Introduction to Basic Python Programming

Part 1: An overview of Python

1. What is python?
2. Python Timeline
3. Advantages/Disadvantages of Python
4. Getting help with pydoc

Part 2: The Python Environment

1. Starting Python
2. Using the interpreter
3. Running a Python script
4. Python scripts on Unix/Windows
5. Editors and IDEs

Part 3: Getting Started

1. Using variables
2. Builtin functions
3. Strings
4. Numbers
5. Converting among types
6. Writing to the screen
7. Command-line parameters

Part 4: Flow Control

1. About flow control
2. White space
3. Conditional expressions
4. Relational and Boolean operators
5. While loops
6. Alternate loop exits

Part 5: Array types

1. About array types (AKA sequences)
2. Lists and list methods
3. Tuples
4. Indexing and slicing
5. Iterating through a sequence
6. Nested sequences
7. Sequence functions, keywords, and operators
8. List comprehensions
9. Generator Expressions

Part 6: Working with files

1. File overview
2. Opening a text file
3. Reading a text file
4. Writing to a text file

Part 7: Dictionaries and Sets

1. About dictionaries
2. Creating dictionaries
3. Iterating through a dictionary
4. About sets
5. Creating sets
6. Working with sets

Part 8: Functions

1. Defining functions
2. Returning values
3. Parameters
4. Global and local scope

Part 9: Sorting

1. The sorted() function
2. Alternate keys
3. Lambda functions
4. Sorting collections
5. Using operator.itemgetter()
6. Reverse sorting

Part 10: Errors and Exception Handling

1. Syntax errors
2. Exceptions
3. Using try/catch
4. Handling multiple exceptions
5. Ignoring exceptions

Part 11: Modules and Packages

1. The import statement
2. Module search path
3. Creating Modules
4. Using packages
5. Function and Module aliases

Part 12: Classes

1. About o-o programming
2. Defining classes
3. Constructors
4. Methods
5. Instance data
6. Properties
7. Class methods and data

• Users new to Python and scripting, enabling them to use basic Python skills on the job in a variety of ways
• Advanced users, system administrators and web site administrators who want to use Python to support their server installations
• Anyone else who wants to automate or simplify common tasks with the use of Python scripts

• Create working Python scripts following best practices
• Use python data types appropriately
• Read and write files with both text and binary data
• Search and replace text with regular expressions
• Get familiar with the standard library and its work-saving modules
• Create "real-world", basic level professional Python applications
• Know when to use collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets
• Understand Pythonic features such as comprehensions and iterators
• Write robust code using exception handling