python

any large nonvenomous snake of the family Pythonidae of Africa, S Asia, and Australia, such as Python reticulatus (reticulated python). They can reach a length of more than 20 feet and kill their prey by constriction

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

python

[′pī‚thän]

(vertebrate zoology)

The common name for members of the reptilian subfamily Pythoninae.

python

nonvenomous jungle snake crushes its victims. [Zoology: NCE, 2252]

See: Deadliness

python

huge serpent which sprang from stagnant waters after the Deluge. [Gk. Myth.: Zimmerman, 227]

See: Monsters

Python

1. <language> A simple, high-level interpreted language invented by Guido van Rossum <guido@cwi.nl> in 1991. Python combines ideas from ABC, C, Modula-3 and Icon. It bridges the gap between C and shell programming, making it suitable for rapid prototyping or as an extension language for C applications. It is object-oriented and supports packages, modules, classes, user-defined exceptions, a good C interface, dynamic loading of C modules and has no arbitrary restrictions.

Python is available for many platforms, including Unix, Windows, DOS, OS/2, Macintosh and Amoeba.

Latest version: 2.5, as of 2007-02-21.

http://python.org/.

Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.lang.python.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

Python

A very popular programming language. Python is an object-oriented language that is used to develop AI applications, system utilities, Internet scripts, as well as to integrate components in C and C++. It is also the language of quantum computing. Created by Guido van Rossum in Amsterdam in the early 1990s, it was named after the BBC comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." See AI and quantum computing.

Python is an interpreted language that compiles to bytecode and requires a "virtual machine" for runtime execution. It uses elements from C, C++ and Modula and supports interfaces to popular functions and libraries such as Unix sockets, the Tk GUI library, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and X11. See bytecode, CPython, Jython, Cython and PyPy.

The following example converts Fahrenheit to centigrade in Python.

  printf("Enter Fahrenheit: ")
  fahr = float(input)
  cell = ((fahr -32) * 5 / 9, 1)
  printf("Celsius is {}".format(cell))

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Python

in Greek mythology, a monstrous serpent, offspring of the goddess Gaea. It was killed by Apollo, who founded the Delphic oracle on the site of his victory and received the name of Pythius.