A Byte of Python

A Byte of Python is the simplified Chinese translation of the free English book A Byte of Python, written by Swaroop C. H. and translated by Shen Jieyuan. Written as both textbook and guide, the book takes readers from zero foundation—from "being able to save a text file"—to writing small Python programs independently. It begins with what Python is and its place in the open-source world, then introduces installing Python on Linux/BSD and Windows, the interpreter and editors, source files and executable programs, and other first hands-on steps; it then proceeds in turn to basic concepts (numbers, strings, variables, identifiers, data types, objects, logical and physical lines, indentation), operators and expressions with their precedence and associativity, control flow (if, while, for, break, continue), functions (parameters, local variables, global, default arguments, keyword arguments, return, DocStrings), modules (sys, .pyc byte compilation, from...import, a module's __name__, writing your own modules), and data structures including lists, tuples, dictionaries, sets, sequences, and strings. Later it demonstrates problem solving and the software development process through repeated iterations of a script, and explains object-oriented programming (self, classes, object methods, __init__, class and object variables, inheritance), input and output (user input, files, pickle), exception handling and the standard library, and finally offers directions for further study and an appendix on free and open-source software (FLOSS). Concise in length, dense with examples, and plain in language, the book has been widely regarded since publication as a small introductory book for Python beginners.