Standard Library Modules

Notice the rightmost portion of Figure 21-1. Some of the modules that your programs will import are provided by Python itself and are not files you will code.

Python automatically comes with a large collection of utility modules known as the standard library. This collection, roughly 200 modules large at last count, contains platform-independent support for common programming tasks: operating system interfaces, object persistence, text pattern matching, network and Internet scripting, GUI construction, and much more. None of these tools are part of the Python language itself, but you can use them by importing the appropriate modules on any standard Python installation. Because they are standard library modules, you can also be reasonably sure that they will be available and will work portably on most platforms on which you will run Python.

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You will see a few of the standard library modules in action in this book’s examples, but for a complete look you should browse the standard Python library reference manual, available either with your Python installation (via IDLE or the Python Start button menu on Windows) or online at http://www.python.org.

Because there are so many modules, this is really the only way to get a feel for what tools are available. You can also find tutorials on Python library tools in commercial books that cover application-level programming, such as O’Reilly’s Programming Python, but the manuals are free, viewable in any web browser (they ship in HTML format), and updated each time Python is rereleased.