Table

of Contents
Introduction 1.1

Installing Python 1.2

First steps in the IPython Shell 1.3

Using Python as a calculator 1.3.1

Storing numbers 1.3.2

Storing text 1.3.3

Writing Python programs 1.4

My first program 1.4.1

Repeating instructions 1.4.2

Making decisions 1.4.3

Overview of data types in Python 1.5
Lists 1.6

Creating lists 1.6.1

Shortcuts 1.6.2
Working with tables 1.6.3

Reading data from files 1.7

Reading a simple text file 1.7.1
Extracting data from text 1.7.2

Writing files 1.7.3

Processing multiple files 1.7.4
Strings 1.8

Screen output 1.8.1

String methods 1.8.2

Format strings 1.8.3

[Other topics] 1.9

Dictionaries 1.9.1

Tuples 1.9.2
Reading from the keyboard 1.9.3

Converting numbers to text and back 1.9.4

Structuring programs 1.9.5

while 1.9.6

Writing your own functions 1.9.7

Modules 1.9.8
Introspection 1.9.9

Working with directories 1.9.10

Programming Challenge: Count Words in Moby Dick 1.10

Background information on Python 3 1.11

Recommended books and websites 1.12

Acknowledgements 1.13

2
3
Introduction

Python 3 Basics Tutorial

(c) 2015 Dr. Kristian Rother ([email protected])

with contributions by Allegra Via, Kaja Milanowska and Anna Philips

Distributed under the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike License 4.0

Sources of this document can be found on https://github.com/krother/Python3_Basics_Tutorial

Introduction

Who is this tutorial for?

This is a tutorial for novice programmers. You are the learner I had in mind when writing this tutorial if:

you have worked a little with a different programming language like R, MATLAB or C.
you have no programming experience at all
you know Python well and would like to teach others

This tutorial works best if you follow the chapters and exercises step by step.

The dataset of U.S. baby names

The authorities of the United States have recorded the first names of all people born as U.S. citizens since 1880. The
dataset is publicly available on http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html . However for the protection of privacy only
names used at least 5 times appear in the data.

4
Introduction

Throughout this tutorial, we will work with this data.

If you are an experienced programmer

If you are fluent in any programming language, this tutorial might be very easy for you. Of course, you can work through the
exercises to get the Python syntax into your fingers. However, this tutorial contains very little material on the higher
abstraction levels in Python, like classes, namespaces or even functions.

For a tutorial for non-beginners, I recommend the following free online books:

Learn Python the Hard Way - a bootcamp-style tutorial by Zed Shaw

How to think like a Computer Scientist - a very systematic, scientific tutorial by Allen B. Downey
Dive into Python 3 - explains one sophisticated program per chapter - by Mark Pilgrim

5
Installing Python

Installing Python
The first step into programming is to get Python installed on your computer. You will need two things

Python itself
a text editor

Which to install, depends on your operating system.

On Ubuntu Linux
By default, Python is already installed. In this tutorial however, we will use Python3 whenever possible. You can install it
from a terminal window with:

sudo apt-get install python3

sudo apt-get install ipython3

To check whether everything worked, type:

ipython3

As a text editor, it is fine to start with gedit. Please make sure to change tabs to spaces via Edit -> Preferences -> Editor ->
tick 'Insert spaces instead of tabs'.

On Windows
A convenient way to install Python, an editor and many additional packages in one go is Anaconda, a Python distribution
with many pre-installed packages for scientific applications.

After installing, you will need to launch the Spyder editor from the Start menu.

Other Python environments

Python 3 - the standard Python installation
Canopy - another Python instllation for scientific purposes.
Idle - a standard editor installed with Python by default.
Sublime Text - a very powerful text editor for all operating systems
Notepad++ - a powerful text editor for Windows. Please do not use the standard Notepad. It won't get you anywhere.
PyCharm - a professional Python development environment capable of handling large projects. You won't need most
of the functionality for a long time, but it is a well-written editor.
vim - a console-based text editor for Unix systems. The tool of choice for many system administrators.

Questions
Question 1
Which text editors are installed on your system?

Question 2
Which Python version are you running?

6
Installing Python

7
First steps in the IPython Shell

First steps on the IPython Shell

There are two ways to use Python: The interactive mode or IPython shell and writing programs. We will use the interactive
mode to store data on U.S. baby names.

