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The Python Standard Library
| Release: | 3.2 |
|---|---|
| Date: | July 10, 2011 |
While The Python Language Reference describes the exact syntax and semantics of the Python language, this library reference manual describes the standard library that is distributed with Python. It also describes some of the optional components that are commonly included in Python distributions.
Python’s standard library is very extensive, offering a wide range of facilities as indicated by the long table of contents listed below. The library contains built-in modules (written in C) that provide access to system functionality such as file I/O that would otherwise be inaccessible to Python programmers, as well as modules written in Python that provide standardized solutions for many problems that occur in everyday programming. Some of these modules are explicitly designed to encourage and enhance the portability of Python programs by abstracting away platform-specifics into platform-neutral APIs.
The Python installers for the Windows platform usually includes the entire standard library and often also include many additional components. For Unix-like operating systems Python is normally provided as a collection of packages, so it may be necessary to use the packaging tools provided with the operating system to obtain some or all of the optional components.
In addition to the standard library, there is a growing collection of several thousand components (from individual programs and modules to packages and entire application development frameworks), available from the Python Package Index.
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Built-in Functions
- 3. Built-in Constants
- 4. Built-in Types
- 4.1. Truth Value Testing
- 4.2. Boolean Operations — and, or, not
- 4.3. Comparisons
- 4.4. Numeric Types — int, float, complex
- 4.5. Iterator Types
- 4.6. Sequence Types — str, bytes, bytearray, list, tuple, range
- 4.7. Set Types — set, frozenset
- 4.8. Mapping Types — dict
- 4.9. memoryview type
- 4.10. Context Manager Types
- 4.11. Other Built-in Types
- 4.12. Special Attributes
- 5. Built-in Exceptions
- 6. String Services
- 6.1. string — Common string operations
- 6.2. re — Regular expression operations
- 6.3. struct — Interpret bytes as packed binary data
- 6.4. difflib — Helpers for computing deltas
- 6.5. textwrap — Text wrapping and filling
- 6.6. codecs — Codec registry and base classes
- 6.7. unicodedata — Unicode Database
- 6.8. stringprep — Internet String Preparation
- 7. Data Types
- 7.1. datetime — Basic date and time types
- 7.2. calendar — General calendar-related functions
- 7.3. collections — Container datatypes
- 7.4. heapq — Heap queue algorithm
- 7.5. bisect — Array bisection algorithm
- 7.6. array — Efficient arrays of numeric values
- 7.7. sched — Event scheduler
- 7.8. queue — A synchronized queue class
- 7.9. weakref — Weak references
- 7.10. types — Names for built-in types
- 7.11. copy — Shallow and deep copy operations
- 7.12. pprint — Data pretty printer
- 7.13. reprlib — Alternate repr() implementation
- 8. Numeric and Mathematical Modules
- 9. Functional Programming Modules
- 10. File and Directory Access
- 10.1. os.path — Common pathname manipulations
- 10.2. fileinput — Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
- 10.3. stat — Interpreting stat() results
- 10.4. filecmp — File and Directory Comparisons
- 10.5. tempfile — Generate temporary files and directories
- 10.6. glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
- 10.7. fnmatch — Unix filename pattern matching
- 10.8. linecache — Random access to text lines
- 10.9. shutil — High-level file operations
- 10.10. macpath — Mac OS 9 path manipulation functions
- 11. Data Persistence
- 12. Data Compression and Archiving
- 13. File Formats
- 14. Cryptographic Services
- 15. Generic Operating System Services
- 15.1. os — Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
- 15.2. io — Core tools for working with streams
- 15.3. time — Time access and conversions
- 15.4. argparse — Parser for command-line options, arguments and sub-commands
- 15.5. optparse — Parser for command line options
- 15.6. getopt — C-style parser for command line options
- 15.7. logging — Logging facility for Python
- 15.8. logging.config — Logging configuration
- 15.9. logging.handlers — Logging handlers
- 15.10. getpass — Portable password input
- 15.11. curses — Terminal handling for character-cell displays
- 15.12. curses.textpad — Text input widget for curses programs
- 15.13. curses.ascii — Utilities for ASCII characters
- 15.14. curses.panel — A panel stack extension for curses
- 15.15. platform — Access to underlying platform’s identifying data
- 15.16. errno — Standard errno system symbols
- 15.17. ctypes — A foreign function library for Python
- 16. Optional Operating System Services
- 16.1. select — Waiting for I/O completion
- 16.2. threading — Thread-based parallelism
- 16.3. multiprocessing — Process-based parallelism
- 16.4. concurrent.futures — Launching parallel tasks
- 16.5. mmap — Memory-mapped file support
- 16.6. readline — GNU readline interface
- 16.7. rlcompleter — Completion function for GNU readline
- 16.8. dummy_threading — Drop-in replacement for the threading module
- 16.9. _thread — Low-level threading API
- 16.10. _dummy_thread — Drop-in replacement for the _thread module
- 17. Interprocess Communication and Networking
- 18. Internet Data Handling
