Python documentation

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1. Whetting Your Appetite
2. Using the Python Interpreter
- 2.1. Invoking the Interpreter
  - 2.1.1. Argument Passing
  - 2.1.2. Interactive Mode
- 2.2. The Interpreter and Its Environment
3. An Informal Introduction to Python
- 3.1. Using Python as a Calculator
- 3.2. First Steps Towards Programming
4. More Control Flow Tools
5. Data Structures
6. Modules
7. Input and Output
- 7.1. Fancier Output Formatting
  - 7.1.1. Old string formatting
- 7.2. Reading and Writing Files
  - 7.2.1. Methods of File Objects
  - 7.2.2. The pickle Module
8. Errors and Exceptions
9. Classes
10. Brief Tour of the Standard Library
11. Brief Tour of the Standard Library – Part II
12. What Now?
13. Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
14. Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations
- 14.1. Representation Error

1. Introduction
- 1.1. Alternate Implementations
- 1.2. Notation
2. Lexical analysis
3. Data model
4. Execution model
- 4.1. Naming and binding
- 4.2. Exceptions
5. Expressions
6. Simple statements
7. Compound statements
8. Top-level components
9. Full Grammar specification

1. Introduction
2. Built-in Functions
3. Non-essential Built-in Functions
4. Built-in Constants
- 4.1. Constants added by the site module
5. Built-in Types
- 5.1. Truth Value Testing
- 5.2. Boolean Operations — and, or, not
- 5.3. Comparisons
- 5.4. Numeric Types — int, float, long, complex
- 5.5. Iterator Types
- 5.6. Sequence Types — str, unicode, list, tuple, buffer, xrange
- 5.7. Set Types — set, frozenset
- 5.8. Mapping Types — dict
- 5.9. File Objects
- 5.10. Context Manager Types
- 5.11. Other Built-in Types
- 5.12. Special Attributes
6. Built-in Exceptions
- 6.1. Exception hierarchy
7. String Services
- 7.1. string — Common string operations
- 7.2. re — Regular expression operations
- 7.3. struct — Interpret strings as packed binary data
- 7.4. difflib — Helpers for computing deltas
- 7.5. StringIO — Read and write strings as files
- 7.6. cStringIO — Faster version of StringIO
- 7.7. textwrap — Text wrapping and filling
- 7.8. codecs — Codec registry and base classes
- 7.9. unicodedata — Unicode Database
- 7.10. stringprep — Internet String Preparation
- 7.11. fpformat — Floating point conversions
8. Data Types
- 8.1. datetime — Basic date and time types
- 8.2. calendar — General calendar-related functions
- 8.3. collections — High-performance container datatypes
- 8.4. heapq — Heap queue algorithm
- 8.5. bisect — Array bisection algorithm
- 8.6. array — Efficient arrays of numeric values
- 8.7. sets — Unordered collections of unique elements
- 8.8. sched — Event scheduler
- 8.9. mutex — Mutual exclusion support
- 8.10. queue — A synchronized queue class
- 8.11. weakref — Weak references
- 8.12. UserDict — Class wrapper for dictionary objects
- 8.13. UserList — Class wrapper for list objects
- 8.14. UserString — Class wrapper for string objects
- 8.15. types — Names for built-in types
- 8.16. new — Creation of runtime internal objects
- 8.17. copy — Shallow and deep copy operations
- 8.18. pprint — Data pretty printer
- 8.19. repr — Alternate repr() implementation
9. Numeric and Mathematical Modules
- 9.1. numbers — Numeric abstract base classes
- 9.2. math — Mathematical functions
- 9.3. cmath — Mathematical functions for complex numbers
- 9.4. decimal — Decimal fixed point and floating point arithmetic
- 9.5. fractions — Rational numbers
- 9.6. random — Generate pseudo-random numbers
- 9.7. itertools — Functions creating iterators for efficient looping
- 9.8. functools — Higher order functions and operations on callable objects
- 9.9. operator — Standard operators as functions
10. File and Directory Access
- 10.1. os.path — Common pathname manipulations
- 10.2. fileinput — Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
- 10.3. stat — Interpreting stat() results
- 10.4. statvfs — Constants used with os.statvfs()
- 10.5. filecmp — File and Directory Comparisons
- 10.6. tempfile — Generate temporary files and directories
- 10.7. glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
- 10.8. fnmatch — Unix filename pattern matching
- 10.9. linecache — Random access to text lines
- 10.10. shutil — High-level file operations
- 10.11. dircache — Cached directory listings
- 10.12. macpath — Mac OS 9 path manipulation functions
11. Data Persistence
