CONTENTS

1 Whetting Your Appetite 3

2 Using the Python Interpreter 5

2.1 Invoking the Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 An Informal Introduction to Python 9

3.1 Using Python as a Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2 First Steps Towards Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4 More Control Flow Tools 19

4.1 if Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2 for Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3 The range() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.5 pass Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.6 Defining Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.7 More on Defining Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.8 Intermezzo: Coding Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

5 Data Structures 31
5.1 More on Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.2 The del statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.3 Tuples and Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.4 Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.5 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.6 Looping Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.7 More on Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.8 Comparing Sequences and Other Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

6 Modules 43
6.1 More on Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.2 Standard Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.3 The dir() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.4 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

7 Input and Output 53

7.1 Fancier Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2 Reading and Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

8 Errors and Exceptions 61

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 8.1 Syntax Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
8.2 Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
8.3 Handling Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.4 Raising Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
8.5 User-defined Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.6 Defining Clean-up Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.7 Predefined Clean-up Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

9 Classes 69
9.1 A Word About Names and Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
9.2 Python Scopes and Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
9.3 A First Look at Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9.4 Random Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
9.5 Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.6 Private Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
9.7 Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
9.8 Iterators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
9.9 Generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
9.10 Generator Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

10 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 83

10.1 Operating System Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.2 File Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.3 Command Line Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.4 Error Output Redirection and Program Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.5 String Pattern Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.6 Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.7 Internet Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.8 Dates and Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.9 Data Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
10.10 Performance Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
10.11 Quality Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
10.12 Batteries Included . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

11 Brief Tour of the Standard Library — Part II 89

11.1 Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.2 Templating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.3 Working with Binary Data Record Layouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.4 Multi-threading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.5 Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.6 Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.7 Tools for Working with Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.8 Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

12 Virtual Environments and Packages 97

12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.2 Creating Virtual Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.3 Managing Packages with pip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

13 What Now? 101

14 Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution 103

14.1 Tab Completion and History Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
14.2 Alternatives to the Interactive Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

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 CHAPTER

ONE

WHETTING YOUR APPETITE

If you do much work on computers, eventually you find that there’s some task you’d 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 you’d like to write a small custom database,
or a specialized GUI application, or a simple game.
If you’re 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 you’re writing a test suite for such
a library and find writing the testing code a tedious task. Or maybe you’ve written a program that could
use an extension language, and you don’t 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 development
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;
• 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

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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 Python’s 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, you’ll 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.

4 Chapter 1. Whetting Your Appetite

 CHAPTER

TWO

USING THE PYTHON INTERPRETER

2.1 Invoking the Interpreter

The Python interpreter is usually installed as /usr/local/bin/python3.7 on those machines where it is
available; putting /usr/local/bin in your Unix shell’s search path makes it possible to start it by typing
the command:
python3.7

to the shell.1 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:\Program Files\Python37\, though
you can change this when you’re running the installer. To add this directory to your path, you can
type the following command into the command prompt in a DOS box:
set path=%path%;C:\Program Files\Python37\

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 doesn’t work, you can exit the interpreter by typing
the following command: quit().
The interpreter’s line-editing features include interactive editing, history substitution and code completion
on systems that support readline. 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 isn’t available; you’ll 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 shell’s -c option. Since Python statements often contain 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.
1 On Unix, the Python 3.x interpreter is by default not installed with the executable named python, so that it does not
conflict with a simultaneously installed Python 2.x executable.

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All command line options are described in using-on-general.

2.1.1 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 interpreter’s option processing but left in sys.argv for the command or module to handle.

2.1.2 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:

$ python3.7
Python 3.7 (default, Sep 16 2015, 09:25:04)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

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

>>> the_world_is_flat = True

>>> if the_world_is_flat:
... print("Be careful not to fall off!")
...
Be careful not to fall off!

For more on interactive mode, see Interactive Mode.

2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment

2.2.1 Source Code Encoding

By default, Python source files are treated as encoded in UTF-8. In that encoding, characters of most
languages in the world can be used simultaneously in string literals, identifiers and comments — although
the standard library only uses ASCII characters for identifiers, a convention that any portable code should
follow. 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.
To declare an encoding other than the default one, a special comment line should be added as the first line
of the file. The syntax is as follows:

# -*- coding: encoding -*-

where encoding is one of the valid codecs supported by Python.

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For example, to declare that Windows-1252 encoding is to be used, the first line of your source code file
should be:

# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-

One exception to the first line rule is when the source code starts with a UNIX “shebang” line. In this case,
the encoding declaration should be added as the second line of the file. For example:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-

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 CHAPTER

THREE

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!
text = "# This is not a comment because it's inside quotes."

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:

>>> 2 + 2
4
>>> 50 - 5*6
20
>>> (50 - 5*6) / 4
5.0
>>> 8 / 5 # division always returns a floating point number
1.6

The integer numbers (e.g. 2, 4, 20) have type int, the ones with a fractional part (e.g. 5.0, 1.6) have type
float. We will see more about numeric types later in the tutorial.

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Division (/) always returns a float. To do floor division and get an integer result (discarding any fractional
result) you can use the // operator; to calculate the remainder you can use %:

>>> 17 / 3 # classic division returns a float

5.666666666666667
>>>
>>> 17 // 3 # floor division discards the fractional part
5
>>> 17 % 3 # the % operator returns the remainder of the division
2
>>> 5 * 3 + 2 # result * divisor + remainder
17

With Python, it is possible to use the ** operator to calculate powers1 :

>>> 5 ** 2 # 5 squared
25
>>> 2 ** 7 # 2 to the power of 7
128

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

If a variable is not “defined” (assigned a value), trying to use it will give you an error:

>>> n # try to access an undefined variable

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:

>>> 4 * 3.75 - 1
14.0

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:

>>> 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.
1 Since ** has higher precedence than -, -3**2 will be interpreted as -(3**2) and thus result in -9. To avoid this and get

9, you can use (-3)**2.

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In addition to int and float, Python supports other types of numbers, such as Decimal and Fraction.
Python also has built-in support for complex numbers, and uses the j or J suffix to indicate the imaginary
part (e.g. 3+5j).

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 ("...") with the same result2 . \ can be used to escape
quotes:

>>> 'spam eggs' # single quotes

'spam eggs'
>>> 'doesn\'t' # use \' to escape the single quote...
"doesn't"
>>> "doesn't" # ...or use double quotes instead
"doesn't"
>>> '"Yes," they said.'
'"Yes," they said.'
>>> "\"Yes,\" they said."
'"Yes," they said.'
>>> '"Isn\'t," they said.'
'"Isn\'t," they said.'

In the interactive interpreter, the output string is enclosed in quotes and special characters are escaped with
backslashes. While this might sometimes look different from the input (the enclosing quotes could change),
the two strings are equivalent. The string is enclosed in double quotes if the string contains a single quote
and no double quotes, otherwise it is enclosed in single quotes. The print() function produces a more
readable output, by omitting the enclosing quotes and by printing escaped and special characters:

>>> '"Isn\'t," they said.'

'"Isn\'t," they said.'
>>> print('"Isn\'t," they said.')
"Isn't," they said.
>>> s = 'First line.\nSecond line.' # \n means newline
>>> s # without print(), \n is included in the output
'First line.\nSecond line.'
>>> print(s) # with print(), \n produces a new line
First line.
Second line.

If you don’t want characters prefaced by \ to be interpreted as special characters, you can use raw strings
by adding an r before the first quote:

>>> print('C:\some\name') # here \n means newline!

C:\some
ame
>>> print(r'C:\some\name') # note the r before the quote
C:\some\name

String literals can span multiple lines. One way is using triple-quotes: """...""" or '''...'''. End of
lines are automatically included in the string, but it’s possible to prevent this by adding a \ at the end of
the line. The following example:
2 Unlike other languages, special characters such as \n have the same meaning with both single ('...') and double ("...")

quotes. The only difference between the two is that within single quotes you don’t need to escape " (but you have to escape
\') and vice versa.

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

produces the following output (note that the initial newline is not included):

Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]

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

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

>>> # 3 times 'un', followed by 'ium'

>>> 3 * 'un' + 'ium'
'unununium'

Two or more string literals (i.e. the ones enclosed between quotes) next to each other are automatically
concatenated.

