This chapter will look at some central types of Python objects. We'll look at the different kinds of numbers, working with strings, and using tuples. We'll look at these first because they're the simplest kinds of data Python works with. In later chapters, we'll look at data collections.
Most of these recipes assume a beginner's level of understanding of Python 3. We'll be looking at how we use the essential built-in types available in Python—numbers, strings, and tuples. Python has a rich variety of numbers, and two different division operators, so we'll need to look closely at the choices available to us.
When working with strings, there are several common operations that are important. We'll explore some of the differences between bytes—as used by our OS files, and Strings—as used by Python. We'll look at how we can exploit the full power of the Unicode character set.
In this chapter, we'll show the recipes as if we're working from the >>> prompt in interactive Python. This is sometimes called the read-eval-print loop (REPL). In later chapters, we'll look more closely at writing script files. The goal is to encourage interactive exploration because it's a great way to learn the language.
