CSE 399-005: Python Programming, Spring 2006

Online textbooks and tutorials

• Tutorials
  • Official Python Tutorial
    by Guido van Rossum (the author of Python).

  • A Quick, Painless Tutorial on the Python Language
    by Norman Matloff.

• Textbooks
  • Dive into Python
    by Mark Pilgrim.
    

  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python
    by Allen B. Downey, Jeffrey Elkner and Chris Meyers
    N.B.: Excellent introductory book for people without programming experience but the python version in the book is a little out-dated.
    

  • Scripting for Computational Science
    by Hans Petter Langtangen
    Comprehensive and excellent book on Python, Perl, Bash, NumPy, RegExp, GUI, CGI, and other utilities, although mainly for numerical sciencists.

• References
  • Python Reference Manual
  • Python Library Reference

• Special Topics
  • Regular Expression HOWTO
  • Sorting mini-HOWTO
  • Tutorial on Iterators and Generators (by Norman Matloff)
  • Python for Fun
    by Chris Meyers
    Featuring Data Structures, Lisp/Prolog in Python, NLP, SQL, and many more. Highly recommended.

Using Python

• Using Python on SEAS machines
  Our default Linux machine to work on is eniac-l.seas.upenn.edu. The default version of Python there is 2.3.5. To use Python 2.4.2, you can either:
  
  • always type python2.4.2, or
  • add one of the following lines to the end of your ~/.bashrc file:
    
    • (recommended) export PATH=/usr/local/python/2.4.2/bin:$PATH, or
      
    • alias python='python2.4.2'
      
    then login again (or type source ~/.bashrc). From now on, python will point to 2.4.2.

• Installing Python on your own machines
  It is pretty straightforward to install Python 2.4.2 on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Please refer to this page.