The Python Tutorial 2.

7 - unofficial
Yeradis P. Barbosa Marrero
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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

The Python Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Whetting Your Appetite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Using the Python Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Invoking the Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Interpreter and Its Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

An Informal Introduction to Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Using Python as a Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
First Steps Towards Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

More Control Flow Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

if Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
for Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
The range() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
pass Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Defining Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
More on Defining Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Intermezzo: Coding Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
More on Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
The del statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Tuples and Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Looping Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
More on Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Comparing Sequences and Other Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
CONTENTS

More on Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Standard Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The dir() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Fancier Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Reading and Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Errors and Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Syntax Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Handling Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Raising Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
User-defined Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Defining Clean-up Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Predefined Clean-up Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
A Word About Names and Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Python Scopes and Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
A First Look at Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Private Variables and Class-local References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Exceptions Are Classes Too . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Iterators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Generator Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Brief Tour of the Standard Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Operating System Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
File Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Command Line Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Error Output Redirection and Program Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
String Pattern Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Internet Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Dates and Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Data Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Performance Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Quality Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Batteries Included . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
CONTENTS

Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Templating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Working with Binary Data Record Layouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Multi-threading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Tools for Working with Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

What Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Line Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
History Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Alternatives to the Interactive Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Representation Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

HISTORY AND LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

History of the software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Terms and conditions for accessing or otherwise using Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Introduction
Python is an easy to learn, powerful, widely used general-purpose, high-level programming
language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability, and its syntax allows programmers
to express concepts in fewer lines of code than would be possible in languages such as C.
Python supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative and
functional programming or procedural styles. It features a dynamic type system and automatic
memory management and has a large and comprehensive standard library.
The Python interpreter and the extensive standard library are freely available in source or binary
form for all major platforms from the Python Web site, http://www.python.org/, and may be freely
distributed. The same site also contains distributions of and pointers to many free third party Python
modules, programs and tools, and additional documentation.
The Python Tutorial

This tutorial introduces the reader informally to the basic concepts and features of the Python
language and system. It helps to have a Python interpreter handy for hands-on experience, but
all examples are self-contained, so the tutorial can be read off-line as well.
For a description of standard objects and modules, see The Python Standard Library. The Python
Language Reference gives a more formal definition of the language. To write extensions in C or
C++, read Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter and Python/C API Reference Manual.
There are also several books covering Python in depth.
This tutorial does not attempt to be comprehensive and cover every single feature, or even every
commonly used feature. Instead, it introduces many of Pythons most noteworthy features, and will
give you a good idea of the languages flavor and style. After reading it, you will be able to read and
write Python modules and programs, and you will be ready to learn more about the various Python
library modules described in The Python Standard Library.
This unofficial tutorial is based on http://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/index.html , just minor modifi-
cations in order to be able to create new file types (ePub, Mobi) and better formatting.
Whetting Your Appetite

If you do much work on computers, eventually you find that theres some task youd like to automate.
For example, you may wish to perform a search-and-replace over a large number of text files, or
rename and rearrange a bunch of photo files in a complicated way. Perhaps youd like to write a
small custom database, or a specialized GUI application, or a simple game.
If youre a professional software developer, you may have to work with several C/C++/Java libraries
but find the usual write/compile/test/re-compile cycle is too slow. Perhaps youre writing a test suite
for such a library and find writing the testing code a tedious task. Or maybe youve written a program
that could use an extension language, and you dont want to design and implement a whole new
language for your application.
Python is just the language for you.
You could write a Unix shell script or Windows batch files for some of these tasks, but shell scripts are
best at moving around files and changing text data, not well-suited for GUI applications or games.
You could write a C/C++/Java program, but it can take a lot of development time to get even a
first-draft program. Python is simpler to use, available on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix operating
systems, and will help you get the job done more quickly.
Python is simple to use, but it is a real programming language, offering much more structure and
support for large programs than shell scripts or batch files can offer. On the other hand, Python also
offers much more error checking than C, and, being a very-high-level language, it has high-level
data types built in, such as flexible arrays and dictionaries. Because of its more general data types
Python is applicable to a much larger problem domain than Awk or even Perl, yet many things are
at least as easy in Python as in those languages.
Python allows you to split your program into modules that can be reused in other Python programs.
It comes with a large collection of standard modules that you can use as the basis of your programs
or as examples to start learning to program in Python. Some of these modules provide things like
file I/O, system calls, sockets, and even interfaces to graphical user interface toolkits like Tk.
Python is an interpreted language, which can save you considerable time during program devel-
opment because no compilation and linking is necessary. The interpreter can be used interactively,
which makes it easy to experiment with features of the language, to write throw-away programs,
or to test functions during bottom-up program development. It is also a handy desk calculator.
Python enables programs to be written compactly and readably. Programs written in Python are
typically much shorter than equivalent C, C++, or Java programs, for several reasons:

the high-level data types allow you to express complex operations in a single statement;
Whetting Your Appetite 3

statement grouping is done by indentation instead of beginning and ending brackets;

no variable or argument declarations are necessary.

Python is extensible: if you know how to program in C it is easy to add a new built-in function or
module to the interpreter, either to perform critical operations at maximum speed, or to link Python
programs to libraries that may only be available in binary form (such as a vendor-specific graphics
library). Once you are really hooked, you can link the Python interpreter into an application written
in C and use it as an extension or command language for that application.
By the way, the language is named after the BBC show Monty Pythons Flying Circus and has
nothing to do with reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only
allowed, it is encouraged!
Now that you are all excited about Python, youll want to examine it in some more detail. Since the
best way to learn a language is to use it, the tutorial invites you to play with the Python interpreter
as you read.
In the next chapter, the mechanics of using the interpreter are explained. This is rather mundane
information, but essential for trying out the examples shown later.
The rest of the tutorial introduces various features of the Python language and system through
examples, beginning with simple expressions, statements and data types, through functions and
modules, and finally touching upon advanced concepts like exceptions and user-defined classes.
 Using the Python Interpreter

Invoking the Interpreter

The Python interpreter is usually installed as /usr/local/bin/python on those machines where it
is available; putting /usr/local/bin in your Unix shells search path makes it possible to start it by
typing the command

1 python

to the shell. Since the choice of the directory where the interpreter lives is an installation option,
other places are possible; check with your local Python guru or system administrator. (E.g.,
/usr/local/python is a popular alternative location.)
On Windows machines, the Python installation is usually placed in C:\Python27, though you can
change this when youre running the installer. To add this directory to your path, you can type the
following command into the command prompt in a DOS box:

1 set path=%path%;C:\python27

Typing an end-of-file character (Control-D on Unix, Control-Z on Windows) at the primary prompt
causes the interpreter to exit with a zero exit status. If that doesnt work, you can exit the interpreter
by typing the following command: quit().
The interpreters line-editing features usually arent very sophisticated. On Unix, whoever installed
the interpreter may have enabled support for the GNU readline library, which adds more elaborate
interactive editing and history features. Perhaps the quickest check to see whether command line
editing is supported is typing Control-P to the first Python prompt you get. If it beeps, you have
command line editing; see Appendix Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution for an
introduction to the keys. If nothing appears to happen, or if P is echoed, command line editing
isnt available; youll only be able to use backspace to remove characters from the current line.
The interpreter operates somewhat like the Unix shell: when called with standard input connected to
a tty device, it reads and executes commands interactively; when called with a file name argument
or with a file as standard input, it reads and executes a script from that file.
A second way of starting the interpreter is python -c command [arg]..., which executes the
statement(s) in command, analogous to the shells -c option. Since Python statements often contain
 Using the Python Interpreter 5

spaces or other characters that are special to the shell, it is usually advised to quote command in its
entirety with single quotes.
Some Python modules are also useful as scripts. These can be invoked using python -m module
[arg] ..., which executes the source file for module as if you had spelled out its full name on the
command line.
When a script file is used, it is sometimes useful to be able to run the script and enter interactive
mode afterwards. This can be done by passing -i before the script.

Argument Passing
When known to the interpreter, the script name and additional arguments thereafter are turned into
a list of strings and assigned to the argv variable in the sys module. You can access this list by
executing import sys. The length of the list is at least one; when no script and no arguments are
given, sys.argv[0] is an empty string. When the script name is given as '-' (meaning standard
input), sys.argv[0] is set to '-'. When -c command is used, sys.argv[0] is set to '-c'. When -m
module is used, sys.argv[0] is set to the full name of the located module. Options found after -c
command or -m module are not consumed by the Python interpreters option processing but left in
sys.argv for the command or module to handle.

Interactive Mode
When commands are read from a tty, the interpreter is said to be in interactive mode. In this mode it
prompts for the next command with the primary prompt, usually three greater-than signs (>>>); for
continuation lines it prompts with the secondary prompt, by default three dots (...). The interpreter
prints a welcome message stating its version number and a copyright notice before printing the first
prompt:

1 python
2 Python 2.7 (#1, Feb 28 2010, 00:02:06)
3 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
4 >>>

Continuation lines are needed when entering a multi-line construct. As an example, take a look at
this if statement:
 Using the Python Interpreter 6

1 >>> the_world_is_flat = 1
2 >>> if the_world_is_flat:
3 ... print "Be careful not to fall off!"
4 ...
5 Be careful not to fall off!

The Interpreter and Its Environment

Error Handling
When an error occurs, the interpreter prints an error message and a stack trace. In interactive mode,
it then returns to the primary prompt; when input came from a file, it exits with a nonzero exit status
after printing the stack trace. (Exceptions handled by an except clause in a try statement are not
errors in this context.) Some errors are unconditionally fatal and cause an exit with a nonzero exit;
this applies to internal inconsistencies and some cases of running out of memory. All error messages
are written to the standard error stream; normal output from executed commands is written to
standard output.
Typing the interrupt character (usually Control-C or DEL) to the primary or secondary prompt
cancels the input and returns to the primary prompt. [1] Typing an interrupt while a command is
executing raises the KeyboardInterrupt exception, which may be handled by a try statement.

Executable Python Scripts

On BSDish Unix systems, Python scripts can be made directly executable, like shell scripts, by
putting the line

1 #! /usr/bin/env python

(assuming that the interpreter is on the users PATH) at the beginning of the script and giving the file
an executable mode. The #! must be the first two characters of the file. On some platforms, this first
line must end with a Unix-style line ending ('\n'), not a Windows ('\r\n') line ending. Note that
the hash, or pound, character, '#', is used to start a comment in Python.
The script can be given an executable mode, or permission, using the chmod command:

1 $ chmod +x myscript.py

On Windows systems, there is no notion of an executable mode. The Python installer automatically
associates .py files with python.exe so that a double-click on a Python file will run it as a script. The
extension can also be .pyw, in that case, the console window that normally appears is suppressed.
 Using the Python Interpreter 7

Source Code Encoding

It is possible to use encodings different than ASCII in Python source files. The best way to do it is
to put one more special comment line right after the #! line to define the source file encoding:

1 # -*- coding: encoding -*-

With that declaration, all characters in the source file will be treated as having the encoding
encoding, and it will be possible to directly write Unicode string literals in the selected encoding. The
list of possible encodings can be found in the Python Library Reference, in the section on codecs.
For example, to write Unicode literals including the Euro currency symbol, the ISO-8859-15 encoding
can be used, with the Euro symbol having the ordinal value 164. This script, when saved in the
ISO-8859-15 encoding, will print the value 8364 (the Unicode codepoint corresponding to the Euro
symbol) and then exit:

1 # -*- coding: iso-8859-15 -*-

2
3 currency = u""
4 print ord(currency)

If your editor supports saving files as UTF-8 with a UTF-8 byte order mark (aka BOM), you can use
that instead of an encoding declaration. IDLE supports this capability if Options/General/Default
Source Encoding/UTF-8 is set. Notice that this signature is not understood in older Python releases
(2.2 and earlier), and also not understood by the operating system for script files with #! lines (only
used on Unix systems).
By using UTF-8 (either through the signature or an encoding declaration), characters of most
languages in the world can be used simultaneously in string literals and comments. Using non-
ASCII characters in identifiers is not supported. To display all these characters properly, your editor
must recognize that the file is UTF-8, and it must use a font that supports all the characters in the
file.

The Interactive Startup File

When you use Python interactively, it is frequently handy to have some standard commands
executed every time the interpreter is started. You can do this by setting an environment variable
named PYTHONSTARTUP to the name of a file containing your start-up commands. This is similar to
the .profile feature of the Unix shells.
This file is only read in interactive sessions, not when Python reads commands from a script, and
not when /dev/tty is given as the explicit source of commands (which otherwise behaves like an
interactive session). It is executed in the same namespace where interactive commands are executed,
 Using the Python Interpreter 8

so that objects that it defines or imports can be used without qualification in the interactive session.
You can also change the prompts sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 in this file.
If you want to read an additional start-up file from the current directory, you can program this in the
global start-up file using code like if os.path.isfile('.pythonrc.py'): execfile('.pythonrc.py').
If you want to use the startup file in a script, you must do this explicitly in the script:

1 import os
2 filename = os.environ.get('PYTHONSTARTUP')
3 if filename and os.path.isfile(filename):
4 execfile(filename)

The Customization Modules

Python provides two hooks to let you customize it: sitecustomize and usercustomize. To see how
it works, you need first to find the location of your user site-packages directory. Start Python and
run this code:

1 >>> import site

2 >>> site.getusersitepackages()
3 '/home/user/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages'

Now you can create a file named usercustomize.py in that directory and put anything you want
in it. It will affect every invocation of Python, unless it is started with the -s option to disable the
automatic import.
sitecustomize works in the same way, but is typically created by an administrator of the computer
in the global site-packages directory, and is imported before usercustomize. See the documentation
of the site module for more details.
-[ Footnotes ]-
[1] A problem with the GNU Readline package may prevent this.
 An Informal Introduction to Python

In the following examples, input and output are distinguished by the presence or absence of prompts
(>>> and ...): to repeat the example, you must type everything after the prompt, when the prompt
appears; lines that do not begin with a prompt are output from the interpreter. Note that a secondary
prompt on a line by itself in an example means you must type a blank line; this is used to end a multi-
line command.
Many of the examples in this manual, even those entered at the interactive prompt, include
comments. Comments in Python start with the hash character, #, and extend to the end of the
physical line. A comment may appear at the start of a line or following whitespace or code, but
not within a string literal. A hash character within a string literal is just a hash character. Since
comments are to clarify code and are not interpreted by Python, they may be omitted when typing
in examples.
Some examples:

1 # this is the first comment

2 SPAM = 1 # and this is the second comment
3 # ... and now a third!
4 STRING = "# This is not a comment."

Using Python as a Calculator

Lets try some simple Python commands. Start the interpreter and wait for the primary prompt, >>>.
(It shouldnt take long.)

Numbers
The interpreter acts as a simple calculator: you can type an expression at it and it will write the
value. Expression syntax is straightforward: the operators +, -, * and / work just like in most other
languages (for example, Pascal or C); parentheses can be used for grouping. For example:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 10

1 >>> 2+2
2 4
3 >>> # This is a comment
4 ... 2+2
5 4
6 >>> 2+2 # and a comment on the same line as code
7 4
8 >>> (50-5*6)/4
9 5
10 >>> # Integer division returns the floor:
11 ... 7/3
12 2
13 >>> 7/-3
14 -3

The equal sign ('=') is used to assign a value to a variable. Afterwards, no result is displayed before
the next interactive prompt:

1 >>> width = 20
2 >>> height = 5*9
3 >>> width * height
4 900

A value can be assigned to several variables simultaneously:

1 >>> x = y = z = 0 # Zero x, y and z

2 >>> x
3 0
4 >>> y
5 0
6 >>> z
7 0

Variables must be defined (assigned a value) before they can be used, or an error will occur:

1 >>> n # try to access an undefined variable

2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
4 NameError: name 'n' is not defined

There is full support for floating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer
operand to floating point:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 11

1 >>> 3 * 3.75 / 1.5

2 7.5
3 >>> 7.0 / 2
4 3.5

Complex numbers are also supported; imaginary numbers are written with a suffix of j or J.
Complex numbers with a nonzero real component are written as (real+imagj), or can be created
with the complex(real, imag) function.

1 >>> 1j * 1J
2 (-1+0j)
3 >>> 1j * complex(0,1)
4 (-1+0j)
5 >>> 3+1j*3
6 (3+3j)
7 >>> (3+1j)*3
8 (9+3j)
9 >>> (1+2j)/(1+1j)
10 (1.5+0.5j)

Complex numbers are always represented as two floating point numbers, the real and imaginary
part. To extract these parts from a complex number z, use z.real and z.imag.

1 >>> a=1.5+0.5j
2 >>> a.real
3 1.5
4 >>> a.imag
5 0.5

The conversion functions to floating point and integer (float(),int() and long()) dont work for
complex numbers there is no one correct way to convert a complex number to a real number. Use
abs(z) to get its magnitude (as a float) or z.real to get its real part.
 An Informal Introduction to Python 12

1 >>> a=3.0+4.0j
2 >>> float(a)
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
5 TypeError: can't convert complex to float; use abs(z)
6 >>> a.real
7 3.0
8 >>> a.imag
9 4.0
10 >>> abs(a) # sqrt(a.real**2 + a.imag**2)
11 5.0

In interactive mode, the last printed expression is assigned to the variable _. This means that when
you are using Python as a desk calculator, it is somewhat easier to continue calculations, for example:

1 >>> tax = 12.5 / 100

2 >>> price = 100.50
3 >>> price * tax
4 12.5625
5 >>> price + _
6 113.0625
7 >>> round(_, 2)
8 113.06

This variable should be treated as read-only by the user. Dont explicitly assign a value to it you
would create an independent local variable with the same name masking the built-in variable with
its magic behavior.

Strings
Besides numbers, Python can also manipulate strings, which can be expressed in several ways. They
can be enclosed in single quotes or double quotes:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 13

1 >>> 'spam eggs'

2 'spam eggs'
3 >>> 'doesn\'t'
4 "doesn't"
5 >>> "doesn't"
6 "doesn't"
7 >>> '"Yes," he said.'
8 '"Yes," he said.'
9 >>> "\"Yes,\" he said."
10 '"Yes," he said.'
11 >>> '"Isn\'t," she said.'
12 '"Isn\'t," she said.'

The interpreter prints the result of string operations in the same way as they are typed for input:
inside quotes, and with quotes and other funny characters escaped by backslashes, to show the
precise value. The string is enclosed in double quotes if the string contains a single quote and no
double quotes, else its enclosed in single quotes. The print statement produces a more readable
output for such input strings.
String literals can span multiple lines in several ways. Continuation lines can be used, with a
backslash as the last character on the line indicating that the next line is a logical continuation
of the line:

1 hello = "This is a rather long string containing\n\

2 several lines of text just as you would do in C.\n\
3 Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is\
4 significant."
5
6 print hello

Note that newlines still need to be embedded in the string using \n the newline following the trailing
backslash is discarded. This example would print the following:

1 This is a rather long string containing

2 several lines of text just as you would do in C.
3 Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is significant.

Or, strings can be surrounded in a pair of matching triple-quotes: """ or '''. End of lines do not
need to be escaped when using triple-quotes, but they will be included in the string.
 An Informal Introduction to Python 14

1 print """
2 Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]
3 -h Display this usage message
4 -H hostname Hostname to connect to
5 """

produces the following output:

1 Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]

2 -h Display this usage message
3 -H hostname Hostname to connect to

If we make the string literal a raw string, \n sequences are not converted to newlines, but the
backslash at the end of the line, and the newline character in the source, are both included in the
string as data. Thus, the example:

1 hello = r"This is a rather long string containing\n\

2 several lines of text much as you would do in C."
3
4 print hello

would print:

1 This is a rather long string containing\n\

2 several lines of text much as you would do in C.

Strings can be concatenated (glued together) with the + operator, and repeated with *:

1 >>> word = 'Help' + 'A'

2 >>> word
3 'HelpA'
4 >>> '<' + word*5 + '>'
5 '<HelpAHelpAHelpAHelpAHelpA>'

Two string literals next to each other are automatically concatenated; the first line above could also
have been written word = 'Help' 'A'; this only works with two literals, not with arbitrary string
expressions:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 15

1 >>> 'str' 'ing' # <- This is ok

2 'string'
3 >>> 'str'.strip() + 'ing' # <- This is ok
4 'string'
5 >>> 'str'.strip() 'ing' # <- This is invalid
6 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
7 'str'.strip() 'ing'
8 ^
9 SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Strings can be subscripted (indexed); like in C, the first character of a string has subscript (index) 0.
There is no separate character type; a character is simply a string of size one. Like in Icon, substrings
can be specified with the slice notation: two indices separated by a colon.

1 >>> word[4]
2 'A'
3 >>> word[0:2]
4 'He'
5 >>> word[2:4]
6 'lp'

Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted first index defaults to zero, an omitted second index
defaults to the size of the string being sliced.

1 >>> word[:2] # The first two characters

2 'He'
3 >>> word[2:] # Everything except the first two characters
4 'lpA'

Unlike a C string, Python strings cannot be changed. Assigning to an indexed position in the string
results in an error:

1 >>> word[0] = 'x'

2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
4 TypeError: object does not support item assignment
5 >>> word[:1] = 'Splat'
6 Traceback (most recent call last):
7 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
8 TypeError: object does not support slice assignment

However, creating a new string with the combined content is easy and efficient:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 16

1 >>> 'x' + word[1:]

2 'xelpA'
3 >>> 'Splat' + word[4]
4 'SplatA'

Heres a useful invariant of slice operations: s[:i] + s[i:] equals s.

1 >>> word[:2] + word[2:]

2 'HelpA'
3 >>> word[:3] + word[3:]
4 'HelpA'

Degenerate slice indices are handled gracefully: an index that is too large is replaced by the string
size, an upper bound smaller than the lower bound returns an empty string.