In the first part of the tutorial, you will use the IPython shell to write simple commands.

Goals
The commands on the IPython shell cover:

How to store a number?

How to add two numbers together?
How to store text?
How to convert a number to text and back?

8
Using Python as a calculator

Using Python as a calculator

Exercise 1:
Enter Python in the interactive mode. You should see a message

In [1]:

Complete the following calculations by filling in the blanks:

In [1]: 1 + ___
Out[1]: 3

In [2]: 12 ___ 8
Out[2]: 4

In [3]: ___ * 5
Out[3]: 20

In [4]: 21 / 7
Out[4]: ___

In [5]: ___ ** 2
Out[5]: 81

Enter the commands to see what happens (do not type the first part In [1] etc., these will appear automatically).

Exercise 2:
Which operations result in 8?

0 + 8

4 4

8 /

65 // 8

17 % 9

2 * * 4

64 ** 0.5

Exercise 3:
Collect the Python operators you already know in a table ( + , - , * etc.).

9
Storing numbers

Storing numbers
The U.S. authorities record the names of all babies born since 1880. How many babies with more or less popular names
were born in 2000? Let's store the numbers in variables.

Exercise 1:
Let's define some variables. Fill in the gaps:

In [1]: emily = 25952

In [2]: hannah = 23073
In [3]: khaleesi = 5
In [4]: emily
Out[4]: ______
In [5]: hannah + 1
Out[5]: ______
In [6]: 3 * khaleesi
Out[6]: ______

Exercise 2:
Let's change the content. Insert the correct values and variable names into the blanks.

In [7]: emily = emily + 1

In [8]: emily
Out[8]: _____

In [9]: all_babies = 0
In [10]: all_babies = _____ + _____ + _____
In [11]: all_babies
Out[11]: 49031

If you like maths, you may sigh loud at the notion of redefining a variable every few lines.

Exercise 3:
Which of the following variable names are correct? Try assigning some numbers to them.

Sarah
ASHLEY
madison alexis
sam90
2000jessy
liz_lauren
alyssa.kay

Exercise 4:
Which are correct variable assignments?

a = 1 * 2

2 = 1 + 1

5 + 6 = y

seven = 3 * 4

10
Storing numbers

11
Storing text

Storing text
Exercise 1:
So far, we have only worked with numbers. Now we will work with text as well.

In [1]: first = 'Emily'

In [2]: last = "Smith"
In [3]: name = first + " " + last
In [4]: name

Exercise 2:
What do the following statements do?

In [5]: name[0]
In [6]: name[3]
In [7]: name[-1]

Exercise 3:
Is it possible to include the following special characters in a string?

Ä á @ ? & * \ / " '

Exercise 4:
What does name contain after the following statements? Explain the code.

In [8]: name = ""

In [9]: anna = "Anna"
In [10]: name = anna[0] + name
In [11]: name = anna[1] + name
In [12]: name = anna[2] + name
In [13]: name = anna[3] + name
In [14]: name

12
Writing Python programs

Writing Python programs

A program consists of multiple lines that are executed in one go.

Usually a program contains the following sections:

Of course, programs can grow a lot more complicated than that.

In this chapter, we will learn to know the print() function for producing output, loops and branching statements.

Turing Completeness
In the second part of the tutorial, you will learn a basic set of Python commands. Theoretically, they are sufficient to write
any program on the planet (this is called Turing completeness).

Practically, you will need shortcuts that make programs prettier, faster, and less painful to write. We will save these
shortcuts for the later parts.

13
Writing Python programs

14
My first program

My first program
Using the interactive IPython shell alone is exciting only for a while. To write more complex programs, you need to store
your instructions in programs, so that you can execute them later.

In this section we will write our first Python program. It is going to simply write a few names of babies to the screen.

Exercise 1
Open a text editor (e.g. Spyder) and create a new file. Write into it:

print("Hannah")
print(23073)

Save the file with the name output.py ab.

Exercise 2
Now let's execute our program.

In Anaconda Spyder you can use the "Play" button or press F5 .

