[Tutor] good reference book recommendations

[Alan Gauld]

"tyler" <tyler.smith at mail.mcgill.ca> wrote

> reference to the core language and standard libraries. It looks like
> Beazely's Essential Reference and the Martelli's Nutshell book are
> both aimed to fill this role - any reason to choose one over the
> other?

I have earlier editions of both books, and in fact have owned
two versions of Beazley's book. Both books cover very
similar ground and do it well.

As a matter of taste I prefer the Nutshell one, but that's
mainly because Beazley's one is in very small font.

OTOH Beazleys is the more up to date, covering
Python 2.5 and, I believe, references to 3.0 as well.
But they have been leapfrogging each other for
years - Beazley got in first then Nutshell, then
Beazley's 2nd ed etc... Neither says significantly
more than the online docs, for that you need bigger
more specific references.

HTH,

Alan G.