Python Tutorial: Release 2.0

Python Tutorial
Release 2.0
Guido van Rossum

Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor
October 16, 2000
BeOpen PythonLabs
E-mail: python-docs@python.org
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Abstract
Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language. It has efficient high-level data structures and a simple
but effective approach to object-oriented programming. Python’s 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 can be freely distributed. The same site also contains
distributions of and pointers to many free third party Python modules, programs and tools, and additional documenta-
tion.
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 Refer-
ence Manual gives a more formal definition of the language. To write extensions in C or C++, read Extending and
Embedding the Python Interpreter and Python/C API Reference. 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 Python’s most noteworthy features, and will give you a good idea of the
language’s flavor and style. After reading it, you will be able to read and write Python modules and programs, and you
will be ready to learn more about the various Python library modules described in the Python Library Reference.
CONTENTS
1 Whetting Your Appetite 1

1.1 Where From Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 Using the Python Interpreter 3

2.1 Invoking the Interpreter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3 An Informal Introduction to Python 7

3.1 Using Python as a Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 First Steps Towards Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4 More Control Flow Tools 19

4.1 if Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2 for Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3 The range() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.5 pass Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.6 Defining Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.7 More on Defining Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5 Data Structures 29
5.1 More on Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.2 The del statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.3 Tuples and Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.4 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.5 More on Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.6 Comparing Sequences and Other Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6 Modules 37
6.1 More on Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.2 Standard Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.3 The dir() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6.4 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7 Input and Output 45

7.1 Fancier Output Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.2 Reading and Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8 Errors and Exceptions 51

8.1 Syntax Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
i
8.2 Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.3 Handling Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8.4 Raising Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
8.5 User-defined Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
8.6 Defining Clean-up Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9 Classes 57
9.1 A Word About Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.2 Python Scopes and Name Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.3 A First Look at Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.4 Random Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.5 Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
9.6 Private Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9.7 Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
10 What Now? 67
A Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution 69

