Basic Python

The present chapter provides an overview of functionality frequently needed in Python scripts, including file reading and writing, list and dictionary operations, simple text processing, writing and calling Python functions, checking a file's type, size, and age, listing and removing files, creating and removing directories, and traversing directory trees. In a sense, the overview is a kind of quick reference with embedded examples containing useful code segments in Python scripts. A corresponding overview of more advanced Python functionality is provided in Chapter 8. For real, complete quick references, see links in doc.html.

The many Python modules developed as part of this book project, and referred to in this and other chapters, are collected in a package scitools. This package must be downloaded and installed (by running a setup.py script) as described in Chapter 1.2. The various modules in scitools are accessible through the dot notation, e.g., scitools.misc denotes the misc module within the scitools package. Many of the functions referred to in the forthcoming sections are found in the misc module.