Programming in Python

This is an online textbook on Python and is a companion resource to the course Programming in Python offered as a part of the Online Degree Program, IIT-Madras. For more details about the course, check out our website.

Note to students: This book is meant to be used as a reference. You may find content that has not been covered in the video lectures. Likewise, there may be some content that is present in the lectures which is not covered here. Additional content appearing in this book will not be considered for grading. In summary, please refer to chapters that you feel are relevant for the course. But you are under no obligation to read the entire book cover to cover. Interested students are always welcome to read the entire thing!

Programming in PythonChapter-0: Warm-upChapter-1: Introduction to PythonChapter-2: ConditionalsChapter-3: LoopsChapter-4: FunctionsChapter-5: Lists and TuplesChapter-6: Dictionaries and SetsChapter-7: File HandlingChapter-8: Object Oriented Programming

Chapter-0: Warm-up

Chapter-1: Introduction to Python

Python shell | Replit Console
Prompts | Output
Emojis
Literals and Variables
Basic Data types | type()
Comments

Operators
Convention
Expressions
Type of Expressions

Arithmetic Expressions
Boolean Expressions

Replit Editor
Errors | Debugging
Exceptions
Wrong Code Snippets

Strings
- Quotes
- Length
- Operations
- Escape Characters
- Substrings

Strings
- Indexing
- Slicing
- Immutability
- Methods

Chapter-2: Conditionals

Variables | Assignment operator | Dynamic Typing
Referencing versus Defining | Keywords and Naming Rules
Reusing Variables | Multiple Assignment | Deleting Variables

Input
Type Conversion | Built-in Functions

Conditional Statements
- if
- if-else
- if-elif-else
Nested Conditional Statements
Defining Variables inside if

System libraries
- calendar
- time
- this

Chapter-3: Loops

while loop
break, continue

for loop
range()
Iterating through Strings

Nested loops
while versus for
print
- end
- sep

Formatted printing
- f-strings
- format()
Format Specifiers

System libraries

math
random

Mathematics and Programming

Limits
Recurrence relations
Rational approximation

Chapter-4: Functions

Introduction
Examples

Arguments
- Positional Arguments
- Keyword Arguments
- Default Arguments
Call by Value

Scope
- Local
- Global
Namespaces
- locals
- globals
Scope and Namespaces

Recursion
Caution in Recursion

Chapter-5: Lists and Tuples

Lists
- Introduction
- Iterating through Lists
- Growing a List
- Operations on Lists
- Useful Functions

Lists
- Mutability
- Call by Reference

Lists
- Simulating an IPL Innings

Lists
- List Methods
- Stack and Queue
- Strings and Lists
  - split
  - join

Lists
- Nested Lists
- Matrices
- Shallow and Deep Copy

Tuples
- Introduction
- More on Tuples
- Lists and Tuples
- Packing and Unpacking

Chapter-6: Dictionaries and Sets

Dictionaries
- Introduction
- Examples
- Iterating over Dictionaries
- Growing a Dictionary
- Mutability

Text Processing
- Number of Sentences
- Number of Words
- Number of Unique Words
- Frequent Words

Dictionaries
- Pangrams and Dictionaries
- Dictionary Methods

Dictionaries in Action: LMS
- Assignment Model
- Submission Model
- Grader

Sets
- Introduction
- Iterating over Sets
- Growing Sets
- Set Operations

Chapter-7: File Handling

File Handling
- Why Files
- File Handling

File Handling
- Creating a file in Replit
- Opening and Reading from a file
- Writing to a file

File Handling
- File object analogy
- Mode

File Handling
- File methods
  - read
  - readline
  - readlines
  - write
  - writelines

File Handling
- CSV files
  - Reading a CSV file
  - Files to Collections

Chapter-8: Object Oriented Programming

Objects and Classes
OOP in Python: an example

Classes and Objects
self
Class Attributes vs Object Attributes

Inheritance
Concrete Example
Parent-child relationship
Method Overriding

Vector: Mathematical Preliminaries
Vector: Specification
Vector: Definition
Collection of Vectors