- 11.1. pickle — Python object serialization
- 11.2. cPickle — A faster pickle
- 11.3. copy_reg — Register pickle support functions
- 11.4. shelve — Python object persistence
- 11.5. marshal — Internal Python object serialization
- 11.6. anydbm — Generic access to DBM-style databases
- 11.7. whichdb — Guess which DBM module created a database
- 11.8. dbm — Simple “database” interface
- 11.9. gdbm — GNU’s reinterpretation of dbm
- 11.10. dbhash — DBM-style interface to the BSD database library
- 11.11. bsddb — Interface to Berkeley DB library
- 11.12. dumbdbm — Portable DBM implementation
- 11.13. sqlite3 — DB-API 2.0 interface for SQLite databases
12. Data Compression and Archiving
- 12.1. zlib — Compression compatible with gzip
- 12.2. gzip — Support for gzip files
- 12.3. bz2 — Compression compatible with bzip2
- 12.4. zipfile — Work with ZIP archives
- 12.5. tarfile — Read and write tar archive files
13. File Formats
- 13.1. csv — CSV File Reading and Writing
- 13.2. ConfigParser — Configuration file parser
- 13.3. robotparser — Parser for robots.txt
- 13.4. netrc — netrc file processing
- 13.5. xdrlib — Encode and decode XDR data
- 13.6. plistlib — Generate and parse Mac OS X .plist files
14. Cryptographic Services
- 14.1. hashlib — Secure hashes and message digests
- 14.2. hmac — Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication
- 14.3. md5 — MD5 message digest algorithm
- 14.4. sha — SHA-1 message digest algorithm
15. Generic Operating System Services
- 15.1. os — Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
- 15.2. io — Core tools for working with streams
- 15.3. time — Time access and conversions
- 15.4. optparse — More powerful command line option parser
- 15.5. getopt — Parser for command line options
- 15.6. logging — Logging facility for Python
- 15.7. getpass — Portable password input
- 15.8. curses — Terminal handling for character-cell displays
- 15.9. curses.textpad — Text input widget for curses programs
- 15.10. curses.wrapper — Terminal handler for curses programs
- 15.11. curses.ascii — Utilities for ASCII characters
- 15.12. curses.panel — A panel stack extension for curses
- 15.13. platform — Access to underlying platform’s identifying data
- 15.14. errno — Standard errno system symbols
- 15.15. ctypes — A foreign function library for Python
16. Optional Operating System Services
- 16.1. select — Waiting for I/O completion
- 16.2. threading — Higher-level threading interface
- 16.3. thread — Multiple threads of control
- 16.4. dummy_threading — Drop-in replacement for the threading module
- 16.5. dummy_thread — Drop-in replacement for the thread module
- 16.6. multiprocessing — Process-based “threading” interface
- 16.7. mmap — Memory-mapped file support
- 16.8. readline — GNU readline interface
- 16.9. rlcompleter — Completion function for GNU readline
17. Interprocess Communication and Networking
- 17.1. subprocess — Subprocess management
- 17.2. socket — Low-level networking interface
- 17.3. ssl — SSL wrapper for socket objects
- 17.4. signal — Set handlers for asynchronous events
- 17.5. popen2 — Subprocesses with accessible I/O streams
- 17.6. asyncore — Asynchronous socket handler
- 17.7. asynchat — Asynchronous socket command/response handler
18. Internet Data Handling
- 18.1. email — An email and MIME handling package
- 18.2. json — JSON encoder and decoder
- 18.3. mailcap — Mailcap file handling
- 18.4. mailbox — Manipulate mailboxes in various formats
- 18.5. mhlib — Access to MH mailboxes
- 18.6. mimetools — Tools for parsing MIME messages
- 18.7. mimetypes — Map filenames to MIME types
- 18.8. MimeWriter — Generic MIME file writer
- 18.9. mimify — MIME processing of mail messages
- 18.10. multifile — Support for files containing distinct parts
- 18.11. rfc822 — Parse RFC 2822 mail headers
- 18.12. base64 — RFC 3548: Base16, Base32, Base64 Data Encodings
- 18.13. binhex — Encode and decode binhex4 files
- 18.14. binascii — Convert between binary and ASCII
- 18.15. quopri — Encode and decode MIME quoted-printable data
- 18.16. uu — Encode and decode uuencode files
19. Structured Markup Processing Tools
- 19.1. HTMLParser — Simple HTML and XHTML parser
- 19.2. sgmllib — Simple SGML parser
- 19.3. htmllib — A parser for HTML documents
- 19.4. htmlentitydefs — Definitions of HTML general entities
- 19.5. xml.parsers.expat — Fast XML parsing using Expat
- 19.6. xml.dom — The Document Object Model API