1 >>> word[1:100]
2 'elpA'
3 >>> word[10:]
4 ''
5 >>> word[2:1]
6 ''

Indices may be negative numbers, to start counting from the right. For example:

1 >>> word[-1] # The last character

2 'A'
3 >>> word[-2] # The last-but-one character
4 'p'
5 >>> word[-2:] # The last two characters
6 'pA'
7 >>> word[:-2] # Everything except the last two characters
8 'Hel'

But note that -0 is really the same as 0, so it does not count from the right!

1 >>> word[-0] # (since -0 equals 0)

2 'H'

Out-of-range negative slice indices are truncated, but dont try this for single-element (non-slice)
indices:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 17

1 >>> word[-100:]
2 'HelpA'
3 >>> word[-10] # error
4 Traceback (most recent call last):
5 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
6 IndexError: string index out of range

One way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters,
with the left edge of the first character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a
string of n characters has index n, for example:

1 +---+---+---+---+---+
2 | H | e | l | p | A |
3 +---+---+---+---+---+
4 0 1 2 3 4 5
5 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1

The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 05 in the string; the second row gives
the corresponding negative indices. The slice from i to j consists of all characters between the edges
labeled i and j, respectively.
For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices, if both are within
bounds. For example, the length of word[1:3] is 2.
The built-in function len() returns the length of a string:

1 >>> s = 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'
2 >>> len(s)
3 34

See also:
Sequence Types str, unicode, list, tuple, bytearray, buffer,xrange Strings, and the Unicode strings
described in the next section, are examples of sequence types, and support the common operations
supported by such types.
String Methods Both strings and Unicode strings support a large number of methods for basic
transformations and searching.
String Formatting Information about string formatting with str.format() is described here.
String Formatting Operations The old formatting operations invoked when strings and Unicode
strings are the left operand of the % operator are described in more detail here.
 An Informal Introduction to Python 18

Unicode Strings
Starting with Python 2.0 a new data type for storing text data is available to the programmer: the
Unicode object. It can be used to store and manipulate Unicode data (see http://www.unicode.org/)
and integrates well with the existing string objects, providing auto-conversions where necessary.
Unicode has the advantage of providing one ordinal for every character in every script used in
modern and ancient texts. Previously, there were only 256 possible ordinals for script characters.
Texts were typically bound to a code page which mapped the ordinals to script characters. This lead
to very much confusion especially with respect to internationalization (usually written as i18n
'i' + 18 characters + 'n') of software. Unicode solves these problems by defining one code page for
all scripts.
Creating Unicode strings in Python is just as simple as creating normal strings:

1 >>> u'Hello World !'

2 u'Hello World !'

The small 'u' in front of the quote indicates that a Unicode string is supposed to be created. If you
want to include special characters in the string, you can do so by using the Python Unicode-Escape
encoding. The following example shows how:

1 >>> u'Hello\u0020World !'

2 u'Hello World !'

The escape sequence \u0020 indicates to insert the Unicode character with the ordinal value 0x0020
(the space character) at the given position.
Other characters are interpreted by using their respective ordinal values directly as Unicode ordinals.
If you have literal strings in the standard Latin-1 encoding that is used in many Western countries,
you will find it convenient that the lower 256 characters of Unicode are the same as the 256 characters
of Latin-1.
For experts, there is also a raw mode just like the one for normal strings. You have to prefix the
opening quote with ur to have Python use the Raw-Unicode-Escape encoding. It will only apply
the above \uXXXX conversion if there is an uneven number of backslashes in front of the small u.

1 >>> ur'Hello\u0020World !'

2 u'Hello World !'
3 >>> ur'Hello\\u0020World !'
4 u'Hello\\\\u0020World !'
 An Informal Introduction to Python 19

The raw mode is most useful when you have to enter lots of backslashes, as can be necessary in
regular expressions.
Apart from these standard encodings, Python provides a whole set of other ways of creating Unicode
strings on the basis of a known encoding.
The built-in function unicode() provides access to all registered Unicode codecs (COders and
DECoders). Some of the more well known encodings which these codecs can convert are Latin-
1, ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16. The latter two are variable-length encodings that store each Unicode
character in one or more bytes. The default encoding is normally set to ASCII, which passes through
characters in the range 0 to 127 and rejects any other characters with an error. When a Unicode
string is printed, written to a file, or converted with str(), conversion takes place using this default
encoding.

1 >>> u"abc"
2 u'abc'
3 >>> str(u"abc")
4 'abc'
5 >>> u""
6 u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'
7 >>> str(u"")
8 Traceback (most recent call last):
9 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
10 UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 0-2: ord\
11 inal not in range(128)

To convert a Unicode string into an 8-bit string using a specific encoding, Unicode objects provide
an encode() method that takes one argument, the name of the encoding. Lowercase names for
encodings are preferred.

1 >>> u"".encode('utf-8')
2 '\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc'

If you have data in a specific encoding and want to produce a corresponding Unicode string from
it, you can use the unicode() function with the encoding name as the second argument.

1 >>> unicode('\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc', 'utf-8')

2 u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'

Lists
Python knows a number of compound data types, used to group together other values. The most
versatile is the list, which can be written as a list of comma-separated values (items) between square
brackets. List items need not all have the same type.
 An Informal Introduction to Python 20

1 >>> a = ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]

2 >>> a
3 ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]

Like string indices, list indices start at 0, and lists can be sliced, concatenated and so on:

1 >>> a[0]
2 'spam'
3 >>> a[3]
4 1234
5 >>> a[-2]
6 100
7 >>> a[1:-1]
8 ['eggs', 100]
9 >>> a[:2] + ['bacon', 2*2]
10 ['spam', 'eggs', 'bacon', 4]
11 >>> 3*a[:3] + ['Boo!']
12 ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 'spam', 'eggs', 100, 'spam', 'eggs', 100, 'Boo!']

All slice operations return a new list containing the requested elements. This means that the
following slice returns a shallow copy of the list a:

1 >>> a[:]
2 ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]

Unlike strings, which are immutable, it is possible to change individual elements of a list:

1 >>> a
2 ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]
3 >>> a[2] = a[2] + 23
4 >>> a
5 ['spam', 'eggs', 123, 1234]

Assignment to slices is also possible, and this can even change the size of the list or clear it entirely:
 An Informal Introduction to Python 21

1 >>> # Replace some items:

2 ... a[0:2] = [1, 12]
3 >>> a
4 [1, 12, 123, 1234]
5 >>> # Remove some:
6 ... a[0:2] = []
7 >>> a
8 [123, 1234]
9 >>> # Insert some:
10 ... a[1:1] = ['bletch', 'xyzzy']
11 >>> a
12 [123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234]
13 >>> # Insert (a copy of) itself at the beginning
14 >>> a[:0] = a
15 >>> a
16 [123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234, 123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234]
17 >>> # Clear the list: replace all items with an empty list
18 >>> a[:] = []
19 >>> a
20 []

The built-in function len() also applies to lists:

1 >>> a = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

2 >>> len(a)
3 4

It is possible to nest lists (create lists containing other lists),for example:

1 >>> q = [2, 3]
2 >>> p = [1, q, 4]
3 >>> len(p)
4 3
5 >>> p[1]
6 [2, 3]
7 >>> p[1][0]
8 2
9 >>> p[1].append('xtra') # See section 5.1
10 >>> p
11 [1, [2, 3, 'xtra'], 4]
12 >>> q
13 [2, 3, 'xtra']
 An Informal Introduction to Python 22

Note that in the last example, p[1] and q really refer to the same object! Well come back to object
semantics later.

First Steps Towards Programming

Of course, we can use Python for more complicated tasks than adding two and two together. For
instance, we can write an initial sub- sequence of the Fibonacci series as follows:

1 >>> # Fibonacci series:

2 ... # the sum of two elements defines the next
3 ... a, b = 0, 1
4 >>> while b < 10:
5 ... print b
6 ... a, b = b, a+b
7 ...
8 1
9 1
10 2
11 3
12 5
13 8

This example introduces several new features.

The first line contains a multiple assignment: the variables a and b simultaneously get the
new values 0 and 1. On the last line this is used again, demonstrating that the expressions
on the right-hand side are all evaluated first before any of the assignments take place. The
right-hand side expressions are evaluated from the left to the right.
The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: b < 10) remains true. In Python, like
in C, any non-zero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or
list value, in fact any sequence; anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are
false. The test used in the example is a simple comparison. The standard comparison operators
are written the same as in C: < (less than), > (greater than), == (equal to), <= (less than or equal
to), >= (greater than or equal to) and != (not equal to).
The body of the loop is indented: indentation is Pythons way of grouping statements. At
the interactive prompt, you have to type a tab or space(s) for each indented line. In practice
you will prepare more complicated input for Python with a text editor; all decent text editors
have an auto-indent facility. When a compound statement is entered interactively, it must be
followed by a blank line to indicate completion (since the parser cannot guess when you have
typed the last line). Note that each line within a basic block must be indented by the same
amount.
 An Informal Introduction to Python 23

The print statement writes the value of the expression(s) it is given. It differs from just writing
the expression you want to write (as we did earlier in the calculator examples) in the way it
handles multiple expressions and strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a space is
inserted between items, so you can format things nicely, like this:

1 >>> i = 256*256
2 >>> print 'The value of i is', i
3 The value of i is 65536

A trailing comma avoids the newline after the output:

1 >>> a, b = 0, 1
2 >>> while b < 1000:
3 ... print b,
4 ... a, b = b, a+b
5 ...
6 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987

Note that the interpreter inserts a newline before it prints the next prompt if the last line was not
completed.
 More Control Flow Tools

Besides the while statement just introduced, Python knows the usual control flow statements known
from other languages, with some twists.

if Statements
Perhaps the most well-known statement type is the if statement. For example:

1 >>> x = int(raw_input("Please enter an integer: "))

2 Please enter an integer: 42
3 >>> if x < 0:
4 ... x = 0
5 ... print 'Negative changed to zero'
6 ... elif x == 0:
7 ... print 'Zero'
8 ... elif x == 1:
9 ... print 'Single'
10 ... else:
11 ... print 'More'
12 ...
13 More

There can be zero or more elif parts, and the else part is optional. The keyword elif is short for
else if, and is useful to avoid excessive indentation. An if elif elif sequence is a substitute
for the switch or case statements found in other languages.

for Statements
The for statement in Python differs a bit from what you may be used to in C or Pascal. Rather than
always iterating over an arithmetic progression of numbers (like in Pascal), or giving the user the
ability to define both the iteration step and halting condition (as C), Pythons for statement iterates
over the items of any sequence (a list or a string), in the order that they appear in the sequence. For
example (no pun intended):
 More Control Flow Tools 25

1 >>> # Measure some strings:

2 ... words = ['cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']
3 >>> for w in words:
4 ... print w, len(w)
5 ...
6 cat 3
7 window 6
8 defenestrate 12

If you need to modify the sequence you are iterating over while inside the loop (for example to
duplicate selected items), it is recommended that you first make a copy. Iterating over a sequence
does not implicitly make a copy. The slice notation makes this especially convenient:

1 >>> for w in words[:]: # Loop over a slice copy of the entire list.
2 ... if len(w) > 6:
3 ... words.insert(0, w)
4 ...
5 >>> words
6 ['defenestrate', 'cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']

The range() Function

If you do need to iterate over a sequence of numbers, the built-in function range() comes in handy.
It generates lists containing arithmetic progressions:

1 >>> range(10)
2 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

The given end point is never part of the generated list; range(10) generates a list of 10 values, the
legal indices for items of a sequence of length 10. It is possible to let the range start at another
number, or to specify a different increment (even negative; sometimes this is called the step):

1 >>> range(5, 10)

2 [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
3 >>> range(0, 10, 3)
4 [0, 3, 6, 9]
5 >>> range(-10, -100, -30)
6 [-10, -40, -70]

To iterate over the indices of a sequence, you can combine range() and len() as follows:
 More Control Flow Tools 26

1 >>> a = ['Mary', 'had', 'a', 'little', 'lamb']

2 >>> for i in range(len(a)):
3 ... print i, a[i]
4 ...
5 0 Mary
6 1 had
7 2 a
8 3 little
9 4 lamb

In most such cases, however, it is convenient to use the enumerate() function, see Looping
Techniques.

break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on

Loops
The break statement, like in C, breaks out of the smallest enclosing for or while loop.
Loop statements may have an else clause; it is executed when the loop terminates through
exhaustion of the list (with for) or when the condition becomes false (with while), but not when the
loop is terminated by a break statement. This is exemplified by the following loop, which searches
for prime numbers:

1 >>> for n in range(2, 10):

2 ... for x in range(2, n):
3 ... if n % x == 0:
4 ... print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
5 ... break
6 ... else:
7 ... # loop fell through without finding a factor
8 ... print n, 'is a prime number'
9 ...
10 2 is a prime number
11 3 is a prime number
12 4 equals 2 * 2
13 5 is a prime number
14 6 equals 2 * 3
15 7 is a prime number
16 8 equals 2 * 4
17 9 equals 3 * 3
 More Control Flow Tools 27

(Yes, this is the correct code. Look closely: the else clause belongs to the for loop, not the if
statement.)
When used with a loop, the else clause has more in common with the else clause of a try statement
than it does that of if statements: a try statements else clause runs when no exception occurs,
and a loops else clause runs when no break occurs. For more on the try statement and exceptions,
see Handling Exceptions.
The continue statement, also borrowed from C, continues with the next iteration of the loop:

1 >>> for num in range(2, 10):

2 ... if num % 2 == 0:
3 ... print "Found an even number", num
4 ... continue
5 ... print "Found a number", num
6 Found an even number 2
7 Found a number 3
8 Found an even number 4
9 Found a number 5
10 Found an even number 6
11 Found a number 7
12 Found an even number 8
13 Found a number 9

pass Statements
The pass statement does nothing. It can be used when a statement is required syntactically but the
program requires no action. For example:

1 >>> while True:

2 ... pass # Busy-wait for keyboard interrupt (Ctrl+C)
3 ...

This is commonly used for creating minimal classes:

1 >>> class MyEmptyClass:

2 ... pass
3 ...

Another place pass can be used is as a place-holder for a function or conditional body when you are
working on new code, allowing you to keep thinking at a more abstract level. The pass is silently
ignored:
 More Control Flow Tools 28

1 >>> def initlog(*args):

2 ... pass # Remember to implement this!
3 ...

Defining Functions
We can create a function that writes the Fibonacci series to an arbitrary boundary:

1 >>> def fib(n): # write Fibonacci series up to n

2 ... """Print a Fibonacci series up to n."""
3 ... a, b = 0, 1
4 ... while a < n:
5 ... print a,
6 ... a, b = b, a+b
7 ...
8 >>> # Now call the function we just defined:
9 ... fib(2000)
10 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597

The keyword def introduces a function definition. It must be followed by the function name and
the parenthesized list of formal parameters. The statements that form the body of the function start
at the next line, and must be indented.
The first statement of the function body can optionally be a string literal; this string literal is the
functions documentation string, or docstring. (More about docstrings can be found in the section
Documentation Strings.) There are tools which use docstrings to automatically produce online or
printed documentation, or to let the user interactively browse through code; its good practice to
include docstrings in code that you write, so make a habit of it.
The execution of a function introduces a new symbol table used for the local variables of the function.
More precisely, all variable assignments in a function store the value in the local symbol table;
whereas variable references first look in the local symbol table, then in the local symbol tables of
enclosing functions, then in the global symbol table, and finally in the table of built-in names. Thus,
global variables cannot be directly assigned a value within a function (unless named in a global
statement), although they may be referenced.
The actual parameters (arguments) to a function call are introduced in the local symbol table of the
called function when it is called; thus, arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is
always an object reference, not the value of the object). [1] When a function calls another function,
a new local symbol table is created for that call.
A function definition introduces the function name in the current symbol table. The value of the
function name has a type that is recognized by the interpreter as a user-defined function. This value
can be assigned to another name which can then also be used as a function. This serves as a general
renaming mechanism:
 More Control Flow Tools 29

1 >>> fib
2 <function fib at 10042ed0>
3 >>> f = fib
4 >>> f(100)
5 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89

Coming from other languages, you might object that fib is not a function but a procedure since it
doesnt return a value. In fact, even functions without a return statement do return a value, albeit a
rather boring one. This value is called None (its a built-in name). Writing the value None is normally
suppressed by the interpreter if it would be the only value written. You can see it if you really want
to using print:

1 >>> fib(0)
2 >>> print fib(0)
3 None

It is simple to write a function that returns a list of the numbers of the Fibonacci series, instead of
printing it:

1 >>> def fib2(n): # return Fibonacci series up to n

2 ... """Return a list containing the Fibonacci series up to n."""
3 ... result = []
4 ... a, b = 0, 1
5 ... while a < n:
6 ... result.append(a) # see below
7 ... a, b = b, a+b
8 ... return result
9 ...
10 >>> f100 = fib2(100) # call it
11 >>> f100 # write the result
12 [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]

This example, as usual, demonstrates some new Python features:

The return statement returns with a value from a function.return without an expression
argument returns None. Falling off the end of a function also returns None.
The statement result.append(a) calls a method of the list object result. A method is a
function that belongs to an object and is named obj.methodname, where obj is some object
(this may be an expression), and methodname is the name of a method that is defined by the
objects type. Different types define different methods. Methods of different types may have
the same name without causing ambiguity. (It is possible to define your own object types and
methods, using classes, see Classes) The method append() shown in the example is defined
for list objects; it adds a new element at the end of the list. In this example it is equivalent to
result = result + [a], but more efficient.
 More Control Flow Tools 30

More on Defining Functions

It is also possible to define functions with a variable number of arguments. There are three forms,
which can be combined.

Default Argument Values

The most useful form is to specify a default value for one or more arguments. This creates a function
that can be called with fewer arguments than it is defined to allow. For example:

1 def ask_ok(prompt, retries=4, complaint='Yes or no, please!'):

2 while True:
3 ok = raw_input(prompt)
4 if ok in ('y', 'ye', 'yes'):
5 return True
6 if ok in ('n', 'no', 'nop', 'nope'):
7 return False
8 retries = retries - 1
9 if retries < 0:
10 raise IOError('refusenik user')
11 print complaint

This function can be called in several ways:

giving only the mandatory argument: ask_ok('Do you really want to quit?')
giving one of the optional arguments: ask_ok('OK to overwrite the file?', 2)
or even giving all arguments: ask_ok('OK to overwrite the file?', 2, 'Come on, only
yes or no!')

This example also introduces the in keyword. This tests whether or not a sequence contains a certain
value.
The default values are evaluated at the point of function definition in the defining scope, so that
 More Control Flow Tools 31

1 i = 5
2
3 def f(arg=i):
4 print arg
5
6 i = 6
7 f()
8
9 will print ``5``.

Important warning: The default value is evaluated only once. This makes a difference when the
default is a mutable object such as a list, dictionary, or instances of most classes. For example, the
following function accumulates the arguments passed to it on subsequent calls:

1 def f(a, L=[]):

2 L.append(a)
3 return L
4
5 print f(1)
6 print f(2)
7 print f(3)

This will print

1 [1]
2 [1, 2]
3 [1, 2, 3]

If you dont want the default to be shared between subsequent calls, you can write the function like
this instead:

1 def f(a, L=None):

2 if L is None:
3 L = []
4 L.append(a)
5 return L

Keyword Arguments
Functions can also be called using keyword arguments of the form kwarg=value. For instance, the
following function:
 More Control Flow Tools 32

1 def parrot(voltage, state='a stiff', action='voom', type='Norwegian Blue'):

2 print "-- This parrot wouldn't", action,
3 print "if you put", voltage, "volts through it."
4 print "-- Lovely plumage, the", type
5 print "-- It's", state, "!"

accepts one required argument (voltage) and three optional arguments (state, action, and type).
This function can be called in any of the following ways:

1 parrot(1000) # 1 positional argument

2 parrot(voltage=1000) # 1 keyword argument
3 parrot(voltage=1000000, action='VOOOOOM') # 2 keyword arguments
4 parrot(action='VOOOOOM', voltage=1000000) # 2 keyword arguments
5 parrot('a million', 'bereft of life', 'jump') # 3 positional arguments
6 parrot('a thousand', state='pushing up the daisies') # 1 positional, 1 keyword

but all the following calls would be invalid:

1 parrot() # required argument missing

2 parrot(voltage=5.0, 'dead') # non-keyword argument after a keyword argument
3 parrot(110, voltage=220) # duplicate value for the same argument
4 parrot(actor='John Cleese') # unknown keyword argument

In a function call, keyword arguments must follow positional arguments. All the keyword arguments
passed must match one of the arguments accepted by the function (e.g. actor is not a valid argument
for the parrot function), and their order is not important. This also includes non-optional arguments
(e.g.parrot(voltage=1000) is valid too). No argument may receive a value more than once. Heres
an example that fails due to this restriction:

1 >>> def function(a):

2 ... pass
3 ...
4 >>> function(0, a=0)
5 Traceback (most recent call last):
6 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
7 TypeError: function() got multiple values for keyword argument 'a'

When a final formal parameter of the form **name is present, it receives a dictionary (see Mapping
Types dict) containing all keyword arguments except for those corresponding to a formal
parameter. This may be combined with a formal parameter of the form *name (described in the next
subsection) which receives a tuple containing the positional arguments beyond the formal parameter
list. (*name must occur before **name.) For example, if we define a function like this:
 More Control Flow Tools 33

1 def cheeseshop(kind, *arguments, **keywords):

2 print "-- Do you have any", kind, "?"
3 print "-- I'm sorry, we're all out of", kind
4 for arg in arguments:
5 print arg
6 print "-" * 40
7 keys = sorted(keywords.keys())
8 for kw in keys:
9 print kw, ":", keywords[kw]

It could be called like this:

1 cheeseshop("Limburger", "It's very runny, sir.",

2 "It's really very, VERY runny, sir.",
3 shopkeeper='Michael Palin',
4 client="John Cleese",
5 sketch="Cheese Shop Sketch")

and of course it would print:

1 -- Do you have any Limburger ?

