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Python Library Reference
Release 2.5.2, documentation updated on 21st February, 2008.
See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.
Python Library Reference
Guido van Rossum
Python Software Foundation
Email: docs@python.org
Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor
Release 2.5.2
21st February, 2008
- Front Matter
- Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Built-in Objects
- 3. Built-in Types
- 3.1 Truth Value Testing
- 3.2 Boolean Operations -- and, or, not
- 3.3 Comparisons
- 3.4 Numeric Types -- int, float, long, complex
- 3.5 Iterator Types
- 3.6 Sequence Types -- str, unicode, list, tuple, buffer, xrange
- 3.7 Set Types -- set, frozenset
- 3.8 Mapping Types -- dict
- 3.9 File Objects
- 3.10 Context Manager Types
- 3.11 Other Built-in Types
- 3.12 Special Attributes
- 4. String Services
- 4.1 string -- Common string operations
- 4.2 re -- Regular expression operations
- 4.3 struct -- Interpret strings as packed binary data
- 4.4 difflib -- Helpers for computing deltas
- 4.5 StringIO -- Read and write strings as files
- 4.6 cStringIO -- Faster version of StringIO
- 4.7 textwrap -- Text wrapping and filling
- 4.8 codecs -- Codec registry and base classes
- 4.9 unicodedata -- Unicode Database
- 4.10 stringprep -- Internet String Preparation
- 4.11 fpformat -- Floating point conversions
- 5. Data Types
- 5.1 datetime -- Basic date and time types
- 5.2 calendar -- General calendar-related functions
- 5.3 collections -- High-performance container datatypes
- 5.4 heapq -- Heap queue algorithm
- 5.5 bisect -- Array bisection algorithm
- 5.6 array -- Efficient arrays of numeric values
- 5.7 sets -- Unordered collections of unique elements
- 5.8 sched -- Event scheduler
- 5.9 mutex -- Mutual exclusion support
- 5.10 Queue -- A synchronized queue class
- 5.11 weakref -- Weak references
- 5.12 UserDict -- Class wrapper for dictionary objects
- 5.13 UserList -- Class wrapper for list objects
- 5.14 UserString -- Class wrapper for string objects
- 5.15 types -- Names for built-in types
- 5.16 new -- Creation of runtime internal objects
- 5.17 copy -- Shallow and deep copy operations
- 5.18 pprint -- Data pretty printer
- 5.19 repr -- Alternate repr() implementation
- 6. Numeric and Mathematical Modules
- 6.1 math -- Mathematical functions
- 6.2 cmath -- Mathematical functions for complex numbers
- 6.3 decimal -- Decimal floating point arithmetic
- 6.4 random -- Generate pseudo-random numbers
- 6.5 itertools -- Functions creating iterators for efficient looping
- 6.6 functools -- Higher order functions and operations on callable objects.
- 6.7 operator -- Standard operators as functions.
- 7. Internet Data Handling
- 7.1 email --
An email and MIME handling package
- 7.1.1 Representing an email message
- 7.1.2 Parsing email messages
- 7.1.3 Generating MIME documents
- 7.1.4 Creating email and MIME objects from scratch
- 7.1.5 Internationalized headers
- 7.1.6 Representing character sets
- 7.1.7 Encoders
- 7.1.8 Exception and Defect classes
- 7.1.9 Miscellaneous utilities
- 7.1.10 Iterators
- 7.1.11 Package History
- 7.1.12 Differences from mimelib
- 7.1.13 Examples
- 7.2 mailcap -- Mailcap file handling.
