Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Updated for Python 2.4, The "Python Cookbook," 2nd Edition offers a wealth of useful code for all Python programmers, not just advanced practitioners. Like its predecessor, the new edition provides solutions to problems that Python programmers face everyday.

It now includes over 200 recipes that range from simple tasks, such as working with dictionaries and list comprehensions, to complex tasks, such as monitoring a network and building a templating system. This revised version also includes new chapters on topics such as time, money, and metaprogramming.

Here's a list of additional topics covered:

Manipulating text

Searching and sorting

Working with files and the filesystem

Object-oriented programming

Dealing with threads and processes

System administration

Interacting with databases

Creating user interfaces

Network and web programming

Processing XML

Distributed programming

Debugging and testing

Another advantage of The "Python Cookbook," 2nd Edition is its trio of authors--three well-known Python programming experts, who are highly visible on email lists and in newsgroups, and speak often at Python conferences.

With scores of practical examples and pertinent background information, The "Python Cookbook," 2nd Edition is the one source you need if you're looking to build efficient, flexible, scalable, and well-integrated systems.

Average Customer Rating:

i cook a lot	Customer Rating:
and I find great recipes in this book almost everyday to make my code cleaner and faster.

Good idea book

Customer Rating:

I like this book for two reasons. 1) If I need to get an idea on how to do something that is not necessarily obvious then it is a good place to look 2) If I have done something and want to see how others may have approached something similar then it is a good gauge on my own 'sanity check' - did I convolute some simple (or complex) logic into a working python script that could be handled in half the space and more elegantly (it has been known to happen) or did I come up with a comparable, better, or unique solution than presented (it has also been known to happen - just not as much as the former). In truth, I often find that I view a solution as 'better' because of the particulars of the application I am working on in which case some subjectivity of usefulness and elegance is based on an inherited aspect of my code and not on the abstract usefulness and elegance which much of the code snippets and explanation presents. Good idea book, keeping in mind that the authors are trying to encapsulate some wisdom to be applied to a very wide set of problems.

Worth the money

Customer Rating:

This is the only Python book I've seen to date which provides detailed and practical examples of metaprogramming idioms, and it gets five stars for that chapter way in the back alone. The chapter on sockets programming also made me laugh since Guido seems to be incredibly proud of what I personally consider to be one of the worst sockets libraries I've ever used, but the Twisted guys have already sorted all of that nonsense out for us, so what the hey. Lots of cool stuff in here you probably haven't even thought of trying--like accessing the result of a list comprehension from inside the comprehension itself.

A great edition	Customer Rating:
This edition (2) is significantly expanded -- and modified where Python advances warrant it -- from the previous version. If you want a book that shows best Python programming practices and gets you going for virtually any programming task this is the book for you

Not the latest Version	Customer Rating:
I purchased this for my son as he requested it. It was an older version so he would not be able to use it. He ordered the newer one out. It not say what the published date was when I order it.