- 19.7. xml.dom.minidom — Lightweight DOM implementation
- 19.8. xml.dom.pulldom — Support for building partial DOM trees
- 19.9. xml.sax — Support for SAX2 parsers
- 19.10. xml.sax.handler — Base classes for SAX handlers
- 19.11. xml.sax.saxutils — SAX Utilities
- 19.12. xml.sax.xmlreader — Interface for XML parsers
- 19.13. xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API
20. Internet Protocols and Support
- 20.1. webbrowser — Convenient Web-browser controller
- 20.2. cgi — Common Gateway Interface support
- 20.3. cgitb — Traceback manager for CGI scripts
- 20.4. wsgiref — WSGI Utilities and Reference Implementation
- 20.5. urllib — Open arbitrary resources by URL
- 20.6. urllib2 — extensible library for opening URLs
- 20.7. httplib — HTTP protocol client
- 20.8. ftplib — FTP protocol client
- 20.9. poplib — POP3 protocol client
- 20.10. imaplib — IMAP4 protocol client
- 20.11. nntplib — NNTP protocol client
- 20.12. smtplib — SMTP protocol client
- 20.13. smtpd — SMTP Server
- 20.14. telnetlib — Telnet client
- 20.15. uuid — UUID objects according to RFC 4122
- 20.16. urlparse — Parse URLs into components
- 20.17. SocketServer — A framework for network servers
- 20.18. BaseHTTPServer — Basic HTTP server
- 20.19. SimpleHTTPServer — Simple HTTP request handler
- 20.20. CGIHTTPServer — CGI-capable HTTP request handler
- 20.21. cookielib — Cookie handling for HTTP clients
- 20.22. Cookie — HTTP state management
- 20.23. xmlrpclib — XML-RPC client access
- 20.24. SimpleXMLRPCServer — Basic XML-RPC server
- 20.25. DocXMLRPCServer — Self-documenting XML-RPC server
21. Multimedia Services
- 21.1. audioop — Manipulate raw audio data
- 21.2. imageop — Manipulate raw image data
- 21.3. aifc — Read and write AIFF and AIFC files
- 21.4. sunau — Read and write Sun AU files
- 21.5. wave — Read and write WAV files
- 21.6. chunk — Read IFF chunked data
- 21.7. colorsys — Conversions between color systems
- 21.8. imghdr — Determine the type of an image
- 21.9. sndhdr — Determine type of sound file
- 21.10. ossaudiodev — Access to OSS-compatible audio devices
22. Internationalization
- 22.1. gettext — Multilingual internationalization services
- 22.2. locale — Internationalization services
23. Program Frameworks
- 23.1. cmd — Support for line-oriented command interpreters
- 23.2. shlex — Simple lexical analysis
24. Graphical User Interfaces with Tk
- 24.1. Tkinter — Python interface to Tcl/Tk
- 24.2. Tix — Extension widgets for Tk
- 24.3. ScrolledText — Scrolled Text Widget
- 24.4. turtle — Turtle graphics for Tk
- 24.5. IDLE
- 24.6. Other Graphical User Interface Packages
25. Development Tools
- 25.1. pydoc — Documentation generator and online help system
- 25.2. doctest — Test interactive Python examples
- 25.3. unittest — Unit testing framework
- 25.4. 2to3 - Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation
- 25.5. test — Regression tests package for Python
- 25.6. test.test_support — Utility functions for tests
26. Debugging and Profiling
- 26.1. bdb — Debugger framework
- 26.2. pdb — The Python Debugger
- 26.3. Debugger Commands
- 26.4. The Python Profilers
- 26.5. hotshot — High performance logging profiler
- 26.6. timeit — Measure execution time of small code snippets
- 26.7. trace — Trace or track Python statement execution
27. Python Runtime Services
- 27.1. sys — System-specific parameters and functions
- 27.2. __builtin__ — Built-in objects
- 27.3. future_builtins — Python 3 builtins
- 27.4. __main__ — Top-level script environment
- 27.5. warnings — Warning control
- 27.6. contextlib — Utilities for with-statement contexts
- 27.7. abc — Abstract Base Classes
- 27.8. atexit — Exit handlers
- 27.9. traceback — Print or retrieve a stack traceback
- 27.10. __future__ — Future statement definitions
- 27.11. gc — Garbage Collector interface
- 27.12. inspect — Inspect live objects
- 27.13. site — Site-specific configuration hook
- 27.14. user — User-specific configuration hook
- 27.15. fpectl — Floating point exception control
- 27.16. distutils — Building and installing Python modules
28. Custom Python Interpreters
- 28.1. code — Interpreter base classes
- 28.2. codeop — Compile Python code
29. Restricted Execution
- 29.1. rexec — Restricted execution framework
- 29.2. Bastion — Restricting access to objects
30. Importing Modules
- 30.1. imp — Access the import internals
- 30.2. imputil — Import utilities
