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![]() ![]() AcknowledgementsThe first thanks belongs to Guido van Rossum, without whom this text would not even exist. With Python, Guido has created a veritable "holy grail" of languages which is an "oh so perfect" tool in so many fields which involve programming, not to mention being a pleasure to use. I would also like to express hearty congratulations and a warm thanks to all technical and non-technical, official and non-official, reviewers involved in this project. Without you, this text would have never been completed. In no particular order, you are presented in the following table. In particular, I'd like to recognize Dowson Tong, Dr. Candelaria de Ram, and Jim Ahlstrom for their numerous nitpicks and helpful comments throughout the entire text (you must be tired of my writing by now!); Dr. Cay Horstmann, Java guru and editor of Prentice Hall's Core series for his up-front and targeted remarks. Thanks goes to my students at UC Santa Cruz Extension, who had to not only endure an incomplete and buggy version of this text, but also all the homework they endured in my Python programming courses. Thanks also goes to my Program Assistant, Ezequiel Jaime, who helped coordinate all the logistics of the C and Python courses; and I can't leave out James P. Prior, who, as the BASIC, FORTRAN (punch cards!), 6502 Assembly, and Pascal instructor to many of us at Pinole Valley High School, encouraged us to pick up the art of programming as well as a wry and punishing sense of humor. Why am I writing this book? Because my thesis advisors at UC Santa Barbara, Louise Moser and P. Michael Melliar-Smith, wanted grad students who
could write, and asked to make sure before letting me in the lab. I'm indebted to you both for not only encouraging your students to work hard and write, but write well. Thanks to Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson, Andrew Powell, Ian Bairnson, Stuart Elliott, David Paton, and the rest of the Project for the many years (including the year it took to write this book!) of listening pleasure and producing the most intellectual, thought-provoking, and technically sound music to have ever crossed my ears. I must also thank the many Projectologist Roadkillers for their kind words of support for my own "project" here. The entire staff of Prentice Hall PTR, most notably my Acquisitions Editor Mark Taub, Production Editor Kathleen M. Caren, Managing Editor Lisa Iarkowski, Page Formatter Eileen Clark, as well as the rest of the staff at PHPTR have been invaluable in helping me put this project together, and allowing me to join the list of all-star authors of the Core series. Tom Post is the graphic artist behind some of the cool figures you see in the book. The ugly ones are solely my responsibility. As I am Macintosh-challenged, I would like to thank Pieter Claerhout for providing the cool MacPython screen snapshot in the introductory chapter. I would also like to thank Albert Anders, who provided the inspiration for, as well as being the co-author of, the chapter on multithreaded programming. Thanks also goes to Aahz for his multithreaded and direct remarks on the MT chapter (I get it now!), as well as inspiration for the Crawler in the Web programming chapter, fellow Yahoo! Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, "regexer-extraordinaire," who gave me valuable feedback for the Regular Expressions chapter, and Fredrik Lundh, another regex luminary and Tk(inter) expert, for valuable comments and suggestions for those corresponding chapters. Catriona (Kate) Johnston gave me wonderful newbie feedback on the Web programming chapter. I'd also like to thank David Ascher (Python expert), Reg Charney (fearless leader of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Association of C/C++ Users), Chris Tismer (Python tinkerer), and Jason Stillwell for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank my family, friends and the Lord above, who have kept me safe and sane during this crazy period of late nights and abandonment. And finally, I would like give a big thanks to all those who believed in me (you know who you are!)—I couldn't have done it without you. Those who didn't… well, you know what you can do! :-) W. J. Chun Silicon Valley, CA (it's not as much a place as it is a state of sanity) November 2000
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