Customer Reviews

Python Standard Library (Nutshell Handbooks) with

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are learning Python, a beginner to intermediate Python programmer, you'll want to get a copy of this book. It won't do as your only Python book, but as a supplement to <i>Learning Python</i> or one of the other introductory Python books, it is invaluable for the non-expert Python programmer. If you bought the first edition of the book, which was available only as an eBook, you'll want this edition as it covers Python 2.0 as well as Python 1.5.2. (The eBook edition covered only Python 1.5.2.)

Each chapter begins with a brief summary of what will be covered. Chapter 4 is summarised as follows: "This chapter describes a number of modules that can be used to convert between Python objects and other data representations. These modules are often used to read and write foreign file formats and to store or transfer Python variables." It's terse, to be sure, but it's not meant for someone who has never looked at Python before.

Frederik assumes you know which module you want to use and gives you some sample code that shows you how to use it. You might ask on a newsgroup how to parse an HTML file. Someone will answer and tell you to look at either the htmllib or sgmllib module. Great. So, umm, how do you use them? A sample script showing you how to do something with either module or both could save you hours of frustration. Frederik also gives you tips on how best to use a module or when not to use it. For example, in describing the htmllib module, he says "If you're only out to parse an HTML file and not render it to an output device, it's usually easier to use the sgmllib module instead."

The book is sprinkled with tips. Early in Chapter 1 he points out that "What you might now know already is that import delegates the actual work to a built-in function called __import__. The trick is that you can call this function directly. This can be handy if you have the module name in a string variable, which imports all modules whose names end with '-plugin'."

The books covers: core modules (eg, re, time); more standard modules (eg, file input, md5); threads and processes (eg, thread, pipes); data representation (eg, pickle, base64); file formats (eg, xmllib, zipfile); mail and news message processing (eg, rfc822, mimetypes); network protocols (eg, socket, asyncore); internationalisation (eg, unicodedata); multimedia modules (eg, wave, winsound); data storage (eg, dbhash, gdbm); tools and utilities (eg, pdb, profile); platform-specific modules (eg, pwd, nt); implementation support modules (eg, macpath, ntpath); and other modules (eg, Bastion, calendar, posixfile, regsub).

The sample code is printed in Courier and some of the samples are tracked too tightly, making it difficult to read. I assume in production they applied the same tracking values for the body text to the code text. (Tracking is the spacing between a series of characters where kerning is the space between two characters.) But that happens only occasionally.

Also included with the book is a CD which contains copies of all the scripts plus an evaluation copy of PythonWorks Pro 1.2, a Python IDE for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. (Fredrik works for Secret Labs AB who develop PythonWorks.) I was able to browse and open the sample files on MacOS X. But of course I couldn't try the evaluation copies of PythonWorks. I would rather they had dropped the CD and made the sample scripts available as a download -- it would drop a few dollars off the cost of the book. If you're an expert Python programmer you won't need this book. But if you're a beginner to intermediate Python programmer you'll find the sample code and commentary invaluable when you try to implement an unfamiliar module, particularly some of the more complex ones. And the tips sprinkled throughout the text will help you achieve mastery of this most glorious of programming languages. Highly recommended.

I bought this book in 2004 when I was just starting to learn Python. I never once used it. Its not a bad book, just less useful now than in 2001.

The book covers Python 2.0. Anything before 2.2 for any Python book is probably not worth the trouble in 2006 and beyond.

When looking for information about a Python module I look in Alex Martelli's Nutshell book(2.2) and the go to the online Library Reference. The nutshell is good for background and examples and the Library Reference brings things up to 2.4.

If I am not quite sure what I am looking for then the Python Cookbook (2nd edition) is the most help.

Mark Pilgram's Dive into Python is a great, in-depth look at some of the more useful standard library modules.

I hope Alex Marelli updates his Nutsehell book for 2.4.

There are other good books for learning Python but the Nutshell(O'Reilly), Cookbook(O' Reilly), Library Reference(python.org), and Dive into Python(online or an Apress book) do the best job of covering the standard library,

The author knows python, but the book itself is not worth it. It just contains lots of code snippet and little explanation.

The two books that I'll recommend are "Python Essential Reference" by David M. Beazley (a second edition is coming soon) and "Core Python" by Wesley Chun.

This is a nice supplemental text for the Standard Library documentation. Sometimes you find yourself puzzled as to how a module is to be used, even after reading the documentation. This book provides a little extra help in that regards by providing concise examples that point you in the right direction.

I can't give it five stars because it is a little sparse for the price. Please be warned, the book is almost all code. Don't expect a great deal of explanatory text.

One of the great things about Python has always been the library that it comes with -- and the Python manual does a fair, if dense, version of documenting this. There are some great books about how to program in Python (such as New Rider's Essential Python), but even these often fail to document the library in a sensible, searchable way.

I had high hopes that this book would be a useful reference for the modules, but in fact, it's much more of a scattered illustration of how some of the modules work. Methods are not listed, modules frequently lack any real explanation, and the examples are often a bit cryptic. There are some useful areas -- the section on how the __builtins__ work, and how to exploit some nifty features about Python importing is pretty cool -- but as any kind of references, or even helpful guide to the standard libraries, this falls far short of my expectations. (Don't let this distract you from other O'Reilly books, though, which are often excellent.)

The standard Python modules are presented according to topics, like: threads, file, mail, network, etc. Each module is introduced by a few text lines and then demonstrated by a code sample with it's output. Although not too much is said about each module, it already fills 270 pages for all modules. This book, together with the "Essential Python Reference" will be very helpful to those programmers, who prefer books over online documentation. The book is not yet five stars, because we will later on need a second edition with double the size, to provide further specifications and more explanations. But O'Reilly can't start with an expensive 700 pages book, right away. And it's an advantage for the programmer, for now, that the book is still handy.

I am a relatively new programmer, who has used only Python and PHP to any significant extent, so ...

I have Python Essential Reference (1st. edition) and this book side-by-side on my shelf at work. I use Python Essential Reference and the online module documentation almost equally, and I almost never pick up this book.

This book isn't really a reference for the Python standard library - David Beazley's "Python Essential Reference" probably fills that gap better - but it is a very useful guide to what the library can be used for, with a comprehensive and motivated selection of code examples.

I was hoping for something along the lines of the book the "Standard C Library" book by P.J. Plauger. Unfortunately, this book is nowhere near as complete. Still, there are interesting and useful bits here and there, and it does serve as a decent supplement to the Python library book included in the distribution itself.