A.1 Line Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
A.2 History Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
A.3 Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
A.4 Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
ii
CHAPTER
ONE
Whetting Your Appetite
If you ever wrote a large shell script, you probably know this feeling: you’d love to add yet another feature, but it’s
already so slow, and so big, and so complicated; or the feature involves a system call or other function that is only
accessible from C . . . Usually the problem at hand isn’t serious enough to warrant rewriting the script in C; perhaps
the problem requires variable-length strings or other data types (like sorted lists of file names) that are easy in the shell
but lots of work to implement in C, or perhaps you’re not sufficiently familiar with C.
Another situation: perhaps you have to work with several C libraries, and the usual C write/compile/test/re-compile
cycle is too slow. You need to develop software more quickly. Possibly perhaps you’ve written a program that could
use an extension language, and you don’t want to design a language, write and debug an interpreter for it, then tie it
into your application.
In such cases, Python may be just the language for you. Python is simple to use, but it is a real programming language,
offering much more structure and support for large programs than the shell has. On the other hand, it also offers much
more error checking than C, and, being a very-high-level language, it has high-level data types built in, such as flexible
arrays and dictionaries that would cost you days to implement efficiently in C. 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 up your program in 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. There are also built-in modules that provide things like file I/O, system calls, sockets, and even
interfaces to GUI 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 allows writing very compact and readable programs. Programs written in Python are typically much shorter
than equivalent C or C++ 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 begin/end brackets;
• no variable or argument declarations are necessary.
Python is extensible: if you know how to program in C it is easy to add a new built-in function or module to the
interpreter, either to perform critical operations at maximum speed, or to link Python programs to libraries that may
only be available in binary form (such as a vendor-specific graphics library). Once you are really hooked, you can
link the Python interpreter into an application written in C and use it as an extension or command language for that
application.
By the way, the language is named after the BBC show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and has nothing to do with
nasty reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only allowed, it is encouraged!
1
1.1 Where From Here
Now that you are all excited about Python, you’ll want to examine it in some more detail. Since the best way to learn
a language is using it, you are invited here to do so.
In the next chapter, the mechanics of using the interpreter are explained. This is rather mundane information, but
essential for trying out the examples shown later.
The rest of the tutorial introduces various features of the Python language and system through examples, beginning
with simple expressions, statements and data types, through functions and modules, and finally touching upon ad-
vanced concepts like exceptions and user-defined classes.
2 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 U NIX shell’s 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.)
Typing an EOF character (Control-D on U NIX, Control-Z on DOS or Windows) at the primary prompt causes
the interpreter to exit with a zero exit status. If that doesn’t work, you can exit the interpreter by typing the following
commands: ‘import sys; sys.exit()’.
The interpreter’s line-editing features usually aren’t very sophisticated. On U NIX, whoever installed the interpreter
may have enabled support for the GNU readline library, which adds more elaborate interactive editing and history
features. Perhaps the quickest check to see whether command line editing is supported is typing Control-P to the
first Python prompt you get. If it beeps, you have command line editing; see Appendix A for an introduction to the
keys. If nothing appears to happen, or if ˆP is echoed, command line editing isn’t available; you’ll only be able to use
backspace to remove characters from the current line.
The interpreter operates somewhat like the U NIX shell: when called with standard input connected to a tty device, it
reads and executes commands interactively; when called with a file name argument or with a file as standard input, it
reads and executes a script from that file.
A third way of starting the interpreter is ‘python -c command [arg] ...’, which executes the statement(s) in
command, analogous to the shell’s -c option. Since Python statements often contain spaces or other characters that are
special to the shell, it is best to quote command in its entirety with double quotes.
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 satisfied from file. Since this file has already
been read until the end by the parser before the program starts executing, the program will encounter EOF immediately.
In the former case (which is usually what you want) they are satisfied from whatever file or device is connected to
standard input of the Python interpreter.
When a script file is used, it is sometimes useful to be able to run the script and enter interactive mode afterwards.
This can be done by passing -i before the script. (This does not work if the script is read from standard input, for the
same reason as explained in the previous paragraph.)
3
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’. Options found after -c command are not
consumed by the Python interpreter’s option processing but left in sys.argv for the command to handle.
2.1.2 Interactive Mode
When commands are read from a tty, the interpreter is said to be in interactive mode. In this mode it prompts for the
next command with the primary prompt, usually three greater-than signs (‘>>> ’); for continuation lines it prompts
with the secondary prompt, by default three dots (‘... ’). The interpreter prints a welcome message stating its
version number and a copyright notice before printing the first prompt, e.g.:
python
Python 1.5.2b2 (#1, Feb 28 1999, 00:02:06) [GCC 2.8.1] on sunos5
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>>
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 file, it exits with a nonzero exit status after printing the stack trace.
(Exceptions handled by an except clause in a try statement are not errors in this context.) Some errors are un-
conditionally 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 the 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.
2.2.2 Executable Python Scripts
On BSD’ish U NIX systems, Python scripts can be made directly executable, like shell scripts, by putting the line
1A problem with the GNU Readline package may prevent this.
4 Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter

#! /usr/bin/env python
(assuming that the interpreter is on the user’s $PATH) at the beginning of the script and giving the file an executable
mode. The ‘#!’ must be the first two characters of the file. Note that the hash, or pound, character, ‘#’, is used to start
a comment in Python.
2.2.3 The Interactive Startup File
When you use Python interactively, it is frequently handy to have some standard commands executed every time the
interpreter is started. You can do this by setting an environment variable named $PYTHONSTARTUP to the name of
a file containing your start-up commands. This is similar to the ‘.profile’ feature of the U NIX shells.
This file is only read in interactive sessions, not when Python reads commands from a script, and not when ‘/dev/tty’
is given as the explicit source of commands (which otherwise behaves like an interactive session). It is executed in
the same namespace where interactive commands are executed, so that objects that it defines or imports can be used
without qualification in the interactive session. You can also change the prompts sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 in this file.
If you want to read an additional start-up file from the current directory, you can program this in the global start-up
file, e.g. ‘if os.path.isfile(’.pythonrc.py’): execfile(’.pythonrc.py’)’. If you want to
use the startup file in a script, you must do this explicitly in the script:
import os
filename = os.environ.get(’PYTHONSTARTUP’)
if filename and os.path.isfile(filename):
execfile(filename)
2.2. The Interpreter and Its Environment 5

6
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.
Some examples:
# this is the first comment

SPAM = 1 # and this is the second comment
# ... and now a third!
STRING = "# This is not a comment."
3.1 Using Python as a Calculator

