Dr. Dobb's Journal February 1998
About Python
By David Arnold, Andy Bond and Martin Chilvers
The authors are researchers at the CRC for Distributed Systems Technology, University of Queensland, Australia. They can be contacted at [email protected].
Python is a portable, interpreted, object-oriented programming language influenced by a variety of other languages, most notably ABC, C, Modula-3, and Icon. With an elegant syntax and powerful, high-level data types, it is easy to learn and is ideal for CGI scripts, system administration, and many other extension and integration tasks. More importantly, its support for rapid prototyping and object-oriented programming makes it a valuable tool for serious software engineering and product development.
The small, but not oversimplified, core language provides the usual basic data types and flow-control statements, along with higher-level types such as strings, lists, tuples, and associative arrays. Object-oriented programming is supported by a class mechanism following the multiple-inheritance model. Exception handling is provided via the try/catch paradigm.
The real power of Python, however, lies in its extensibility. The language can be extended by writing modules in either Python itself, or compiled languages such as C and C++. These modules can define variables, functions, new data types and their methods, or simply provide a link to existing code libraries. It is also possible to embed the Python interpreter in another application for use as an extension language. The standard Python library includes modules for a wide range of tasks, from debuggers and profilers to Internet services and graphical user interfaces. If you need it, it is probably already there.
Python runs under Windows 3.x, 95, and NT, most flavors of UNIX, Macintosh, and OS/2. It is freely copyable and can be used without fee in commercial products. More information (and source code) can be obtained at http://www.python.org/.
DDJ
Copyright © 1998, Dr. Dobb's Journal
