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Python Cookbook [Paperback]

Alex Martelli , Anna Ravenscroft , David Ascher
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
RRP: £38.50
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Book Description

25 Mar 2005 0596007973 978-0596007973 2

Portable, powerful, and a breeze to use, Python is the popular open source object-oriented programming language used for both standalone programs and scripting applications. It is now being used by an increasing number of major organizations, including NASA and Google.

Updated for Python 2.4, The Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition offers a wealth of useful code for all Python programmers, not just advanced practitioners. Like its predecessor, the new edition provides solutions to problems that Python programmers face everyday.

It now includes over 200 recipes that range from simple tasks, such as working with dictionaries and list comprehensions, to complex tasks, such as monitoring a network and building a templating system. This revised version also includes new chapters on topics such as time, money, and metaprogramming.

Here's a list of additional topics covered:

  • Manipulating text
  • Searching and sorting
  • Working with files and the filesystem
  • Object-oriented programming
  • Dealing with threads and processes
  • System administration
  • Interacting with databases
  • Creating user interfaces
  • Network and web programming
  • Processing XML
  • Distributed programming
  • Debugging and testing
Another advantage of The Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition is its trio of authors--three well-known Python programming experts, who are highly visible on email lists and in newsgroups, and speak often at Python conferences.

With scores of practical examples and pertinent background information, The Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition is the one source you need if you're looking to build efficient, flexible, scalable, and well-integrated systems.


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Product details

  • Paperback: 846 pages
  • Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 2 edition (25 Mar 2005)
  • Language: French
  • ISBN-10: 0596007973
  • ISBN-13: 978-0596007973
  • Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 4.2 x 23.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 352,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Review

The 'Python Cookbook' is superb. -- Cameron Laird, Unix Review.com, Jan 7, 2003 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Alex Martelli spent 8 years with IBM Research, winning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards. He then spent 13 as a Senior Software Consultant at think3 inc, developing libraries, network protocols, GUI engines, event frameworks, and web access frontends. He has also taught programming languages, development methods, and numerical computing at Ferrara University and other venues. He's a C++ MVP for Brainbench, and a member of the Python Software Foundation. He currently works for AB Strakt, a Python-centered software house in G teborg, Sweden, mostly by telecommuting from his home in Bologna, Italy. Alex's proudest achievement is the articles that appeared in Bridge World (January/February 2000), which were hailed as giant steps towards solving issues that had haunted contract bridge theoreticians for decades.

Anna Martelli Ravenscroft has a background in training and mentoring, particularly in office technologies. She brings a fresh perspective to Python with a focus on practical, real-world problem solving. Anna is currently pursuing a degree at Stanford University and often pair programs (in Python) with her husband and children.

David Ascher is the lead for Python projects at ActiveState, including Komodo, ActiveState's integrated development environment written mostly in Python. David has taught courses about Python to corporations, in universities, and at conferences. He also organized the Python track at the 1999 and 2000 O'Reilly Open Source Conventions, and was the program chair for the 10th International Python Conference. In addition, he co-wrote Learning Python (both editions) and serves as a director of the Python Software Foundation. David holds a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in cognitive science, both from Brown University.


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Customer Reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars More than a cookbook 6 Aug 2006
Format:Paperback
String handling, money, time, dates. Email, network sockets, cgi, xml. The staples of the cookbook, and Python Cookbook certainly has these. However, interspersed throughout are chapters that seem to have come from at least one other completely different book, a more discursive rumination on Python programming in general. Each chapter begins with a mini essay from a Python luminary, and the discussion of each recipe is fairly extensive.

If you do any scientific or engineering work, you'll know that Python is everywhere on the scientific desktop, providing bindings, scripting and GUI front ends for ancient Fortran/C monstrosities. Reflecting this interest, there is a strong emphasis on performance, with chapters devoted to algorithms and searching and sorting.

Elsewhere, those who have graduated from the plethora of beginner's books, but have been bemused by the complete lack of any intermediate texts, will be pleased to find chapters on Python shortcuts (getting the most out of sequences for the most part) and one on generators and iterators. Futher, there is a chapter on OOP the Python way (including examples of dynamic delegation and design patterns implementation), and one on metaclasses.

