Ultimate Python Programming

Preface

Introduction to Python

• What makes Python so popular
• Python implementation
• Installing Python
• Python Interactive Mode
• Executing a Python Script
• IDLE
• Getting Help

Getting Started

• Identifiers
• Python Types
• Objects
• Variables and assignment statement
• Multiple and Pairwise Assignments
• Deleting a name
• Naming convention for constants 
• Operators
• Augmented assignment statements
• Expressions
• Order of operations: Operator Precedence and Associativity
• Type Conversion
• Statements
• Printing Output 
• Getting user input
• Complete programs
• Comments
• Indentation in Python
• Container types
• Mutable and Immutable Types 
• Functions and methods
• Importing
• Revisiting interactive mode 
• Errors
• PEP8
• Exercise

Strings

• Indexing
• Strings are immutable
• String Slicing
• String Concatenation and Repetition
• Checking membership 
• Adding whitespace to strings
• Creating multiline strings
• String methods
• Case-changing methods
• Character classification methods
• Aligning text within strings 
• Removing unwanted leading and trailing characters
• Searching and replacing substrings
• Chaining method calls
• String comparison 
• String conversions
• Escape Sequences
• Raw string literals
• String formatting
• String formatting using the format() method of string class
• Representation of text - character encodings
• Exercise 

Lists and Tuples

• Accessing individual elements of a list by indexing 
• Getting parts of a list by slicing
• Changing an item in a list by index assignment
• Changing a Portion of the list by slice assignment
• Adding an item at the end of the list by using append()
• Adding an item anywhere in the list by using insert()
• Adding multiple items at the end by using extend() or +=
• Removing a single element or a slice by using the del statement
• Removing an element by index and getting it by using pop()
• Removing an element by value using remove()
• Removing all the elements by using clear()
• Sorting a List 
• Reversing a List
• Finding an item in the list
• Comparing Lists
• Built-in functions used on lists
• Concatenation and Replication
• Using a list with functions from the random module
• Creating a list
• Using range to create a list of integers
• Using the repetition operator to create a list of repeated values
• Creating a list by splitting a string
• Converting a list of strings to a single string using join()
• List of Lists (Nested lists)
• Copying a list
• Shallow copy and deep copy
• Repetition operator with nested lists
• Tuples
• Tuple packing and unpacking
• Exercise

Dictionaries and Sets

• Dictionaries
• Adding new key-value pairs 
• Modifying Values 
• Getting a value from a key by using the get() method
• Getting a value from a key by using the setdefault() method
• Getting all keys, all values, and all key-value pairs
• Checking for the existence of a key or a value in a dictionary
• Comparing dictionaries 
• Deleting key-value pairs from a dictionary
• Creating a Dictionary at run time
• Creating a dictionary from existing data by using dict()
• Creating a dictionary by using the fromkeys() method
• Combining dictionaries 
• Nesting of dictionaries
• Aliasing and Shallow vs. Deep Copy
• Introduction to sets
• Creating a set
• Adding and Removing elements 
• Comparing sets
• Union, intersection, and difference of sets
• Frozenset
• Exercise

Conditional Execution

• if statement
• else clause in if statement
• Nested if statements
• Multiway selection by using elif clause
• Truthiness
• Short circuit behavior of operators and and or
• Values returned by and and or operators
• if else operator
• Exercise

Loops

• while loop
• for loop
• Nesting of Loops
• Premature termination of loops using the break statement
• continue statement
• else block in Loops
• pass statement
• for loop vs. while loop
• Exercise

Looping Techniques

• Iterating in sorted and reversed order
• Iterating over unique values
• Index-Based for loops
• Making in-place changes in a list while iterating 
• Skipping some items while iterating
• Using range and len combination to shuffle a sequence
• enumerate function 
• Iterating over multiple sequences using zip
• Modifying a collection while iterating in a for loop
• Infinite loop with break
• Avoiding complex logical conditions using break
• Exercise 

Comprehensions

• List Comprehensions
• if clause in list comprehension 
• Ternary operator in list comprehension
• Modifying a list while iterating 
• Getting keys from values in a dictionary using list comprehension
• Using list comprehensions to avoid aliasing while creating lists of lists
• Multiple for clauses and Nested list Comprehensions
• Extracting a column in a matrix 
• Dictionary Comprehensions
• Inverting the dictionary
• Set Comprehensions
• When not to use comprehensions
• Exercise

Functions

• Function Definition
• Function call
• Flow of control
• Parameters and Arguments
• No type checking of arguments
• Local Variables
• return statement
• Returning Multiple Values
• Semantics of argument passing
• Default Arguments
• Default arguments that could change over time
• Positional and Keyword Arguments
• Unpacking Arguments
• Variable number of positional arguments
• Variable number of keyword arguments
• Keyword-only arguments
• Positional-Only Arguments
• Multiple Unpackings in a Python Function Call
• Arguments and Parameters summary
• Function Objects
• Attributes of a function 
• Doctrsings
• Function Annotations 
• Recursive Functions 
• Exercise

