Python Basics

Prof. Gheith Abandah

Developing Curricula for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (DeCAIR)

618535-EPP-1-2020-1-JO-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP
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Reference
• Wes McKinney, Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling
with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython, O’Reilly Media, 3rd
Edition, 2022. https://wesmckinney.com/book/
• Material: https://github.com/wesm/pydata-book

• Vanderplas, Jacob T. A Whirlwind Tour of Python. O'Reilly

Media, 2016.
• Material: https://github.com/jakevdp/WhirlwindTourOfPython/

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Quick Python Syntax
• Comments are marked by #.
# Comments
• Quotation marks (" ') can
also be used to enter """
Multi-line comment often
comments. used in documentation
"""
• Use \ to extend a statement
"Single-line Comment"
on the next line.
• Semicolon ; can optionally
terminate a statement.
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Quick Python Syntax
• In Python, code blocks
are denoted by
indentation.
• Four spaces are usually
used.
• Which code snippet
always prints x?

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Quick Python Syntax
• Parentheses are for:
• Grouping
• Calling

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Variables and Objects
• Python variables are pointers
to objects.

• Variable names can point to

objects of any type.

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Variables and Objects
• If we have two
variable names
pointing to the
same mutable
object, then
changing one will
change the other
as well!

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Variables and Objects
• Numbers, strings, and other simple types are immutable.

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Variables and Objects
• Everything is an object

• Object have attributes and methods

accessible through the dot syntax (.)

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Arithmetic Operators

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Bitwise Operators

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Comparison Operators

• Return Boolean values True or

False

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Assignment Operators
• Assignment is evaluated from
right to left.

• There is an augmented
assignment operator
corresponding to each of the
binary arithmetic and bitwise
operators.

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Boolean Operators
• The Boolean operators
operate on Boolean values:
• and
• or
• not
• Can be used to construct
complex comparisons.

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Identity and Membership Operators

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Python Scalar Types

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Integers and Floats
• Integers are variable-precision, no overflow is possible.

• The floating-point type can store fractional numbers. They

can be defined either in standard decimal notation or in
exponential notation.

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Strings
• Strings in Python are created with single or double quotes.
• The built-in function len() returns the string length.
• Any character in the string can be accessed through its index.

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None and Boolean
• Functions that do not return value return None.
• None variables are evaluated to False.

• The Boolean type is a simple type with two possible values:

True and False.
• Values are evaluated to True unless they are None, zero or
empty.

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Built-In Data Structures
• There are four built in Python data structures.

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Lists
• List are ordered and mutable.
• A list can hold objects of any
type.
• Python uses zero-based
indexing.
• Elements at the end of the list
can be accessed with negative
numbers, starting from -1.

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Lists
• Slicing is a means of accessing
multiple values in sub-lists.
[start : end+1 : inc]
• Negative step reverses the list.
• Both indexing and slicing can be used
to set elements as well as access
them.

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Tuples
• Tuples are similar to lists, but are immutable.
• Can be defined with or without parentheses ().
• Functions return multiple values as tuples.

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Dictionaries
• Dictionaries are flexible mappings of keys to values.
• They can be created via a comma-separated list of
key:value pairs within curly braces.

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Sets
• Sets are unordered collections of unique items.
• They are defined using curly brackets { }.
• Set operations include union, intersection, difference and
symmetric difference.

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Conditional Statements: if, elif, and
else
• if statements in Python have optional elif and else
parts.

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for Loops
• The for loop is repeated for each index returned by the
iterator after in.

• The range() object is very useful in for loops.

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for Loops
• The range(start, end+1, inc) has default zero start and
unit increment.

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while Loops
• The while loop iterates as long as the condition is met.

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break and continue: Fine-Tuning Your
Loops
• The continue statement skips the remainder of the current
loop, and goes to the next iteration.

Prints odd
numbers

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break and continue: Fine-Tuning Your
Loops
• The break statement breaks out of the loop entirely.

List all Fibonacci

numbers up to 100.

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Defining Functions
• Functions are defined with the def statement.
• The following function returns a list of the first N Fibonacci
numbers.

