Python Scripting

Python Tutorial
Release 2.6.3
Guido van Rossum Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor
October 06, 2009
Python Software Foundation Email: docs@python.org
CONTENTS
1 2
Whetting Your Appetite Using the Python Interpreter 2.1 Invoking the Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Informal Introduction to Python 3.1 Using Python as a Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 First Steps Towards Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . More Control Flow Tools 4.1 if Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 for Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The range() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops 4.5 pass Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Dening Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 More on Dening Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Intermezzo: Coding Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Structures 5.1 More on Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The del statement . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Tuples and Sequences . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Looping Techniques . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 More on Conditions . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Comparing Sequences and Other Types Modules 6.1 More on Modules . . 6.2 Standard Modules . . 6.3 The dir() Function . 6.4 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3 5 5 6 9 9 17 19 19 19 20 20 21 21 23 27 29 29 33 33 34 35 36 37 37 39 40 42 42 43 47 47 50
Input and Output 7.1 Fancier Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Reading and Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Errors and Exceptions 8.1 Syntax Errors . . . . . . . . 8.2 Exceptions . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Handling Exceptions . . . . 8.4 Raising Exceptions . . . . . 8.5 User-dened Exceptions . . 8.6 Dening Clean-up Actions . 8.7 Predened Clean-up Actions
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53 53 53 54 56 56 57 58 61 61 61 63 65 66 68 68 68 69 70 71 73 73 73 74 74 74 74 75 75 76 76 76 77 79 79 80 81 81 82 82 83 84 87
Classes 9.1 A Word About Terminology . . . 9.2 Python Scopes and Name Spaces 9.3 A First Look at Classes . . . . . . 9.4 Random Remarks . . . . . . . . 9.5 Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.6 Private Variables . . . . . . . . . 9.7 Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . 9.8 Exceptions Are Classes Too . . . 9.9 Iterators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.10 Generators . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.11 Generator Expressions . . . . . .
10 Brief Tour of the Standard Library 10.1 Operating System Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 File Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Command Line Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 Error Output Redirection and Program Termination 10.5 String Pattern Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.7 Internet Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.8 Dates and Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.9 Data Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.10 Performance Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.11 Quality Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.12 Batteries Included . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Brief Tour of the Standard Library Part II 11.1 Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Templating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Working with Binary Data Record Layouts 11.4 Multi-threading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5 Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.6 Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.7 Tools for Working with Lists . . . . . . . . 11.8 Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic . . . . 12 What Now? 13 Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution 13.1 Line Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2 History Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.3 Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.4 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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89 89 89 89 91 93
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14.1 Representation Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Glossary
95 97
B About these documents 103 B.1 Contributors to the Python Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 C History and License C.1 History of the software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C.2 Terms and conditions for accessing or otherwise using Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C.3 Licenses and Acknowledgements for Incorporated Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D Copyright Index 105 105 106 108 117 119
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Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3
Release 2.6 Date October 06, 2009 Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language. It has efcient high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming. Pythons elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on most platforms. The Python interpreter and the extensive standard library are freely available in source or binary form for all major platforms from the Python Web site, http://www.python.org/, and may be freely distributed. The same site also contains distributions of and pointers to many free third party Python modules, programs and tools, and additional documentation. The Python interpreter is easily extended with new functions and data types implemented in C or C++ (or other languages callable from C). Python is also suitable as an extension language for customizable applications. This tutorial introduces the reader informally to the basic concepts and features of the Python language and system. It helps to have a Python interpreter handy for hands-on experience, but all examples are self-contained, so the tutorial can be read off-line as well. For a description of standard objects and modules, see the Python Library Reference document. The Python Reference Manual gives a more formal denition of the language. To write extensions in C or C++, read Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter and Python/C API Reference. There are also several books covering Python in depth. This tutorial does not attempt to be comprehensive and cover every single feature, or even every commonly used feature. Instead, it introduces many of Pythons most noteworthy features, and will give you a good idea of the languages avor and style. After reading it, you will be able to read and write Python modules and programs, and you will be ready to learn more about the various Python library modules described in the Python Library Reference. The Glossary is also worth going through.
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
ONE
WHETTING YOUR APPETITE

If you do much work on computers, eventually you nd that theres some task youd like to automate. For example, you may wish to perform a search-and-replace over a large number of text les, or rename and rearrange a bunch of photo les in a complicated way. Perhaps youd like to write a small custom database, or a specialized GUI application, or a simple game. If youre a professional software developer, you may have to work with several C/C++/Java libraries but nd the usual write/compile/test/re-compile cycle is too slow. Perhaps youre writing a test suite for such a library and nd writing the testing code a tedious task. Or maybe youve written a program that could use an extension language, and you dont want to design and implement a whole new language for your application. Python is just the language for you. You could write a Unix shell script or Windows batch les for some of these tasks, but shell scripts are best at moving around les 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 rst-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 les 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 exible 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 le 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-specic graphics library). Once you are really hooked, you can
link the Python interpreter into an application written in C and use it as an extension or command language for that application. By the way, the language is named after the BBC show Monty Pythons Flying Circus and has nothing to do with reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only allowed, it is encouraged! Now that you are all excited about Python, youll want to examine it in some more detail. Since the best way to learn a language is to use it, the tutorial invites you to play with the Python interpreter as you read. In the next chapter, the mechanics of using the interpreter are explained. This is rather mundane information, but essential for trying out the examples shown later. The rest of the tutorial introduces various features of the Python language and system through examples, beginning with simple expressions, statements and data types, through functions and modules, and nally touching upon advanced concepts like exceptions and user-dened classes.
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/python on those machines where it is available; putting /usr/local/bin in your Unix shells search path makes it possible to start it by typing the command python to the shell. Since the choice of the directory where the interpreter lives is an installation option, other places are possible; check with your local Python guru or system administrator. (E.g., /usr/local/python is a popular alternative location.) On Windows machines, the Python installation is usually placed in C:\Python26, though you can change this when youre running the installer. To add this directory to your path, you can type the following command into the command prompt in a DOS box: set path=%path%;C:\python26 Typing an end-of-le character (Control-D on Unix, Control-Z on Windows) at the primary prompt causes the interpreter to exit with a zero exit status. If that doesnt work, you can exit the interpreter by typing the following commands: import sys; sys.exit(). The interpreters line-editing features usually arent very sophisticated. On Unix, whoever installed the interpreter may have enabled support for the GNU readline library, which adds more elaborate interactive editing and history features. Perhaps the quickest check to see whether command line editing is supported is typing Control-P to the rst Python prompt you get. If it beeps, you have command line editing; see Appendix Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution for an introduction to the keys. If nothing appears to happen, or if ^P is echoed, command line editing isnt available; youll only be able to use backspace to remove characters from the current line. The interpreter operates somewhat like the Unix shell: when called with standard input connected to a tty device, it reads and executes commands interactively; when called with a le name argument or with a le as standard input, it reads and executes a script from that le. A second way of starting the interpreter is python -c command [arg] ..., which executes the statement(s) in command, analogous to the shells -c option. Since Python statements often contain 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 le for module as if you had spelled out its full name on the command line. Note that there is a difference between python file and python <file. In the latter case, input requests from the program, such as calls to input() and raw_input(), are satised from le. Since this le has already been read until the end by the parser before the program starts executing, the program will encounter end-of-le immediately. In the former case (which is usually what you want) they are satised from whatever le or device is connected to standard input of the Python interpreter.
When a script le 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. (This does not work if the script is read from standard input, for the same reason as explained in the previous paragraph.)
2.1.1 Argument Passing

When known to the interpreter, the script name and additional arguments thereafter are passed to the script in the variable sys.argv, which is a list of strings. Its length is at least one; when no script and no arguments are given, sys.argv[0] is an empty string. When the script name is given as - (meaning standard input), sys.argv[0] is set to -. When -c command is used, sys.argv[0] is set to -c. When -m module is used, sys.argv[0] is set to the full name of the located module. Options found after -c command or -m module are not consumed by the Python interpreters option processing but left in sys.argv for the command or module to handle.
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 rst prompt: python Python 2.6 (#1, Feb 28 2007, 00:02:06) 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 = 1 >>> if the_world_is_flat: ... print "Be careful not to fall off!" ... Be careful not to fall off!
2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment

2.2.1 Error Handling
When an error occurs, the interpreter prints an error message and a stack trace. In interactive mode, it then returns to the primary prompt; when input came from a le, it exits with a nonzero exit status after printing the stack trace. (Exceptions handled by an except clause in a try statement are not errors in this context.) Some errors are unconditionally fatal and cause an exit with a nonzero exit; this applies to internal inconsistencies and some cases of running out of memory. All error messages are written to the standard error stream; normal output from executed commands is written to standard output. Typing the interrupt character (usually Control-C or DEL) to the primary or secondary prompt cancels the input and returns to the primary prompt. 1 Typing an interrupt while a command is executing raises the KeyboardInterrupt exception, which may be handled by a try statement.
1
A problem with the GNU Readline package may prevent this.
Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter
2.2.2 Executable Python Scripts

On BSDish Unix systems, Python scripts can be made directly executable, like shell scripts, by putting the line #! /usr/bin/env python (assuming that the interpreter is on the users PATH) at the beginning of the script and giving the le an executable mode. The #! must be the rst two characters of the le. On some platforms, this rst line must end with a Unix-style line ending (\n), not a Windows (\r\n) line ending. Note that the hash, or pound, character, #, is used to start a comment in Python. The script can be given an executable mode, or permission, using the chmod command: $ chmod +x myscript.py On Windows systems, there is no notion of an executable mode. The Python installer automatically associates .py les with python.exe so that a double-click on a Python le will run it as a script. The extension can also be .pyw, in that case, the console window that normally appears is suppressed.
2.2.3 Source Code Encoding

It is possible to use encodings different than ASCII in Python source les. The best way to do it is to put one more special comment line right after the #! line to dene the source le encoding: # -*- coding: encoding -*With that declaration, all characters in the source le will be treated as having the encoding encoding, and it will be possible to directly write Unicode string literals in the selected encoding. The list of possible encodings can be found in the Python Library Reference, in the section on codecs. For example, to write Unicode literals including the Euro currency symbol, the ISO-8859-15 encoding can be used, with the Euro symbol having the ordinal value 164. This script will print the value 8364 (the Unicode codepoint corresponding to the Euro symbol) and then exit: # -*- coding: iso-8859-15 -*currency = u" " print ord(currency) If your editor supports saving les as UTF-8 with a UTF-8 byte order mark (aka BOM), you can use that instead of an encoding declaration. IDLE supports this capability if Options/General/Default Source Encoding/UTF-8 is set. Notice that this signature is not understood in older Python releases (2.2 and earlier), and also not understood by the operating system for script les with #! lines (only used on Unix systems). By using UTF-8 (either through the signature or an encoding declaration), characters of most languages in the world can be used simultaneously in string literals and comments. Using non-ASCII characters in identiers is not supported. To display all these characters properly, your editor must recognize that the le is UTF-8, and it must use a font that supports all the characters in the le.
2.2.4 The Interactive Startup File

When you use Python interactively, it is frequently handy to have some standard commands executed every time the interpreter is started. You can do this by setting an environment variable named PYTHONSTARTUP to the name of a le containing your start-up commands. This is similar to the .profile feature of the Unix shells. This le is only read in interactive sessions, not when Python reads commands from a script, and not when /dev/tty is given as the explicit source of commands (which otherwise behaves like an interactive session). It is executed in
2.2. The Interpreter and Its Environment
the same namespace where interactive commands are executed, so that objects that it denes or imports can be used without qualication in the interactive session. You can also change the prompts sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 in this le. If you want to read an additional start-up le from the current directory, you can program this in the global start-up le using code like if os.path.isfile(.pythonrc.py): execfile(.pythonrc.py). If you want to use the startup le in a script, you must do this explicitly in the script: import os filename = os.environ.get(PYTHONSTARTUP) if filename and os.path.isfile(filename): execfile(filename)
Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter
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! STRING = "# This is not a comment."
3.1 Using Python as a Calculator

Lets try some simple Python commands. Start the interpreter and wait for the primary prompt, >>>. (It shouldnt 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: >>> 4 >>> ... 4 >>> 4 >>> 2+2 # This is a comment 2+2 2+2 # and a comment on the same line as code
(50-5*6)/4
5 >>> # Integer division returns the floor: ... 7/3 2 >>> 7/-3 -3 The equal sign (=) is used to assign a value to a variable. Afterwards, no result is displayed before the next interactive prompt: >>> width = 20 >>> height = 5*9 >>> width * height 900 A value can be assigned to several variables simultaneously: >>> >>> 0 >>> 0 >>> 0 x = y = z = 0 x y z # Zero x, y and z
Variables must be dened (assigned a value) before they can be used, or an error will occur: >>> # try to access an ... n Traceback (most recent File "<stdin>", line NameError: name n is undefined variable call last): 1, in <module> not defined
There is full support for oating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer operand to oating point: >>> 3 * 3.75 / 1.5 7.5 >>> 7.0 / 2 3.5 Complex numbers are also supported; imaginary numbers are written with a sufx of j or J. Complex numbers with a nonzero real component are written as (real+imagj), or can be created with the complex(real, imag) function. >>> 1j * 1J (-1+0j) >>> 1j * complex(0,1) (-1+0j) >>> 3+1j*3 (3+3j) >>> (3+1j)*3 (9+3j) >>> (1+2j)/(1+1j) (1.5+0.5j) Complex numbers are always represented as two oating point numbers, the real and imaginary part. To extract these parts from a complex number z, use z.real and z.imag.
10
Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python
>>> a=1.5+0.5j >>> a.real 1.5 >>> a.imag 0.5 The conversion functions to oating point and integer (float(), int() and long()) dont work for complex numbers there is no one correct way to convert a complex number to a real number. Use abs(z) to get its magnitude (as a oat) or z.real to get its real part. >>> a=3.0+4.0j >>> float(a) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: cant convert complex to float; use abs(z) >>> a.real 3.0 >>> a.imag 4.0 >>> abs(a) # sqrt(a.real**2 + a.imag**2) 5.0 >>> 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. Dont explicitly assign a value to it you would create an independent local variable with the same name masking the built-in variable with its magic behavior.
3.1.2 Strings
Besides numbers, Python can also manipulate strings, which can be expressed in several ways. They can be enclosed in single quotes or double quotes: >>> spam eggs spam eggs >>> doesn\t "doesnt" >>> "doesnt" "doesnt" >>> "Yes," he said. "Yes," he said. >>> "\"Yes,\" he said." "Yes," he said. >>> "Isn\t," she said. "Isn\t," she said.
3.1. Using Python as a Calculator
11
String literals can span multiple lines in several ways. Continuation lines can be used, with a backslash as the last character on the line indicating that the next line is a logical continuation of the line: hello = "This is a rather long string containing\n\ several lines of text just as you would do in C.\n\ Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is\ significant." print hello Note that newlines still need to be embedded in the string using \n; the newline following the trailing backslash is discarded. This example would print the following: This is a rather long string containing several lines of text just as you would do in C. Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is significant. Or, strings can be surrounded in a pair of matching triple-quotes: """ or . End of lines do not need to be escaped when using triple-quotes, but they will be included in the string. print """ Usage: thingy [OPTIONS] -h -H hostname """ produces the following output: Usage: thingy [OPTIONS] -h -H hostname Display this usage message Hostname to connect to
Display this usage message Hostname to connect to
If we make the string literal a raw string, \n sequences are not converted to newlines, but the backslash at the end of the line, and the newline character in the source, are both included in the string as data. Thus, the example: hello = r"This is a rather long string containing\n\ several lines of text much as you would do in C." print hello would print: This is a rather long string containing\n\ several lines of text much as you would do in C. The interpreter prints the result of string operations in the same way as they are typed for input: inside quotes, and with quotes and other funny characters escaped by backslashes, to show the precise value. The string is enclosed in double quotes if the string contains a single quote and no double quotes, else its enclosed in single quotes. (The print statement, described later, can be used to write strings without quotes or escapes.) Strings can be concatenated (glued together) with the + operator, and repeated with *: >>> word = Help + A >>> word HelpA >>> < + word*5 + > <HelpAHelpAHelpAHelpAHelpA> Two string literals next to each other are automatically concatenated; the rst line above could also have been written word = Help A; this only works with two literals, not with arbitrary string expressions:
12
>>> str ing string >>> str.strip() string >>> str.strip() File "<stdin>", str.strip()
# + ing # <-
<-
This is ok
This is ok This is invalid
ing # <line 1, in ? ing ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Strings can be subscripted (indexed); like in C, the rst character of a string has subscript (index) 0. There is no separate character type; a character is simply a string of size one. Like in Icon, substrings can be specied with the slice notation: two indices separated by a colon. >>> word[4] A >>> word[0:2] He >>> word[2:4] lp Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted rst index defaults to zero, an omitted second index defaults to the size of the string being sliced. >>> word[:2] He >>> word[2:] lpA # The first two characters # Everything except the first two characters
Unlike a C string, Python strings cannot be changed. Assigning to an indexed position in the string results in an error: >>> word[0] = x Traceback (most recent File "<stdin>", line TypeError: object does >>> word[:1] = Splat Traceback (most recent File "<stdin>", line TypeError: object does call last): 1, in ? not support item assignment call last): 1, in ? not support slice assignment
However, creating a new string with the combined content is easy and efcient: >>> x + word[1:] xelpA >>> Splat + word[4] SplatA Heres a useful invariant of slice operations: s[:i] + s[i:] equals s. >>> word[:2] + word[2:] HelpA >>> word[:3] + word[3:] HelpA Degenerate slice indices are handled gracefully: an index that is too large is replaced by the string size, an upper bound smaller than the lower bound returns an empty string. >>> word[1:100] elpA >>> word[10:]
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>>> word[2:1] Indices may be negative numbers, to start counting from the right. For example: >>> word[-1] A >>> word[-2] p >>> word[-2:] pA >>> word[:-2] Hel # The last character # The last-but-one character # The last two characters # Everything except the last two characters
But note that -0 is really the same as 0, so it does not count from the right! >>> word[-0] H # (since -0 equals 0)
Out-of-range negative slice indices are truncated, but dont try this for single-element (non-slice) indices: >>> word[-100:] HelpA >>> word[-10] # error Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? IndexError: string index out of range One way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters, with the left edge of the rst character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n characters has index n, for example: +---+---+---+---+---+ | H | e | l | p | A | +---+---+---+---+---+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 The rst row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0...5 in the string; the second row gives the corresponding negative indices. The slice from i to j consists of all characters between the edges labeled i and j, respectively. For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices, if both are within bounds. For example, the length of word[1:3] is 2. The built-in function len() returns the length of a string: >>> s = supercalifragilisticexpialidocious >>> len(s) 34 See Also: Sequence Types str, unicode, list, tuple, buffer, xrange (in The Python Library Reference) Strings, and the Unicode strings described in the next section, are examples of sequence types, and support the common operations supported by such types. String Methods (in The Python Library Reference) Both strings and Unicode strings support a large number of methods for basic transformations and searching. String Formatting (in The Python Library Reference) Information about string formatting with str.format() is described here.
14
String Formatting Operations (in The Python Library Reference) The old formatting operations invoked when strings and Unicode strings are the left operand of the % operator are described in more detail here.
3.1.3 Unicode Strings

