John Smith's Blog

(This is a bit of a lame post - 99% was generated by a script - but I wanted an online copy for my own future reference.)

I was reading the notes about the new stuff in Python 3.3, and it struck me that I didn't know anything about a couple of the modules mentioned. (For the record, they were abc and sched - hopefully my ignorance of them isn't too shameful ;-)

This has motivated me to go through the Python standard library and make sure I have at least a cursory knowledge of all the modules - I'm aiming to do one per day. There is a list on python.org, but it is grouped by theme, and I'd rather have a bit of a change from one day to the next, which hopefully an alphabetically sorted list should have a fair chance of achieving.

To this end, I knocked up a basic script to churn through the stdlib directory, which I can then use as a tick list. Maybe it could be of use to someone else too? Important: the list omits libraries which are written in C - these have __doc__ properties formatted differently from the pure Python libraries, and I think the pure libraries are enough for me to be going on with for now :-)

BTW, after I'd written the script to generate this list, I found that there's a similar (but more nicely formatted) list on Doug Hellmann's site, which annoyingly didn't show up in my Google search queries when I started out on this. It does have references for the C libraries, but I also notice a few libraries in the list below that aren't on that page e.g. ast, bdb, code. As I don't (currently!) know what those libraries are, I don't know if there's a particular reason for their omission.

abc

Abstract Base Classes (ABCs) according to PEP 3119.

_abcoll

Abstract Base Classes (ABCs) for collections, according to PEP 3119.

aifc

Stuff to parse AIFF-C and AIFF files.

antigravity

{Undocumented}

anydbm

Generic interface to all dbm clones.

argparse

Command-line parsing library

ast

ast

asynchat

A class supporting chat-style (command/response) protocols.

asyncore

Basic infrastructure for asynchronous socket service clients and servers.

atexit

allow programmer to define multiple exit functions to be executed upon normal program termination.

audiodev

Classes for manipulating audio devices (currently only for Sun and SGI)

base64

RFC 3548: Base16, Base32, Base64 Data Encodings

BaseHTTPServer

HTTP server base class.

Bastion

ification utility.

bdb

Debugger basics

binhex

Macintosh binhex compression/decompression.

bisect

Bisection algorithms.

bsddb

Support for Berkeley DB 4.1 through 4.8 with a simple interface.

calendar

Calendar printing functions

cgi

Support module for CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts.

CGIHTTPServer

CGI-savvy HTTP Server.

cgitb

More comprehensive traceback formatting for Python scripts.

chunk

Simple class to read IFF chunks.

cmd

A generic class to build line-oriented command interpreters.

code

Utilities needed to emulate Python's interactive interpreter.

codecs

Python Codec Registry, API and helpers.

codeop

Utilities to compile possibly incomplete Python source code.

collections

{Undocumented}

colorsys

Conversion functions between RGB and other color systems.

commands

Execute shell commands via os.popen() and return status, output.

compileall

Module/script to "compile" all .py files to .pyc (or .pyo) file.

compiler

Package for parsing and compiling Python source code

config

{Not importable - ImportError}

ConfigParser

Configuration file parser.

contextlib

Utilities for with-statement contexts. See PEP 343.

Cookie

Here's a sample session to show how to use this module. At the moment, this is the only documentation.

cookielib

HTTP cookie handling for web clients.

copy

Generic (shallow and deep) copying operations.

copy_reg

Helper to provide extensibility for pickle/cPickle.

cProfile

Python interface for the 'lsprof' profiler. Compatible with the 'profile' module.

csv

CSV parsing and writing.

ctypes

create and manipulate C data types in Python

curses

curses

dbhash

Provide a (g)dbm-compatible interface to bsddb.hashopen.

decimal

This is a Py2.3 implementation of decimal floating point arithmetic based on the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification:

Demo

{Not importable - ImportError}

difflib

helpers for computing deltas between objects.

dircache

Read and cache directory listings.

dis

Disassembler of Python byte code into mnemonics.

distutils

distutils

Doc

{Not importable - ImportError}

doctest

a framework for running examples in docstrings.

DocXMLRPCServer

Self documenting XML-RPC Server.

dumbdbm

A dumb and slow but simple dbm clone.

dummy_thread

Drop-in replacement for the thread module.

dummy_threading

Faux ``threading`` version using ``dummy_thread`` instead of ``thread``.

email

A package for parsing, handling, and generating email messages.

encodings

Standard "encodings" Package

filecmp

Utilities for comparing files and directories.

fileinput

Helper class to quickly write a loop over all standard input files.

fnmatch

Filename matching with shell patterns.

formatter

Generic output formatting.

fpformat

General floating point formatting functions.

fractions

Rational, infinite-precision, real numbers.

ftplib

An FTP client class and some helper functions.

functools

Tools for working with functions and callable objects

__future__

Record of phased-in incompatible language changes.

genericpath

Path operations common to more than one OS Do not use directly. The OS specific modules import the appropriate functions from this module themselves.

getopt

Parser for command line options.

getpass

Utilities to get a password and/or the current user name.

gettext

Internationalization and localization support.

glob

Filename globbing utility.

gzip

Functions that read and write gzipped files.

hashlib

module - A common interface to many hash functions.

heapq

Heap queue algorithm (a.k.a. priority queue).

hmac

HMAC (Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication) Python module.

hotshot

High-perfomance logging profiler, mostly written in C.

htmlentitydefs

HTML character entity references.

htmllib

HTML 2.0 parser.

