Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Steven F. Lott
Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Steven F. Lott

Overview of this book

Python is the preferred choice of developers, engineers, data scientists, and hobbyists everywhere. It is a great language that can power your applications and provide great speed, safety, and scalability. It can be used for simple scripting or sophisticated web applications. By exposing Python as a series of simple recipes, this book gives you insight into specific language features in a particular context. Having a tangible context helps make the language or a given standard library feature easier to understand. This book comes with 133 recipes on the latest version of Python 3.8. The recipes will benefit everyone, from beginners just starting out with Python to experts. You'll not only learn Python programming concepts but also how to build complex applications. The recipes will touch upon all necessary Python concepts related to data structures, object oriented programming, functional programming, and statistical programming. You will get acquainted with the nuances of Python syntax and how to effectively take advantage of it. By the end of this Python book, you will be equipped with knowledge of testing, web services, configuration, and application integration tips and tricks. You will be armed with the knowledge of how to create applications with flexible logging, powerful configuration, command-line options, automated unit tests, and good documentation.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
16
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17
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 a user for input.

There are two relatively common situations:

  • Ordinary input: We can use the input() function for this. This will provide a helpful echo of the characters being entered.
  • Secure, 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 gathering valid, useful data. The input also needs to be validated.

When gathering input from a user there are several tiers of considerations for us to make, including the following:

  1. The user interaction...