>>> 'Py' 'thon'

'Python'

This feature is particularly useful when you want to break long strings:

>>> text = ('Put several strings within parentheses '

... 'to have them joined together.')
>>> text
'Put several strings within parentheses to have them joined together.'

This only works with two literals though, not with variables or expressions:

>>> prefix = 'Py'

>>> prefix 'thon' # can't concatenate a variable and a string literal
...
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> ('un' * 3) 'ium'
...
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

If you want to concatenate variables or a variable and a literal, use +:

>>> prefix + 'thon'

'Python'

Strings can be indexed (subscripted), with the first character having index 0. There is no separate character
type; a character is simply a string of size one:

>>> word = 'Python'

>>> word[0] # character in position 0
'P'
>>> word[5] # character in position 5
'n'

Indices may also be negative numbers, to start counting from the right:

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>>> word[-1] # last character

'n'
>>> word[-2] # second-last character
'o'
>>> word[-6]
'P'

Note that since -0 is the same as 0, negative indices start from -1.
In addition to indexing, slicing is also supported. While indexing is used to obtain individual characters,
slicing allows you to obtain substring:

>>> word[0:2] # characters from position 0 (included) to 2 (excluded)

'Py'
>>> word[2:5] # characters from position 2 (included) to 5 (excluded)
'tho'

Note how the start is always included, and the end always excluded. This makes sure that s[:i] + s[i:]
is always equal to s:

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

'Python'
>>> word[:4] + word[4:]
'Python'

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] # character from the beginning to position 2 (excluded)

'Py'
>>> word[4:] # characters from position 4 (included) to the end
'on'
>>> word[-2:] # characters from the second-last (included) to the end
'on'

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:

+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| P | y | t | h | o | n |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1

The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0…6 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.
Attempting to use an index that is too large will result in an error:

>>> word[42] # the word only has 6 characters

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: string index out of range

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However, out of range slice indexes are handled gracefully when used for slicing:
>>> word[4:42]
'on'
>>> word[42:]
''

Python strings cannot be changed — they are immutable. Therefore, assigning to an indexed position in the
string results in an error:
>>> word[0] = 'J'
...
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment
>>> word[2:] = 'py'
...
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

If you need a different string, you should create a new one:

>>> 'J' + word[1:]
'Jython'
>>> word[:2] + 'py'
'Pypy'

The built-in function len() returns the length of a string:

>>> s = 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'
>>> len(s)
34

See also:
textseq Strings are examples of sequence types, and support the common operations supported by such
types.
string-methods Strings support a large number of methods for basic transformations and searching.
f-strings String literals that have embedded expressions.
formatstrings Information about string formatting with str.format().
old-string-formatting The old formatting operations invoked when strings are the left operand of the %
operator are described in more detail here.

3.1.3 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. Lists
might contain items of different types, but usually the items all have the same type.
>>> squares = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>> squares
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

Like strings (and all other built-in sequence type), lists can be indexed and sliced:
>>> squares[0] # indexing returns the item
1
>>> squares[-1]
(continues on next page)

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(continued from previous page)

25
>>> squares[-3:] # slicing returns a new list
[9, 16, 25]

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

>>> squares[:]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

Lists also support operations like concatenation:

>>> squares + [36, 49, 64, 81, 100]

[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]

Unlike strings, which are immutable, lists are a mutable type, i.e. it is possible to change their content:

>>> cubes = [1, 8, 27, 65, 125] # something's wrong here

>>> 4 ** 3 # the cube of 4 is 64, not 65!
64
>>> cubes[3] = 64 # replace the wrong value
>>> cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125]

You can also add new items at the end of the list, by using the append() method (we will see more about
methods later):

>>> cubes.append(216) # add the cube of 6

>>> cubes.append(7 ** 3) # and the cube of 7
>>> cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343]

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

>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']

>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']
>>> # replace some values
>>> letters[2:5] = ['C', 'D', 'E']
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'f', 'g']
>>> # now remove them
>>> letters[2:5] = []
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'f', 'g']
>>> # clear the list by replacing all the elements with an empty list
>>> letters[:] = []
>>> letters
[]

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

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

>>> len(letters)
4

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

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

>>> n = [1, 2, 3]
>>> x = [a, n]
>>> x
[['a', 'b', 'c'], [1, 2, 3]]
>>> x[0]
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> x[0][1]
'b'

3.2 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:

>>> # Fibonacci series:

... # the sum of two elements defines the next
... a, b = 0, 1
>>> while a < 10:
... print(a)
... a, b = b, a+b
...
0
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: a < 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. 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.
• The print() function writes the value of the argument(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 arguments, floating point quantities, and strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a
space is inserted between items, so you can format things nicely, like this:

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

The keyword argument end can be used to avoid the newline after the output, or end the output with
a different string:

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

3.2. First Steps Towards Programming 17

 CHAPTER

FOUR

MORE CONTROL FLOW TOOLS

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

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

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

Please enter an integer: 42
>>> if x < 0:
... x = 0
... print('Negative changed to zero')
... elif x == 0:
... print('Zero')
... elif x == 1:
... print('Single')
... else:
... print('More')
...
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.

4.2 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), Python’s 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):

>>> # Measure some strings:

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

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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:

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

With for w in words:, the example would attempt to create an infinite list, inserting defenestrate over
and over again.

4.3 The range() Function

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

>>> for i in range(5):

... print(i)
...
0
1
2
3
4

The given end point is never part of the generated sequence; range(10) generates 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’):

range(5, 10)
5, 6, 7, 8, 9

range(0, 10, 3)
0, 3, 6, 9

range(-10, -100, -30)

-10, -40, -70

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

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

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

In most such cases, however, it is convenient to use the enumerate() function, see Looping Techniques.
A strange thing happens if you just print a range:

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>>> print(range(10))
range(0, 10)

In many ways the object returned by range() behaves as if it is a list, but in fact it isn’t. It is an object
which returns the successive items of the desired sequence when you iterate over it, but it doesn’t really
make the list, thus saving space.
We say such an object is iterable, that is, suitable as a target for functions and constructs that expect
something from which they can obtain successive items until the supply is exhausted. We have seen that
the for statement is such an iterator. The function list() is another; it creates lists from iterables:

>>> list(range(5))
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]

Later we will see more functions that return iterables and take iterables as argument.

4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops

The break statement, like in C, breaks out of the innermost 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:

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

... for x in range(2, n):
... if n % x == 0:
... print(n, 'equals', x, '*', n//x)
... break
... else:
... # loop fell through without finding a factor
... print(n, 'is a prime number')
...
2 is a prime number
3 is a prime number
4 equals 2 * 2
5 is a prime number
6 equals 2 * 3
7 is a prime number
8 equals 2 * 4
9 equals 3 * 3

(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 statement’s else clause runs when no exception occurs, and a loop’s 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:

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

... if num % 2 == 0:
... print("Found an even number", num)
... continue
... print("Found a number", num)
Found an even number 2
(continues on next page)

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Found a number 3
Found an even number 4
Found a number 5
Found an even number 6
Found a number 7
Found an even number 8
Found a number 9

4.5 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:

>>> while True:

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

This is commonly used for creating minimal classes:

>>> class MyEmptyClass:

... pass
...

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:

>>> def initlog(*args):

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

4.6 Defining Functions

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

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

... """Print a Fibonacci series up to n."""
... a, b = 0, 1
... while a < n:
... print(a, end=' ')
... a, b = b, a+b
... print()
...
>>> # Now call the function we just defined:
... fib(2000)
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 function’s
documentation string, or docstring. (More about docstrings can be found in the section Documentation

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Strings.) There are tools which use docstrings to automatically produce online or printed documentation,
or to let the user interactively browse through code; it’s 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:

>>> fib
<function fib at 10042ed0>
>>> f = fib
>>> f(100)
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 doesn’t
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 (it’s 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():

>>> fib(0)
>>> print(fib(0))
None

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

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

... """Return a list containing the Fibonacci series up to n."""
... result = []
... a, b = 0, 1
... while a < n:
... result.append(a) # see below
... a, b = b, a+b
... return result
...
>>> f100 = fib2(100) # call it
>>> f100 # write the result
[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
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).

