Learn Python in One Day and Learn It Well (Jamie Chan, LCF Publishing) (Z-Library)

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Learn Python in One Day and Learn It Well Python for Beginners with Hands-on Project The only book you need to start coding in Python immediately By Jamie Chan http://www.learncodingfast.com/python Copyright © 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Preface This book is written to help you learn Python programming FAST and learn it WELL. If you are an absolute beginner in Programming, you'll find that this book explains complex concepts in an easy to understand manner. Examples are carefully chosen to demonstrate each concept so that you can gain a deeper understand of the language. If you are an experienced coder, this book gives you a good base from which to explore Python. The appendices at the end of the book will also provide you with a convenient reference for some of the commonly used functions in Python. In addition, as Richard Branson puts it: "The best way of learning about anything is by doing". At the end of the course, you'll be guided through a project that gives you a chance to put what you've learned to use. You can download the source code for the project and the appendices at http://www.learncodingfast.com/python.

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Table of Contents Chapter 1: Python, what Python? What is Python? Why Learn Python? Chapter 2: Getting ready for Python Installing the Interpreter Using the Python Shell, IDLE and Writing our FIRST program Chapter 3: The World of Variables and Operators What are variables? Naming a Variable The Assignment Sign Basic Operators More Assignment Operators Chapter 4: Data Types in Python Integers Float String Type Casting In Python List Tuple Dictionary Chapter 5: Making Your Program Interactive Input() Print() Triple Quotes Escape Characters Chapter 6: Making Choices and Decisions Condition Statements If Statement Inline If For Loop While Loop Break Continue

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Try, Except Chapter 7: Functions and Modules What are Functions? Defining Your Own Functions Variable Scope Importing Modules Creating our Own Module Chapter 8: Working with Files Opening and Reading Text Files Using a For Loop to Read Text Files Writing to a Text File Opening and Reading Text Files by Buffer Size Opening, Reading and Writing Binary Files Deleting and Renaming Files Project: Math and BODMAS Part 1: myPythonFunctions.py Part 2: mathGame.py Challenge Yourself Thank You Appendix A: Working With Strings Appendix B: Working With Lists Appendix C: Working With Tuples Appendix D: Working With Dictionaries Appendix E: Project Answers One Last Thing…

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Chapter 1: Python, what Python? Welcome to the exciting world of programming. I'm so glad you picked up this book and I sincerely hope this book can help you master the Python language and experience the exhilaration of programming. Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of Python programming, let us first answer a few questions.

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What is Python? Python is a widely used high-level programming language created by Guido van Rossum in the late 1980s. The language places strong emphasis on code readability and simplicity, making it possible for programmers to develop applications rapidly. Like all high level programming languages, Python code resembles the English language which computers are unable to understand. Codes that we write in Python have to be interpreted by a special program known as the Python interpreter, which we’ll have to install before we can code, test and execute our Python programs. We'll look at how to install the Python interpreter in Chapter 2. There are also a number of third-party tools, such as Py2exe or Pyinstaller that allow us to package our Python code into stand-alone executable programs for some of the most popular operating systems like Windows and Mac OS. This allows us to distribute our Python programs without requiring the users to install the Python interpreter.

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Why Learn Python? There are a large number of high level programming languages available, such as C, C++, and Java. The good news is all high level programming languages are very similar to one another. What differs is mainly the syntax, the libraries available and the way we access those libraries. A library is simply a collection of resources and pre-written codes that we can use when we write our programs. If you learn one language well, you can easily learn a new language in a fraction of the time it took you to learn the first language. If you are new to programming, Python is a great place to start. One of the key features of Python is its simplicity, making it the ideal language for beginners to learn. Most programs in Python require considerably fewer lines of code to perform the same task compared to other languages such as C. This leads to fewer programming errors and reduces the development time needed. In addition, Python comes with an extensive collection of third party resources that extend the capabilities of the language. As such, Python can be used for a large variety of tasks, such as for desktop applications, database applications, network programming, game programming and even mobile development. Last but not least, Python is a cross platform language, which means that code written for one operating system, such as Windows, will work well on Mac OS or Linux without making any changes to the Python code. Convinced that Python is THE language to learn? Let’s get started...