HTMLParser

A parser for HTML and XHTML.

httplib

HTTP/1.1 client library

idlelib

{Undocumented}

ihooks

Import hook support.

imaplib

IMAP4 client.

imghdr

Recognize image file formats based on their first few bytes.

importlib

Backport of importlib.import_module from 3.x.

imputil

Import utilities

inspect

Get useful information from live Python objects.

io

The io module provides the Python interfaces to stream handling. The builtin open function is defined in this module.

json

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a subset of JavaScript syntax (ECMA-262 3rd edition) used as a lightweight data interchange format.

keyword

Keywords (from "graminit.c")

lib-dynload

{Not importable - SyntaxError}

lib-tk

{Not importable - SyntaxError}

lib2to3

{Undocumented}

linecache

Cache lines from files.

locale

Locale support.

logging

Logging package for Python. Based on PEP 282 and comments thereto in comp.lang.python, and influenced by Apache's log4j system.

_LWPCookieJar

Load / save to libwww-perl (LWP) format files.

macpath

Pathname and path-related operations for the Macintosh.

macurl2path

Macintosh-specific module for conversion between pathnames and URLs.

mailbox

Read/write support for Maildir, mbox, MH, Babyl, and MMDF mailboxes.

mailcap

Mailcap file handling. See RFC 1524.

markupbase

Shared support for scanning document type declarations in HTML and XHTML.

md5

{Undocumented, with warnings - possibly deprecated?}

mhlib

MH interface -- purely object-oriented (well, almost)

mimetools

Various tools used by MIME-reading or MIME-writing programs.

mimetypes

Guess the MIME type of a file.

MimeWriter

Generic MIME writer.

mimify

Mimification and unmimification of mail messages.

modulefinder

Find modules used by a script, using introspection.

_MozillaCookieJar

Mozilla / Netscape cookie loading / saving.

multifile

A readline()-style interface to the parts of a multipart message.

multiprocessing

{Undocumented}

mutex

Mutual exclusion -- for use with module sched

netrc

An object-oriented interface to .netrc files.

new

Create new objects of various types. Deprecated.

nntplib

An NNTP client class based on RFC 977: Network News Transfer Protocol.

ntpath

Common pathname manipulations, WindowsNT/95 version.

nturl2path

Convert a NT pathname to a file URL and vice versa.

numbers

Abstract Base Classes (ABCs) for numbers, according to PEP 3141.

opcode

module - potentially shared between dis and other modules which operate on bytecodes (e.g. peephole optimizers).

optparse

A powerful, extensible, and easy-to-use option parser.

os

OS routines for Mac, NT, or Posix depending on what system we're on.

os2emxpath

Common pathname manipulations, OS/2 EMX version.

pdb

A Python debugger.

__phello__.foo

{Undocumented}

pickle

Create portable serialized representations of Python objects.

pickletools

"Executable documentation" for the pickle module.

pipes

Conversion pipeline templates.

pkgutil

Utilities to support packages.

platform

This module tries to retrieve as much platform-identifying data as possible. It makes this information available via function APIs.

plat-linux2

{Not importable - SyntaxError}

plistlib

a tool to generate and parse MacOSX .plist files.

popen2

Spawn a command with pipes to its stdin, stdout, and optionally stderr.

poplib

A POP3 client class.

posixfile

Extended file operations available in POSIX.

posixpath

Common operations on Posix pathnames.

pprint

Support to pretty-print lists, tuples, & dictionaries recursively.

profile

Class for profiling Python code.

pstats

Class for printing reports on profiled python code.

pty

Pseudo terminal utilities.

pyclbr

Parse a Python module and describe its classes and methods.

py_compile

Routine to "compile" a .py file to a .pyc (or .pyo) file.

pydoc

Generate Python documentation in HTML or text for interactive use.

pydoc_data

{Undocumented}

_pyio

Python implementation of the io module.

