Whenever you think of Python’s asterisk operator (*), you most likely think of multiplication or exponentiation. Similarly, you probably associate the forward slash operator (/) with division. But you can also use the bare asterisk and slash as special parameters in function headers. These do something completely unrelated to mathematics. When defining functions, you’ll often include a list of comma-separated parameters to define what types of arguments the user can pass to your function. Using the asterisk and forward slash […]

You’ve used ChatGPT, and you understand the potential of using a large language model (LLM) to assist you in your tasks. Maybe you’re already working on an LLM-supported application and read about prompt engineering, but you’re unsure how to translate the theoretical concepts into a practical example. Your text prompt instructs the LLM’s responses, so tweaking it can get you vastly different output. In this tutorial, you’ll apply multiple prompt engineering techniques to a real-world example. You’ll experience prompt engineering […]

It’s always a good month to be a Pythonista, but July 2023 really drove this point home! The release of a new Python 3.12 beta version and Cython 3.0 moved the language forward, and more change is on the way with the steering council’s announcement that a no-GIL CPython is in the works. Development in the Python world is a collective effort, with big contributions coming not from only the core developers but also everyday programmers. Sharing ideas is key […]

In this section, you’ll learn about three of the higher-order functions that Python’s operator module makes available to you: itemgetter(), attrgetter(), and methodcaller(). You’ll learn how these allow you to work with Python collections in a range of useful ways that encourage a functional style of Python programming. Selecting Values From Multidimensional Collections With itemgetter() The first function that you’ll learn about is operator.itemgetter(). In its basic form, you pass it a single parameter that represents an index. Then itemgetter() […]

When it comes to file retrieval, Python offers a robust set of tools and packages that are useful in a variety of applications, from web scraping to automating scripts and analyzing retrieved data. Downloading files from a URL programmatically is a useful skill to learn for various programming and data projects and workflows. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to: Download files from the Web using the standard library as well as third-party libraries in Python Stream data to download […]

Every new Python version brings many changes, updates, fixes, and new features. Python 3.12 will be the next minor version and is now in the beta phase. In this version, the core team has been working intensely to formalize and improve the syntax and behavior of one of the most popular Python features: f-strings. F-strings, short for formatted strings, are string literals prefixed by either a lowercase or uppercase letter F. These strings provide a concise and clean syntax that […]