Book Image

Python Fundamentals

By : Ryan Marvin, Mark Nganga, Amos Omondi
Book Image

Python Fundamentals

By: Ryan Marvin, Mark Nganga, Amos Omondi

Overview of this book

After a brief history of Python and key differences between Python 2 and Python 3, you'll understand how Python has been used in applications such as YouTube and Google App Engine. As you work with the language, you'll learn about control statements, delve into controlling program flow and gradually work on more structured programs via functions. As you settle into the Python ecosystem, you'll learn about data structures and study ways to correctly store and represent information. By working through specific examples, you'll learn how Python implements object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts of abstraction, encapsulation of data, inheritance, and polymorphism. You'll be given an overview of how imports, modules, and packages work in Python, how you can handle errors to prevent apps from crashing, as well as file manipulation. By the end of this book, you'll have built up an impressive portfolio of projects and armed yourself with the skills you need to tackle Python projects in the real world.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Python Fundamentals
Preface

Introduction


You have already seen lists that hold values that you can access by using indexes. However, what if you wanted to name each value, instead of using an index? For example, suppose that you want to access a list of cake ingredients, but you do not know where in the array it is. In that case, a dictionary would come in handy.

Dictionaries, sometimes referred to as associative arrays in other languages, are data structures that hold data or information in a key-value order. Dictionaries allow you to access whatever value you want, using the much easier to remember key.

Dictionaries, unlike lists, are indexed using keys, which are usually strings. There are two kinds of dictionaries that you can use in Python: the default dict, which is unordered, and a special kind of dictionary called an OrderedDict. The difference is that the keys in the default dictionary are stored in an unordered manner, whereas an OrderedDict stores key-value pairs in the order of insertion.

A set is a collection...