Python: Further Topics

Prerequisites

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course will introduce more advanced aspects of the Python language than the "Python for Absolute Beginners" course or "Python for Programmers" courses. The course will cover topics such as file I/O in more detail than either of those two courses. Whilst the course will not cover the use of Python to produce graphical output, some mention will be made of how Python can be used to interface with tools such as gnuplot to produce graphical output of scientific data.

This course does not explicitly cover the object oriented aspects of the Python language.

• Prior attendance at one of the "Python for Absolute Beginners" or "Python for Programmers" courses or equivalent experience
• Those attending should be able to use a plain text editor (e.g. emacs, gedit, pico, vi) on a Unix system as might be obtained from the Emacs or Vi introductory courses.

Number of sessions: 2

• More advanced Python data types
• File I/O in Python
• Error handling in Python
• Handling structured data files (comma separated value (CSV) files)
• Interfacing with gnuplot for graphical output
• Introduction to Python's pickle and cPickle modules
• Other advanced aspects of the Python language

Presentation/demonstration with practicals.

Python v. 3 on PWF Linux

• This course is unsuitable for those who have no experience of Python.
• Whilst not a prerequisite, those with little programming experience may benefit from first attending the "Programming: Basics of Programming" course.
• Those attending this course may also be interested in the following: "Python: Operating System Access", "Python: Regular Expressions", "Python: Checkpointing" and "Python: Numerical Programming in Python".
• Those needing to produce graphical output from their programs may wish to also attend the "Gnuplot for Simple Graphs" course.

Two half day sessions

• Programming and Scripting
• Scientific Computing