3. An Informal Introduction to Python In the following examples, input and output are distinguished by the presence or absence of prompts ( >>> and … ): to repeat the example, you must type everything after the prompt, when the prompt appears; lines that do not begin with a prompt are output from the interpreter. Note that a secondary prompt on a line by itself in an example means you must type a blank line; this is used to end a multi-line command. Many of the examples in this manual, even those entered at the interactive prompt, include comments. Comments in Python start with the hash character, # , and extend to the end of the physical line. A comment may appear at the start of a line or following whitespace or code, but not within a string literal. A hash character within a string literal is just a hash character. Since comments are to clarify code and are not interpreted by Python, they may be omitted when typing in examples. Some examples: # this is the...
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2. Using the Python Interpreter 2.1. Invoking the Interpreter The Python interpreter is usually installed as /usr/local/bin/python3.8 on those machines where it is available; putting /usr/local/bin in your Unix shell’s search path makes it possible to start it by typing the command: python3.8 to the shell. 1 Since the choice of the directory where the interpreter lives is an installation option, other places are possible; check with your local Python guru or system administrator. (E.g., /usr/local/python is a popular alternative location.) On Windows machines where you have installed Python from the Microsoft Store , the python3.8 command will be available. If you have the py.exe launcher installed, you can use the py command. See Excursus: Setting environment variables for other ways to launch Python. Typing an end-of-file character ( Control-D on Unix, Control-Z on Windows) at the primary prompt causes the interpreter to exit with a zero exit status. If t...
1. Whetting Your Appetite If you do much work on computers, eventually you find that there’s some task you’d like to automate. For example, you may wish to perform a search-and-replace over a large number of text files, or rename and rearrange a bunch of photo files in a complicated way. Perhaps you’d like to write a small custom database, or a specialized GUI application, or a simple game. If you’re a professional software developer, you may have to work with several C/C++/Java libraries but find the usual write/compile/test/re-compile cycle is too slow. Perhaps you’re writing a test suite for such a library and find writing the testing code a tedious task. Or maybe you’ve written a program that could use an extension language, and you don’t want to design and implement a whole new language for your application. Python is just the language for you. You could write a Unix shell script or Windows batch files for some of these tasks, but shell scripts are best at moving aro...
The Python Tutorial Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language. It has efficient high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming. Python’s elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on most platforms. The Python interpreter and the extensive standard library are freely available in source or binary form for all major platforms from the Python Web site, https://www.python.org/ , and may be freely distributed. The same site also contains distributions of and pointers to many free third party Python modules, programs and tools, and additional documentation. The Python interpreter is easily extended with new functions and data types implemented in C or C++ (or other languages callable from C). Python is also suitable as an extension language for customizable applications. This tutorial introduces the...
