in Windows -- Scripts on Windows versus scripts on UNIX -- Scripts and modules -- Creating executable programs with freeze -- Classes and object-oriented programming -- Defining classes -- Instance variables -- Methods -- Class variables -- Class methods -- Inheritance -- Inheritance with class and instance variables -- Private variables and private methods -- Scoping rules and namespaces for class instances -- Destructors and memory management -- Multiple inheritance -- Graphical User Interfaces and Tk -- Installing Tk -- Starting Tk and using Tkinter -- Principles of Tk -- A simple Tkinter application -- Creating widgets -- Widget placement -- What else can Tkinter do? -- Alternatives to Tk and Tkinter -- Advanced language features -- Packages -- What is a package? -- A first example -- A concrete example -- The _all_ attribute -- Proper use of packages -- Data types as objects -- Types are objects, too -- Using types -- The types module -- Types and user-defined classes -- Special method attributes -- What is a special method attribute? -- Making an object behave like a list -- Sample problem 2 -- When to use special method attributes -- Regular expressions -- What is a regular expression? -- Regular expressions with metacharacters -- Regular expressions and raw strings -- Extracting matched text from strings -- Substituting text with regular expressions -- What else can regular expressions do? -- Advanced topics and applications -- Python, Windows, and COM -- How to use Python with COM -- Installation and setup -- Anatomy of a Python COM server -- Creating and using the server from Visual Basic -- Passing data in and out of the server -- Callbacks -- Using Excel as a client -- Distributed COM -- Client side COM--automating Office -- Type libraries -- Guidelines -- Other goodies -- Extending Python with C and C++ -- Using this chapter -- Compilation details -- A first example -- Memory management -- Writing extensions in C++ -- Where to go from here -- Integration with the Java Virtual Machine: JPython -- What is JPython? -- Prologue: the false hope for a single language -- JPython, the killer scripting language -- Downloading and installing JPython -- Using Java from JPython -- Using JPython from Java -- Compiling JPython classes -- Using Java and JPython together -- HTML and Python--the HTMLgen package -- Uses for HTMLgen -- How HTMLgen renders objects -- Document model -- Tables -- Lists -- Frames -- Images -- Image maps -- The tag -- Call protocol -- CSS1 support -- CGI and forms -- Auxiliary modules -- The future -- Using 'Zope' -- Object publishing -- Advanced Zope -- What else can Python do? -- The Quick Python reference