Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language (2nd Edition, Revised)

This is the revised Chinese edition of the second edition of Programming in Python 3 by Mark Summerfield, translated by Wang Hongbo and Sun Chuanqing and published by Posts & Telecom Press. The book begins with the "eight key elements" that make up the Python language—data types, object references, collection data types, logical operators, control flow statements, arithmetic operators, input/output, and creating and calling functions—using one chapter to build a hands-on foundation before going deeper in later chapters. Building on that foundation, the book discusses data type details such as integers, floating-point and decimal numbers, strings, and character encoding; collection data types such as lists, tuples, sets, and dictionaries; control structures, exception handling, and custom functions; modules and packages and an overview of the standard library; custom classes and composite classes in object-oriented programming; and reading, writing, and random access for binary files, text files, and XML files. The second half moves into engineering topics: advanced techniques such as generators, decorators, context managers, descriptors, abstract base classes, metaclasses, and coroutines; debugging, unit testing, and profiling; workload distribution with multiprocessing and multithreading; TCP client and server programming; DBM and SQL database programming; regular expressions; handwritten parsers and parsing with PyParsing and PLY; and writing dialog-style and main-window GUI programs with Tkinter. The book is built around example-driven explanations, with complete examples and end-of-chapter exercises in every chapter; the example code was tested with Python 3 on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X and can be downloaded with the book. It can be read straight through as a systematic Python 3 tutorial or used as a language reference to fill gaps, and is suited to readers who want to learn Python to a deliverable level.