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Chapter 2: Getting ready for Python Installing the Interpreter Before we can write our first Python program, we have to download the appropriate interpreter for our computers. We’ll be using Python 3 in this book because as stated on the official Python site “Python 2.x is legacy, Python 3.x is the present and future of the language”. In addition, “Python 3 eliminates many quirks that can unnecessarily trip up beginning programmers”. However, note that Python 2 is currently still rather widely used. Python 2 and 3 are about 90% similar. Hence if you learn Python 3, you will likely have no problems understanding codes written in Python 2. To install the interpreter for Python 3, head over to https://www.python.org/downloads/. The correct version should be indicated at the top of the webpage. Click on the version for Python 3 and the software will start downloading. Alternatively if you want to install a different version, scroll down the page and you’ll see a listing of other versions. Click on the release version that you want. We’ll be using version 3.4.2 in this book. You’ll be redirected to the download page for that version. Scroll down towards the end of the page and you’ll see a table listing various installers for that version. Choose the correct installer for your computer. The installer to use depends on two factors: 1. The operating system (Windows, Mac OS, or Linux) and 2. The processor (32-bit vs 64-bit) that you are using. For instance, if you are using a 64-bit Windows computer, you will likely be using the "Windows x86-64 MSI installer". Just click on the link to download it. If you download and run the wrong installer, no worries. You will get an error message and the interpreter will not install. Simply download the correct installer and you are good to go.

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Once you have successfully installed the interpreter, you are ready to start coding in Python.

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Using the Python Shell, IDLE and Writing our FIRST program We’ll be writing our code using the IDLE program that comes bundled with our Python interpreter. To do that, let’s first launch the IDLE program. You launch the IDLE program like how you launch any other programs. For instance on Windows 8, you can search for it by typing “IDLE” in the search box. Once it is found, click on IDLE (Python GUI) to launch it. You’ll be presented with the Python Shell shown below. The Python Shell allows us to use Python in interactive mode. This means we can enter one command at a time. The Shell waits for a command from the user, executes it and returns the result of the execution. After this, the Shell waits for the next command. Try typing the following into the Shell. The lines starting with >>> are the commands you should type while the lines after the commands show the results. >>> 2+3 5 >>> 3>2 True >>> print (‘Hello World’) Hello World When you type 2+3, you are issuing a command to the Shell, asking it to evaluate the value of 2+3. Hence, the Shell returns the answer 5. When you type 3>2, you are asking the Shell if 3 is greater than 2. The Shell replies True. Finally, print is a command asking the Shell to display the line Hello World. The Python Shell is a very convenient tool for testing Python commands, especially when we are first getting started with the language. However, if you exit from the Python Shell and enter it again, all the commands you type will be gone. In addition, you cannot use the Python Shell to create an actual program. To code an actual program, you need to write your code in a text file and save it with a .py extension. This file is known as a Python script.

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To create a Python script, click on File > New File in the top menu of our Python Shell. This will bring up the text editor that we are going to use to write our very first program, the “Hello World” program. Writing the “Hello World” program is kind of like the rite of passage for all new programmers. We’ll be using this program to familiarize ourselves with the IDLE software. Type the following code into the text editor (not the Shell). #Prints the Words “Hello World” print (“Hello World”) You should notice that the line #Prints the Words “Hello World” is in red while the word “print” is in purple and “Hello World” is in green. This is the software’s way of making our code easier to read. The words “print” and “Hello World” serve different purposes in our program, hence they are displayed using different colors. We’ll go into more details in later chapters. The line #Prints the Words “Hello World” (in red) is actually not part of the program. It is a comment written to make our code more readable for other programmers. This line is ignored by the Python interpreter. To add comments to our program, we type a # sign in front of each line of comment, like this: #This is a comment #This is also a comment #This is yet another comment Alternatively, we can also use three single quotes (or three double quotes) for multiline comments, like this: ’’’ This is a comment This is also a comment This is yet another comment ’’’ Now click File > Save As… to save your code. Make sure you save it with the .py extension. Done? Voilà! You have just successfully written your first Python program. Finally click on Run > Run Module to execute the program (or press F5). You should see the

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words Hello World printed on your Python Shell. To see these steps in action, you can check out this excellent tutorial by mybringback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEFr1eYIePw. However, note that he used Python 2 in the video, so some commands will give you an error. If you want to try his codes, you need to add ( ) for the print statements. Instead of writing print ‘Hello World’, you have to write print (‘Hello World’). In addition, you have to change raw_input() to input(). We’ll cover print() and input() in Chapter 5.

