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Produce impressive results
and have fun too!
What is it?
What does it look like?
Who uses it?
What does it cost?
Do I have to run Linux?
Python® is a mature, dynamic, object-oriented programming language used for many kinds of software development. It can be learned in a few days, comes with extensive standard libraries, and offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools. Python's clean syntax and testing frameworks encourage readable and maintainable code. Python has a large community of friendly developers, several conferences, and many books.
# Do something with every word in a file.
import re
word_pattern = re.compile(r"[\w'-]+")
for line in open(filename):
for word in word_pattern.finditer(line):
do_something_with(word.group(0))
EVE Online
Google
Philips Semiconductor
Industrial Light and Magic – integrated Python into their in-house C++ lighting tool, used to place light sources into a 3D scene and to facilitate the writing, generation, and previewing of shaders and materials used on CG elements.
import mx.ODBC.Windows as odbc
conn = odbc.connect('MyDSN')
cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute('''
SELECT name, citystate, phoneno
FROM members
ORDER BY citystate, name''')
for row in cursor.fetchone():
print row.name, row.citystate, row.phoneno
Honeywell – integrated Python, COM, DocBook, OpenJade, and Word to create a documentation tool for BEACON, a visual programming environment. The tool was used for code reviews in corporate software development, leading to significant (>$1M) in cost savings.
Absolutely not! Python is platform-neutral and runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, Palm handhelds, and Nokia mobile phones. Python has also been ported to the Java and .NET virtual machines; look for Jython and IronPython, respectively. Both include libraries to access the VM.
Python is distributed under an OSI-approved open source license that makes it free to use, even for commercial products. There are also vendors who sell feature-rich Python bundles and provide support services.