Let’s try some simple Python commands. Start the interpreter and wait for the primary prompt, ‘>>> ’. (It shouldn’t
take long.)
3.1.1 Numbers
The interpreter acts as a simple calculator: you can type an expression at it and it will write the value. Expression
syntax is straightforward: the operators +, -, * and / work just like in most other languages (for example, Pascal or
C); parentheses can be used for grouping. For example:
7
>>> 2+2
4
>>> # This is a comment
... 2+2
4
>>> 2+2 # and a comment on the same line as code
4
>>> (50-5*6)/4
5
>>> # Integer division returns the floor:
... 7/3
2
>>> 7/-3
-3
Like in C, the equal sign (‘=’) is used to assign a value to a variable. The value of an assignment is not written:
>>> width = 20
>>> height = 5*9
>>> width * height
900
A value can be assigned to several variables simultaneously:
>>> x = y = z = 0 # Zero x, y and z

>>> x
0
>>> y
0
>>> z
0
There is full support for floating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer operand to floating
point:
>>> 4 * 2.5 / 3.3

3.0303030303
>>> 7.0 / 2
3.5
Complex numbers are also supported; imaginary numbers are written with a suffix of ‘j’ or ‘J’. Complex numbers
with a nonzero real component are written as ‘(real+imagj)’, or can be created with the ‘complex(real, imag)’
function.
8 Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

>>> 1j * 1J
(-1+0j)
>>> 1j * complex(0,1)
(-1+0j)
>>> 3+1j*3
(3+3j)
>>> (3+1j)*3
(9+3j)
>>> (1+2j)/(1+1j)
(1.5+0.5j)
Complex numbers are always represented as two floating point numbers, the real and imaginary part. To extract these
parts from a complex number z, use z.real and z.imag.
>>> a=1.5+0.5j
>>> a.real
1.5
>>> a.imag
0.5
The conversion functions to floating point and integer (float(), int() and long()) don’t work for complex
numbers — there is no one correct way to convert a complex number to a real number. Use abs(z) to get its
magnitude (as a float) or z.real to get its real part.
>>> a=1.5+0.5j
>>> float(a)
Traceback (innermost last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: can’t convert complex to float; use e.g. abs(z)
>>> a.real
1.5
>>> abs(a)
1.58113883008
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 = 17.5 / 100
>>> price = 3.50
>>> price * tax
0.61249999999999993
>>> price + _
4.1124999999999998
>>> round(_, 2)
4.1100000000000003
This variable should be treated as read-only by the user. Don’t explicitly assign a value to it — you would create an
independent local variable with the same name masking the built-in variable with its magic behavior.
3.1. Using Python as a Calculator 9

3.1.2 Strings
Besides numbers, Python can also manipulate strings, which can be expressed in several ways. They can be enclosed
in single quotes or double quotes:
>>> ’spam eggs’
’spam eggs’
>>> ’doesn\’t’
"doesn’t"
>>> "doesn’t"
"doesn’t"
>>> ’"Yes," he said.’
’"Yes," he said.’
>>> "\"Yes,\" he said."
’"Yes," he said.’
>>> ’"Isn\’t," she said.’
’"Isn\’t," she said.’
String literals can span multiple lines in several ways. Newlines can be escaped with backslashes, e.g.:
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.\n"
print hello
which would print the following:

This is a rather long string containing
several lines of text just as you would do in C.
Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is significant.
Or, strings can be surrounded in a pair of matching triple-quotes: """ or ’’’. End of lines do not need to be escaped
when using triple-quotes, but they will be included in the string.
print """
Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]
-h Display this usage message
-H hostname Hostname to connect to
"""
produces the following output:

Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]
-h Display this usage message
-H hostname Hostname to connect to
The interpreter prints the result of string operations in the same way as they are typed for input: inside quotes, and with
quotes and other funny characters escaped by backslashes, to show the precise value. The string is enclosed in double
quotes if the string contains a single quote and no double quotes, else it’s enclosed in single quotes. (The print
statement, described later, can be used to write strings without quotes or escapes.)
Strings can be concatenated (glued together) with the + operator, and repeated with *:

>>> word = ’Help’ + ’A’
>>> word
’HelpA’
>>> ’<’ + word*5 + ’>’
’<HelpAHelpAHelpAHelpAHelpA>’
Two string literals next to each other are automatically concatenated; the first line above could also have been written
‘word = ’Help’ ’A’’; this only works with two literals, not with arbitrary string expressions:
>>> import string

