Python Standard Library

The Python Standard Library

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While The Python Language Reference 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.

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 platform 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 several thousand components (from individual programs and modules to packages and entire application development frameworks), available from the Python Package Index.

    Introduction
        Notes on availability
    Built-in Functions
    Built-in Constants
        Constants added by the site module
    Built-in Types
        Truth Value Testing
        Boolean Operations — and, or, not
        Comparisons
        Numeric Types — int, float, complex
        Iterator Types
        Sequence Types — list, tuple, range
        Text Sequence Type — str
        Binary Sequence Types — bytes, bytearray, memoryview
        Set Types — set, frozenset
        Mapping Types — dict
        Context Manager Types
        Other Built-in Types
        Special Attributes
    Built-in Exceptions
        Base classes
        Concrete exceptions
        Warnings
        Exception hierarchy
    Text Processing Services
        string — Common string operations
        re — Regular expression operations
        difflib — Helpers for computing deltas
        textwrap — Text wrapping and filling
        unicodedata — Unicode Database
        stringprep — Internet String Preparation
        readline — GNU readline interface
        rlcompleter — Completion function for GNU readline
    Binary Data Services
        struct — Interpret bytes as packed binary data
        codecs — Codec registry and base classes
    Data Types
        datetime — Basic date and time types
        calendar — General calendar-related functions
        collections — Container datatypes
        collections.abc — Abstract Base Classes for Containers
        heapq — Heap queue algorithm
        bisect — Array bisection algorithm
        array — Efficient arrays of numeric values
        weakref — Weak references
        types — Dynamic type creation and names for built-in types
        copy — Shallow and deep copy operations
        pprint — Data pretty printer
        reprlib — Alternate repr() implementation
        enum — Support for enumerations
    Numeric and Mathematical Modules
        numbers — Numeric abstract base classes
        math — Mathematical functions
        cmath — Mathematical functions for complex numbers
        decimal — Decimal fixed point and floating point arithmetic
        fractions — Rational numbers
        random — Generate pseudo-random numbers
        statistics — Mathematical statistics functions
    Functional Programming Modules
        itertools — Functions creating iterators for efficient looping
        functools — Higher-order functions and operations on callable objects
        operator — Standard operators as functions
    File and Directory Access
        pathlib — Object-oriented filesystem paths
        os.path — Common pathname manipulations
        fileinput — Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
        stat — Interpreting stat() results
        filecmp — File and Directory Comparisons
        tempfile — Generate temporary files and directories
        glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
        fnmatch — Unix filename pattern matching
        linecache — Random access to text lines
        shutil — High-level file operations
        macpath — Mac OS 9 path manipulation functions
    Data Persistence
        pickle — Python object serialization
        copyreg — Register pickle support functions
        shelve — Python object persistence
        marshal — Internal Python object serialization
        dbm — Interfaces to Unix “databases”
        sqlite3 — DB-API 2.0 interface for SQLite databases
    Data Compression and Archiving
        zlib — Compression compatible with gzip
        gzip — Support for gzip files
        bz2 — Support for bzip2 compression
        lzma — Compression using the LZMA algorithm
        zipfile — Work with ZIP archives
        tarfile — Read and write tar archive files
    File Formats
        csv — CSV File Reading and Writing
        configparser — Configuration file parser
        netrc — netrc file processing
        xdrlib — Encode and decode XDR data
        plistlib — Generate and parse Mac OS X .plist files
    Cryptographic Services
        hashlib — Secure hashes and message digests
        hmac — Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication
        secrets — Generate secure random numbers for managing secrets
    Generic Operating System Services
        os — Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
        io — Core tools for working with streams
        time — Time access and conversions
        argparse — Parser for command-line options, arguments and sub-commands
        getopt — C-style parser for command line options
        logging — Logging facility for Python
        logging.config — Logging configuration
        logging.handlers — Logging handlers
        getpass — Portable password input
        curses — Terminal handling for character-cell displays
        curses.textpad — Text input widget for curses programs
        curses.ascii — Utilities for ASCII characters
        curses.panel — A panel stack extension for curses
        platform — Access to underlying platform’s identifying data
        errno — Standard errno system symbols
        ctypes — A foreign function library for Python
    Concurrent Execution
        threading — Thread-based parallelism
        multiprocessing — Process-based parallelism
        The concurrent package
        concurrent.futures — Launching parallel tasks
        subprocess — Subprocess management
        sched — Event scheduler
        queue — A synchronized queue class
        _thread — Low-level threading API
        _dummy_thread — Drop-in replacement for the _thread module
        dummy_threading — Drop-in replacement for the threading module
    contextvars — Context Variables
        Context Variables
        Manual Context Management
        asyncio support
    Networking and Interprocess Communication
        asyncio — Asynchronous I/O
        socket — Low-level networking interface
        ssl — TLS/SSL wrapper for socket objects
        select — Waiting for I/O completion
        selectors — High-level I/O multiplexing
        asyncore — Asynchronous socket handler
        asynchat — Asynchronous socket command/response handler
        signal — Set handlers for asynchronous events
        mmap — Memory-mapped file support
    Internet Data Handling
        email — An email and MIME handling package
        json — JSON encoder and decoder
        mailcap — Mailcap file handling
        mailbox — Manipulate mailboxes in various formats
        mimetypes — Map filenames to MIME types
        base64 — Base16, Base32, Base64, Base85 Data Encodings
        binhex — Encode and decode binhex4 files
        binascii — Convert between binary and ASCII
