Python Summary/Quickref

• Linux "Optional" modules, building and build dependencies
• Versions
• Glossary
• Introduction and Syntax
  • Expressions and Statements
  • Functions
  • Types
  • Names, Bindings, Namespaces
  • Character and Byte String Handling
  • Docstrings
• Language Features
  • Exceptions and Warnings
  • Iterators and Generators
  • Sequences
  • Modules, Packages and Importing
• Standard Libraries
  • Regular Expressions
  • Date and Time
  • Iterator protcol and itertools
  • File and Network I/O.
  • Filesystem and Path Libraries
  • Pickle object seralization
  • Argument Parsing
  • Logging
  • Concurrency, subprocesses
  • Internet Protocols and Support
  • Python Language Services (manipulating Python code)
• Functional Programming
  • Functional modules in the standard library
  • toolz library (docs)
• Runtime Environments
  • Site setup (sys.path etc.)
  • IPython REPL
  • Virtual Environments
  • Packaging Code
  • Microsoft Windows
  • Jupyter (IPython) Notebook, Hub, Lab, etc.
• Testing Libraries
  • PythonTestingToolsTaxonomy offers a large list of testing tools.
  • unittest
  • doctest finds and runs tests in function docstrings.
  • Pytest (Assertions, Configuration)
  • tox
• Other Libraries
  • attrs to generate class definition boilerplate
  • PyYAML
  • PyMongo
  • Twisted, an event-driven networking/concurrency framework
  • Git Libraries
  • SQLAlchemy
• Tips and Tricks

When using pip with a system (OS-packaged) Python, ensure that the python-dev or python3-dev (Debian) package is installed or some packages may not build. (The typical error message will include something about not being able to find <Python.h>.)

Glossary

• dunder: Double underline, as in __name__.

Major Changes in New Versions

See also python-version-cheat-sheet and offical changelog.

• 3.3: yield from (PEP380)
• 3.4: pathlib (PEP 428)
• 3.5: Additional unpacking generalisations (PEP 448). Type annotations excepting variables (PEP 484).
• 3.6: f-strings (PEP 498, for ≥3.12 PEP 701). Underscores in numeric literals, e.g. 1_000 (PEP 515). Type annotations for variables (PEP 526).
• 3.7: Guaranteed sort order of dicts. Data classes (PEP 557). breakpoint() (PEP 553). Postponed eval of annotations (PEP 563).
• 3.8: Walrus operator := (PEP 572)
• 3.9: Built-in generic types; annotate w/list[int] instead of from typing import List (PEP 585).
• 3.10: Structural pattern matchin (PEP 622). Union types as X | Y (PEP 604).
• 3.11: Exception groups, except* (PEP 654). Standard library tomlib for parsing TOML (PEP 680).