Controlling How Python Views Data
As discussed in Chapter 5, all data on your computer is stored as 0s and 1s. The computer doesn’t understand the concept of letters, Boolean values, dates, times, or any other kind of information except numbers. In addition, a computer’s capability to work with numbers is both inflexible and rela- tively simplistic. When you work with a string in Python, you’re depending on Python to translate the concept of a string into a form the computer can
understand. The storage containers that your application creates and uses in the form of variables tell Python how to treat the 0s and 1s that the computer has stored. So, it’s important to understand that the Python view of data isn’t the same as your view of data or the computer’s view of data — Python acts as an intermediary to make your applications functional.
To manage data within an application, the application must control the way in which Python views the data. The use of operators, packaging methods such as functions, and the introduction of user input all help applications control data. All these techniques rely, in part, on making comparisons. Determining what to do next means understanding what state the data is in now as com- pared to some other state. If the variable contains the name John now, but you really want it to contain Mary instead, then you first need to know that it does in fact contain John. Only then can you make the decision to change the con- tent of the variable to Mary.
Making comparisons
Python’s main method for making comparisons is through the use of opera- tors. In fact, operators play a major role in manipulating data as well. The upcoming “Working with Operators” section discusses how operators work and how you can use them in applications to control data in various ways. Later chapters use operators extensively as you discover techniques for creating applications that can make decisions, perform tasks repetitively, and interact with the user in interesting ways. However, the basic idea behind operators is that they help applications perform various types of comparisons.
In some cases, you use some fancy methods for performing comparisons in an application. For example, you can compare the output of two functions (as described in the “Comparing function output” section, later in this chapter). With Python, you can perform comparisons at a number of levels so that you can manage data without a problem in your application. Using these tech- niques hides detail so that you can focus on the point of the comparison and define how to react to that comparison rather than become mired in detail.
Your choice of techniques for performing comparisons affects the manner in which Python views the data and determines the sorts of things you can do to manage the data after the comparison is made. All this functionality might seem absurdly complex at the moment, but the important point to remem- ber is that applications require comparisons in order to interact with data correctly.
Understanding how computers make comparisons
Computers don’t understand packaging, such as functions, or any of the other structures that you create with Python. All this packaging is for your benefit, not the computer’s. However, computers do directly support the concept of operators. Most Python operators have a direct corollary with a command that the computer understands directly. For example, when you ask whether one number is greater than another number, the computer can actually perform this computation directly, using an operator. (The upcoming section explains operators in detail.)
Some comparisons aren’t direct. Computers work only with numbers. So, when you ask Python to compare two strings, what Python actually does is compare the numeric value of each character in the string. For example, the letter A is actually the number 65 in the computer. A lowercase letter a has a different numeric value — 97. As a result, even though you might see ABC as being equal to abc, the computer doesn’t agree — it sees them as different because the numeric values of their individual letters are different.