Part 1 Starting out

1 About Python: Why should I use Python?; What Python does well; What Python doesn’t do as well; Why learn Python 3?; Summary
2 Getting started: Installing Python; IDLE and the basic interactive mode; Using IDLE’s Python Shell window; Hello, world; Using the interactive prompt to explore Python; Summary
3 The Quick Python overview: Python synopsis; Built-in data types; Control flow structures; Module creation; Object-oriented programming; Summary

Part 2 The essentials

4 The absolute basics: Indentation and block structuring; Differentiating comments; Variables and assignments; Expressions; Strings; Numbers; The None value; Getting input from the user; Built-in operators; Basic Python style; Summary
5 Lists, tuples, and sets: Lists are like arrays; List indices; Modifying lists; Sorting lists; Other common list operations; Nested lists and deep copies; Tuples; Sets; Summary
6 Strings: Strings as sequences of characters; Basic string operations; Special characters and escape sequences; String methods; Converting from objects to strings; Using the format method; Formatting strings with %; Bytes; Summary
7 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; Summary
8 Control flow: The while loop; The if-elif-else statement; The for loop; List and dictionary comprehensions; Statements, blocks, and indentation; Boolean values and expressions; Writing a simple program to analyze a text file; Summary
9 Functions: Basic function definitions; Function parameter options; Mutable objects as arguments; Local, nonlocal, and global variables; Assigning functions to variables; lambda expressions; Generator functions; Decorators; Summary
10 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; Summary
11 Python programs: Creating a very basic program; Making a script directly executable on UNIX; Scripts on Mac OS X; Script execution options in Windows; Scripts on Windows vs. scripts on UNIX; Programs and modules; Distributing Python applications; Summary
12 Using the filesystem: Paths and pathnames; Getting information about files; More filesystem operations; Processing all files in a directory subtree; Summary
13 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; Reading structured binary data with the struct module; Pickling objects into files; Shelving objects; Summary
14 Exceptions: Introduction to exceptions; Exceptions in Python; Using with; Summary
15 Classes and object-oriented programming: Defining classes; Instance variables; Methods; Class variables; Static methods and class methods; Inheritance; Inheritance with class and instance variables; Private variables and private methods; Using @property for more flexible instance variables; Scoping rules and namespaces for class instances; Destructors and memory management; Multiple inheritance; Summary
16 Graphical user interfaces: Installing Tkinter; Starting Tk and using Tkinter; Principles of Tkinter; A simple Tkinter application; Creating widgets; Widget placement; Using classes to manage Tkinter applications; What else can Tkinter do?; Alternatives to Tkinter; Summary

Part 3 Advanced language features

17 Regular expressions: What is a regular expression?; Regular expressions with special characters; Regular expressions and raw strings; Extracting matched text from strings; Substituting text with regular expressions; Summary
18 Packages: What is a package?; A first example; A concrete example; The __all__ attribute; Proper use of packages; Summary
19 Data types as objects: Types are objects, too; Using types; Types and user-defined classes; Duck typing; Summary
20 Advanced object-oriented features: What is a special method attribute?; Making an object behave like a list; Giving an object full list capability; Subclassing from built-in types; When to use special method attributes; Metaclasses; Abstract base classes; Summary

Part 4 Where can you go from here?

21 Testing your code made easy(-er): Why you need to have tests; The assert statement; Tests in docstrings: doctests; Using unit tests to test everything, every time; Summary
22 Moving from Python 2 to Python 3: Porting from 2 to 3; Testing with Python 2.6 and -3; Using 2to3 to convert the code; Testing and common problems; Using the same code for 2 and 3; Summary
23 Using Python libraries: “Batteries included”—the standard library; Moving beyond the standard library; Adding more Python libraries; Installing Python libraries using setup.py; PyPI, a.k.a. “the Cheese Shop”; Summary 289
24 Network, web, and database programming: Accessing databases in Python; Network programming in Python; Creating a Python web application; Sample project—creating a message wall; Summary