Starting with Python 2.0 a new data type for storing text data is available to the programmer: the Unicode object. It can be used to store and manipulate Unicode data (see http://www.unicode.org/) and integrates well with the existing string objects, providing auto-conversions where necessary. Unicode has the advantage of providing one ordinal for every character in every script used in modern and ancient texts. Previously, there were only 256 possible ordinals for script characters. Texts were typically bound to a code page which mapped the ordinals to script characters. This lead to very much confusion especially with respect to internationalization (usually written as i18n i + 18 characters + n) of software. Unicode solves these problems by dening one code page for all scripts. Creating Unicode strings in Python is just as simple as creating normal strings: >>> uHello World ! uHello World ! The small u in front of the quote indicates that a Unicode string is supposed to be created. If you want to include special characters in the string, you can do so by using the Python Unicode-Escape encoding. The following example shows how: >>> uHello\u0020World ! uHello World ! The escape sequence \u0020 indicates to insert the Unicode character with the ordinal value 0x0020 (the space character) at the given position. Other characters are interpreted by using their respective ordinal values directly as Unicode ordinals. If you have literal strings in the standard Latin-1 encoding that is used in many Western countries, you will nd it convenient that the lower 256 characters of Unicode are the same as the 256 characters of Latin-1. For experts, there is also a raw mode just like the one for normal strings. You have to prex the opening quote with ur to have Python use the Raw-Unicode-Escape encoding. It will only apply the above \uXXXX conversion if there is an uneven number of backslashes in front of the small u. >>> urHello\u0020World ! uHello World ! >>> urHello\\u0020World ! uHello\\\\u0020World ! The raw mode is most useful when you have to enter lots of backslashes, as can be necessary in regular expressions. Apart from these standard encodings, Python provides a whole set of other ways of creating Unicode strings on the basis of a known encoding. The built-in function unicode() provides access to all registered Unicode codecs (COders and DECoders). Some of the more well known encodings which these codecs can convert are Latin-1, ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16. The latter two are variable-length encodings that store each Unicode character in one or more bytes. The default encoding is normally set to ASCII, which passes through characters in the range 0 to 127 and rejects any other characters with an error. When a Unicode string is printed, written to a le, or converted with str(), conversion takes place using this default encoding. >>> u"abc" uabc >>> str(u"abc") abc >>> u"" u\xe4\xf6\xfc
15
>>> str(u"") Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? UnicodeEncodeError: ascii codec cant encode characters in position 0-2: ordinal not in r To convert a Unicode string into an 8-bit string using a specic encoding, Unicode objects provide an encode() method that takes one argument, the name of the encoding. Lowercase names for encodings are preferred. >>> u"".encode(utf-8) \xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc If you have data in a specic encoding and want to produce a corresponding Unicode string from it, you can use the unicode() function with the encoding name as the second argument. >>> unicode(\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc, utf-8) u\xe4\xf6\xfc
3.1.4 Lists
Python knows a number of compound data types, used to group together other values. The most versatile is the list, which can be written as a list of comma-separated values (items) between square brackets. List items need not all have the same type. >>> a = [spam, eggs, 100, 1234] >>> a [spam, eggs, 100, 1234] Like string indices, list indices start at 0, and lists can be sliced, concatenated and so on: >>> a[0] spam >>> a[3] 1234 >>> a[-2] 100 >>> a[1:-1] [eggs, 100] >>> a[:2] + [bacon, 2*2] [spam, eggs, bacon, 4] >>> 3*a[:3] + [Boo!] [spam, eggs, 100, spam, eggs, 100, spam, eggs, 100, Boo!] Unlike strings, which are immutable, it is possible to change individual elements of a list: >>> a [spam, eggs, 100, 1234] >>> a[2] = a[2] + 23 >>> a [spam, eggs, 123, 1234] Assignment to slices is also possible, and this can even change the size of the list or clear it entirely: >>> ... >>> [1, >>> ... >>> 16 # Replace some items: a[0:2] = [1, 12] a 12, 123, 1234] # Remove some: a[0:2] = [] a Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python
[123, 1234] >>> # Insert some: ... a[1:1] = [bletch, xyzzy] >>> a [123, bletch, xyzzy, 1234] >>> # Insert (a copy of) itself at the beginning >>> a[:0] = a >>> a [123, bletch, xyzzy, 1234, 123, bletch, xyzzy, 1234] >>> # Clear the list: replace all items with an empty list >>> a[:] = [] >>> a [] The built-in function len() also applies to lists: >>> a = [a, b, c, d] >>> len(a) 4 It is possible to nest lists (create lists containing other lists), for example: >>> >>> >>> 3 >>> [2, >>> 2 >>> >>> [1, >>> [2, q = [2, 3] p = [1, q, 4] len(p) p[1] 3] p[1][0] p[1].append(xtra) p [2, 3, xtra], 4] q 3, xtra] # See section 5.1
Note that in the last example, p[1] and q really refer to the same object! Well come back to object semantics later.
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: >>> ... ... >>> ... ... ... 1 1 2 3 # Fibonacci series: # the sum of two elements defines the next a, b = 0, 1 while b < 10: print b a, b = b, a+b
3.2. First Steps Towards Programming
17
5 8 This example introduces several new features. The rst 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 rst before any of the assignments take place. The right-hand side expressions are evaluated from the left to the right. The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: b < 10) remains true. In Python, like in C, any nonzero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or list value, in fact any sequence; anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are false. The test used in the example is a simple comparison. The standard comparison operators are written the same as in C: < (less than), > (greater than), == (equal to), <= (less than or equal to), >= (greater than or equal to) and != (not equal to). The body of the loop is indented: indentation is Pythons way of grouping statements. Python does not (yet!) provide an intelligent input line editing facility, so you have to type a tab or space(s) for each indented line. In practice you will prepare more complicated input for Python with a text editor; most text editors have an auto-indent facility. When a compound statement is entered interactively, it must be followed by a blank line to indicate completion (since the parser cannot guess when you have typed the last line). Note that each line within a basic block must be indented by the same amount. The print statement writes the value of the expression(s) it is given. It differs from just writing the expression you want to write (as we did earlier in the calculator examples) in the way it handles multiple expressions and strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a space is inserted between items, so you can format things nicely, like this: >>> i = 256*256 >>> print The value of i is, i The value of i is 65536 A trailing comma avoids the newline after the output: >>> a, b = 0, 1 >>> while b < 1000: ... print b, ... a, b = b, a+b ... 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 Note that the interpreter inserts a newline before it prints the next prompt if the last line was not completed.
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CHAPTER
FOUR
MORE CONTROL FLOW TOOLS

Besides the while statement just introduced, Python knows the usual control ow 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(raw_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 dene both the iteration step and halting condition (as C), Pythons for statement iterates over the items of any sequence (a list or a string), in the order that they appear in the sequence. For example (no pun intended): >>> ... >>> ... ... cat # Measure some strings: a = [cat, window, defenestrate] for x in a: print x, len(x) 3
19
window 6 defenestrate 12 It is not safe to modify the sequence being iterated over in the loop (this can only happen for mutable sequence types, such as lists). If you need to modify the list you are iterating over (for example, to duplicate selected items) you must iterate over a copy. The slice notation makes this particularly convenient: >>> for x in a[:]: # make a slice copy of the entire list ... if len(x) > 6: a.insert(0, x) ... >>> a [defenestrate, cat, window, defenestrate]
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 lists containing arithmetic progressions: >>> range(10) [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] The given end point is never part of the generated list; range(10) generates a list of 10 values, the legal indices for items of a sequence of length 10. It is possible to let the range start at another number, or to specify a different increment (even negative; sometimes this is called the step): >>> 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.
4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops

The break statement, like in C, breaks out of the smallest enclosing for or while loop. The continue statement, also borrowed from C, continues with the next iteration of the 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 exemplied by the following loop, which searches for prime numbers:
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Chapter 4. More Control Flow Tools
>>> 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
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 Dening Functions

We can create a function that writes the Fibonacci series to an arbitrary boundary: >>> ... ... ... ... ... ... >>> ... 1 1 def fib(n): # write Fibonacci series up to n """Print a Fibonacci series up to n.""" a, b = 0, 1 while b < n: print b, a, b = b, a+b # Now call the function we just defined: fib(2000) 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 21
4.5. pass Statements
The keyword def introduces a function denition. 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 rst statement of the function body can optionally be a string literal; this string literal is the functions documentation string, or docstring. (More about docstrings can be found in the section Documentation Strings.) There are tools which use docstrings to automatically produce online or printed documentation, or to let the user interactively browse through code; its good practice to include docstrings in code that you write, so make a habit of it. The execution of a function introduces a new symbol table used for the local variables of the function. More precisely, all variable assignments in a function store the value in the local symbol table; whereas variable references rst look in the local symbol table, then in the local symbol tables of enclosing functions, then in the global symbol table, and nally 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 denition 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-dened 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) 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 Coming from other languages, you might object that fib is not a function but a procedure since it doesnt return a value. In fact, even functions without a return statement do return a value, albeit a rather boring one. This value is called None (its a built-in name). Writing the value None is normally suppressed by the interpreter if it would be the only value written. You can see it if you really want to using print: >>> 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: >>> ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... >>> >>> [1, 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 b < n: result.append(b) # see below a, b = b, a+b return result f100 = fib2(100) # call it f100 # write the result 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.
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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The statement result.append(b) calls a method of the list object result. A method is a function that belongs to an object and is named obj.methodname, where obj is some object (this may be an expression), and methodname is the name of a method that is dened by the objects type. Different types dene different methods. Methods of different types may have the same name without causing ambiguity. (It is possible to dene your own object types and methods, using classes, as discussed later in this tutorial.) The method append() shown in the example is dened for list objects; it adds a new element at the end of the list. In this example it is equivalent to result = result + [b], but more efcient.
4.7 More on Dening Functions

It is also possible to dene 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 dened to allow. For example: def ask_ok(prompt, retries=4, complaint=Yes or no, please!): while True: ok = raw_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 IOError, refusenik user print complaint This function can be called either like this: ask_ok(Do you really want to quit?) or like this: ask_ok(OK to overwrite the file?, 2). 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 denition in the dening 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: def f(a, L=[]): L.append(a) return L print f(1) print f(2) print f(3)
4.7. More on Dening Functions
23
This will print [1] [1, 2] [1, 2, 3] If you dont 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 keyword = value. For instance, the following function: def parrot(voltage, state=a stiff, action=voom, type=Norwegian Blue): print "-- This parrot wouldnt", action, print "if you put", voltage, "volts through it." print "-- Lovely plumage, the", type print "-- Its", state, "!" could be called in any of the following ways: parrot(1000) parrot(action = VOOOOOM, voltage = 1000000) parrot(a thousand, state = pushing up the daisies) parrot(a million, bereft of life, jump) but the following calls would all be invalid: parrot() parrot(voltage=5.0, dead) parrot(110, voltage=220) parrot(actor=John Cleese) # # # # required argument missing non-keyword argument following keyword duplicate value for argument unknown keyword
In general, an argument list must have any positional arguments followed by any keyword arguments, where the keywords must be chosen from the formal parameter names. Its not important whether a formal parameter has a default value or not. No argument may receive a value more than once formal parameter names corresponding to positional arguments cannot be used as keywords in the same calls. Heres an example that fails due to this restriction: >>> def function(a): ... pass ... >>> function(0, a=0) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: function() got multiple values for keyword argument a When a nal formal parameter of the form **name is present, it receives a dictionary (see Mapping Types dict (in The Python Library Reference)) 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 dene a function like this:
24
def cheeseshop(kind, *arguments, **keywords): print "-- Do you have any", kind, "?" print "-- Im sorry, were all out of", kind for arg in arguments: print arg print "-" * 40 keys = keywords.keys() keys.sort() for kw in keys: print kw, ":", keywords[kw] It could be called like this: cheeseshop("Limburger", "Its very runny, sir.", "Its 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 ? -- Im sorry, were all out of Limburger Its very runny, sir. Its really very, VERY runny, sir. ---------------------------------------client : John Cleese shopkeeper : Michael Palin sketch : Cheese Shop Sketch Note that the sort() method of the list of keyword argument names is called before printing the contents of the keywords dictionary; if this is not done, the order in which the arguments are printed is undened.
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))
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: >>> [3, >>> >>> [3, range(3, 6) 4, 5] args = [3, 6] range(*args) 4, 5] # normal call with separate arguments
# call with arguments unpacked from a list
In the same fashion, dictionaries can deliver keyword arguments with the **-operator: >>> def parrot(voltage, state=a stiff, action=voom): ... print "-- This parrot wouldnt", action, 4.7. More on Dening Functions 25
... print "if you put", voltage, "volts through it.", ... print "Es", state, "!" ... >>> d = {"voltage": "four million", "state": "bleedin demised", "action": "VOOM"} >>> parrot(**d) -- This parrot wouldnt VOOM if you put four million volts through it. Es bleedin demised
4.7.5 Lambda Forms

By popular demand, a few features commonly found in functional programming languages like Lisp have been added to Python. With the lambda keyword, small anonymous functions can be created. Heres a function that returns the sum of its two arguments: lambda a, b: a+b. Lambda forms 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 denition. Like nested function denitions, lambda forms can reference variables from the containing scope: >>> ... ... >>> >>> 42 >>> 43 def make_incrementor(n): return lambda x: x + n f = make_incrementor(42) f(0) f(1)
4.7.6 Documentation Strings

There are emerging conventions about the content and formatting of documentation strings. The rst line should always be a short, concise summary of the objects purpose. For brevity, it should not explicitly state the objects name or type, since these are available by other means (except if the name happens to be a verb describing a functions operation). This line should begin with a capital letter and end with a period. If there are more lines in the documentation string, the second line should be blank, visually separating the summary from the rest of the description. The following lines should be one or more paragraphs describing the objects calling conventions, its side effects, etc. The Python parser does not strip indentation from multi-line string literals in Python, so tools that process documentation have to strip indentation if desired. This is done using the following convention. The rst non-blank line after the rst line of the string determines the amount of indentation for the entire documentation string. (We cant use the rst line since it is generally adjacent to the strings opening quotes so its indentation is not apparent in the string literal.) Whitespace equivalent to this indentation is then stripped from the start of all lines of the string. Lines that are indented less should not occur, but if they occur all their leading whitespace should be stripped. Equivalence of whitespace should be tested after expansion of tabs (to 8 spaces, normally). Here is an example of a multi-line docstring: >>> def my_function(): ... """Do nothing, but document it. ... ... No, really, it doesnt do anything. ... """ ... pass ... >>> print my_function.__doc__
26
Do nothing, but document it. No, really, it doesnt do anything.
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 dont exceed 79 characters. This helps users with small displays and makes it possible to have several code les 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 rst method argument (see A First Look at Classes for more on classes and methods). Dont use fancy encodings if your code is meant to be used in international environments. Plain ASCII works best in any case.
4.8. Intermezzo: Coding Style
27
28
CHAPTER
FIVE
DATA STRUCTURES
This chapter describes some things youve 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: append(x) Add an item to the end of the list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = [x]. = L.
extend(L) Extend the list by appending all the items in the given list; equivalent to a[len(a):]
insert(i, x) Insert an item at a given position. The rst 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). remove(x) Remove the rst item from the list whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such item. pop([i]) Remove the item at the given position in the list, and return it. If no index is specied, 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.) index(x) Return the index in the list of the rst item whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such item. count(x) Return the number of times x appears in the list. sort() Sort the items of the list, in place. reverse() Reverse the elements of the list, in place. An example that uses most of the list methods: >>> >>> 2 1 >>> a = [66.25, 333, 333, 1, 1234.5] print a.count(333), a.count(66.25), a.count(x) 0 a.insert(2, -1) 29
>>> a.append(333) >>> a [66.25, 333, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333] >>> a.index(333) 1 >>> a.remove(333) >>> a [66.25, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333] >>> a.reverse() >>> a [333, 1234.5, 1, 333, -1, 66.25] >>> a.sort() >>> a [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]
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 rst element retrieved (last-in, rst-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: >>> >>> >>> >>> [3, >>> 7 >>> [3, >>> 6 >>> 5 >>> [3, stack = [3, 4, 5] stack.append(6) stack.append(7) stack 4, 5, 6, 7] stack.pop() stack 4, 5, 6] stack.pop() stack.pop() stack 4]
5.1.2 Using Lists as Queues

You can also use a list conveniently as a queue, where the rst element added is the rst element retrieved (rst-in, rst-out). To add an item to the back of the queue, use append(). To retrieve an item from the front of the queue, use pop() with 0 as the index. For example: >>> queue = ["Eric", "John", "Michael"] >>> queue.append("Terry") # Terry arrives >>> queue.append("Graham") # Graham arrives >>> queue.pop(0) Eric >>> queue.pop(0) John >>> queue [Michael, Terry, Graham]
30
Chapter 5. Data Structures
5.1.3 Functional Programming Tools

There are three built-in functions that are very useful when used with lists: filter(), map(), and reduce(). filter(function, sequence) returns a sequence consisting of those items from the sequence for which function(item) is true. If sequence is a string or tuple, the result will be of the same type; otherwise, it is always a list. For example, to compute some primes: >>> def f(x): return x % 2 != 0 and x % 3 != 0 ... >>> filter(f, range(2, 25)) [5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23] map(function, sequence) calls function(item) for each of the sequences items and returns a list of the return values. For example, to compute some cubes: >>> def cube(x): return x*x*x ... >>> map(cube, range(1, 11)) [1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343, 512, 729, 1000] More than one sequence may be passed; the function must then have as many arguments as there are sequences and is called with the corresponding item from each sequence (or None if some sequence is shorter than another). For example: >>> >>> ... >>> [0, seq = range(8) def add(x, y): return x+y map(add, seq, seq) 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14]
reduce(function, sequence) returns a single value constructed by calling the binary function function on the rst two items of the sequence, then on the result and the next item, and so on. For example, to compute the sum of the numbers 1 through 10: >>> def add(x,y): return x+y ... >>> reduce(add, range(1, 11)) 55 If theres only one item in the sequence, its value is returned; if the sequence is empty, an exception is raised. A third argument can be passed to indicate the starting value. In this case the starting value is returned for an empty sequence, and the function is rst applied to the starting value and the rst sequence item, then to the result and the next item, and so on. For example, >>> def sum(seq): ... def add(x,y): return x+y ... return reduce(add, seq, 0) ... >>> sum(range(1, 11)) 55 >>> sum([]) 0 Dont use this examples denition of sum(): since summing numbers is such a common need, a built-in function sum(sequence) is already provided, and works exactly like this. New in version 2.3.
5.1. More on Lists
31
5.1.4 List Comprehensions

List comprehensions provide a concise way to create lists without resorting to use of map(), filter() and/or lambda. The resulting list denition tends often to be clearer than lists built using those constructs. Each list comprehension consists of an expression followed by a for clause, then zero or more for or if clauses. The result will be a list resulting from evaluating the expression in the context of the for and if clauses which follow it. If the expression would evaluate to a tuple, it must be parenthesized. >>> freshfruit = [ banana, loganberry , passion fruit ] >>> [weapon.strip() for weapon in freshfruit] [banana, loganberry, passion fruit] >>> vec = [2, 4, 6] >>> [3*x for x in vec] [6, 12, 18] >>> [3*x for x in vec if x > 3] [12, 18] >>> [3*x for x in vec if x < 2] [] >>> [[x,x**2] for x in vec] [[2, 4], [4, 16], [6, 36]] >>> [x, x**2 for x in vec] # error - parens required for tuples File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? [x, x**2 for x in vec] ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> [(x, x**2) for x in vec] [(2, 4), (4, 16), (6, 36)] >>> vec1 = [2, 4, 6] >>> vec2 = [4, 3, -9] >>> [x*y for x in vec1 for y in vec2] [8, 6, -18, 16, 12, -36, 24, 18, -54] >>> [x+y for x in vec1 for y in vec2] [6, 5, -7, 8, 7, -5, 10, 9, -3] >>> [vec1[i]*vec2[i] for i in range(len(vec1))] [8, 12, -54] List comprehensions are much more exible than map() and can be applied to complex expressions and nested functions: >>> [str(round(355/113.0, i)) for i in range(1,6)] [3.1, 3.14, 3.142, 3.1416, 3.14159]
5.1.5 Nested List Comprehensions

