Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• What is the structure of a python package?

• What is the structure of a python script?

Objectives

• Separate analysis and process code

• Figure out the difference between a package and a script.

Cookiecutter Projects

Cookiecutter is a python program that enables you to quickly spin up projects from a preconfigured package.

• cookiecutter
• Cookiecutter python

This will enable you to create a template project that can be imported in an interactive environment.

Python Packages

A python package is simply a collection of python modules which can be used in other scripts or in an interactive environment.

Submodules

Submodules are simply additional folders in your project which are made available with the “dot” syntax (e.g. pandas.DataFrame.index)

Namespaces

How are package namespaces resolved?

Python Scripts

A script is simply a single file which is meant to be run interactively in a shell. It can be given to a progam such as crontab to run automatically, or passed around in version control for someone to run manually.

Key Points

• Python works well both interactively and with configured libraries.