This part of the book is a collection of additional Python
application topics. Most of the tools presented along the way can be
used in a wide variety of application domains. You'll find the
following chapters here:
Chapter 16. This chapter covers commonly used and
advanced Python techniques for storing information between program
executions -- DBM files, object pickling (serialization), object
shelves, and Python's SQL database interfaces.
Chapter 17. This chapter explores techniques for
implementing more advanced data structures in Python -- stacks,
sets, binary search trees, graphs, and the like. In Python, these
take the form of object implementations.
Chapter 18. This chapter addresses Python tools
and techniques for parsing text-based information -- string splits
and joins, regular expression matching, recursive descent parsing,
and advanced language-based topics.
This is the last pure Python part of the book and makes heavy use of
tools presented earlier in the text, especially the Tkinter GUI
library. For instance, a tree browser is used to illustrate various
object structures, a form browser helps make database concepts more
concrete, and a calculator GUI serves to demonstrate language
processing and code reuse concepts.
