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Introduction to Python

• The evolution of Python from Shell Scripting and Perl
• Installing Python and running / debugging simple scripts
• Differences between Python 3 and earlier versions
• Using the JVM and CLR based Python interpreters
• Comparing Python to Ruby, JavaScript and PowerShell

The Basics of Python Scripting

• Declaring and modifying variables
• Reading and writing from the console
• Working with the built in data types
• Making choices and performing iteration
• Declaring functions and passing parameters
• Identity, equality and references

Working With Structured Data

• Storing individual items in sets, lists and tuples
• Storing pairs of items in dictionaries (aka hashes)
• Understanding how class declarations work in Python
• Creating classes and adding attributes and operations
• Using your own types with the built-in collections

Regular Expressions in Python

• What is a regular expression?
• How the Regular Expression Engine operates
• Functions in Python that accept regular expressions
• Creating character classes and specifying multiplicities
• Meta-characters for specifying positions in the input
• Understanding greedy vs. non-greedy matching
• Using parenthesis for grouping and submatches
• Making use of look-behind and look-ahead
• Adding comments to your regular expressions

Object Orientation in Depth

• Creating class hierarchies in Python
• Overriding methods from base classes
• Adding properties to your classes
• The intrinsic class and object attributes
• Creating your own iterator objects and generators
• Using decorators to address Aspects in your design
• Guidelines for overloading operators sensibly
• Support for meta-programming in Python

Functional Programming in Python

• Using functions as inputs to other functions
• Building and returning functions from functions
• Creating and working with lambda functions
• Using lamdbas with filter, map and reduce
• Simplifying your code using list comprehensions

Writing Maintainable Scripts

• Raising and catching exceptions correctly
• Organizing your code into modules and packages
• Understanding symbol tables and accessing them in code
• Picking a testing framework and applying TDD in Python

Performing Common Tasks

• Reading and writing text, data and objects from files
• Basic network programming in Python using sockets
• Dynamically running code with exec and eval
• Working with SOAPy and RESTful web services
• Options for accessing relational databases
• Writing multi-threaded Python scripts