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Product Author Bios

Doug Hellmann is currently a senior developer with Racemi, Inc., and communications director of the Python Software Foundation. He has been programming in Python since version 1.4 and has worked on a variety of Unix and non-Unix platforms for projects in fields such as mapping, medical news publishing, banking, and data center automation. After a year as a regular columnist for Python Magazine, he served as editor-in-chief from 2008-2009. Since 2007, Doug has published the popular "Python Module of the Week" series on his blog. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

“Hellmann’s writing has become an indispensable resource for me and many others as it fills a critical gap in Python Documentation with examples.”

— Jesse Noller, Python Core Developer and PSF Board Member

Master the Powerful Python Standard Library through Real Code Examples

 

The Python Standard Library contains hundreds of modules for interacting with the operating system, interpreter, and Internet—all extensively tested and ready to jump-start your application development. The Python Standard Library by Example introduces virtually every important area of the Python 2.7 library through concise, stand-alone source code/output examples, designed for easy learning and reuse.

 

Building on his popular Python Module of the Week blog series, author and Python expert Doug Hellmann focuses on “showing” not “telling.” He explains code behavior through downloadable examples that fully demonstrate each feature.

 

You’ll find practical code for working with text, data types, algorithms, math, file systems, networking, the Internet, XML, email, cryptography, concurrency, runtime and language services, and much more. Each section fully covers one module, and links to valuable additional resources, making this book an ideal tutorial and reference. Coverage includes

  • Manipulating text with string, textwrap, re, and difflib
  • Implementing data structures: collections, array, queue, struct, copy, and more
  • Reading, writing, and manipulating files and directories
  • Regular expression pattern matching
  • Exchanging data and providing for persistence Archiving and data compression
  • Managing processes and threads
  • Using application “building blocks”: parsing command-line options, prompting for passwords, scheduling events, and logging
  • Testing, debugging, and compilation
  • Controlling runtime configuration
  • Using module and package utilities

If you’re new to Python, this book will quickly give you access to a whole new world of functionality. If you’ve worked with Python before, you’ll discover new, powerful solutions and better ways to use the modules you’ve already tried.

Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A lot of information at a great price; I suggest a hard copy because you'll want to flip through it quickly, July 25, 2011
This review is from: The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library) (Paperback)
If you have ever worked with Python, you have probably come across Python Module of the Week (PyMOTW) or virtualenvwrapper. Both are the work of Doug Hellmann. He has now brought to life The Python Standard Library By Example. If Python gives you the batteries, Hellmann gives you not only an instruction manual but the "on" switch to get you going right away.

The Python documentation is really great, but might leave some with a "some assembly required" feeling. The book's examples aim to be more complete, while still covering a serious breadth of the Standard Library. Do not expect to use all of the examples in your project without some modification, customization and expansion. After all, they are miniature projects in their own right.

By the Numbers:

It weighs in at a whopping 1300-something pages across 19 chapters. This translates roughly to a 2-inch print copy, or a 7.3 MB PDF. The accompanying source is 5.5 MB after unzipping and contains 113... Read more
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Many clear examples of how to use Python's standard library, June 15, 2011
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This review is from: The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library) (Paperback)
I had pre-ordered this book, as the author's website and blogs have always been excellent in their ability to give concise examples for the usage of Python's extensive standard library. I have now had the book for a few days and I am very pleased with it.

I sometimes wonder when I will buy my last physical book, as digital versions are becoming standard. This book, however, is a great example of some of the great computer books that lived most of their lives right next to my computer: a well-organized reference manual with a great index and table of contents (you can view these on the Amazon page for this title).

I teach Python in my high school Computer Science classes, and have always loved the fact that I can write Python code quickly and successfully for so many tasks that come up when teaching. Learning Python is one thing--being able to utilize the standard library in "Pythonic" ways is another skill entirely. The core language is perfect for... Read more
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars useful contribution to python literature, July 15, 2011
By 
Michael Deacon (Berkeley, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library) (Paperback)
While most python books teach you how to write code in the language, this book takes a different approach - it shows you how to build python programs using existing code from the standard library. As every python programmer knows, the best way to leverage the power of the language is to use the built-in functionality of the library.