If youve got the stomach for it, list comprehensions can be nested. They are a powerful tool but like all powerful tools they need to be used carefully, if at all. Consider the following example of a 3x3 matrix held as a list containing three lists, one list per row: >>> mat = [ ... [1, 2, 3], ... [4, 5, 6], ... [7, 8, 9], ... ] Now, if you wanted to swap rows and columns, you could use a list comprehension:
32
>>> print [[row[i] for row in mat] for i in [0, 1, 2]] [[1, 4, 7], [2, 5, 8], [3, 6, 9]] Special care has to be taken for the nested list comprehension: To avoid apprehension when nesting list comprehensions, read from right to left. A more verbose version of this snippet shows the ow explicitly: for i in [0, 1, 2]: for row in mat: print row[i], print In real world, you should prefer built-in functions to complex ow statements. The zip() function would do a great job for this use case: >>> zip(*mat) [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)] 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: >>> >>> >>> [1, >>> >>> [1, >>> >>> [] a = [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5] del a[0] a 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5] del a[2:4] a 66.25, 1234.5] del a[:] 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). Well nd 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 Sequence Types str, unicode, list, tuple, buffer, xrange (in The Python Library Reference)). 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]
5.2. The del statement
33
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)) 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). Tuples have many uses. For example: (x, y) coordinate pairs, employee records from a database, etc. Tuples, like strings, are immutable: it is not possible to assign to the individual items of a tuple (you can simulate much of the same effect with slicing and concatenation, though). It is also possible to create tuples which contain mutable objects, such as lists. 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 sufcient to enclose a single value in parentheses). Ugly, but effective. For example: >>> empty = () >>> singleton = hello, >>> len(empty) 0 >>> len(singleton) 1 >>> singleton (hello,) # <-- note trailing comma
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 the list of variables on the left to have the same number of elements as the length of the sequence. Note that multiple assignment is really just a combination of tuple packing and sequence unpacking.
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. Here is a brief demonstration: >>> basket = [apple, orange, apple, pear, orange, banana] >>> fruit = set(basket) # create a set without duplicates >>> fruit set([orange, pear, apple, banana]) >>> orange in fruit # fast membership testing True >>> crabgrass in fruit False
34
>>> # Demonstrate set operations on unique letters from two words ... >>> a = set(abracadabra) >>> b = set(alacazam) >>> a # unique letters in a set([a, r, b, c, d]) >>> a - b # letters in a but not in b set([r, d, b]) >>> a | b # letters in either a or b set([a, c, r, d, b, m, z, l]) >>> a & b # letters in both a and b set([a, c]) >>> a ^ b # letters in a or b but not both set([r, d, b, m, z, l])
5.5 Dictionaries
Another useful data type built into Python is the dictionary (see Mapping Types dict (in The Python Library Reference)). Dictionaries are sometimes found in other languages as associative memories or associative arrays. Unlike sequences, which are indexed by a range of numbers, dictionaries are indexed by keys, which can be any immutable type; strings and numbers can always be keys. Tuples can be used as keys if they contain only strings, numbers, or tuples; if a tuple contains any mutable object either directly or indirectly, it cannot be used as a key. You cant use lists as keys, since lists can be modied in place using index assignments, slice assignments, or methods like append() and extend(). It is best to think of a dictionary as an unordered set of key: value pairs, with the requirement that the keys are unique (within one dictionary). A pair of braces creates an empty dictionary: {}. Placing a comma-separated list of key:value pairs within the braces adds initial key:value pairs to the dictionary; this is also the way dictionaries are written on output. The main operations on a dictionary are storing a value with some key and extracting the value given the key. It is also possible to delete a key:value pair with del. If you store using a key that is already in use, the old value associated with that key is forgotten. It is an error to extract a value using a non-existent key. The keys() method of a dictionary object returns a list of all the keys used in the dictionary, in arbitrary order (if you want it sorted, just apply the sort() method to the list of keys). 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 {sape: 4139, guido: 4127, jack: 4098} >>> tel[jack] 4098 >>> del tel[sape] >>> tel[irv] = 4127 >>> tel {guido: 4127, irv: 4127, jack: 4098} >>> tel.keys() [guido, irv, jack] >>> guido in tel True
5.5. Dictionaries
35
The dict() constructor builds dictionaries directly from lists of key-value pairs stored as tuples. When the pairs form a pattern, list comprehensions can compactly specify the key-value list. >>> dict([(sape, 4139), (guido, 4127), (jack, 4098)]) {sape: 4139, jack: 4098, guido: 4127} >>> dict([(x, x**2) for x in (2, 4, 6)]) # use a list comprehension {2: 4, 4: 16, 6: 36} Later in the tutorial, we will learn about Generator Expressions which are even better suited for the task of supplying key-values pairs to the dict() constructor. 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, jack: 4098, guido: 4127}
5.6 Looping Techniques

When looping through dictionaries, the key and corresponding value can be retrieved at the same time using the iteritems() method. >>> knights = {gallahad: the pure, robin: the brave} >>> for k, v in knights.iteritems(): ... 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, rst specify the sequence in a forward direction and then call the reversed() function. >>> for i in reversed(xrange(1,10,2)): ... print i ... 9 7 5 36 Chapter 5. Data Structures
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
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 lexicographical ordering: rst the rst two items are compared, and if they differ this determines the outcome of the comparison; if they are equal, the next two items are compared, and so on, until either sequence is exhausted. If two items to be compared are themselves sequences of the same type, the lexicographical comparison is carried out recursively. If all items of two sequences compare equal, the sequences are considered equal. If one sequence is an initial sub-sequence of the other, the shorter sequence is the smaller (lesser) one. Lexicographical ordering for strings uses the ASCII ordering for individual characters. Some examples of comparisons between sequences of the same type:
5.7. More on Conditions
37
(1, 2, 3) < (1, 2, 4) < [1, 2, 4] [1, 2, 3] 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 is legal. The outcome is deterministic but arbitrary: the types are ordered by their name. Thus, a list is always smaller than a string, a string is always smaller than a tuple, etc. 1 Mixed numeric types are compared according to their numeric value, so 0 equals 0.0, etc.
The rules for comparing objects of different types should not be relied upon; they may change in a future version of the language.
38
CHAPTER
SIX
MODULES
If you quit from the Python interpreter and enter it again, the denitions 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 le as input instead. This is known as creating a script. As your program gets longer, you may want to split it into several les for easier maintenance. You may also want to use a handy function that youve written in several programs without copying its denition into each program. To support this, Python has a way to put denitions in a le and use them in a script or in an interactive instance of the interpreter. Such a le is called a module; denitions 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 le containing Python denitions and statements. The le name is the module name with the sufx .py appended. Within a module, the modules name (as a string) is available as the value of the global variable __name__. For instance, use your favorite text editor to create a le 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 b < n: print b, a, b = b, a+b def fib2(n): # return Fibonacci series up to n result = [] a, b = 0, 1 while b < n: result.append(b) 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 dened 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: >>> 1 1 >>> [1, fibo.fib(1000) 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 fibo.fib2(100) 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
39
>>> fibo.__name__ fibo If you intend to use a function often you can assign it to a local name: >>> fib = fibo.fib >>> fib(500) 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 denitions. These statements are intended to initialize the module. They are executed only the rst time the module is imported somewhere. 1 Each module has its own private symbol table, which is used as the global symbol table by all functions dened in the module. Thus, the author of a module can use global variables in the module without worrying about accidental clashes with a users global variables. On the other hand, if you know what you are doing you can touch a modules global variables with the same notation used to refer to its functions, modname.itemname. Modules can import other modules. It is customary but not required to place all import statements at the beginning of a module (or script, for that matter). The imported module names are placed in the importing modules global symbol table. There is a variant of the import statement that imports names from a module directly into the importing modules symbol table. For example: >>> from fibo import fib, fib2 >>> fib(500) 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 dened). There is even a variant to import all names that a module denes: >>> from fibo import * >>> fib(500) 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 This imports all names except those beginning with an underscore (_). Note: For efciency reasons, each module is only imported once per interpreter session. Therefore, if you change your modules, you must restart the interpreter or, if its just one module you want to test interactively, use reload(), e.g. reload(modulename).
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:
1 In fact function denitions are also statements that are executed; the execution enters the function name in the modules global symbol table.
40
Chapter 6. Modules
if __name__ == "__main__": import sys fib(int(sys.argv[1])) you can make the le 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 le: $ python fibo.py 50 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 searches for a le named spam.py in the current directory, and then in the list of directories specied by the environment variable PYTHONPATH. This has the same syntax as the shell variable PATH, that is, a list of directory names. When PYTHONPATH is not set, or when the le is not found there, the search continues in an installation-dependent default path; on Unix, this is usually .:/usr/local/lib/python. Actually, modules are searched in the list of directories given by the variable sys.path which is initialized from the directory containing the input script (or the current directory), PYTHONPATH and the installation- dependent default. This allows Python programs that know what theyre doing to modify or replace the module search path. Note that because the directory containing the script being run is on the search path, it is important that the script not have the same name as a standard module, or Python will attempt to load the script as a module when that module is imported. This will generally be an error. See section Standard Modules for more information.
6.1.3 Compiled Python les

As an important speed-up of the start-up time for short programs that use a lot of standard modules, if a le called spam.pyc exists in the directory where spam.py is found, this is assumed to contain an already-byte-compiled version of the module spam. The modication time of the version of spam.py used to create spam.pyc is recorded in spam.pyc, and the .pyc le is ignored if these dont match. Normally, you dont need to do anything to create the spam.pyc le. Whenever spam.py is successfully compiled, an attempt is made to write the compiled version to spam.pyc. It is not an error if this attempt fails; if for any reason the le is not written completely, the resulting spam.pyc le will be recognized as invalid and thus ignored later. The contents of the spam.pyc le are platform independent, so a Python module directory can be shared by machines of different architectures. Some tips for experts: When the Python interpreter is invoked with the -O ag, optimized code is generated and stored in .pyo les. The optimizer currently doesnt help much; it only removes assert statements. When -O is used, all bytecode is optimized; .pyc les are ignored and .py les are compiled to optimized bytecode. Passing two -O ags to the Python interpreter (-OO) will cause the bytecode compiler to perform optimizations that could in some rare cases result in malfunctioning programs. Currently only __doc__ strings are removed from the bytecode, resulting in more compact .pyo les. Since some programs may rely on having these available, you should only use this option if you know what youre doing.
6.1. More on Modules
41
A program doesnt run any faster when it is read from a .pyc or .pyo le than when it is read from a .py le; the only thing thats faster about .pyc or .pyo les is the speed with which they are loaded. When a script is run by giving its name on the command line, the bytecode for the script is never written to a .pyc or .pyo le. Thus, the startup time of a script may be reduced by moving most of its code to a module and having a small bootstrap script that imports that module. It is also possible to name a .pyc or .pyo le directly on the command line. It is possible to have a le called spam.pyc (or spam.pyo when -O is used) without a le spam.py for the same module. This can be used to distribute a library of Python code in a form that is moderately hard to reverse engineer. The module compileall can create .pyc les (or .pyo les when -O is used) for all modules in a directory.
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 efciency or to provide access to operating system primitives such as system calls. The set of such modules is a conguration 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 dene the strings used as primary and secondary prompts: >>> import sys >>> sys.ps1 >>> >>> sys.ps2 ... >>> sys.ps1 = C> C> print Yuck! Yuck! C> These two variables are only dened if the interpreter is in interactive mode. The variable sys.path is a list of strings that determines the interpreters search path for modules. It is initialized to a default path taken from the environment variable PYTHONPATH, or from a built-in default if PYTHONPATH is not set. You can modify it using standard list operations: >>> import sys >>> sys.path.append(/ufs/guido/lib/python)
6.3 The dir() Function

The built-in function dir() is used to nd out which names a module denes. It returns a sorted list of strings: >>> import fibo, sys >>> dir(fibo) [__name__, fib, fib2] >>> dir(sys) [__displayhook__, __doc__, __excepthook__, __name__, __stderr__, __stdin__, __stdout__, _getframe, api_version, argv, builtin_module_names, byteorder, callstats, copyright, displayhook, exc_clear, exc_info, exc_type, excepthook, 42 Chapter 6. Modules
exec_prefix, executable, exit, getdefaultencoding, getdlopenflags, getrecursionlimit, getrefcount, hexversion, maxint, maxunicode, meta_path, modules, path, path_hooks, path_importer_cache, platform, prefix, ps1, ps2, setcheckinterval, setdlopenflags, setprofile, setrecursionlimit, settrace, stderr, stdin, stdout, version, version_info, warnoptions] Without arguments, dir() lists the names you have dened currently: >>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] >>> import fibo >>> fib = fibo.fib >>> dir() [__builtins__, __doc__, __file__, __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 dened in the standard module __builtin__: >>> import __builtin__ >>> dir(__builtin__) [ArithmeticError, AssertionError, AttributeError, DeprecationWarning, EOFError, Ellipsis, EnvironmentError, Exception, False, FloatingPointError, FutureWarning, IOError, ImportError, IndentationError, IndexError, KeyError, KeyboardInterrupt, LookupError, MemoryError, NameError, None, NotImplemented, NotImplementedError, OSError, OverflowError, PendingDeprecationWarning, ReferenceError, RuntimeError, RuntimeWarning, StandardError, StopIteration, SyntaxError, SyntaxWarning, SystemError, SystemExit, TabError, True, TypeError, UnboundLocalError, UnicodeDecodeError, UnicodeEncodeError, UnicodeError, UnicodeTranslateError, UserWarning, ValueError, Warning, WindowsError, ZeroDivisionError, _, __debug__, __doc__, __import__, __name__, abs, apply, basestring, bool, buffer, callable, chr, classmethod, cmp, coerce, compile, complex, copyright, credits, delattr, dict, dir, divmod, enumerate, eval, execfile, exit, file, filter, float, frozenset, getattr, globals, hasattr, hash, help, hex, id, input, int, intern, isinstance, issubclass, iter, len, license, list, locals, long, map, max, min, object, oct, open, ord, pow, property, quit, range, raw_input, reduce, reload, repr, reversed, round, set, setattr, slice, sorted, staticmethod, str, sum, super, tuple, type, unichr, unicode, vars, xrange, zip]
6.4 Packages
Packages are a way of structuring Pythons module namespace by using dotted module names. For example, the module name A.B designates a submodule named B in a package named A. Just like the use of modules saves the authors of different modules from having to worry about each others global variable names, the use of dotted module names saves the authors of multi-module packages like NumPy or the Python Imaging Library from having to worry about each others module names. Suppose you want to design a collection of modules (a package) for the uniform handling of sound les and sound data. There are many different sound le formats (usually recognized by their extension, for example: .wav, .aiff, 6.4. Packages 43
.au), so you may need to create and maintain a growing collection of modules for the conversion between the various le 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 articial stereo effect), so in addition you will be writing a never-ending stream of modules to perform these operations. Heres a possible structure for your package (expressed in terms of a hierarchical lesystem): sound/ __init__.py formats/ __init__.py wavread.py wavwrite.py aiffread.py aiffwrite.py auread.py auwrite.py ... effects/ __init__.py echo.py surround.py reverse.py ... filters/ __init__.py equalizer.py vocoder.py karaoke.py ... Top-level package Initialize the sound package Subpackage for file format conversions
Subpackage for sound effects
Subpackage for filters
When importing the package, Python searches through the directories on sys.path looking for the package subdirectory. The __init__.py les 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 le, 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 prex, 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)
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Chapter 6. Modules
Note that when using from package import item, the item can be either a submodule (or subpackage) of the package, or some other name dened in the package, like a function, class or variable. The import statement rst tests whether the item is dened in the package; if not, it assumes it is a module and attempts to load it. If it fails to nd it, an ImportError exception is raised. Contrarily, when using syntax like import item.subitem.subsubitem, each item except for the last must be a package; the last item can be a module or a package but cant be a class or function or variable dened 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 lesystem, nds which submodules are present in the package, and imports them all. Unfortunately, this operation does not work very well on Windows platforms, where the lesystem does not always have accurate information about the case of a lename! On these platforms, there is no guaranteed way to know whether a le ECHO.PY should be imported as a module echo, Echo or ECHO. (For example, Windows 95 has the annoying practice of showing all le names with a capitalized rst letter.) The DOS 8+3 lename restriction adds another interesting problem for long module names. The only solution is for the package author to provide an explicit index of the package. The import statement uses the following convention: if a packages __init__.py code denes a list named __all__, it is taken to be the list of module names that should be imported when from package import * is encountered. It is up to the package author to keep this list up-to-date when a new version of the package is released. Package authors may also decide not to support it, if they dont see a use for importing * from their package. For example, the le sounds/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 dened, 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 dened in the package. This includes any names dened (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 dened in the sound.effects package when the from...import statement is executed. (This also works when __all__ is dened.) 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, and certain modules are designed to export only names that follow certain patterns. 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. Packages
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6.4.2 Intra-package References

The submodules often need to refer to each other. For example, the surround module might use the echo module. In fact, such references are so common that the import statement rst looks in the containing package before looking in the standard module search path. Thus, the surround module can simply use import echo or from echo import echofilter. If the imported module is not found in the current package (the package of which the current module is a submodule), the import statement looks for a top-level module with the given name. When packages are structured into subpackages (as with the sound package in the example), you can use absolute imports to refer to submodules of siblings packages. For example, if the module sound.filters.vocoder needs to use the echo module in the sound.effects package, it can use from sound.effects import echo. Starting with Python 2.5, in addition to the implicit relative imports described above, you can write explicit relative imports with the from module import name form of import statement. These explicit relative imports use leading dots to indicate the current and parent packages involved in the relative import. From the surround module for example, you might use: from . import echo from .. import formats from ..filters import equalizer Note that both explicit and implicit relative imports are based on the name of the current module. Since the name of the main module is always "__main__", modules intended for use as the main module of a Python application should always use absolute imports.
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 packages __init__.py before the code in that le is executed. This variable can be modied; 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.
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Chapter 6. Modules
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 le for future use. This chapter will discuss some of the possibilities.
7.1 Fancier Output Formatting