This is an extremely useful book, particularly the chapters on using Python's basic collections, which will furnish the reader with some essential idioms for efficient use. However, this, and the OOP chapters would have been better as a separate book. But in lieu of a Thinking in Python or Effective Python, you need this book if you want to do any serious development in Python.

As a cookbook, it has everything you will be expecting as a springboard for exploring the standard library, except for regular expressions. But these are so well covered in introductory books, that you won't need enormous coverage here. On the other hand, the material is presented in a fairly wordy manner, which makes for interesting reading, but for dipping in and out, makes finding things more difficult than it might be.

The other notable thing about Python Cookbook is that it has rather a large number of errors in it. You will want to check the O'Reilly website for the errata, especially if you don't have the most recent printing, rather than scratching your head over why the Singleton implementation doesn't work at all.

Nonetheless, this is a vital resource for Python 2.4 users; even if you don't think you need a traditional cookbook, there is an enormous amount of material here you can benefit from.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With cookbooks there is a danger of just reproducing in print a set of libraries that might have been more conveniently downloaded from a code repository. The "Python Cookbook" succeeds by concentrating on those idioms and techniques that can often be woven into various programs. In addition the accompanying commentaries usually do an excellent job of leaving the reader with a better understanding of the relevant issues rather than just being told "Do it this way". The value of the book is increased further by the well-written chapter introductions, which often yield deep insights into the Python way of doing things.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Verbose, and could be better organised 9 July 2009
By Frank T
Format:Paperback
I can't help but compare this book to Tom Christiansen's Perl Cookbook. It's not bad, but if you've ever used the Perl book, you're likely to be disappointed by this one.

One problem is that the "recipes" in this book are often for very specific tasks that are unlikely to correspond exactly to what the reader wants to do ("Looking up Holidays Automatically", "Enriching the Dictionary Type with Ratings Functionality", "Converting Among Temperature Scales", etc.).

What do headings like these really tell the reader about the technical problems that the recipes solve? In the Perl Cookbook, you can flip through the pages and within seconds find a heading that corresponds exactly to what you want to do. Here, you have to go through a process of interpretation, and as often as not read a couple of paragraphs of each recipe to see if it's any use to you.

This lack of informativeness about content applies also to some whole chapters, notably "Time and Money" and "Python Shortcuts". What have time and money got to do with the structure of Python? How do I know in advance if my task falls into the category of a "shortcut"? Programming guides should structure themselves around tasks, not concepts.

The book also suffers somewhat from verbosity, especially in the chapter introductions. You don't buy a book like this to be reminded how great Python is ("Python shines in this task", etc.). This may sound picky, but in a cookbook, succinctness is of the essence: you don't want to have to study every paragraph on the offchance that there's useful information in it.

Maybe I'm being harsh, but knowing from the Perl book just how good a programming cookbook CAN be, I have to express my disappointment with this one. I am finding "Python in a Nutshell" a much more helpful, more succinct, and no less comprehensive, guide to the language.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Replacement for Pythonn & AWS cookbook which I ordered by mistake.
I have no knowledge of this item. It was a gift for my grandson at University and was sent direct to him. However it arrived within the times given and was in good order.
Published 3 months ago by Meemaw
4.0 out of 5 stars Good reference for beginners.
The cookbook is a good reference for beginners for python as it presents solutions to problems in a convenient concentrated way.

However(! Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2011 by B. H. Madsen
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
This book contains a lot of practical examples - to about all topics when you develop
python programs. Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2010 by Maciej
4.0 out of 5 stars great value for money
Got this book very cheap off amazon compared to other python books and pretty much has everything you need. Found the networking section most helpful.
Published on 3 Sep 2010 by Sam S. Ung
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent resource
This book has earned a spot within arms reach of my computer.

An excellent source of facts, ideas, and inspiration - exactly what a cookbook should be.

Published on 25 Mar 2003 by P. E. Jacobs
4.0 out of 5 stars Another useful Python reference.
Try as I might, I can't help comparing this with the excellent `Perl Cookbook'.

Like its Perl counterpart, the Python Cookbook presents a series of short `recipes' for doing... Read more

Published on 30 Sep 2002 by Simon Ward
4.0 out of 5 stars A useful howto for those in need of a quick Python reference
I had been interested in learning python for a while before i actually started reading up on it.

I found that this book covered most of the topics i was looking for: i.e. Read more

Published on 21 Aug 2002
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