In Unix open a terminal, change to the directory with the Python file and type:

python3 output.py

Exercise 3
Explain the following program:

name = "Emily"
jahr = 2000
print(name, jahr)

Exercise 4
Write the following program:

name = "Emily"
name

What happens when you execute the code?

15
Repeating instructions

Repeating instructions
In our early programs, each Python instruction was executed only once. That makes programming a bit pointless, because
our programs are limited by our typing speed.

In this section we will take a closer look at the for statement that repeats one or more instructions several times.

Exercise 1
What does the following program do?

for number in range(1, 43):

print(number)

Exercise 2
What advantages does the for loop have over the following one?

print(0)
print(1)
print(2)
print(3)
print(4)
..

Exercise 3
Write a for loop that creates the following output

1
4
9
16
25
36
49

Exercise 4
Explain the difference between the following two programs:

total = 0
for number in range(10):
total = total + number
print(total)

and

total = 0
for number in range(10):
total = total + number
print(total)

Exercise 5

16
Repeating instructions

What does the following program do?

text = ""
characters = "Hannah"
for char in characters:
text = char + text
print(text)

Exercise 6
Write a program that calculates the number of characters in Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta . Spaces count as well!

17
Making decisions

Making decisions
The last missing piece in our basic set of commands is the ability to make decisions in a program. This is done in Python
using the if command.

Exercise 1
Execute the following program and explain its output.

number = 123

if number > 1000:

print("The number is larger than 1000.")
elif number == 1000:
print("The numer is exactly 1000.")
else:
print("The number is smaller than 1000.")

Exercise 2
Set name to such a value that one, two or all three conditions apply.

name = ____

if "m" in name:
print("There is a 'm' in the name.")
if name != "Mimi":
print("The name is not Mimi.")
if name[0] == "M" and name[-1] == "m":
print("The name starts and ends with m.")

Exercise 3

18
Making decisions

The following program writes the positions of all letters "n" in the name to the screen. Unfortunately, it contains three
errors. Make the program execute correctly:

name = "Anna"
position = 1

for char in name

if char = "n":
print(position)
position = position + 1

Exercise 4
Which of these if statements are syntactically correct?

if a and b:

if len(s) == 23:

if a but not b < 3:

if a ** 2 >= 49:

if a != 3

if (a and b) or (c and d):

19
Overview of data types in Python

Overview of Data types in Python

Data types
Match the data samples with their types.

Definitions

Immutable and mutable data types

In Python there are basic and composite data types. The values of basic data types cannot be changed, they are
immutable. Most of the composite data types are mutable.

The immutable data types in Python are:

Boolean ( True / False )

Integer ( 0 , 1 , -3 )
Float ( 1.0 , -0.3 , 1.2345 )
Strings ( 'apple' , "banana" ) - both single and double quotes are valid
None (aka an empty variable)
Tuples (multiple values in parentheses, e.g. ('Jack', 'Smith', 1990) )

The mutable data types are

List [1, 2, 2, 3]

20
Overview of data types in Python

Dictionary {'name': 'John Smith', 'year': 1990}

Set ()

Type conversions
Values can be converted into each other using conversion functions. Try the following:

int('5.5')
float(5)
str(5.5)
list("ABC")
tuple([1,2,3])
dict([('A',1),('B',2)])
set([1,2,2,3])

21
Lists

Lists
To handle larger amounts of data, we cannot invent a new variable for every new data item. Somehow we need to store
more data in one variable. This is where Python lists come in.

However, Python counts a bit different than humans do:

22
Creating lists

Creating lists
Exercise 1
Find out what each of the expressions does to the list in the center.

Exercise 2
What does the following program do?

top8 = [34465, 32025, 28569, 27531, \

24928, 23632, 22818, 22307]

for value in top8:

print(value)

Exercise 3
How many babies are there in total? Write a program that calculates that number.

Exercise 4
You have a list of the 20 most popular girls names from the year 2000:

['Emily', 'Hannah', 'Madison', 'Ashley', 'Sarah',

'Alexis', 'Samantha', 'Jessica', 'Elizabeth', 'Taylor',
'Lauren', 'Alyssa', 'Kayla', 'Abigail', 'Brianna',
'Olivia', 'Emma', 'Megan', 'Grace', 'Victoria']

Write a program that prints all names starting with 'A' or 'M' .