True to its title, the book features numerous examples, each one fully annotated, explaining how to use the modules.

Need to parse text using regular expressions? Python has a module for that. What about searching file system directories recursively? Network sockets? Those and hundreds of other useful tools are available in the standard library. Hellman shows you how to use the existing modules in the library so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

A word of caution for those who are new to python: the book assumes familiarity with basic language syntax.

Overall, this book compares favorably with the other... Read more
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Online Sample Chapter

The Python Standard Library: Data Structures

Table of Contents

Tables xxxi

Foreword xxxiii

Acknowledgments xxxvii

About the Author xxxix

 

Introduction 1

 

Chapter 1: Text 3

1.1 string—Text Constants and Templates 4

1.2 textwrap—Formatting Text Paragraphs 9

1.3 re—Regular Expressions 13

1.4 difflib—Compare Sequences 61

 

Chapter 2: Data Structures 69

2.1 collections—Container Data Types 70

2.2 array—Sequence of Fixed-Type Data 84

2.3 heapq—Heap Sort Algorithm 87

2.4 bisect—Maintain Lists in Sorted Order 93

2.5 Queue—Thread-Safe FIFO Implementation 96

2.6 struct—Binary Data Structures 102

2.7 weakref—Impermanent References to Objects 106

2.8 copy—Duplicate Objects 117

2.9 pprint—Pretty-Print Data Structures 123

 

Chapter 3: Algorithms 129

3.1 functools—Tools for Manipulating Functions 129

3.2 itertools—Iterator Functions 141

3.3 operator—Functional Interface to Built-in Operators 153

3.4 contextlib—Context Manager Utilities 163

 

Chapter 4: Dates and Times 173

4.1 time—Clock Time 173

4.2 datetime—Date and Time Value Manipulation 180

4.3 calendar—Work with Dates 191

 

Chapter 5: Mathematics 197

5.1 decimal—Fixed and Floating-Point Math 197

5.2 fractions—Rational Numbers 207

5.3 random—Pseudorandom Number Generators 211

5.4 math—Mathematical Functions 223

 

Chapter 6: The File System 247

6.1 os.path—Platform-Independent Manipulation of Filenames 248

6.2 glob—Filename Pattern Matching 257

6.3 linecache—Read Text Files Efficiently 261

6.4 tempfile—Temporary File System Objects 265

6.5 shutil—High-Level File Operations 271

6.6 mmap—Memory-Map Files 279

6.7 codecs—String Encoding and Decoding 284

6.8 StringIO—Text Buffers with a File-like API 314

6.9 fnmatch—UNIX-Style Glob Pattern Matching 315

6.10 dircache—Cache Directory Listings 319

6.11 filecmp—Compare Files 322

 

Chapter 7: Data Persistence and Exchange 333

7.1 pickle—Object Serialization 334

7.2 shelve—Persistent Storage of Objects 343

7.3 anydbm—DBM-Style Databases 347

7.4 whichdb—Identify DBM-Style Database Formats 350

7.5 sqlite3—Embedded Relational Database 351

7.6 xml.etree.ElementTree—XML Manipulation API 387

7.7 csv—Comma-Separated Value Files 411

 

Chapter 8: Data Compression and Archiving 421

8.1 zlib—GNU zlib Compression 421

8.2 gzip—Read and Write GNU Zip Files 430

8.3 bz2—bzip2 Compression 436

8.4 tarfile—Tar Archive Access 448

8.5 zipfile—ZIP Archive Access 457

 

Chapter 9: Cryptography 469

9.1 hashlib—Cryptographic Hashing 469

9.2 hmac—Cryptographic Message Signing and Verification 473

 