Queue

A multi-producer, multi-consumer queue.

quopri

Conversions to/from quoted-printable transport encoding as per RFC 1521.

random

Random variable generators.

re

Support for regular expressions (RE).

repr

Redo the builtin repr() (representation) but with limits on most sizes.

rexec

Restricted execution facilities.

rfc822

RFC 2822 message manipulation.

rlcompleter

Word completion for GNU readline 2.0.

robotparser

runpy

locating and running Python code using the module namespace

sched

A generally useful event scheduler class.

sets

Classes to represent arbitrary sets (including sets of sets).

sgmllib

A parser for SGML, using the derived class as a static DTD.

sha

{Undocumented, with warnings - possibly deprecated?}

shelve

Manage shelves of pickled objects.

shlex

A lexical analyzer class for simple shell-like syntaxes.

shutil

Utility functions for copying and archiving files and directory trees.

SimpleHTTPServer

Simple HTTP Server.

SimpleXMLRPCServer

Simple XML-RPC Server.

site

Append module search paths for third-party packages to sys.path.

site-packages

{Not importable - SyntaxError}

smtpd

An RFC 2821 smtp proxy.

smtplib

SMTP/ESMTP client class.

sndhdr

Routines to help recognizing sound files.

socket

This module provides socket operations and some related functions. On Unix, it supports IP (Internet Protocol) and Unix domain sockets. On other systems, it only supports IP. Functions specific for a socket are available as methods of the socket object.

SocketServer

Generic socket server classes.

sqlite3

{Undocumented}

sre

This file is only retained for backwards compatibility. It will be removed in the future. sre was moved to re in version 2.5.

sre_compile

Internal support module for sre

sre_constants

Internal support module for sre

sre_parse

Internal support module for sre

ssl

This module provides some more Pythonic support for SSL.

stat

Constants/functions for interpreting results of os.stat() and os.lstat().

statvfs

Constants for interpreting the results of os.statvfs() and os.fstatvfs().

string

A collection of string operations (most are no longer used).

StringIO

File-like objects that read from or write to a string buffer.

stringold

Common string manipulations.

stringprep

Library that exposes various tables found in the StringPrep RFC 3454.

_strptime

Strptime-related classes and functions.

struct

Functions to convert between Python values and C structs represented as Python strings. It uses format strings (explained below) as compact descriptions of the lay-out of the C structs and the intended conversion to/from Python values.

subprocess

Subprocesses with accessible I/O streams

sunau

Stuff to parse Sun and NeXT audio files.

sunaudio

Interpret sun audio headers.

symbol

Non-terminal symbols of Python grammar (from "graminit.h").

symtable

Interface to the compiler's internal symbol tables

sysconfig

Provide access to Python's configuration information.

tabnanny

The Tab Nanny despises ambiguous indentation. She knows no mercy.

tarfile

Read from and write to tar format archives.

telnetlib

TELNET client class.

tempfile

Temporary files.

test

{Undocumented}

textwrap

Text wrapping and filling.

this

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

threading

Thread module emulating a subset of Java's threading model.

_threading_local

Thread-local objects.

timeit

Tool for measuring execution time of small code snippets.

toaiff

Convert "arbitrary" sound files to AIFF (Apple and SGI's audio format).

token

Token constants (from "token.h").

tokenize

Tokenization help for Python programs.

Tools

{Not importable - ImportError}

trace

program/module to trace Python program or function execution

traceback

Extract, format and print information about Python stack traces.

tty

Terminal utilities.

types

Define names for all type symbols known in the standard interpreter.

unittest

Python unit testing framework, based on Erich Gamma's JUnit and Kent Beck's Smalltalk testing framework.

urllib

Open an arbitrary URL.

urllib2

An extensible library for opening URLs using a variety of protocols

urlparse

Parse (absolute and relative) URLs.

user

Hook to allow user-specified customization code to run.

UserDict

A more or less complete user-defined wrapper around dictionary objects.

UserList

A more or less complete user-defined wrapper around list objects.

UserString

A user-defined wrapper around string objects

uu

Implementation of the UUencode and UUdecode functions.

uuid

UUID objects (universally unique identifiers) according to RFC 4122.

warnings

Python part of the warnings subsystem.

wave

Stuff to parse WAVE files.

weakref

Weak reference support for Python.

_weakrefset

{Undocumented}

webbrowser

Interfaces for launching and remotely controlling Web browsers.

whichdb

Guess which db package to use to open a db file.

wsgiref

a WSGI (PEP 333) Reference Library

xdrlib

Implements (a subset of) Sun XDR -- eXternal Data Representation.

xml

Extended XML support for Python

xmllib

A parser for XML, using the derived class as static DTD.

xmlrpclib

An XML-RPC client interface for Python.

zipfile

Read and write ZIP files.

There are a few entries that are slightly odd, such as robotparser and ast, which are due to the __doc__ property of those modules being formatted differently from the rest, and me being too idle to fix them.

Caveat: the list was generated in Python 2.7 running on Fedora 15, so it's possible my stdlib isn't completely standard.