pyc file [Newbie Question]

[Alex Martelli]

Gabriel Genellina <gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar> wrote:

> En Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:40:23 -0300, Jim Aikin <editor at musicwords.net>
> escribió:
> 
> > The Tutorial is very good, but there are numerous topics that it slides
> > past
> > (as it would have to do, in order to avoid being ten times as long). I
> > haven't yet gotten deep enough into Python to even know where to look
> > for a
> > full explanation of what "import" does or what alternatives there might
> > be
> > to using it.
> 
> There are many books about Python:  
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks
> "Dive into Python" may be a good choice if you have some programming
> experience in another languages.

OTOH, it doesn't really offer "a full explanation" and even
alternatives, as Jim requests; I know of no _introductory_ book that
meets that requirement as stated.  Hey, even "Python in a Nutshell"
might fall a little short, since "a full explanation" of all subtle
intricacies of "import" (never mind "alternatives") might take at least
a hundred pages, and I don't devote more than 50 to the subject; I
figured that covering 99% of the subject in 50 pages was better than
taking twice as many pages to cover 100%... or try to... hey, just
today, at work, Guido and I and a couple of other colleagues had a
disagreement on how exactly importing would work in a certain subtle
case, and we settled it by careful _experiments_ -- and, remember, he
INVENTED the language, and I wrote the best-selling reference book on
the language -- thinking of a *full* explanation of subtleties that can
momentarily confound us, in an *introductory* book, boggles the mind!-)


Alex