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Chapter 3: The World of Variables and Operators Now that we’re done with the introductory stuff, let’s get down to the real stuff. In this chapter, you’ll learn all about variables and operators. Specifically, you’ll learn what variables are and how to name and declare them. We’ll also learn about the common operations that we can perform on them. Ready? Let’s go.

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What are variables? Variables are names given to data that we need to store and manipulate in our programs. For instance, suppose your program needs to store the age of a user. To do that, we can name this data userAge and define the variable userAge using the following statement. userAge = 0 After you define the variable userAge, your program will allocate a certain area of your computer's storage space to store this data. You can then access and modify this data by referring to it by its name, userAge. Every time you declare a new variable, you need to give it an initial value. In this example, we gave it the value 0. We can always change this value in our program later. We can also define multiple variables at one go. To do that simply write userAge, userName = 30, ‘Peter’ This is equivalent to userAge = 30 userName = ‘Peter’

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Naming a Variable A variable name in Python can only contain letters (a - z, A - B), numbers or underscores (_). However, the first character cannot be a number. Hence, you can name your variables userName, user_name or userName2 but not 2userName. In addition, there are some reserved words that you cannot use as a variable name because they already have preassigned meanings in Python. These reserved words include words like print, input, if, while etc. We’ll learn about each of them in subsequent chapters. Finally, variable names are case sensitive. username is not the same as userName. There are two conventions when naming a variable in Python. We can either use the camel case notation or use underscores. Camel case is the practice of writing compound words with mixed casing (e.g. thisIsAVariableName). This is the convention that we’ll be using in the rest of the book. Alternatively, another common practice is to use underscores (_) to separate the words. If you prefer, you can name your variables like this: this_is_a_variable_name.

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The Assignment Sign Note that the = sign in the statement userAge = 0 has a different meaning from the = sign we learned in Math. In programming, the = sign is known as an assignment sign. It means we are assigning the value on the right side of the = sign to the variable on the left. A good way to understand the statement userAge = 0 is to think of it as userAge <- 0. The statements x = y and y = x have very different meanings in programming. Confused? An example will likely clear this up. Type the following code into your IDLE editor and save it. x = 5 y = 10 x = y print ("x = ", x) print ("y = ", y) Now run the program. You should get this output: x = 10 y = 10 Although x has an initial value of 5 (declared on the first line), the third line x = y assigns the value of y to x (x <- y), hence changing the value of x to 10 while the value of y remains unchanged. Next, modify the program by changing ONLY ONE statement: Change the third line from x = y to y = x. Mathematically, x = y and y = x mean the same thing. However, this is not so in programming. Run the second program. You will now get x = 5 y = 5 You can see that in this example, the x value remains as 5, but the value of y is changed to 5. This is because the statement y = x assigns the value of x to y (y <- x). y becomes 5

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while x remains unchanged as 5.

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Basic Operators Besides assigning a variable an initial value, we can also perform the usual mathematical operations on variables. Basic operators in Python include +, -, *, /, //, % and ** which represent addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, floor division, modulus and exponent respectively. Example: Suppose x = 5, y = 2 Addition: x + y = 7 Subtraction: x - y = 3 Multiplication: x*y = 10 Division: x/y = 2.5 Floor Division: x//y = 2 (rounds down the answer to the nearest whole number) Modulus: x%y = 1 (gives the remainder when 5 is divided by 2) Exponent: x**y = 25 (5 to the power of 2)

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More Assignment Operators Besides the = sign, there are a few more assignment operators in Python (and most programming languages). These include operators like +=, -= and *=. Suppose we have the variable x, with an initial value of 10. If we want to increment x by 2, we can write x = x + 2 The program will first evaluate the expression on the right (x + 2) and assign the answer to the left. So eventually the statement above becomes x <- 12. Instead of writing x = x + 2, we can also write x += 2 to express the same meaning. The += sign is actually a shorthand that combines the assignment sign with the addition operator. Hence, x += 2 simply means x = x + 2. Similarly, if we want to do a subtraction, we can write x = x - 2 or x -= 2. The same works for all the 7 operators mentioned in the section above.

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Chapter 4: Data Types in Python In this chapter, we’ll first look at some basic data types in Python, specifically the integer, float and string. Next, we’ll explore the concept of type casting. Finally, we’ll discuss three more advanced data types in Python: the list, tuple and dictionary.