Appendix A. Further reading

Chapter 1. Getting To Know Python

• 1.3. Documenting functions
  • Python Style Guide discusses how to write a good doc string.
  • Python Tutorial discusses conventions for spacing in doc strings.

• 1.4. Everything is an object
  • Python Reference Manual explains exactly what it means to say that everything in Python is an object.
  • eff-bot summarizes Python objects.

• 1.5. Indenting code
  • Python Reference Manual discusses cross-platform indentation issues and shows various indentation errors.
  • Python Style Guide discusses good indentation style.

• 1.6. Testing modules
  • Python Reference Manual discusses the low-level details of importing modules.

• 1.7. Dictionaries 101
  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist teaches about dictionaries and shows how to use dictionaries to model sparse matrices.
  • Python Knowledge Base has lots of example code using dictionaries.
  • Python Library Reference summarizes all the dictionary methods.

• 1.8. Lists 101
  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist teaches about lists and makes an important point about passing lists as function arguments.
  • Python Tutorial shows how to use lists as stacks and queues.
  • Python Knowledge Base answers common questions about lists and has lots of example code using lists.
  • Python Library Reference summarizes all the list methods.

• 1.9. Tuples 101
  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist teaches about tuples and shows how to concatenate tuples.
  • Python Knowledge Base shows how to sort a tuple.
  • Python Tutorial shows how to define a tuple with one element.

• 1.10. Defining variables
  • Python Reference Manual shows examples of when you can skip the line continuation character and when you have to use it.

• 1.11. Formatting strings
  • Python Library Reference summarizes all the string formatting format characters.
  • Effective AWK Programming discusses all the format characters and advanced string formatting techniques like specifying width, precision, and zero-padding.

• 1.12. Mapping lists
  • Python Tutorial discusses another way to map lists using the built-in map function.
  • Python Tutorial shows how to do nested list mapping.

• 1.13. Joining lists and splitting strings
  • Python Knowledge Base answers common questions about strings and has lots of example code using strings.
  • Python Library Reference summarizes all the string methods.
  • Python Library Reference documents the string module.

Chapter 2. The Power Of Introspection

• 2.2. Importing modules using from module import
  • eff-bot has more to say on import module vs. from module import.
  • Python Tutorial discusses advanced import techniques, including from module import *.

• 2.3. Optional and named arguments
  • Python Tutorial discusses exactly when and how default arguments are evaluated, which matters when the default value is a list or an expression with side effects.

• 2.4. type, str, dir, and other built-in functions
  • Python Library Reference documents all the built-in functions and all the built-in exceptions.

• 2.6. Filtering lists
  • Python Tutorial discusses another way to filter lists using the built-in filter function.

• 2.8. Using lambda functions
  • Python Knowledge Base discusses using lambda to call functions indirectly.
  • Python Tutorial shows how to access outside variables from inside a lambda function. (PEP 227 explains why this technique is unnecessary in Python 2.1, which supports nested scopes.)
  • The Whole Python FAQ has examples of obfuscated one-liners using lambda.

Chapter 3. An Object-Oriented Framework

• 3.2. Defining classes
  • Learning to Program has a gentler introduction to classes.
  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist shows how to use classes to model compound datatypes.
  • Python Tutorial has an in-depth look at classes, namespaces, and inheritance.
  • Python Knowledge Base answers common questions about classes.

• 3.3. Instantiating classes
  • Python Library Reference summarizes built-in attributes like __class__.
  • Python Library Reference documents the gc module, which gives you low-level control over Python's garbage collection.

• 3.4. UserDict: a wrapper class
  • Python Library Reference documents the UserDict module and the copy module.

• 3.6. Advanced special class methods
  • Python Reference Manual documents all the special class methods.

• 3.8. Private functions
  • Python Tutorial discusses the inner workings of private variables.

• 3.9. Handling exceptions
  • Python Tutorial discusses exceptions, including raising your own exceptions and handling multiple exceptions at once.
  • Python Library Reference summarizes all the built-in exceptions.
  • Python Library Reference documents the traceback module, which provides low-level access to exception attributes after an exception is raised.
  • Python Reference Manual discusses the inner workings of the try...except block.

• 3.10. File objects
  • Python Tutorial discusses reading and writing files, including how to read a file one line at a time into a list.
  • eff-bot discusses efficiency and performance of various ways of reading a file.
  • Python Knowledge Base answers common questions about files.
  • Python Library Reference summarizes all the file object methods.

• 3.12. Assigning multiple values at once
  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist shows how to use multiple assignment to swap the values of two variables.
  • Python Knowledge Base answers questions about the os module.