The Python Standard Library has a lot of modules! To help you get familiar with what's available, here are a selection of our favourite Python Standard Library modules and why we use them!

  • csv: very convenient for reading and writing csv files
  • collections: useful extensions of the usual data types including OrderedDictdefaultdict and namedtuple
  • random: generates pseudo-random numbers, shuffles sequences randomly and chooses random items
  • string: more functions on strings. This module also contains useful collections of letters like string.digits(a string containing all characters with are valid digits).
  • re: pattern-matching in strings via regular expressions
  • math: some standard mathematical functions
  • os: interacting with operating systems
  • os.path: submodule of os for manipulating path names
  • sys: work directly with the Python interpreter
  • json: good for reading and writing json files (good for web work)

 

How to import:

from module_name import object_name as different_name

for example:

from csv import reader as csvreader