Python is a very powerful and widespread language, with a fully-featured standard library. It's said to come with batteries included, which means that most of what you will have to do will be available in the standard library.
Such a big set of functions might make developers feel lost, and it's not always clear which of the available tools are the best for solving a specific task. For many of these tasks, external libraries will also be available that you can install to solve the same problem. So, you might not only find yourself wondering which class or function to use from all the features provided by the standard library, but you will also wonder when it's best to switch to an external library to achieve your goals.
This book tries to provide a general overview of the tools available in the Python standard library to solve many common tasks and recipes to leverage those tools to achieve specific results. For cases where the solution based on the standard library might get too complex or limited, it will also try to suggest tools out of the standard library that can help you do the next step.
