Python 123 introduction

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jeremy Sanders a écrit :
> Here is a brief simple introduction to Python I wrote for a computing course
> for graduate astronomers. It assumes some programming experience. Although
> it is not a complete guide, I believe this could be a useful document for
> other groups to learn Python, so I'm making it available for others to
> download, and modify for their own needs (some of the content is site
> specific).

May I emit some observations and suggest a couple of corrections ?

"""
To make it executable type chmod +x test.py, then run it by typing its 
name, test.py on the unix prompt
"""

Unless the current directory is in the path, this won't work:
bruno at bibi ~ $ cat toto.py
#!/usr/bin/python
print 'hello'
bruno at bibi ~ $ chmod +x toto.py
bruno at bibi ~ $ toto.py
-bash: toto.py: command not found
bruno at bibi ~ $ ./toto.py
hello
bruno at bibi ~ $



">>> a+b      # the value is printed at the prompt"
s/value/result/

"Numbers can be integers (int, whole numbers) or floating point (float)"
s/Numbers/Numeric objects/

"Strings are collections of characters"
s/Strings/String objects/

"Lists are collections of any types of variable (even lists)"
List objects are ordered collections of any type of objects (even other 
lists)

"Tuples are like lists but they cannot be changed"
s/Tuples/Tuple objects/

<side-note>
Semantically, a tuple is more a kind of record - a dict indexed by 
position - than an immutable list. That is: lists are homogenous ordered 
collections of arbitrary length. Neither the length of the collection 
nor the position of an object in it  have special meaning. While tuples 
are fixed-length heterogenous ordered   structures where both the number 
of items and their positions are meaningfull. Canonically, a DB table 
can be represented as a list of tuples.
</side-note>

"Files correspond to files on the disk"
File objects correspond to OS files.

 >>> import sys
 >>> type(sys.stdin)
<type 'file'>

"""
Note that immutable objects (like numbers, strings or tuples) do not 
have this property.

 >>> a = 10              # makes a point to object 10
"""

NB : here '10' is not the id of the object, it's its value. So it should 
be: # makes name 'a' point to an int object

"""
 >>> b = a               # makes b point to object 10
 >>> a = 11              # makes a point to object 11
 >>> print b             # prints 10
"""

Hem... This has nothing to do with ints being immutables:

a = [1] # makes 'a' point to a list
b = a   # makes  'b' points to the same object
a = [1] # makes 'a' points to *another* list
print "a is b ? %s" % (a is b)

"""
In Python subroutines, procedures and functions are basically the same thing
"""

NB : The type is 'function'. They *always* return something 
(implicitely, the None object).

"None is a special value meaning ``nothing''"
s/value/object/

"You can test whether something is None by using is None"
There's always only one single None object, so you can test whether 
something is None by using 'is None'.

"""
a = ['foo', 'fred', 42]
for i in a:
     print i
"""

Traditionaly, identifier 'i' is used as the current index in C-like 
loops. Using it in this context might be a bit confusing :

a = ['foo', 'fred', 42]
for obj in a:
     print obj

"""
As an aside, there is a shortcut version of loops called a list 
comprehension which is very convenient:
"""

List comps are a "shortcut" for building lists. They are not a "shortcut 
  version of loops".

"""
filename = 'stupid.dat'
try:
     f = open(filename)
except IOError:              # the file did not open
     print "The filename", filename, "does not exist!"
"""

Actually, the file may exist, but the program may not be able to open it 
for other reasons...

filename = 'stupid.dat'
try:
     f = open(filename)
except IOError, e:              # the file did not open
     print "could not open file %s : %s" % (filename, e)



My 2 cents...