title: is there a nice "python conventions and best practices" summary anywhere?
body: <p>I am fairly new to python, and I generally code as a means to an end, as opposed to being a "coder".  I like all the power that python contains through libraries, and I enjoy the inherent but invisible strength in python.  (E.g., object-oriented, but still relatively scripter-friendly structure for making classes, etc.)<br><br>
      But I keep running into cases where I cannot find complete documentation, and I find pointers to the appropriate documentation only <b>after</b> discovering the problem I have accidentally created.  So far, I have only found references to the following appropriate documentation:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PEP 0008</a><br>
  <a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PEP 0257</a><br><br></p>
  
  <p>Unless I missed something, however, neither of these captured issues regarding "proper" python file naming conventions.  After making several python scripts, I discovered that I am not supposed to use periods ( . ) in the file name, since it will make it a challenge to import them.  After running into this problem, I could indeed find links talking to this point:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1828127/how-to-reference-python-package-when-filename-contains-a-period">no periods allowed</a></p>
  
  <p>However, I'd really like to start tackling issues pro-actively, instead of having to step backwards through the proper mechanisms.  Python has SEVERAL aspects which make it quite unique (such as required whitespace &amp; the aforementioned disallowed periods in filenames).  I am too new to say whether these are good things or bad things.  But I can say that it is a pain to keep discovering all these things after the fact.<br><br></p>
  
  <p>Is there any sort of "encyclopedia" which may capture all these idiosyncrasies, beyond the 2 relatively brief documents I've cited above?<br><br></p>
  
  <p>Thanks, all!<br>
                        Mike</p>