Python Programming for Biology: Bioinformatics and Beyond

Constant

(string.)

Description

Value

ascii_letters

All ASCII letters both

upper and lower case,

in order.

‘abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ’

ascii_lowercase

All ASCII lower-case

letters, in order.

‘abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz’

ascii_uppercase

All ASCII upper-case

letters, in order.

‘ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ’

digits

The characters that

are used to represent

whole numbers.

‘0123456789’

hexdigits

The characters that

are used in

hexadecimal

representations of

numbers.

‘0123456789abcdefABCDEF’

letters

All letters both upper

and lower case, in

order. Not available

in Python 3, use

string.ascii_letters

instead.

‘abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ’

lowercase

All lower-case letters,

in order. Not

‘abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz’

---

available in Python 3,

use

string.ascii_lowercase

instead.

octdigits

The characters that

are used in octal

represntations of

numbers.

‘01234567’

punctuation

All punctuation

characters, i.e. not

letters, digits or

whitespace.

‘!”#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~’

printable

All printable

characters that have

an on-screen effect.

‘0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!”#$%&'()*+,-./:;

<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~\t\n\r\x0b\x0c’

uppercase

All upper-case letters,

in order. Not

available in Python 3,

use

string.ascii_uppercase

instead.

‘ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ’

whitespace

All whitespace

characters.

‘\t\n\x0b\x0c\r ‘

The ‘

math

’ module

The following table lists some of the more commonly used mathematical operations that

may  be  used  by  importing  from  the  math  module.  Most  descriptions  will  also  apply  to

equivalents in the cmath module, which is used for complex numbers. It should be noted

that  although  the  methods  are  listed  in  the  form  math.method(),  if  many  mathematical

operations are being performed (inside loops), and execution speed is important, then it is

generally  better  to  import  the  function  directly,  i.e.  from  math  import  method,  and  use

method(args) rather than repeatedly use the dot notation math.method(args).