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Reviewer: Claudiu Popescu

This textbook, on the scripting language Python, is more scientific than a regular programming language manual. It is addressed to the computational scientists and mathematicians, but can also be used by software developers and students in computers or mathematics. I am a little surprised that this book is listed in the mathematical section of the Springer Web page, because I think that it belongs more in the computer section. The main quality of this book is the thorough presentation of topics, with all of the explanations and relationships, followed by numerous examples and exercises. Almost any page has examples that can be run immediately on the computer. The book has more than 700 pages, organized into 12 chapters. Chapter 1 answers a key question: Why is scripting useful, compared to traditional programming__?__ The advantages are shorter code, efficiency, interaction, flexibility, and combining existing applications written in different languages. The second chapter introduces the Python scripting language, using examples from "Hello world" to more complex numerical examples, including simulation and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) report generation. The remaining chapters present basic and advanced features of Python; graphical user interface (GUI) programming and Web interfaces in Python; and the combination of Python with FORTRAN, C, and C++. The examples are mostly from mathematics, like algorithms, numerical solutions, and regular expressions. The book contains two appendices on installing the required software environment and the elements of software engineering. The book has the merit of showing why Python is good for many purposes, like holding together existing applications and tools, including simulation, data analysis, and visualization; adding a GUI to an old program; and making computational Web applications using MATLAB-like numerical applications in C, C++, or FORTRAN. I warmly recommend this as a complex, but clear book on scripting. It is quite easy to understand by running the numerous examples on the computer. Online Computing Reviews Service