Wiley Python: Create - Modify - Reuse 978-0-470-25932-0 User Manual

        A Python Primer       

   

 This chapter provides a quick overview of the Python language. The goal in this chapter is not to 
teach you the Python language  —  excellent books have been written on that subject, such as 
 Beginning Python  (Wrox, 2005). This chapter describes Python ’ s lexical structure and programming 
conventions, so if you are familiar with other scripting languages such as Perl or Ruby, or with 
compiled programming languages such as Java or C#, you should easily be up to speed in no time.  

  Getting Star ted 

 Of course, the first thing you need to do is install Python, if you don ’ t already have it. Installers are 
available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Unix, and everything from OpenVMS to the Playstation 
(no, I ’ m not kidding). 

 If you go to  

www.python.org/download

  you can find links to download the correct version of 

Python for your operating system. Follow the install instructions for your particular Python 
distribution  —  instructions can vary significantly depending on what operating system you ’ re 
installing to.

  What Version Number to Install 

 Although the examples in this book should work for any Python version above 2.0, it is 
best to install the latest stable build for your operating system. For Windows (which is 
the environment I primarily work in), the latest stable version is 2.51. There is an alpha 
build of Python 3.0 available as of this writing, but other than just looking at it for fun, 
I ’ d steer clear of it for the examples in this book  —  in some cases the syntax is very 
 different, and the examples in this book won ’ t work with Python 3.0.  

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