• Calling it:

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Default Argument Values
• You can have default values for arguments.

• It can be called with our without the optional args.

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*args and **kwargs: Flexible Arguments
• Functions can be defined using *args and **kwargs to
capture variable numbers of arguments and keyword
arguments.

Tuple

Dictionary

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Objects and Classes
• Python is object-oriented programming language.
• Objects bundle together data and functions.
• Each Python object has a type, or class.
• An object is an instance of a class.
• Accessing instance data:
object.attribute_name
• Accessing instance methods:
object.method_name(parameters)
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String Objects
• String objects are instances of class str.

name = input("Please enter your name: ")

print("Hello " + name.upper() + ", how are you?")

Please enter your name: Sami

Hello SAMI, how are you?

• String objects have many useful methods

https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#text-sequence-type-str
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String Methods
>>> s = " Hi "
>>> s.strip()
'Hi'
>>> 'Age: {0}, Weight: {1}'.format(20, 70)
'Age: 20, Weight: 70'
>>> s = 'This is a string'
>>> s.find('is')
2
>>> s.replace('a', 'the')
'This is the string'

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String Objects
s = 'The cat\'s tail \n is \t long.'
print(s)
• Accept the escape character
The cat's tail
\. is long.

s = '‫'بايثون‬
print(s)

• Unicode encoded. ‫بايثون‬

s_utf8 = s.encode('utf-8')
print(s_utf8)

b'\xd8\xa8\xd8\xa7\xd9\x8a\xd8\xab\xd9
\x88\xd9\x86'
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Date and Time Objects
from datetime import datetime, date, time
• The built-in Python dt = datetime(1999, 8, 16, 8, 30, 0)
print(dt.day)
datetime module provides
datetime, date, and time 16
types. dt2 = datetime(2000, 8, 16, 8, 30, 0)
• Such objects can be delta = dt2 - dt
dt3 = dt2 + delta
formatted and accept - and print(dt3.strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M'))
+ operands.
17/08/2001 08:30

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File Objects
• Files can be opened for read, write or append.
f = open('myfile.txt', 'w')
f.write('Line 1\n')
f.write('Line 2\n')
f.close()

f = open('myfile.txt', 'r')
for line in f:
print(line.strip()) Line 1
Line 2
f.close()

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Classes
• New class types can be defined using class keyword.
class Animal(object):
def __init__(self, name='Animal'): # Constructor
print('Constructing an animal!')
self.name = name
if name == 'Cat':
self.meows = True # Attribute
else:
self.meows = False
super(Animal, self).__init__()

def does_meow(self): # Method

return self.meows
Constructing an animal!
cat = Animal('Cat') It meows True
print('It meows ', cat.does_meow())
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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Runtime Errors
1. Referencing an undefined
variable
2. Unsupported operation

3. Division by zero

4. Accessing a sequence element

that doesn’t exist
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Catching Exceptions: try and except
• Runtime exceptions can be handled using the try…except
clause.

You can catch specific exceptions:

except ZeroDivisionError:

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try…except…else…finally
• Python also support else and finally

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Iterators
• Iterators are used in for loops and can be used using
next()

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Iterators
• The range iterator

• Iterating over lists

• enumerate iterator
L=[2,4,6,8,10]
list(enumerate(L)

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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List Comprehensions
• A way to compress a list-building for loop into a single short,
readable line.
• Syntax: [expr for var in iterable]

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List Comprehensions
• Lists comprehensions can be used to construct sets with no
duplicates.

• Or dictionaries

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Outline
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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Generators
• A list is a collection of values, while a generator expression is
a recipe for producing values.

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Generators
• A generator function uses yield to yield a sequence of
values.

Get a sequence from

the generator

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Homework 2
• Solve the homework on Python Basic Programming

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Summary
• Quick Python Syntax • Defining and Using
• Variables and Objects Functions
• Operators • Objects and Classes
• Built-In Types: Simple Values • Errors and Exceptions
• Built-In Data Structures • Iterators
• Control Flow • List Comprehensions
• Generators

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