Silly newbie question - Carrot character (^)

[Philip Semanchuk]

On Nov 6, 2010, at 12:33 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Fri, 05 Nov 2010 23:21:11 -0400, Philip Semanchuk wrote:
> 
>> Take the OP's question. How is one supposed to find out about bitwise
>> operators in Python? AFAICT they're not mentioned in the tutorial, and
>> neither are decorators, assert(), global, exec, the ternary if
>> statement, etc.
> 
> The tutorial isn't meant as an exhaustive lesson on every single Python 
> feature.

I agree, and I don't expect otherwise. My point was that if the tutorial doesn't mention a feature, the only other place to learn about it (on python.org) is the language ref. Some people might think the language ref is a fine place to direct newcomers to Python. I don't. It's not awful, but it's dense and unfriendly for those just starting out. 


> There are plenty of other resources available: learning Python 
> *starts* with the python.org tutorial (or some equivalent), it doesn't 
> end there.

Yes, I agree. That's what I said in my email too. One goes through the tutorial a few times and then...? There's not a formal document to turn to after that. There are plenty of resources -- books, mailing lists, etc. But they're 3rd party, unstructured, not maintained, etc.

I realize that the Python Foundation doesn't have infinite resources to work with, so maybe they'd love to create & maintain a more readable language reference if they had time/money/people. I don't hear anyone talk about it, though. 

bye
Philip