Standard Library Tour II
beginner12 min readLesson 39 of 169
pathlib, json, and Counter — the tools that replace manual loops.
Three more tools that appear constantly in real code:
pathlib — filesystem paths as objects
from pathlib import Path
data_dir = Path("data")
print(data_dir / "notes.txt") # data/notes.txt
print(Path("report.pdf").suffix) # .pdf
json — data interchange
import json
json.dumps({"ok": True}) # '{"ok": true}'
json.loads('{"ok": true}') # {"ok": True}
collections.Counter — counting, done right
from collections import Counter
votes = ["anh", "binh", "anh", "cuong", "anh"]
c = Counter(votes)
print(c.most_common(1)) # [('anh', 3)]
print(c["binh"]) # 1 — missing keys count as 0
Notice what Counter replaces: a manual loop with a dict of tallies and a missing-key branch. Standard-library tools are usually shorter AND clearer.