Chapter 1 Introduction

This introductory book on the Python programming language is written for the biologists, but others will also find it useful. Parts 1 and 2 are written with the general audience in mind, whereas part 3 covers simple biological applications. Anyone without biological background should be able to understand those applications.

1.1 Part 1 - Language Basics

Chapter 3 introduces you to simple commands and data structures. Chapter 4 explains the flow of code. Chapters 5, 6, 7 show how this flow of code execution can be modified with loops, conditional statements and functions.

Chapter 8 introduces you to the immensely helpful dictionary data structure. Outside of part 1, Chapter 18 covers another important topic - communicating with user input and external data files.

1.2 Part 2 - Turning Ideas into Code

Chapter 10-13 explain how you can turn your ideas into Python codes. Chapter 14 presents the common error messages encountered and mistakes made by the beginners.

1.3 Part 3 - Biological Problems

Chapters 10, 11 introduce you to the immensely helpful dictionary data structure. Chapter 12 covers another important topic - communicating with user input and external data files.

The power of Python is enhanced by the functions. This topic is covered in Chapters 13-15. Chapter 13 shows a number of built-in functions, whereas Chapter 14 introduces you to two additional libraries providing functions for creating random data and analyzing regular expressions. Finally, Chapter 15 explains how you can create functions on your own.

Chapters 15-19 are relevant for the biologists, although non-biologists can appreciate Chapter 16.

Chapter 20 compares Python with R, another language popular among the biologists.Those unfamiliar with R can skip this chapter.