A comprehensive guide that takes you from the basic to advanced concepts in the Python programming language.
What is a Memory-Mapped File in Python From Python’s official documentation, be sure to checkout Python’s mmap module: A memory-mapped file object behaves like both strings and like file objects. Unlike normal string objects, however, these are mutable. Basically, a memory-mapped (using Python’s mmap module) file object maps a normal file object into memory. This [...]
In our other article, Encoding and Decoding Strings (in Python 2.x), we looked at how Python 2.x works with string encoding. Here we will look at encoding and decoding strings in Python 3.x, and how it is different. Encoding/decoding strings in Python 3.x vs Python 2.x Many things in Python 2.x did not change very [...]
Python’s syntax is relatively convenient and easy to work with, but aside from the basic structure of the language Python is also sprinkled with small syntax structures that make certain tasks especially convenient. The lambda keyword/function construct is one of these, where the creators call it “syntactical candy”. Here we’ll examine how to use them. To understand the lambda keyword/function and their [...]
Often times when coding a python masterpiece, there are certain things that could go wrong when executing your masterfully designed code. Things such as files or directories that are missing, empty strings, variables that are supposed to be strings but are actually arrays at run-time. These things are called exceptions in Python. This is what [...]
Python strings as sequences of characters Python strings are sequences of individual characters, and share their basic methods of access with those other Python sequences – lists and tuples. The simplest way of extracting single characters from strings (and individual members from any sequence) is to unpack them into corresponding variables. Unfortunately, it’s not often [...]
Decorators in Python seem complicated, but they’re very simple. You’ve probably seen them; they’re the odd bits before a function definition that begin with ‘@‘, e.g.: Note the function called decorator; it takes a function as an argument and defines and returns a new function that uses the one it was passed. That pattern is [...]
In the first part of this series, we looked at the basics of using classes in Python. Now we’ll take a look at some more advanced topics. Python Class Inheritance Python classes support inheritance, which lets us take a class definition and extend it. Let’s create a new class that inherits (or derives) from the [...]
Sometimes we need to generate lists which follow some natural logic, such as iterating over a sequence and applying some conditions in them. We can use Python’s “list comprehension” technique to write compact codes to generate lists. We can loop through a sequence, and apply logical expression. First, let’s look at a special function range [...]
While programming in Python, there will likely be times where you have some data that needs to be utilized or manipulated in the form of a file but hasn’t yet been written to one. Naturally, the first solution that comes to mind is to open a new or existing file, write the data and finally [...]
Classes are a way of grouping related bits of information together into a single unit (also known as an object), along with functions that can be called to manipulate that object (also known as methods). For example, if you want to track information about a person, you might want to record their name, address and [...]