In this section, we're going to use import
to access other
libraries in Python. These libraries contain more useful functions and
tools for us to use in our own programs.
In order to use a library, we first have to import
it like
this:
Now that we have the math library available, we can use the dot
operator to access its useful functions inside. Let's try using the
sqrt()
function in the math
library, which
finds the square root of a number:
import math
number = 36
square_root = math.sqrt(number)
print(square_root)
# 6
Again, to use a function inside a library, we first write the library's
name, followed by a dot, followed by the function we want to access.
If we tried to use this same code without first importing the library,
Python would give us an error saying that it doesn't know what we're
talking about:
number = 36
square_root = math.sqrt(number)
print(square_root)
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
# NameError: name 'math' is not defined
Here's another example using the random
library to
generate a random number between 1 and 10:
import random
number = random.randint(1, 10)
print(number)
# random number between 1 and 10
The random.randint()
function takes two numbers as
arguments. The first is the minimum value, and the second is
the maximum value. Then it chooses a random integer between those two
values.
This is just a small taste of the enormous number of Python libraries
in the world. Using them can help you save time and simplify your code,
so check them out!