python

Developerworks are running a comprehensive series on Python version 3, and the changes that it brings with it.

Part one looks at print() - which is now a function, not a statement, and therefore requires parentheses. This, on its own, is going to cause a large number of pre-existing Python programs to break. It also covers the renaming of raw_input() to input, the new bytes literal, changes to string formatting and new I/O mechanisms.

Part two covers class decorators, metaclasses, abstract base classes, changes to exception handling and the handling of integer literals.

If you do any sort of Python programming, then you'd do well to read these two articles, as Python 3 is here now, and you're likely to be using it in the near future.

GNU readline is a library that provides command-line editing facilities, such being able to browse through history with the cursor up/down keys - most Linux users would have seen this at the bash command line. It's also possible to include these features in your own Python programs, using Python's readline module. This article from O'Reilly explains how to do this, and gives a few good examples.

Python 3.0 has been released.

You can get your copy here.

Ars Technica have published an awesome walkthough guide on writing a GNOME application in Python, with demonstrations of how to make use of PyCurl, GTK, and integrating the application with Nautilus. Well worth a read.

O'Reilly are running a good walkthrough of Python's Struct class, which provides functions for packing and unpacking data into and from strings.

Liza Daly has written an article on Python's lxml library, a high-performance xml parser, giving some examples on performing iterative parsing and some very good advice on making your code perform better.

Packt Publishing have published a piece on getting your python scripts to talk to a MySQL database.

Linux.com has a look at the backwards incompatible changes that will be part of the forthcoming Python 3.0