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The Python Standard Library

While The Python Language Reference describes the exact syntax and semantics of the Python
language, this library reference manual describes the standard library that is distributed with
Python. It also describes some of the optional components that are commonly included in Python
distributions.

Python’s standard library is very extensive, offering a wide range of facilities as indicated by the
long table of contents listed below. The library contains built-in modules (written in C) that provide
access to system functionality such as file I/O that would otherwise be inaccessible to Python
programmers, as well as modules written in Python that provide standardized solutions for many
problems that occur in everyday programming. Some of these modules are explicitly designed to
encourage and enhance the portability of Python programs by abstracting away platform-
specifics into platform-neutral APIs.

The Python installers for the Windows platform usually include the entire standard library and
often also include many additional components. For Unix-like operating systems Python is
normally provided as a collection of packages, so it may be necessary to use the packaging tools
provided with the operating system to obtain some or all of the optional components.

In addition to the standard library, there is a growing collection of several thousand components
(from individual programs and modules to packages and entire application development
frameworks), available from the Python Package Index.

Introduction
Notes on availability
Built-in Functions
Built-in Constants
Constants added by the site module
Built-in Types
Truth Value Testing
Boolean Operations — and , or , not
Comparisons
Numeric Types — int , float , complex
Iterator Types
Sequence Types — list , tuple , range
Text Sequence Type — str
Binary Sequence Types — bytes , bytearray , memoryview
Set Types — set , frozenset
Mapping Types — dict
Context Manager Types
Other Built-in Types
Special Attributes
Built-in Exceptions
Base classes
Concrete exceptions
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Warnings
Exception hierarchy
Text Processing Services
string — Common string operations
re — Regular expression operations
difflib — Helpers for computing deltas
textwrap — Text wrapping and filling
unicodedata — Unicode Database
stringprep — Internet String Preparation
readline — GNU readline interface
rlcompleter — Completion function for GNU readline
Binary Data Services
struct — Interpret bytes as packed binary data
codecs — Codec registry and base classes
Data Types
datetime — Basic date and time types
calendar — General calendar-related functions
collections — Container datatypes
collections.abc — Abstract Base Classes for Containers
heapq — Heap queue algorithm
bisect — Array bisection algorithm
array — Efficient arrays of numeric values
weakref — Weak references
types — Dynamic type creation and names for built-in types
copy — Shallow and deep copy operations
pprint — Data pretty printer
reprlib — Alternate repr() implementation
enum — Support for enumerations
Numeric and Mathematical Modules
numbers — Numeric abstract base classes
math — Mathematical functions
cmath — Mathematical functions for complex numbers
decimal — Decimal fixed point and floating point arithmetic
fractions — Rational numbers
random — Generate pseudo-random numbers
statistics — Mathematical statistics functions
Functional Programming Modules
itertools — Functions creating iterators for efficient looping
functools — Higher-order functions and operations on callable objects
operator — Standard operators as functions
File and Directory Access
pathlib — Object-oriented filesystem paths
os.path — Common pathname manipulations
fileinput — Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
stat — Interpreting stat() results
filecmp — File and Directory Comparisons
tempfile — Generate temporary files and directories
glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
fnmatch — Unix filename pattern matching
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linecache — Random access to text lines

