Cookbook for beginners?

[Rune Strand]

Aahz wrote:
> If you were going to name three or five essential recipes from the
> Python Cookbook suitable for beginners, what would you pick?
>
> Yes, this is for _Python for Dummies_, so idioms that aren't in the
> Cookbook are also fine.

If it's for _beginners_ / _dummies_, I would expect things like

1.6
names = ['George', 'Saddam', 'Osama']
name_string = ', '.join(names)

4.10
dict.setdefault(k, v)

?.?
dict = dict(zip(list_a, list_b))

- listcomps

2.1 / 2.2
reading/writing from/to files

?.?
string-methods like .split(), .upper(), endswith(), startswith(),
isalpha() ...