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Made the intro text more positive in tone.

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Noted that Win & Mac installers normally include the whole library
but that Unix users may need to add packages.
Added a link to pypy.
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mark.summerfield 2007-08-03 09:09:18 +00:00
parent 6ea0df4f60
commit dfc057928c
1 changed files with 26 additions and 16 deletions
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Doc-26/library/index.rst
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.. _library-index:
###############################
The Python standard library
The Python Standard Library
###############################
:Release: |version|
:Date: |today|
While :ref:`reference-index` describes the exact syntax and semantics of the
language, it does not describe the standard library that is distributed with the
language, and which greatly enhances its immediate usability. This library
contains built-in modules (written in C) that provide access to system
functionality such as file I/O that would otherwise be inaccessible to Python
programmers, as well as modules written in Python that provide standardized
solutions for many problems that occur in everyday programming. Some of these
modules are explicitly designed to encourage and enhance the portability of
Python programs.
While the :ref:`reference-index` describes the exact syntax and
semantics of the Python language, this library reference manual
describes the standard library that is distributed with Python. It also
describes some of the optional components that are commonly included
in Python distributions.
This library reference manual documents Python's standard library, as well as
many optional library modules (which may or may not be available, depending on
whether the underlying platform supports them and on the configuration choices
made at compile time). It also documents the standard types of the language and
its built-in functions and exceptions, many of which are not or incompletely
documented in the Reference Manual.
Python's standard library is very extensive, offering a wide range of
facilities as indicated by the long table of contents listed below. The
library contains built-in modules (written in C) that provide access to
system functionality such as file I/O that would otherwise be
inaccessible to Python programmers, as well as modules written in Python
that provide standardized solutions for many problems that occur in
everyday programming. Some of these modules are explicitly designed to
encourage and enhance the portability of Python programs by abstracting
away platform-specifics into platform-neutral APIs.
The Python installers for the Windows and Mac platforms usually include
the entire standard library and often also include many additional
components. For Unix-like operating systems Python is normally provided
as a collection of packages, so it may be necessary to use the packaging
tools provided with the operating system to obtain some or all of the
optional components.
In addition to the standard library, there is a growing collection of
over 2500 additional components available from the `Python Package Index
<http://pypi.python.org/pypi>`_.
.. toctree::