There is a useful function in Python called ‘sleep()’. It’s part of the ‘time’ module and allows you to pause, sleep, wait, or stop a Python script or application. Python can be used to make useful command-line tools to streamline your workflow, but sometimes you need to wait for the user, or for a pre-defined amount of time. For example, you may want to prompt the user to press a key when they have finished reading instructions or give them time to override a default … Read more

In Python, there’s an easy way to sort lists: using the sort() method. This tutorial explains how to use sort(), with examples. We’ve covered the following in Python: Removing list items Checking if items are in lists Finding items in lists Now it’s time to find out how to sort a list. Syntax for the sort() Method list.sort(reverse=True|False, key=sortFunction) Note that: ‘reverse’ should be a True/False boolean value and is optional reverse=True will sort the list descending The default is reverse=False True/False values case sensitive in Python! … Read more

This tutorial explains how to find items within a list in Python and return the values, using “filter”. Previously we covered checking whether items exist in a list in Python, but that could only tell us whether they were present, or not (with a boolean return value containing the result). If you are searching a list for a specific value, you already know what the value of the matching items will be so the above method is sufficient. However, what if you are searching by a set of … Read more

This tutorial will teach you how to install pip3, the package manager for Python, on Ubuntu Linux. Pip is a Python Package Manager. It’s currently at version 3 – hence, Pip3. Python is useful on its own, but it’s even more useful when you can start leveraging other people’s pre-written code. The default repository used by Pip is the Python Package Index (PyPI) (https://pypi.org/). PyPI contains a collection of other users’ code for performing a multitude of tasks, from drawing graphs to artificial intelligence. Checking if Pip is Already Installed … Read more