2 -- I'm sorry, we're all out of Limburger
3 It's very runny, sir.
4 It's really very, VERY runny, sir.
5 ----------------------------------------
6 client : John Cleese
7 shopkeeper : Michael Palin
8 sketch : Cheese Shop Sketch

Note that the list of keyword argument names is created by sorting the result of the keywords
dictionarys keys() method before printing its contents; if this is not done, the order in which the
arguments are printed is undefined.

Arbitrary Argument Lists

Finally, the least frequently used option is to specify that a function can be called with an arbitrary
number of arguments. These arguments will be wrapped up in a tuple (see Tuples and Sequences).
Before the variable number of arguments, zero or more normal arguments may occur.
 More Control Flow Tools 34

1 def write_multiple_items(file, separator, *args):

2 file.write(separator.join(args))

Unpacking Argument Lists

The reverse situation occurs when the arguments are already in a list or tuple but need to be
unpacked for a function call requiring separate positional arguments. For instance, the built-in
range() function expects separate start and stop arguments. If they are not available separately,
write the function call with the *-operator to unpack the arguments out of a list or tuple:

1 >>> range(3, 6) # normal call with separate arguments

2 [3, 4, 5]
3 >>> args = [3, 6]
4 >>> range(*args) # call with arguments unpacked from a list
5 [3, 4, 5]

In the same fashion, dictionaries can deliver keyword arguments with the **-operator:

1 >>> def parrot(voltage, state='a stiff', action='voom'):

2 ... print "-- This parrot wouldn't", action,
3 ... print "if you put", voltage, "volts through it.",
4 ... print "E's", state, "!"
5 ...
6 >>> d = {"voltage": "four million", "state": "bleedin' demised", "action": "VO\
7 OM"}
8 >>> parrot(**d)
9 -- This parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it. E's ble\
10 edin' demised !

Lambda Expressions
Small anonymous functions can be created with the lambda keyword. This function returns the sum
of its two arguments: lambda a, b: a+b. Lambda functions can be used wherever function objects
are required. They are syntactically restricted to a single expression. Semantically, they are just
syntactic sugar for a normal function definition. Like nested function definitions, lambda functions
can reference variables from the containing scope:
 More Control Flow Tools 35

1 >>> def make_incrementor(n):

2 ... return lambda x: x + n
3 ...
4 >>> f = make_incrementor(42)
5 >>> f(0)
6 42
7 >>> f(1)
8 43

The above example uses a lambda expression to return a function. Another use is to pass a small
function as an argument:

1 >>> pairs = [(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three'), (4, 'four')]
2 >>> pairs.sort(key=lambda pair: pair[1])
3 >>> pairs
4 [(4, 'four'), (1, 'one'), (3, 'three'), (2, 'two')]

Documentation Strings
There are emerging conventions about the content and formatting of documentation strings.
The first line should always be a short, concise summary of the objects purpose. For brevity, it should
not explicitly state the objects name or type, since these are available by other means (except if the
name happens to be a verb describing a functions operation). This line should begin with a capital
letter and end with a period.
If there are more lines in the documentation string, the second line should be blank, visually
separating the summary from the rest of the description. The following lines should be one or more
paragraphs describing the objects calling conventions, its side effects, etc.
The Python parser does not strip indentation from multi-line string literals in Python, so tools
that process documentation have to strip indentation if desired. This is done using the following
convention. The first non-blank line after the first line of the string determines the amount of
indentation for the entire documentation string. (We cant use the first line since it is generally
adjacent to the strings opening quotes so its indentation is not apparent in the string literal.)
Whitespace equivalent to this indentation is then stripped from the start of all lines of the string.
Lines that are indented less should not occur, but if they occur all their leading whitespace should be
stripped. Equivalence of whitespace should be tested after expansion of tabs (to 8 spaces, normally).
Here is an example of a multi-line docstring:
 More Control Flow Tools 36

1 >>> def my_function():

2 ... """Do nothing, but document it.
3 ...
4 ... No, really, it doesn't do anything.
5 ... """
6 ... pass
7 ...
8 >>> print my_function.__doc__
9 Do nothing, but document it.
10
11 No, really, it doesn't do anything.

Intermezzo: Coding Style

Now that you are about to write longer, more complex pieces of Python,it is a good time to talk
about coding style. Most languages can be written (or more concise, formatted) in different styles;
some are more readable than others. Making it easy for others to read your code is always a good
idea, and adopting a nice coding style helps tremendously for that.
For Python, PEP 8 has emerged as the style guide that most projects adhere to; it promotes a very
readable and eye-pleasing coding style. Every Python developer should read it at some point; here
are the most important points extracted for you:

Use 4-space indentation, and no tabs.

4 spaces are a good compromise between small indentation (allows greater nesting depth) and
large indentation (easier to read). Tabs introduce confusion, and are best left out.
Wrap lines so that they dont exceed 79 characters.
This helps users with small displays and makes it possible to have several code files side-by-
side on larger displays.
Use blank lines to separate functions and classes, and larger blocks of code inside functions.
When possible, put comments on a line of their own.
Use docstrings.
Use spaces around operators and after commas, but not directly inside bracketing constructs:
a = f(1, 2) + g(3, 4).
Name your classes and functions consistently; the convention is to use CamelCase for classes
and lower_case_with_underscores for functions and methods. Always use self as the name
for the first method argument (see A First Look at Classes for more on classes and methods).
Dont use fancy encodings if your code is meant to be used in international environments.
Plain ASCII works best in any case.
More Control Flow Tools 37

-[ Footnotes ]-
[1] Actually, call by object reference would be a better description, since if a mutable object is passed,
the caller will see any changes the callee makes to it (items inserted into a list).
Data Structures

This chapter describes some things youve learned about already in more detail, and adds some new
things as well.

More on Lists
The list data type has some more methods. Here are all of the methods of list objects:

list.append(x)
Add an item to the end of the list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = [x].
list.extend(L)
Extend the list by appending all the items in the given list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = L.
list.insert(i, x)
Insert an item at a given position. The first argument is the index of the element before which
to insert, so a.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and a.insert(len(a), x) is
equivalent to a.append(x).
list.remove(x)
Remove the first item from the list whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such item.
list.pop([i])
Remove the item at the given position in the list, and return it. If no index is specified, a.pop()
removes and returns the last item in the list. (The square brackets around the i in the method
signature denote that the parameter is optional, not that you should type square brackets at
that position. You will see this notation frequently in the Python Library Reference.)
list.index(x)
Return the index in the list of the first item whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such
item.
list.count(x)
Return the number of times x appears in the list.
list.sort()
Sort the items of the list, in place.
list.reverse()
Reverse the elements of the list, in place.

An example that uses most of the list methods:

 Data Structures 39

1 >>> a = [66.25, 333, 333, 1, 1234.5]

2 >>> print a.count(333), a.count(66.25), a.count('x')
3 2 1 0
4 >>> a.insert(2, -1)
5 >>> a.append(333)
6 >>> a
7 [66.25, 333, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333]
8 >>> a.index(333)
9 1
10 >>> a.remove(333)
11 >>> a
12 [66.25, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333]
13 >>> a.reverse()
14 >>> a
15 [333, 1234.5, 1, 333, -1, 66.25]
16 >>> a.sort()
17 >>> a
18 [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]

Using Lists as Stacks

The list methods make it very easy to use a list as a stack, where the last element added is the
first element retrieved (last-in, first-out). To add an item to the top of the stack, use append(). To
retrieve an item from the top of the stack, use pop() without an explicit index. For example:

1 >>> stack = [3, 4, 5]

2 >>> stack.append(6)
3 >>> stack.append(7)
4 >>> stack
5 [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
6 >>> stack.pop()
7 7
8 >>> stack
9 [3, 4, 5, 6]
10 >>> stack.pop()
11 6
12 >>> stack.pop()
13 5
14 >>> stack
15 [3, 4]
 Data Structures 40

Using Lists as Queues

It is also possible to use a list as a queue, where the first element added is the first element retrieved
(first-in, first-out); however, lists are not efficient for this purpose. While appends and pops from
the end of list are fast, doing inserts or pops from the beginning of a list is slow (because all of the
other elements have to be shifted by one).
To implement a queue, use collections.deque which was designed to have fast appends and pops
from both ends. For example:

1 >>> from collections import deque

2 >>> queue = deque(["Eric", "John", "Michael"])
3 >>> queue.append("Terry") # Terry arrives
4 >>> queue.append("Graham") # Graham arrives
5 >>> queue.popleft() # The first to arrive now leaves
6 'Eric'
7 >>> queue.popleft() # The second to arrive now leaves
8 'John'
9 >>> queue # Remaining queue in order of arrival
10 deque(['Michael', 'Terry', 'Graham'])

Functional Programming Tools

There are three built-in functions that are very useful when used with lists: filter(), map(), and
reduce().

filter(function, sequence) returns a sequence consisting of those items from the sequence for
which function(item) is true. If sequence is a string or tuple, the result will be of the same type;
otherwise, it is always a list. For example, to compute a sequence of numbers not divisible by 2 or
3:

1 >>> def f(x): return x % 2 != 0 and x % 3 != 0

2 ...
3 >>> filter(f, range(2, 25))
4 [5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23]

map(function, sequence) calls function(item) for each of the sequences items and returns a list
of the return values. For example, to compute some cubes:
 Data Structures 41

1 >>> def cube(x): return x*x*x

2 ...
3 >>> map(cube, range(1, 11))
4 [1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343, 512, 729, 1000]

More than one sequence may be passed; the function must then have as many arguments as there are
sequences and is called with the corresponding item from each sequence (or None if some sequence
is shorter than another). For example:

1 >>> seq = range(8)

2 >>> def add(x, y): return x+y
3 ...
4 >>> map(add, seq, seq)
5 [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14]

reduce(function, sequence) returns a single value constructed by calling the binary function
function on the first two items of the sequence, then on the result and the next item, and so on. For
example, to compute the sum of the numbers 1 through 10:

1 >>> def add(x,y): return x+y

2 ...
3 >>> reduce(add, range(1, 11))
4 55

If theres only one item in the sequence, its value is returned; if the sequence is empty, an exception
is raised.
A third argument can be passed to indicate the starting value. In this case the starting value is
returned for an empty sequence, and the function is first applied to the starting value and the first
sequence item, then to the result and the next item, and so on. For example,

1 >>> def sum(seq):

2 ... def add(x,y): return x+y
3 ... return reduce(add, seq, 0)
4 ...
5 >>> sum(range(1, 11))
6 55
7 >>> sum([])
8 0

Dont use this examples definition of sum(): since summing numbers is such a common need, a
built-in function sum(sequence) is already provided, and works exactly like this.
 Data Structures 42

List Comprehensions

List comprehensions provide a concise way to create lists. Common applications are to make new
lists where each element is the result of some operations applied to each member of another sequence
or iterable, or to create a subsequence of those elements that satisfy a certain condition.
For example, assume we want to create a list of squares, like:

1 >>> squares = []
2 >>> for x in range(10):
3 ... squares.append(x**2)
4 ...
5 >>> squares
6 [0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

We can obtain the same result with:

1 squares = [x**2 for x in range(10)]

This is also equivalent to squares = map(lambda x: x**2, range(10)), but its more concise and
readable.
A list comprehension consists of brackets containing an expression followed by a for clause, then
zero or more for or if clauses. The result will be a new list resulting from evaluating the expression
in the context of the for and if clauses which follow it. For example, this listcomp combines the
elements of two lists if they are not equal:

1 >>> [(x, y) for x in [1,2,3] for y in [3,1,4] if x != y]

2 [(1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 1), (2, 4), (3, 1), (3, 4)]

and its equivalent to:

 Data Structures 43

1 >>> combs = []
2 >>> for x in [1,2,3]:
3 ... for y in [3,1,4]:
4 ... if x != y:
5 ... combs.append((x, y))
6 ...
7 >>> combs
8 [(1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 1), (2, 4), (3, 1), (3, 4)]

Note how the order of the for and if statements is the same in both these snippets.
If the expression is a tuple (e.g. the (x, y) in the previous example), it must be parenthesized.

1 >>> vec = [-4, -2, 0, 2, 4]

2 >>> # create a new list with the values doubled
3 >>> [x*2 for x in vec]
4 [-8, -4, 0, 4, 8]
5 >>> # filter the list to exclude negative numbers
6 >>> [x for x in vec if x >= 0]
7 [0, 2, 4]
8 >>> # apply a function to all the elements
9 >>> [abs(x) for x in vec]
10 [4, 2, 0, 2, 4]
11 >>> # call a method on each element
12 >>> freshfruit = [' banana', ' loganberry ', 'passion fruit ']
13 >>> [weapon.strip() for weapon in freshfruit]
14 ['banana', 'loganberry', 'passion fruit']
15 >>> # create a list of 2-tuples like (number, square)
16 >>> [(x, x**2) for x in range(6)]
17 [(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 4), (3, 9), (4, 16), (5, 25)]
18 >>> # the tuple must be parenthesized, otherwise an error is raised
19 >>> [x, x**2 for x in range(6)]
20 File "<stdin>", line 1
21 [x, x**2 for x in range(6)]
22 ^
23 SyntaxError: invalid syntax
24 >>> # flatten a list using a listcomp with two 'for'
25 >>> vec = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
26 >>> [num for elem in vec for num in elem]
27 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

List comprehensions can contain complex expressions and nested functions:

 Data Structures 44

1 >>> from math import pi

2 >>> [str(round(pi, i)) for i in range(1, 6)]
3 ['3.1', '3.14', '3.142', '3.1416', '3.14159']

Nested List Comprehensions

The initial expression in a list comprehension can be any arbitrary expression, including another list
comprehension.
Consider the following example of a 3x4 matrix implemented as a list of 3 lists of length 4:

1 >>> matrix = [
2 ... [1, 2, 3, 4],
3 ... [5, 6, 7, 8],
4 ... [9, 10, 11, 12],
5 ... ]

The following list comprehension will transpose rows and columns:

1 >>> [[row[i] for row in matrix] for i in range(4)]

2 [[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7, 11], [4, 8, 12]]

As we saw in the previous section, the nested listcomp is evaluated in the context of the for that
follows it, so this example is equivalent to:

1 >>> transposed = []
2 >>> for i in range(4):
3 ... transposed.append([row[i] for row in matrix])
4 ...
5 >>> transposed
6 [[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7, 11], [4, 8, 12]]

which, in turn, is the same as:

 Data Structures 45

1 >>> transposed = []
2 >>> for i in range(4):
3 ... # the following 3 lines implement the nested listcomp
4 ... transposed_row = []
5 ... for row in matrix:
6 ... transposed_row.append(row[i])
7 ... transposed.append(transposed_row)
8 ...
9 >>> transposed
10 [[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7, 11], [4, 8, 12]]

In the real world, you should prefer built-in functions to complex flow statements. The zip()
function would do a great job for this use case:

1 >>> zip(*matrix)
2 [(1, 5, 9), (2, 6, 10), (3, 7, 11), (4, 8, 12)]

See Unpacking Argument Lists for details on the asterisk in this line.

The del statement

There is a way to remove an item from a list given its index instead of its value: the del statement.
This differs from the pop() method which returns a value. The del statement can also be used to
remove slices from a list or clear the entire list (which we did earlier by assignment of an empty list
to the slice). For example:

1 >>> a = [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]

2 >>> del a[0]
3 >>> a
4 [1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]
5 >>> del a[2:4]
6 >>> a
7 [1, 66.25, 1234.5]
8 >>> del a[:]
9 >>> a
10 []

del can also be used to delete entire variables:

 Data Structures 46

1 >>> del a

Referencing the name a hereafter is an error (at least until another value is assigned to it). Well find
other uses for del later.

Tuples and Sequences

We saw that lists and strings have many common properties, such as indexing and slicing operations.
They are two examples of sequence data types (see Sequence Types str, unicode, list, tuple,
bytearray, buffer, xrange). Since Python is an evolving language, other sequence data types may
be added. There is also another standard sequence data type: the tuple.
A tuple consists of a number of values separated by commas, for instance:

1 >>> t = 12345, 54321, 'hello!'

2 >>> t[0]
3 12345
4 >>> t
5 (12345, 54321, 'hello!')
6 >>> # Tuples may be nested:
7 ... u = t, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
8 >>> u
9 ((12345, 54321, 'hello!'), (1, 2, 3, 4, 5))
10 >>> # Tuples are immutable:
11 ... t[0] = 88888
12 Traceback (most recent call last):
13 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
14 TypeError: 'tuple' object does not support item assignment
15 >>> # but they can contain mutable objects:
16 ... v = ([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 1])
17 >>> v
18 ([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 1])

As you see, on output tuples are always enclosed in parentheses, so that nested tuples are interpreted
correctly; they may be input with or without surrounding parentheses, although often parentheses
are necessary anyway (if the tuple is part of a larger expression). It is not possible to assign to the
individual items of a tuple, however it is possible to create tuples which contain mutable objects,
such as lists.
Though tuples may seem similar to lists, they are often used in different situations and for different
purposes. Tuples are immutable, and usually contain an heterogeneous sequence of elements that
are accessed via unpacking (see later in this section) or indexing (or even by attribute in the case of
 Data Structures 47

namedtuples). Lists are mutable, and their elements are usually homogeneous and are accessed by
iterating over the list.
A special problem is the construction of tuples containing 0 or 1 items: the syntax has some extra
quirks to accommodate these. Empty tuples are constructed by an empty pair of parentheses; a tuple
with one item is constructed by following a value with a comma (it is not sufficient to enclose a
single value in parentheses). Ugly, but effective. For example:

1 >>> empty = ()
2 >>> singleton = 'hello', # <-- note trailing comma
3 >>> len(empty)
4 0
5 >>> len(singleton)
6 1
7 >>> singleton
8 ('hello',)

The statement t = 12345, 54321, 'hello!' is an example of tuple packing: the values 12345, 54321
and 'hello!' are packed together in a tuple. The reverse operation is also possible:

1 >>> x, y, z = t

This is called, appropriately enough, sequence unpacking and works for any sequence on the right-
hand side. Sequence unpacking requires the list of variables on the left to have the same number of
elements as the length of the sequence. Note that multiple assignment is really just a combination
of tuple packing and sequence unpacking.

Sets
Python also includes a data type for sets. A set is an unordered collection with no duplicate elements.
Basic uses include membership testing and eliminating duplicate entries. Set objects also support
mathematical operations like union, intersection, difference, and symmetric difference.
Curly braces or the set() function can be used to create sets. Note: to create an empty set you have
to use set(), not {}; the latter creates an empty dictionary, a data structure that we discuss in the
next section.
Here is a brief demonstration:
 Data Structures 48

1 >>> basket = ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana']

2 >>> fruit = set(basket) # create a set without duplicates
3 >>> fruit
4 set(['orange', 'pear', 'apple', 'banana'])
5 >>> 'orange' in fruit # fast membership testing
6 True
7 >>> 'crabgrass' in fruit
8 False
9
10 >>> # Demonstrate set operations on unique letters from two words
11 ...
12 >>> a = set('abracadabra')
13 >>> b = set('alacazam')
14 >>> a # unique letters in a
15 set(['a', 'r', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
16 >>> a - b # letters in a but not in b
17 set(['r', 'd', 'b'])
18 >>> a | b # letters in either a or b
19 set(['a', 'c', 'r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'])
20 >>> a & b # letters in both a and b
21 set(['a', 'c'])
22 >>> a ^ b # letters in a or b but not both
23 set(['r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'])
24 ````
25
26 Similarly to *list comprehensions*, set comprehensions are also supported:
27
28 ```shell
29 >>> a = {x for x in 'abracadabra' if x not in 'abc'}
30 >>> a
31 set(['r', 'd'])

Dictionaries
Another useful data type built into Python is the dictionary (see Mapping Types dict). Dictionaries
are sometimes found in other languages as associative memories or associative arrays. Unlike
sequences, which are indexed by a range of numbers, dictionaries are indexed by keys, which can
be any immutable type; strings and numbers can always be keys. Tuples can be used as keys if they
contain only strings, numbers, or tuples; if a tuple contains any mutable object either directly or
indirectly, it cannot be used as a key. You cant use lists as keys, since lists can be modified in place
using index assignments, slice assignments, or methods like append() and extend().
 Data Structures 49

It is best to think of a dictionary as an unordered set of key:value pairs, with the requirement
that the keys are unique (within one dictionary). A pair of braces creates an empty dictionary: {}.
Placing a comma-separated list of key:value pairs within the braces adds initial key:value pairs to
the dictionary; this is also the way dictionaries are written on output.
The main operations on a dictionary are storing a value with some key and extracting the value
given the key. It is also possible to delete a key:value pair with del. If you store using a key that is
already in use, the old value associated with that key is forgotten. It is an error to extract a value
using a non-existent key.
The keys() method of a dictionary object returns a list of all the keys used in the dictionary, in
arbitrary order (if you want it sorted, just apply the sorted() function to it). To check whether a
single key is in the dictionary, use the in keyword.
Here is a small example using a dictionary:

1 >>> tel = {'jack': 4098, 'sape': 4139}

2 >>> tel['guido'] = 4127
3 >>> tel
4 {'sape': 4139, 'guido': 4127, 'jack': 4098}
5 >>> tel['jack']
6 4098
7 >>> del tel['sape']
8 >>> tel['irv'] = 4127
9 >>> tel
10 {'guido': 4127, 'irv': 4127, 'jack': 4098}
11 >>> tel.keys()
12 ['guido', 'irv', 'jack']
13 >>> 'guido' in tel
14 True

The dict() constructor builds dictionaries directly from sequences of key-value pairs:

1 >>> dict([('sape', 4139), ('guido', 4127), ('jack', 4098)])

2 {'sape': 4139, 'jack': 4098, 'guido': 4127}

In addition, dict comprehensions can be used to create dictionaries from arbitrary key and value
expressions:

1 >>> {x: x**2 for x in (2, 4, 6)}

2 {2: 4, 4: 16, 6: 36}

When the keys are simple strings, it is sometimes easier to specify pairs using keyword arguments:
 Data Structures 50

1 >>> dict(sape=4139, guido=4127, jack=4098)

2 {'sape': 4139, 'jack': 4098, 'guido': 4127}

Looping Techniques
When looping through a sequence, the position index and corresponding value can be retrieved at
the same time using the enumerate() function.

