Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Introduction


One of the benefits of the Python programming language is that it is interpreted, not compiled. This means that Python code is processed when it is called, rather than having to be pre-compiled before use. Because of this, interpreted languages generally have an interactive shell, allowing users to test code and otherwise have immediate feedback without having to create a separate source code file.

Of course, to get the most functionality out of a programming language, having permanent code files is necessary. When using an interactive prompt, the code lives in RAM; once the interactive session is closed, that code is lost. Thus, using an interactive prompt is a great way to quickly test programming ideas, but you wouldn't want to run a full-blown program from it.

This chapter will talk about using the Command Prompt to launch programs, as well as Python's functionality using the interactive shell. Special functionality with the Windows operating system will be discussed, and...