Python for Informatics: Exploring Information

Charles Severance

Version 0.0.9-d2

• Preface
  • Python for Informatics: Remixing an Open Book
• Why should you learn to write programs?
  • Creativity and motivation
  • Computer hardware architecture
  • Understanding programming
  • Words and sentences
  • Conversing with Python
  • Terminology: interpreter and compiler
  • Writing a program
  • What is a program?
  • The building blocks of programs
  • What could possibly go wrong?
  • The learning journey
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Variables, expressions and statements
  • Values and types
  • Variables
  • Variable names and keywords
  • Statements
  • Operators and operands
  • Expressions
  • Order of operations
  • Modulus operator
  • String operations
  • Asking the user for input
  • Comments
  • Choosing mnemonic variable names
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Conditional execution
  • Boolean expressions
  • Logical operators
  • Conditional execution
  • Alternative execution
  • Chained conditionals
  • Nested conditionals
  • Catching exceptions using try and except
  • Short circuit evaluation of logical expressions
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Functions
  • Function calls
  • Built-in functions
  • Type conversion functions
  • Random numbers
  • Math functions
  • Adding new functions
  • Definitions and uses
  • Flow of execution
  • Parameters and arguments
  • Fruitful functions and void functions
  • Why functions?
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Iteration
  • Updating variables
  • The while statement
  • Infinite loops
  • “Infinite loops” and break
  • Finishing iterations with continue
  • Definite loops using for
  • Loop patterns
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Strings
  • A string is a sequence
  • Getting the length of a string using len
  • Traversal through a string with a loop
  • String slices
  • Strings are immutable
  • Looping and counting
  • The in operator
  • String comparison
  • string methods
  • Parsing strings
  • Format operator
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Files
  • Persistence
  • Opening files
  • Text files and lines
  • Reading files
  • Searching through a file
  • Letting the user choose the file name
  • Using try, except, and open
  • Writing files
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Lists
  • A list is a sequence
  • Lists are mutable
  • Traversing a list
  • List operations
  • List slices
  • List methods
  • Deleting elements
  • Lists and functions
  • Lists and strings
  • Parsing lines
  • Objects and values
  • Aliasing
  • List arguments
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Dictionaries
  • Dictionary as a set of counters
  • Dictionaries and files
  • Looping and dictionaries
  • Advanced text parsing
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Tuples
  • Tuples are immutable
  • Comparing tuples
  • Tuple assignment
  • Dictionaries and tuples
  • Multiple assignment with dictionaries
  • The most common words
  • Using tuples as keys in dictionaries
  • Sequences: strings, lists, and tuples–Oh My!
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Regular expressions
  • Character matching in regular expressions
  • Extracting data using regular expressions
  • Combining searching and extracting
  • Escape character
  • Summary
  • Bonus section for Unix users
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Networked programs
  • HyperText Transport Protocol - HTTP
  • The World’s Simplest Web Browser
  • Retrieving an image over HTTP
  • Retrieving web pages with urllib
  • Parsing HTML and scraping the web
  • Parsing HTML using Regular Expressions
  • Parsing HTML using BeautifulSoup
  • Reading binary files using urllib
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Using Web Services
  • eXtensible Markup Language - XML
  • Parsing XML
  • Looping through nodes
  • JavaScript Object Notation - JSON
  • Parsing JSON
  • Application Programming Interfaces (API)
  • Google geocoding web service
  • Security and API usage
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Using databases and Structured Query Language (SQL)
  • What is a database?
  • Database concepts
  • SQLite manager Firefox add-on
  • Creating a database table
  • Structured Query Language (SQL) summary
  • Spidering Twitter using a database
  • Basic data modeling
  • Programming with multiple tables
  • Three kinds of keys
  • Using JOIN to retrieve data
  • Summary
  • Debugging
  • Glossary
• Visualizing data
  • Building a Google map from geocoded data
  • Visualizing networks and interconnections
  • Visualizing mail data
• Automating common tasks on your computer
  • File names and paths
  • Example: Cleaning up a photo directory
  • Command line arguments
  • Pipes
  • Glossary
  • Exercises
• Python Programming on Windows
• Python Programming on Macintosh
• Contributions
  • Contributor List for “Python for Informatics”
  • Preface for “Think Python”
  • Contributor List for “Think Python”
• Copyright Detail
• Index

This document was translated from L^AT_EX by H^EV^EA.