- 7.3 mailbox -- Manipulate mailboxes in various formats
- 7.4 mhlib -- Access to MH mailboxes
- 7.5 mimetools -- Tools for parsing MIME messages
- 7.6 mimetypes -- Map filenames to MIME types
- 7.7 MimeWriter -- Generic MIME file writer
- 7.8 mimify -- MIME processing of mail messages
- 7.9 multifile -- Support for files containing distinct parts
- 7.10 rfc822 -- Parse RFC 2822 mail headers
- 7.11 base64 -- RFC 3548: Base16, Base32, Base64 Data Encodings
- 7.12 binhex -- Encode and decode binhex4 files
- 7.13 binascii -- Convert between binary and ASCII
- 7.14 quopri -- Encode and decode MIME quoted-printable data
- 7.15 uu -- Encode and decode uuencode files
- 7.1 email --
An email and MIME handling package
- 8. Structured Markup Processing Tools
- 8.1 HTMLParser -- Simple HTML and XHTML parser
- 8.2 sgmllib -- Simple SGML parser
- 8.3 htmllib -- A parser for HTML documents
- 8.4 htmlentitydefs -- Definitions of HTML general entities
- 8.5 xml.parsers.expat -- Fast XML parsing using Expat
- 8.6 xml.dom -- The Document Object Model API
- 8.7 xml.dom.minidom -- Lightweight DOM implementation
- 8.8 xml.dom.pulldom -- Support for building partial DOM trees
- 8.9 xml.sax -- Support for SAX2 parsers
- 8.10 xml.sax.handler -- Base classes for SAX handlers
- 8.11 xml.sax.saxutils -- SAX Utilities
- 8.12 xml.sax.xmlreader -- Interface for XML parsers
- 8.13 xml.etree.ElementTree -- The ElementTree XML API
- 9. File Formats
- 10. Cryptographic Services
- 11. File and Directory Access
- 11.1 os.path -- Common pathname manipulations
- 11.2 fileinput -- Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
- 11.3 stat -- Interpreting stat() results
- 11.4 statvfs -- Constants used with os.statvfs()
- 11.5 filecmp -- File and Directory Comparisons
- 11.6 tempfile -- Generate temporary files and directories
- 11.7 glob -- Unix style pathname pattern expansion
- 11.8 fnmatch -- Unix filename pattern matching
- 11.9 linecache -- Random access to text lines
- 11.10 shutil -- High-level file operations
- 11.11 dircache -- Cached directory listings
- 12. Data Compression and Archiving
- 13. Data Persistence
- 13.1 pickle -- Python object serialization
- 13.2 cPickle -- A faster pickle
- 13.3 copy_reg -- Register pickle support functions
- 13.4 shelve -- Python object persistence
- 13.5 marshal -- Internal Python object serialization
- 13.6 anydbm -- Generic access to DBM-style databases
- 13.7 whichdb -- Guess which DBM module created a database
- 13.8 dbm -- Simple ``database'' interface
- 13.9 gdbm -- GNU's reinterpretation of dbm
- 13.10 dbhash -- DBM-style interface to the BSD database library
- 13.11 bsddb -- Interface to Berkeley DB library
- 13.12 dumbdbm -- Portable DBM implementation
- 13.13 sqlite3 -- DB-API 2.0 interface for SQLite databases
- 14. Generic Operating System Services
- 14.1 os -- Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
- 14.2 time -- Time access and conversions
- 14.3 optparse -- More powerful command line option parser
- 14.4 getopt -- Parser for command line options
- 14.5 logging -- Logging facility for Python
- 14.6 getpass -- Portable password input
- 14.7 curses -- Terminal handling for character-cell displays
- 14.8 curses.textpad -- Text input widget for curses programs
- 14.9 curses.wrapper -- Terminal handler for curses programs
- 14.10 curses.ascii -- Utilities for ASCII characters
- 14.11 curses.panel -- A panel stack extension for curses.
- 14.12 platform -- Access to underlying platform's identifying data.
- 14.13 errno -- Standard errno system symbols
- 14.14 ctypes -- A foreign function library for Python.