1 >>> for i, v in enumerate(['tic', 'tac', 'toe']):

2 ... print i, v
3 ...
4 0 tic
5 1 tac
6 2 toe

To loop over two or more sequences at the same time, the entries can be paired with the zip()
function.

1 >>> questions = ['name', 'quest', 'favorite color']

2 >>> answers = ['lancelot', 'the holy grail', 'blue']
3 >>> for q, a in zip(questions, answers):
4 ... print 'What is your {0}? It is {1}.'.format(q, a)
5 ...
6 What is your name? It is lancelot.
7 What is your quest? It is the holy grail.
8 What is your favorite color? It is blue.

To loop over a sequence in reverse, first specify the sequence in a forward direction and then call
the reversed() function.

1 >>> for i in reversed(xrange(1,10,2)):

2 ... print i
3 ...
4 9
5 7
6 5
7 3
8 1

To loop over a sequence in sorted order, use the sorted() function which returns a new sorted list
while leaving the source unaltered.
 Data Structures 51

1 >>> basket = ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana']

2 >>> for f in sorted(set(basket)):
3 ... print f
4 ...
5 apple
6 banana
7 orange
8 pear

When looping through dictionaries, the key and corresponding value can be retrieved at the same
time using the iteritems() method.

1 >>> knights = {'gallahad': 'the pure', 'robin': 'the brave'}

2 >>> for k, v in knights.iteritems():
3 ... print k, v
4 ...
5 gallahad the pure
6 robin the brave

To change a sequence you are iterating over while inside the loop (for example to duplicate certain
items), it is recommended that you first make a copy. Looping over a sequence does not implicitly
make a copy. The slice notation makes this especially convenient:

1 >>> words = ['cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']

2 >>> for w in words[:]: # Loop over a slice copy of the entire list.
3 ... if len(w) > 6:
4 ... words.insert(0, w)
5 ...
6 >>> words
7 ['defenestrate', 'cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']

More on Conditions
The conditions used in while and if statements can contain any operators, not just comparisons.
The comparison operators in and not in check whether a value occurs (does not occur) in a
sequence. The operators is and is not compare whether two objects are really the same object;
this only matters for mutable objects like lists. All comparison operators have the same priority,
which is lower than that of all numerical operators.
Comparisons can be chained. For example, a < b == c tests whether a is less than b and moreover
b equals c.
 Data Structures 52

Comparisons may be combined using the Boolean operators and and or, and the outcome of a
comparison (or of any other Boolean expression) may be negated with not. These have lower
priorities than comparison operators; between them, not has the highest priority and or the lowest,
so that A and not B or C is equivalent to (A and (not B)) or C. As always, parentheses can be
used to express the desired composition.
The Boolean operators and and or are so-called short-circuit operators: their arguments are evaluated
from left to right, and evaluation stops as soon as the outcome is determined. For example, if A and C
are true but B is false, A and B and C does not evaluate the expression C. When used as a general value
and not as a Boolean, the return value of a short-circuit operator is the last evaluated argument.
It is possible to assign the result of a comparison or other Boolean expression to a variable. For
example,

1 >>> string1, string2, string3 = '', 'Trondheim', 'Hammer Dance'

2 >>> non_null = string1 or string2 or string3
3 >>> non_null
4 'Trondheim'

Note that in Python, unlike C, assignment cannot occur inside expressions. C programmers may
grumble about this, but it avoids a common class of problems encountered in C programs: typing =
in an expression when == was intended.

Comparing Sequences and Other Types

Sequence objects may be compared to other objects with the same sequence type. The comparison
uses lexicographical ordering: first the first two items are compared, and if they differ this determines
the outcome of the comparison; if they are equal, the next two items are compared, and so on, until
either sequence is exhausted. If two items to be compared are themselves sequences of the same
type, the lexicographical comparison is carried out recursively. If all items of two sequences compare
equal, the sequences are considered equal. If one sequence is an initial sub-sequence of the other,
the shorter sequence is the smaller (lesser) one. Lexicographical ordering for strings uses the ASCII
ordering for individual characters. Some examples of comparisons between sequences of the same
type:
 Data Structures 53

1 (1, 2, 3) < (1, 2, 4)

2 [1, 2, 3] < [1, 2, 4]
3 'ABC' < 'C' < 'Pascal' < 'Python'
4 (1, 2, 3, 4) < (1, 2, 4)
5 (1, 2) < (1, 2, -1)
6 (1, 2, 3) == (1.0, 2.0, 3.0)
7 (1, 2, ('aa', 'ab')) < (1, 2, ('abc', 'a'), 4)

Note that comparing objects of different types is legal. The outcome is deterministic but arbitrary:
the types are ordered by their name. Thus, a list is always smaller than a string, a string is always
smaller than a tuple, etc. [1] Mixed numeric types are compared according to their numeric value,
so 0 equals 0.0, etc.
-[ Footnotes ]-
[1] The rules for comparing objects of different types should not be relied upon; they may change
in a future version of the language.
 Modules
If you quit from the Python interpreter and enter it again, the definitions you have made (functions
and variables) are lost. Therefore, if you want to write a somewhat longer program, you are better
off using a text editor to prepare the input for the interpreter and running it with that file as input
instead. This is known as creating a script. As your program gets longer, you may want to split it
into several files for easier maintenance. You may also want to use a handy function that youve
written in several programs without copying its definition into each program.
To support this, Python has a way to put definitions in a file and use them in a script or in an
interactive instance of the interpreter. Such a file is called a module; definitions from a module can
be imported into other modules or into the main module (the collection of variables that you have
access to in a script executed at the top level and in calculator mode).
A module is a file containing Python definitions and statements. The file name is the module name
with the suffix .py appended. Within a module, the modules name (as a string) is available as the
value of the global variable __name__. For instance, use your favorite text editor to create a file called
fibo.py in the current directory with the following contents:

1 # Fibonacci numbers module

2
3 def fib(n): # write Fibonacci series up to n
4 a, b = 0, 1
5 while b < n:
6 print b,
7 a, b = b, a+b
8
9 def fib2(n): # return Fibonacci series up to n
10 result = []
11 a, b = 0, 1
12 while b < n:
13 result.append(b)
14 a, b = b, a+b
15 return result

Now enter the Python interpreter and import this module with the following command:

1 >>> import fibo

This does not enter the names of the functions defined in fibo directly in the current symbol table;
it only enters the module name fibo there. Using the module name you can access the functions:
 Modules 55

1 >>> fibo.fib(1000)
2 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987
3 >>> fibo.fib2(100)
4 [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
5 >>> fibo.__name__
6 'fibo'

If you intend to use a function often you can assign it to a local name:

1 >>> fib = fibo.fib

2 >>> fib(500)
3 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

More on Modules
A module can contain executable statements as well as function definitions. These statements
are intended to initialize the module. They are executed only the first time the module name is
encountered in an import statement. [1] (They are also run if the file is executed as a script.)
Each module has its own private symbol table, which is used as the global symbol table by all
functions defined in the module. Thus, the author of a module can use global variables in the module
without worrying about accidental clashes with a users global variables. On the other hand, if you
know what you are doing you can touch a modules global variables with the same notation used
to refer to its functions, modname.itemname.
Modules can import other modules. It is customary but not required to place all import statements
at the beginning of a module (or script, for that matter). The imported module names are placed in
the importing modules global symbol table.
There is a variant of the import statement that imports names from a module directly into the
importing modules symbol table. For example:

1 >>> from fibo import fib, fib2

2 >>> fib(500)
3 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

This does not introduce the module name from which the imports are taken in the local symbol
table (so in the example, fibo is not defined).
There is even a variant to import all names that a module defines:
 Modules 56

1 >>> from fibo import *

2 >>> fib(500)
3 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

This imports all names except those beginning with an underscore (_).
Note that in general the practice of importing * from a module or package is frowned upon, since it
often causes poorly readable code. However, it is okay to use it to save typing in interactive sessions.
Note: For efficiency reasons, each module is only imported once per interpreter session. Therefore,
if you change your modules, you must restart the interpreter or, if its just one module you want
to test interactively, use reload(), e.g. reload(modulename).

Executing modules as scripts

When you run a Python module with

1 python fibo.py <arguments>

the code in the module will be executed, just as if you imported it, but with the __name__ set to
"__main__". That means that by adding this code at the end of your module:

1 if __name__ == "__main__":
2 import sys
3 fib(int(sys.argv[1]))

you can make the file usable as a script as well as an importable module, because the code that parses
the command line only runs if the module is executed as the main file:

1 $ python fibo.py 50
2 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34

If the module is imported, the code is not run:

1 >>> import fibo

2 >>>

This is often used either to provide a convenient user interface to a module, or for testing purposes
(running the module as a script executes a test suite).
Modules 57

The Module Search Path

When a module named spam is imported, the interpreter first searches for a built-in module with
that name. If not found, it then searches for a file named spam.py in a list of directories given by the
variable sys.path. sys.path is initialized from these locations:

the directory containing the input script (or the current directory).
PYTHONPATH (a list of directory names, with the same syntax as the shell variable PATH).
the installation-dependent default.

After initialization, Python programs can modify sys.path. The directory containing the script being
run is placed at the beginning of the search path, ahead of the standard library path. This means
that scripts in that directory will be loaded instead of modules of the same name in the library
directory. This is an error unless the replacement is intended. See section Standard Modules for
more information.

Compiled Python files

As an important speed-up of the start-up time for short programs that use a lot of standard modules,
if a file called spam.pyc exists in the directory where spam.py is found, this is assumed to contain
an already-byte-compiled version of the module spam. The modification time of the version of
spam.py used to create spam.pyc is recorded in spam.pyc, and the .pyc file is ignored if these dont
match.
Normally, you dont need to do anything to create the spam.pyc file. Whenever spam.py is
successfully compiled, an attempt is made to write the compiled version to spam.pyc. It is not an error
if this attempt fails; if for any reason the file is not written completely, the resulting spam.pyc file
will be recognized as invalid and thus ignored later. The contents of the spam.pyc file are platform
independent, so a Python module directory can be shared by machines of different architectures.
Some tips for experts:

When the Python interpreter is invoked with the -O flag, optimized code is generated and
stored in .pyo files. The optimizer currently doesnt help much; it only removes assert
statements. When -O is used, all bytecode is optimized; .pyc files are ignored and .py files are
compiled to optimized bytecode.
Passing two -O flags to the Python interpreter (-OO) will cause the bytecode compiler to
perform optimizations that could in some rare cases result in malfunctioning programs.
Currently only __doc__ strings are removed from the bytecode, resulting in more compact
.pyo files. Since some programs may rely on having these available, you should only use this
option if you know what youre doing.
 Modules 58

A program doesnt run any faster when it is read from a .pyc or .pyo file than when it is read
from a .py file; the only thing thats faster about .pyc or .pyo files is the speed with which
they are loaded.
When a script is run by giving its name on the command line, the bytecode for the script is
never written to a .pyc or .pyo file. Thus, the startup time of a script may be reduced by
moving most of its code to a module and having a small bootstrap script that imports that
module. It is also possible to name a .pyc or .pyo file directly on the command line.
It is possible to have a file called spam.pyc (or spam.pyo when -O is used) without a file
spam.py for the same module. This can be used to distribute a library of Python code in a
form that is moderately hard to reverse engineer.
The module compileall can create .pyc files (or .pyo files when -O is used) for all modules
in a directory.

Standard Modules
Python comes with a library of standard modules, described in a separate document, the Python
Library Reference (Library Reference hereafter). Some modules are built into the interpreter; these
provide access to operations that are not part of the core of the language but are nevertheless built
in, either for efficiency or to provide access to operating system primitives such as system calls. The
set of such modules is a configuration option which also depends on the underlying platform. For
example, the winreg module is only provided on Windows systems. One particular module deserves
some attention: sys, which is built into every Python interpreter. The variables sys.ps1 and sys.ps2
define the strings used as primary and secondary prompts:

1 >>> import sys

2 >>> sys.ps1
3 '>>> '
4 >>> sys.ps2
5 '... '
6 >>> sys.ps1 = 'C> '
7 C> print 'Yuck!'
8 Yuck!
9 C>

These two variables are only defined if the interpreter is in interactive mode.
The variable sys.path is a list of strings that determines the interpreters search path for modules.
It is initialized to a default path taken from the environment variable PYTHONPATH, or from a built-in
default if PYTHONPATH is not set. You can modify it using standard list operations:
 Modules 59

1 >>> import sys

2 >>> sys.path.append('/ufs/guido/lib/python')

The dir() Function

The built-in function dir() is used to find out which names a module defines. It returns a sorted
list of strings:

1 >>> import fibo, sys

2 >>> dir(fibo)
3 ['__name__', 'fib', 'fib2']
4 >>> dir(sys) # doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
5 ['__displayhook__', '__doc__', '__excepthook__', '__name__', '__package__',
6 '__stderr__', '__stdin__', '__stdout__', '_clear_type_cache',
7 '_current_frames', '_getframe', '_mercurial', 'api_version', 'argv',
8 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder', 'call_tracing', 'callstats',
9 'copyright', 'displayhook', 'dont_write_bytecode', 'exc_clear', 'exc_info',
10 'exc_traceback', 'exc_type', 'exc_value', 'excepthook', 'exec_prefix',
11 'executable', 'exit', 'flags', 'float_info', 'float_repr_style',
12 'getcheckinterval', 'getdefaultencoding', 'getdlopenflags',
13 'getfilesystemencoding', 'getobjects', 'getprofile', 'getrecursionlimit',
14 'getrefcount', 'getsizeof', 'gettotalrefcount', 'gettrace', 'hexversion',
15 'long_info', 'maxint', 'maxsize', 'maxunicode', 'meta_path', 'modules',
16 'path', 'path_hooks', 'path_importer_cache', 'platform', 'prefix', 'ps1',
17 'py3kwarning', 'setcheckinterval', 'setdlopenflags', 'setprofile',
18 'setrecursionlimit', 'settrace', 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout', 'subversion',
19 'version', 'version_info', 'warnoptions']

Without arguments, dir() lists the names you have defined currently:

1 >>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
2 >>> import fibo
3 >>> fib = fibo.fib
4 >>> dir()
5 ['__builtins__', '__name__', '__package__', 'a', 'fib', 'fibo', 'sys']

Note that it lists all types of names: variables, modules, functions, etc.
dir() does not list the names of built-in functions and variables. If you want a list of those, they are
defined in the standard module __builtin__:
 Modules 60

1 >>> import __builtin__

2 >>> dir(__builtin__) # doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
3 ['ArithmeticError', 'AssertionError', 'AttributeError', 'BaseException',
4 'BufferError', 'BytesWarning', 'DeprecationWarning', 'EOFError',
5 'Ellipsis', 'EnvironmentError', 'Exception', 'False', 'FloatingPointError',
6 'FutureWarning', 'GeneratorExit', 'IOError', 'ImportError', 'ImportWarning',
7 'IndentationError', 'IndexError', 'KeyError', 'KeyboardInterrupt',
8 'LookupError', 'MemoryError', 'NameError', 'None', 'NotImplemented',
9 'NotImplementedError', 'OSError', 'OverflowError',
10 'PendingDeprecationWarning', 'ReferenceError', 'RuntimeError',
11 'RuntimeWarning', 'StandardError', 'StopIteration', 'SyntaxError',
12 'SyntaxWarning', 'SystemError', 'SystemExit', 'TabError', 'True',
13 'TypeError', 'UnboundLocalError', 'UnicodeDecodeError',
14 'UnicodeEncodeError', 'UnicodeError', 'UnicodeTranslateError',
15 'UnicodeWarning', 'UserWarning', 'ValueError', 'Warning',
16 'ZeroDivisionError', '_', '__debug__', '__doc__', '__import__',
17 '__name__', '__package__', 'abs', 'all', 'any', 'apply', 'basestring',
18 'bin', 'bool', 'buffer', 'bytearray', 'bytes', 'callable', 'chr',
19 'classmethod', 'cmp', 'coerce', 'compile', 'complex', 'copyright',
20 'credits', 'delattr', 'dict', 'dir', 'divmod', 'enumerate', 'eval',
21 'execfile', 'exit', 'file', 'filter', 'float', 'format', 'frozenset',
22 'getattr', 'globals', 'hasattr', 'hash', 'help', 'hex', 'id', 'input',
23 'int', 'intern', 'isinstance', 'issubclass', 'iter', 'len', 'license',
24 'list', 'locals', 'long', 'map', 'max', 'memoryview', 'min', 'next',
25 'object', 'oct', 'open', 'ord', 'pow', 'print', 'property', 'quit',
26 'range', 'raw_input', 'reduce', 'reload', 'repr', 'reversed', 'round',
27 'set', 'setattr', 'slice', 'sorted', 'staticmethod', 'str', 'sum', 'super',
28 'tuple', 'type', 'unichr', 'unicode', 'vars', 'xrange', 'zip']

Packages
Packages are a way of structuring Pythons module namespace by using dotted module names.
For example, the module name A.B designates a submodule named B in a package named A. Just like
the use of modules saves the authors of different modules from having to worry about each others
global variable names, the use of dotted module names saves the authors of multi-module packages
like NumPy or the Python Imaging Library from having to worry about each others module names.
Suppose you want to design a collection of modules (a package) for the uniform handling of
sound files and sound data. There are many different sound file formats (usually recognized by
their extension, for example: .wav, .aiff, .au), so you may need to create and maintain a growing
collection of modules for the conversion between the various file formats. There are also many
different operations you might want to perform on sound data (such as mixing, adding echo,
 Modules 61

applying an equalizer function, creating an artificial stereo effect), so in addition you will be writing
a never-ending stream of modules to perform these operations. Heres a possible structure for your
package (expressed in terms of a hierarchical filesystem):

1 sound/ Top-level package

2 __init__.py Initialize the sound package
3 formats/ Subpackage for file format conversions
4 __init__.py
5 wavread.py
6 wavwrite.py
7 aiffread.py
8 aiffwrite.py
9 auread.py
10 auwrite.py
11 ...
12 effects/ Subpackage for sound effects
13 __init__.py
14 echo.py
15 surround.py
16 reverse.py
17 ...
18 filters/ Subpackage for filters
19 __init__.py
20 equalizer.py
21 vocoder.py
22 karaoke.py
23 ...

When importing the package, Python searches through the directories on sys.path looking for the
package subdirectory.
The __init__.py files are required to make Python treat the directories as containing packages; this
is done to prevent directories with a common name, such as string, from unintentionally hiding
valid modules that occur later on the module search path. In the simplest case, __init__.py can just
be an empty file, but it can also execute initialization code for the package or set the __all__ variable,
described later.
Users of the package can import individual modules from the package, for example:

1 import sound.effects.echo

This loads the submodule sound.effects.echo. It must be referenced with its full name.
 Modules 62

1 sound.effects.echo.echofilter(input, output, delay=0.7, atten=4)

An alternative way of importing the submodule is:

1 from sound.effects import echo

This also loads the submodule echo, and makes it available without its package prefix, so it can be
used as follows:

1 echo.echofilter(input, output, delay=0.7, atten=4)

Yet another variation is to import the desired function or variable directly:

1 from sound.effects.echo import echofilter

Again, this loads the submodule echo, but this makes its function echofilter() directly available:

1 echofilter(input, output, delay=0.7, atten=4)

Note that when using from package import item, the item can be either a submodule (or
subpackage) of the package, or some other name defined in the package, like a function, class or
variable. The import statement first tests whether the item is defined in the package; if not, it assumes
it is a module and attempts to load it. If it fails to find it, an ImportError exception is raised.
Contrarily, when using syntax like import item.subitem.subsubitem, each item except for the last
must be a package; the last item can be a module or a package but cant be a class or function or
variable defined in the previous item.

Importing * From a Package

Now what happens when the user writes from sound.effects import *? Ideally, one would hope
that this somehow goes out to the filesystem, finds which submodules are present in the package,
and imports them all. This could take a long time and importing sub-modules might have unwanted
side-effects that should only happen when the sub-module is explicitly imported.
The only solution is for the package author to provide an explicit index of the package. The import
statement uses the following convention: if a packages __init__.py code defines a list named __-
all__, it is taken to be the list of module names that should be imported when from package import
* is encountered. It is up to the package author to keep this list up-to-date when a new version of
the package is released. Package authors may also decide not to support it, if they dont see a use for
importing * from their package. For example, the file sound/effects/__init__.py could contain
the following code:
 Modules 63

1 __all__ = ["echo", "surround", "reverse"]

This would mean that from sound.effects import * would import the three named submodules
of the sound package.
If __all__ is not defined, the statement from sound.effects import * does not import all
submodules from the package sound.effects into the current namespace; it only ensures that the
package sound.effects has been imported (possibly running any initialization code in __init__.py)
and then imports whatever names are defined in the package. This includes any names defined (and
submodules explicitly loaded) by __init__.py. It also includes any submodules of the package that
were explicitly loaded by previous import statements. Consider this code:

1 import sound.effects.echo
2 import sound.effects.surround
3 from sound.effects import *

In this example, the echo and surround modules are imported in the current namespace because
they are defined in the sound.effects package when the from...import statement is executed.
(This also works when __all__ is defined.)
Although certain modules are designed to export only names that follow certain patterns when you
use import *, it is still considered bad practise in production code.
Remember, there is nothing wrong with using from Package import specific_submodule! In fact,
this is the recommended notation unless the importing module needs to use submodules with the
same name from different packages.