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expression), and methodname is the name of a method that is defined by the object’s 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.

4.7 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.

4.7.1 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:

def ask_ok(prompt, retries=4, reminder='Please try again!'):

while True:
ok = input(prompt)
if ok in ('y', 'ye', 'yes'):
return True
if ok in ('n', 'no', 'nop', 'nope'):
return False
retries = retries - 1
if retries < 0:
raise ValueError('invalid user response')
print(reminder)

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

i = 5

def f(arg=i):
print(arg)

i = 6
f()

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:

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def f(a, L=[]):

L.append(a)
return L

print(f(1))
print(f(2))
print(f(3))

This will print

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

If you don’t want the default to be shared between subsequent calls, you can write the function like this
instead:

def f(a, L=None):

if L is None:
L = []
L.append(a)
return L

4.7.2 Keyword Arguments

Functions can also be called using keyword arguments of the form kwarg=value. For instance, the following
function:

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

print("-- This parrot wouldn't", action, end=' ')
print("if you put", voltage, "volts through it.")
print("-- Lovely plumage, the", type)
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:

parrot(1000) # 1 positional argument

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

but all the following calls would be invalid:

parrot() # required argument missing

parrot(voltage=5.0, 'dead') # non-keyword argument after a keyword argument
parrot(110, voltage=220) # duplicate value for the same argument
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. Here’s an example
that fails due to this restriction:

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>>> def function(a):

... pass
...
>>> function(0, a=0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
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 typesmapping)
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:

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

print("-- Do you have any", kind, "?")
print("-- I'm sorry, we're all out of", kind)
for arg in arguments:
print(arg)
print("-" * 40)
for kw in keywords:
print(kw, ":", keywords[kw])

It could be called like this:

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

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

and of course it would print:

-- Do you have any Limburger ?

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

Note that the order in which the keyword arguments are printed is guaranteed to match the order in which
they were provided in the function call.

4.7.3 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.

def write_multiple_items(file, separator, *args):

file.write(separator.join(args))

Normally, these variadic arguments will be last in the list of formal parameters, because they scoop up
all remaining input arguments that are passed to the function. Any formal parameters which occur after

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the *args parameter are ‘keyword-only’ arguments, meaning that they can only be used as keywords rather
than positional arguments.

>>> def concat(*args, sep="/"):

... return sep.join(args)
...
>>> concat("earth", "mars", "venus")
'earth/mars/venus'
>>> concat("earth", "mars", "venus", sep=".")
'earth.mars.venus'

4.7.4 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:

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

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

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

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

... print("-- This parrot wouldn't", action, end=' ')
... print("if you put", voltage, "volts through it.", end=' ')
... print("E's", state, "!")
...
>>> d = {"voltage": "four million", "state": "bleedin' demised", "action": "VOOM"}
>>> parrot(**d)
-- This parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it. E's bleedin' demised !

4.7.5 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:

>>> def make_incrementor(n):

... return lambda x: x + n
...
>>> f = make_incrementor(42)
>>> f(0)
42
>>> f(1)
43

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

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

4.7.6 Documentation Strings

Here are some conventions about the content and formatting of documentation strings.
The first line should always be a short, concise summary of the object’s purpose. For brevity, it should
not explicitly state the object’s name or type, since these are available by other means (except if the name
happens to be a verb describing a function’s 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 object’s 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 can’t use the first line since it is generally adjacent to the string’s 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:
>>> def my_function():
... """Do nothing, but document it.
...
... No, really, it doesn't do anything.
... """
... pass
...
>>> print(my_function.__doc__)
Do nothing, but document it.

No, really, it doesn't do anything.

4.7.7 Function Annotations

Function annotations are completely optional metadata information about the types used by user-defined
functions (see PEP 3107 and PEP 484 for more information).
Annotations are stored in the __annotations__ attribute of the function as a dictionary and have no effect
on any other part of the function. Parameter annotations are defined by a colon after the parameter name,
followed by an expression evaluating to the value of the annotation. Return annotations are defined by a
literal ->, followed by an expression, between the parameter list and the colon denoting the end of the def
statement. The following example has a positional argument, a keyword argument, and the return value
annotated:
>>> def f(ham: str, eggs: str = 'eggs') -> str:
... print("Annotations:", f.__annotations__)
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... print("Arguments:", ham, eggs)
... return ham + ' and ' + eggs
...
>>> f('spam')
Annotations: {'ham': <class 'str'>, 'return': <class 'str'>, 'eggs': <class 'str'>}
Arguments: spam eggs
'spam and eggs'

4.8 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 don’t 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).
• Don’t use fancy encodings if your code is meant to be used in international environments. Python’s
default, UTF-8, or even plain ASCII work best in any case.
• Likewise, don’t use non-ASCII characters in identifiers if there is only the slightest chance people
speaking a different language will read or maintain the code.

4.8. Intermezzo: Coding Style 29

 CHAPTER

FIVE

DATA STRUCTURES

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

5.1 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(iterable)
Extend the list by appending all the items from the iterable. Equivalent to a[len(a):] = iterable.
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 equal to x. It raises a ValueError 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.clear()
Remove all items from the list. Equivalent to del a[:].
list.index(x [, start [, end ]])
Return zero-based index in the list of the first item whose value is equal to x. Raises a ValueError if
there is no such item.
The optional arguments start and end are interpreted as in the slice notation and are used to limit the
search to a particular subsequence of the list. The returned index is computed relative to the beginning
of the full sequence rather than the start argument.
list.count(x)
Return the number of times x appears in the list.
list.sort(key=None, reverse=False)
Sort the items of the list in place (the arguments can be used for sort customization, see sorted() for
their explanation).

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list.reverse()
Reverse the elements of the list in place.
list.copy()
Return a shallow copy of the list. Equivalent to a[:].
An example that uses most of the list methods:

>>> fruits = ['orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'banana', 'kiwi', 'apple', 'banana']

>>> fruits.count('apple')
2
>>> fruits.count('tangerine')
0
>>> fruits.index('banana')
3
>>> fruits.index('banana', 4) # Find next banana starting a position 4
6
>>> fruits.reverse()
>>> fruits
['banana', 'apple', 'kiwi', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange']
>>> fruits.append('grape')
>>> fruits
['banana', 'apple', 'kiwi', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange', 'grape']
>>> fruits.sort()
>>> fruits
['apple', 'apple', 'banana', 'banana', 'grape', 'kiwi', 'orange', 'pear']
>>> fruits.pop()
'pear'

You might have noticed that methods like insert, remove or sort that only modify the list have no return
value printed – they return the default None.1 This is a design principle for all mutable data structures in
Python.

5.1.1 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:

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

>>> stack.append(6)
>>> stack.append(7)
>>> stack
[3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
>>> stack.pop()
7
>>> stack
[3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> stack.pop()
6
>>> stack.pop()
5
>>> stack
[3, 4]

1 Other languages may return the mutated object, which allows method chaining, such as
d->insert("a")->remove("b")->sort();.

