Book Image

Python: Real-World Data Science

By : Fabrizio Romano, Dusty Phillips, Phuong Vo.T.H, Martin Czygan, Robert Layton, Sebastian Raschka
Book Image

Python: Real-World Data Science

By: Fabrizio Romano, Dusty Phillips, Phuong Vo.T.H, Martin Czygan, Robert Layton, Sebastian Raschka

Overview of this book

The Python: Real-World Data Science course will take you on a journey to become an efficient data science practitioner by thoroughly understanding the key concepts of Python. This learning path is divided into four modules and each module are a mini course in their own right, and as you complete each one, you’ll have gained key skills and be ready for the material in the next module. The course begins with getting your Python fundamentals nailed down. After getting familiar with Python core concepts, it’s time that you dive into the field of data science. In the second module, you'll learn how to perform data analysis using Python in a practical and example-driven way. The third module will teach you how to design and develop data mining applications using a variety of datasets, starting with basic classification and affinity analysis to more complex data types including text, images, and graphs. Machine learning and predictive analytics have become the most important approaches to uncover data gold mines. In the final module, we'll discuss the necessary details regarding machine learning concepts, offering intuitive yet informative explanations on how machine learning algorithms work, how to use them, and most importantly, how to avoid the common pitfalls.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Table of Contents
2
Python: Real-World Data Science
3
Meet Your Course Guide
4
What's so cool about Data Science?
5
Course Structure
6
Course Journey
7
The Course Roadmap and Timeline
12
Index

Chapter 9. Strings and Serialization

Before we get involved with higher level design patterns, let's take a deep dive into one of Python's most common objects: the string. We'll see that there is a lot more to the string than meets the eye, and also cover searching strings for patterns and serializing data for storage or transmission.

In particular, we'll visit:

  • The complexities of strings, bytes, and byte arrays
  • The ins and outs of string formatting
  • A few ways to serialize data
  • The mysterious regular expression

Strings

Strings are a basic primitive in Python; we've used them in nearly every example we've discussed so far. All they do is represent an immutable sequence of characters. However, though you may not have considered it before, "character" is a bit of an ambiguous word; can Python strings represent sequences of accented characters? Chinese characters? What about Greek, Cyrillic, or Farsi?

In Python 3, the answer is yes. Python strings...