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

HTML reports


For people who prefer a more visual help tool, or prefer to keep a browser open, PyDoc includes the ability to create HTML files from the official Python documentation. Depending on the version of Python being used, there are several different ways to access the HTML information.

How to do it...

  1. Starting in Python 3.2, help web pages can be opened by using python -m pydoc -b. If you have both Python 2 and 3 installed, you can specify which Python version you desire to work with; for example, python3 -m pydoc -b. If you are using Python 2, then use the command python -m pydoc -p <port>. The port number can be 0, which will pick a random, unused port address for the web server.
  2. Regardless of which version you use, it should open up a web page similar to the following screenshot:

  1. All of the modules available in Python are shown as hyperlinks. You can also search for entries via the Search box; alternatively, if you know the name of the module you're interested in, enter it directly...