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5.1.2 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:

>>> from collections import deque

>>> queue = deque(["Eric", "John", "Michael"])
>>> queue.append("Terry") # Terry arrives
>>> queue.append("Graham") # Graham arrives
>>> queue.popleft() # The first to arrive now leaves
'Eric'
>>> queue.popleft() # The second to arrive now leaves
'John'
>>> queue # Remaining queue in order of arrival
deque(['Michael', 'Terry', 'Graham'])

5.1.3 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:

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

Note that this creates (or overwrites) a variable named x that still exists after the loop completes. We can
calculate the list of squares without any side effects using:

squares = list(map(lambda x: x**2, range(10)))

or, equivalently:

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

which is 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:

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

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

and it’s equivalent to:

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

List comprehensions can contain complex expressions and nested functions:

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

5.1.4 Nested List Comprehensions

The initial expression in a list comprehension can be any arbitrary expression, including another list com-
prehension.
Consider the following example of a 3x4 matrix implemented as a list of 3 lists of length 4:
>>> matrix = [
... [1, 2, 3, 4],
... [5, 6, 7, 8],
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... [9, 10, 11, 12],
... ]

The following list comprehension will transpose rows and columns:

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

[[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:

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

which, in turn, is the same as:

>>> transposed = []
>>> for i in range(4):
... # the following 3 lines implement the nested listcomp
... transposed_row = []
... for row in matrix:
... transposed_row.append(row[i])
... transposed.append(transposed_row)
...
>>> transposed
[[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:

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

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

5.2 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:

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

>>> del a[0]
>>> a
[1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]
>>> del a[2:4]
>>> a
[1, 66.25, 1234.5]
>>> del a[:]
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>>> a
[]

del can also be used to delete entire variables:

>>> del a

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

5.3 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 typesseq). 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:
>>> t = 12345, 54321, 'hello!'
>>> t[0]
12345
>>> t
(12345, 54321, 'hello!')
>>> # Tuples may be nested:
... u = t, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
>>> u
((12345, 54321, 'hello!'), (1, 2, 3, 4, 5))
>>> # Tuples are immutable:
... t[0] = 88888
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'tuple' object does not support item assignment
>>> # but they can contain mutable objects:
... v = ([1, 2, 3], [3, 2, 1])
>>> v
([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 a heterogeneous sequence of elements that are accessed via
unpacking (see later in this section) or indexing (or even by attribute in the case of 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:
>>> empty = ()
>>> singleton = 'hello', # <-- note trailing comma
>>> len(empty)
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0
>>> len(singleton)
1
>>> singleton
('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:

>>> x, y, z = t

This is called, appropriately enough, sequence unpacking and works for any sequence on the right-hand side.
Sequence unpacking requires that there are as many variables on the left side of the equals sign as there are
elements in the sequence. Note that multiple assignment is really just a combination of tuple packing and
sequence unpacking.

5.4 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:

>>> basket = {'apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana'}

>>> print(basket) # show that duplicates have been removed
{'orange', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple'}
>>> 'orange' in basket # fast membership testing
True
>>> 'crabgrass' in basket
False

>>> # Demonstrate set operations on unique letters from two words

...
>>> a = set('abracadabra')
>>> b = set('alacazam')
>>> a # unique letters in a
{'a', 'r', 'b', 'c', 'd'}
>>> a - b # letters in a but not in b
{'r', 'd', 'b'}
>>> a | b # letters in a or b or both
{'a', 'c', 'r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'}
>>> a & b # letters in both a and b
{'a', 'c'}
>>> a ^ b # letters in a or b but not both
{'r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'}

Similarly to list comprehensions, set comprehensions are also supported:

>>> a = {x for x in 'abracadabra' if x not in 'abc'}

>>> a
{'r', 'd'}

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5.5 Dictionaries

Another useful data type built into Python is the dictionary (see typesmapping). 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 can’t use
lists as keys, since lists can be modified in place using index assignments, slice assignments, or methods like
append() and extend().
It is best to think of a dictionary as a 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.
Performing list(d) on a dictionary returns a list of all the keys used in the dictionary, in insertion order
(if you want it sorted, just use sorted(d) instead). To check whether a single key is in the dictionary, use
the in keyword.
Here is a small example using a dictionary:

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

>>> tel['guido'] = 4127
>>> tel
{'jack': 4098, 'sape': 4139, 'guido': 4127}
>>> tel['jack']
4098
>>> del tel['sape']
>>> tel['irv'] = 4127
>>> tel
{'jack': 4098, 'guido': 4127, 'irv': 4127}
>>> list(tel)
['jack', 'guido', 'irv']
>>> sorted(tel)
['guido', 'irv', 'jack']
>>> 'guido' in tel
True
>>> 'jack' not in tel
False

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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5.6 Looping Techniques

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

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

>>> for k, v in knights.items():
... print(k, v)
...
gallahad the pure
robin the brave

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

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

... print(i, v)
...
0 tic
1 tac
2 toe

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

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

>>> answers = ['lancelot', 'the holy grail', 'blue']
>>> for q, a in zip(questions, answers):
... print('What is your {0}? It is {1}.'.format(q, a))
...
What is your name? It is lancelot.
What is your quest? It is the holy grail.
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.

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

... print(i)
...
9
7
5
3
1

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

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

>>> for f in sorted(set(basket)):
... print(f)
...
apple
banana
orange
pear

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It is sometimes tempting to change a list while you are looping over it; however, it is often simpler and safer
to create a new list instead.

>>> import math

>>> raw_data = [56.2, float('NaN'), 51.7, 55.3, 52.5, float('NaN'), 47.8]
>>> filtered_data = []
>>> for value in raw_data:
... if not math.isnan(value):
... filtered_data.append(value)
...
>>> filtered_data
[56.2, 51.7, 55.3, 52.5, 47.8]

5.7 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.
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,

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

>>> non_null = string1 or string2 or string3
>>> non_null
'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.

5.8 Comparing Sequences and Other Types

Sequence objects may be compared to other objects with the same sequence type. The comparison uses lex-
icographical 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 com-
parison 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)

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one. Lexicographical ordering for strings uses the Unicode code point number to order individual characters.
Some examples of comparisons between sequences of the same type:

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

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

Note that comparing objects of different types with < or > is legal provided that the objects have appropriate
comparison methods. For example, mixed numeric types are compared according to their numeric value,
so 0 equals 0.0, etc. Otherwise, rather than providing an arbitrary ordering, the interpreter will raise a
TypeError exception.

5.8. Comparing Sequences and Other Types 41

 CHAPTER

SIX

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 you’ve 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 module’s 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:

# Fibonacci numbers module

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

a, b = 0, 1
while a < n:
print(a, end=' ')
a, b = b, a+b
print()

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

result = []
a, b = 0, 1
while a < n:
result.append(a)
a, b = b, a+b
return result

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

>>> 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:

>>> fibo.fib(1000)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987
>>> fibo.fib2(100)
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[0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
>>> fibo.__name__
'fibo'

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

>>> fib = fibo.fib

>>> fib(500)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

6.1 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 user’s global variables. On the other hand, if you know what you
are doing you can touch a module’s 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
module’s global symbol table.
There is a variant of the import statement that imports names from a module directly into the importing
module’s symbol table. For example:

>>> from fibo import fib, fib2

>>> fib(500)
0 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:

>>> from fibo import *

>>> fib(500)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

This imports all names except those beginning with an underscore (_). In most cases Python programmers
do not use this facility since it introduces an unknown set of names into the interpreter, possibly hiding some
things you have already defined.
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.
If the module name is followed by as, then the name following as is bound directly to the imported module.

>>> import fibo as fib

>>> fib.fib(500)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

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 module’s global symbol table.

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This is effectively importing the module in the same way that import fibo will do, with the only difference
of it being available as fib.
It can also be used when utilising from with similar effects:

>>> from fibo import fib as fibonacci

>>> fibonacci(500)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

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 it’s just one module you want to test
interactively, use importlib.reload(), e.g. import importlib; importlib.reload(modulename).

6.1.1 Executing modules as scripts

When you run a Python module with

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:

if __name__ == "__main__":
import sys
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:

$ python fibo.py 50
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34

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

>>> import fibo

>>>

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).

6.1.2 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 when no file is specified).
• PYTHONPATH (a list of directory names, with the same syntax as the shell variable PATH).
• The installation-dependent default.

Note: On file systems which support symlinks, the directory containing the input script is calculated after
the symlink is followed. In other words the directory containing the symlink is not added to the module

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search path.

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.