23
Creating lists

Exercise 5
Use the expressions to modify the list as indicated. Use each expression once.

Exercise 6
Create a new list containing the sum of California and New York for each name.

names = ["Emily", "Amy", "Penny", "Bernadette"]

california = [2269, 542, 54, 21]
new_york = [881, 179, 12, 11]

Exercise 7
Use the expressions to modify the list as indicated. Use each expression once.

24
Creating lists

25
Shortcuts

Shortcuts
Exercise 1
Simplify the following code using the function sum() :

counts = [356, 412, 127, 8, 32]

total = 0
for number in data:
total = total + number
print(total)

Exercise 2
Simplify the following code using the function range() :

i = 0
while i < 10:
print(i * '*')
i += 1

Exercise 3
Simplify the following code using the function zip() :

names = ['Lilly', 'Lily', 'Leila', 'Lilja', 'Lillie']

counts = [356, 412, 127, 8, 32]

table = []
i = 0
while i < len(names):
row = (names[i], counts[i])
table.append(row)
i += 1
print(table)

Exercise 4
Simplify the following code using the function enumerate() :

names = ['Lilly', 'Lily', 'Leila', 'Lilja', 'Lillie']

i = 0
for name in names:
print(i, name)
i += 1

Exercise 5
Use list(range()) to create the following lists:

[4, 7, 9, 12]

[10, 20, 30, 40, 50]

[33, 32, 31, 30]

Exercise 6

26
Shortcuts

On which data types does the len() function work?

lists
dictionaries
strings
floats
sets

27
Working with tables

Tables
Data frequently occurs in the form of tables. To process tables in Python, it helps to know that we can put lists in other lists.
These are also called nested lists.

A simple table in Python looks like this:

# columns: Name, #California, #New York

[
["Emily", 2269, 881],
["Amy", 542, 179],
["Penny", 54, 12],
["Bernadette", 21, 11]
]

In this chapter we will deal with creating and processing nested lists.

Exercise 1
Write all rows of the above table to the screen with a for loop.

Exercise 2
Write all cells of the table to the screen with a double for loop.

Exercise 3
Create an empty table of 10 x 10 cells and fill them with numbers from 1 to 100.

Exercise 4
Sort the above table by the second column. Use the following code sniplet:

from operator import itemgetter

tabelle.sort(key=itemgetter(col_index))

28
Reading data from files

Reading data from files

In this section, you will learn to extract information from simple text files.

For the next exercises, you will need the complete archive of baby names (the shorter one not grouped by states). You can
download the files from http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html.

29
Reading a simple text file

Reading simple text files

Exercise 1
Create a text file bigbang.txt in a text editor, containing the following data:

Emily,F,12562
Amy,F,2178
Penny,F,342
Bernadette,F,129
Leonard,M,384
Howard,M,208
Sheldon,M,164
Stuart,M,82
Raj,M,41

Exercise 1:
Make the program work by inserting close , line , bigbang.txt , print into the gaps.

f = open(___)
for ____ in f:
____(line)
f.____()

Hint:
Depending on your editor, you may need to insert the complete path to the file. If the program does not work, a wrong file
name or location are the most probable reasons.

Exercise 3
How many different girls names were there in 2015?

Sort the following code lines and indent them correctly:

girls = 0

if "B" in line:

print(girls)

if ",F," in line:

for line in open('names/yob2015.txt'):

girls += 1

Exercise 4
Extend the program from the previous exercise such that boys and girls names are counted separately.

Exercise 5
Which of the following commands are correct?

for char in "ABCD":

30
Reading a simple text file

for i in range(10):

for number in [4, 6, 8]:

for k in 3+7:

for (i=0; i<10; i++):

for var in open('bigbang.txt'):

Exercise 6
Write a program that reads lines from the file yob2015.txt . Identify all lines containing your name and print them to the
screen.

31
Extracting data from text

Parsing data from text

Most text files contain both text and numbers. Extracting these data fields from a file and storing them in reasonably
structured variables is called parsing. To parse files, we need methods of strings, lists and type conversions.

