described as batteries included-- phrase generally credited to frank stajano meaning that most of what you need for real day-to-day work is already there for importing python' standard librarywhile not part of the core language per seis standard part of the python system and you can expect it to be available wherever your scripts run indeedthis is noteworthy difference between python and some other scripting languages--because python comes with so many library tools "out of the box,supplemental sites like perl' cpan are not as important as we'll seethe standard library forms much of the challenge in python programming once you've mastered the core languageyou'll find that you'll spend most of your time applying the built-in functions and modules that come with the system on the other handlibraries are where most of the fun happens in practiceprograms become most interesting when they start using services external to the language interpreternetworksfilesguisxmldatabasesand so on all of these are supported in the python standard library beyond the standard librarythere is an additional collection of third-party packages for python that must be fetched and installed separately as of this writingyou can find most of these third-party extensions via general web searchesand using the links at orgsome third-party extensions are large systems in their own rightnumpydjangoand vpythonfor instanceadd vector processingwebsite constructionand visualizationrespectively if you have to do something special with pythonchances are good that either its support is part of the standard python install package or you can find free and open source module that will help most of the tools we'll employ in this text are standard part of pythonbut 'll be careful to point out things that must be installed separately of coursepython' extreme code reuse idiom also makes your programs dependent on the code you reusein practicethoughand as we'll see repeatedly in this bookpowerful libraries coupled with open source access speed development without locking you into an existing set of features or limitations system scripting overview to begin our exploration of the systems domainwe will take quick tour through the standard library sys and os modules in this before moving on to larger system programming concepts as you can tell from the length of their attribute listsboth of these are large modules--the following reflects python running on windows outside idlec:\pp \systempython python ( : aug : : [msc bit )on win type "help""copyright""creditsor "licensefor more information import sysos len(dir(sys) attributes system scripting overview