6.1.3 “Compiled” Python files

To speed up loading modules, Python caches the compiled version of each module in the __pycache__
directory under the name module.version.pyc, where the version encodes the format of the compiled file;
it generally contains the Python version number. For example, in CPython release 3.3 the compiled version of
spam.py would be cached as __pycache__/spam.cpython-33.pyc. This naming convention allows compiled
modules from different releases and different versions of Python to coexist.
Python checks the modification date of the source against the compiled version to see if it’s out of date
and needs to be recompiled. This is a completely automatic process. Also, the compiled modules are
platform-independent, so the same library can be shared among systems with different architectures.
Python does not check the cache in two circumstances. First, it always recompiles and does not store the
result for the module that’s loaded directly from the command line. Second, it does not check the cache if
there is no source module. To support a non-source (compiled only) distribution, the compiled module must
be in the source directory, and there must not be a source module.
Some tips for experts:
• You can use the -O or -OO switches on the Python command to reduce the size of a compiled module.
The -O switch removes assert statements, the -OO switch removes both assert statements and __doc__
strings. Since some programs may rely on having these available, you should only use this option if
you know what you’re doing. “Optimized” modules have an opt- tag and are usually smaller. Future
releases may change the effects of optimization.
• A program doesn’t run any faster when it is read from a .pyc file than when it is read from a .py file;
the only thing that’s faster about .pyc files is the speed with which they are loaded.
• The module compileall can create .pyc files for all modules in a directory.
• There is more detail on this process, including a flow chart of the decisions, in PEP 3147.

6.2 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:

>>> import sys

>>> sys.ps1
'>>> '
>>> sys.ps2
'... '
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(continued from previous page)

>>> sys.ps1 = 'C> '
C> print('Yuck!')
Yuck!
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 interpreter’s 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:

>>> import sys

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

6.3 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:

>>> import fibo, sys

>>> dir(fibo)
['__name__', 'fib', 'fib2']
>>> dir(sys)
['__displayhook__', '__doc__', '__excepthook__', '__loader__', '__name__',
'__package__', '__stderr__', '__stdin__', '__stdout__',
'_clear_type_cache', '_current_frames', '_debugmallocstats', '_getframe',
'_home', '_mercurial', '_xoptions', 'abiflags', 'api_version', 'argv',
'base_exec_prefix', 'base_prefix', 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder',
'call_tracing', 'callstats', 'copyright', 'displayhook',
'dont_write_bytecode', 'exc_info', 'excepthook', 'exec_prefix',
'executable', 'exit', 'flags', 'float_info', 'float_repr_style',
'getcheckinterval', 'getdefaultencoding', 'getdlopenflags',
'getfilesystemencoding', 'getobjects', 'getprofile', 'getrecursionlimit',
'getrefcount', 'getsizeof', 'getswitchinterval', 'gettotalrefcount',
'gettrace', 'hash_info', 'hexversion', 'implementation', 'int_info',
'intern', 'maxsize', 'maxunicode', 'meta_path', 'modules', 'path',
'path_hooks', 'path_importer_cache', 'platform', 'prefix', 'ps1',
'setcheckinterval', 'setdlopenflags', 'setprofile', 'setrecursionlimit',
'setswitchinterval', 'settrace', 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout',
'thread_info', 'version', 'version_info', 'warnoptions']

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

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

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>>> import builtins

>>> dir(builtins)
['ArithmeticError', 'AssertionError', 'AttributeError', 'BaseException',
'BlockingIOError', 'BrokenPipeError', 'BufferError', 'BytesWarning',
'ChildProcessError', 'ConnectionAbortedError', 'ConnectionError',
'ConnectionRefusedError', 'ConnectionResetError', 'DeprecationWarning',
'EOFError', 'Ellipsis', 'EnvironmentError', 'Exception', 'False',
'FileExistsError', 'FileNotFoundError', 'FloatingPointError',
'FutureWarning', 'GeneratorExit', 'IOError', 'ImportError',
'ImportWarning', 'IndentationError', 'IndexError', 'InterruptedError',
'IsADirectoryError', 'KeyError', 'KeyboardInterrupt', 'LookupError',
'MemoryError', 'NameError', 'None', 'NotADirectoryError', 'NotImplemented',
'NotImplementedError', 'OSError', 'OverflowError',
'PendingDeprecationWarning', 'PermissionError', 'ProcessLookupError',
'ReferenceError', 'ResourceWarning', 'RuntimeError', 'RuntimeWarning',
'StopIteration', 'SyntaxError', 'SyntaxWarning', 'SystemError',
'SystemExit', 'TabError', 'TimeoutError', 'True', 'TypeError',
'UnboundLocalError', 'UnicodeDecodeError', 'UnicodeEncodeError',
'UnicodeError', 'UnicodeTranslateError', 'UnicodeWarning', 'UserWarning',
'ValueError', 'Warning', 'ZeroDivisionError', '_', '__build_class__',
'__debug__', '__doc__', '__import__', '__name__', '__package__', 'abs',
'all', 'any', 'ascii', 'bin', 'bool', 'bytearray', 'bytes', 'callable',
'chr', 'classmethod', 'compile', 'complex', 'copyright', 'credits',
'delattr', 'dict', 'dir', 'divmod', 'enumerate', 'eval', 'exec', 'exit',
'filter', 'float', 'format', 'frozenset', 'getattr', 'globals', 'hasattr',
'hash', 'help', 'hex', 'id', 'input', 'int', 'isinstance', 'issubclass',
'iter', 'len', 'license', 'list', 'locals', 'map', 'max', 'memoryview',
'min', 'next', 'object', 'oct', 'open', 'ord', 'pow', 'print', 'property',
'quit', 'range', 'repr', 'reversed', 'round', 'set', 'setattr', 'slice',
'sorted', 'staticmethod', 'str', 'sum', 'super', 'tuple', 'type', 'vars',
'zip']

6.4 Packages
Packages are a way of structuring Python’s 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 other’s global variable names, the
use of dotted module names saves the authors of multi-module packages like NumPy or Pillow from having
to worry about each other’s 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, 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. Here’s a
possible structure for your package (expressed in terms of a hierarchical filesystem):

sound/ Top-level package

__init__.py Initialize the sound package
formats/ Subpackage for file format conversions
__init__.py
wavread.py
wavwrite.py
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aiffread.py
aiffwrite.py
auread.py
auwrite.py
...
effects/ Subpackage for sound effects
__init__.py
echo.py
surround.py
reverse.py
...
filters/ Subpackage for filters
__init__.py
equalizer.py
vocoder.py
karaoke.py
...

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:

import sound.effects.echo

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

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

An alternative way of importing the submodule is:

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:

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

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

from sound.effects.echo import echofilter

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

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 can’t be a class or function or variable defined

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in the previous item.

6.4.1 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 package’s __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 don’t see a use for importing * from their package. For
example, the file sound/effects/__init__.py could contain the following code:

__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:

import sound.effects.echo
import sound.effects.surround
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 practice 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.

6.4.2 Intra-package References

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.
You can also write relative imports, with the from module import name form of import statement. These
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:

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from . import echo

from .. import formats
from ..filters import equalizer

Note that 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 must always
use absolute imports.

6.4.3 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 package’s __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.

6.4. Packages 51
 CHAPTER

SEVEN

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.

7.1 Fancier Output Formatting

So far we’ve encountered two ways of writing values: expression statements and the print() function.
(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 you’ll want more control over the formatting of your output than simply printing space-separated
values. There are several ways to format output.
• To use formatted string literals, begin a string with f or F before the opening quotation mark or triple
quotation mark. Inside this string, you can write a Python expression between { and } characters that
can refer to variables or literal values.

>>> year = 2016 ; event = 'Referendum'

>>> f'Results of the {year} {event}'
'Results of the 2016 Referendum'

• The str.format() method of strings requires more manual effort. You’ll still use { and } to mark
where a variable will be substituted and can provide detailed formatting directives, but you’ll also need
to provide the information to be formatted.

>>> yes_votes = 42_572_654 ; no_votes = 43_132_495

>>> percentage = yes_votes/(yes_votes+no_votes)
>>> '{:-9} YES votes {:2.2%}'.format(yes_votes, percentage)
' 42572654 YES votes 49.67%'

• Finally, you can do all the string handling yourself by using string slicing and concatenation operations
to create any layout you can imagine. The string type has some methods that perform useful operations
for padding strings to a given column width.
When you don’t need fancy output but just want a quick display of some variables for debugging purposes,
you can convert any value to a string with 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 don’t have a particular representation for human con-
sumption, 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, in particular, have two distinct
representations.
Some examples:

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>>> s = 'Hello, world.'