Exercise 1
Insert the following pieces into the code, so that all commands are executed correctly: age , int(age) , name , str(born) ,
2000

name = 'Emily Smith'

born = _____
____ = '15'

text = ____ + ' was born in the year ' + _____ + '.'
year = born + _____
text
year

Exercise 2
The following program collects names in a list that occur at least 10000 times. Unfortunately, the program contains four
errors. Find and fix these.

frequent = []

for line in open('names/yob2015.txt'):

columns = line.strip().split(',')
name = colums[1]
anzahl = int(columns[3])
if anzahl >= 10000
frequent.append(name)

print(frequent)

Exercise 3
Write a program that calculates the total number of babys for the year 2015 and writes it to the screen. Compare that
number with the year 1915.

Exercise 4
Write a program that finds the three most frequent names for boys and girls in a given year and writes them to the screen.

Hint: The three most frequent names are on top of the list.

Exercise 5
Write a program that calculates the percentage of the 10 most frequent names for the year 2015 and writes it to the screen.

32
Writing files

Writing Files
Exercise 1
Form pairs of Python commands and their meanings.

Exercise 2
Execute the following program. Explain what happens.

names = ['Adam', 'Bob', 'Charlie']

f = open('boys.txt', 'w')
for name in names:
f.write(name + '\n')
f.close()

Exercise 3
Remove the + '\n' from the program and execute it again. What happens?

Exercise 4
Complete the following statements by int() or str() so that all of them work.

33
Writing files

In [1]: 9 + 9

In [2]: 9 + '9'

In [3]: '9' + '9'

In [4]: 9 * '9'

Exercise 5
Write a program that writes the following data into a two-column text file.

names = ["Emma", "Olivia", "Sophia", "Isabella",

"Ava", "Mia", "Emily"]
values = [20799, 19674, 18490, 16950,
15586, 13442, 12562]

34
Processing multiple files

Processing multiple files

Exercise 1
The following program calculates the total number of births during the past 130 years.

The code contains a subtle semantic bug. Execute the program. Inspect the output. Find and fix the bug.

births = []
result = 0

print("\nyear births per year")

print("-" * 25)
for year in range(1890, 2015, 1):
filename = 'names/yob{}.txt'.format(year)
for line in open(filename):
spalten = line.strip().split(',')
births.append(int(spalten[2]))
print(year, sum(births))
result += sum(births)
print("\nResult: {} births total".format(result))

Exercise 2
Write a program that finds lines containing your name in the years 1880 to 2014.

Exercise 3
Extend the program in such a way that the gender is being checked as well. Print only lines with matching 'M' or 'F' ,
respectively.

Exercise 4
Collect all matches in a list.

Exercise 5
If no matches were found in a given year, add a 0 to the result.

35
Screen output

Screen output
In this chapter we will explor the print() function to write text to the screen.

Exercise 1
Which print statements are correct?

print("9" + "9")

print "nine"

print(str(9) + "nine")

print(9 + 9)

print(nine)

Exercise 2
Explain the following statement:

print("Emily\tSmith\n2000")

Exercise 3
Some babies have names similar to celebrities. Write a program producing the following output:

Harry Hermione Severus

Tyrion Daenerys Frodo
Luke Leia Darth

Exercise 4
Expand the previous exercise so that:

only a single print statement is used.

the names are stored in a variable before building the string.

36
String methods

String methods
Exercise 1
Determine what the expressions do to the string in the center.

Exercise 2
The following program identifies names used for both girls and boys and writes them to a file.

Complete the code to dissect lines to columns, so that the variables name and gender are defined.

girls = []
duplicates = []

for line in open('names/yob2015.txt'):

# insert your code here

if gender == 'F':
girls.append(name)
elif gender == 'M':
if name in girls:
duplicates.append(name)

output = open('duplicate_names.txt', 'w')

for name in duplicates:
text = "{:>15s}\n".format(name)
output.write(text)
output.close()

37
String methods

38
Format strings

Format Strings
Exercise 1
Try the following expressions in a Python shell:

"{}".format("Hello")
"{:10}".format("Hello")
"{:>10}".format("Hello")
"{1} {0}".format("first", "second")
"{:5d}".format(42)
"{:4.1f}".format(3.14159)
"{:6.3f}".format(3.14159)

Exercise 2
Write a for loop producing the following string:

000111222333444555666777888999

Exercise 3
You have the following two lists:

top_ten_names = ['Jacob', 'Michael', 'Matthew', 'Joshua', \

'Christopher', 'Nicholas', 'Andrew', 'Joseph', \
'Daniel', 'Tyler']

top_ten_numbers = [34465, 32025, 28569, 27531, \

24928, 23632, 22818, 22307, 21500]

Write a program that creates a table with two vertically aligned columns.