Intra-package References
The submodules often need to refer to each other. For example, the surround module might use the
echo module. In fact, such references are so common that the import statement first looks in the
containing package before looking in the standard module search path. Thus, the surround module
can simply use import echo or from echo import echofilter. If the imported module is not
found in the current package (the package of which the current module is a submodule), the import
statement looks for a top-level module with the given name.
When packages are structured into subpackages (as with the sound package in the example), you
can use absolute imports to refer to submodules of siblings packages. For example, if the module
sound.filters.vocoder needs to use the echo module in the sound.effects package, it can use
from sound.effects import echo.
Starting with Python 2.5, in addition to the implicit relative imports described above, you can write
explicit relative imports with the from module import name form of import statement. These explicit
relative imports use leading dots to indicate the current and parent packages involved in the relative
import. From the surround module for example, you might use:
 Modules 64

1 from . import echo

2 from .. import formats
3 from ..filters import equalizer

Note that both explicit and implicit relative imports are based on the name of the current module.
Since the name of the main module is always "__main__", modules intended for use as the main
module of a Python application should always use absolute imports.

Packages in Multiple Directories

Packages support one more special attribute, __path__. This is initialized to be a list containing the
name of the directory holding the packages __init__.py before the code in that file is executed. This
variable can be modified; doing so affects future searches for modules and subpackages contained
in the package.
While this feature is not often needed, it can be used to extend the set of modules found in a package.
-[ Footnotes ]-
[1] In fact function definitions are also statements that are executed; the execution of a module-
level function definition enters the function name in the modules global symbol table.
Input and Output
There are several ways to present the output of a program; data can be printed in a human-readable
form, or written to a file for future use. This chapter will discuss some of the possibilities.

Fancier Output Formatting

So far weve encountered two ways of writing values: expression statements and the print
statement. (A third way is using the write() method of file objects; the standard output file can
be referenced as sys.stdout. See the Library Reference for more information on this.)
Often youll want more control over the formatting of your output than simply printing space-
separated values. There are two ways to format your output; the first way is to do all the string
handling yourself; using string slicing and concatenation operations you can create any layout you
can imagine. The string types have some methods that perform useful operations for padding strings
to a given column width; these will be discussed shortly. The second way is to use the str.format()
method.
The string module contains a Template class which offers yet another way to substitute values into
strings.
One question remains, of course: how do you convert values to strings? Luckily, Python has ways
to convert any value to a string: pass it to the repr() or str() functions.
The str() function is meant to return representations of values which are fairly human-readable,
while repr() is meant to generate representations which can be read by the interpreter (or will
force a SyntaxError if there is no equivalent syntax). For objects which dont have a particular
representation for human consumption, str() will return the same value as repr(). Many values,
such as numbers or structures like lists and dictionaries, have the same representation using either
function. Strings and floating point numbers, in particular, have two distinct representations.
Some examples:
 Input and Output 66

1 >>> s = 'Hello, world.'

2 >>> str(s)
3 'Hello, world.'
4 >>> repr(s)
5 "'Hello, world.'"
6 >>> str(1.0/7.0)
7 '0.142857142857'
8 >>> repr(1.0/7.0)
9 '0.14285714285714285'
10 >>> x = 10 * 3.25
11 >>> y = 200 * 200
12 >>> s = 'The value of x is ' + repr(x) + ', and y is ' + repr(y) + '...'
13 >>> print s
14 The value of x is 32.5, and y is 40000...
15 >>> # The repr() of a string adds string quotes and backslashes:
16 ... hello = 'hello, world\n'
17 >>> hellos = repr(hello)
18 >>> print hellos
19 'hello, world\n'
20 >>> # The argument to repr() may be any Python object:
21 ... repr((x, y, ('spam', 'eggs')))
22 "(32.5, 40000, ('spam', 'eggs'))"

Here are two ways to write a table of squares and cubes:

1 >>> for x in range(1, 11):

2 ... print repr(x).rjust(2), repr(x*x).rjust(3),
3 ... # Note trailing comma on previous line
4 ... print repr(x*x*x).rjust(4)
5 ...
6 1 1 1
7 2 4 8
8 3 9 27
9 4 16 64
10 5 25 125
11 6 36 216
12 7 49 343
13 8 64 512
14 9 81 729
15 10 100 1000
16
17 >>> for x in range(1,11):
 Input and Output 67

18 ... print '{0:2d} {1:3d} {2:4d}'.format(x, x*x, x*x*x)

19 ...
20 1 1 1
21 2 4 8
22 3 9 27
23 4 16 64
24 5 25 125
25 6 36 216
26 7 49 343
27 8 64 512
28 9 81 729
29 10 100 1000

(Note that in the first example, one space between each column was added by the way print works:
it always adds spaces between its arguments.)
This example demonstrates the str.rjust() method of string objects, which right-justifies a string
in a field of a given width by padding it with spaces on the left. There are similar methods
str.ljust() and str.center(). These methods do not write anything, they just return a new string.
If the input string is too long, they dont truncate it, but return it unchanged; this will mess up your
column lay-out but thats usually better than the alternative, which would be lying about a value.
(If you really want truncation you can always add a slice operation, as in x.ljust(n)[:n].)
There is another method, str.zfill(), which pads a numeric string on the left with zeros. It
understands about plus and minus signs:

1 >>> '12'.zfill(5)
2 '00012'
3 >>> '-3.14'.zfill(7)
4 '-003.14'
5 >>> '3.14159265359'.zfill(5)
6 '3.14159265359'

Basic usage of the str.format() method looks like this:

1 >>> print 'We are the {} who say "{}!"'.format('knights', 'Ni')

2 We are the knights who say "Ni!"

The brackets and characters within them (called format fields) are replaced with the objects passed
into the str.format() method. A number in the brackets refers to the position of the object passed
into the str.format() method.
 Input and Output 68

1 >>> print '{0} and {1}'.format('spam', 'eggs')

2 spam and eggs
3 >>> print '{1} and {0}'.format('spam', 'eggs')
4 eggs and spam

If keyword arguments are used in the str.format() method, their values are referred to by using
the name of the argument.

1 >>> print 'This {food} is {adjective}.'.format(

2 ... food='spam', adjective='absolutely horrible')
3 This spam is absolutely horrible.

Positional and keyword arguments can be arbitrarily combined:

1 >>> print 'The story of {0}, {1}, and {other}.'.format('Bill', 'Manfred',

2 ... other='Georg')
3 The story of Bill, Manfred, and Georg.

'!s' (apply str()) and '!r' (apply repr()) can be used to convert the value before it is formatted.

1 >>> import math

2 >>> print 'The value of PI is approximately {}.'.format(math.pi)
3 The value of PI is approximately 3.14159265359.
4 >>> print 'The value of PI is approximately {!r}.'.format(math.pi)
5 The value of PI is approximately 3.141592653589793.

An optional ':' and format specifier can follow the field name. This allows greater control over
how the value is formatted. The following example rounds Pi to three places after the decimal.

1 >>> import math

2 >>> print 'The value of PI is approximately {0:.3f}.'.format(math.pi)
3 The value of PI is approximately 3.142.

Passing an integer after the ':' will cause that field to be a minimum number of characters wide.
This is useful for making tables pretty.
 Input and Output 69

1 >>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 7678}

2 >>> for name, phone in table.items():
3 ... print '{0:10} ==> {1:10d}'.format(name, phone)
4 ...
5 Jack ==> 4098
6 Dcab ==> 7678
7 Sjoerd ==> 4127

If you have a really long format string that you dont want to split up, it would be nice if you could
reference the variables to be formatted by name instead of by position. This can be done by simply
passing the dict and using square brackets '[]' to access the keys

1 >>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 8637678}

2 >>> print ('Jack: {0[Jack]:d}; Sjoerd: {0[Sjoerd]:d}; '
3 ... 'Dcab: {0[Dcab]:d}'.format(table))
4 Jack: 4098; Sjoerd: 4127; Dcab: 8637678

This could also be done by passing the table as keyword arguments with the ** notation.

1 >>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 8637678}

2 >>> print 'Jack: {Jack:d}; Sjoerd: {Sjoerd:d}; Dcab: {Dcab:d}'.format(**table)
3 Jack: 4098; Sjoerd: 4127; Dcab: 8637678

This is particularly useful in combination with the built-in function vars(), which returns a
dictionary containing all local variables.
For a complete overview of string formatting with str.format(), see Format String Syntax.

Old string formatting

The % operator can also be used for string formatting. It interprets the left argument much like a
sprintf()-style format string to be applied to the right argument, and returns the string resulting
from this formatting operation. For example:

1 >>> import math

2 >>> print 'The value of PI is approximately %5.3f.' % math.pi
3 The value of PI is approximately 3.142.

More information can be found in the String Formatting Operations section.

Reading and Writing Files

open() returns a file object, and is most commonly used with two arguments: open(filename,
mode).
 Input and Output 70

1 >>> f = open('workfile', 'w')

2 >>> print f
3 <open file 'workfile', mode 'w' at 80a0960>

The first argument is a string containing the filename. The second argument is another string
containing a few characters describing the way in which the file will be used. mode can be 'r'
when the file will only be read, 'w' for only writing (an existing file with the same name will be
erased), and 'a' opens the file for appending; any data written to the file is automatically added to
the end. 'r+' opens the file for both reading and writing. The mode argument is optional; 'r' will
be assumed if its omitted.
On Windows, 'b' appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode, so there are also modes like
'rb', 'wb', and 'r+b'. Python on Windows makes a distinction between text and binary files; the
end-of-line characters in text files are automatically altered slightly when data is read or written.
This behind-the-scenes modification to file data is fine for ASCII text files, but itll corrupt binary
data like that in JPEG or EXE files. Be very careful to use binary mode when reading and writing such
files. On Unix, it doesnt hurt to append a 'b' to the mode, so you can use it platform-independently
for all binary files.

Methods of File Objects

The rest of the examples in this section will assume that a file object called f has already been
created.
To read a files contents, call f.read(size), which reads some quantity of data and returns it as a
string. size is an optional numeric argument. When size is omitted or negative, the entire contents
of the file will be read and returned; its your problem if the file is twice as large as your machines
memory. Otherwise, at most size bytes are read and returned. If the end of the file has been reached,
f.read() will return an empty string ("").

1 >>> f.read()
2 'This is the entire file.\n'
3 >>> f.read()
4 ''

f.readline() reads a single line from the file; a newline character (\n) is left at the end of the string,
and is only omitted on the last line of the file if the file doesnt end in a newline. This makes the
return value unambiguous; if f.readline() returns an empty string, the end of the file has been
reached, while a blank line is represented by '\n', a string containing only a single newline.
 Input and Output 71

1 >>> f.readline()
2 'This is the first line of the file.\n'
3 >>> f.readline()
4 'Second line of the file\n'
5 >>> f.readline()
6 ''

For reading lines from a file, you can loop over the file object. This is memory efficient, fast, and
leads to simple code:

1 >>> for line in f:

2 print line,
3
4 This is the first line of the file.
5 Second line of the file

If you want to read all the lines of a file in a list you can also use list(f) or f.readlines().
f.write(string) writes the contents of string to the file, returning None.

1 >>> f.write('This is a test\n')

To write something other than a string, it needs to be converted to a string first:

1 >>> value = ('the answer', 42)

2 >>> s = str(value)
3 >>> f.write(s)

f.tell() returns an integer giving the file objects current position in the file, measured in bytes
from the beginning of the file. To change the file objects position, use f.seek(offset,from_what).
The position is computed from adding offset to a reference point; the reference point is selected by
the from_what argument. A from_what value of 0 measures from the beginning of the file, 1 uses
the current file position, and 2 uses the end of the file as the reference point. from_what can be
omitted and defaults to 0, using the beginning of the file as the reference point.
 Input and Output 72

1 >>> f = open('workfile', 'r+')

2 >>> f.write('0123456789abcdef')
3 >>> f.seek(5) # Go to the 6th byte in the file
4 >>> f.read(1)
5 '5'
6 >>> f.seek(-3, 2) # Go to the 3rd byte before the end
7 >>> f.read(1)
8 'd'

When youre done with a file, call f.close() to close it and free up any system resources taken up
by the open file. After calling f.close(), attempts to use the file object will automatically fail.

1 >>> f.close()
2 >>> f.read()
3 Traceback (most recent call last):
4 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
5 ValueError: I/O operation on closed file

It is good practice to use the with keyword when dealing with file objects. This has the advantage
that the file is properly closed after its suite finishes, even if an exception is raised on the way. It is
also much shorter than writing equivalent try-finally blocks:
shell >>> with open('workfile', 'r') as f: ... read_data = f.read() >>> f.closed True

File objects have some additional methods, such as isatty() and truncate() which are less
frequently used; consult the Library Reference for a complete guide to file objects.

Saving structured data with json

Strings can easily be written to and read from a file. Numbers take a bit more effort, since the read()
method only returns strings, which will have to be passed to a function like int(), which takes a
string like '123' and returns its numeric value 123. When you want to save more complex data types
like nested lists and dictionaries, parsing and serializing by hand becomes complicated.
Rather than having users constantly writing and debugging code to save complicated data types to
files, Python allows you to use the popular data interchange format called JSON (JavaScript Object
Notation). The standard module called json can take Python data hierarchies, and convert them
to string representations; this process is called serializing. Reconstructing the data from the string
representation is called deserializing. Between serializing and deserializing, the string representing
the object may have been stored in a file or data, or sent over a network connection to some distant
machine.
Note: The JSON format is commonly used by modern applications to allow for data exchange. Many
programmers are already familiar with it, which makes it a good choice for interoperability.
If you have an object x, you can view its JSON string representation with a simple line of code:
 Input and Output 73

1 >>> json.dumps([1, 'simple', 'list'])

2 '[1, "simple", "list"]'

Another variant of the dumps() function, called dump(), simply serializes the object to a file. So if f
is a file object opened for writing, we can do this:

1 json.dump(x, f)

To decode the object again, if f is a file object which has been opened for reading:

1 x = json.load(f)

This simple serialization technique can handle lists and dictionaries, but serializing arbitrary class
instances in JSON requires a bit of extra effort. The reference for the json module contains an
explanation of this.
See also:

pickle - the pickle module

Contrary to JSON, pickle is a protocol which allows the serialization of arbitrarily complex
Python objects. As such, it is specific to Python and cannot be used to communicate with
applications written in other languages. It is also insecure by default: deserializing pickle data
coming from an untrusted source can execute arbitrary code, if the data was crafted by a
skilled attacker.
 Errors and Exceptions
Until now error messages havent been more than mentioned, but if you have tried out the examples
you have probably seen some. There are (at least) two distinguishable kinds of errors: syntax errors
and exceptions.

Syntax Errors
Syntax errors, also known as parsing errors, are perhaps the most common kind of complaint you
get while you are still learning Python:

1 >>> while True print 'Hello world'

2 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
3 while True print 'Hello world'
4 ^
5 SyntaxError: invalid syntax

The parser repeats the offending line and displays a little arrow pointing at the earliest point in the
line where the error was detected. The error is caused by (or at least detected at) the token preceding
the arrow: in the example, the error is detected at the keyword print, since a colon (':') is missing
before it. File name and line number are printed so you know where to look in case the input came
from a script.

Exceptions
Even if a statement or expression is syntactically correct, it may cause an error when an attempt
is made to execute it. Errors detected during execution are called exceptions and are not uncondi-
tionally fatal: you will soon learn how to handle them in Python programs. Most exceptions are not
handled by programs, however, and result in error messages as shown here:
 Errors and Exceptions 75

1 >>> 10 * (1/0)
2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
4 ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
5 >>> 4 + spam*3
6 Traceback (most recent call last):
7 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
8 NameError: name 'spam' is not defined
9 >>> '2' + 2
10 Traceback (most recent call last):
11 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
12 TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects

The last line of the error message indicates what happened. Exceptions come in different types,
and the type is printed as part of the message: the types in the example are ZeroDivisionError,
NameError and TypeError. The string printed as the exception type is the name of the built-in
exception that occurred. This is true for all built-in exceptions, but need not be true for user-defined
exceptions (although it is a useful convention). Standard exception names are built-in identifiers
(not reserved keywords).
The rest of the line provides detail based on the type of exception and what caused it.
The preceding part of the error message shows the context where the exception happened, in the
form of a stack traceback. In general it contains a stack traceback listing source lines; however, it
will not display lines read from standard input.
Built-in Exceptions lists the built-in exceptions and their meanings.

Handling Exceptions
It is possible to write programs that handle selected exceptions. Look at the following example, which
asks the user for input until a valid integer has been entered, but allows the user to interrupt the
program (using Control-C or whatever the operating system supports); note that a user-generated
interruption is signalled by raising the KeyboardInterrupt exception.

1 >>> while True:

2 ... try:
3 ... x = int(raw_input("Please enter a number: "))
4 ... break
5 ... except ValueError:
6 ... print "Oops! That was no valid number. Try again..."
7 ...
 Errors and Exceptions 76

The try statement works as follows.

First, the try clause (the statement(s) between the try and except keywords) is executed.
If no exception occurs, the except clause is skipped and execution of the try statement is
finished.
If an exception occurs during execution of the try clause, the rest of the clause is skipped.
Then if its type matches the exception named after the except keyword, the except clause is
executed, and then execution continues after the try statement.
If an exception occurs which does not match the exception named in the except clause, it is
passed on to outer try statements; if no handler is found, it is an unhandled exception and
execution stops with a message as shown above.

A try statement may have more than one except clause, to specify handlers for different exceptions.
At most one handler will be executed. Handlers only handle exceptions that occur in the corre-
sponding try clause, not in other handlers of the same try statement. An except clause may name
multiple exceptions as a parenthesized tuple, for example:

1 ... except (RuntimeError, TypeError, NameError):

2 ... pass

Note that the parentheses around this tuple are required, because except ValueError, e: was
the syntax used for what is normally written as except ValueError as e: in modern Python
(described below). The old syntax is still supported for backwards compatibility. This means except
RuntimeError, TypeError is not equivalent to except (RuntimeError, TypeError): but to except
RuntimeError as TypeError: which is not what you want.
The last except clause may omit the exception name(s), to serve as a wildcard. Use this with extreme
caution, since it is easy to mask a real programming error in this way! It can also be used to print
an error message and then re-raise the exception (allowing a caller to handle the exception as well):

1 import sys
2
3 try:
4 f = open('myfile.txt')
5 s = f.readline()
6 i = int(s.strip())
7 except IOError as e:
8 print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(e.errno, e.strerror)
9 except ValueError:
10 print "Could not convert data to an integer."
11 except:
12 print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0]
13 raise
 Errors and Exceptions 77

The try except statement has an optional else clause, which, when present, must follow all except
clauses. It is useful for code that must be executed if the try clause does not raise an exception. For
example:

1 for arg in sys.argv[1:]:

2 try:
3 f = open(arg, 'r')
4 except IOError:
5 print 'cannot open', arg
6 else:
7 print arg, 'has', len(f.readlines()), 'lines'
8 f.close()

The use of the else clause is better than adding additional code to the try clause because it avoids
accidentally catching an exception that wasnt raised by the code being protected by the try
except statement.

When an exception occurs, it may have an associated value, also known as the exceptions argument.
The presence and type of the argument depend on the exception type.
The except clause may specify a variable after the exception name (or tuple). The variable is bound to
an exception instance with the arguments stored in instance.args. For convenience, the exception
instance defines __str__() so the arguments can be printed directly without having to reference
.args.

One may also instantiate an exception first before raising it and add any attributes to it as desired.

1 >>> try:
2 ... raise Exception('spam', 'eggs')
3 ... except Exception as inst:
4 ... print type(inst) # the exception instance
5 ... print inst.args # arguments stored in .args
6 ... print inst # __str__ allows args to printed directly
7 ... x, y = inst.args
8 ... print 'x =', x
9 ... print 'y =', y
10 ...
11 <type 'exceptions.Exception'>
12 ('spam', 'eggs')
13 ('spam', 'eggs')
14 x = spam
15 y = eggs
 Errors and Exceptions 78

If an exception has an argument, it is printed as the last part (detail) of the message for unhandled
exceptions.
Exception handlers dont just handle exceptions if they occur immediately in the try clause, but also
if they occur inside functions that are called (even indirectly) in the try clause. For example:

1 >>> def this_fails():

2 ... x = 1/0
3 ...
4 >>> try:
5 ... this_fails()
6 ... except ZeroDivisionError as detail:
7 ... print 'Handling run-time error:', detail
8 ...
9 Handling run-time error: integer division or modulo by zero

Raising Exceptions
The raise statement allows the programmer to force a specified exception to occur. For example:

1 >>> raise NameError('HiThere')

2 Traceback (most recent call last):
3 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
4 NameError: HiThere

The sole argument to raise indicates the exception to be raised. This must be either an exception
instance or an exception class (a class that derives from Exception).
If you need to determine whether an exception was raised but dont intend to handle it, a simpler
form of the raise statement allows you to re-raise the exception:

1 >>> try:
2 ... raise NameError('HiThere')
3 ... except NameError:
4 ... print 'An exception flew by!'
5 ... raise
6 ...
7 An exception flew by!
8 Traceback (most recent call last):
9 File "<stdin>", line 2, in ?
10 NameError: HiThere
 Errors and Exceptions 79

User-defined Exceptions
Programs may name their own exceptions by creating a new exception class (see Classes for more
about Python classes). Exceptions should typically be derived from the Exception class, either
directly or indirectly. For example:

1 >>> class MyError(Exception):

2 ... def __init__(self, value):
3 ... self.value = value
4 ... def __str__(self):
5 ... return repr(self.value)
6 ...
7 >>> try:
8 ... raise MyError(2*2)
9 ... except MyError as e:
10 ... print 'My exception occurred, value:', e.value
11 ...
12 My exception occurred, value: 4
13 >>> raise MyError('oops!')
14 Traceback (most recent call last):
15 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
16 __main__.MyError: 'oops!'