So far weve encountered two ways of writing values: expression statements and the print statement. (A third way is using the write() method of le objects; the standard output le can be referenced as sys.stdout. See the Library Reference for more information on this.) Often youll want more control over the formatting of your output than simply printing space-separated values. There are two ways to format your output; the rst way is to do all the string handling yourself; using string slicing and concatenation operations you can create any layout you can imagine. The standard module string contains some useful operations for padding strings to a given column width; these will be discussed shortly. The second way is to use the str.format() method. One question remains, of course: how do you convert values to strings? Luckily, Python has ways to convert any value to a string: pass it to the repr() or str() functions. The str() function is meant to return representations of values which are fairly human-readable, while repr() is meant to generate representations which can be read by the interpreter (or will force a SyntaxError if there is not equivalent syntax). For objects which dont have a particular representation for human consumption, str() will return the same value as repr(). Many values, such as numbers or structures like lists and dictionaries, have the same representation using either function. Strings and oating point numbers, in particular, have two distinct representations. Some examples: >>> s = Hello, world. >>> str(s) Hello, world. >>> repr(s) "Hello, world." >>> str(0.1) 0.1 >>> repr(0.1) 0.10000000000000001 >>> 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:
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... 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))" Here are two ways to write a table of squares and cubes: >>> for x in range(1, 11): ... print repr(x).rjust(2), repr(x*x).rjust(3), ... # Note trailing comma 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 >>> 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 6 36 216 7 49 343 8 64 512 9 81 729 10 100 1000 (Note that in the rst example, one space between each column was added by the way print works: it always adds spaces between its arguments.) This example demonstrates the rjust() method of string objects, which right-justies a string in a eld of a given width by padding it with spaces on the left. There are similar methods ljust() and center(). These methods do not write anything, they just return a new string. If the input string is too long, they dont truncate it, but return it unchanged; this will mess up your column lay-out but thats usually better than the alternative, which would be lying about a value. (If you really want truncation you can always add a slice operation, as in x.ljust(n)[:n].) There is another method, 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)
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Chapter 7. Input and Output
3.14159265359 Basic usage of the str.format() method looks like this: >>> print We are the {0} who say "{1}!".format(knights, Ni) We are the knights who say "Ni!" The brackets and characters within them (called format elds) are replaced with the objects passed into the format method. The number in the brackets refers to the position of the object passed into the 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 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. An optional : and format specier can follow the eld name. This also greater control over how the value is formatted. The following example truncates the Pi to three places after the decimal. >>> import math >>> print The value of PI is approximately {0:.3f}..format(math.pi) The value of PI is approximately 3.142. Passing an integer after the : will cause that eld to be a minimum number of characters wide. This is useful for making tables pretty.: >>> table = {Sjoerd: 4127, Jack: 4098, Dcab: 7678} >>> for name, phone in table.items(): ... print {0:10} ==> {1:10d}.format(name, phone) ... Jack ==> 4098 Dcab ==> 7678 Sjoerd ==> 4127 If you have a really long format string that you dont want to split up, it would be nice if you could reference the variables to be formatted by name instead of by position. This can be done by simply passing the dict and using square brackets [] to access the keys >>> 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 new built-in vars() function, which returns a dictionary containing all local variables.
7.1. Fancier Output Formatting
49
For a complete overview of string formatting with str.format(), see Format String Syntax (in The Python Library Reference).
7.1.1 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: >>> import math >>> print The value of PI is approximately %5.3f . % math.pi The value of PI is approximately 3.142. Since str.format() is quite new, a lot of Python code still uses the % operator. However, because this old style of formatting will eventually removed from the language str.format() should generally be used. More information can be found in the String Formatting Operations (in The Python Library Reference) section.
7.2 Reading and Writing Files

open() returns a le object, and is most commonly used with two arguments: open(filename, mode). >>> f = open(/tmp/workfile, w) >>> print f <open file /tmp/workfile, mode w at 80a0960> The rst argument is a string containing the lename. The second argument is another string containing a few characters describing the way in which the le will be used. mode can be r when the le will only be read, w for only writing (an existing le with the same name will be erased), and a opens the le for appending; any data written to the le is automatically added to the end. r+ opens the le for both reading and writing. The mode argument is optional; r will be assumed if its omitted. On Windows, b appended to the mode opens the le in binary mode, so there are also modes like rb, wb, and r+b. Windows makes a distinction between text and binary les; the end-of-line characters in text les are automatically altered slightly when data is read or written. This behind-the-scenes modication to le data is ne for ASCII text les, but itll corrupt binary data like that in JPEG or EXE les. Be very careful to use binary mode when reading and writing such les. On Unix, it doesnt hurt to append a b to the mode, so you can use it platformindependently for all binary les.
7.2.1 Methods of File Objects

The rest of the examples in this section will assume that a le object called f has already been created. To read a les contents, call f.read(size), which reads some quantity of data and returns it as a string. size is an optional numeric argument. When size is omitted or negative, the entire contents of the le will be read and returned; its your problem if the le is twice as large as your machines memory. Otherwise, at most size bytes are read and returned. If the end of the le 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 le; a newline character (\n) is left at the end of the string, and is only omitted on the last line of the le if the le doesnt end in a newline. This makes the return value unambiguous; if
50
f.readline() returns an empty string, the end of the le 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() f.readlines() returns a list containing all the lines of data in the le. If given an optional parameter sizehint, it reads that many bytes from the le and enough more to complete a line, and returns the lines from that. This is often used to allow efcient reading of a large le by lines, but without having to load the entire le in memory. Only complete lines will be returned. >>> f.readlines() [This is the first line of the file.\n, Second line of the file\n] An alternative approach to reading lines is to loop over the le object. This is memory efcient, fast, and leads to simpler code: >>> for line in f: print line, This is the first line of the file. Second line of the file The alternative approach is simpler but does not provide as ne-grained control. Since the two approaches manage line buffering differently, they should not be mixed. f.write(string) writes the contents of string to the le, returning None. >>> f.write(This is a test\n) To write something other than a string, it needs to be converted to a string rst: >>> value = (the answer, 42) >>> s = str(value) >>> f.write(s) f.tell() returns an integer giving the le objects current position in the le, measured in bytes from the beginning of the le. To change the le objects position, use f.seek(offset, from_what). The position is computed from adding offset to a reference point; the reference point is selected by the from_what argument. A from_what value of 0 measures from the beginning of the le, 1 uses the current le position, and 2 uses the end of the le as the reference point. from_what can be omitted and defaults to 0, using the beginning of the le as the reference point. >>> >>> >>> >>> 5 >>> >>> d f = open(/tmp/workfile, r+) f.write(0123456789abcdef) f.seek(5) # Go to the 6th byte in the file f.read(1) f.seek(-3, 2) # Go to the 3rd byte before the end f.read(1)
When youre done with a le, call f.close() to close it and free up any system resources taken up by the open le. After calling f.close(), attempts to use the le object will automatically fail. >>> f.close() >>> f.read() Traceback (most recent call last):
7.2. Reading and Writing Files
51
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? ValueError: I/O operation on closed file It is good practice to use the with keyword when dealing with le objects. This has the advantage that the le is properly closed after its suite nishes, even if an exception is raised on the way. It is also much shorter than writing equivalent try-finally blocks: >>> with open(/tmp/workfile, r) as f: ... read_data = f.read() >>> f.closed True File objects have some additional methods, such as isatty() and truncate() which are less frequently used; consult the Library Reference for a complete guide to le objects.
7.2.2 The pickle Module

Strings can easily be written to and read from a le. 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. However, when you want to save more complex data types like lists, dictionaries, or class instances, things get a lot more complicated. Rather than have users be constantly writing and debugging code to save complicated data types, Python provides a standard module called pickle. This is an amazing module that can take almost any Python object (even some forms of Python code!), and convert it to a string representation; this process is called pickling. Reconstructing the object from the string representation is called unpickling. Between pickling and unpickling, the string representing the object may have been stored in a le or data, or sent over a network connection to some distant machine. If you have an object x, and a le object f thats been opened for writing, the simplest way to pickle the object takes only one line of code: pickle.dump(x, f) To unpickle the object again, if f is a le object which has been opened for reading: x = pickle.load(f) (There are other variants of this, used when pickling many objects or when you dont want to write the pickled data to a le; consult the complete documentation for pickle in the Python Library Reference.) pickle is the standard way to make Python objects which can be stored and reused by other programs or by a future invocation of the same program; the technical term for this is a persistent object. Because pickle is so widely used, many authors who write Python extensions take care to ensure that new data types such as matrices can be properly pickled and unpickled.
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CHAPTER
EIGHT
ERRORS AND EXCEPTIONS

Until now error messages havent been more than mentioned, but if you have tried out the examples you have probably seen some. There are (at least) two distinguishable kinds of errors: syntax errors and exceptions.
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, in ? 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 keyword print, since a colon (:) is missing before it. File name and line number are printed so you know where to look in case the input came from a script.
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 ? ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero >>> 4 + spam*3 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? NameError: name spam is not defined >>> 2 + 2 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: cannot concatenate str and int objects
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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-dened exceptions (although it is a useful convention). Standard exception names are built-in identiers (not reserved keywords). The rest of the line provides detail based on the type of exception and what caused it. The preceding part of the error message shows the context where the exception happened, in the form of a stack traceback. In general it contains a stack traceback listing source lines; however, it will not display lines read from standard input. Built-in Exceptions (in The Python Library Reference) 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(raw_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 nished. 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 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) 54 Chapter 8. Errors and Exceptions
s = f.readline() i = int(s.strip()) except IOError as (errno, strerror): print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(errno, strerror) 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 IOError: 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 accidentally catching an exception that wasnt raised by the code being protected by the try ... except statement. When an exception occurs, it may have an associated value, also known as the exceptions argument. The presence and type of the argument depend on the exception type. The except clause may specify a variable after the exception name (or tuple). The variable is bound to an exception instance with the arguments stored in instance.args. For convenience, the exception instance denes __getitem__() and __str__() so the arguments can be accessed or printed directly without having to reference .args. But use of .args is discouraged. Instead, the preferred use is to pass a single argument to an exception (which can be a tuple if multiple arguments are needed) and have it bound to the message attribute. One may also instantiate an exception rst 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 printed directly ... x, y = inst # __getitem__ allows args to be unpacked directly ... print x =, x ... print y =, y ... <type exceptions.Exception> (spam, eggs) (spam, eggs) x = spam y = eggs If an exception has an argument, it is printed as the last part (detail) of the message for unhandled exceptions. Exception handlers dont just handle exceptions if they occur immediately in the try clause, but also if they occur inside functions that are called (even indirectly) in the try clause. For example:
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>>> def this_fails(): ... x = 1/0 ... >>> try: ... this_fails() ... except ZeroDivisionError as detail: ... print Handling run-time error:, detail ... Handling run-time error: integer division or modulo by zero
8.4 Raising Exceptions

The raise statement allows the programmer to force a specied exception to occur. For example: >>> raise NameError(HiThere) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? NameError: HiThere The sole argument to raise indicates the exception to be raised. This must be either an exception instance or an exception class (a class that derives from Exception). If you need to determine whether an exception was raised but dont intend to handle it, a simpler form of the raise statement allows you to re-raise the exception: >>> try: ... raise NameError(HiThere) ... except NameError: ... print An exception flew by! ... raise ... An exception flew by! Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 2, in ? NameError: HiThere
8.5 User-dened Exceptions

Programs may name their own exceptions by creating a new exception class. Exceptions should typically be derived from the Exception class, either directly or indirectly. For example: >>> class MyError(Exception): ... def __init__(self, value): ... self.value = value ... def __str__(self): ... return repr(self.value) ... >>> try: ... raise MyError(2*2) ... except MyError as e: ... print My exception occurred, value:, e.value ... My exception occurred, value: 4
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>>> raise MyError(oops!) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? __main__.MyError: oops! In this example, the default __init__() of Exception has been overridden. The new behavior simply creates the value attribute. This replaces the default behavior of creating the args attribute. Exception classes can be dened 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 dened by that module, and subclass that to create specic 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 thats 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 dened with names that end in Error, similar to the naming of the standard exceptions. Many standard modules dene their own exceptions to report errors that may occur in functions they dene. More information on classes is presented in chapter Classes.
8.6 Dening Clean-up Actions

The try statement has another optional clause which is intended to dene clean-up actions that must be executed under all circumstances. For example:
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>>> try: ... raise KeyboardInterrupt ... finally: ... print Goodbye, world! ... Goodbye, world! Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 2, in ? KeyboardInterrupt A nally clause is always executed before leaving the try statement, whether an exception has occurred or not. When an exception has occurred in the try clause and has not been handled by an except clause (or it has occurred in a except or else clause), it is re-raised after the finally clause has been executed. The finally clause is also executed on the way out when any other clause of the try statement is left via a break, continue or return statement. A more complicated example (having except and finally clauses in the same try statement works as of Python 2.5): >>> 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 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 ? 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 les or network connections), regardless of whether the use of the resource was successful.
8.7 Predened Clean-up Actions

Some objects dene standard clean-up actions to be undertaken when the object is no longer needed, regardless of whether or not the operation using the object succeeded or failed. Look at the following example, which tries to open a le and print its contents to the screen. for line in open("myfile.txt"): print line
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The problem with this code is that it leaves the le open for an indeterminate amount of time after the code has nished executing. This is not an issue in simple scripts, but can be a problem for larger applications. The with statement allows objects like les 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 After the statement is executed, the le f is always closed, even if a problem was encountered while processing the lines. Other objects which provide predened clean-up actions will indicate this in their documentation.
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Pythons class mechanism adds classes to the language with a minimum of new syntax and semantics. It is a mixture of the class mechanisms found in C++ and Modula-3. As is true for modules, classes in Python do not put an absolute barrier between denition and user, but rather rely on the politeness of the user not to break into the denition. The most important features of classes are retained with full power, however: 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 an arbitrary amount of private data. In C++ terminology, all class members (including the data members) are public, and all member functions are virtual. There are no special constructors or destructors. As in Modula-3, there are no shorthands for referencing the objects members from its methods: the method function is declared with an explicit rst argument representing the object, which is provided implicitly by the call. As in Smalltalk, classes themselves are objects, albeit in the wider sense of the word: in Python, all data types 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++ but unlike in Modula-3, most built-in operators with special syntax (arithmetic operators, subscripting etc.) can be redened for class instances.
9.1 A Word About Terminology

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.) 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 rst glance at Python, and can be safely ignored when dealing with immutable basic types (numbers, strings, tuples). However, aliasing has an (intended!) effect on the semantics of Python code involving mutable objects such as lists, dictionaries, and most types representing entities outside the program (les, windows, etc.). This is usually used to the benet 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 modies 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 Name Spaces

Before introducing classes, I rst have to tell you something about Pythons scope rules. Class denitions play some neat tricks with namespaces, and you need to know how scopes and namespaces work to fully understand whats going on. Incidentally, knowledge about this subject is useful for any advanced Python programmer. Lets begin with some denitions.
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A namespace is a mapping from names to objects. Most namespaces are currently implemented as Python dictionaries, but thats normally not noticeable in any way (except for performance), and it may change in the future. Examples of namespaces are: the set of built-in names (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 dene a function maximize without confusion users of the modules must prex it with the module name. By the way, I use the word attribute for any name following a dot for example, in the expression z.real, real is an attribute of the object z. Strictly speaking, references to names in modules are attribute references: in the expression modname.funcname, modname is a module object and funcname is an attribute of it. In this case there happens to be a straightforward mapping between the modules attributes and the global names dened 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. Name spaces 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 denition 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 le or interactively, are considered part of a module called __main__, so they have their own global namespace. (The built-in names actually also live in a module; this is called __builtin__.) The local namespace for a function is created when the function is called, and deleted when the function returns or raises an exception that is not handled within the function. (Actually, forgetting would be a better way to describe what actually happens.) Of course, recursive invocations each have their own local namespace. A scope is a textual region of a Python program where a namespace is directly accessible. Directly accessible here means that an unqualied reference to a name attempts to nd 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 rst, contains the local names; the namespaces of any enclosing functions, which are searched starting with the nearest enclosing scope; the middle scope, searched next, contains the current modules global names; and the outermost scope (searched last) is the namespace containing built-in names. If a name is declared global, then all references and assignments go directly to the middle scope containing the modules global names. Otherwise, all variables found outside of the innermost scope are read-only (an attempt to write to such a variable will simply create a new local variable in the innermost scope, leaving the identically named outer variable unchanged). Usually, the local scope references the local names of the (textually) current function. Outside functions, the local scope references the same namespace as the global scope: the modules namespace. Class denitions place yet another namespace in the local scope. It is important to realize that scopes are determined textually: the global scope of a function dened in a module is that modules namespace, no matter from where or by what alias the function is called. On the other hand, the actual search for names is done dynamically, at run time however, the language denition is evolving towards static name resolution, at compile time, so dont rely on dynamic name resolution! (In fact, local variables are already determined statically.) A special quirk of Python is that if no global statement is in effect assignments to names always go into the innermost scope. Assignments do not copy data they just bind names to objects. The same is true for deletions: the
1 Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute called __dict__ which returns the dictionary used to implement the modules namespace; the name __dict__ is an attribute but not a global name. Obviously, using this violates the abstraction of namespace implementation, and should be restricted to things like post-mortem debuggers.
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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 denitions 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.)
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 Denition Syntax

The simplest form of class denition looks like this: class ClassName: <statement-1> . . . <statement-N> Class denitions, like function denitions (def statements) must be executed before they have any effect. (You could conceivably place a class denition in a branch of an if statement, or inside a function.) In practice, the statements inside a class denition will usually be function denitions, but other statements are allowed, and sometimes useful well come back to this later. The function denitions 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 denition 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 denitions bind the name of the new function here. When a class denition 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 denition; well learn more about class objects in the next section. The original local scope (the one in effect just before the class denition was entered) is reinstated, and the class object is bound here to the class name given in the class denition 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 classs namespace when the class object was created. So, if the class denition 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 assignment. __doc__ is also a valid attribute, returning the docstring belonging to the class: "A simple example class". Class instantiation uses function notation. Just pretend that the class object is a parameterless function that returns a new instance of the class. For example (assuming the above class):
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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 specic initial state. Therefore a class may dene a special method named __init__(), like this: def __init__(self): self.data = [] When a class denes 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 exibility. 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 rst 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, well use the term method exclusively to mean methods of class instance objects, unless explicitly stated otherwise.) Valid method names of an instance object depend on its class. By denition, all attributes of a class that are function objects dene 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.
9.3.4 Method Objects

Usually, a method is called right after it is bound: x.f()
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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 denition for f() specied 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 isnt actually used... Actually, you may have guessed the answer: the special thing about methods is that the object is passed as the rst 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 methods object before the rst argument. If you still dont understand how methods work, a look at the implementation can perhaps clarify matters. When an instance attribute is referenced that isnt a data attribute, its 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, it is unpacked again, a new argument list is constructed from the instance object and the original argument list, and the function object is called with this new argument list.
9.4 Random Remarks

Data attributes override method attributes with the same name; to avoid accidental name conicts, which may cause hard-to-nd bugs in large programs, it is wise to use some kind of convention that minimizes the chance of conicts. Possible conventions include capitalizing method names, prexing 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 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 conicts 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 nd 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 rst 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 denes a method for instances of that class. It is not necessary that the function denition is textually enclosed in the class denition: assigning a function object to a local variable in the class is also ok. For example:
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# 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 the class denition. (The class itself 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 dened in it. Usually, the class containing the method is itself dened in this global scope, and in the next section well nd 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__.
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 denition looks like this: class DerivedClassName(BaseClassName): <statement-1> . . . <statement-N> The name BaseClassName must be dened in a scope containing the derived class denition. In place of a base class name, other arbitrary expressions are also allowed. This can be useful, for example, when the base class is dened in another module: class DerivedClassName(modname.BaseClassName): Execution of a derived class denition 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.
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Theres nothing special about instantiation of derived classes: DerivedClassName() creates a new instance of the class. Method references are resolved as follows: the corresponding class attribute is searched, descending down the chain of base classes if necessary, and the method reference is valid if this yields a function object. Derived classes may override methods of their base classes. Because methods have no special privileges when calling other methods of the same object, a method of a base class that calls another method dened 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 dened or imported directly in the global scope.) Python has two built-in functions that work with inheritance: Use isinstance() to check an objects type: isinstance(obj, int) will be True only if obj.__class__ is int or some class derived from int. Use issubclass() to check class inheritance: issubclass(bool, int) is True since bool is a subclass of int. However, issubclass(unicode, str) is False since unicode is not a subclass of str (they only share a common ancestor, basestring).
9.5.1 Multiple Inheritance

