3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.

1 documentation Page 1 of 14

3. 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:

# this is the first comment

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

3.1. Using Python as a Calculator

Let’s try some simple Python commands. Start the interpreter and wait for the primary
prompt, >>> . (It shouldn’t take long.)

3.1.1. 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:

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 2 of 14

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

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

>>> width = 20
>>> height = 5*9
>>> width * height
900

A value can be assigned to several variables simultaneously:

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

>>> x
0
>>> y
0
>>> z
0

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

>>> # try to access an undefined variable

... n
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
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:

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 3 of 14

>>> 3 * 3.75 / 1.5

7.5
>>> 7.0 / 2
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.

>>> 1j * 1J
(-1+0j)
>>> 1j * complex(0,1)
(-1+0j)
>>> 3+1j*3
(3+3j)
>>> (3+1j)*3
(9+3j)
>>> (1+2j)/(1+1j)
(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 .

>>> a=1.5+0.5j
>>> a.real
1.5
>>> a.imag
0.5

The conversion functions to floating point and integer ( float() , int() and long() )
don’t 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.

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

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 4 of 14

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:

>>> tax = 12.5 / 100

>>> price = 100.50
>>> price * tax
12.5625
>>> price + _
113.0625
>>> round(_, 2)
113.06

This variable should be treated as read-only by the user. Don’t 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.

3.1.2. 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:

>>> 'spam eggs'

'spam eggs'
>>> 'doesn\'t'
"doesn't"
>>> "doesn't"
"doesn't"
>>> '"Yes," he said.'
'"Yes," he said.'
>>> "\"Yes,\" he said."
'"Yes," he said.'
>>> '"Isn\'t," she said.'
'"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 it’s 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:

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 5 of 14

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

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

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:

This is a rather long string containing

several lines of text just as you would do in C.
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.

print """
Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]
-h Display this usage message
-H hostname Hostname to connect to
"""

produces the following output:

Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]

-h Display this usage message
-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:

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

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

print hello

would print:

This is a rather long string containing\n\

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

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

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 6 of 14

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 it’s enclosed in single
quotes. (The print statement, described later, can be used to write strings without
quotes or escapes.)

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

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

>>> word
'HelpA'
>>> '<' + word*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:

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

'string'
>>> 'str'.strip() + 'ing' # <- This is ok
'string'
>>> 'str'.strip() 'ing' # <- This is invalid
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
'str'.strip() 'ing'
^
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.

>>> word[4]
'A'
>>> word[0:2]
'He'
>>> word[2:4]
'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.

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

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

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 7 of 14

Unlike a C string, Python strings cannot be changed. Assigning to an indexed position

in the string results in an error:

>>> word[0] = 'x'

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

However, creating a new string with the combined content is easy and efficient:

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

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

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

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

'HelpA'
>>> word[:3] + word[3:]
'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.

>>> word[1:100]
'elpA'
>>> word[10:]
''
>>> word[2:1]
''

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

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

'A'
>>> word[-2] # The last-but-one character
'p'
>>> word[-2:] # The last two characters
'pA'
>>> word[:-2] # Everything except the last two characters
'Hel'

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 8 of 14

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

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

'H'

Out-of-range negative slice indices are truncated, but don’t try this for single-element
(non-slice) indices:

>>> word[-100:]
'HelpA'
>>> word[-10] # error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
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:

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

The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0...5 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:

>>> s = 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'
>>> len(s)
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.

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 9 of 14

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.

3.1.3. 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:

>>> u'Hello World !'

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:

>>> u'Hello\u0020World !'

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’.

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 10 of 14

>>> ur'Hello\u0020World !'

u'Hello World !'
>>> ur'Hello\\u0020World !'
u'Hello\\\\u0020World !'

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.

>>> u"abc"
u'abc'
>>> str(u"abc")
'abc'
>>> u"äöü"
u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'
>>> str(u"äöü")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 0

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.

>>> u"äöü".encode('utf-8')
'\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.

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

u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'

3.1.4. Lists

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 11 of 14

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.

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

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

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

>>> a[0]
'spam'
>>> a[3]
1234
>>> a[-2]
100
>>> a[1:-1]
['eggs', 100]
>>> a[:2] + ['bacon', 2*2]
['spam', 'eggs', 'bacon', 4]
>>> 3*a[:3] + ['Boo!']
['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:

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

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

list:

>>> a
['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]
>>> a[2] = a[2] + 23
>>> a
['spam', 'eggs', 123, 1234]

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

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 12 of 14

>>> # Replace some items:

... a[0:2] = [1, 12]
>>> a
[1, 12, 123, 1234]
>>> # Remove some:
... a[0:2] = []
>>> a
[123, 1234]
>>> # Insert some:
... a[1:1] = ['bletch', 'xyzzy']
>>> a
[123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234]
>>> # Insert (a copy of) itself at the beginning
>>> a[:0] = a
>>> a
[123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234, 123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234]
>>> # Clear the list: replace all items with an empty list
>>> a[:] = []
>>> a
[]

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

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

>>> len(a)
4

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

>>> q = [2, 3]
>>> p = [1, q, 4]
>>> len(p)
3
>>> p[1]
[2, 3]
>>> p[1][0]
2
>>> p[1].append('xtra') # See section 5.1
>>> p
[1, [2, 3, 'xtra'], 4]
>>> q
[2, 3, 'xtra']

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

3.2. First Steps Towards Programming

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 13 of 14

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:

>>> # Fibonacci series:

... # the sum of two elements defines the next
... a, b = 0, 1
>>> while b < 10:
... print b
... a, b = b, a+b
...
1
1
2
3
5
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 Python’s way of grouping

statements. Python does not (yet!) provide an intelligent input line editing facility,
so 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; most 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.

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

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011
3. An Informal Introduction to Python — Python v2.7.1 documentation Page 14 of 14

you can format things nicely, like this:

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

A trailing comma avoids the newline after the output:

>>> a, b = 0, 1
>>> while b < 1000:
... print b,
... a, b = b, a+b
...
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.

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html 25/05/2011