In this example, the default __init__() of Exception has been overridden. The new behavior simply
creates the value attribute. This replaces the default behavior of creating the args attribute.
Exception classes can be defined which do anything any other class can do, but are usually kept
simple, often only offering a number of attributes that allow information about the error to be
extracted by handlers for the exception. When creating a module that can raise several distinct errors,
a common practice is to create a base class for exceptions defined by that module, and subclass that
to create specific exception classes for different error conditions:

1 class Error(Exception):
2 """Base class for exceptions in this module."""
3 pass
4
5 class InputError(Error):
6 """Exception raised for errors in the input.
7
8 Attributes:
9 expr -- input expression in which the error occurred
10 msg -- explanation of the error
 Errors and Exceptions 80

11 """
12
13 def __init__(self, expr, msg):
14 self.expr = expr
15 self.msg = msg
16
17 class TransitionError(Error):
18 """Raised when an operation attempts a state transition that's not
19 allowed.
20
21 Attributes:
22 prev -- state at beginning of transition
23 next -- attempted new state
24 msg -- explanation of why the specific transition is not allowed
25 """
26
27 def __init__(self, prev, next, msg):
28 self.prev = prev
29 self.next = next
30 self.msg = msg

Most exceptions are defined with names that end in Error, similar to the naming of the standard
exceptions.
Many standard modules define their own exceptions to report errors that may occur in functions
they define. More information on classes is presented in chapter Classes.

Defining Clean-up Actions

The try statement has another optional clause which is intended to define clean-up actions that
must be executed under all circumstances. For example:

1 >>> try:
2 ... raise KeyboardInterrupt
3 ... finally:
4 ... print 'Goodbye, world!'
5 ...
6 Goodbye, world!
7 Traceback (most recent call last):
8 File "<stdin>", line 2, in ?
9 KeyboardInterrupt
 Errors and Exceptions 81

A finally clause is always executed before leaving the try statement, whether an exception has
occurred or not. When an exception has occurred in the try clause and has not been handled by an
except clause (or it has occurred in a except or else clause), it is re-raised after the finally clause
has been executed. The finally clause is also executed on the way out when any other clause of
the try statement is left via a break, continue or return statement. A more complicated example
(having except and finally clauses in the same try statement works as of Python 2.5):

1 >>> def divide(x, y):

2 ... try:
3 ... result = x / y
4 ... except ZeroDivisionError:
5 ... print "division by zero!"
6 ... else:
7 ... print "result is", result
8 ... finally:
9 ... print "executing finally clause"
10 ...
11 >>> divide(2, 1)
12 result is 2
13 executing finally clause
14 >>> divide(2, 0)
15 division by zero!
16 executing finally clause
17 >>> divide("2", "1")
18 executing finally clause
19 Traceback (most recent call last):
20 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
21 File "<stdin>", line 3, in divide
22 TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'str' and 'str'

As you can see, the finally clause is executed in any event. The TypeError raised by dividing two
strings is not handled by the except clause and therefore re-raised after the finally clause has been
executed.
In real world applications, the finally clause is useful for releasing external resources (such as files
or network connections), regardless of whether the use of the resource was successful.

Predefined Clean-up Actions

Some objects define standard clean-up actions to be undertaken when the object is no longer needed,
regardless of whether or not the operation using the object succeeded or failed. Look at the following
example, which tries to open a file and print its contents to the screen.
 Errors and Exceptions 82

1 for line in open("myfile.txt"):

2 print line,

The problem with this code is that it leaves the file open for an indeterminate amount of time after
the code has finished executing. This is not an issue in simple scripts, but can be a problem for larger
applications. The with statement allows objects like files to be used in a way that ensures they are
always cleaned up promptly and correctly.

1 with open("myfile.txt") as f:
2 for line in f:
3 print line,

After the statement is executed, the file f is always closed, even if a problem was encountered while
processing the lines. Other objects which provide predefined clean-up actions will indicate this in
their documentation.
Classes

Compared with other programming languages, Pythons class mechanism adds classes with a
minimum of new syntax and semantics. It is a mixture of the class mechanisms found in C++ and
Modula-3. Python classes provide all the standard features of Object Oriented Programming: the
class inheritance mechanism allows multiple base classes, a derived class can override any methods
of its base class or classes, and a method can call the method of a base class with the same name.
Objects can contain arbitrary amounts and kinds of data. As is true for modules, classes partake
of the dynamic nature of Python: they are created at runtime, and can be modified further after
creation.
In C++ terminology, normally class members (including the data members) are public (except
see below Private Variables and Class-local References), and all member functions are virtual.
As in Modula-3, there are no shorthands for referencing the objects members from its methods:
the method function is declared with an explicit first argument representing the object, which
is provided implicitly by the call. As in Smalltalk, classes themselves are objects. This provides
semantics for importing and renaming. Unlike C++ and Modula-3, built-in types can be used as
base classes for extension by the user. Also, like in C++, most built-in operators with special syntax
(arithmetic operators, subscripting etc.) can be redefined for class instances.
(Lacking universally accepted terminology to talk about classes, I will make occasional use of
Smalltalk and C++ terms. I would use Modula-3 terms, since its object-oriented semantics are closer
to those of Python than C++, but I expect that few readers have heard of it.)

A Word About Names and Objects

Objects have individuality, and multiple names (in multiple scopes) can be bound to the same object.
This is known as aliasing in other languages. This is usually not appreciated on a first glance at
Python, and can be safely ignored when dealing with immutable basic types (numbers, strings,
tuples). However, aliasing has a possibly surprising effect on the semantics of Python code involving
mutable objects such as lists, dictionaries, and most other types. This is usually used to the benefit
of the program, since aliases behave like pointers in some respects. For example, passing an object
is cheap since only a pointer is passed by the implementation; and if a function modifies an object
passed as an argument, the caller will see the change this eliminates the need for two different
argument passing mechanisms as in Pascal.
Classes 84

Python Scopes and Namespaces

Before introducing classes, I first have to tell you something about Pythons scope rules. Class
definitions play some neat tricks with namespaces, and you need to know how scopes and
namespaces work to fully understand whats going on. Incidentally, knowledge about this subject
is useful for any advanced Python programmer.
Lets begin with some definitions.
A namespace is a mapping from names to objects. Most namespaces are currently implemented as
Python dictionaries, but thats normally not noticeable in any way (except for performance), and
it may change in the future. Examples of namespaces are: the set of built-in names (containing
functions such as abs(), and built-in exception names); the global names in a module; and the local
names in a function invocation. In a sense the set of attributes of an object also form a namespace.
The important thing to know about namespaces is that there is absolutely no relation between names
in different namespaces; for instance, two different modules may both define a function maximize
without confusion users of the modules must prefix it with the module name.
By the way, I use the word attribute for any name following a dot for example, in the expression
z.real, real is an attribute of the object z. Strictly speaking, references to names in modules are
attribute references: in the expression modname.funcname, modname is a module object and funcname
is an attribute of it. In this case there happens to be a straightforward mapping between the modules
attributes and the global names defined in the module: they share the same namespace! [1]
Attributes may be read-only or writable. In the latter case, assignment to attributes is possible.
Module attributes are writable: you can write modname.the_answer = 42. Writable attributes may
also be deleted with the del statement. For example, del modname.the_answer will remove the
attribute the_answer from the object named by modname.
Namespaces are created at different moments and have different lifetimes. The namespace contain-
ing the built-in names is created when the Python interpreter starts up, and is never deleted. The
global namespace for a module is created when the module definition is read in; normally, module
namespaces also last until the interpreter quits. The statements executed by the top-level invocation
of the interpreter, either read from a script file or interactively, are considered part of a module
called __main__, so they have their own global namespace. (The built-in names actually also live in
a module; this is called __builtin__.)
The local namespace for a function is created when the function is called, and deleted when the
function returns or raises an exception that is not handled within the function. (Actually, forgetting
would be a better way to describe what actually happens.) Of course, recursive invocations each
have their own local namespace.
A scope is a textual region of a Python program where a namespace is directly accessible. Directly
accessible here means that an unqualified reference to a name attempts to find the name in the
namespace.
Classes 85

Although scopes are determined statically, they are used dynamically. At any time during execution,
there are at least three nested scopes whose namespaces are directly accessible:

the innermost scope, which is searched first, contains the local names
the scopes of any enclosing functions, which are searched starting with the nearest enclosing
scope, contains non-local, but also non-global names
the next-to-last scope contains the current modules global names
the outermost scope (searched last) is the namespace containing built-in names

If a name is declared global, then all references and assignments go directly to the middle scope
containing the modules global names. Otherwise, all variables found outside of the innermost scope
are read-only (an attempt to write to such a variable will simply create a new local variable in the
innermost scope, leaving the identically named outer variable unchanged).
Usually, the local scope references the local names of the (textually) current function. Outside
functions, the local scope references the same namespace as the global scope: the modules
namespace. Class definitions place yet another namespace in the local scope.
It is important to realize that scopes are determined textually: the global scope of a function defined
in a module is that modules namespace, no matter from where or by what alias the function is
called. On the other hand, the actual search for names is done dynamically, at run time however,
the language definition is evolving towards static name resolution, at compile time, so dont rely
on dynamic name resolution! (In fact, local variables are already determined statically.)
A special quirk of Python is that if no global statement is in effect assignments to names always
go into the innermost scope. Assignments do not copy data they just bind names to objects.
The same is true for deletions: the statement del x removes the binding of x from the namespace
referenced by the local scope. In fact, all operations that introduce new names use the local scope:
in particular, import statements and function definitions bind the module or function name in the
local scope. (The global statement can be used to indicate that particular variables live in the global
scope.)

A First Look at Classes

Classes introduce a little bit of new syntax, three new object types, and some new semantics.

Class Definition Syntax

The simplest form of class definition looks like this:
 Classes 86

1 class ClassName:
2 <statement-1>
3 .
4 .
5 .
6 <statement-N>

Class definitions, like function definitions (def statements) must be executed before they have any
effect. (You could conceivably place a class definition in a branch of an if statement, or inside a
function.)
In practice, the statements inside a class definition will usually be function definitions, but other
statements are allowed, and sometimes useful well come back to this later. The function
definitions inside a class normally have a peculiar form of argument list, dictated by the calling
conventions for methods again, this is explained later.
When a class definition is entered, a new namespace is created, and used as the local scope thus,
all assignments to local variables go into this new namespace. In particular, function definitions bind
the name of the new function here.
When a class definition is left normally (via the end), a class object is created. This is basically a
wrapper around the contents of the namespace created by the class definition; well learn more
about class objects in the next section. The original local scope (the one in effect just before the class
definition was entered) is reinstated, and the class object is bound here to the class name given in
the class definition header (ClassName in the example).

Class Objects
Class objects support two kinds of operations: attribute references and instantiation.
Attribute references use the standard syntax used for all attribute references in Python: obj.name.
Valid attribute names are all the names that were in the classs namespace when the class object was
created. So, if the class definition looked like this:

1 class MyClass:
2 """A simple example class"""
3 i = 12345
4 def f(self):
5 return 'hello world'

then MyClass.i and MyClass.f are valid attribute references, returning an integer and a function
object, respectively. Class attributes can also be assigned to, so you can change the value of
MyClass.i by assignment. __doc__ is also a valid attribute, returning the docstring belonging to
the class: "A simple example class".
Class instantiation uses function notation. Just pretend that the class object is a parameterless
function that returns a new instance of the class. For example (assuming the above class):
 Classes 87

1 x = MyClass()

creates a new instance of the class and assigns this object to the local variable x.
The instantiation operation (calling a class object) creates an empty object. Many classes like to
create objects with instances customized to a specific initial state. Therefore a class may define a
special method named __init__(), like this:

1 def __init__(self):
2 self.data = []

When a class defines an __init__() method, class instantiation automatically invokes __init__()
for the newly-created class instance. So in this example, a new, initialized instance can be obtained
by:

1 x = MyClass()

Of course, the __init__() method may have arguments for greater flexibility. In that case,
arguments given to the class instantiation operator are passed on to __init__(). For example,

1 >>> class Complex:

2 ... def __init__(self, realpart, imagpart):
3 ... self.r = realpart
4 ... self.i = imagpart
5 ...
6 >>> x = Complex(3.0, -4.5)
7 >>> x.r, x.i
8 (3.0, -4.5)

Instance Objects
Now what can we do with instance objects? The only operations understood by instance objects are
attribute references. There are two kinds of valid attribute names, data attributes and methods.
data attributes correspond to instance variables in Smalltalk, and to data members in C++. Data
attributes need not be declared; like local variables, they spring into existence when they are first
assigned to. For example, if x is the instance of MyClass created above, the following piece of code
will print the value 16, without leaving a trace:
 Classes 88

1 x.counter = 1
2 while x.counter < 10:
3 x.counter = x.counter * 2
4 print x.counter
5 del x.counter

The other kind of instance attribute reference is a method. A method is a function that belongs to
an object. (In Python, the term method is not unique to class instances: other object types can have
methods as well. For example, list objects have methods called append, insert, remove, sort, and so
on. However, in the following discussion, well use the term method exclusively to mean methods
of class instance objects, unless explicitly stated otherwise.)
Valid method names of an instance object depend on its class. By definition, all attributes of a class
that are function objects define corresponding methods of its instances. So in our example, x.f is
a valid method reference, since MyClass.f is a function, but x.i is not, since MyClass.i is not. But
x.f is not the same thing as MyClass.f it is a method object, not a function object.

Method Objects
Usually, a method is called right after it is bound:

1 x.f()

In the MyClass example, this will return the string 'hello world'. However, it is not necessary to
call a method right away: x.f is a method object, and can be stored away and called at a later time.
For example:

1 xf = x.f
2 while True:
3 print xf()
4 ````
5
6 will continue to print ``hello world`` until the end of time.
7
8 What exactly happens when a method is called? You may have noticed that ``x.f()`\
9 ` was called without an argument above, even though the function definition for `\
10 `f()`` specified an argument. What happened to the argument? Surely Python raise\
11 s an exception when a function that requires an argument is called without any --\
12 - even if the argument isn't actually used...
13
14 Actually, you may have guessed the answer: the special thing about methods is tha\
15 t the object is passed as the first argument of the function. In our example, th\
 Classes 89

16 e call ``x.f()`` is exactly equivalent to ``MyClass.f(x)``. In general, calling \

17 a method with a list of *n* arguments is equivalent to calling the corresponding \
18 function with an argument list that is created by inserting the method's object b\
19 efore the first argument.
20
21 If you still don't understand how methods work, a look at the implementation can \
22 perhaps clarify matters. When an instance attribute is referenced that isn't a d\
23 ata attribute, its class is searched. If the name denotes a valid class attribut\
24 e that is a function object, a method object is created by packing (pointers to) \
25 the instance object and the function object just found together in an abstract ob\
26 ject: this is the method object. When the method object is called with an argume\
27 nt list, a new argument list is constructed from the instance object and the argu\
28 ment list, and the function object is called with this new argument list.
29
30
31 ## Random Remarks
32
33 Data attributes override method attributes with the same name; to avoid accidenta\
34 l name conflicts, which may cause hard-to-find bugs in large programs, it is wise\
35 to use some kind of convention that minimizes the chance of conflicts. Possible\
36 conventions include capitalizing method names, prefixing data attribute names wi\
37 th a small unique string (perhaps just an underscore), or using verbs for methods\
38 and nouns for data attributes.
39
40 Data attributes may be referenced by methods as well as by ordinary users ("clien\
41 ts") of an object. In other words, classes are not usable to implement pure abst\
42 ract data types. In fact, nothing in Python makes it possible to enforce data hi\
43 ding --- it is all based upon convention. (On the other hand, the Python impleme\
44 ntation, written in C, can completely hide implementation details and control acc\
45 ess to an object if necessary; this can be used by extensions to Python written i\
46 n C.)
47
48 Clients should use data attributes with care --- clients may mess up invariants m\
49 aintained by the methods by stamping on their data attributes. Note that clients\
50 may add data attributes of their own to an instance object without affecting the\
51 validity of the methods, as long as name conflicts are avoided --- again, a nami\
52 ng convention can save a lot of headaches here.
53
54 There is no shorthand for referencing data attributes (or other methods!) from wi\
55 thin methods. I find that this actually increases the readability of methods: th\
56 ere is no chance of confusing local variables and instance variables when glancin\
57 g through a method.
 Classes 90

58
59 Often, the first argument of a method is called ``self``. This is nothing more t\
60 han a convention: the name ``self`` has absolutely no special meaning to Python. \
61 Note, however, that by not following the convention your code may be less readab\
62 le to other Python programmers, and it is also conceivable that a *class browser*\
63 program might be written that relies upon such a convention.
64
65 Any function object that is a class attribute defines a method for instances of t\
66 hat class. It is not necessary that the function definition is textually enclose\
67 d in the class definition: assigning a function object to a local variable in the\
68 class is also ok. For example:
69
70 ```python
71 # Function defined outside the class
72 def f1(self, x, y):
73 return min(x, x+y)
74
75 class C:
76 f = f1
77 def g(self):
78 return 'hello world'
79 h = g

Now f, g and h are all attributes of class C that refer to function objects, and consequently they are
all methods of instances of C h being exactly equivalent to g. Note that this practice usually only
serves to confuse the reader of a program.
Methods may call other methods by using method attributes of the self argument:

1 class Bag:
2 def __init__(self):
3 self.data = []
4 def add(self, x):
5 self.data.append(x)
6 def addtwice(self, x):
7 self.add(x)
8 self.add(x)

Methods may reference global names in the same way as ordinary functions. The global scope
associated with a method is the module containing its definition. (A class is never used as a global
scope.) While one rarely encounters a good reason for using global data in a method, there are
many legitimate uses of the global scope: for one thing, functions and modules imported into the
global scope can be used by methods, as well as functions and classes defined in it. Usually, the class
 Classes 91

containing the method is itself defined in this global scope, and in the next section well find some
good reasons why a method would want to reference its own class.
Each value is an object, and therefore has a class (also called its type). It is stored as object.__-
class__.

Inheritance
Of course, a language feature would not be worthy of the name class without supporting
inheritance. The syntax for a derived class definition looks like this:

1 class DerivedClassName(BaseClassName):
2 <statement-1>
3 .
4 .
5 .
6 <statement-N>

The name BaseClassName must be defined in a scope containing the derived class definition. In place
of a base class name, other arbitrary expressions are also allowed. This can be useful, for example,
when the base class is defined in another module:

1 class DerivedClassName(modname.BaseClassName):

Execution of a derived class definition proceeds the same as for a base class. When the class object
is constructed, the base class is remembered. This is used for resolving attribute references: if a
requested attribute is not found in the class, the search proceeds to look in the base class. This rule
is applied recursively if the base class itself is derived from some other class.
Theres nothing special about instantiation of derived classes: DerivedClassName() creates a new
instance of the class. Method references are resolved as follows: the corresponding class attribute is
searched, descending down the chain of base classes if necessary, and the method reference is valid
if this yields a function object.
Derived classes may override methods of their base classes. Because methods have no special
privileges when calling other methods of the same object, a method of a base class that calls another
method defined in the same base class may end up calling a method of a derived class that overrides
it. (For C++ programmers: all methods in Python are effectively virtual.)
An overriding method in a derived class may in fact want to extend rather than simply replace the
base class method of the same name. There is a simple way to call the base class method directly: just
call BaseClassName.methodname(self, arguments). This is occasionally useful to clients as well.
(Note that this only works if the base class is accessible as BaseClassName in the global scope.)
Python has two built-in functions that work with inheritance:
 Classes 92

Use isinstance() to check an instances type: isinstance(obj, int) will be True only if
obj.__class__ is int or some class derived from int.
Use issubclass() to check class inheritance: issubclass(bool, int) is True since bool is a
subclass of int. However, issubclass(unicode, str) is False since unicode is not a subclass
of str (they only share a common ancestor,basestring).

