3. Python Runtime Services

The modules described in this chapter provide a wide range of services related to the Python interpreter and its interaction with its environment. Here's an overview:

sys   Access system-specific parameters and functions.
gc   Interface to the cycle-detecting garbage collector.
weakref   Support for weak references and weak dictionaries.
fpectl   Provide control for floating point exception handling.
atexit   Register and execute cleanup functions.
types   Names for built-in types.
UserDict   Class wrapper for dictionary objects.
UserList   Class wrapper for list objects.
UserString   Class wrapper for string objects.
operator   All Python's standard operators as built-in functions.
inspect   Extract information and source code from live objects.
traceback   Print or retrieve a stack traceback.
linecache   This module provides random access to individual lines from text files.
pickle   Convert Python objects to streams of bytes and back.
cPickle   Faster version of pickle, but not subclassable.
copy_reg   Register pickle support functions.
shelve   Python object persistence.
copy   Shallow and deep copy operations.
marshal   Convert Python objects to streams of bytes and back (with different constraints).
warnings   Issue warning messages and control their disposition.
imp   Access the implementation of the import statement.
zipimport   support for importing Python modules from ZIP archives.
pkgutil   Utilities to support extension of packages.
code   Base classes for interactive Python interpreters.
codeop   Compile (possibly incomplete) Python code.
pprint   Data pretty printer.
repr   Alternate repr() implementation with size limits.
new   Interface to the creation of runtime implementation objects.
site   A standard way to reference site-specific modules.
user   A standard way to reference user-specific modules.
__builtin__   The set of built-in functions.
__main__   The environment where the top-level script is run.
__future__   Future statement definitions
