Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook

Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook

Overview of this book

Python is the preferred choice of developers, engineers, data scientists, and hobbyists everywhere. It is a great scripting language that can power your applications and provide great speed, safety, and scalability. By exposing Python as a series of simple recipes, you can gain insight into specific language features in a particular context. Having a tangible context helps make the language or standard library feature easier to understand. This book comes with over 100 recipes on the latest version of Python. The recipes will benefit everyone ranging from beginner to an expert. The book is broken down into 13 chapters that build from simple language concepts to more complex applications of the language. The recipes will touch upon all the necessary Python concepts related to data structures, OOP, functional programming, as well as statistical programming. You will get acquainted with the nuances of Python syntax and how to effectively use the advantages that it offers. You will end the book equipped with the knowledge of testing, web services, and configuration and application integration tips and tricks. The recipes take a problem-solution approach to resolve issues commonly faced by Python programmers across the globe. You will be armed with the knowledge of creating applications with flexible logging, powerful configuration, and command-line options, automated unit tests, and good documentation.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using input() and getpass() for user input


Some Python scripts depend on gathering input from a user. There are several ways to do this. One popular technique is to use the console to prompt the user for input.

There are two relatively common situations:

  • Ordinary input: We use the input() function for this. This will provide a helpful echo of the characters being entered.
  • No echo input: This is often used for passwords. The characters entered aren't displayed, providing a degree of privacy. We use the getpass() function in the getpass module for this.

The input() and getpass() functions are just two implementation choices for reading from the console. It turns out that getting the string of characters is only the first step in processing. We actually have separate tiers of considerations:

  1. The initial interaction with the console. This is the basics of writing a prompt and reading input. This must correctly handle data as well as keyboard events, such as backspace for editing. This may also mean...