Multiple Inheritance
Python supports a limited form of multiple inheritance as well. A class definition with multiple base
classes looks like this:

1 class DerivedClassName(Base1, Base2, Base3):

2 <statement-1>
3 .
4 .
5 .
6 <statement-N>

For old-style classes, the only rule is depth-first, left-to-right. Thus, if an attribute is not found in
DerivedClassName, it is searched in Base1, then (recursively) in the base classes of Base1, and only
if it is not found there, it is searched in Base2, and so on.
(To some people breadth first searching Base2 and Base3 before the base classes of Base1 looks
more natural. However,this would require you to know whether a particular attribute of Base1 is
actually defined in Base1 or in one of its base classes before you can figure out the consequences of
a name conflict with an attribute of Base2. The depth-first rule makes no differences between direct
and inherited attributes of Base1.)
For new-style classes, the method resolution order changes dynamically to support cooperative calls
to super(). This approach is known in some other multiple-inheritance languages as call-next-
method and is more powerful than the super call found in single-inheritance languages.
With new-style classes, dynamic ordering is necessary because all cases of multiple inheritance
exhibit one or more diamond relationships (where at least one of the parent classes can be
accessed through multiple paths from the bottommost class). For example, all new-style classes
inherit from object, so any case of multiple inheritance provides more than one path to reach
object. To keep the base classes from being accessed more than once, the dynamic algorithm
linearizes the search order in a way that preserves the left-to-right ordering specified in each class,
that calls each parent only once, and that is monotonic (meaning that a class can be subclassed
without affecting the precedence order of its parents). Taken together, these properties make it
possible to design reliable and extensible classes with multiple inheritance. For more detail, see
http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.3/mro/.
 Classes 93

Private Variables and Class-local References

Private instance variables that cannot be accessed except from inside an object dont exist in
Python. However, there is a convention that is followed by most Python code: a name prefixed
with an underscore (e.g. _spam) should be treated as a non-public part of the API (whether it is a
function, a method or a data member). It should be considered an implementation detail and subject
to change without notice.
Since there is a valid use-case for class-private members (namely to avoid name clashes of names
with names defined by subclasses), there is limited support for such a mechanism, called name
mangling. Any identifier of the form __spam (at least two leading underscores, at most one trailing
underscore) is textually replaced with _classname__spam, where classname is the current class name
with leading underscore(s) stripped. This mangling is done without regard to the syntactic position
of the identifier, as long as it occurs within the definition of a class.
Name mangling is helpful for letting subclasses override methods without breaking intraclass
method calls. For example:

1 class Mapping:
2 def __init__(self, iterable):
3 self.items_list = []
4 self.__update(iterable)
5
6 def update(self, iterable):
7 for item in iterable:
8 self.items_list.append(item)
9
10 __update = update # private copy of original update() method
11
12 class MappingSubclass(Mapping):
13
14 def update(self, keys, values):
15 # provides new signature for update()
16 # but does not break __init__()
17 for item in zip(keys, values):
18 self.items_list.append(item)

Note that the mangling rules are designed mostly to avoid accidents; it still is possible to access or
modify a variable that is considered private. This can even be useful in special circumstances, such
as in the debugger.
Notice that code passed to exec, eval() or execfile() does not consider the classname of the
invoking class to be the current class; this is similar to the effect of the global statement, the effect
of which is likewise restricted to code that is byte-compiled together. The same restriction applies
to getattr(), setattr() and delattr(), as well as when referencing __dict__ directly.
 Classes 94

Odds and Ends

Sometimes it is useful to have a data type similar to the Pascal record or C struct, bundling
together a few named data items. An empty class definition will do nicely:

1 class Employee:
2 pass
3
4 john = Employee() # Create an empty employee record
5
6 # Fill the fields of the record
7 john.name = 'John Doe'
8 john.dept = 'computer lab'
9 john.salary = 1000

A piece of Python code that expects a particular abstract data type can often be passed a class that
emulates the methods of that data type instead. For instance, if you have a function that formats
some data from a file object, you can define a class with methods read() and readline() that get
the data from a string buffer instead, and pass it as an argument.
Instance method objects have attributes, too: m.im_self is the instance object with the method m(),
and m.im_func is the function object corresponding to the method.

Exceptions Are Classes Too

User-defined exceptions are identified by classes as well. Using this mechanism it is possible to create
extensible hierarchies of exceptions.
There are two new valid (semantic) forms for the raise statement:

1 raise Class, instance

2
3 raise instance

In the first form, instance must be an instance of Class or of a class derived from it. The second
form is a shorthand for:

1 raise instance.__class__, instance

A class in an except clause is compatible with an exception if it is the same class or a base class
thereof (but not the other way around an except clause listing a derived class is not compatible
with a base class). For example, the following code will print B, C,D in that order:
 Classes 95

1 class B:
2 pass
3 class C(B):
4 pass
5 class D(C):
6 pass
7
8 for c in [B, C, D]:
9 try:
10 raise c()
11 except D:
12 print "D"
13 except C:
14 print "C"
15 except B:
16 print "B"

Note that if the except clauses were reversed (with except B first), it would have printed B, B, B
the first matching except clause is triggered.
When an error message is printed for an unhandled exception, the exceptions class name is printed,
then a colon and a space, and finally the instance converted to a string using the built-in function
str().

Iterators
By now you have probably noticed that most container objects can be looped over using a for
statement:

1 for element in [1, 2, 3]:

2 print element
3 for element in (1, 2, 3):
4 print element
5 for key in {'one':1, 'two':2}:
6 print key
7 for char in "123":
8 print char
9 for line in open("myfile.txt"):
10 print line,

This style of access is clear, concise, and convenient. The use of iterators pervades and unifies Python.
Behind the scenes, the for statement calls iter() on the container object. The function returns an
 Classes 96

iterator object that defines the method next() which accesses elements in the container one at a
time. When there are no more elements, next() raises a StopIteration exception which tells the
for loop to terminate. This example shows how it all works:

1 >>> s = 'abc'
2 >>> it = iter(s)
3 >>> it
4 <iterator object at 0x00A1DB50>
5 >>> it.next()
6 'a'
7 >>> it.next()
8 'b'
9 >>> it.next()
10 'c'
11 >>> it.next()
12 Traceback (most recent call last):
13 File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
14 it.next()
15 StopIteration

Having seen the mechanics behind the iterator protocol, it is easy to add iterator behavior to your
classes. Define an __iter__() method which returns an object with a next() method. If the class
defines next(), then __iter__() can just return self:

1 class Reverse:
2 """Iterator for looping over a sequence backwards."""
3 def __init__(self, data):
4 self.data = data
5 self.index = len(data)
6 def __iter__(self):
7 return self
8 def next(self):
9 if self.index == 0:
10 raise StopIteration
11 self.index = self.index - 1
12 return self.data[self.index]
 Classes 97

1 >>> rev = Reverse('spam')

2 >>> iter(rev)
3 <__main__.Reverse object at 0x00A1DB50>
4 >>> for char in rev:
5 ... print char
6 ...
7 m
8 a
9 p
10 s

Generators
Generators are a simple and powerful tool for creating iterators. They are written like regular
functions but use the yield statement whenever they want to return data. Each time next() is called,
the generator resumes where it left-off (it remembers all the data values and which statement was
last executed). An example shows that generators can be trivially easy to create:

1 def reverse(data):
2 for index in range(len(data)-1, -1, -1):
3 yield data[index]

1 >>> for char in reverse('golf'):

2 ... print char
3 ...
4 f
5 l
6 o
7 g

Anything that can be done with generators can also be done with class based iterators as described in
the previous section. What makes generators so compact is that the __iter__() and next() methods
are created automatically.
Another key feature is that the local variables and execution state are automatically saved between
calls. This made the function easier to write and much more clear than an approach using instance
variables like self.index and self.data.
In addition to automatic method creation and saving program state, when generators terminate, they
automatically raise StopIteration. In combination, these features make it easy to create iterators
with no more effort than writing a regular function.
 Classes 98

Generator Expressions
Some simple generators can be coded succinctly as expressions using a syntax similar to list
comprehensions but with parentheses instead of brackets. These expressions are designed for
situations where the generator is used right away by an enclosing function. Generator expressions
are more compact but less versatile than full generator definitions and tend to be more memory
friendly than equivalent list comprehensions.
Examples:

1 >>> sum(i*i for i in range(10)) # sum of squares

2 285
3
4 >>> xvec = [10, 20, 30]
5 >>> yvec = [7, 5, 3]
6 >>> sum(x*y for x,y in zip(xvec, yvec)) # dot product
7 260
8
9 >>> from math import pi, sin
10 >>> sine_table = dict((x, sin(x*pi/180)) for x in range(0, 91))
11
12 >>> unique_words = set(word for line in page for word in line.split())
13
14 >>> valedictorian = max((student.gpa, student.name) for student in graduates)
15
16 >>> data = 'golf'
17 >>> list(data[i] for i in range(len(data)-1,-1,-1))
18 ['f', 'l', 'o', 'g']

-[ Footnotes ]-
[1] Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute called __dict__ which
returns the dictionary used to implement the modules namespace; the name __dict__ is an attribute
but not a global name. Obviously, using this violates the abstraction of namespace implementation,
and should be restricted to things like post-mortem debuggers.
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library
Operating System Interface
The os module provides dozens of functions for interacting with the operating system:

1 >>> import os
2 >>> os.getcwd() # Return the current working directory
3 'C:\\Python26'
4 >>> os.chdir('/server/accesslogs') # Change current working directory
5 >>> os.system('mkdir today') # Run the command mkdir in the system shell
6 0

Be sure to use the import os style instead of from os import *. This will keep os.open() from
shadowing the built-in open() function which operates much differently.
The built-in dir() and help() functions are useful as interactive aids for working with large modules
like os:

1 >>> import os
2 >>> dir(os)
3 <returns a list of all module functions>
4 >>> help(os)
5 <returns an extensive manual page created from the module's docstrings>

For daily file and directory management tasks, the shutil module provides a higher level interface
that is easier to use:

1 >>> import shutil

2 >>> shutil.copyfile('data.db', 'archive.db')
3 >>> shutil.move('/build/executables', 'installdir')

File Wildcards
The glob module provides a function for making file lists from directory wildcard searches:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 100

1 >>> import glob

2 >>> glob.glob('*.py')
3 ['primes.py', 'random.py', 'quote.py']

Command Line Arguments

Common utility scripts often need to process command line arguments. These arguments are stored
in the sys modules argv attribute as a list. For instance the following output results from running
python demo.py one two three at the command line:

1 >>> import sys

2 >>> print sys.argv
3 ['demo.py', 'one', 'two', 'three']

The getopt module processes sys.argv using the conventions of the Unix getopt() function. More
powerful and flexible command line processing is provided by the argparse module.

Error Output Redirection and Program Termination

The sys module also has attributes for stdin, stdout, and stderr. The latter is useful for emitting
warnings and error messages to make them visible even when stdout has been redirected:

1 >>> sys.stderr.write('Warning, log file not found starting a new one\n')

2 Warning, log file not found starting a new one

The most direct way to terminate a script is to use sys.exit().

String Pattern Matching

The re module provides regular expression tools for advanced string processing. For complex
matching and manipulation, regular expressions offer succinct, optimized solutions:

1 >>> import re
2 >>> re.findall(r'\bf[a-z]*', 'which foot or hand fell fastest')
3 ['foot', 'fell', 'fastest']
4 >>> re.sub(r'(\b[a-z]+) \1', r'\1', 'cat in the the hat')
5 'cat in the hat'

When only simple capabilities are needed, string methods are preferred because they are easier to
read and debug:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 101

1 >>> 'tea for too'.replace('too', 'two')

2 'tea for two'

Mathematics
The math module gives access to the underlying C library functions for floating point math:

1 >>> import math

2 >>> math.cos(math.pi / 4.0)
3 0.70710678118654757
4 >>> math.log(1024, 2)
5 10.0

The random module provides tools for making random selections:

1 >>> import random

2 >>> random.choice(['apple', 'pear', 'banana'])
3 'apple'
4 >>> random.sample(xrange(100), 10) # sampling without replacement
5 [30, 83, 16, 4, 8, 81, 41, 50, 18, 33]
6 >>> random.random() # random float
7 0.17970987693706186
8 >>> random.randrange(6) # random integer chosen from range(6)
9 4

Internet Access
There are a number of modules for accessing the internet and processing internet protocols. Two of
the simplest are urllib2 for retrieving data from URLs and smtplib for sending mail:

1 >>> import urllib2

2 >>> for line in urllib2.urlopen('http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/timer.pl'):
3 ... if 'EST' in line or 'EDT' in line: # look for Eastern Time
4 ... print line
5
6 <BR>Nov. 25, 09:43:32 PM EST
7
8 >>> import smtplib
9 >>> server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
10 >>> server.sendmail('soothsayer@example.org', 'jcaesar@example.org',
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 102

11 ... """To: jcaesar@example.org

12 ... From: soothsayer@example.org
13 ...
14 ... Beware the Ides of March.
15 ... """)
16 >>> server.quit()

(Note that the second example needs a mailserver running on localhost.)

Dates and Times

The datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and times in both simple and complex
ways. While date and time arithmetic is supported, the focus of the implementation is on efficient
member extraction for output formatting and manipulation. The module also supports objects that
are timezone aware.

1 >>> # dates are easily constructed and formatted

2 >>> from datetime import date
3 >>> now = date.today()
4 >>> now
5 datetime.date(2003, 12, 2)
6 >>> now.strftime("%m-%d-%y. %d %b %Y is a %A on the %d day of %B.")
7 '12-02-03. 02 Dec 2003 is a Tuesday on the 02 day of December.'
8
9 >>> # dates support calendar arithmetic
10 >>> birthday = date(1964, 7, 31)
11 >>> age = now - birthday
12 >>> age.days
13 14368

Data Compression
Common data archiving and compression formats are directly supported by modules including:
zlib, gzip, bz2, zipfile andtarfile.
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 103

1 >>> import zlib

2 >>> s = 'witch which has which witches wrist watch'
3 >>> len(s)
4 41
5 >>> t = zlib.compress(s)
6 >>> len(t)
7 37
8 >>> zlib.decompress(t)
9 'witch which has which witches wrist watch'
10 >>> zlib.crc32(s)
11 226805979

Performance Measurement
Some Python users develop a deep interest in knowing the relative performance of different
approaches to the same problem. Python provides a measurement tool that answers those questions
immediately.
For example, it may be tempting to use the tuple packing and unpacking feature instead of the
traditional approach to swapping arguments. The timeit module quickly demonstrates a modest
performance advantage:

1 >>> from timeit import Timer

2 >>> Timer('t=a; a=b; b=t', 'a=1; b=2').timeit()
3 0.57535828626024577
4 >>> Timer('a,b = b,a', 'a=1; b=2').timeit()
5 0.54962537085770791

In contrast to timeits fine level of granularity, the profile and pstats modules provide tools for
identifying time critical sections in larger blocks of code.

Quality Control
One approach for developing high quality software is to write tests for each function as it is
developed and to run those tests frequently during the development process.
The doctest module provides a tool for scanning a module and validating tests embedded in a
programs docstrings. Test construction is as simple as cutting-and-pasting a typical call along
with its results into the docstring. This improves the documentation by providing the user with an
example and it allows the doctest module to make sure the code remains true to the documentation:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 104

1 def average(values):
2 """Computes the arithmetic mean of a list of numbers.
3
4 >>> print average([20, 30, 70])
5 40.0
6 """
7 return sum(values, 0.0) / len(values)
8
9 import doctest
10 doctest.testmod() # automatically validate the embedded tests

The unittest module is not as effortless as the doctest module, but it allows a more comprehensive
set of tests to be maintained in a separate file:

1 import unittest
2
3 class TestStatisticalFunctions(unittest.TestCase):
4
5 def test_average(self):
6 self.assertEqual(average([20, 30, 70]), 40.0)
7 self.assertEqual(round(average([1, 5, 7]), 1), 4.3)
8 with self.assertRaises(ZeroDivisionError):
9 average([])
10 with self.assertRaises(TypeError):
11 average(20, 30, 70)
12
13 unittest.main() # Calling from the command line invokes all tests

Batteries Included
Python has a batteries included philosophy. This is best seen through the sophisticated and robust
capabilities of its larger packages. For example:

The xmlrpclib and SimpleXMLRPCServer modules make implementing remote procedure calls
into an almost trivial task. Despite the modules names, no direct knowledge or handling of
XML is needed.
The email package is a library for managing email messages, including MIME and other
RFC 2822-based message documents. Unlike smtplib and poplib which actually send and
receive messages, the email package has a complete toolset for building or decoding complex
message structures (including attachments) and for implementing internet encoding and
header protocols.
Brief Tour of the Standard Library 105

The xml.dom and xml.sax packages provide robust support for parsing this popular data
interchange format. Likewise, the csv module supports direct reads and writes in a common
database format. Together, these modules and packages greatly simplify data interchange
between Python applications and other tools.
Internationalization is supported by a number of modules including gettext, locale, and the
codecs package.
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library
Part II
This second tour covers more advanced modules that support professional programming needs.
These modules rarely occur in small scripts.

Output Formatting
The repr module provides a version of repr() customized for abbreviated displays of large or deeply
nested containers:

1 >>> import repr

2 >>> repr.repr(set('supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'))
3 "set(['a', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', ...])"

The pprint module offers more sophisticated control over printing both built-in and user defined
objects in a way that is readable by the interpreter. When the result is longer than one line, the
pretty printer adds line breaks and indentation to more clearly reveal data structure:

1 >>> import pprint

2 >>> t = [[[['black', 'cyan'], 'white', ['green', 'red']], [['magenta',
3 ... 'yellow'], 'blue']]]
4 ...
5 >>> pprint.pprint(t, width=30)
6 [[[['black', 'cyan'],
7 'white',
8 ['green', 'red']],
9 [['magenta', 'yellow'],
10 'blue']]]

The textwrap module formats paragraphs of text to fit a given screen width:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 107

1 >>> import textwrap

2 >>> doc = """The wrap() method is just like fill() except that it returns
3 ... a list of strings instead of one big string with newlines to separate
4 ... the wrapped lines."""
5 ...
6 >>> print textwrap.fill(doc, width=40)
7 The wrap() method is just like fill()
8 except that it returns a list of strings
9 instead of one big string with newlines
10 to separate the wrapped lines.

The locale module accesses a database of culture specific data formats. The grouping attribute of
locales format function provides a direct way of formatting numbers with group separators:

1 >>> import locale

2 >>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'English_United States.1252')
3 'English_United States.1252'
4 >>> conv = locale.localeconv() # get a mapping of conventions
5 >>> x = 1234567.8
6 >>> locale.format("%d", x, grouping=True)
7 '1,234,567'
8 >>> locale.format_string("%s%.*f", (conv['currency_symbol'],
9 ... conv['frac_digits'], x), grouping=True)
10 '$1,234,567.80'

Templating
The string module includes a versatile Template class with a simplified syntax suitable for
editing by end-users. This allows users to customize their applications without having to alter the
application.
The format uses placeholder names formed by $ with valid Python identifiers (alphanumeric
characters and underscores). Surrounding the placeholder with braces allows it to be followed by
more alphanumeric letters with no intervening spaces. Writing $$ creates a single escaped $:

1 >>> from string import Template

2 >>> t = Template('${village}folk send $$10 to $cause.')
3 >>> t.substitute(village='Nottingham', cause='the ditch fund')
4 'Nottinghamfolk send $10 to the ditch fund.'

The substitute() method raises a KeyError when a placeholder is not supplied in a dictionary or
a keyword argument. For mail-merge style applications, user supplied data may be incomplete and
the safe_substitute() method may be more appropriate it will leave placeholders unchanged if
data is missing:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 108

1 >>> t = Template('Return the $item to $owner.')

2 >>> d = dict(item='unladen swallow')
3 >>> t.substitute(d)
4 Traceback (most recent call last):
5 ...
6 KeyError: 'owner'
7 >>> t.safe_substitute(d)
8 'Return the unladen swallow to $owner.'

Template subclasses can specify a custom delimiter. For example, a batch renaming utility for a photo
browser may elect to use percent signs for placeholders such as the current date, image sequence
number, or file format:

1 >>> import time, os.path

2 >>> photofiles = ['img_1074.jpg', 'img_1076.jpg', 'img_1077.jpg']
3 >>> class BatchRename(Template):
4 ... delimiter = '%'
5 >>> fmt = raw_input('Enter rename style (%d-date %n-seqnum %f-format): ')
6 Enter rename style (%d-date %n-seqnum %f-format): Ashley_%n%f
7
8 >>> t = BatchRename(fmt)
9 >>> date = time.strftime('%d%b%y')
10 >>> for i, filename in enumerate(photofiles):
11 ... base, ext = os.path.splitext(filename)
12 ... newname = t.substitute(d=date, n=i, f=ext)
13 ... print '{0} --> {1}'.format(filename, newname)
14
15 img_1074.jpg --> Ashley_0.jpg
16 img_1076.jpg --> Ashley_1.jpg
17 img_1077.jpg --> Ashley_2.jpg

Another application for templating is separating program logic from the details of multiple output
formats. This makes it possible to substitute custom templates for XML files, plain text reports, and
HTML web reports.

Working with Binary Data Record Layouts

The struct module provides pack() and unpack() functions for working with variable length binary
record formats. The following example shows how to loop through header information in a ZIP file
without using the zipfile module. Pack codes "H" and "I" represent two and four byte unsigned
numbers respectively. The "<" indicates that they are standard size and in little-endian byte order:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 109

1 import struct
2
3 data = open('myfile.zip', 'rb').read()
4 start = 0
5 for i in range(3): # show the first 3 file headers
6 start += 14
7 fields = struct.unpack('<IIIHH', data[start:start+16])
8 crc32, comp_size, uncomp_size, filenamesize, extra_size = fields
9
10 start += 16
11 filename = data[start:start+filenamesize]
12 start += filenamesize
13 extra = data[start:start+extra_size]
14 print filename, hex(crc32), comp_size, uncomp_size
15
16 start += extra_size + comp_size # skip to the next header

Multi-threading
Threading is a technique for decoupling tasks which are not sequentially dependent. Threads can be
used to improve the responsiveness of applications that accept user input while other tasks run in
the background. A related use case is running I/O in parallel with computations in another thread.
The following code shows how the high level threading module can run tasks in background while
the main program continues to run:

1 import threading, zipfile

2
3 class AsyncZip(threading.Thread):
4 def __init__(self, infile, outfile):
5 threading.Thread.__init__(self)
6 self.infile = infile
7 self.outfile = outfile
8 def run(self):
9 f = zipfile.ZipFile(self.outfile, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
10 f.write(self.infile)
11 f.close()
12 print 'Finished background zip of: ', self.infile
13
14 background = AsyncZip('mydata.txt', 'myarchive.zip')
15 background.start()
16 print 'The main program continues to run in foreground.'
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 110

17
18 background.join() # Wait for the background task to finish
19 print 'Main program waited until background was done.'