        quopri — Encode and decode MIME quoted-printable data
        uu — Encode and decode uuencode files
    Structured Markup Processing Tools
        html — HyperText Markup Language support
        html.parser — Simple HTML and XHTML parser
        html.entities — Definitions of HTML general entities
        XML Processing Modules
        xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API
        xml.dom — The Document Object Model API
        xml.dom.minidom — Minimal DOM implementation
        xml.dom.pulldom — Support for building partial DOM trees
        xml.sax — Support for SAX2 parsers
        xml.sax.handler — Base classes for SAX handlers
        xml.sax.saxutils — SAX Utilities
        xml.sax.xmlreader — Interface for XML parsers
        xml.parsers.expat — Fast XML parsing using Expat
    Internet Protocols and Support
        webbrowser — Convenient Web-browser controller
        cgi — Common Gateway Interface support
        cgitb — Traceback manager for CGI scripts
        wsgiref — WSGI Utilities and Reference Implementation
        urllib — URL handling modules
        urllib.request — Extensible library for opening URLs
        urllib.response — Response classes used by urllib
        urllib.parse — Parse URLs into components
        urllib.error — Exception classes raised by urllib.request
        urllib.robotparser — Parser for robots.txt
        http — HTTP modules
        http.client — HTTP protocol client
        ftplib — FTP protocol client
        poplib — POP3 protocol client
        imaplib — IMAP4 protocol client
        nntplib — NNTP protocol client
        smtplib — SMTP protocol client
        smtpd — SMTP Server
        telnetlib — Telnet client
        uuid — UUID objects according to RFC 4122
        socketserver — A framework for network servers
        http.server — HTTP servers
        http.cookies — HTTP state management
        http.cookiejar — Cookie handling for HTTP clients
        xmlrpc — XMLRPC server and client modules
        xmlrpc.client — XML-RPC client access
        xmlrpc.server — Basic XML-RPC servers
        ipaddress — IPv4/IPv6 manipulation library
    Multimedia Services
        audioop — Manipulate raw audio data
        aifc — Read and write AIFF and AIFC files
        sunau — Read and write Sun AU files
        wave — Read and write WAV files
        chunk — Read IFF chunked data
        colorsys — Conversions between color systems
        imghdr — Determine the type of an image
        sndhdr — Determine type of sound file
        ossaudiodev — Access to OSS-compatible audio devices
    Internationalization
        gettext — Multilingual internationalization services
        locale — Internationalization services
    Program Frameworks
        turtle — Turtle graphics
        cmd — Support for line-oriented command interpreters
        shlex — Simple lexical analysis
    Graphical User Interfaces with Tk
        tkinter — Python interface to Tcl/Tk
        tkinter.ttk — Tk themed widgets
        tkinter.tix — Extension widgets for Tk
        tkinter.scrolledtext — Scrolled Text Widget
        IDLE
        Other Graphical User Interface Packages
    Development Tools
        typing — Support for type hints
        pydoc — Documentation generator and online help system
        doctest — Test interactive Python examples
        unittest — Unit testing framework
        unittest.mock — mock object library
        unittest.mock — getting started
        2to3 - Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation
        test — Regression tests package for Python
        test.support — Utilities for the Python test suite
        test.support.script_helper — Utilities for the Python execution tests
    Debugging and Profiling
        bdb — Debugger framework
        faulthandler — Dump the Python traceback
        pdb — The Python Debugger
        The Python Profilers
        timeit — Measure execution time of small code snippets
        trace — Trace or track Python statement execution
        tracemalloc — Trace memory allocations
    Software Packaging and Distribution
        distutils — Building and installing Python modules
        ensurepip — Bootstrapping the pip installer
        venv — Creation of virtual environments
        zipapp — Manage executable Python zip archives
    Python Runtime Services
        sys — System-specific parameters and functions
        sysconfig — Provide access to Python’s configuration information
        builtins — Built-in objects
        __main__ — Top-level script environment
        warnings — Warning control
        dataclasses — Data Classes
        contextlib — Utilities for with-statement contexts
        abc — Abstract Base Classes
        atexit — Exit handlers
        traceback — Print or retrieve a stack traceback
        __future__ — Future statement definitions
        gc — Garbage Collector interface
        inspect — Inspect live objects
        site — Site-specific configuration hook
    Custom Python Interpreters
        code — Interpreter base classes
        codeop — Compile Python code
    Importing Modules
        zipimport — Import modules from Zip archives
        pkgutil — Package extension utility
        modulefinder — Find modules used by a script
        runpy — Locating and executing Python modules
        importlib — The implementation of import
    Python Language Services
        parser — Access Python parse trees
        ast — Abstract Syntax Trees
        symtable — Access to the compiler’s symbol tables
        symbol — Constants used with Python parse trees
        token — Constants used with Python parse trees
        keyword — Testing for Python keywords
        tokenize — Tokenizer for Python source
        tabnanny — Detection of ambiguous indentation
        pyclbr — Python class browser support
        py_compile — Compile Python source files
        compileall — Byte-compile Python libraries
        dis — Disassembler for Python bytecode
        pickletools — Tools for pickle developers
    Miscellaneous Services
        formatter — Generic output formatting
    MS Windows Specific Services
        msilib — Read and write Microsoft Installer files
        msvcrt — Useful routines from the MS VC++ runtime
        winreg — Windows registry access
        winsound — Sound-playing interface for Windows
    Unix Specific Services
        posix — The most common POSIX system calls
        pwd — The password database
        spwd — The shadow password database
        grp — The group database
        crypt — Function to check Unix passwords
        termios — POSIX style tty control
        tty — Terminal control functions
        pty — Pseudo-terminal utilities
        fcntl — The fcntl and ioctl system calls
        pipes — Interface to shell pipelines
        resource — Resource usage information
        nis — Interface to Sun’s NIS (Yellow Pages)
        syslog — Unix syslog library routines
    Superseded Modules
        optparse — Parser for command line options
        imp — Access the import internals
    Undocumented Modules
        Platform specific modules