Python supports a limited form of multiple inheritance as well. A class denition with multiple base classes looks like this: class DerivedClassName(Base1, Base2, Base3): <statement-1> . . . <statement-N> For old-style classes, the only rule is depth-rst, left-to-right. Thus, if an attribute is not found in DerivedClassName, it is searched in Base1, then (recursively) in the base classes of Base1, and only if it is not found there, it is searched in Base2, and so on. (To some people breadth rst searching Base2 and Base3 before the base classes of Base1 looks more natural. However, this would require you to know whether a particular attribute of Base1 is actually dened in Base1 or in one of its base classes before you can gure out the consequences of a name conict with an attribute of Base2. The depth-rst rule makes no differences between direct and inherited attributes of Base1.) For new-style classes, the method resolution order changes dynamically to support cooperative calls to super(). This approach is known in some other multiple-inheritance languages as call-next-method and is more powerful than the super call found in single-inheritance languages. With new-style classes, dynamic ordering is necessary because all cases of multiple inheritance exhibit one or more diamond relationships (where one at least one of the parent classes can be accessed through multiple paths from the bottommost class). For example, all new-style classes inherit from object, so any case of multiple inheritance provides more than one path to reach object. To keep the base classes from being accessed more than once, the dynamic algorithm linearizes the search order in a way that preserves the left-to-right ordering specied in each class, that calls each parent only once, and that is monotonic (meaning that a class can be subclassed without affecting the precedence order of its parents). Taken together, these properties make it possible to design reliable and extensible classes with multiple inheritance. For more detail, see http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.3/mro/.
9.5. Inheritance
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9.6 Private Variables

There is limited support for class-private identiers. Any identier 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 identier, so it can be used to dene class-private instance and class variables, methods, variables stored in globals, and even variables stored in instances. private to this class on instances of other classes. Truncation may occur when the mangled name would be longer than 255 characters. Outside classes, or when the class name consists of only underscores, no mangling occurs. Name mangling is intended to give classes an easy way to dene private instance variables and methods, without having to worry about instance variables dened by derived classes, or mucking with instance variables by code outside the class. Note that the mangling rules are designed mostly to avoid accidents; it still is possible for a determined soul to access or modify a variable that is considered private. This can even be useful in special circumstances, such as in the debugger, and thats one reason why this loophole is not closed. (Buglet: derivation of a class with the same name as the base class makes use of private variables of the base class possible.) Notice that code passed to exec, eval() or execfile() does not consider the classname of the invoking class to be the current class; this is similar to the effect of the global statement, the effect of which is likewise restricted to code that is byte-compiled together. The same restriction applies to getattr(), setattr() and delattr(), as well as when referencing __dict__ directly.
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 denition 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 le object, you can dene a class with methods read() and readline() that get the data from a string buffer instead, and pass it as an argument. Instance method objects have attributes, too: m.im_self is the instance object with the method m(), and m.im_func is the function object corresponding to the method.
9.8 Exceptions Are Classes Too

User-dened exceptions are identied by classes as well. Using this mechanism it is possible to create extensible hierarchies of exceptions. There are two new valid (semantic) forms for the raise statement:
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raise Class, instance raise instance In the rst form, instance must be an instance of Class or of a class derived from it. The second form is a shorthand for: raise instance.__class__, instance A class in an except clause is compatible with an exception if it is the same class or a base class thereof (but not the other way around an except clause listing a derived class is not compatible with a base class). For example, the following code will print B, C, D in that order: class B: pass class C(B): pass class D(C): pass for c in [B, C, D]: try: raise c() except D: print "D" except C: print "C" except B: print "B" Note that if the except clauses were reversed (with except B rst), it would have printed B, B, B the rst matching except clause is triggered. When an error message is printed for an unhandled exception, the exceptions class name is printed, then a colon and a space, and nally the instance converted to a string using the built-in function str().
9.9 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 This style of access is clear, concise, and convenient. The use of iterators pervades and unies Python. Behind the scenes, the for statement calls iter() on the container object. The function returns an iterator object that denes the method next() which accesses elements in the container one at a time. When there are no more elements, next() raises a StopIteration exception which tells the for loop to terminate. This example shows how it all works:
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>>> s = abc >>> it = iter(s) >>> it <iterator object at 0x00A1DB50> >>> it.next() a >>> it.next() b >>> it.next() c >>> it.next() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? it.next() StopIteration Having seen the mechanics behind the iterator protocol, it is easy to add iterator behavior to your classes. Dene a __iter__() method which returns an object with a next() method. If the class denes 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] >>> for char in Reverse(spam): ... print char ... m a p s
9.10 Generators
Generators are a simple and powerful tool for creating iterators. They are written like regular functions but use the yield statement whenever they want to return data. Each time next() is called, the generator resumes where it left-off (it remembers all the data values and which statement was last executed). An example shows that generators can be trivially easy to create: def reverse(data): for index in range(len(data)-1, -1, -1): yield data[index] >>> for char in reverse(golf): 70 Chapter 9. Classes
... ... f l o g
print char
Anything that can be done with generators can also be done with class based iterators as described in the previous section. What makes generators so compact is that the __iter__() and next() methods are created automatically. Another key feature is that the local variables and execution state are automatically saved between calls. This made the function easier to write and much more clear than an approach using instance variables like self.index and self.data. In addition to automatic method creation and saving program state, when generators terminate, they automatically raise StopIteration. In combination, these features make it easy to create iterators with no more effort than writing a regular function.
9.11 Generator Expressions

Some simple generators can be coded succinctly as expressions using a syntax similar to list comprehensions but with parentheses instead of brackets. These expressions are designed for situations where the generator is used right away by an enclosing function. Generator expressions are more compact but less versatile than full generator denitions and tend to be more memory friendly than equivalent list comprehensions. Examples: >>> sum(i*i for i in range(10)) 285 >>> xvec = [10, 20, 30] >>> yvec = [7, 5, 3] >>> sum(x*y for x,y in zip(xvec, yvec)) 260 # sum of squares
# dot product
>>> from math import pi, sin >>> sine_table = dict((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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10.1 Operating System Interface
The os module provides dozens of functions for interacting with the operating system: >>> import os >>> os.system(time 0:02) 0 >>> os.getcwd() # Return the current working directory C:\\Python26 >>> os.chdir(/server/accesslogs) Be sure to use the import os style instead of from os import *. This will keep os.open() from shadowing the built-in open() function which operates much differently. The built-in dir() and help() functions are useful as interactive aids for working with large modules like os: >>> import os >>> dir(os) <returns a list of all module functions> >>> help(os) <returns an extensive manual page created from the modules docstrings> For daily le and directory management tasks, the shutil module provides a higher level interface that is easier to use: >>> import shutil >>> shutil.copyfile(data.db, archive.db) >>> shutil.move(/build/executables, installdir)
10.2 File Wildcards

The glob module provides a function for making le lists from directory wildcard searches: >>> import glob >>> glob.glob(*.py) [primes.py, random.py, quote.py]
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10.3 Command Line Arguments

Common utility scripts often need to process command line arguments. These arguments are stored in the sys modules argv attribute as a list. For instance the following output results from running python demo.py one two three at the command line: >>> import sys >>> print sys.argv [demo.py, one, two, three] The getopt module processes sys.argv using the conventions of the Unix getopt() function. More powerful and exible command line processing is provided by the optparse module.
10.4 Error Output Redirection and Program Termination

The sys module also has attributes for stdin, stdout, and stderr. The latter is useful for emitting warnings and error messages to make them visible even when stdout has been redirected: >>> sys.stderr.write(Warning, log file not found starting a new one\n) Warning, log file not found starting a new one The most direct way to terminate a script is to use sys.exit().
10.5 String Pattern Matching

The re module provides regular expression tools for advanced string processing. For complex matching and manipulation, regular expressions offer succinct, optimized solutions: >>> import re >>> re.findall(r\bf[a-z]*, which foot or hand fell fastest) [foot, fell, fastest] >>> re.sub(r(\b[a-z]+) \1, r\1, cat in the the hat) cat in the hat When only simple capabilities are needed, string methods are preferred because they are easier to read and debug: >>> tea for too.replace(too, two) tea for two
10.6 Mathematics
The math module gives access to the underlying C library functions for oating point math: >>> import math >>> math.cos(math.pi / 4.0) 0.70710678118654757 >>> math.log(1024, 2) 10.0 The random module provides tools for making random selections:
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>>> import random >>> random.choice([apple, pear, banana]) apple >>> random.sample(xrange(100), 10) # sampling without replacement [30, 83, 16, 4, 8, 81, 41, 50, 18, 33] >>> random.random() # random float 0.17970987693706186 >>> random.randrange(6) # random integer chosen from range(6) 4
10.7 Internet Access

There are a number of modules for accessing the internet and processing internet protocols. Two of the simplest are urllib2 for retrieving data from urls and smtplib for sending mail: >>> import urllib2 >>> for line in urllib2.urlopen(http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/timer.pl): ... if EST in line or EDT in line: # look for Eastern Time ... print line <BR>Nov. 25, 09:43:32 PM EST >>> >>> >>> ... ... ... ... ... >>> import smtplib server = smtplib.SMTP(localhost) server.sendmail(soothsayer@example.org, jcaesar@example.org, """To: jcaesar@example.org From: soothsayer@example.org Beware the Ides of March. """) server.quit()
(Note that the second example needs a mailserver running on localhost.)
10.8 Dates and Times

The datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and times in both simple and complex ways. While date and time arithmetic is supported, the focus of the implementation is on efcient member extraction for output formatting and manipulation. The module also supports objects that are timezone aware. # dates are easily constructed and formatted >>> from datetime import date >>> now = date.today() >>> now datetime.date(2003, 12, 2) >>> now.strftime("%m-%d-%y. %d %b %Y is a %A on the %d day of %B.") 12-02-03. 02 Dec 2003 is a Tuesday on the 02 day of December. # dates support calendar arithmetic >>> birthday = date(1964, 7, 31) >>> age = now - birthday
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>>> age.days 14368
10.9 Data Compression

Common data archiving and compression formats are directly supported by modules including: zlib, gzip, bz2, zipfile and tarfile. >>> import zlib >>> s = witch which has which witches wrist watch >>> len(s) 41 >>> t = zlib.compress(s) >>> len(t) 37 >>> zlib.decompress(t) witch which has which witches wrist watch >>> zlib.crc32(s) 226805979
10.10 Performance Measurement

Some Python users develop a deep interest in knowing the relative performance of different approaches to the same problem. Python provides a measurement tool that answers those questions immediately. For example, it may be tempting to use the tuple packing and unpacking feature instead of the traditional approach to swapping arguments. The timeit module quickly demonstrates a modest performance advantage: >>> from timeit import Timer >>> Timer(t=a; a=b; b=t, a=1; b=2).timeit() 0.57535828626024577 >>> Timer(a,b = b,a, a=1; b=2).timeit() 0.54962537085770791 In contrast to timeits ne level of granularity, the profile and pstats modules provide tools for identifying time critical sections in larger blocks of code.
10.11 Quality Control

One approach for developing high quality software is to write tests for each function as it is developed and to run those tests frequently during the development process. The doctest module provides a tool for scanning a module and validating tests embedded in a programs docstrings. Test construction is as simple as cutting-and-pasting a typical call along with its results into the docstring. This improves the documentation by providing the user with an example and it allows the doctest module to make sure the code remains true to the documentation: def average(values): """Computes the arithmetic mean of a list of numbers. >>> print average([20, 30, 70]) 40.0
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""" return sum(values, 0.0) / len(values) import doctest doctest.testmod()
# automatically validate the embedded tests
The unittest module is not as effortless as the doctest module, but it allows a more comprehensive set of tests to be maintained in a separate le: import unittest class TestStatisticalFunctions(unittest.TestCase): def test_average(self): self.assertEqual(average([20, 30, 70]), 40.0) self.assertEqual(round(average([1, 5, 7]), 1), 4.3) self.assertRaises(ZeroDivisionError, average, []) self.assertRaises(TypeError, average, 20, 30, 70) unittest.main() # Calling from the command line invokes all tests
10.12 Batteries Included

Python has a batteries included philosophy. This is best seen through the sophisticated and robust capabilities of its larger packages. For example: The xmlrpclib and SimpleXMLRPCServer modules make implementing remote procedure calls into an almost trivial task. Despite the modules names, no direct knowledge or handling of XML is needed. The email package is a library for managing email messages, including MIME and other RFC 2822-based message documents. Unlike smtplib and poplib which actually send and receive messages, the email package has a complete toolset for building or decoding complex message structures (including attachments) and for implementing internet encoding and header protocols. The xml.dom and xml.sax packages provide robust support for parsing this popular data interchange format. Likewise, the csv module supports direct reads and writes in a common database format. Together, these modules and packages greatly simplify data interchange between python applications and other tools. Internationalization is supported by a number of modules including gettext, locale, and the codecs package.
10.12. Batteries Included
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This second tour covers more advanced modules that support professional programming needs. These modules rarely occur in small scripts.
11.1 Output Formatting

The repr module provides a version of repr() customized for abbreviated displays of large or deeply nested containers: >>> import repr >>> repr.repr(set(supercalifragilisticexpialidocious)) "set([a, c, d, e, f, g, ...])" The pprint module offers more sophisticated control over printing both built-in and user dened objects in a way that is readable by the interpreter. When the result is longer than one line, the pretty printer adds line breaks and indentation to more clearly reveal data structure: >>> import pprint >>> t = [[[[black, cyan], white, [green, red]], [[magenta, ... yellow], blue]]] ... >>> pprint.pprint(t, width=30) [[[[black, cyan], white, [green, red]], [[magenta, yellow], blue]]] The textwrap module formats paragraphs of text to t a given screen width: >>> import textwrap >>> doc = """The wrap() method is just like fill() except that it returns ... a list of strings instead of one big string with newlines to separate ... the wrapped lines.""" ... >>> print textwrap.fill(doc, width=40) The wrap() method is just like fill() except that it returns a list of strings
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instead of one big string with newlines to separate the wrapped lines. The locale module accesses a database of culture specic data formats. The grouping attribute of locales format function provides a direct way of formatting numbers with group separators: >>> import locale >>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, English_United States.1252) English_United States.1252 >>> conv = locale.localeconv() # get a mapping of conventions >>> x = 1234567.8 >>> locale.format("%d ", x, grouping=True) 1,234,567 >>> locale.format("%s%.*f ", (conv[currency_symbol], ... conv[frac_digits], x), grouping=True) $1,234,567.80
11.2 Templating
The string module includes a versatile Template class with a simplied syntax suitable for editing by end-users. This allows users to customize their applications without having to alter the application. The format uses placeholder names formed by $ with valid Python identiers (alphanumeric characters and underscores). Surrounding the placeholder with braces allows it to be followed by more alphanumeric letters with no intervening spaces. Writing $$ creates a single escaped $: >>> from string import Template >>> t = Template(${village}folk send $$10 to $cause.) >>> t.substitute(village=Nottingham, cause=the ditch fund) Nottinghamfolk send $10 to the ditch fund. The substitute() method raises a KeyError when a placeholder is not supplied in a dictionary or a keyword argument. For mail-merge style applications, user supplied data may be incomplete and the safe_substitute() method may be more appropriate it will leave placeholders unchanged if data is missing: >>> t = Template(Return the $item to $owner.) >>> d = dict(item=unladen swallow) >>> t.substitute(d) Traceback (most recent call last): . . . KeyError: owner >>> t.safe_substitute(d) Return the unladen swallow to $owner. Template subclasses can specify a custom delimiter. For example, a batch renaming utility for a photo browser may elect to use percent signs for placeholders such as the current date, image sequence number, or le format: >>> import time, os.path >>> photofiles = [img_1074.jpg, img_1076.jpg, img_1077.jpg] >>> class BatchRename(Template): ... delimiter = % >>> fmt = raw_input(Enter rename style (%d -date %n-seqnum %f -format): Enter rename style (%d-date %n-seqnum %f-format): Ashley_%n%f >>> t = BatchRename(fmt) >>> date = time.strftime(%d %b%y)
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>>> for i, filename in enumerate(photofiles): ... base, ext = os.path.splitext(filename) ... newname = t.substitute(d=date, n=i, f=ext) ... print {0} --> {1}.format(filename, newname) img_1074.jpg --> Ashley_0.jpg img_1076.jpg --> Ashley_1.jpg img_1077.jpg --> Ashley_2.jpg Another application for templating is separating program logic from the details of multiple output formats. This makes it possible to substitute custom templates for XML les, plain text reports, and HTML web reports.
11.3 Working with Binary Data Record Layouts

The struct module provides pack() and unpack() functions for working with variable length binary record formats. The following example shows how to loop through header information in a ZIP le without using the zipfile module. Pack codes "H" and "I" represent two and four byte unsigned numbers respectively. The "<" indicates that they are standard size and in little-endian byte order: import struct data = open(myfile.zip, rb).read() start = 0 for i in range(3): # show the first 3 file headers start += 14 fields = struct.unpack(<IIIHH, data[start:start+16]) crc32, comp_size, uncomp_size, filenamesize, extra_size = fields start += 16 filename = data[start:start+filenamesize] start += filenamesize extra = data[start:start+extra_size] print filename, hex(crc32), comp_size, uncomp_size start += extra_size + comp_size # skip to the next header
11.4 Multi-threading
Threading is a technique for decoupling tasks which are not sequentially dependent. Threads can be used to improve the responsiveness of applications that accept user input while other tasks run in the background. A related use case is running I/O in parallel with computations in another thread. The following code shows how the high level threading module can run tasks in background while the main program continues to run: import threading, zipfile class AsyncZip(threading.Thread): def __init__(self, infile, outfile): threading.Thread.__init__(self) self.infile = infile self.outfile = outfile def run(self): 11.3. Working with Binary Data Record Layouts 81
f = zipfile.ZipFile(self.outfile, w, zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) f.write(self.infile) f.close() print Finished background zip of: , self.infile background = AsyncZip(mydata.txt, myarchive.zip) background.start() print The main program continues to run in foreground. background.join() # Wait for the background task to finish print Main program waited until background was done. The principal challenge of multi-threaded applications is coordinating threads that share data or other resources. To that end, the threading module provides a number of synchronization primitives including locks, events, condition variables, and semaphores. While those tools are powerful, minor design errors can result in problems that are difcult to reproduce. So, the preferred approach to task coordination is to concentrate all access to a resource in a single thread and then use the Queue module to feed that thread with requests from other threads. Applications using Queue.Queue objects for inter-thread communication and coordination are easier to design, more readable, and more reliable.
11.5 Logging
The logging module offers a full featured and exible logging system. At its simplest, log messages are sent to a le or to sys.stderr: import logging logging.debug(Debugging information) logging.info(Informational message) logging.warning(Warning:config file %s not found, server.conf) logging.error(Error occurred) logging.critical(Critical error -- shutting down) This produces the following output: WARNING:root:Warning:config file server.conf not found ERROR:root:Error occurred CRITICAL:root:Critical error -- shutting down By default, informational and debugging messages are suppressed and the output is sent to standard error. Other output options include routing messages through email, datagrams, sockets, or to an HTTP Server. New lters can select different routing based on message priority: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, and CRITICAL. The logging system can be congured directly from Python or can be loaded from a user editable conguration le for customized logging without altering the application.
11.6 Weak References

