Python Essential Reference

The author did a great job of including a ton of information in a clear and succinct reference. This is not a book that will teach a newbie all about programming. However, it is perfect for those that have at least some programming experience, whether in Python or some other language, and need a reference while coding in Python. For those new to the language who find themselves wondering "How do I do that in Python?", the first chapter includes a short (11 page) tutorial that demonstrates using: - Variables - Conditionals - File I/O - Strings - Lists & Tuples - Loops - Dictionaries - Functions - Classes - Exceptions - Modules The tutorial section is nice while getting up to speed with Python's syntax. The rest of the book goes into a bit more detail on rest of the Python's language features with the exception of some of the more inconspicuous ones. Most of the "raw" information in the book is available on python.org or other online resources, but with the book you get that same information filtered through the author's Python experience plus a lot of concise examples. I've found that what is not covered in this book is better answered by searching the related mailing list archives. As with the other New Riders programming books I own, this one is indexed well, making it easy to find what I am looking for. Also, the size of the book is small enough that it fits nicely in my briefcase and on my desktop. It appears that a lot of thought went into both the content of the book as well as the overall design of the reference, that's why I've given it the highest rating.

Intending to familiarize myself with Python, I picked up a copy of O'Reilly's Programming Python a couple of years ago. After an initial attempt at going through the book, it has been on my book shelf since. It was simply not organized in a fashion that allowed me to quickly pick up the essentials of the language.As someone who was already familiar with C/C++ and Perl, but wanting to learn Python, the Python Essential Reference was exactly what I was looking for. Yes, most of the information contained in the book is available in the Python reference documents, but not collected in one place.In addition to adding examples from his own experience, David Beazley has done an excellent job in concisely summarizing the built-in features of the language as well as providing a nicely indexed library reference.While this book may not be immediately useful for someone looking specifically for a language tutorial, beginning or advanced Python programmers will get useful information from this book for much longer than most tutorial style books.Highly recommended.

This excellent reference concisely covers the Python language and libraries. It is a model of what a reference should be: well-produced, tightly written, comprehensive without covering the obsolete or arcane. I even like the small type face.Peter Leopold's pompous 'official' review is off the mark in a variety of ways. For instance, the reason there aren't comparisons to other languages is precisely that this is _reference_, not advocacy or tutorial.Leopold's ill-tempered criticisms of the language itself are hardly relevant to the quality of the book; they also happen to be incorrect. Python _does_ support bytecode-only distribution. Python _is not_ a cleansed version of Perl. Python _is not_ only for quick and dirty projects.Python _does_ provide the abstraction mechanisms and libraries to solve serious problems in a maintainable way, as long as execution efficiency isn't paramount.

If you're familiar with Python programming, and want a beautifully presented, concise reference, this is the book for you.If you're new to Python, but experienced with C/C++ and perl, this book is a great way to pick up the Python sytax and libraries (love that Occam syntactic indenting!)Beginners should try something like O'Reilly's "Learning Python", and pick up "Python Essential Reference" once they're familiar with the basics.