TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 A tutorial introduction 5
2 Lexical conventions and syntax 19
3 Types and objects 27
4 Operators and expressions 57
5 Control flow 71
6 Functions and functional programming 79
7 Classes and object-oriented programming 91
8 Modules and packages 103
9 Input and output 111
10 Execution environment 123
11 Introduction to the Python Standard Library 131
12 Built-in functions and exceptions 135
13 Python runtime services 149
14 Mathematics 181
15 Data structures and algorithms 195
16 String and text handling 203
17 Data management and object persistence 237
18 File handling 245
19 Operating system services 265
20 Threads 355
21 Network programming 365
22 Internet application protocols 393
23 Internet data handling and encoding 445
24 Cryptographic services 495
25 Miscellaneous modules 499
26 Debugging, profiling, and testing 503
27 Extending and embedding Python 519