These appendices contain simple explanations and definitions for a subset of the Python language, its standard libraries and a few of the key modules used in this book. The objective is not to give a complete description of every possible option, which is already documented (and will be more up-to-date) on the Internet. Rather, the aim is to cover all of the components used in this book as well as a few extra useful details in relatively plain English, to help with learning the language. Hence, it is deliberate that we have simplified or omitted certain details to avoid obfuscating the main points for novice programmers. While we describe most of the core components of standard Python, for some of the libraries we will only highlight some parts we have found particularly useful. In some cases, where we don’t describe individual components, we will describe what a library or a module is generally used for, in order to guide further investigation.

In addition to the material presented here, the website http://www.cambridge.org/pythonforbiology provides links to full, in-depth documentation for Python and the associated libraries that are used throughout this book.