0.e - Description of modules & Pip

Day 3 - Modules and pip in Python!

Module is like a code library which can be used to borrow code written by somebody else in our python program. There are two types of modules in python:

  1. Built in Modules - These modules are ready to import and use and ships with the python interpreter. there is no need to install such modules explicitly.
  2. External Modules - These modules are imported from a third party file or can be installed using a package manager like pip or conda. Since this code is written by someone else, we can install different versions of a same module with time.

The pip command

It can be used as a package manager pip to install a python module.
Lets install a module called pandas using the following command

pip install pandas

Using a module in Python (Usage)

We use the import syntax to import a module in Python. Here is an example code:

import pandas

# Read and work with a file named 'words.csv'
df = pandas.read_csv('words.csv')
print(df) # This will display first few rows from the words.csv file

Similarly we can install other modules and look into their documentations for usage instructions.
We will find ourselved doing this often in the later part of this course