shutil — High-level file operations
macpath — Mac OS 9 path manipulation functions
Data Persistence
pickle — Python object serialization
copyreg — Register pickle support functions
shelve — Python object persistence
marshal — Internal Python object serialization
dbm — Interfaces to Unix “databases”
sqlite3 — DB-API 2.0 interface for SQLite databases
Data Compression and Archiving
zlib — Compression compatible with gzip
gzip — Support for gzip files
bz2 — Support for bzip2 compression
lzma — Compression using the LZMA algorithm
zipfile — Work with ZIP archives
tarfile — Read and write tar archive files
File Formats
csv — CSV File Reading and Writing
configparser — Configuration file parser
netrc — netrc file processing
xdrlib — Encode and decode XDR data
plistlib — Generate and parse Mac OS X .plist files
Cryptographic Services
hashlib — Secure hashes and message digests
hmac — Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication
secrets — Generate secure random numbers for managing secrets
Generic Operating System Services
os — Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
io — Core tools for working with streams
time — Time access and conversions
argparse — Parser for command-line options, arguments and sub-commands
getopt — C-style parser for command line options
logging — Logging facility for Python
logging.config — Logging configuration
logging.handlers — Logging handlers
getpass — Portable password input
curses — Terminal handling for character-cell displays
curses.textpad — Text input widget for curses programs
curses.ascii — Utilities for ASCII characters
curses.panel — A panel stack extension for curses
platform — Access to underlying platform’s identifying data
errno — Standard errno system symbols
ctypes — A foreign function library for Python
Concurrent Execution
threading — Thread-based parallelism
multiprocessing — Process-based parallelism
The concurrent package
concurrent.futures — Launching parallel tasks
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subprocess — Subprocess management

sched — Event scheduler
queue — A synchronized queue class
_thread — Low-level threading API
_dummy_thread — Drop-in replacement for the _thread module
dummy_threading — Drop-in replacement for the threading module
contextvars — Context Variables
Context Variables
Manual Context Management
asyncio support
Networking and Interprocess Communication
asyncio — Asynchronous I/O
socket — Low-level networking interface
ssl — TLS/SSL wrapper for socket objects
select — Waiting for I/O completion
selectors — High-level I/O multiplexing
asyncore — Asynchronous socket handler
asynchat — Asynchronous socket command/response handler
signal — Set handlers for asynchronous events
mmap — Memory-mapped file support
Internet Data Handling
email — An email and MIME handling package
json — JSON encoder and decoder
mailcap — Mailcap file handling
mailbox — Manipulate mailboxes in various formats
mimetypes — Map filenames to MIME types
base64 — Base16, Base32, Base64, Base85 Data Encodings
binhex — Encode and decode binhex4 files
binascii — Convert between binary and ASCII
quopri — Encode and decode MIME quoted-printable data
uu — Encode and decode uuencode files
Structured Markup Processing Tools
html — HyperText Markup Language support
html.parser — Simple HTML and XHTML parser
html.entities — Definitions of HTML general entities
XML Processing Modules
xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API
xml.dom — The Document Object Model API
xml.dom.minidom — Minimal DOM implementation
xml.dom.pulldom — Support for building partial DOM trees
xml.sax — Support for SAX2 parsers
xml.sax.handler — Base classes for SAX handlers
xml.sax.saxutils — SAX Utilities
xml.sax.xmlreader — Interface for XML parsers
xml.parsers.expat — Fast XML parsing using Expat
Internet Protocols and Support
webbrowser — Convenient Web-browser controller
cgi — Common Gateway Interface support
cgitb — Traceback manager for CGI scripts
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wsgiref — WSGI Utilities and Reference Implementation