Python does automatic memory management (reference counting for most objects and garbage collection to eliminate cycles). The memory is freed shortly after the last reference to it has been eliminated. This approach works ne for most applications but occasionally there is a need to track objects only as long as they are being used by something else. Unfortunately, just tracking them creates a reference that makes them permanent. The weakref module provides tools for tracking objects without creating a reference. When the object is no longer
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needed, it is automatically removed from a weakref table and a callback is triggered for weakref objects. Typical applications include caching objects that are expensive to create: >>> import weakref, gc >>> class A: ... def __init__(self, value): ... self.value = value ... def __repr__(self): ... return str(self.value) ... >>> a = A(10) # create a reference >>> d = weakref.WeakValueDictionary() >>> d[primary] = a # does not create a reference >>> d[primary] # fetch the object if it is still alive 10 >>> del a # remove the one reference >>> gc.collect() # run garbage collection right away 0 >>> d[primary] # entry was automatically removed Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> d[primary] # entry was automatically removed File "C:/python26/lib/weakref.py", line 46, in __getitem__ o = self.data[key]() KeyError: primary
11.7 Tools for Working with Lists

Many data structure needs can be met with the built-in list type. However, sometimes there is a need for alternative implementations with different performance trade-offs. The array module provides an array() object that is like a list that stores only homogeneous data and stores it more compactly. The following example shows an array of numbers stored as two byte unsigned binary numbers (typecode "H") rather than the usual 16 bytes per entry for regular lists of python int objects: >>> from array import array >>> a = array(H, [4000, 10, 700, 22222]) >>> sum(a) 26932 >>> a[1:3] array(H, [10, 700]) The collections module provides a deque() object that is like a list with faster appends and pops from the left side but slower lookups in the middle. These objects are well suited for implementing queues and breadth rst tree searches: >>> from collections import deque >>> d = deque(["task1", "task2", "task3"]) >>> d.append("task4") >>> print "Handling", d.popleft() Handling task1 unsearched = deque([starting_node]) def breadth_first_search(unsearched): node = unsearched.popleft() 11.7. Tools for Working with Lists 83
for m in gen_moves(node): if is_goal(m): return m unsearched.append(m) In addition to alternative list implementations, the library also offers other tools such as the bisect module with functions for manipulating sorted lists: >>> import bisect >>> scores = [(100, perl), (200, tcl), (400, lua), (500, python)] >>> bisect.insort(scores, (300, ruby)) >>> scores [(100, perl), (200, tcl), (300, ruby), (400, lua), (500, python)] The heapq module provides functions for implementing heaps based on regular lists. The lowest valued entry is always kept at position zero. This is useful for applications which repeatedly access the smallest element but do not want to run a full list sort: >>> from heapq import heapify, heappop, heappush >>> data = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 0] >>> heapify(data) # rearrange the list into heap order >>> heappush(data, -5) # add a new entry >>> [heappop(data) for i in range(3)] # fetch the three smallest entries [-5, 0, 1]
11.8 Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic

The decimal module offers a Decimal datatype for decimal oating point arithmetic. Compared to the builtin float implementation of binary oating point, the new class is especially helpful for nancial applications and other uses which require exact decimal representation, control over precision, control over rounding to meet legal or regulatory requirements, tracking of signicant decimal places, or for applications where the user expects the results to match calculations done by hand. For example, calculating a 5% tax on a 70 cent phone charge gives different results in decimal oating point and binary oating point. The difference becomes signicant if the results are rounded to the nearest cent: >>> from decimal import * >>> Decimal(0.70) * Decimal(1.05) Decimal(0.7350) >>> .70 * 1.05 0.73499999999999999 The Decimal result keeps a trailing zero, automatically inferring four place signicance from multiplicands with two place signicance. Decimal reproduces mathematics as done by hand and avoids issues that can arise when binary oating point cannot exactly represent decimal quantities. Exact representation enables the Decimal class to perform modulo calculations and equality tests that are unsuitable for binary oating point: >>> Decimal(1.00) % Decimal(.10) Decimal(0.00) >>> 1.00 % 0.10 0.09999999999999995 >>> sum([Decimal(0.1)]*10) == Decimal(1.0) True
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>>> sum([0.1]*10) == 1.0 False The decimal module provides arithmetic with as much precision as needed: >>> getcontext().prec = 36 >>> Decimal(1) / Decimal(7) Decimal(0.142857142857142857142857142857142857)
11.8. Decimal Floating Point Arithmetic
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WHAT NOW?
Reading this tutorial has probably reinforced your interest in using Python you should be eager to apply Python to solving your real-world problems. Where should you go to learn more? This tutorial is part of Pythons documentation set. Some other documents in the set are: The Python Standard Library (in The Python Library Reference): You should browse through this manual, which gives complete (though terse) reference material about types, functions, and the modules in the standard library. The standard Python distribution includes a lot of additional code. There are modules to read Unix mailboxes, retrieve documents via HTTP, generate random numbers, parse command-line options, write CGI programs, compress data, and many other tasks. Skimming through the Library Reference will give you an idea of whats available. Installing Python Modules (in Installing Python Modules) explains how to install external modules written by other Python users. The Python Language Reference (in The Python Language Reference): A detailed explanation of Pythons syntax and semantics. Its heavy reading, but is useful as a complete guide to the language itself. More Python resources: http://www.python.org: The major Python Web site. It contains code, documentation, and pointers to Pythonrelated pages around the Web. This Web site is mirrored in various places around the world, such as Europe, Japan, and Australia; a mirror may be faster than the main site, depending on your geographical location. http://docs.python.org: Fast access to Pythons documentation. http://pypi.python.org: The Python Package Index, previously also nicknamed the Cheese Shop, is an index of user-created Python modules that are available for download. Once you begin releasing code, you can register it here so that others can nd it. http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/: The Python Cookbook is a sizable collection of code examples, larger modules, and useful scripts. Particularly notable contributions are collected in a book also titled Python Cookbook (OReilly & Associates, ISBN 0-596-00797-3.) For Python-related questions and problem reports, you can post to the newsgroup comp.lang.python, or send them to the mailing list at python-list@python.org. The newsgroup and mailing list are gatewayed, so messages posted to one will automatically be forwarded to the other. There are around 120 postings a day (with peaks up to several hundred), asking (and answering) questions, suggesting new features, and announcing new modules. Before posting, be sure to check the list of Frequently Asked Questions (also called the FAQ), or look for it in the Misc/ directory of the Python source distribution. Mailing list archives are available at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/. The FAQ answers many of the questions that come up again and again, and may already contain the solution for your problem.
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INTERACTIVE INPUT EDITING AND HISTORY SUBSTITUTION

Some versions of the Python interpreter support editing of the current input line and history substitution, similar to facilities found in the Korn shell and the GNU Bash shell. This is implemented using the GNU Readline library, which supports Emacs-style and vi-style editing. This library has its own documentation which I wont duplicate here; however, the basics are easily explained. The interactive editing and history described here are optionally available in the Unix and Cygwin versions of the interpreter. This chapter does not document the editing facilities of Mark Hammonds PythonWin package or the Tk-based environment, IDLE, distributed with Python. The command line history recall which operates within DOS boxes on NT and some other DOS and Windows avors is yet another beast.
13.1 Line Editing

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

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

The key bindings and some other parameters of the Readline library can be customized by placing commands in an initialization le called ~/.inputrc. Key bindings have the form key-name: function-name
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or "string": function-name and options can be set with set option-name value For example: # I prefer vi-style editing: set editing-mode vi # Edit using a single line: set horizontal-scroll-mode On # Rebind some keys: Meta-h: backward-kill-word "\C-u": universal-argument "\C-x\C-r": re-read-init-file Note that the default binding for Tab in Python is to insert a Tab character instead of Readlines default lename completion function. If you insist, you can override this by putting Tab: complete in your ~/.inputrc. (Of course, this makes it harder to type indented continuation lines if youre accustomed to using Tab for that purpose.) Automatic completion of variable and module names is optionally available. To enable it in the interpreters interactive mode, add the following to your startup le: 1 import rlcompleter, readline readline.parse_and_bind(tab: complete) This binds the Tab key to the completion function, so hitting the Tab key twice suggests completions; it looks at Python statement names, the current local variables, and the available module names. For dotted expressions such as string.a, it will evaluate the expression up to the nal . and then suggest completions from the attributes of the resulting object. Note that this may execute application-dened code if an object with a __getattr__() method is part of the expression. A more capable startup le might look like this example. Note that this deletes the names it creates once they are no longer needed; this is done since the startup le is executed in the same namespace as the interactive commands, and removing the names avoids creating side effects in the interactive environment. You may nd it convenient to keep some of the imported modules, such as os, which turn out to be needed in most sessions with the interpreter. # # # # # # # # # Add auto-completion and a stored history file of commands to your Python interactive interpreter. Requires Python 2.0+, readline. Autocomplete is bound to the Esc key by default (you can change it - see readline docs). Store the file in ~/.pystartup, and set an environment variable to point to it: "export PYTHONSTARTUP=/home/user/.pystartup" in bash. Note that PYTHONSTARTUP does *not* expand "~", so you have to put in the full path to your home directory. atexit os readline rlcompleter
import import import import

1
Python will execute the contents of a le identied by the PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable when you start an interactive interpreter.
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Chapter 13. Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
historyPath = os.path.expanduser("~/.pyhistory") def save_history(historyPath=historyPath): import readline readline.write_history_file(historyPath) if os.path.exists(historyPath): readline.read_history_file(historyPath) atexit.register(save_history) del os, atexit, readline, rlcompleter, save_history, historyPath
13.4 Commentary
This facility is an enormous step forward compared to earlier versions of the interpreter; however, some wishes are left: It would be nice if the proper indentation were suggested on continuation lines (the parser knows if an indent token is required next). The completion mechanism might use the interpreters symbol table. A command to check (or even suggest) matching parentheses, quotes, etc., would also be useful.
13.4. Commentary
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CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
FLOATING POINT ARITHMETIC: ISSUES AND LIMITATIONS

Floating-point numbers are represented in computer hardware as base 2 (binary) fractions. For example, the decimal fraction 0.125 has value 1/10 + 2/100 + 5/1000, and in the same way the binary fraction 0.001 has value 0/2 + 0/4 + 1/8. These two fractions have identical values, the only real difference being that the rst is written in base 10 fractional notation, and the second in base 2. Unfortunately, most decimal fractions cannot be represented exactly as binary fractions. A consequence is that, in general, the decimal oating-point numbers you enter are only approximated by the binary oating-point numbers actually stored in the machine. The problem is easier to understand at rst in base 10. Consider the fraction 1/3. You can approximate that as a base 10 fraction: 0.3 or, better, 0.33 or, better, 0.333 and so on. No matter how many digits youre willing to write down, the result will never be exactly 1/3, but will be an increasingly better approximation of 1/3. In the same way, no matter how many base 2 digits youre willing to use, the decimal value 0.1 cannot be represented exactly as a base 2 fraction. In base 2, 1/10 is the innitely repeating fraction 0.0001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011... Stop at any nite number of bits, and you get an approximation. This is why you see things like: >>> 0.1 0.10000000000000001 On most machines today, that is what youll see if you enter 0.1 at a Python prompt. You may not, though, because the number of bits used by the hardware to store oating-point values can vary across machines, and Python only prints a decimal approximation to the true decimal value of the binary approximation stored by the machine. On most
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machines, if Python were to print the true decimal value of the binary approximation stored for 0.1, it would have to display >>> 0.1 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625 instead! The Python prompt uses the built-in repr() function to obtain a string version of everything it displays. For oats, repr(float) rounds the true decimal value to 17 signicant digits, giving 0.10000000000000001 repr(float) produces 17 signicant digits because it turns out thats enough (on most machines) so that eval(repr(x)) == x exactly for all nite oats x, but rounding to 16 digits is not enough to make that true. Note that this is in the very nature of binary oating-point: this is not a bug in Python, and it is not a bug in your code either. Youll see the same kind of thing in all languages that support your hardwares oating-point arithmetic (although some languages may not display the difference by default, or in all output modes). Pythons built-in str() function produces only 12 signicant digits, and you may wish to use that instead. Its unusual for eval(str(x)) to reproduce x, but the output may be more pleasant to look at: >>> print str(0.1) 0.1 Its important to realize that this is, in a real sense, an illusion: the value in the machine is not exactly 1/10, youre simply rounding the display of the true machine value. Other surprises follow from this one. For example, after seeing >>> 0.1 0.10000000000000001 you may be tempted to use the round() function to chop it back to the single digit you expect. But that makes no difference: >>> round(0.1, 1) 0.10000000000000001 The problem is that the binary oating-point value stored for 0.1 was already the best possible binary approximation to 1/10, so trying to round it again cant make it better: it was already as good as it gets. Another consequence is that since 0.1 is not exactly 1/10, summing ten values of 0.1 may not yield exactly 1.0, either: >>> sum = 0.0 >>> for i in range(10): ... sum += 0.1 ... >>> sum 0.99999999999999989 Binary oating-point arithmetic holds many surprises like this. The problem with 0.1 is explained in precise detail below, in the Representation Error section. See The Perils of Floating Point for a more complete account of other common surprises. As that says near the end, there are no easy answers. Still, dont be unduly wary of oating-point! The errors in Python oat operations are inherited from the oating-point hardware, and on most machines are on the order of no more than 1 part in 2**53 per operation. Thats more than adequate for most tasks, but you do need to keep in mind that its not decimal arithmetic, and that every oat operation can suffer a new rounding error. While pathological cases do exist, for most casual use of oating-point arithmetic youll see the result you expect in the end if you simply round the display of your nal results to the number of decimal digits you expect. str() usually sufces, and for ner control see the str.format() methods format speciers in Format String Syntax (in The Python Library Reference).
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Chapter 14. Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations
14.1 Representation Error