Modules and Packages

• Modules
• Types of modules
• Exploring modules
• Creating and naming a new module
• Importing a module
• Importing all names from a module 
• Restricting names that can be imported
• Importing individual names from a module
• Using an alias while importing
• Documenting a module
• Module search Path
• Module object
• Byte compiled version of a module
• Reloading a module
• Scripts and modules 
• Packages
• Importing a package and its contents
• Subpackages
• Relative imports 
• Exercise

Namespaces and Scope

• Namespaces
• Inspecting namespaces
• Scope
• Name Resolution
• global statement
• nonlocal statement
• Exercise

Files

• Opening a File
• File opening modes
• Buffering
• Binary and Text Files
• Closing a file
• with statement
• Random Access
• Using seek in text mode
• Calling seek in append mode
• Reading and writing to the same file
• Reading a File using read()
• Line oriented reading 
• Writing to a file 
• Redirecting output of print to a file
• Example Programs
• File Related Modules
• Command Line Arguments
• Storing and Retrieving Python objects using pickle
• Exercise
• Project : Hangman Game

Object Oriented Programming

• Programming Paradigms
• Introduction to object-oriented programming
• Defining Classes and Creating Instance Objects
• Adding methods to the class
• Adding instance variables
• Calling a method inside another method
• Common pitfalls
• Initializer
• Data Hiding
• Class Variables
• Class and object namespaces
• Changing a class variable through an instance
• Class Methods
• Creating alternative initializers using class Methods
• Static Methods
• Creating Managed Attributes using properties
• Designing a class
• Exercise
• Project : Quiz creation
• Project : Snakes and Ladders Game
• Project : Log in system 

Magic Methods

• Overloading Binary Arithmetic operators
• Reverse methods
• In-place methods
• Magic Methods for comparison
• Comparing objects of different classes
• String representation of an instance object
• Construction and destruction of objects
• Making instance objects callable
• Overloading type conversion functions
• List of magic methods
• Exercise
• Project : Date Class

Inheritance and Polymorphism

• Inheriting a class
• Adding new methods and data members to the derived class 
• Overriding a base Method 
• Invoking the base class methods 
• Multilevel Inheritance
• object class
• Multiple Inheritance
• Method Resolution Order (MRO)
• super and MRO
• Polymorphism
• Abstract Base classes
• Composition
• Exercise

Iterators and Generators

• Iterables
• Iterators
• for loop Iteration Context – How for loop works
• Iteration Tools
• Iterator vs Iterable
• Creating your own Iterator
• Making your class Iterable
• Some More Iterators
• Lazy evaluation
• itertools Module
• Generators
• Generator function vs Normal function 
• Generator expressions
• Exercise

Decorators

• Prerequisites for understanding decorators
• Introduction to decorators
• Writing your first decorator
• Applying your decorator to multiple functions
• Automatic decoration syntax 
• Decorator Example: Timer 
• Decorator Example: Logger
• Decorator Example: Counting function calls
• Applications of decorators
• Decorating functions that take arguments
• Returning values from decorated functions 
• Decorator Example: Checking return values
• Decorator Example: Checking argument values
• Applying Multiple Decorators
• Preserving metadata of a function after decoration
• General template for writing a decorator
• Decorators with parameters
• General template for writing a decorator factory
• Decorator factory example
• Applying decorators to imported functions 
• Decorating classes
• Class Decorators
• Class Decorators with parameters
• Exercise

Lambda Expressions and Functional Programming

• Lambda expression
• Comparing def statement and lambda expression 
• Examples of lambda expressions 
• Using Lambda expressions
• Using lambda expressions for returning function objects
• Lambda expressions as closures
• Creating jump tables using lambda functions 
• Using lambda expressions in sorted built-in function
• Functional programming
• map
• map with multiple iterables
• filter
• Reducing an iterable 
• Built-in reducing functions 
• operator module
• Exercise

Exception Handling

• Types of Errors
• Strategies to handle exceptions in your code
• Error Handling by Python (Default exception handling)
• Built-in Exceptions: Python Exceptions Class Hierarchy
• Customized Exception Handling by using try…except 
• Catching multiple exceptions using multiple except handlers and single except handler 
• How to handle an exception
• Guaranteed execution of finally block
• else Block
• Why do we need an else block
• How to get exception details
• Nested try statements
• Raising Exception
• Re-raising Exception
• Chaining Exceptions
• Creating your own exceptions in Python (Custom exceptions)
• Assertions
• Exercise

Context Managers

• with statement
• Implementing our own context manager
• Exception raised inside with block 
• Why we need with statement and context managers
• Runtime context
• Example: Sending output of a portion of code to a file
• Example : Finding time taken by a piece of code
• Using context managers in the standard library
• Nested with statements and multiple context Managers
• Implementing a context manager by using a decorator on a generator
• Exercise