- 30.3. zipimport — Import modules from Zip archives
- 30.4. pkgutil — Package extension utility
- 30.5. modulefinder — Find modules used by a script
- 30.6. runpy — Locating and executing Python modules
31. Python Language Services
- 31.1. parser — Access Python parse trees
- 31.2. Abstract Syntax Trees
- 31.3. symtable — Access to the compiler’s symbol tables
- 31.4. symbol — Constants used with Python parse trees
- 31.5. token — Constants used with Python parse trees
- 31.6. keyword — Testing for Python keywords
- 31.7. tokenize — Tokenizer for Python source
- 31.8. tabnanny — Detection of ambiguous indentation
- 31.9. pyclbr — Python class browser support
- 31.10. py_compile — Compile Python source files
- 31.11. compileall — Byte-compile Python libraries
- 31.12. dis — Disassembler for Python bytecode
- 31.13. pickletools — Tools for pickle developers
32. Python compiler package
- 32.1. The basic interface
- 32.2. Limitations
- 32.3. Python Abstract Syntax
- 32.4. Using Visitors to Walk ASTs
- 32.5. Bytecode Generation
33. Miscellaneous Services
- 33.1. formatter — Generic output formatting
34. MS Windows Specific Services
- 34.1. msilib — Read and write Microsoft Installer files
- 34.2. msvcrt – Useful routines from the MS VC++ runtime
- 34.3. _winreg – Windows registry access
- 34.4. winsound — Sound-playing interface for Windows
35. Unix Specific Services
- 35.1. posix — The most common POSIX system calls
- 35.2. pwd — The password database
- 35.3. spwd — The shadow password database
- 35.4. grp — The group database
- 35.5. crypt — Function to check Unix passwords
- 35.6. dl — Call C functions in shared objects
- 35.7. termios — POSIX style tty control
- 35.8. tty — Terminal control functions
- 35.9. pty — Pseudo-terminal utilities
- 35.10. fcntl — The fcntl() and ioctl() system calls
- 35.11. pipes — Interface to shell pipelines
- 35.12. posixfile — File-like objects with locking support
- 35.13. resource — Resource usage information
- 35.14. nis — Interface to Sun’s NIS (Yellow Pages)
- 35.15. syslog — Unix syslog library routines
- 35.16. commands — Utilities for running commands
36. Mac OS X specific services
- 36.1. ic — Access to the Mac OS X Internet Config
- 36.2. MacOS — Access to Mac OS interpreter features
- 36.3. macostools — Convenience routines for file manipulation
- 36.4. findertools — The finder‘s Apple Events interface
- 36.5. EasyDialogs — Basic Macintosh dialogs
- 36.6. FrameWork — Interactive application framework
- 36.7. autoGIL — Global Interpreter Lock handling in event loops
- 36.8. Mac OS Toolbox Modules
- 36.9. ColorPicker — Color selection dialog
37. MacPython OSA Modules
- 37.1. gensuitemodule — Generate OSA stub packages
- 37.2. aetools — OSA client support
- 37.3. aepack — Conversion between Python variables and AppleEvent data containers
- 37.4. aetypes — AppleEvent objects
- 37.5. MiniAEFrame — Open Scripting Architecture server support
38. SGI IRIX Specific Services
- 38.1. al — Audio functions on the SGI
- 38.2. AL — Constants used with the al module
- 38.3. cd — CD-ROM access on SGI systems
- 38.4. fl — FORMS library for graphical user interfaces
- 38.5. FL — Constants used with the fl module
- 38.6. flp — Functions for loading stored FORMS designs
- 38.7. fm — Font Manager interface
- 38.8. gl — Graphics Library interface
- 38.9. DEVICE — Constants used with the gl module
- 38.10. GL — Constants used with the gl module
- 38.11. imgfile — Support for SGI imglib files
- 38.12. jpeg — Read and write JPEG files
39. SunOS Specific Services
- 39.1. sunaudiodev — Access to Sun audio hardware
- 39.2. SUNAUDIODEV — Constants used with sunaudiodev
40. Undocumented Modules
- 40.1. Miscellaneous useful utilities
- 40.2. Platform specific modules
- 40.3. Multimedia
- 40.4. Undocumented Mac OS modules
- 40.5. Obsolete
- 40.6. SGI-specific Extension modules

Introduction
The Very High Level Layer
Reference Counting
Exception Handling
Utilities
Abstract Objects Layer
Concrete Objects Layer
Initialization, Finalization, and Threads
Memory Management
Object Implementation Support

1. Extending Python with C or C++
2. Defining New Types
- 2.1. The Basics
- 2.2. Type Methods
3. Building C and C++ Extensions with distutils
- 3.1. Distributing your extension modules
4. Building C and C++ Extensions on Windows
5. Embedding Python in Another Application

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