- 15. Optional Operating System Services
- 15.1 select -- Waiting for I/O completion
- 15.2 thread -- Multiple threads of control
- 15.3 threading -- Higher-level threading interface
- 15.4 dummy_thread -- Drop-in replacement for the thread module
- 15.5 dummy_threading -- Drop-in replacement for the threading module
- 15.6 mmap -- Memory-mapped file support
- 15.7 readline -- GNU readline interface
- 15.8 rlcompleter -- Completion function for GNU readline
- 16. Unix Specific Services
- 16.1 posix -- The most common POSIX system calls
- 16.2 pwd -- The password database
- 16.3 spwd -- The shadow password database
- 16.4 grp -- The group database
- 16.5 crypt -- Function to check Unix passwords
- 16.6 dl -- Call C functions in shared objects
- 16.7 termios -- POSIX style tty control
- 16.8 tty -- Terminal control functions
- 16.9 pty -- Pseudo-terminal utilities
- 16.10 fcntl -- The fcntl() and ioctl() system calls
- 16.11 pipes -- Interface to shell pipelines
- 16.12 posixfile -- File-like objects with locking support
- 16.13 resource -- Resource usage information
- 16.14 nis -- Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages)
- 16.15 syslog -- Unix syslog library routines
- 16.16 commands -- Utilities for running commands
- 17. Interprocess Communication and Networking
- 17.1 subprocess -- Subprocess management
- 17.2 socket -- Low-level networking interface
- 17.3 signal -- Set handlers for asynchronous events
- 17.4 popen2 -- Subprocesses with accessible I/O streams
- 17.5 asyncore -- Asynchronous socket handler
- 17.6 asynchat -- Asynchronous socket command/response handler
- 18. Internet Protocols and Support
- 18.1 webbrowser -- Convenient Web-browser controller
- 18.2 cgi -- Common Gateway Interface support.
- 18.3 cgitb -- Traceback manager for CGI scripts
- 18.4 wsgiref -- WSGI Utilities and Reference Implementation
- 18.5 urllib -- Open arbitrary resources by URL
- 18.6 urllib2 --
extensible library for opening URLs
- 18.6.1 Request Objects
- 18.6.2 OpenerDirector Objects
- 18.6.3 BaseHandler Objects
- 18.6.4 HTTPRedirectHandler Objects
- 18.6.5 HTTPCookieProcessor Objects
- 18.6.6 ProxyHandler Objects
- 18.6.7 HTTPPasswordMgr Objects
- 18.6.8 AbstractBasicAuthHandler Objects
- 18.6.9 HTTPBasicAuthHandler Objects
- 18.6.10 ProxyBasicAuthHandler Objects
- 18.6.11 AbstractDigestAuthHandler Objects
- 18.6.12 HTTPDigestAuthHandler Objects
- 18.6.13 ProxyDigestAuthHandler Objects
- 18.6.14 HTTPHandler Objects
- 18.6.15 HTTPSHandler Objects
- 18.6.16 FileHandler Objects
- 18.6.17 FTPHandler Objects
- 18.6.18 CacheFTPHandler Objects
- 18.6.19 GopherHandler Objects
- 18.6.20 UnknownHandler Objects
- 18.6.21 HTTPErrorProcessor Objects
- 18.6.22 Examples
- 18.7 httplib -- HTTP protocol client
- 18.8 ftplib -- FTP protocol client
- 18.9 gopherlib -- Gopher protocol client
- 18.10 poplib -- POP3 protocol client
- 18.11 imaplib -- IMAP4 protocol client
- 18.12 nntplib -- NNTP protocol client
- 18.13 smtplib -- SMTP protocol client
- 18.14 smtpd -- SMTP Server
- 18.15 telnetlib -- Telnet client
- 18.16 uuid -- UUID objects according to RFC 4122
- 18.17 urlparse -- Parse URLs into components
- 18.18 SocketServer -- A framework for network servers
- 18.19 BaseHTTPServer -- Basic HTTP server
- 18.20 SimpleHTTPServer -- Simple HTTP request handler
- 18.21 CGIHTTPServer -- CGI-capable HTTP request handler
- 18.22 cookielib -- Cookie handling for HTTP clients
- 18.23 Cookie -- HTTP state management
- 18.24 xmlrpclib -- XML-RPC client access
- 18.25 SimpleXMLRPCServer -- Basic XML-RPC server
- 18.26 DocXMLRPCServer -- Self-documenting XML-RPC server
- 19. Multimedia Services
- 19.1 audioop -- Manipulate raw audio data
- 19.2 imageop -- Manipulate raw image data
- 19.3 aifc -- Read and write AIFF and AIFC files
- 19.4 sunau -- Read and write Sun AU files
- 19.5 wave -- Read and write WAV files
- 19.6 chunk -- Read IFF chunked data
- 19.7 colorsys -- Conversions between color systems
- 19.8 rgbimg -- Read and write ``SGI RGB'' files
- 19.9 imghdr -- Determine the type of an image
- 19.10 sndhdr -- Determine type of sound file
- 19.11 ossaudiodev -- Access to OSS-compatible audio devices
- 20. Graphical User Interfaces with Tk
- 21. Internationalization
- 22. Program Frameworks
- 23. Development Tools
- 24. The Python Debugger
- 25. The Python Profilers
- 25.1 Introduction to the profilers
- 25.2 Instant User's Manual
- 25.3 What Is Deterministic Profiling?
