Silly newbie question - Carrot character (^)

[Ned Deily]

In article <11A0F261-1BF4-4C35-83FA-C47BF968D150 at semanchuk.com>,
 Philip Semanchuk <philip at semanchuk.com> wrote:
> On Nov 6, 2010, at 12:33 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > On Fri, 05 Nov 2010 23:21:11 -0400, Philip Semanchuk wrote:
> > 
> >> Take the OP's question. How is one supposed to find out about bitwise
> >> operators in Python? AFAICT they're not mentioned in the tutorial, and
> >> neither are decorators, assert(), global, exec, the ternary if
> >> statement, etc.
> > 
> > The tutorial isn't meant as an exhaustive lesson on every single Python 
> > feature.
> 
> I agree, and I don't expect otherwise. My point was that if the tutorial 
> doesn't mention a feature, the only other place to learn about it (on 
> python.org) is the language ref. Some people might think the language ref is 
> a fine place to direct newcomers to Python. I don't. It's not awful, but it's 
> dense and unfriendly for those just starting out. 

In the Python documentation set, the language reference should usually 
be the second place to send someone.  The first place is The Python 
Standard Library manual where built-in types and the methods supported 
by them are documented.  For bit string operations:

http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#bit-string-operations-on-int
eger-types

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org