Recommended Books/Resources for Python

[Gerhard Häring]

TegSkywalker wrote:
> Hey all. Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question (new and want to learn
> Python) but do any of you have any suggested books or readings on how to
> learn Phython? I saw an O'Reilly book over at Amazon.com
> (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565924649) and wasn't 100% sure if
> this was a good source or not.

I can't recommend anything myself, but here's a great listing of 
Python-related books: http://www.amk.ca/bookstore/

> Here is another question. I see that Python is a multisource language
> spanning different OSes like Windows, Linux, and Mactintosh like how Java
> aims to be. If I were going to program something like an interactive CD and
> wanted to give it to people to check out, would they have to have a Python
> interpreter installed on their machine or will it run like a normal Windows
> .exe file for example?

One way or the other, Python applications need an interpreter. There 
are, however, ways to bundle the interpreter and the libraries used by a 
script into one self-contained executable (or an executable and a few DLLs).

On Windows: Gordon McMillan's installer or py2exe
everywhere: freeze (in the Tools directory)

Gerhard