- 25.4 Reference Manual - profile and cProfile
- 25.5 Limitations
- 25.6 Calibration
- 25.7 Extensions -- Deriving Better Profilers
- 25.8 hotshot -- High performance logging profiler
- 25.9 timeit -- Measure execution time of small code snippets
- 25.10 trace -- Trace or track Python statement execution
- 26. Python Runtime Services
- 26.1 sys -- System-specific parameters and functions
- 26.2 __builtin__ -- Built-in objects
- 26.3 __main__ -- Top-level script environment
- 26.4 warnings -- Warning control
- 26.5 contextlib -- Utilities for with-statement contexts.
- 26.6 atexit -- Exit handlers
- 26.7 traceback -- Print or retrieve a stack traceback
- 26.8 __future__ -- Future statement definitions
- 26.9 gc -- Garbage Collector interface
- 26.10 inspect -- Inspect live objects
- 26.11 site -- Site-specific configuration hook
- 26.12 user -- User-specific configuration hook
- 26.13 fpectl -- Floating point exception control
- 27. Custom Python Interpreters
- 28. Restricted Execution
- 29. Importing Modules
- 30. Python Language Services
- 30.1 parser -- Access Python parse trees
- 30.2 symbol -- Constants used with Python parse trees
- 30.3 token -- Constants used with Python parse trees
- 30.4 keyword -- Testing for Python keywords
- 30.5 tokenize -- Tokenizer for Python source
- 30.6 tabnanny -- Detection of ambiguous indentation
- 30.7 pyclbr -- Python class browser support
- 30.8 py_compile -- Compile Python source files
- 30.9 compileall -- Byte-compile Python libraries
- 30.10 dis -- Disassembler for Python byte code
- 30.11 pickletools -- Tools for pickle developers.
- 30.12 distutils -- Building and installing Python modules
- 31. Python compiler package
- 32. Abstract Syntax Trees
- 33. Miscellaneous Services
- 34. SGI IRIX Specific Services
- 34.1 al -- Audio functions on the SGI
- 34.2 AL -- Constants used with the al module
- 34.3 cd -- CD-ROM access on SGI systems
- 34.4 fl -- FORMS library for graphical user interfaces
- 34.5 FL -- Constants used with the fl module
- 34.6 flp -- Functions for loading stored FORMS designs
- 34.7 fm -- Font Manager interface
- 34.8 gl -- Graphics Library interface
- 34.9 DEVICE -- Constants used with the gl module
- 34.10 GL -- Constants used with the gl module
- 34.11 imgfile -- Support for SGI imglib files
- 34.12 jpeg -- Read and write JPEG files
- 35. SunOS Specific Services
- 36. MS Windows Specific Services
- A. Undocumented Modules
- B. Reporting Bugs
- C. History and License
- Module Index
- Index
- About this document ...
Release 2.5.2, documentation updated on 21st February, 2008.