urllib — URL handling modules
urllib.request — Extensible library for opening URLs
urllib.response — Response classes used by urllib
urllib.parse — Parse URLs into components
urllib.error — Exception classes raised by urllib.request
urllib.robotparser — Parser for robots.txt
http — HTTP modules
http.client — HTTP protocol client
ftplib — FTP protocol client
poplib — POP3 protocol client
imaplib — IMAP4 protocol client
nntplib — NNTP protocol client
smtplib — SMTP protocol client
smtpd — SMTP Server
telnetlib — Telnet client
uuid — UUID objects according to RFC 4122
socketserver — A framework for network servers
http.server — HTTP servers
http.cookies — HTTP state management
http.cookiejar — Cookie handling for HTTP clients
xmlrpc — XMLRPC server and client modules
xmlrpc.client — XML-RPC client access
xmlrpc.server — Basic XML-RPC servers
ipaddress — IPv4/IPv6 manipulation library
Multimedia Services
audioop — Manipulate raw audio data
aifc — Read and write AIFF and AIFC files
sunau — Read and write Sun AU files
wave — Read and write WAV files
chunk — Read IFF chunked data
colorsys — Conversions between color systems
imghdr — Determine the type of an image
sndhdr — Determine type of sound file
ossaudiodev — Access to OSS-compatible audio devices
Internationalization
gettext — Multilingual internationalization services
locale — Internationalization services
Program Frameworks
turtle — Turtle graphics
cmd — Support for line-oriented command interpreters
shlex — Simple lexical analysis
Graphical User Interfaces with Tk
tkinter — Python interface to Tcl/Tk
tkinter.ttk — Tk themed widgets
tkinter.tix — Extension widgets for Tk
tkinter.scrolledtext — Scrolled Text Widget
IDLE
Other Graphical User Interface Packages
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Development Tools
typing — Support for type hints
pydoc — Documentation generator and online help system
doctest — Test interactive Python examples
unittest — Unit testing framework
unittest.mock — mock object library
unittest.mock — getting started
2to3 - Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation
test — Regression tests package for Python
test.support — Utilities for the Python test suite
test.support.script_helper — Utilities for the Python execution tests
Debugging and Profiling
bdb — Debugger framework
faulthandler — Dump the Python traceback
pdb — The Python Debugger
The Python Profilers
timeit — Measure execution time of small code snippets
trace — Trace or track Python statement execution
tracemalloc — Trace memory allocations
Software Packaging and Distribution
distutils — Building and installing Python modules
ensurepip — Bootstrapping the pip installer
venv — Creation of virtual environments
zipapp — Manage executable Python zip archives
Python Runtime Services
sys — System-specific parameters and functions
sysconfig — Provide access to Python’s configuration information
builtins — Built-in objects
__main__ — Top-level script environment
warnings — Warning control
dataclasses — Data Classes
contextlib — Utilities for with -statement contexts
abc — Abstract Base Classes
atexit — Exit handlers
traceback — Print or retrieve a stack traceback
__future__ — Future statement definitions
gc — Garbage Collector interface
inspect — Inspect live objects
site — Site-specific configuration hook
Custom Python Interpreters
code — Interpreter base classes
codeop — Compile Python code
Importing Modules
zipimport — Import modules from Zip archives
pkgutil — Package extension utility
modulefinder — Find modules used by a script
runpy — Locating and executing Python modules
importlib — The implementation of import
Python Language Services
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parser — Access Python parse trees

ast — Abstract Syntax Trees
symtable — Access to the compiler’s symbol tables
symbol — Constants used with Python parse trees
token — Constants used with Python parse trees
keyword — Testing for Python keywords
tokenize — Tokenizer for Python source
tabnanny — Detection of ambiguous indentation
pyclbr — Python class browser support
py_compile — Compile Python source files
compileall — Byte-compile Python libraries
dis — Disassembler for Python bytecode
pickletools — Tools for pickle developers
Miscellaneous Services
formatter — Generic output formatting
MS Windows Specific Services
msilib — Read and write Microsoft Installer files
msvcrt — Useful routines from the MS VC++ runtime
winreg — Windows registry access
winsound — Sound-playing interface for Windows
Unix Specific Services
posix — The most common POSIX system calls
pwd — The password database
spwd — The shadow password database
grp — The group database
crypt — Function to check Unix passwords
termios — POSIX style tty control
tty — Terminal control functions
pty — Pseudo-terminal utilities
fcntl — The fcntl and ioctl system calls
pipes — Interface to shell pipelines
resource — Resource usage information
nis — Interface to Sun’s NIS (Yellow Pages)
syslog — Unix syslog library routines
Superseded Modules
optparse — Parser for command line options
imp — Access the import internals
Undocumented Modules
Platform specific modules

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