Guido Van Rossum Libri

The goal of the Python Essential Reference is to concisely describe the Python programming language and its large library of standard modules, collectively known as the Python programming "environment". It is arranged into four major parts. First a brief tutorial and introduction is presented, then an informal language reference will cover lexical conventions, functions, statements, control flow, datatypes, classes, and execution models. The third part will cover the Python library, and the final section covers the Python C API that is used to write Python extensions.This book is for the professional who has experience with other systems programming languages such as C or C++, and is looking for content that is not embellished with basic introductory material on the Python programming environment.

This book describes how to write modules in C or C++ to extend the Python interpreter with new modules. Those modules can not only define new functions but also new object types and their methods. The document also describes how to embed the Python interpreter in another application, for use as an extension language. Finally, it shows how to compile and link extension modules so that they can be loaded dynamically (at run time) into the interpreter, if the underlying operating system supports this feature. This book assumes basic knowledge about Python. This book is a paper version of the freely available electronic documentation of the python project.