Data Types

The modules described in this chapter provide a variety of specialized data types such as dates and times, fixed-type arrays, heap queues, synchronized queues, and sets.

Python also provides some built-in data types, in particular, dict, list, set (which along with frozenset, replaces the deprecated sets module), and tuple. The str class can be used to handle binary data and 8-bit text, and the unicode class to handle Unicode text.

The following modules are documented in this chapter:

• datetime — Basic date and time types
  • Available Types
  • timedelta Objects
  • date Objects
  • datetime Objects
  • time Objects
  • tzinfo Objects
  • strftime Behavior

• calendar — General calendar-related functions

• collections — High-performance container datatypes
  • ABCs - abstract base classes
  • deque objects
    • deque Recipes
  • defaultdict objects
    • defaultdict Examples
  • namedtuple Factory Function for Tuples with Named Fields

• heapq — Heap queue algorithm
  • Theory

• bisect — Array bisection algorithm
  • Examples

• array — Efficient arrays of numeric values

• sets — Unordered collections of unique elements
  • Set Objects
  • Example
  • Protocol for automatic conversion to immutable
  • Comparison to the built-in set types

• sched — Event scheduler
  • Scheduler Objects

• mutex — Mutual exclusion support
  • Mutex Objects

• queue — A synchronized queue class
  • Queue Objects

• weakref — Weak references
  • Weak Reference Objects
  • Example

• UserDict — Class wrapper for dictionary objects
• UserList — Class wrapper for list objects
• UserString — Class wrapper for string objects

• types — Names for built-in types

• new — Creation of runtime internal objects

• copy — Shallow and deep copy operations

• pprint — Data pretty printer
  • PrettyPrinter Objects
  • pprint Example

• repr — Alternate repr implementation
  • Repr Objects
  • Subclassing Repr Objects