Professional Python

Python provides many tools and constructs for writing advanced but concise and maintainable code.   However, many Python programmers are unfamiliar with how to use them.   The purpose of this book, therefore, is to give beginning and intermediate-level Python programmers the ability to write better architected and easier to understand applications by introducing widely applicable language constructs that are relatively easy to adopt and result in more robust and efficient applications. The book covers a set of advanced Python functions, classes, and libraries, including: Decorators Context Managers Generators   Magic Methods / Overloading Class Factories Metaclasses   Strings and bytestrings Regular Expressions (re) The author also covers advanced tools for both developing and testing Python apps, including:  Unit Testing CLI tools (optparse) asyncio (Python 3.4 only) For each topic, the author will:   introduce the language constructs and libraries conceptually:  i.e., explaining the what explain why the construct can be useful, and importantly when (and when not) to use it show how to code solutions using these constructs against real-world scenarios  This book will, when versions of Python diverge, provide implementation details for both, but for the most part will take a "Python 3 first" approach to ensure the book remains relevant for a long time. It will also promote the use of six (http://pythonhosted.org/six/) for a single-source implementation where possible. All code examples in the book will be available on the book's companion website for download.