Background

Python was invented in the early 1990s by Guido. It was based on another language that was invented for the Amoeba project.

Python is a very useful scripting language in today's modern environments for the following reasons.

  1. It runs on everything you can think of: 1.# Linux 1.# Mac OS 9 1.# Mac OS X 1.# MS-Windows 1.# Unix
  2. It is fully ObjectOriented.
  3. it supports Functional Programming.
  4. It supports metadata that allows program elements to describe themselves. Likewise, programmers can add comments to program elements that become part of the metadata and can be examined at runtime. Thus, it really is self documenting.
  5. The standard library is huge. Support is very good for internet protocols, web data formats, etc.
  6. The language itself is powerful way to manipulate arrays and lists, dictionaries, and strings.
  7. Thanks to the Jython interpreter which is implemented in Java, Python and Java programs can interoperate seamlessly.

Python in Cocoon

In Cocoon, Python can be used:

  1. To write Extensible Server Pages (See python block for samples).
  2. To write scripts for the ScriptGenerator (See PythonScriptGenerator for sample).
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