Python Essential Reference (4th Edition, Revised)

This book is a classic reference manual for the Python programming language, written by David M. Beazley, who has long worked in Python training and consulting; the original is Python Essential Reference, 4th Edition. The book is divided into three major parts, systematically covering the most important and practical content of the core Python language and commonly used standard library. Part I, "The Python Language," starts with running Python, variables and expressions, conditional statements, and file reading and writing, then covers lexical conventions and syntax, types and objects, operators and expressions, program structure and control flow, functions and functional programming, classes and object-oriented programming, modules and packaging, input and output, the execution environment, and testing, debugging, profiling, and tuning. Part II, "The Python Library," is organized by topic and covers built-in functions and exceptions, runtime services, mathematics, data structures and algorithms, string and text processing, database access, file and directory handling, operating system services, threads and concurrency, network programming and sockets, network applications, web programming, and internet data handling and encoding. Part III, "Extending and Embedding," discusses extending Python with C and embedding Python in other programs. The book is reference-oriented, with compact entries and concise examples, and includes advanced topics not easily found in official documentation, making it suitable as a long-term desk reference. This is the revised 4th edition, published by Asynchronous Books.