A Guide to Python

This tutorial specially made for Python Beginners. "A Guide to Python" helps newbies learn the Python Programming Language in an easy way.

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Python is a general-purpose interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, and high-level programming language. It was created by Guido van Rossum during 1985- 1990. Like Perl, Python source code is also available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This tutorial gives enough understanding on Python programming language.

• Python is Interpreted: Python is processed at runtime by the interpreter. You do not need to compile your program before executing it. This is similar to PERL and PHP.

• Python is Interactive: You can actually sit at a Python prompt and interact with the interpreter directly to write your programs.

• Python is Object-Oriented: Python supports Object-Oriented style or technique of programming that encapsulates code within objects.

• Python is a Beginner's Language: Python is a great language for the beginner-level programmers and supports the development of a wide range of applications from simple text processing to WWW browsers to games.

Prerequisites

You should have a basic understanding of Computer Programming terminologies. A basic understanding of any of the programming languages is a plus.

Python Features

Easy-to-learn: Python has few keywords, simple structure, and a clearly defined syntax. This allows the student to pick up the language quickly.

• Easy-to-read: Python code is more clearly defined and visible to the eyes.

• Easy-to-maintain: Python's source code is fairly easy-to-maintain.

• A broad standard library: Python's bulk of the library is very portable and cross-platform compatible on UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh.

• Interactive Mode: Python has support for an interactive mode which allows interactive testing and debugging of snippets of code.

• Portable: Python can run on a wide variety of hardware platforms and has the same interface on all platforms.

• Extendable: You can add low-level modules to the Python interpreter. These modules enable programmers to add to or customize their tools to be more efficient.

• Databases: Python provides interfaces to all major commercial databases.

• GUI Programming: Python supports GUI applications that can be created and ported to many system calls, libraries and windows systems, such as Windows MFC, Macintosh, and the X Window system of Unix.

• Scalable: Python provides a better structure and support for large programs than shell scripting.

Apart from the above-mentioned features, Python has a big list of good features, few are listed below:

• Supports functional and structured programming methods as well as OOP.

• Can be used as a scripting language or can be compiled to byte-code for building large applications.

• Provides very high-level dynamic data types and supports dynamic type checking.

• Supports automatic garbage collection.

• Can be easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java.

Pythonic

Python has an idiomatic term Pythonic which basically means writing code well but also in such a manner that conforms to the community and to take advantage of the language to do tasks.

Non-Pythonic

i = 0
while i < 5:
   print(i)
   i += 1

Pythonic

for x in range(5)
  print(i)

Examples

Simple Example

print "Hello, Python!"

Python Character Set

Any program written in Python contains words or statement which follow a sequence of characters.Python uses the following characters set:

• • Letters:Upper cass and lower case letters.
• • Digital:0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
• • Special Symbol: Underscore( _ ),(,),+,-,* ,& , ^ ,% , $ ,# ,! ,single quotes('), Double quote s("), Colon(:),and Semi Colon(;).
• • White Spaces:Space,Tab.