Introduction

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()! Also useful are dir(), which shows you all the object’s methods, and .doc, which shows you its documentation string:

>>> a = 5
>>> help(a)
Help on int object:
(etc)

>>> dir(a)
['__abs__', '__add__', '__doc__', ...]

>>> a.__doc__
Help on int object:
(etc)

Syntax

Python has no mandatory statement termination characters and blocks are specified by indentation. Indent to begin a block, indent 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 data types, strings included. You can also use multiple variables on one line. For example:

>>> 
>>> myvar = 2
>>> myvar
2
>>> print myvar
2
>>> myvar = 1
>>> myvar += 5
>>> print myvar
6
>>> mystring = "hello world"
>>> print mystring
hello world
>>> 
>>> mystring = ''' This is a multi-line data string starting
with a triple single quote and ending with another
triple quote'''
>>>

Data types

The data structures available in python are lists, tuples and dictionaries. 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")]
>>> sample
[1, ["another", "list"], ("a", "tuple")]
>>>
>>> mylist = ["List item 1", 2, 3.14]
>>> mylist[0] = "List item 1 again" # We're changing the item.
>>> mylist[-1] = 3.21 # Here, we refer to the last item.
>>> mydict = {"Key 1": "Value 1", 2: 3, "pi": 3.14}
>>> mydict["pi"] = 3.15 # This is how you change dictionary values.
>>> 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]

# Adding a third parameter, "step" will have Python step in
# N item increments, rather than 1.
# E.g., this will return the first item, then go to the third and
# return that (so, items 0 and 2 in 0-indexing).

>>> print mylist[::2]
['List item 1', 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). Multi Line 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:

 >>> mystring = "hello world"
>>> print mystring
hello world
>>> 
>>> mystring = ''' This is a multi-line data string starting
with a triple single quote and ending with another
triple quote'''

>>> 
>>>print "Name: %s\
Number: %s\
String: %s" % ('hello', 3, "---")

Name: hello
Number: 3
String: ---

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().

>>> # This is a comment
>>> file_sizes = [ 12, 5, 1, 2, 12, 45, 14, 90, 46, 57, 65, 90 ]
>>> 
>>> # We are creating a checking loop which tell if \
any file size more than 20 as Amber and if its more \
than 60 as Red else Green
>>> 
>>> for each in file_sizes:
 if each < 20:
 print "Green"
 else if each < 60:
 print "Amber"
 else
 print "Red"
...
(etc, etc)

Functions

Functions are declared with the “def” keyword. Optional arguments are set in the function declaration after the mandatory arguments by being assigned a default value. For named arguments, the name of the argument is assigned a value. Functions can return a tuple (and using tuple unpacking you can effectively return multiple values).

>>>def check_filesize(file_sizes):
'''
This function is used to check if file sizes.
If size is < 20 reported as Green,
if its < 40 and > 20 its Amber,
if > 40 as Red
'''
 for each in file_sizes:
 if each < 20:
 print "Green"
 else if each < 60:
 print "Amber"
 else
 print "Red"