Book Image

Learn Python Programming - Second Edition

By : Fabrizio Romano
4.5 (2)
Book Image

Learn Python Programming - Second Edition

4.5 (2)
By: Fabrizio Romano

Overview of this book

Learn Python Programming is a quick, thorough, and practical introduction to Python - an extremely flexible and powerful programming language that can be applied to many disciplines. Unlike other books, it doesn't bore you with elaborate explanations of the basics but gets you up-and-running, using the language. You will begin by learning the fundamentals of Python so that you have a rock-solid foundation to build upon. You will explore the foundations of Python programming and learn how Python can be manipulated to achieve results. Explore different programming paradigms and find the best approach to a situation; understand how to carry out performance optimization and effective debugging; control the flow of a program; and utilize an interchange format to exchange data. You'll also walk through cryptographic services in Python and understand secure tokens. Learn Python Programming will give you a thorough understanding of the Python language. You'll learn how to write programs, build websites, and work with data by harnessing Python's renowned data science libraries. Filled with real-world examples and projects, the book covers various types of applications, and concludes by building real-world projects based on the concepts you have learned.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Return values

The return values of functions are one of those things where Python is ahead of most other languages. Functions are usually allowed to return one object (one value) but, in Python, you can return a tuple, and this implies that you can return whatever you want. This feature allows a coder to write software that would be much harder to write in any other language, or certainly more tedious. We've already said that to return something from a function we need to use the return statement, followed by what we want to return. There can be as many return statements as needed in the body of a function.

On the other hand, if within the body of a function we don't return anything, or we invoke a bare return statement, the function will return None. This behavior is harmless and, even though I don't have the room here to go into detail explaining why Python was...