Python 2.7 tricks

1) map() with an initial argument of None is similar to zip():

>>> a = (1,)
>>> b = (2, 3, 4)
>>> c = (5, 6)

>>> map(None, a, b, c)
[
 (1, 2, 5), 
 (None, 3, 6), 
 (None, 4, None)
]

>>> zip(a, b, c)
[(1, 2, 5)]

2) startswith() and endswith() accept tuples as suffix:

>>> ext.endswith(('.exe', '.dll'))
>>> filename.startswith(('img', 'pic', 'logo'))

3) str.center(width[, fillchar])

>>> 'text'.center(10)
'   text   '
>>> 'text'.center(10, '-')

'---text---'

4) filter(function, iterable) with None as a function is the same as bool as a function.

>>> filter(None, [1, 0, 2, 3, 4, None, 5])

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

>>> filter(bool, [1, 0, 2, 3, 4, None, 5])

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

5) str.split([sep[, maxsplit]) with sep as None or not specified all consecutive whitespaces are regarded as a single separator:

>>> 'This  is  a string'.split(None)
['This', 'is', 'a', 'string']
>>> 'This  is  a string'.split()
['This', 'is', 'a', 'string']
But if sep is ' ':

>>> 'This  is  a string'.split(' ')

['This', '', 'is', '', 'a', 'string']

6) Operator <> is the same as !=

7) It is possible to use several context managers on one line:

with open('in_file_a', 'r') as in_file_a, open('out_file_a', 'w') as out_file_a, open('out_file_c', 'a') as out_file_c:
    pass