This section explains the 0.1 example in detail, and shows how you can perform an exact analysis of cases like this yourself. Basic familiarity with binary oating-point representation is assumed. Representation error refers to the fact that some (most, actually) decimal fractions cannot be represented exactly as binary (base 2) fractions. This is the chief reason why Python (or Perl, C, C++, Java, Fortran, and many others) often wont display the exact decimal number you expect: >>> 0.1 0.10000000000000001 Why is that? 1/10 is not exactly representable as a binary fraction. Almost all machines today (November 2000) use IEEE-754 oating point arithmetic, and almost all platforms map Python oats to IEEE-754 double precision. 754 doubles contain 53 bits of precision, so on input the computer strives to convert 0.1 to the closest fraction it can of the form J /2***N* where J is an integer containing exactly 53 bits. Rewriting 1 / 10 ~= J / (2**N) as J ~= 2**N / 10 and recalling that J has exactly 53 bits (is >= 2**52 but < 2**53), the best value for N is 56: >>> 2**52 4503599627370496L >>> 2**53 9007199254740992L >>> 2**56/10 7205759403792793L That is, 56 is the only value for N that leaves J with exactly 53 bits. The best possible value for J is then that quotient rounded: >>> q, r = divmod(2**56, 10) >>> r 6L Since the remainder is more than half of 10, the best approximation is obtained by rounding up: >>> q+1 7205759403792794L Therefore the best possible approximation to 1/10 in 754 double precision is that over 2**56, or 7205759403792794 / 72057594037927936 Note that since we rounded up, this is actually a little bit larger than 1/10; if we had not rounded up, the quotient would have been a little bit smaller than 1/10. But in no case can it be exactly 1/10! So the computer never sees 1/10: what it sees is the exact fraction given above, the best 754 double approximation it can get: >>> .1 * 2**56 7205759403792794.0 If we multiply that fraction by 10**30, we can see the (truncated) value of its 30 most signicant decimal digits: >>> 7205759403792794 * 10**30 / 2**56 100000000000000005551115123125L
14.1. Representation Error
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meaning that the exact number stored in the computer is approximately equal to the decimal value 0.100000000000000005551115123125. Rounding that to 17 signicant digits gives the 0.10000000000000001 that Python displays (well, will display on any 754-conforming platform that does best-possible input and output conversions in its C library yours may not!).
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Chapter 14. Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations
APPENDIX
GLOSSARY
>>> The default Python prompt of the interactive shell. Often seen for code examples which can be executed interactively in the interpreter. ... The default Python prompt of the interactive shell when entering code for an indented code block or within a pair of matching left and right delimiters (parentheses, square brackets or curly braces). 2to3 A tool that tries to convert Python 2.x code to Python 3.x code by handling most of the incompatibilites which can be detected by parsing the source and traversing the parse tree. 2to3 is available in the standard library as lib2to3; a standalone entry point is provided as Tools/scripts/2to3. See 2to3 - Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation (in The Python Library Reference). abstract base class Abstract Base Classes (abbreviated ABCs) complement duck-typing by providing a way to dene interfaces when other techniques like hasattr() would be clumsy. Python comes with many builtin ABCs for data structures (in the collections module), numbers (in the numbers module), and streams (in the io module). You can create your own ABC with the abc module. argument A value passed to a function or method, assigned to a named local variable in the function body. A function or method may have both positional arguments and keyword arguments in its denition. Positional and keyword arguments may be variable-length: * accepts or passes (if in the function denition or call) several positional arguments in a list, while ** does the same for keyword arguments in a dictionary. Any expression may be used within the argument list, and the evaluated value is passed to the local variable. attribute A value associated with an object which is referenced by name using dotted expressions. For example, if an object o has an attribute a it would be referenced as o.a. BDFL Benevolent Dictator For Life, a.k.a. Guido van Rossum, Pythons creator. bytecode Python source code is compiled into bytecode, the internal representation of a Python program in the interpreter. The bytecode is also cached in .pyc and .pyo les so that executing the same le is faster the second time (recompilation from source to bytecode can be avoided). This intermediate language is said to run on a virtual machine that executes the machine code corresponding to each bytecode. class A template for creating user-dened objects. Class denitions normally contain method denitions which operate on instances of the class. classic class Any class which does not inherit from object. See new-style class. Classic classes will be removed in Python 3.0. coercion The implicit conversion of an instance of one type to another during an operation which involves two arguments of the same type. For example, int(3.15) converts the oating point number to the integer 3, but in 3+4.5, each argument is of a different type (one int, one oat), and both must be converted to the same type before they can be added or it will raise a TypeError. Coercion between two operands can be performed with the coerce builtin function; thus, 3+4.5 is equivalent to calling operator.add(*coerce(3, 4.5)) and
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results in operator.add(3.0, 4.5). Without coercion, all arguments of even compatible types would have to be normalized to the same value by the programmer, e.g., float(3)+4.5 rather than just 3+4.5. complex number An extension of the familiar real number system in which all numbers are expressed as a sum of a real part and an imaginary part. Imaginary numbers are real multiples of the imaginary unit (the square root of -1), often written i in mathematics or j in engineering. Python has builtin support for complex numbers, which are written with this latter notation; the imaginary part is written with a j sufx, e.g., 3+1j. To get access to complex equivalents of the math module, use cmath. Use of complex numbers is a fairly advanced mathematical feature. If youre not aware of a need for them, its almost certain you can safely ignore them. context manager An object which controls the environment seen in a with statement by dening __enter__() and __exit__() methods. See PEP 343. CPython The canonical implementation of the Python programming language. The term CPython is used in contexts when necessary to distinguish this implementation from others such as Jython or IronPython. decorator A function returning another function, usually applied as a function transformation using the @wrapper syntax. Common examples for decorators are classmethod() and staticmethod(). The decorator syntax is merely syntactic sugar, the following two function denitions are semantically equivalent: def f(...): ... f = staticmethod(f) @staticmethod def f(...): ... See the documentation for function denition (in The Python Language Reference) for more about decorators. descriptor Any new-style object which denes the methods __get__(), __set__(), or __delete__(). When a class attribute is a descriptor, its special binding behavior is triggered upon attribute lookup. Normally, using a.b to get, set or delete an attribute looks up the object named b in the class dictionary for a, but if b is a descriptor, the respective descriptor method gets called. Understanding descriptors is a key to a deep understanding of Python because they are the basis for many features including functions, methods, properties, class methods, static methods, and reference to super classes. For more information about descriptors methods, see Implementing Descriptors (in The Python Language Reference). dictionary An associative array, where arbitrary keys are mapped to values. The use of dict closely resembles that for list, but the keys can be any object with a __hash__() function, not just integers. Called a hash in Perl. docstring A string literal which appears as the rst expression in a class, function or module. While ignored when the suite is executed, it is recognized by the compiler and put into the __doc__ attribute of the enclosing class, function or module. Since it is available via introspection, it is the canonical place for documentation of the object. duck-typing A pythonic programming style which determines an objects type by inspection of its method or attribute signature rather than by explicit relationship to some type object (If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.) By emphasizing interfaces rather than specic types, well-designed code improves its exibility by allowing polymorphic substitution. Duck-typing avoids tests using type() or isinstance(). (Note, however, that duck-typing can be complemented with abstract base classes.) Instead, it typically employs hasattr() tests or EAFP programming. EAFP Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This common Python coding style assumes the existence of valid keys or attributes and catches exceptions if the assumption proves false. This clean and fast style is characterized
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Appendix A. Glossary
by the presence of many try and except statements. The technique contrasts with the LBYL style common to many other languages such as C. expression A piece of syntax which can be evaluated to some value. In other words, an expression is an accumulation of expression elements like literals, names, attribute access, operators or function calls which all return a value. In contrast to many other languages, not all language constructs are expressions. There are also statements which cannot be used as expressions, such as print or if. Assignments are also statements, not expressions. extension module A module written in C or C++, using Pythons C API to interact with the core and with user code. nder An object that tries to nd the loader for a module. It must implement a method named find_module(). See PEP 302 for details. function A series of statements which returns some value to a caller. It can also be passed zero or more arguments which may be used in the execution of the body. See also argument and method. __future__ A pseudo module which programmers can use to enable new language features which are not compatible with the current interpreter. For example, the expression 11/4 currently evaluates to 2. If the module in which it is executed had enabled true division by executing: from __future__ import division the expression 11/4 would evaluate to 2.75. By importing the __future__ module and evaluating its variables, you can see when a new feature was rst added to the language and when it will become the default: >>> import __future__ >>> __future__.division _Feature((2, 2, 0, alpha, 2), (3, 0, 0, alpha, 0), 8192) garbage collection The process of freeing memory when it is not used anymore. Python performs garbage collection via reference counting and a cyclic garbage collector that is able to detect and break reference cycles. generator A function which returns an iterator. It looks like a normal function except that values are returned to the caller using a yield statement instead of a return statement. Generator functions often contain one or more for or while loops which yield elements back to the caller. The function execution is stopped at the yield keyword (returning the result) and is resumed there when the next element is requested by calling the next() method of the returned iterator. generator expression An expression that returns a generator. It looks like a normal expression followed by a for expression dening a loop variable, range, and an optional if expression. The combined expression generates values for an enclosing function: >>> sum(i*i for i in range(10)) 285 GIL See global interpreter lock. global interpreter lock The lock used by Python threads to assure that only one thread executes in the CPython virtual machine at a time. This simplies the CPython implementation by assuring that no two processes can access the same memory at the same time. Locking the entire interpreter makes it easier for the interpreter to be multi-threaded, at the expense of much of the parallelism afforded by multi-processor machines. Efforts have been made in the past to create a free-threaded interpreter (one which locks shared data at a much ner granularity), but so far none have been successful because performance suffered in the common single-processor case. hashable An object is hashable if it has a hash value which never changes during its lifetime (it needs a __hash__() method), and can be compared to other objects (it needs an __eq__() or __cmp__() method). Hashable objects which compare equal must have the same hash value. Hashability makes an object usable as a dictionary key and a set member, because these data structures use the hash value internally. # sum of squares 0, 1, 4, ... 81
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All of Pythons immutable built-in objects are hashable, while no mutable containers (such as lists or dictionaries) are. Objects which are instances of user-dened classes are hashable by default; they all compare unequal, and their hash value is their id(). IDLE An Integrated Development Environment for Python. IDLE is a basic editor and interpreter environment which ships with the standard distribution of Python. Good for beginners, it also serves as clear example code for those wanting to implement a moderately sophisticated, multi-platform GUI application. immutable An object with a xed value. Immutable objects include numbers, strings and tuples. Such an object cannot be altered. A new object has to be created if a different value has to be stored. They play an important role in places where a constant hash value is needed, for example as a key in a dictionary. integer division Mathematical division discarding any remainder. For example, the expression 11/4 currently evaluates to 2 in contrast to the 2.75 returned by oat division. Also called oor division. When dividing two integers the outcome will always be another integer (having the oor function applied to it). However, if one of the operands is another numeric type (such as a float), the result will be coerced (see coercion) to a common type. For example, an integer divided by a oat will result in a oat value, possibly with a decimal fraction. Integer division can be forced by using the // operator instead of the / operator. See also __future__. importer An object that both nds and loads a module; both a nder and loader object. interactive Python has an interactive interpreter which means you can enter statements and expressions at the interpreter prompt, immediately execute them and see their results. Just launch python with no arguments (possibly by selecting it from your computers main menu). It is a very powerful way to test out new ideas or inspect modules and packages (remember help(x)). interpreted Python is an interpreted language, as opposed to a compiled one, though the distinction can be blurry because of the presence of the bytecode compiler. This means that source les can be run directly without explicitly creating an executable which is then run. Interpreted languages typically have a shorter development/debug cycle than compiled ones, though their programs generally also run more slowly. See also interactive. iterable A container object capable of returning its members one at a time. Examples of iterables include all sequence types (such as list, str, and tuple) and some non-sequence types like dict and file and objects of any classes you dene with an __iter__() or __getitem__() method. Iterables can be used in a for loop and in many other places where a sequence is needed (zip(), map(), ...). When an iterable object is passed as an argument to the builtin function iter(), it returns an iterator for the object. This iterator is good for one pass over the set of values. When using iterables, it is usually not necessary to call iter() or deal with iterator objects yourself. The for statement does that automatically for you, creating a temporary unnamed variable to hold the iterator for the duration of the loop. See also iterator, sequence, and generator. iterator An object representing a stream of data. Repeated calls to the iterators next() method return successive items in the stream. When no more data are available a StopIteration exception is raised instead. At this point, the iterator object is exhausted and any further calls to its next() method just raise StopIteration again. Iterators are required to have an __iter__() method that returns the iterator object itself so every iterator is also iterable and may be used in most places where other iterables are accepted. One notable exception is code which attempts multiple iteration passes. A container object (such as a list) produces a fresh new iterator each time you pass it to the iter() function or use it in a for loop. Attempting this with an iterator will just return the same exhausted iterator object used in the previous iteration pass, making it appear like an empty container. More information can be found in Iterator Types (in The Python Library Reference). keyword argument Arguments which are preceded with a variable_name= in the call. The variable name designates the local name in the function to which the value is assigned. ** is used to accept or pass a dictionary of keyword arguments. See argument. lambda An anonymous inline function consisting of a single expression which is evaluated when the function is called. The syntax to create a lambda function is lambda [arguments]: expression
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LBYL Look before you leap. This coding style explicitly tests for pre-conditions before making calls or lookups. This style contrasts with the EAFP approach and is characterized by the presence of many if statements. list A built-in Python sequence. Despite its name it is more akin to an array in other languages than to a linked list since access to elements are O(1). list comprehension A compact way to process all or part of the elements in a sequence and return a list with the results. result = ["0x%02x" % x for x in range(256) if x % 2 == 0] generates a list of strings containing even hex numbers (0x..) in the range from 0 to 255. The if clause is optional. If omitted, all elements in range(256) are processed. loader An object that loads a module. It must dene a method named load_module(). A loader is typically returned by a nder. See PEP 302 for details. mapping A container object (such as dict) which supports arbitrary key lookups using the special method __getitem__(). metaclass The class of a class. Class denitions create a class name, a class dictionary, and a list of base classes. The metaclass is responsible for taking those three arguments and creating the class. Most object oriented programming languages provide a default implementation. What makes Python special is that it is possible to create custom metaclasses. Most users never need this tool, but when the need arises, metaclasses can provide powerful, elegant solutions. They have been used for logging attribute access, adding thread-safety, tracking object creation, implementing singletons, and many other tasks. More information can be found in Customizing class creation (in The Python Language Reference). method A function which is dened inside a class body. If called as an attribute of an instance of that class, the method will get the instance object as its rst argument (which is usually called self). See function and nested scope. mutable Mutable objects can change their value but keep their id(). See also immutable. named tuple Any tuple-like class whose indexable elements are also accessible using named attributes (for example, time.localtime() returns a tuple-like object where the year is accessible either with an index such as t[0] or with a named attribute like t.tm_year). A named tuple can be a built-in type such as time.struct_time, or it can be created with a regular class denition. A full featured named tuple can also be created with the factory function collections.namedtuple(). The latter approach automatically provides extra features such as a selfdocumenting representation like Employee(name=jones, title=programmer). namespace The place where a variable is stored. Namespaces are implemented as dictionaries. There are the local, global and builtin namespaces as well as nested namespaces in objects (in methods). Namespaces support modularity by preventing naming conicts. For instance, the functions __builtin__.open() and os.open() are distinguished by their namespaces. Namespaces also aid readability and maintainability by making it clear which module implements a function. For instance, writing random.seed() or itertools.izip() makes it clear that those functions are implemented by the random and itertools modules, respectively. nested scope The ability to refer to a variable in an enclosing denition. For instance, a function dened inside another function can refer to variables in the outer function. Note that nested scopes work only for reference and not for assignment which will always write to the innermost scope. In contrast, local variables both read and write in the innermost scope. Likewise, global variables read and write to the global namespace. new-style class Any class which inherits from object. This includes all built-in types like list and dict. Only new-style classes can use Pythons newer, versatile features like __slots__, descriptors, properties, and __getattribute__(). More information can be found in New-style and classic classes (in The Python Language Reference). object Any data with state (attributes or value) and dened behavior (methods). Also the ultimate base class of any new-style class.
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positional argument The arguments assigned to local names inside a function or method, determined by the order in which they were given in the call. * is used to either accept multiple positional arguments (when in the denition), or pass several arguments as a list to a function. See argument. Python 3000 Nickname for the next major Python version, 3.0 (coined long ago when the release of version 3 was something in the distant future.) This is also abbreviated Py3k. Pythonic An idea or piece of code which closely follows the most common idioms of the Python language, rather than implementing code using concepts common to other languages. For example, a common idiom in Python is to loop over all elements of an iterable using a for statement. Many other languages dont have this type of construct, so people unfamiliar with Python sometimes use a numerical counter instead: for i in range(len(food)): print food[i] As opposed to the cleaner, Pythonic method: for piece in food: print piece reference count The number of references to an object. When the reference count of an object drops to zero, it is deallocated. Reference counting is generally not visible to Python code, but it is a key element of the CPython implementation. The sys module denes a getrefcount() function that programmers can call to return the reference count for a particular object. __slots__ A declaration inside a new-style class that saves memory by pre-declaring space for instance attributes and eliminating instance dictionaries. Though popular, the technique is somewhat tricky to get right and is best reserved for rare cases where there are large numbers of instances in a memory-critical application. sequence An iterable which supports efcient element access using integer indices via the __getitem__() special method and denes a len() method that returns the length of the sequence. Some built-in sequence types are list, str, tuple, and unicode. Note that dict also supports __getitem__() and __len__(), but is considered a mapping rather than a sequence because the lookups use arbitrary immutable keys rather than integers. slice An object usually containing a portion of a sequence. A slice is created using the subscript notation, [] with colons between numbers when several are given, such as in variable_name[1:3:5]. The bracket (subscript) notation uses slice objects internally (or in older versions, __getslice__() and __setslice__()). special method A method that is called implicitly by Python to execute a certain operation on a type, such as addition. Such methods have names starting and ending with double underscores. Special methods are documented in Special method names (in The Python Language Reference). statement A statement is part of a suite (a block of code). A statement is either an expression or a one of several constructs with a keyword, such as if, while or print. triple-quoted string A string which is bound by three instances of either a quotation mark () or an apostrophe (). While they dont provide any functionality not available with single-quoted strings, they are useful for a number of reasons. They allow you to include unescaped single and double quotes within a string and they can span multiple lines without the use of the continuation character, making them especially useful when writing docstrings. type The type of a Python object determines what kind of object it is; every object has a type. An objects type is accessible as its __class__ attribute or can be retrieved with type(obj). virtual machine A computer dened entirely in software. Pythons virtual machine executes the bytecode emitted by the bytecode compiler. Zen of Python Listing of Python design principles and philosophies that are helpful in understanding and using the language. The listing can be found by typing import this at the interactive prompt.
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APPENDIX
ABOUT THESE DOCUMENTS

These documents are generated from reStructuredText sources by Sphinx, a document processor specically written for the Python documentation. Development of the documentation and its toolchain takes place on the docs@python.org mailing list. Were always looking for volunteers wanting to help with the docs, so feel free to send a mail there! Many thanks go to: Fred L. Drake, Jr., the creator of the original Python documentation toolset and writer of much of the content; the Docutils project for creating reStructuredText and the Docutils suite; Fredrik Lundh for his Alternative Python Reference project from which Sphinx got many good ideas. See Reporting Bugs in Python for information how to report bugs in this documentation, or Python itself.
B.1 Contributors to the Python Documentation

This section lists people who have contributed in some way to the Python documentation. It is probably not complete if you feel that you or anyone else should be on this list, please let us know (send email to docs@python.org), and well be glad to correct the problem. Aahz, Michael Abbott, Steve Alexander, Jim Ahlstrom, Fred Allen, A. Amoroso, Pehr Anderson, Oliver Andrich, Heidi Annexstad, Jess Cea Avin, Daniel Barclay, Chris Barker, Don Bashford, Anthony Baxter, Alexander Belopolsky, Bennett Benson, Jonathan Black, Robin Boerdijk, Michal Bozon, Aaron Brancotti, Georg Brandl, Keith Briggs, Ian Bruntlett, Lee Busby, Lorenzo M. Catucci, Carl Cerecke, Mauro Cicognini, Gilles Civario, Mike Clarkson, Steve Clift, Dave Cole, Matthew Cowles, Jeremy Craven, Andrew Dalke, Ben Darnell, L. Peter Deutsch, Robert Donohue, Fred L. Drake, Jr., Josip Dzolonga, Jeff Epler, Michael Ernst, Blame Andy Eskilsson, Carey Evans, Martijn Faassen, Carl Feynman, Dan Finnie, Hernn Martnez Foffani, Stefan Franke, Jim Fulton, Peter Funk, Lele Gaifax, Matthew Gallagher, Gabriel Genellina, Ben Gertzeld, Nadim Ghaznavi, Jonathan Giddy, Shelley Gooch, Nathaniel Gray, Grant Grifn, Thomas Guettler, Anders Hammarquist, Mark Hammond, Harald Hanche-Olsen, Manus Hand, Gerhard Hring, Travis B. Hartwell, Tim Hatch, Janko Hauser, Thomas Heller, Bernhard Herzog, Magnus L. Hetland, Konrad Hinsen, Stefan Hoffmeister, Albert Hofkamp, Gregor Hofeit, Steve Holden, Thomas Holenstein, Gerrit Holl, Rob Hooft, Brian Hooper, Randall Hopper, Michael Hudson, Eric Huss, Jeremy Hylton, Roger Irwin, Jack Jansen, Philip H. Jensen, Pedro Diaz Jimenez, Kent Johnson, Lucas de Jonge, Andreas Jung, Robert Kern, Jim Kerr, Jan Kim, Greg Kochanski, Guido Kollerie, Peter A. Koren, Daniel Kozan, Andrew M. Kuchling, Dave Kuhlman, Erno Kuusela, Thomas Lamb, Detlef Lannert, Piers Lauder, Glyph Lefkowitz, Robert Lehmann, Marc-Andr Lemburg, Ross Light, Ulf A. Lindgren, Everett Lipman, Mirko Liss, Martin von Lwis, Fredrik Lundh, Jeff MacDonald, John Machin, Andrew MacIntyre, Vladimir Marangozov, Vincent Marchetti, Laura Matson, Daniel May, Rebecca McCreary, Doug Mennella, Paolo Milani, Skip Montanaro, Paul Moore, Ross Moore, Sjoerd Mullender, Dale Nagata, Ng Pheng Siong, Koray Oner, Tomas Oppelstrup, Denis S. Otkidach, Zooko OWhielacronx, Shriphani Palakodety, William Park, Joonas Paalasmaa, Harri Pasanen, Bo Peng, Tim Peters, Benjamin Peterson, Christopher Petrilli, Justin 103
D. Pettit, Chris Phoenix, Franois Pinard, Paul Prescod, Eric S. Raymond, Edward K. Ream, Sean Reifschneider, Bernhard Reiter, Armin Rigo, Wes Rishel, Armin Ronacher, Jim Roskind, Guido van Rossum, Donald Wallace Rouse II, Mark Russell, Nick Russo, Chris Ryland, Constantina S., Hugh Sasse, Bob Savage, Scott Schram, Neil Schemenauer, Barry Scott, Joakim Sernbrant, Justin Sheehy, Charlie Shepherd, Michael Simcich, Ionel Simionescu, Michael Sloan, Gregory P. Smith, Roy Smith, Clay Spence, Nicholas Spies, Tage Stabell-Kulo, Frank Stajano, Anthony Starks, Greg Stein, Peter Stoehr, Mark Summereld, Reuben Sumner, Kalle Svensson, Jim Tittsler, David Turner, Ville Vainio, Martijn Vries, Charles G. Waldman, Greg Ward, Barry Warsaw, Corran Webster, Glyn Webster, Bob Weiner, Eddy Welbourne, Jeff Wheeler, Mats Wichmann, Gerry Wiener, Timothy Wild, Collin Winter, Blake Winton, Dan Wolfe, Steven Work, Thomas Wouters, Ka-Ping Yee, Rory Yorke, Moshe Zadka, Milan Zamazal, Cheng Zhang. It is only with the input and contributions of the Python community that Python has such wonderful documentation Thank You!
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Appendix B. About these documents
APPENDIX
HISTORY AND LICENSE