39
Dictionaries

Dictionaries

Exercise 1
Find out what each of the expressions does to the dictionary in the center.

Exercise 2
What do the following commands produce?

d = {1:'A', 'B':1, 'A':True}

print(d['A'])

False

"B"

True

Exercise 3
What do these commands produce?

d = {1:'A', 'B':1, 'A':True}

print(d.has_key('B'))

40
Dictionaries

True

"B"

False

Exercise 4
What do these commands produce?

d = {1:'A', 'B':1, 'A':True}

print(d.values())

True

['A', 1, True]

[1, 'B', 'A']

Exercise 5
What do these commands produce?

d = {1:'A', 'B':1, 'A':True}

print(d.keys())

[1, 'B', 'A']

['A', 'B', 1]

[1, 'A', 'B']

The order may vary

Exercise 6
What do these commands produce?

d = {1:'A', 'B':1, 'A':True}

print(d['C'])

None

'C'

an Error

False

Exercise 7
What do these commands produce?

d = {1:'A', 'B':1, 'A':True}

d.setdefault('C', 3)
print(d['C'])

'C'

None

41
Dictionaries

an Error

42
Tuples

Tuples
A tuple is a sequence of elements that cannot be modified. They are useful to group elements of different type.

t = ('bananas','200g',0.55)

In contrast to lists, tuples can also be used as keys in dictionaries.

Exercises

Exercise 1
Which are correct tuples?

[ ] (1, 2, 3)
[ ] ("Jack", "Knife")
[ ] ('blue', [0, 0, 255])
[ ] [1, "word"]

Exercise 2
What can you do with tuples?

[ ] group data of different kind

[ ] change the values in them
[ ] run a for loop over them
[ ] sort them

43
Reading from the keyboard

Reading from the keyboard

Next, we will connect the keyboard to our program.

Warming up
What happens when you write the follwing lines in the IPython shell:

In [1]: a = input()
In [2]: a

Exercise 1
Which input statements are correct?

[ ] a = input()
[ ] a = input("enter a number")
[ ] a = input(enter your name)
[ ] a = input(3)

The Challenge: Enter a baby name

Write a program that asks for a name and an age, then writes a sentence with the entered data:

Bobby is 3 years old.

Extra challenge:
Add 1 to the age entered.

44
Converting numbers to text and back

Converting numbers to text and back

Now you know how to store numbers and how to store text. Being able to convert the two into each other will come in
handy. For that, we will use type conversions.

Warming up
Now we are going to combine strings with integer numbers.

name = 'Emily Smith'

born = _____
____ = '15'

text = ____ + ' was born in the year ' + _____

year = born + _____
text
year

Insert into the following items into the code, so that all statements are working: age , int(age) , name, str(born) , 2000

Questions
Can you leave str(born) and int(age) away?
What do str() and int() do?

Exercises
Exercise 1:
What is the result of the following statements?

9 + 9

9 + '9'

'9' + '9'

Exercise 2:
Change the statements above by adding int() or str() to each of them, so that the result is 18 or '99', respectively.

Exercise 3:
Explain the result of the following operations?

9 * 9
9 * '9'
'9' * 9

Exercise 4:
Write Python statements that create the following string:

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Converting numbers to text and back

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890

The Challenge: A data record with types

field value type

first name Andrew string

last name O'Malley string

gender M string

year of birth 2000 integer

age 15 integer

Write the values from each row of the table into string or integer variables, then combine them to a single one-line string.

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Structuring programs

Structuring programs
In Python, you can structure programs on four different levels: with functions, classes, modules and packages. Of these,
classes are the most complicated to use. Therefore they are skipped in this tutorial.

Goals
Learn to write functions
Learn to write modules
Learn to write packages
Know some standard library modules
Know some installable modules

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Writing your own functions

Functions
Python 3.5 has 72 builtin functions. To start writing useful programs, knowing about 25 of them is sufficient. Many of these
functions are useful shortcuts that make your programs shorter.

