Help for a complete newbie

[Alex Martelli]

Steve Bergman <steve at rueb.com> wrote:
   ...
> Both are a bit out of date.  The current python version is 2.4.
> Learning Python covers 2.3.  Nutshell covers up to 2.2.
> 
> One of these days Alex will come out with a 2nd Edition of Nutshell and
> there will be much rejoicing. ;-)

If everything goes according to plan, the Nutshell's 2nd Edition should
be out at OSCON (O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, end of July in
Portland, OR -- check it out, it's really a good conference!).  The
book's text is about ready to get into O'Reilly's production queue (and
they take about 3 months to get to paper, so we should make it), save
for a few technical issues with cross-chapter cross-references, and
we're working on those; so it's basically out of my hands, save for
various intermediate-checking stages.

"Python in a Nutshell", 2nd edition, focuses on Python 2.4, but I've
managed to just about cover the forthcoming 2.5 as well (currently out
in alpha-1 stage) -- no doubt some 2.5 details in the book will prove
incorrect (particularly if there are any changes between alpha1 and the
final version), and for some crucial new libraries due for inclusion in
2.5 (such as ElementTree and ctypes) I've just barely managed a
"mention" rather than real "coverage"; nevertheless, I do hope the
amount of 2.5 coverage I've been able to add will be useful to future
readers (and save me from doing a 3rd edition any time soon;-).


Alex