Learning Python (Learning) by Mark Lutz  (9)  £16.24

Python Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)) by Mark Lutz  (6)  £3.99

Programming Python by Mark Lutz  (6)  £27.99

Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: From Novice to Professional) by Magnus Lie Hetland  (2)  £30.99

Core PYTHON Programming by Wesley J. Chun  (6)  £17.39

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Cameron Laird, Unix Review.com, Jan 7, 2003
The 'Python Cookbook' is superb.

Book Description
The Python Cookbook is a collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for Python programmers, written by Python programmers. Over the past year, members of the Python community have contributed material to an online repository of Python recipes hosted by ActiveState. This book contains the best of those recipes, accompanied by overviews and background material by key Python figures.

The recipes in the Python Cookbook range from simple tasks, such as working with dictionaries and list comprehensions, to entire modules that demonstrate templating systems and network monitoring. This book contains over 200 recipes on the following topics:

Searching and sorting

Manipulating text

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

Extending Python

This book is a treasure trove of useful code for all Python programmers, from novices to advanced practitioners, with contributions from such Python luminaries as Guido Van Rossum, David Ascher, Tim Peters, Paul Prescod, Mark Hammond, and Alex Martelli, as well as over 100 other Python programmers. The recipes highlight Python best practices and can be used directly in day-to-day programming tasks, as a source of ideas, or as a way to learn more about Python.

The recipes in the Python Cookbook were edited by David Ascher, who is on the board of the Python Software Foundation and is the co-author of Learning Python, and Alex Martelli, who is known for his numerous and exhaustive postings on the Python mailing list. The book contains a foreword by Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python.

See all Product Description

Learning Python (Learning) by Mark Lutz  (9)  £16.24

Programming Python by Mark Lutz  (6)  £27.99

Core PYTHON Programming by Wesley J. Chun  (6)  £17.39

Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: From Novice to Professional) by Magnus Lie Hetland  (2)  £30.99

Python Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)) by Mark Lutz  (6)  £3.99

› Explore similar items : Books (48)

5 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:  (3) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review (5 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   7 of 7 people found the following review helpful: More than a cookbook, 6 Aug 2006 By  Thing with a hook - See all my reviews This review is from: Python Cookbook (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.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   4 of 4 people found the following review helpful: Useful code samples, illuminating commentary, deep insights, 23 Oct 2002 By  Hamish Lawson (St Andrews, Scotland) - See all my reviews 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.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: Another useful Python reference., 30 Sep 2002 By  Dr. S. Ward "deepwater_systems" - See all my reviews       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 certain tasks quickly but, unlike the `Perl Cookbook' the Python text suffers from being excessively verbose in places. Some of the recipes have been taken from the Perl Cookbook and `pythonised' (the authors state as much) and as such this book is very good for programmers who are migrating from Perl to Python - some of the recipe explanations are very good indeed. As a result of this, the Cookbook is also a good reference for those starting out with Python. Combine the Cookbook with David Beazley's `Python Essential Reference' and you've got a winning combination. Recommended.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) › See all 5 customer reviews...		Most Recent Customer Reviews 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 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. Read more Published on 21 Aug 2002 Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 5 customer reviews...