C.1 History of the software
Python was created in the early 1990s by Guido van Rossum at Stichting Mathematisch Centrum (CWI, see http://www.cwi.nl/) in the Netherlands as a successor of a language called ABC. Guido remains Pythons principal author, although it includes many contributions from others. In 1995, Guido continued his work on Python at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI, see http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/) in Reston, Virginia where he released several versions of the software. In May 2000, Guido and the Python core development team moved to BeOpen.com to form the BeOpen PythonLabs team. In October of the same year, the PythonLabs team moved to Digital Creations (now Zope Corporation; see http://www.zope.com/). In 2001, the Python Software Foundation (PSF, see http://www.python.org/psf/) was formed, a non-prot organization created specically to own Python-related Intellectual Property. Zope Corporation is a sponsoring member of the PSF. All Python releases are Open Source (see http://www.opensource.org/ for the Open Source Denition). Historically, most, but not all, Python releases have also been GPL-compatible; the table below summarizes the various releases. Release 0.9.0 thru 1.2 1.3 thru 1.5.2 1.6 2.0 1.6.1 2.1 2.0.1 2.1.1 2.2 2.1.2 2.1.3 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3 2.3 2.3.1 2.3.2 2.3.3 2.3.4 2.3.5 2.4 Derived from n/a 1.2 1.5.2 1.6 1.6 2.0+1.6.1 2.0+1.6.1 2.1+2.0.1 2.1.1 2.1.1 2.1.2 2.2 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.2 2.3 2.3.1 2.3.2 2.3.3 2.3.4 2.3 Year 1991-1995 1995-1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2001 2001 2001 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002-2003 2002-2003 2002-2003 2003 2003 2004 2005 2004 Owner GPL compatible? CWI yes CNRI yes CNRI no BeOpen.com no CNRI no PSF no PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes PSF yes Continued on next page 105
2.4.1 2.4.2 2.4.3 2.4.4 2.5 2.5.1 2.5.2 2.5.3 2.6 2.6.1
Table C.1 continued from previous page 2.4 2005 PSF yes 2.4.1 2005 PSF yes 2.4.2 2006 PSF yes 2.4.3 2006 PSF yes 2.4 2006 PSF yes 2.5 2007 PSF yes 2.5.1 2008 PSF yes 2.5.2 2008 PSF yes 2.5 2008 PSF yes 2.6 2008 PSF yes
Note: GPL-compatible doesnt mean that were distributing Python under the GPL. All Python licenses, unlike the GPL, let you distribute a modied version without making your changes open source. The GPL-compatible licenses make it possible to combine Python with other software that is released under the GPL; the others dont. Thanks to the many outside volunteers who have worked under Guidos direction to make these releases possible.
C.2 Terms and conditions for accessing or otherwise using Python

PSF LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR PYTHON 2.6.3 1. This LICENSE AGREEMENT is between the Python Software Foundation (PSF), and the Individual or Organization (Licensee) accessing and otherwise using Python 2.6.3 software in source or binary form and its associated documentation. 2. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License Agreement, PSF hereby grants Licensee a nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide license to reproduce, analyze, test, perform and/or display publicly, prepare derivative works, distribute, and otherwise use Python 2.6.3 alone or in any derivative version, provided, however, that PSFs License Agreement and PSFs notice of copyright, i.e., Copyright 2001-2009 Python Software Foundation; All Rights Reserved are retained in Python 2.6.3 alone or in any derivative version prepared by Licensee. 3. In the event Licensee prepares a derivative work that is based on or incorporates Python 2.6.3 or any part thereof, and wants to make the derivative work available to others as provided herein, then Licensee hereby agrees to include in any such work a brief summary of the changes made to Python 2.6.3. 4. PSF is making Python 2.6.3 available to Licensee on an AS IS basis. PSF MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, PSF MAKES NO AND DISCLAIMS ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF PYTHON 2.6.3 WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. 5. PSF SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO LICENSEE OR ANY OTHER USERS OF PYTHON 2.6.3 FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR LOSS AS A RESULT OF MODIFYING, DISTRIBUTING, OR OTHERWISE USING PYTHON 2.6.3, OR ANY DERIVATIVE THEREOF, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY THEREOF. 6. This License Agreement will automatically terminate upon a material breach of its terms and conditions. 7. Nothing in this License Agreement shall be deemed to create any relationship of agency, partnership, or joint venture between PSF and Licensee. This License Agreement does not grant permission to use PSF trademarks or trade name in a trademark sense to endorse or promote products or services of Licensee, or any third party. 8. By copying, installing or otherwise using Python 2.6.3, Licensee agrees to be bound by the terms and conditions of this License Agreement.
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Appendix C. History and License
BEOPEN.COM LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR PYTHON 2.0 BEOPEN PYTHON OPEN SOURCE LICENSE AGREEMENT VERSION 1 1. This LICENSE AGREEMENT is between BeOpen.com (BeOpen), having an ofce at 160 Saratoga Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95051, and the Individual or Organization (Licensee) accessing and otherwise using this software in source or binary form and its associated documentation (the Software). 2. Subject to the terms and conditions of this BeOpen Python License Agreement, BeOpen hereby grants Licensee a non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide license to reproduce, analyze, test, perform and/or display publicly, prepare derivative works, distribute, and otherwise use the Software alone or in any derivative version, provided, however, that the BeOpen Python License is retained in the Software, alone or in any derivative version prepared by Licensee. 3. BeOpen is making the Software available to Licensee on an AS IS basis. BEOPEN MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, BEOPEN MAKES NO AND DISCLAIMS ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. 4. BEOPEN SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO LICENSEE OR ANY OTHER USERS OF THE SOFTWARE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR LOSS AS A RESULT OF USING, MODIFYING OR DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE, OR ANY DERIVATIVE THEREOF, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY THEREOF. 5. This License Agreement will automatically terminate upon a material breach of its terms and conditions. 6. This License Agreement shall be governed by and interpreted in all respects by the law of the State of California, excluding conict of law provisions. Nothing in this License Agreement shall be deemed to create any relationship of agency, partnership, or joint venture between BeOpen and Licensee. This License Agreement does not grant permission to use BeOpen trademarks or trade names in a trademark sense to endorse or promote products or services of Licensee, or any third party. As an exception, the BeOpen Python logos available at http://www.pythonlabs.com/logos.html may be used according to the permissions granted on that web page. 7. By copying, installing or otherwise using the software, Licensee agrees to be bound by the terms and conditions of this License Agreement. CNRI LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR PYTHON 1.6.1 1. This LICENSE AGREEMENT is between the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, having an ofce at 1895 Preston White Drive, Reston, VA 20191 (CNRI), and the Individual or Organization (Licensee) accessing and otherwise using Python 1.6.1 software in source or binary form and its associated documentation. 2. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License Agreement, CNRI hereby grants Licensee a nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide license to reproduce, analyze, test, perform and/or display publicly, prepare derivative works, distribute, and otherwise use Python 1.6.1 alone or in any derivative version, provided, however, that CNRIs License Agreement and CNRIs notice of copyright, i.e., Copyright 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives; All Rights Reserved are retained in Python 1.6.1 alone or in any derivative version prepared by Licensee. Alternately, in lieu of CNRIs License Agreement, Licensee may substitute the following text (omitting the quotes): Python 1.6.1 is made available subject to the terms and conditions in CNRIs License Agreement. This Agreement together with Python 1.6.1 may be located on the Internet using the following unique, persistent identier (known as a handle): 1895.22/1013. This Agreement may also be obtained from a proxy server on the Internet using the following URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1895.22/1013. 3. In the event Licensee prepares a derivative work that is based on or incorporates Python 1.6.1 or any part thereof, and wants to make the derivative work available to others as provided herein, then Licensee hereby agrees to include in any such work a brief summary of the changes made to Python 1.6.1. 4. CNRI is making Python 1.6.1 available to Licensee on an AS IS basis. CNRI MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION,
C.2. Terms and conditions for accessing or otherwise using Python
107
CNRI MAKES NO AND DISCLAIMS ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF PYTHON 1.6.1 WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. 5. CNRI SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO LICENSEE OR ANY OTHER USERS OF PYTHON 1.6.1 FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR LOSS AS A RESULT OF MODIFYING, DISTRIBUTING, OR OTHERWISE USING PYTHON 1.6.1, OR ANY DERIVATIVE THEREOF, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY THEREOF. 6. This License Agreement will automatically terminate upon a material breach of its terms and conditions. 7. This License Agreement shall be governed by the federal intellectual property law of the United States, including without limitation the federal copyright law, and, to the extent such U.S. federal law does not apply, by the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, excluding Virginias conict of law provisions. Notwithstanding the foregoing, with regard to derivative works based on Python 1.6.1 that incorporate non-separable material that was previously distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia shall govern this License Agreement only as to issues arising under or with respect to Paragraphs 4, 5, and 7 of this License Agreement. Nothing in this License Agreement shall be deemed to create any relationship of agency, partnership, or joint venture between CNRI and Licensee. This License Agreement does not grant permission to use CNRI trademarks or trade name in a trademark sense to endorse or promote products or services of Licensee, or any third party. 8. By clicking on the ACCEPT button where indicated, or by copying, installing or otherwise using Python 1.6.1, Licensee agrees to be bound by the terms and conditions of this License Agreement. ACCEPT CWI LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR PYTHON 0.9.0 THROUGH 1.2 Copyright 1991 - 1995, Stichting Mathematisch Centrum Amsterdam, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Stichting Mathematisch Centrum or CWI not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specic, written prior permission. STICHTING MATHEMATISCH CENTRUM DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL STICHTING MATHEMATISCH CENTRUM BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
C.3 Licenses and Acknowledgements for Incorporated Software

This section is an incomplete, but growing list of licenses and acknowledgements for third-party software incorporated in the Python distribution.
C.3.1 Mersenne Twister

The _random module includes code based on a download from http://www.math.keio.ac.jp/ matumoto/MT2002/emt19937ar.html. The following are the verbatim comments from the original code: A C-program for MT19937, with initialization improved 2002/1/26. Coded by Takuji Nishimura and Makoto Matsumoto. Before using, initialize the state by using init_genrand(seed)
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or init_by_array(init_key, key_length). Copyright (C) 1997 - 2002, Makoto Matsumoto and Takuji Nishimura, All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. The names of its contributors may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Any feedback is very welcome. http://www.math.keio.ac.jp/matumoto/emt.html email: matumoto@math.keio.ac.jp
C.3.2 Sockets
The socket module uses the functions, getaddrinfo(), and getnameinfo(), which are coded in separate source les from the WIDE Project, http://www.wide.ad.jp/. Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998 WIDE Project. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. Neither the name of the project nor the names of its contributors C.3. Licenses and Acknowledgements for Incorporated Software 109
may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE PROJECT AND CONTRIBUTORS AS IS AND GAI_ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE PROJECT OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR GAI_ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON GAI_ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN GAI_ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
C.3.3 Floating point exception control

The source for the fpectl module includes the following notice: --------------------------------------------------------------------/ Copyright (c) 1996. \ | The Regents of the University of California. | | All rights reserved. | | | | Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for | | any purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this en| | tire notice is included in all copies of any software which is or | | includes a copy or modification of this software and in all | | copies of the supporting documentation for such software. | | | | This work was produced at the University of California, Lawrence | | Livermore National Laboratory under contract no. W-7405-ENG-48 | | between the U.S. Department of Energy and The Regents of the | | University of California for the operation of UC LLNL. | | | | DISCLAIMER | | | | This software was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an | | agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States | | Government nor the University of California nor any of their em| | ployees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any | | liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or | | usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process | | disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe | | privately-owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commer| | cial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, | | manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or | | imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United | | States Government or the University of California. The views and | | opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or | | reflect those of the United States Government or the University | | of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product | \ endorsement purposes. / --------------------------------------------------------------------110 Appendix C. History and License
C.3.4 MD5 message digest algorithm

The source code for the md5 module contains the following notice: Copyright (C) 1999, 2002 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved.
This software is provided as-is, without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required. 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. L. Peter Deutsch ghost@aladdin.com Independent implementation of MD5 (RFC 1321). This code implements the MD5 Algorithm defined in RFC 1321, whose text is available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1321.txt The code is derived from the text of the RFC, including the test suite (section A.5) but excluding the rest of Appendix A. It does not include any code or documentation that is identified in the RFC as being copyrighted. The original and principal author of md5.h is L. Peter Deutsch <ghost@aladdin.com>. Other authors are noted in the change history that follows (in reverse chronological order): 2002-04-13 lpd Removed support for non-ANSI compilers; removed references to Ghostscript; clarified derivation from RFC 1321; now handles byte order either statically or dynamically. 1999-11-04 lpd Edited comments slightly for automatic TOC extraction. 1999-10-18 lpd Fixed typo in header comment (ansi2knr rather than md5); added conditionalization for C++ compilation from Martin Purschke <purschke@bnl.gov>. 1999-05-03 lpd Original version.
C.3.5 Asynchronous socket services

The asynchat and asyncore modules contain the following notice: Copyright 1996 by Sam Rushing
C.3. Licenses and Acknowledgements for Incorporated Software
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All Rights Reserved Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Sam Rushing not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. SAM RUSHING DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL SAM RUSHING BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
C.3.6 Cookie management

The Cookie module contains the following notice: Copyright 2000 by Timothy OMalley <timo@alum.mit.edu> All Rights Reserved Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Timothy OMalley not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. Timothy OMalley DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL Timothy OMalley BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
C.3.7 Proling
The profile and pstats modules contain the following notice: Copyright 1994, by InfoSeek Corporation, all rights reserved. Written by James Roskind Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this Python software
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and its associated documentation for any purpose (subject to the restriction in the following sentence) without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies, and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of InfoSeek not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. This permission is explicitly restricted to the copying and modification of the software to remain in Python, compiled Python, or other languages (such as C) wherein the modified or derived code is exclusively imported into a Python module. INFOSEEK CORPORATION DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL INFOSEEK CORPORATION BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
C.3.8 Execution tracing

The trace module contains the following notice: portions copyright 2001, Autonomous Zones Industries, Inc., all rights... err... reserved and offered to the public under the terms of the Python 2.2 license. Author: Zooko OWhielacronx http://zooko.com/ mailto:zooko@zooko.com Copyright 2000, Mojam Media, Inc., all rights reserved. Author: Skip Montanaro Copyright 1999, Bioreason, Inc., all rights reserved. Author: Andrew Dalke Copyright 1995-1997, Automatrix, Inc., all rights reserved. Author: Skip Montanaro Copyright 1991-1995, Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, all rights reserved.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this Python software and its associated documentation for any purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies, and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of neither Automatrix, Bioreason or Mojam Media be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission.
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C.3.9 UUencode and UUdecode functions

The uu module contains the following notice: Copyright 1994 by Lance Ellinghouse Cathedral City, California Republic, United States of America. All Rights Reserved Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Lance Ellinghouse not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. LANCE ELLINGHOUSE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL LANCE ELLINGHOUSE CENTRUM BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. Modified by Jack Jansen, CWI, July 1995: - Use binascii module to do the actual line-by-line conversion between ascii and binary. This results in a 1000-fold speedup. The C version is still 5 times faster, though. - Arguments more compliant with python standard
C.3.10 XML Remote Procedure Calls

The xmlrpclib module contains the following notice: The XML-RPC client interface is Copyright (c) 1999-2002 by Secret Labs AB Copyright (c) 1999-2002 by Fredrik Lundh By obtaining, using, and/or copying this software and/or its associated documentation, you agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions: Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its associated documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies, and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Secret Labs AB or the author not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. SECRET LABS AB AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL SECRET LABS AB OR THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY
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DAMAGES WHETHER ACTION, OF THIS
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE SOFTWARE.
C.3.11 test_epoll
The test_epoll contains the following notice: Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Twisted Matrix Laboratories. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
C.3.12 Select kqueue

The select and contains the following notice for the kqueue interface: Copyright (c) 2000 Doug White, 2006 James Knight, 2007 Christian Heimes All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS AS IS AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
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HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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APPENDIX
COPYRIGHT
Python and this documentation is: Copyright 2001-2008 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved. Copyright 2000 BeOpen.com. All rights reserved. Copyright 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. All rights reserved. Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum. All rights reserved.
See History and License for complete license and permissions information.
117
118
Appendix D. Copyright
INDEX
Symbols
* statement, 25 ** statement, 25 ..., 97 __all__, 45 __builtin__ module, 43 __future__, 99 __slots__, 102 >>>, 97 2to3, 97
descriptor, 98 dictionary, 98 docstring, 98 docstrings, 22, 26 documentation strings, 22, 26 duck-typing, 98
E
EAFP, 98 environment variable PATH, 7, 41 PYTHONPATH, 41, 42 PYTHONSTARTUP, 7, 90 expression, 99 extension module, 99
A
abstract base class, 97 argument, 97 attribute, 97
F
le object, 50 nder, 99 for statement, 19 function, 99
B
BDFL, 97 built-in function help, 73 open, 50 unicode, 15 bytecode, 97
G
garbage collection, 99 generator, 99 generator expression, 99 GIL, 99 global interpreter lock, 99
C
class, 97 classic class, 97 coding style, 27 coercion, 97 compileall module, 42 complex number, 98 context manager, 98 CPython, 98
H
hashable, 99 help built-in function, 73
I
IDLE, 100 immutable, 100 importer, 100 integer division, 100
D
decorator, 98
119
interactive, 100 interpreted, 100 iterable, 100 iterator, 100
K
keyword argument, 100
PEP 343, 98 PEP 8, 27 Pythonic, 102 PYTHONPATH, 41, 42 PYTHONSTARTUP, 7, 90
R
readline module, 90 reference count, 102 rlcompleter module, 90
L
lambda, 100 LBYL, 100 list, 101 list comprehension, 101 loader, 101
S
search path, module, 41 sequence, 102 slice, 102 special method, 102 statement, 102 *, 25 **, 25 for, 19 string module, 47 strings, documentation, 22, 26 style coding, 27 sys module, 42
M
mapping, 101 metaclass, 101 method, 101 object, 64 module __builtin__, 43 compileall, 42 pickle, 52 readline, 90 rlcompleter, 90 search path, 41 string, 47 sys, 42 mutable, 101
N
named tuple, 101 namespace, 101 nested scope, 101 new-style class, 101
T
triple-quoted string, 102 type, 102
U
unicode built-in function, 15
O
object, 101 le, 50 method, 64 open built-in function, 50
V
virtual machine, 102
Z
Zen of Python, 102
P
PATH, 7, 41 path module search, 41 pickle module, 52 positional argument, 101 Python 3000, 102 Python Enhancement Proposals PEP 302, 99, 101 120
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Python Tutorial

Guido van Rossum Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor

October 06, 2009

Python Software Foundation Email: docs@python.org

14.1 Representation Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Glossary

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

WHETTING YOUR APPETITE

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Chapter 1. Whetting Your Appetite

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Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

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2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment

A problem with the GNU Readline package may prevent this.

Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

2.2.2 Executable Python Scripts

2.2.3 Source Code Encoding

2.2.4 The Interactive Startup File

2.2. The Interpreter and Its Environment

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter

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3.1 Using Python as a Calculator

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

3.1. Using Python as a Calculator

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Display this usage message Hostname to connect to

Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

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Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

3.1.3 Unicode Strings

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Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

3.2 First Steps Towards Programming

3.2. First Steps Towards Programming

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

MORE CONTROL FLOW TOOLS

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Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

4.3 The range() Function

4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops

Chapter 4. More Control Flow Tools

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

4.5 pass Statements

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4.5. pass Statements

Python Tutorial, Release 2.6.3

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