Preliminary fluff
So, you want to learn the Python programming language but can’t find a concise and yet full-featured tutorial. This tutorial will attempt to teach you Python in 10 minutes. It’s probably not so much a tutorial as it is a cross between a tutorial and a cheatsheet, so it will just show you some basic concepts to start you off. Obviously, if you want to really learn a language you need to program in it for a while. I will assume that you are already familiar with programming and will, therefore, skip most of the non-language-specific stuff. The important keywords will be highlighted so you can easily spot them. Also, pay attention because, due to the terseness of this tutorial, some things will be introduced directly in code and only briefly commented on.
Properties
Python is strongly typed (i.e. types are enforced), dynamically, implicitly typed (i.e. you don’t have to declare variables), case sensitive (i.e. var and VAR are two different variables) and object-oriented (i.e. everything is an object).
Getting help
Help in Python is always available right in the interpreter. If you want to know how an object works, all you have to do is call help(<object>)! Also useful are dir(), which shows you all the object’s methods, and <object>.doc, which shows you its documentation string:
>>> help(5)
Help on int object:
(etc etc)
>>> dir(5)
['__abs__', '__add__', ... ]
>>> abs.__doc__
'abs(number) -> numbernnReturn the absolute value of the argument.'
Syntax
Python has no mandatory statement termination characters and blocks are specified by indentation. Indent to begin a block, dedent to end one. Statements that expect an indentation level end in a colon (:). Comments start with the pound (
#) sign and are single-line, multi-line strings are used for multi-line comments. Values are assigned (in fact, objects are bound to names) with the equals sign (”=”), and equality testing is done using two equals signs (”==“). You can increment/decrement values using the += and -= operators respectively by the right-hand amount. This works on many datatypes, strings included. You can also use multiple variables on one line. For example:
>>> myvar = 3
>>> myvar += 2
>>> myvar
5
>>> myvar -= 1
>>> myvar
4
"""This is a multiline comment.
The following lines concatenate the two strings."""
>>> mystring = "Hello"
>>> mystring += " world."
>>> print mystring
Hello world.
6.
This swaps the variables in one line(!).
7.
It doesn't violate strong typing because values aren't
8.
actually being assigned, but new objects are bound to
9.
the old names.
>>> myvar, mystring = mystring, myvar
Data types
The data structures available in python are lists, tuples and dictionaries. Sets are available in the sets library (but are built-in in Python 2.5 and later). Lists are like one-dimensional arrays (but you can also have lists of other lists), dictionaries are associative arrays (a.k.a. hash tables) and tuples are immutable one-dimensional arrays (Python “arrays” can be of any type, so you can mix e.g. integers, strings, etc in lists/dictionaries/tuples). The index of the first item in all array types is 0. Negative numbers count from the end towards the beginning, -1 is the last item. Variables can point to functions. The usage is as follows:
>>> sample = [1, ["another", "list"], ("a", "tuple")]
>>> mylist = ["List item 1", 2, 3.14]
>>> mylist[0] = "List item 1 again"
>>> mylist[-1] = 3.14
>>> mydict = {"Key 1": "Value 1", 2: 3, "pi": 3.14}
>>> mydict["pi"] = 3.15
>>> mytuple = (1, 2, 3)
>>> myfunction = len
>>> print myfunction(mylist)
3
You can access array ranges using a colon (:). Leaving the start index empty assumes the first item, leaving the end index assumes the last item. Negative indexes count from the last item backwards (thus -1 is the last item) like so:
>>> mylist = ["List item 1", 2, 3.14]
>>> print mylist[:]
['List item 1', 2, 3.1400000000000001]
>>> print mylist[0:2]
['List item 1', 2]
>>> print mylist[-3:-1]
['List item 1', 2]
>>> print mylist[1:]
[2, 3.14]
Strings
Its strings can use either single or double quotation marks, and you can have quotation marks of one kind inside a string that uses the other kind (i.e. “He said ‘hello’.” is valid). Multiline strings are enclosed in triple double (or single) quotes (”“”). Python supports Unicode out of the box, using the syntax u“This is a unicode string”. To fill a string with values, you use the % (modulo) operator and a tuple. Each %s gets replaced with an item from the tuple, left to right, and you can also use dictionary substitutions, like so:
>>>print "Name: %snNumber: %snString: %s" % (myclass. name, 3, 3 * "-")
Name: Poromenos
Number: 3
String: ---
strString = """This is
a multiline
string."""
10.
WARNING: Watch out for the trailing s in "%(key)s".
>>> print "This %(verb)s a %(noun)s." % {"noun": "test", "verb": "is"}
This is a test.
Flow control statements
Flow control statements are if, for, and while. There is no select; instead, use if. Use for to enumerate through members of a list. To obtain a list of numbers, use range(<number>). These statements’ syntax is thus:
rangelist = range(10)
>>> print rangelist
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
for number in rangelist:
# Check if number is one of
# the numbers in the tuple.
if number in (3, 4, 7, 9):
# "Break" terminates a for without
# executing the "else" clause.
break
else:
# "Continue" starts the next iteration
# of the loop. It's rather useless here,
# as it's the last statement of the loop.
continue
else:
# The "else" clause is optional and is
# executed only if the loop didn't "break".
pass # Do nothing
if rangelist[1]
2:
print "The second item (lists are 0-based) is 2"
elif rangelist[1]
3:
print "The second item (lists are 0-based) is 3"
else:
print "Dunno"
while rangelist[1] == 1:
pass