Our first order of business is to ensure that you have Python installed. You'll need it in order to complete most of the examples in this book. We'll be working with Python 2.6 and we assume that you're using that same version. If there are any drastic differences in earlier releases, we'll make a note of them as we go along. All of the examples should still function properly with Python 2.4 and later versions.
If you don't have Python installed, you can download the latest 2.X version from http://www.python.org. Most Linux distributions, as well as Mac OS, usually have a version of Python preinstalled.
At the time of this writing, Python 2.6 was the latest version available, while 2.7 was in an alpha state.
The examples in this book are written for Python 2. However, wherever possible, we will provide code that has already been ported to Python 3. You can find the Python 3 code in the Python3 directories in the code bundle available on the Packt Publishing FTP site.
Unfortunately, we can't promise that all of the third-party libraries that we'll use will support Python 3. The Python community is working hard to port popular modules to version 3.0. However, as the versions are incompatible, there is a lot of work remaining. In situations where we cannot provide example code, we'll note this.