>>> str(s)
'Hello, world.'
>>> repr(s)
"'Hello, world.'"
>>> str(1/7)
'0.14285714285714285'
>>> x = 10 * 3.25
>>> y = 200 * 200
>>> s = 'The value of x is ' + repr(x) + ', and y is ' + repr(y) + '...'
>>> print(s)
The value of x is 32.5, and y is 40000...
>>> # The repr() of a string adds string quotes and backslashes:
... hello = 'hello, world\n'
>>> hellos = repr(hello)
>>> print(hellos)
'hello, world\n'
>>> # The argument to repr() may be any Python object:
... repr((x, y, ('spam', 'eggs')))
"(32.5, 40000, ('spam', 'eggs'))"

The string module contains a Template class that offers yet another way to substitute values into strings,
using placeholders like $x and replacing them with values from a dictionary, but offers much less control of
the formatting.

7.1.1 Formatted String Literals

Formatted string literals (also called f-strings for short) let you include the value of Python expressions inside
a string by prefixing the string with f or F and writing expressions as {expression}.
An optional format specifier can follow the expression. This allows greater control over how the value is
formatted. The following example rounds pi to three places after the decimal:

>>> import math

>>> print(f'The value of pi is approximately {math.pi:.3f}.')

Passing an integer after the ':' will cause that field to be a minimum number of characters wide. This is
useful for making columns line up.

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

>>> for name, phone in table.items():
... print(f'{name:10} ==> {phone:10d}')
...
Sjoerd ==> 4127
Jack ==> 4098
Dcab ==> 7678

Other modifiers can be used to convert the value before it is formatted. '!a' applies ascii(), '!s' applies
str(), and '!r' applies repr():

>>> animals = 'eels'

>>> print(f'My hovercraft is full of {animals}.')
My hovercraft is full of eels.
>>> print('My hovercraft is full of {animals !r}.')
My hovercraft is full of 'eels'.

For a reference on these format specifications, see the reference guide for the formatspec.

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7.1.2 The String format() Method

Basic usage of the str.format() method looks like this:
>>> print('We are the {} who say "{}!"'.format('knights', 'Ni'))
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 can be used to refer to the position of the object passed
into the str.format() method.
>>> print('{0} and {1}'.format('spam', 'eggs'))
spam and eggs
>>> print('{1} and {0}'.format('spam', 'eggs'))
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.
>>> print('This {food} is {adjective}.'.format(
... food='spam', adjective='absolutely horrible'))
This spam is absolutely horrible.

Positional and keyword arguments can be arbitrarily combined:

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

If you have a really long format string that you don’t 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
>>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 8637678}
>>> print('Jack: {0[Jack]:d}; Sjoerd: {0[Sjoerd]:d}; '
... 'Dcab: {0[Dcab]:d}'.format(table))
Jack: 4098; Sjoerd: 4127; Dcab: 8637678

This could also be done by passing the table as keyword arguments with the ‘**’ notation.
>>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 8637678}
>>> print('Jack: {Jack:d}; Sjoerd: {Sjoerd:d}; Dcab: {Dcab:d}'.format(**table))
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.
As an example, the following lines produce a tidily-aligned set of columns giving integers and their squares
and cubes:
>>> for x in range(1, 11):
... print('{0:2d} {1:3d} {2:4d}'.format(x, x*x, x*x*x))
...
1 1 1
2 4 8
3 9 27
4 16 64
5 25 125
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6 36 216
7 49 343
8 64 512
9 81 729
10 100 1000

For a complete overview of string formatting with str.format(), see formatstrings.

7.1.3 Manual String Formatting

Here’s the same table of squares and cubes, formatted manually:

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

... print(repr(x).rjust(2), repr(x*x).rjust(3), end=' ')
... # Note use of 'end' on previous line
... print(repr(x*x*x).rjust(4))
...
1 1 1
2 4 8
3 9 27
4 16 64
5 25 125
6 36 216
7 49 343
8 64 512
9 81 729
10 100 1000

(Note that the one space between each column was added by the way print() works: it always adds spaces
between its arguments.)
The str.rjust() method of string objects 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 don’t truncate it, but
return it unchanged; this will mess up your column lay-out but that’s 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:

>>> '12'.zfill(5)
'00012'
>>> '-3.14'.zfill(7)
'-003.14'
>>> '3.14159265359'.zfill(5)
'3.14159265359'

7.1.4 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:

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>>> import math

>>> print('The value of pi is approximately %5.3f.' % math.pi)
The value of pi is approximately 3.142.

More information can be found in the old-string-formatting section.

7.2 Reading and Writing Files

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

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

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 it’s omitted.
Normally, files are opened in text mode, that means, you read and write strings from and to the file, which are
encoded in a specific encoding. If encoding is not specified, the default is platform dependent (see open()).
'b' appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode: now the data is read and written in the form of
bytes objects. This mode should be used for all files that don’t contain text.
In text mode, the default when reading is to convert platform-specific line endings (\n on Unix, \r\n on
Windows) to just \n. When writing in text mode, the default is to convert occurrences of \n back to
platform-specific line endings. This behind-the-scenes modification to file data is fine for text files, but will
corrupt binary data like that in JPEG or EXE files. Be very careful to use binary mode when reading and
writing such files.
It is good practice to use the with keyword when dealing with file objects. The advantage is that the file is
properly closed after its suite finishes, even if an exception is raised at some point. Using with is also much
shorter than writing equivalent try-finally blocks:

>>> with open('workfile') as f:

... read_data = f.read()
>>> f.closed
True

If you’re not using the with keyword, then you should call f.close() to close the file and immediately
free up any system resources used by it. If you don’t explicitly close a file, Python’s garbage collector will
eventually destroy the object and close the open file for you, but the file may stay open for a while. Another
risk is that different Python implementations will do this clean-up at different times.
After a file object is closed, either by a with statement or by calling f.close(), attempts to use the file
object will automatically fail.

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

7.2.1 Methods of File Objects

The rest of the examples in this section will assume that a file object called f has already been created.

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To read a file’s contents, call f.read(size), which reads some quantity of data and returns it as a string (in
text mode) or bytes object (in binary mode). size is an optional numeric argument. When size is omitted
or negative, the entire contents of the file will be read and returned; it’s your problem if the file is twice as
large as your machine’s 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 ('').
>>> f.read()
'This is the entire file.\n'
>>> f.read()
''

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 doesn’t 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.
>>> f.readline()
'This is the first line of the file.\n'
>>> f.readline()
'Second line of the file\n'
>>> f.readline()
''

For reading lines from a file, you can loop over the file object. This is memory efficient, fast, and leads to
simple code:
>>> for line in f:
... print(line, end='')
...
This is the first line of the file.
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 the number of characters written.
>>> f.write('This is a test\n')
15

Other types of objects need to be converted – either to a string (in text mode) or a bytes object (in binary
mode) – before writing them:
>>> value = ('the answer', 42)
>>> s = str(value) # convert the tuple to string
>>> f.write(s)
18

f.tell() returns an integer giving the file object’s current position in the file represented as number of bytes
from the beginning of the file when in binary mode and an opaque number when in text mode.
To change the file object’s 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.
>>> f = open('workfile', 'rb+')
>>> f.write(b'0123456789abcdef')
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16
>>> f.seek(5) # Go to the 6th byte in the file
5
>>> f.read(1)
b'5'
>>> f.seek(-3, 2) # Go to the 3rd byte before the end
13
>>> f.read(1)
b'd'

In text files (those opened without a b in the mode string), only seeks relative to the beginning of the file are
allowed (the exception being seeking to the very file end with seek(0, 2)) and the only valid offset values
are those returned from the f.tell(), or zero. Any other offset value produces undefined behaviour.
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.

7.2.2 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 represen-
tations; 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:

>>> import json

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

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

json.dump(x, f)

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

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

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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.

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EIGHT

ERRORS AND EXCEPTIONS

Until now error messages haven’t 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.

8.1 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:

>>> while True print('Hello world')

File "<stdin>", line 1
while True print('Hello world')
^
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 function 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.