The principal challenge of multi-threaded applications is coordinating threads that share data or
other resources. To that end, the threading module provides a number of synchronization primitives
including locks, events, condition variables, and semaphores.
While those tools are powerful, minor design errors can result in problems that are difficult to
reproduce. So, the preferred approach to task coordination is to concentrate all access to a resource in
a single thread and then use the Queue module to feed that thread with requests from other threads.
Applications using Queue.Queue objects for inter-thread communication and coordination are easier
to design, more readable, and more reliable.

Logging
The logging module offers a full featured and flexible logging system. At its simplest, log messages
are sent to a file or to sys.stderr:

1 import logging
2 logging.debug('Debugging information')
3 logging.info('Informational message')
4 logging.warning('Warning:config file %s not found', 'server.conf')
5 logging.error('Error occurred')
6 logging.critical('Critical error -- shutting down')

This produces the following output:

1 WARNING:root:Warning:config file server.conf not found

2 ERROR:root:Error occurred
3 CRITICAL:root:Critical error -- shutting down

By default, informational and debugging messages are suppressed and the output is sent to standard
error. Other output options include routing messages through email, datagrams, sockets, or to
an HTTP Server. New filters can select different routing based on message priority: DEBUG, INFO,
WARNING, ERROR, and CRITICAL.

The logging system can be configured directly from Python or can be loaded from a user editable
configuration file for customized logging without altering the application.
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 111

Weak References
Python does automatic memory management (reference counting for most objects and garbage
collection to eliminate cycles). The memory is freed shortly after the last reference to it has been
eliminated.
This approach works fine for most applications but occasionally there is a need to track objects
only as long as they are being used by something else. Unfortunately, just tracking them creates
a reference that makes them permanent. The weakref module provides tools for tracking objects
without creating a reference. When the object is no longer needed, it is automatically removed from
a weakref table and a callback is triggered for weakref objects. Typical applications include caching
objects that are expensive to create:

1 >>> import weakref, gc

2 >>> class A:
3 ... def __init__(self, value):
4 ... self.value = value
5 ... def __repr__(self):
6 ... return str(self.value)
7 ...
8 >>> a = A(10) # create a reference
9 >>> d = weakref.WeakValueDictionary()
10 >>> d['primary'] = a # does not create a reference
11 >>> d['primary'] # fetch the object if it is still alive
12 10
13 >>> del a # remove the one reference
14 >>> gc.collect() # run garbage collection right away
15 0
16 >>> d['primary'] # entry was automatically removed
17 Traceback (most recent call last):
18 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
19 d['primary'] # entry was automatically removed
20 File "C:/python26/lib/weakref.py", line 46, in __getitem__
21 o = self.data[key]()
22 KeyError: 'primary'

Tools for Working with Lists

Many data structure needs can be met with the built-in list type. However, sometimes there is a need
for alternative implementations with different performance trade-offs.
The array module provides an array() object that is like a list that stores only homogeneous data
and stores it more compactly. The following example shows an array of numbers stored as two byte
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 112

unsigned binary numbers (typecode "H") rather than the usual 16 bytes per entry for regular lists of
Python int objects:

1 >>> from array import array

2 >>> a = array('H', [4000, 10, 700, 22222])
3 >>> sum(a)
4 26932
5 >>> a[1:3]
6 array('H', [10, 700])

The collections module provides a deque() object that is like a list with faster appends and pops
from the left side but slower lookups in the middle. These objects are well suited for implementing
queues and breadth first tree searches:

1 >>> from collections import deque

2 >>> d = deque(["task1", "task2", "task3"])
3 >>> d.append("task4")
4 >>> print "Handling", d.popleft()
5 Handling task1

1 unsearched = deque([starting_node])
2 def breadth_first_search(unsearched):
3 node = unsearched.popleft()
4 for m in gen_moves(node):
5 if is_goal(m):
6 return m
7 unsearched.append(m)

In addition to alternative list implementations, the library also offers other tools such as the bisect
module with functions for manipulating sorted lists:

1 >>> import bisect

2 >>> scores = [(100, 'perl'), (200, 'tcl'), (400, 'lua'), (500, 'python')]
3 >>> bisect.insort(scores, (300, 'ruby'))
4 >>> scores
5 [(100, 'perl'), (200, 'tcl'), (300, 'ruby'), (400, 'lua'), (500, 'python')]

The heapq module provides functions for implementing heaps based on regular lists. The lowest
valued entry is always kept at position zero. This is useful for applications which repeatedly access
the smallest element but do not want to run a full list sort:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 113

1 >>> from heapq import heapify, heappop, heappush

2 >>> data = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 0]
3 >>> heapify(data) # rearrange the list into heap order
4 >>> heappush(data, -5) # add a new entry
5 >>> [heappop(data) for i in range(3)] # fetch the three smallest entries
6 [-5, 0, 1]

Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic

The decimal module offers a Decimal datatype for decimal floating point arithmetic. Compared to
the built-in float implementation of binary floating point, the class is especially helpful for

financial applications and other uses which require exact decimal representation,
control over precision,
control over rounding to meet legal or regulatory requirements,
tracking of significant decimal places, or
applications where the user expects the results to match calculations done by hand.

For example, calculating a 5% tax on a 70 cent phone charge gives different results in decimal floating
point and binary floating point. The difference becomes significant if the results are rounded to the
nearest cent:

1 >>> from decimal import *

2 >>> x = Decimal('0.70') * Decimal('1.05')
3 >>> x
4 Decimal('0.7350')
5 >>> x.quantize(Decimal('0.01')) # round to nearest cent
6 Decimal('0.74')
7 >>> round(.70 * 1.05, 2) # same calculation with floats
8 0.73

The Decimal result keeps a trailing zero, automatically inferring four place significance from
multiplicands with two place significance. Decimal reproduces mathematics as done by hand and
avoids issues that can arise when binary floating point cannot exactly represent decimal quantities.
Exact representation enables the Decimal class to perform modulo calculations and equality tests
that are unsuitable for binary floating point:
 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 114

1 >>> Decimal('1.00') % Decimal('.10')

2 Decimal('0.00')
3 >>> 1.00 % 0.10
4 0.09999999999999995
5
6 >>> sum([Decimal('0.1')]*10) == Decimal('1.0')
7 True
8 >>> sum([0.1]*10) == 1.0
9 False

The decimal module provides arithmetic with as much precision as needed:

1 >>> getcontext().prec = 36
2 >>> Decimal(1) / Decimal(7)
3 Decimal('0.142857142857142857142857142857142857')
What Now?
Reading this tutorial has probably reinforced your interest in using Python you should be eager
to apply Python to solving your real-world problems. Where should you go to learn more?
This tutorial is part of Pythons documentation set. Some other documents in the set are:

The Python Standard Library:

You should browse through this manual, which gives complete (though terse) reference
material about types, functions, and the modules in the standard library. The standard Python
distribution includes a lot of additional code. There are modules to read Unix mailboxes,
retrieve documents via HTTP, generate random numbers, parse command-line options, write
CGI programs, compress data, and many other tasks. Skimming through the Library Reference
will give you an idea of whats available.
Installing Python Modules explains how to install external modules written by other Python
users.
The Python Language Reference: A detailed explanation of Pythons syntax and semantics.
Its heavy reading, but is useful as a complete guide to the language itself.

More Python resources:

http://www.python.org: The major Python Web site. It contains code, documentation, and
pointers to Python-related pages around the Web. This Web site is mirrored in various places
around the world, such as Europe, Japan, and Australia; a mirror may be faster than the main
site, depending on your geographical location.
http://docs.python.org: Fast access to Pythons documentation.
http://pypi.python.org: The Python Package Index, previously also nicknamed the Cheese
Shop, is an index of user-created Python modules that are available for download. Once you
begin releasing code, you can register it here so that others can find it.
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/: The Python Cookbook is a sizable col-
lection of code examples, larger modules, and useful scripts. Particularly notable contributions
are collected in a book also titled Python Cookbook (OReilly & Associates, ISBN 0-596-00797-
3.)

For Python-related questions and problem reports, you can post to the newsgroup comp.lang.python,
or send them to the mailing list at python-list@python.org. The newsgroup and mailing list are
gatewayed, so messages posted to one will automatically be forwarded to the other. There are
around 120 postings a day (with peaks up to several hundred), asking (and answering) questions,
What Now? 116

suggesting new features, and announcing new modules. Before posting, be sure to check the
list of Frequently Asked Questions (also called the FAQ). Mailing list archives are available at
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/. The FAQ answers many of the questions that come up again and
again, and may already contain the solution for your problem.
Interactive Input Editing and History
Substitution
Some versions of the Python interpreter support editing of the current input line and history
substitution, similar to facilities found in the Korn shell and the GNU Bash shell. This is implemented
using the GNU Readline library, which supports Emacs-style and vi-style editing. This library has
its own documentation which I wont duplicate here; however, the basics are easily explained. The
interactive editing and history described here are optionally available in the Unix and Cygwin
versions of the interpreter.
This chapter does not document the editing facilities of Mark Hammonds PythonWin package or
the Tk-based environment, IDLE, distributed with Python. The command line history recall which
operates within DOS boxes on NT and some other DOS and Windows flavors is yet another beast.

Line Editing
If supported, input line editing is active whenever the interpreter prints a primary or secondary
prompt. The current line can be edited using the conventional Emacs control characters. The most
important of these are: C-A (Control-A) moves the cursor to the beginning of the line, C-E to the
end, C-B moves it one position to the left, C-F to the right. Backspace erases the character to the left
of the cursor, C-D the character to its right. C-K kills (erases) the rest of the line to the right of the
cursor, C-Y yanks back the last killed string. C-underscore undoes the last change you made; it can
be repeated for cumulative effect.

History Substitution
History substitution works as follows. All non-empty input lines issued are saved in a history buffer,
and when a new prompt is given you are positioned on a new line at the bottom of this buffer. C-P
moves one line up (back) in the history buffer, C-N moves one down. Any line in the history buffer
can be edited; an asterisk appears in front of the prompt to mark a line as modified. Pressing the
Return key passes the current line to the interpreter. C-R starts an incremental reverse search; C-S
starts a forward search.

Key Bindings
The key bindings and some other parameters of the Readline library can be customized by placing
commands in an initialization file called /.inputrc. Key bindings have the form
 Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution 118

1 key-name: function-name

or shell "string": function-name and options can be set with shell set option-name value
For example: shell # I prefer vi-style editing: set editing-mode vi
# Edit using a single line: set horizontal-scroll-mode On
# Rebind some keys: Meta-h: backward-kill-word C-u: universal-argument C-xC-r: re-read-init-
file Note that the default binding for Tab in Python is to insert a Tab character instead of Readlines
default filename completion function. If you insist, you can override this by putting

1 Tab: complete

in your /.inputrc. (Of course, this makes it harder to type indented continuation lines if youre
accustomed to using Tab for that purpose.)
Automatic completion of variable and module names is optionally available. To enable it in the
interpreters interactive mode, add the following to your startup file: [1]

1 import rlcompleter, readline

2 readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')

This binds the Tab key to the completion function, so hitting the Tab key twice suggests completions;
it looks at Python statement names, the current local variables, and the available module names.
For dotted expressions such as string.a, it will evaluate the expression up to the final '.' and
then suggest completions from the attributes of the resulting object. Note that this may execute
application-defined code if an object with a __getattr__() method is part of the expression.
A more capable startup file might look like this example. Note that this deletes the names it creates
once they are no longer needed; this is done since the startup file is executed in the same namespace
as the interactive commands, and removing the names avoids creating side effects in the interactive
environment. You may find it convenient to keep some of the imported modules, such as os, which
turn out to be needed in most sessions with the interpreter.

1 # Add auto-completion and a stored history file of commands to your Python

2 # interactive interpreter. Requires Python 2.0+, readline. Autocomplete is
3 # bound to the Esc key by default (you can change it - see readline docs).
4 #
5 # Store the file in ~/.pystartup, and set an environment variable to point
6 # to it: "export PYTHONSTARTUP=~/.pystartup" in bash.
7
8 import atexit
9 import os
10 import readline
 Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution 119

11 import rlcompleter
12
13 historyPath = os.path.expanduser("~/.pyhistory")
14
15 def save_history(historyPath=historyPath):
16 import readline
17 readline.write_history_file(historyPath)
18
19 if os.path.exists(historyPath):
20 readline.read_history_file(historyPath)
21
22 atexit.register(save_history)
23 del os, atexit, readline, rlcompleter, save_history, historyPath

Alternatives to the Interactive Interpreter

This facility is an enormous step forward compared to earlier versions of the interpreter; however,
some wishes are left: It would be nice if the proper indentation were suggested on continuation lines
(the parser knows if an indent token is required next). The completion mechanism might use the
interpreters symbol table. A command to check (or even suggest) matching parentheses, quotes,
etc., would also be useful.
One alternative enhanced interactive interpreter that has been around for quite some time is IPython,
which features tab completion, object exploration and advanced history management. It can also be
thoroughly customized and embedded into other applications. Another similar enhanced interactive
environment is bpython.
-[ Footnotes ]-
[1] Python will execute the contents of a file identified by the PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable
when you start an interactive interpreter. To customize Python even for non-interactive mode, see
The Customization Modules.
 Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and
Limitations
Floating-point numbers are represented in computer hardware as base 2 (binary) fractions. For
example, the decimal fraction

1 0.125

has value 1/10 + 2/100 + 5/1000, and in the same way the binary fraction

1 0.001

has value 0/2 + 0/4 + 1/8. These two fractions have identical values, the only real difference being
that the first is written in base 10 fractional notation, and the second in base 2.
Unfortunately, most decimal fractions cannot be represented exactly as binary fractions. A conse-
quence is that, in general, the decimal floating-point numbers you enter are only approximated by
the binary floating-point numbers actually stored in the machine.
The problem is easier to understand at first in base 10. Consider the fraction 1/3. You can approximate
that as a base 10 fraction:

1 0.3

or, better,

1 0.33

or, better,

1 0.333

and so on. No matter how many digits youre willing to write down, the result will never be exactly
1/3, but will be an increasingly better approximation of 1/3.
In the same way, no matter how many base 2 digits youre willing to use, the decimal value 0.1
cannot be represented exactly as a base 2 fraction. In base 2, 1/10 is the infinitely repeating fraction
 Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations 121

1 0.0001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011...

Stop at any finite number of bits, and you get an approximation.

On a typical machine running Python, there are 53 bits of precision available for a Python float, so
the value stored internally when you enter the decimal number 0.1 is the binary fraction

1 0.00011001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011010

which is close to, but not exactly equal to, 1/10.

Its easy to forget that the stored value is an approximation to the original decimal fraction,
because of the way that floats are displayed at the interpreter prompt. Python only prints a decimal
approximation to the true decimal value of the binary approximation stored by the machine. If
Python were to print the true decimal value of the binary approximation stored for 0.1, it would
have to display

1 >>> 0.1
2 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625

That is more digits than most people find useful, so Python keeps the number of digits manageable
by displaying a rounded value instead

1 >>> 0.1
2 0.1

Its important to realize that this is, in a real sense, an illusion: the value in the machine is not exactly
1/10, youre simply rounding the display of the true machine value. This fact becomes apparent as
soon as you try to do arithmetic with these values

1 >>> 0.1 + 0.2

2 0.30000000000000004

Note that this is in the very nature of binary floating-point: this is not a bug in Python, and it is
not a bug in your code either. Youll see the same kind of thing in all languages that support your
hardwares floating-point arithmetic (although some languages may not display the difference by
default, or in all output modes).
Other surprises follow from this one. For example, if you try to round the value 2.675 to two decimal
places, you get this
 Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations 122

1 >>> round(2.675, 2)
2 2.67

The documentation for the built-in round() function says that it rounds to the nearest value,
rounding ties away from zero. Since the decimal fraction 2.675 is exactly halfway between 2.67
and 2.68, you might expect the result here to be (a binary approximation to) 2.68. Its not, because
when the decimal string 2.675 is converted to a binary floating-point number, its again replaced
with a binary approximation, whose exact value is

1 2.67499999999999982236431605997495353221893310546875

Since this approximation is slightly closer to 2.67 than to 2.68, its rounded down.
If youre in a situation where you care which way your decimal halfway-cases are rounded, you
should consider using the decimal module. Incidentally, the decimal module also provides a nice
way to see the exact value thats stored in any particular Python float

1 >>> from decimal import Decimal

2 >>> Decimal(2.675)
3 Decimal('2.67499999999999982236431605997495353221893310546875')

Another consequence is that since 0.1 is not exactly 1/10, summing ten values of 0.1 may not yield
exactly 1.0, either:

1 >>> sum = 0.0

2 >>> for i in range(10):
3 ... sum += 0.1
4 ...
5 >>> sum
6 0.9999999999999999

Binary floating-point arithmetic holds many surprises like this. The problem with 0.1 is explained
in precise detail below, in the Representation Error section. See The Perils of Floating Point for a
more complete account of other common surprises.
As that says near the end, there are no easy answers. Still, dont be unduly wary of floating-point!
The errors in Python float operations are inherited from the floating-point hardware, and on most
machines are on the order of no more than 1 part in 2**53 per operation. Thats more than adequate
for most tasks, but you do need to keep in mind that its not decimal arithmetic, and that every float
operation can suffer a new rounding error.
While pathological cases do exist, for most casual use of floating-point arithmetic youll see the
result you expect in the end if you simply round the display of your final results to the number
of decimal digits you expect. For fine control over how a float is displayed see the str.format()
methods format specifiers in Format String Syntax.
 Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations 123

Representation Error
This section explains the 0.1 example in detail, and shows how you can perform an exact analysis
of cases like this yourself. Basic familiarity with binary floating-point representation is assumed.
Representation error refers to the fact that some (most, actually) decimal fractions cannot be
represented exactly as binary (base 2) fractions. This is the chief reason why Python (or Perl, C,
C++, Java, Fortran, and many others) often wont display the exact decimal number you expect:

1 >>> 0.1 + 0.2

2 0.30000000000000004

Why is that? 1/10 and 2/10 are not exactly representable as a binary fraction. Almost all machines
today (July 2010) use IEEE-754 floating point arithmetic, and almost all platforms map Python floats
to IEEE-754 double precision. 754 doubles contain 53 bits of precision, so on input the computer
strives to convert 0.1 to the closest fraction it can of the form J/2**N where J is an integer containing
exactly 53 bits. Rewriting

1 1 / 10 ~= J / (2**N)

as shell J = 2**N / 10
and recalling that J has exactly 53 bits (is >= 2**52 but <2**53), the best value for N is 56:

1 >>> 2**52
2 4503599627370496
3 >>> 2**53
4 9007199254740992
5 >>> 2**56/10
6 7205759403792793

That is, 56 is the only value for N that leaves J with exactly 53 bits. The best possible value for J is
then that quotient rounded:

1 >>> q, r = divmod(2**56, 10)

2 >>> r
3 6

Since the remainder is more than half of 10, the best approximation is obtained by rounding up:
 Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations 124

1 >>> q+1
2 7205759403792794

Therefore the best possible approximation to 1/10 in 754 double precision is that over 2**56, or

1 7205759403792794 / 72057594037927936

Note that since we rounded up, this is actually a little bit larger than 1/10; if we had not rounded up,
the quotient would have been a little bit smaller than 1/10. But in no case can it be exactly 1/10!
So the computer never sees 1/10: what it sees is the exact fraction given above, the best 754 double
approximation it can get:

1 >>> .1 * 2**56
2 7205759403792794.0

If we multiply that fraction by 10**30, we can see the (truncated) value of its 30 most significant
decimal digits:

1 >>> 7205759403792794 * 10**30 // 2**56

2 100000000000000005551115123125L

meaning that the exact number stored in the computer is approximately equal to the decimal value
0.100000000000000005551115123125. In versions prior to Python 2.7 and Python 3.1, Python rounded
this value to 17 significant digits, giving 0.10000000000000001. In current versions, Python displays
a value based on the shortest decimal fraction that rounds correctly back to the true binary value,
resulting simply in 0.1.
HISTORY AND LICENSE
History of the software
Python was created in the early 1990s by Guido van Rossum at Stichting Mathematisch Centrum
(CWI, see http://www.cwi.nl/) in the Netherlands as a successor of a language called ABC. Guido
remains Pythons principal author, although it includes many contributions from others.
In 1995, Guido continued his work on Python at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives
(CNRI, see http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/) in Reston, Virginia where he released several versions of
the software.
In May 2000, Guido and the Python core development team moved to BeOpen.com to form
the BeOpen PythonLabs team. In October of the same year, the PythonLabs team moved to
Digital Creations (now Zope Corporation; see http://www.zope.com/). In 2001, the Python Software
Foundation (PSF, see http://www.python.org/psf/) was formed, a non-profit organization created
specifically to own Python-related Intellectual Property. Zope Corporation is a sponsoring member
of the PSF.
All Python releases are Open Source (see http://www.opensource.org/ for the Open Source Defini-
tion). Historically, most, but not all, Python releases have also been GPL-compatible.
HISTORY AND LICENSE 126

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Python

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Copyright
Python and this documentation is:

Copyright 2001-2014 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2000 BeOpen.com. All rights reserved.
Copyright 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. All rights reserved.
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum. All rights reserved.

See http://docs.python.org/2/license.html for complete license and permissions information.