3. Python Services

The modules described in this chapter provide a wide range of services related to the Python interpreter and its interaction with its environment. Here's an overview:

sys Access system-specific parameters and functions.
types Names for all built-in types.
UserDict Class wrapper for dictionary objects.
UserList Class wrapper for list objects.
operator All Python's standard operators as built-in functions.
traceback Print or retrieve a stack traceback.
linecache This module provides random access to individual lines from text files.
pickle Convert Python objects to streams of bytes and back.
cPickle Faster version of pickle, but not subclassable.
copy_reg Register pickle support functions.
shelve Python object persistency.
copy Shallow and deep copy operations.
marshal Convert Python objects to streams of bytes and back (with different constraints).
imp Access the implementation of the import statement.
parser Access parse trees for Python source code.
symbol Constants representing internal nodes of the parse tree.
token Constants representing terminal nodes of the parse tree.
keyword Test whether a string is a keyword in Python.
tokenize Lexical scanner for Python source code.
pyclbr Supports information extraction for a Python class browser.
code Base classes for interactive Python interpreters.
codeop Compile (possibly incomplete) Python code.
pprint Data pretty printer.
repr Alternate repr() implementation with size limits.
py_compile Compile Python source files to byte-code files.
compileall Tools for byte-compiling all Python source files in a directory tree.
dis Disassembler.
new Interface to the creation of runtime implementation objects.
site A standard way to reference site-specific modules.
user A standard way to reference user-specific modules.
__builtin__ The set of built-in functions.
__main__ The environment where the top-level script is run.


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