8.2 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 unconditionally 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:

>>> 10 * (1/0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ZeroDivisionError: division by zero
>>> 4 + spam*3
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'spam' is not defined
>>> '2' + 2
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: Can't convert 'int' object to str implicitly

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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.
bltin-exceptions lists the built-in exceptions and their meanings.

8.3 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.

>>> while True:

... try:
... x = int(input("Please enter a number: "))
... break
... except ValueError:
... print("Oops! That was no valid number. Try again...")
...

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 corresponding try
clause, not in other handlers of the same try statement. An except clause may name multiple exceptions as
a parenthesized tuple, for example:

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

... pass

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:

class B(Exception):
pass

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class C(B):
pass

class D(C):
pass

for cls in [B, C, D]:

try:
raise cls()
except D:
print("D")
except C:
print("C")
except B:
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.
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):

import sys

try:
f = open('myfile.txt')
s = f.readline()
i = int(s.strip())
except OSError as err:
print("OS error: {0}".format(err))
except ValueError:
print("Could not convert data to an integer.")
except:
print("Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0])
raise

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:

for arg in sys.argv[1:]:

try:
f = open(arg, 'r')
except OSError:
print('cannot open', arg)
else:
print(arg, 'has', len(f.readlines()), 'lines')
f.close()

The use of the else clause is better than adding additional code to the try clause because it avoids acciden-
tally catching an exception that wasn’t 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 exception’s argument. The
presence and type of the argument depend on the exception type.
The except clause may specify a variable after the exception name. 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

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instantiate an exception first before raising it and add any attributes to it as desired.
>>> try:
... raise Exception('spam', 'eggs')
... except Exception as inst:
... print(type(inst)) # the exception instance
... print(inst.args) # arguments stored in .args
... print(inst) # __str__ allows args to be printed directly,
... # but may be overridden in exception subclasses
... x, y = inst.args # unpack args
... print('x =', x)
... print('y =', y)
...
<class 'Exception'>
('spam', 'eggs')
('spam', 'eggs')
x = spam
y = eggs

If an exception has arguments, they are printed as the last part (‘detail’) of the message for unhandled
exceptions.
Exception handlers don’t 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:
>>> def this_fails():
... x = 1/0
...
>>> try:
... this_fails()
... except ZeroDivisionError as err:
... print('Handling run-time error:', err)
...
Handling run-time error: division by zero

8.4 Raising Exceptions

The raise statement allows the programmer to force a specified exception to occur. For example:
>>> raise NameError('HiThere')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
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 an exception class is passed, it will be implicitly
instantiated by calling its constructor with no arguments:
raise ValueError # shorthand for 'raise ValueError()'

If you need to determine whether an exception was raised but don’t intend to handle it, a simpler form of
the raise statement allows you to re-raise the exception:
>>> try:
... raise NameError('HiThere')
... except NameError:
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(continued from previous page)

... print('An exception flew by!')
... raise
...
An exception flew by!
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
NameError: HiThere

8.5 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 indi-
rectly.
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:

class Error(Exception):
"""Base class for exceptions in this module."""
pass

class InputError(Error):
"""Exception raised for errors in the input.

Attributes:
expression -- input expression in which the error occurred
message -- explanation of the error
"""

def __init__(self, expression, message):

self.expression = expression
self.message = message

class TransitionError(Error):
"""Raised when an operation attempts a state transition that's not
allowed.

Attributes:
previous -- state at beginning of transition
next -- attempted new state
message -- explanation of why the specific transition is not allowed
"""

def __init__(self, previous, next, message):

self.previous = previous
self.next = next
self.message = message

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.

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8.6 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:

>>> try:
... raise KeyboardInterrupt
... finally:
... print('Goodbye, world!')
...
Goodbye, world!
KeyboardInterrupt
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>

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 an 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:

>>> def divide(x, y):

... try:
... result = x / y
... except ZeroDivisionError:
... print("division by zero!")
... else:
... print("result is", result)
... finally:
... print("executing finally clause")
...
>>> divide(2, 1)
result is 2.0
executing finally clause
>>> divide(2, 0)
division by zero!
executing finally clause
>>> divide("2", "1")
executing finally clause
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "<stdin>", line 3, in divide
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.

8.7 Predefined Clean-up Actions

Some objects define standard clean-up actions to be undertaken when the object is no longer needed, regard-
less 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.

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

print(line, end="")

The problem with this code is that it leaves the file open for an indeterminate amount of time after this part
of 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.

with open("myfile.txt") as f:
for line in f:
print(line, end="")

After the statement is executed, the file f is always closed, even if a problem was encountered while pro-
cessing the lines. Objects which, like files, provide predefined clean-up actions will indicate this in their
documentation.

8.7. Predefined Clean-up Actions 67

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NINE

CLASSES

Classes provide a means of bundling data and functionality together. Creating a new class creates a new type
of object, allowing new instances of that type to be made. Each class instance can have attributes attached
to it for maintaining its state. Class instances can also have methods (defined by its class) for modifying its
state.
Compared with other programming languages, Python’s 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 all member functions are virtual. As in Modula-3, there are no shorthands for
referencing the object’s 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.)

9.1 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.

9.2 Python Scopes and Namespaces

Before introducing classes, I first have to tell you something about Python’s scope rules. Class definitions
play some neat tricks with namespaces, and you need to know how scopes and namespaces work to fully

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understand what’s going on. Incidentally, knowledge about this subject is useful for any advanced Python
programmer.
Let’s begin with some definitions.
A namespace is a mapping from names to objects. Most namespaces are currently implemented as Python
dictionaries, but that’s 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 module’s 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 containing 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 builtins.)
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.
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 module’s 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
module’s global names. To rebind variables found outside of the innermost scope, the nonlocal statement
can be used; if not declared nonlocal, those variables 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).
1 Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute called __dict__ which returns the dictionary used

to implement the module’s 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.

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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 module’s 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 module’s 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 don’t 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 and should
be rebound there; the nonlocal statement indicates that particular variables live in an enclosing scope and
should be rebound there.

9.2.1 Scopes and Namespaces Example

This is an example demonstrating how to reference the different scopes and namespaces, and how global
and nonlocal affect variable binding:

def scope_test():
def do_local():
spam = "local spam"

def do_nonlocal():
nonlocal spam
spam = "nonlocal spam"

def do_global():
global spam
spam = "global spam"

spam = "test spam"

do_local()
print("After local assignment:", spam)
do_nonlocal()
print("After nonlocal assignment:", spam)
do_global()
print("After global assignment:", spam)

scope_test()
print("In global scope:", spam)

The output of the example code is:

After local assignment: test spam

After nonlocal assignment: nonlocal spam
After global assignment: nonlocal spam
In global scope: global spam

Note how the local assignment (which is default) didn’t change scope_test’s binding of spam. The nonlocal
assignment changed scope_test’s binding of spam, and the global assignment changed the module-level
binding.

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You can also see that there was no previous binding for spam before the global assignment.

9.3 A First Look at Classes

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

9.3.1 Class Definition Syntax

The simplest form of class definition looks like this:

class ClassName:
<statement-1>
.
.
.
<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 — we’ll 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; we’ll 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).

9.3.2 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 class’s namespace when the class object was created. So,
if the class definition looked like this:

class MyClass:
"""A simple example class"""
i = 12345

def f(self):
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 assign-
ment. __doc__ is also a valid attribute, returning the docstring belonging to the class: "A simple example
class".

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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):

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:

def __init__(self):
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:

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,

>>> class Complex:

... def __init__(self, realpart, imagpart):
... self.r = realpart
... self.i = imagpart
...
>>> x = Complex(3.0, -4.5)
>>> x.r, x.i
(3.0, -4.5)

9.3.3 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:

x.counter = 1
while x.counter < 10:
x.counter = x.counter * 2
print(x.counter)
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, we’ll 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.

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9.3.4 Method Objects

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

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:

xf = x.f
while True:
print(xf())

will continue to print hello world until the end of time.

