INFO

Pychron  

0.2.0
requirements

 -epd7.0.2
 -scikits.statsmodels
 -pyserial









Python, Enthought and Pychron need to knows

Think of python as a program. what it does is takes 
human readable source code (.py) and parses,compiles and executes in real time. 

Documentation 
*** http://docs.python.org/ ***

Best place to start *** http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html ***

You can run python in 2 ways. (there is actually many ways to run from the command line but 
	only 2 are used frequently)
Open terminal

1. with no arguments. opens the python interpreter
$ python 

2. with a path to python script (absolute or relative path). executes the script
$ python hello_world.py

Using Python Interpreter			
Zen of Python
>>> import this 

you can use the command line as a powerful calculator
*** see http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html ***

>>> x=1
>>> y=2
>>> x+y
3
>>>	x=50

Use the up and down arrows to cycle thru previous commands
>>> x+y
53
>>> y=x+y
>>> x+y
103
>>> i=0
>>> i+=1    #same as i = i+1 works for all math operators i -=1, i*=2 etc...

strings are defined using ', ", or ''' blocks
' and " are equivalent. convenient when needing to nest quotes. 

>>> s='foo'
>>> b='bar'
>>> print s,b
foo bar
>>> s
'foo'
>>> b
'bar'



to make a list of items use a list or tuple 
*** see http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html ***
list 
>>> l1=[1,2,3,4]
>>> l2=['foo','bar']
>>> t1=(1,2,3)
>>> t2=('foo','bar')
get the length of the sequence use builtin len
>>> len(l1)
4
to generate a list of numbers use builtin range
>>> range(10)
[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
>>> range(0,10,2)
[0,2,4,6,8]

get item from list
>>> l1[0]
1
get the last item
>>> l1[-1]
9
get a sublist
>>> l1[0:2] 		#list[startindex:stopindex:step] 
					#each parameter is optional but at least needs to be set
					#startindex defaults to 0
					#stopindex defaults to the last index
					#step defaults to 1
					l1[0:2] same as l1[0:2:1] and l1[:2] (preferred)
					
same slicing operations work on strings. just think of them as a list of characters
>>> s= 'hello world'
>>> s[:5]
'hello'
>>> s[6:]
'world'
>>> s[-5:]
'world'

you can split and join strings easily
>>> s.split(' ') #str.list(character to  split on) returns a list
['hello', 'world']
>>> ', '.join(s.split(' ')) #join_str.join(list of strings to join)
hello, world
>>> '\n'.join(['this is a good','way to write multi','line text'])
this is a good
way to write multi
line text

dictionaries are key:value containers
there are two syntaxes for creating a dictionary
>>> d=dict(name='Jake', office=316, building='MSEC')
>>> d2 = {'name':'Jake','office':316, 'building':'MSEC'} #convenient when the keys are variables as well
>>> key1='person'
>>> key2='id'
>>> val1='John'
>>> val2=10394303
>>> d3 = {key1:val1, key2:val2}

to get a value from the dictionary you specifiy a key. To get the definition of a word you find the 
word (key) in are dictionary and read the associated entry

>>> d['name']
Jake
entries can be modified
>>> d['name']='Jake Ross'
>>> d['name']
Jake Ross
 
 
#string formating is awesome in python
#lets say you want to display some text with your results
>>> 'the result of {} plus {} is {}'.format(x,y,x+y)
'the result of 50 plus 53 is 103'
>>> 'the result of {1} plus {0} is {2}'.format(x,y,x+y)
'the result of 53 plus 50 is 103'

#you can use pass in a key:pairs
>>> "{name}'s office is {building} {office}".format(name='Jake',building='MSEC',office=316)
or better
>>> "{name}'s office is {building} {office}".format(**d2)
"Jake's office is MSEC 316"