Chapter 10: Processes and Threads 481

10.1 subprocess—Spawning Additional Processes 481

10.2 signal—Asynchronous System Events 497

10.3 threading—Manage Concurrent Operations 505

10.4 multiprocessing—Manage Processes like Threads 529

 

Chapter 11: Networking 561

11.1 socket—Network Communication 561

11.2 select—Wait for I/O Efficiently 594

11.3 SocketServer—Creating Network Servers 609

11.4 asyncore—Asynchronous I/O 619

11.5 asynchat—Asynchronous Protocol Handler 629

 

Chapter 12: The Internet 637

12.1 urlparse—Split URLs into Components 638

12.2 BaseHTTPServer—Base Classes for Implementing Web Servers 644

12.3 urllib—Network Resource Access 651

12.4 urllib2—Network Resource Access 657

12.5 base64—Encode Binary Data with ASCII 670

12.6 robotparser—Internet Spider Access Control 674

12.7 Cookie—HTTP Cookies 677

12.8 uuid—Universally Unique Identifiers 684

12.9 json—JavaScript Object Notation 690

12.10 xmlrpclib—Client Library for XML-RPC 702

12.11 SimpleXMLRPCServer—An XML-RPC Server 714

 

Chapter 13: Email 727

13.1 smtplib—Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Client 727

13.2 smtpd—Sample Mail Servers 734

13.3 imaplib—IMAP4 Client Library 738

13.4 mailbox—Manipulate Email Archives 758

 

Chapter 14: Application Building Blocks 769

14.1 getopt—Command-Line Option Parsing 770

14.2 optparse—Command-Line Option Parser 777

14.3 argparse—Command-Line Option and Argument Parsing 795

14.4 readline—The GNU Readline Library 823

14.5 getpass—Secure Password Prompt 836

14.6 cmd—Line-Oriented Command Processors 839

14.7 shlex—Parse Shell-Style Syntaxes 852

14.8 ConfigParser—Work with Configuration Files 861

14.9 logging—Report Status, Error, and Informational Messages 878

14.10 fileinput—Command-Line Filter Framework 883

14.11 atexit—Program Shutdown Callbacks 890

14.12 sched—Timed Event Scheduler 894


Chapter 15: Internationalization and Localization 899

15.1 gettext—Message Catalogs 899

15.2 locale—Cultural Localization API 909

 

Chapter 16: Developer Tools 919

16.1 pydoc—Online Help for Modules 920

16.2 doctest—Testing through Documentation 921

16.3 unittest—Automated Testing Framework 949

16.4 traceback—Exceptions and Stack Traces 958

16.5 cgitb—Detailed Traceback Reports 965

16.6 pdb—Interactive Debugger 975

16.7 trace—Follow Program Flow 1012

16.8 profile and pstats—Performance Analysis 1022

16.9 timeit—Time the Execution of Small Bits of Python Code 1031

16.10 compileall—Byte-Compile Source Files 1037

16.11 pyclbr—Class Browser 1039

 

Chapter 17: Runtime Features 1045

17.1 site—Site-Wide Configuration 1046

17.2 sys—System-Specific Configuration 1055

17.3 os—Portable Access to Operating System Specific Features 1108

17.4 platform—System Version Information 1129

17.5 resource—System Resource Management 1134

17.6 gc—Garbage Collector 1138

17.7 sysconfig—Interpreter Compile-Time Configuration 1160

 

Chapter 18: Language Tools 1169

18.1 warnings—Nonfatal Alerts 1170

18.2 abc—Abstract Base Classes 1178

18.3 dis—Python Bytecode Disassembler 1186

18.4 inspect—Inspect Live Objects 1200

18.5 exceptions—Built-in Exception Classes 1216

 

Chapter 19: Modules and Packages 1235

19.1 imp—Python’s Import Mechanism 1235

19.2 zipimport—Load Python Code from ZIP Archives 1240

19.3 pkgutil—Package Utilities 1247

 

Index of Python Modules 1259

Index 1261

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