What exactly happens when a method is called? You may have noticed that x.f() was called without an
argument above, even though the function definition for f() specified an argument. What happened to the
argument? Surely Python raises an exception when a function that requires an argument is called without
any — even if the argument isn’t actually used…
Actually, you may have guessed the answer: the special thing about methods is that the instance object is
passed as the first argument of the function. In our example, the call x.f() is exactly equivalent to MyClass.
f(x). In general, calling a method with a list of n arguments is equivalent to calling the corresponding
function with an argument list that is created by inserting the method’s instance object before the first
argument.
If you still don’t understand how methods work, a look at the implementation can perhaps clarify matters.
When a non-data attribute of an instance is referenced, the instance’s class is searched. If the name denotes
a valid class attribute that is a function object, a method object is created by packing (pointers to) the
instance object and the function object just found together in an abstract object: this is the method object.
When the method object is called with an argument list, a new argument list is constructed from the instance
object and the argument list, and the function object is called with this new argument list.

9.3.5 Class and Instance Variables

Generally speaking, instance variables are for data unique to each instance and class variables are for at-
tributes and methods shared by all instances of the class:

class Dog:

kind = 'canine' # class variable shared by all instances

def __init__(self, name):

self.name = name # instance variable unique to each instance

>>> d = Dog('Fido')
>>> e = Dog('Buddy')
>>> d.kind # shared by all dogs
'canine'
>>> e.kind # shared by all dogs
'canine'
>>> d.name # unique to d
'Fido'
>>> e.name # unique to e
'Buddy'

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As discussed in A Word About Names and Objects, shared data can have possibly surprising effects with
involving mutable objects such as lists and dictionaries. For example, the tricks list in the following code
should not be used as a class variable because just a single list would be shared by all Dog instances:

class Dog:

tricks = [] # mistaken use of a class variable

def __init__(self, name):

self.name = name

def add_trick(self, trick):

self.tricks.append(trick)

>>> d = Dog('Fido')
>>> e = Dog('Buddy')
>>> d.add_trick('roll over')
>>> e.add_trick('play dead')
>>> d.tricks # unexpectedly shared by all dogs
['roll over', 'play dead']

Correct design of the class should use an instance variable instead:

class Dog:

def __init__(self, name):

self.name = name
self.tricks = [] # creates a new empty list for each dog

def add_trick(self, trick):

self.tricks.append(trick)

>>> d = Dog('Fido')
>>> e = Dog('Buddy')
>>> d.add_trick('roll over')
>>> e.add_trick('play dead')
>>> d.tricks
['roll over']
>>> e.tricks
['play dead']

9.4 Random Remarks

Data attributes override method attributes with the same name; to avoid accidental name conflicts, which
may cause hard-to-find bugs in large programs, it is wise to use some kind of convention that minimizes the
chance of conflicts. Possible conventions include capitalizing method names, prefixing data attribute names
with a small unique string (perhaps just an underscore), or using verbs for methods and nouns for data
attributes.
Data attributes may be referenced by methods as well as by ordinary users (“clients”) of an object. In
other words, classes are not usable to implement pure abstract data types. In fact, nothing in Python
makes it possible to enforce data hiding — it is all based upon convention. (On the other hand, the Python
implementation, written in C, can completely hide implementation details and control access to an object if
necessary; this can be used by extensions to Python written in C.)
Clients should use data attributes with care — clients may mess up invariants maintained by the methods

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by stamping on their data attributes. Note that clients may add data attributes of their own to an instance
object without affecting the validity of the methods, as long as name conflicts are avoided — again, a naming
convention can save a lot of headaches here.
There is no shorthand for referencing data attributes (or other methods!) from within methods. I find that
this actually increases the readability of methods: there is no chance of confusing local variables and instance
variables when glancing through a method.
Often, the first argument of a method is called self. This is nothing more than a convention: the name
self has absolutely no special meaning to Python. Note, however, that by not following the convention
your code may be less readable to other Python programmers, and it is also conceivable that a class browser
program might be written that relies upon such a convention.
Any function object that is a class attribute defines a method for instances of that class. It is not necessary
that the function definition is textually enclosed in the class definition: assigning a function object to a local
variable in the class is also ok. For example:

# Function defined outside the class

def f1(self, x, y):
return min(x, x+y)

class C:
f = f1

def g(self):
return 'hello world'

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:

class Bag:
def __init__(self):
self.data = []

def add(self, x):

self.data.append(x)

def addtwice(self, x):

self.add(x)
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 containing the method is itself defined in this
global scope, and in the next section we’ll 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__.

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9.5 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:

class DerivedClassName(BaseClassName):
<statement-1>
.
.
.
<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:

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.
There’s 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:
• Use isinstance() to check an instance’s 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(float, int) is False since float is not a subclass of int.

9.5.1 Multiple Inheritance

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

class DerivedClassName(Base1, Base2, Base3):

<statement-1>
.
.
.
<statement-N>

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For most purposes, in the simplest cases, you can think of the search for attributes inherited from a parent
class as depth-first, left-to-right, not searching twice in the same class where there is an overlap in the hier-
archy. Thus, if an attribute is not found in DerivedClassName, it is searched for in Base1, then (recursively)
in the base classes of Base1, and if it was not found there, it was searched for in Base2, and so on.
In fact, it is slightly more complex than that; 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.
Dynamic ordering is necessary because all cases of multiple inheritance exhibit one or more diamond re-
lationships (where at least one of the parent classes can be accessed through multiple paths from the
bottommost class). For example, all 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 order-
ing 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
https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.3/mro/.

9.6 Private Variables

“Private” instance variables that cannot be accessed except from inside an object don’t 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:
class Mapping:
def __init__(self, iterable):
self.items_list = []
self.__update(iterable)

def update(self, iterable):

for item in iterable:
self.items_list.append(item)

__update = update # private copy of original update() method

class MappingSubclass(Mapping):

def update(self, keys, values):

# provides new signature for update()
# but does not break __init__()
for item in zip(keys, values):
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.

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Notice that code passed to exec() or eval() 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.

9.7 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:

class Employee:
pass

john = Employee() # Create an empty employee record

# Fill the fields of the record

john.name = 'John Doe'
john.dept = 'computer lab'
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.__self__ is the instance object with the method m(), and
m.__func__ is the function object corresponding to the method.

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

for element in [1, 2, 3]:

print(element)
for element in (1, 2, 3):
print(element)
for key in {'one':1, 'two':2}:
print(key)
for char in "123":
print(char)
for line in open("myfile.txt"):
print(line, end='')

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 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. You can call the __next__() method using the next() built-in function; this example shows how
it all works:

>>> s = 'abc'
>>> it = iter(s)
>>> it
(continues on next page)

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(continued from previous page)

<iterator object at 0x00A1DB50>
>>> next(it)
'a'
>>> next(it)
'b'
>>> next(it)
'c'
>>> next(it)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
next(it)
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:

class Reverse:
"""Iterator for looping over a sequence backwards."""
def __init__(self, data):
self.data = data
self.index = len(data)

def __iter__(self):
return self

def __next__(self):
if self.index == 0:
raise StopIteration
self.index = self.index - 1
return self.data[self.index]

>>> rev = Reverse('spam')

>>> iter(rev)
<__main__.Reverse object at 0x00A1DB50>
>>> for char in rev:
... print(char)
...
m
a
p
s

9.9 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 on it, 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:

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

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

... print(char)
...
f
l
o
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 au-
tomatically raise StopIteration. In combination, these features make it easy to create iterators with no
more effort than writing a regular function.

9.10 Generator Expressions

Some simple generators can be coded succinctly as expressions using a syntax similar to list comprehensions
but with parentheses instead of square brackets. These expressions are designed for situations where the gen-
erator 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:

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

285

>>> xvec = [10, 20, 30]

>>> yvec = [7, 5, 3]
>>> sum(x*y for x,y in zip(xvec, yvec)) # dot product
260

>>> from math import pi, sin

>>> sine_table = {x: sin(x*pi/180) for x in range(0, 91)}

>>> unique_words = set(word for line in page for word in line.split())

>>> valedictorian = max((student.gpa, student.name) for student in graduates)

>>> data = 'golf'

>>> list(data[i] for i in range(len(data)-1, -1, -1))
['f', 'l', 'o', 'g']

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