- 18.1. email — An email and MIME handling package
- 18.2. json — JSON encoder and decoder
- 18.3. mailcap — Mailcap file handling
- 18.4. mailbox — Manipulate mailboxes in various formats
- 18.5. mimetypes — Map filenames to MIME types
- 18.6. base64 — RFC 3548: Base16, Base32, Base64 Data Encodings
- 18.7. binhex — Encode and decode binhex4 files
- 18.8. binascii — Convert between binary and ASCII
- 18.9. quopri — Encode and decode MIME quoted-printable data
- 18.10. uu — Encode and decode uuencode files
- 19. Structured Markup Processing Tools
- 19.1. html — HyperText Markup Language support
- 19.2. html.parser — Simple HTML and XHTML parser
- 19.3. html.entities — Definitions of HTML general entities
- 19.4. xml.parsers.expat — Fast XML parsing using Expat
- 19.5. xml.dom — The Document Object Model API
- 19.6. xml.dom.minidom — Lightweight DOM implementation
- 19.7. xml.dom.pulldom — Support for building partial DOM trees
- 19.8. xml.sax — Support for SAX2 parsers
- 19.9. xml.sax.handler — Base classes for SAX handlers
- 19.10. xml.sax.saxutils — SAX Utilities
- 19.11. xml.sax.xmlreader — Interface for XML parsers
- 19.12. xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API
- 20. Internet Protocols and Support
- 20.1. webbrowser — Convenient Web-browser controller
- 20.2. cgi — Common Gateway Interface support
- 20.3. cgitb — Traceback manager for CGI scripts
- 20.4. wsgiref — WSGI Utilities and Reference Implementation
- 20.5. urllib.request — Extensible library for opening URLs
- 20.6. urllib.response — Response classes used by urllib
- 20.7. urllib.parse — Parse URLs into components
- 20.8. urllib.error — Exception classes raised by urllib.request
- 20.9. urllib.robotparser — Parser for robots.txt
- 20.10. http.client — HTTP protocol client
- 20.11. ftplib — FTP protocol client
- 20.12. poplib — POP3 protocol client
- 20.13. imaplib — IMAP4 protocol client
- 20.14. nntplib — NNTP protocol client
- 20.15. smtplib — SMTP protocol client
- 20.16. smtpd — SMTP Server
- 20.17. telnetlib — Telnet client
- 20.18. uuid — UUID objects according to RFC 4122
- 20.19. socketserver — A framework for network servers
- 20.20. http.server — HTTP servers
- 20.21. http.cookies — HTTP state management
- 20.22. http.cookiejar — Cookie handling for HTTP clients
- 20.23. xmlrpc.client — XML-RPC client access
- 20.24. xmlrpc.server — Basic XML-RPC servers
- 21. Multimedia Services
- 21.1. audioop — Manipulate raw audio data
- 21.2. aifc — Read and write AIFF and AIFC files
- 21.3. sunau — Read and write Sun AU files
- 21.4. wave — Read and write WAV files
- 21.5. chunk — Read IFF chunked data
- 21.6. colorsys — Conversions between color systems
- 21.7. imghdr — Determine the type of an image
- 21.8. sndhdr — Determine type of sound file
- 21.9. ossaudiodev — Access to OSS-compatible audio devices
- 22. Internationalization
- 23. Program Frameworks
- 24. Graphical User Interfaces with Tk
- 25. Development Tools
- 25.1. pydoc — Documentation generator and online help system
- 25.2. doctest — Test interactive Python examples
- 25.3. unittest — Unit testing framework
- 25.4. 2to3 - Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation
- 25.5. test — Regression tests package for Python
- 25.6. test.support — Utility functions for tests
- 26. Debugging and Profiling
- 27. Python Runtime Services
- 27.1. sys — System-specific parameters and functions
- 27.2. sysconfig — Provide access to Python’s configuration information
- 27.3. builtins — Built-in objects
- 27.4. __main__ — Top-level script environment
- 27.5. warnings — Warning control
- 27.6. contextlib — Utilities for with-statement contexts
- 27.7. abc — Abstract Base Classes
- 27.8. atexit — Exit handlers
- 27.9. traceback — Print or retrieve a stack traceback
- 27.10. __future__ — Future statement definitions
- 27.11. gc — Garbage Collector interface
- 27.12. inspect — Inspect live objects
- 27.13. site — Site-specific configuration hook
- 27.14. fpectl — Floating point exception control
- 27.15. distutils — Building and installing Python modules
- 28. Custom Python Interpreters
- 29. Importing Modules
- 30. Python Language Services
- 30.1. parser — Access Python parse trees
- 30.2. ast — Abstract Syntax Trees
- 30.3. symtable — Access to the compiler’s symbol tables
- 30.4. symbol — Constants used with Python parse trees
- 30.5. token — Constants used with Python parse trees
- 30.6. keyword — Testing for Python keywords
- 30.7. tokenize — Tokenizer for Python source
- 30.8. tabnanny — Detection of ambiguous indentation
- 30.9. pyclbr — Python class browser support
- 30.10. py_compile — Compile Python source files
- 30.11. compileall — Byte-compile Python libraries
- 30.12. dis — Disassembler for Python bytecode
- 30.13. pickletools — Tools for pickle developers
- 31. Miscellaneous Services
- 32. MS Windows Specific Services
- 33. Unix Specific Services
- 33.1. posix — The most common POSIX system calls
- 33.2. pwd — The password database
- 33.3. spwd — The shadow password database
- 33.4. grp — The group database
- 33.5. crypt — Function to check Unix passwords
- 33.6. termios — POSIX style tty control
- 33.7. tty — Terminal control functions
- 33.8. pty — Pseudo-terminal utilities
- 33.9. fcntl — The fcntl() and ioctl() system calls
- 33.10. pipes — Interface to shell pipelines
- 33.11. resource — Resource usage information
- 33.12. nis — Interface to Sun’s NIS (Yellow Pages)
- 33.13. syslog — Unix syslog library routines
- 34. Undocumented Modules