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Modules

Modules

What is a module?
Any Python file (ending .py) can be imported from another Python script. A single Python file is also called a module.

Importing modules
To import from a module, its name (without .py) needs to be given in the import statement. Import statements can look like
this:

import fruit
import fruit as f
from fruit import fruit_prices
from my_package.fruit import fruit_prices

It is strongly recommended to list the imported variables and functions explicitly instead of using the import * syntax. This
makes debugging a lot easier.

When importing, Python generates intermediate code files (in the pycache directory) that help to execute programs faster.
They are managed automatically, and dont need to be updated.

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Introspection

Introspection

Warming up
Try the following on the interactive shell:

import random
dir(random)
help(random.choice)
name = random.choice(['Hannah', 'Emily', 'Sarah'])
type(name)

What does the code do?

The Challenge: a Baby name generator

Write a program that will generate a random baby name from a list of possible names.

Use the Python module random

Extra challenges:
let the user choose the gender of the babies.
let the user enter how many babies they want to have.
load baby names from a file.

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Working with directories

Working with directories

To process bigger amounts of data, you will need to work on more than one file. Sometimes you don't know all the files in
advance.

Warming up
Fill in the gaps

Exercise 1
Explain the following code:

import os
for dirname in os.listdir('.'):
print(dirname)

Exercise 1
Write a program that counts the number of files in the unzipped set of baby names. Have the program print that number.

Verify that the number is correct.

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Working with directories

Exercise 2
How many entries (lines) does the entire name dataset have?

Hint: Generate a message that tells you which file the program is reading.

Exercise 3
Write a program that finds the most frequently occuring name in each year and prints it.

The Challenge
Find and print your name and the according number in each of the files, so that you can see how the number changes over
time.

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Programming Challenge: Count Words in Moby Dick

Coding Challenge: Count Words in Moby Dick

The Challenge
The book "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville describes an epic battle of a gloomy captain against his personal nemesis, the
white whale. Who of them is mentioned in the book more often?

Your Task
Write a program that counts how often each word occurs in the book. Determine how often the words captain and whale
occur. You will need different data structures for counting words and for sorting them.

When you know whether whale or captain occurs more often, you have mastered this challenge.

Use the 8 hint cards as necessary.

Background
You can find the full text for Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” in the text file mobydick.txt and on www.gutenberg.org.

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Background information on Python 3

Background information on Python 3

What is Python?
Python is an interpreted language.
Python uses dynamic typing.
Python 3 is not compatible to Python 2.x
The Python interpreter generates intermediate code (in the pycache directory).

Strengths
Quick to write, no compilation
Fully object-oriented
Many reliable libraries
All-round language
100% free software

Weaknesses
Writing very fast programs is not straightforward
No strict encapsulation

What has changed from Python 2 to Python 3?

print is now a function
all Strings are stored in Unicode (better handling of umlauts and special characters in all languages)
many functions like zip(), map() and filter() return iterators
the standard library has been cleaned up completely

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Recommended books and websites

Recommended books and websites

Free Online Books

Books for beginners and people with programming experience:

Learn Python the Hard Way - a bootcamp-style tutorial by Zed Shaw

How to think like a Computer Scientist - a very systematic, scientific tutorial by Allen B. Downey
Dive into Python 3 - explains one sophisticated program per chapter - by Mark Pilgrim

Paper books
Managing your Biological Data with Python - Allegra Via, Kristian Rother and Anna Tramontano
Data Science from Scratch - Joel Grus

Websites
Main documentation and tutorial: http://www.python.org/doc
Tutorial for experienced programmers: http://www.diveintopython.org
Tutorial for beginners: http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy/html/
Comprehensive list of Python tutorials, websites and books: http://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/python/
Python Library Reference covering the language basics: https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html
Global Module Index – description of standard modules: https://docs.python.org/3/py-modindex.html

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Acknowledgements

Authors
© 2013 Kristian Rother ([email protected])

This document contains contributions by Allegra Via, Kaja Milanowska and Anna Philips.

License
Distributed under the conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike License 3.0.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for inspiring exchange on training and Python that this tutorial has benefited from:
Pedro Fernandes, Tomasz Puton, Edward Jenkins, Bernard Szlachta, Robert Lehmann and Magdalena Rother

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