Intended Audience

Beginning to intermediate programmers. A basic working knowledge of Python is assumed.

Summary

This tutorial will introduce beginning to intermediate programmers to the many useful Python tools & techniques for text and data processing. Topics will include regular expressions, filtering data with generators, and parsing.

Outline

• Common data sources needing processing:
  • log files
  • CSV
  • tabular data
  • email
  • XML
• Tools & techniques:
  • lists & dictionaries
  • s.join(list) instead of accumulating
  • for line in file
  • filters, large data sources: generators
  • decorate-sort-undecorate
  • StringIO
• Regular expressions:
  • pattern matching
  • filtering
  • substitution
  • splitting
• Parsing:
  • text.split()
  • text.find()
  • regular expressions
  • "real" parsers (including XML)
  • state machines

Please send feedback & ideas for further specific topics to the trainer, David Goodger (email, home page).