[Python] Python Libs

The Python Standard Library has a lot of modules! To help you get familiar with what's available, here are a selection of our favourite Python Standard Library modules and why we use them!

• csv: very convenient for reading and writing csv files
• collections: useful extensions of the usual data types including OrderedDict, defaultdict and namedtuple
• random: generates pseudo-random numbers, shuffles sequences randomly and chooses random items
• string: more functions on strings. This module also contains useful collections of letters like string.digits(a string containing all characters with are valid digits).
• re: pattern-matching in strings via regular expressions
• math: some standard mathematical functions
• os: interacting with operating systems
• os.path: submodule of os for manipulating path names
• sys: work directly with the Python interpreter
• json: good for reading and writing json files (good for web work)

How to import:

from module_name import object_name as different_name

for example:

from csv import reader as csvreader