basic-python.txt
author amit@shrike.aero.iitb.ac.in
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:02:53 +0530
changeset 73 9dffd11728d2
child 78 099a2cc6c7d2
permissions -rw-r--r--
Started on day2 . Adding a script on basic python

*Script


*Hello and welcome to this tutorial on Basic Python using Python.

This tutorial formally introduces Python as a language . Through this tutorial we will be able to understand Basic Data types like number , Boolean and strings .Some basic operators , simple input/output and basic conditional flow . 

In numbers Python supports three kinds of data types ,

floats,integers and complex numbers

An integer can be defined as follows :
a=13

This make a an integer variable with value 13 .

You can also type 9 around 20 times 

a=99999999999999999999999 . as you can see Python does not have a limit on how long an integer has to be . Isn't that great . 

Now will try a float.

let's type 
p=3.141592  if you type out p now you will notice that it is not absolutely equal to p you typed in . The reason for that is how a computer saves decimal values . 

Apart from integer and float, Python has an in-built support for complex numbers. Now we try to assign a complex value to a variable .
Type:
c = 3+4j
As you can see ,the notation for complex numbers is similar to the one used in electric engineering. 
We will now try some operations on complex numbers . First we will try to get the absolute value of the complex number . For this we will use the abs built in function . For this do :
abs in parenthesis c . 

Do get the imaginary part of c you can do :

c.imag

and similarly for real part do :

c.real

Python also has Boolean as a built-in type .

Try it out just type ..
 t=True , note that T in true is capitalized .