Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.
Python combines remarkable power with very clear syntax.
It
has modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types,
and dynamic typing. There are interfaces to many system calls and
libraries, as well as to various windowing systems (X11, Motif, Tk,
Mac, MFC). New built-in modules are easily written in C or C++. Python
is also usable as an extension language for applications that need a
programmable interface.
The Python implementation is
portable: it runs on many brands of UNIX, on Windows, OS/2, Mac, Amiga,
and many other platforms (if there's a C compiler for it)
Python is a high-level general-purpose programming language that can be applied to many different classes of problems.
The language comes with a large standard library that covers areas such
as string processing (regular expressions, Unicode, calculating
differences between files), Internet protocols (HTTP, FTP, SMTP,
XML-RPC, POP, IMAP, CGI programming), software engineering (unit
testing, logging, profiling, parsing Python code), and operating system
interfaces (system calls, filesystems, TCP/IP sockets).
You can do anything you want with the source, as long as you leave the copyrights in and display those copyrights in any documentation about Python that you produce.
If you honor the copyright rules, it's OK to use Python for commercial
use, to sell copies of Python in source or binary form (modified or
unmodified), or to sell products that incorporate Python in some form.
The source distribution is a gzipped tar file containing the
complete C source, LaTeX documentation, Python library modules, example
programs, and several useful pieces of freely distributable software.
This will compile and run out of the box on most UNIX platforms.
There are numerous tutorials and books available. Consult http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide to find information for beginning Python programmers, including lists of tutorials.
Very stable. New, stable releases have been coming out roughly
every 6 to 18 months since 1991, and this seems likely to continue.
Currently there are usually around 18 months between major releases.
With
the introduction of retrospective "bugfix" releases the stability of
existing releases is being improved. Bugfix releases, indicated by a
third component of the version number (e.g. 2.1.3, 2.2.2), are managed
for stability; only fixes for known problems are included in a bugfix
release, and it's guaranteed that interfaces will remain the same
throughout a series of bugfix releases.
The 2.3.3 release is the most stable version at this point in time.
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