>>> ’str’ ’ing’ # <- This is ok
’string’
>>> string.strip(’str’) + ’ing’ # <- This is ok
’string’
>>> string.strip(’str’) ’ing’ # <- This is invalid
File "<stdin>", line 1
string.strip(’str’) ’ing’
ˆ
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Strings can be subscripted (indexed); like in C, the first character of a string has subscript (index) 0. There is no
separate character type; a character is simply a string of size one. Like in Icon, substrings can be specified with the
slice notation: two indices separated by a colon.
>>> word[4]
’A’
>>> word[0:2]
’He’
>>> word[2:4]
’lp’
Unlike a C string, Python strings cannot be changed. Assigning to an indexed position in the string results in an error:
>>> word[0] = ’x’

TypeError: object doesn’t support item assignment
>>> word[:-1] = ’Splat’
TypeError: object doesn’t support slice assignment
However, creating a new string with the combined content is easy and efficient:
>>> ’x’ + word[1:]

’xelpA’
>>> ’Splat’ + word[-1:]
’SplatA’

Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted first index defaults to zero, an omitted second index defaults to the size
of the string being sliced.
>>> word[:2] # The first two characters

’He’
>>> word[2:] # All but the first two characters
’lpA’
Here’s a useful invariant of slice operations: s[:i] + s[i:] equals s.

>>> word[:2] + word[2:]
’HelpA’
>>> word[:3] + word[3:]
’HelpA’
Degenerate slice indices are handled gracefully: an index that is too large is replaced by the string size, an upper bound
smaller than the lower bound returns an empty string.
>>> word[1:100]
’elpA’
>>> word[10:]
’’
>>> word[2:1]
’’
Indices may be negative numbers, to start counting from the right. For example:
>>> word[-1] # The last character
’A’
>>> word[-2] # The last-but-one character
’p’
>>> word[-2:] # The last two characters
’pA’
>>> word[:-2] # All but the last two characters
’Hel’
But note that -0 is really the same as 0, so it does not count from the right!
>>> word[-0] # (since -0 equals 0)
’H’
Out-of-range negative slice indices are truncated, but don’t try this for single-element (non-slice) indices:
>>> word[-100:]
’HelpA’
>>> word[-10] # error
IndexError: string index out of range
The best way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters, with the left edge
of the first character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n characters has index n, for
example:

+---+---+---+---+---+
| H | e | l | p | A |
+---+---+---+---+---+
0 1 2 3 4 5
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1
The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0...5 in the string; the second row gives the corresponding
negative indices. The slice from i to j consists of all characters between the edges labeled i and j, respectively.
For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices, if both are within bounds, e.g., the length
of word[1:3] is 2.
The built-in function len() returns the length of a string:
>>> s = ’supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’
>>> len(s)
34
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 and texts were typically bound to a
code page which mapped the ordinals to script characters. This lead to very much confusion especially with respect
to internationalization (usually written as ‘i18n’ — ‘i’ + 18 characters + ‘n’) of software. Unicode solves these
problems by defining one code page for all scripts.
Creating Unicode strings in Python is just as simple as creating normal strings:
>>> u’Hello World !’

u’Hello World !’
The small ‘u’ in front of the quote indicates that an Unicode string is supposed to be created. If you want to include
special characters in the string, you can do so by using the Python Unicode-Escape encoding. The following example
shows how:
>>> u’Hello\\u0020World !’
The escape sequence

u0020 indicates to insert the Unicode character with the HEX ordinal 0x0020 (the space character) at the given
position.
Other characters are interpreted by using their respective ordinal value directly as Unicode ordinal. Due to the fact that
the lower 256 Unicode are the same as the standard Latin-1 encoding used in many western countries, the process of
entering Unicode is greatly simplified.
For experts, there is also a raw mode just like for normal strings. You have to prepend the string with a small ’r’ 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’.
>>> ur’Hello\u0020World !’
>>> ur’Hello\\u0020World !’
u’Hello\\\\u0020World !’
The raw mode is most useful when you have to enter lots of backslashes e.g. 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 builtin 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 which permit to store Unicode characters in 8 or 16 bits. Python uses UTF-8 as default
encoding. This becomes noticeable when printing Unicode strings or writing them to files.
>>> u""
u’\344\366\374’
>>> str(u"")
’\303\244\303\266\303\274’
If you have data in a specific encoding and want to produce a corresponding Unicode string from it, you can use the
unicode() builtin with the encoding name as second argument.
>>> unicode(’\303\244\303\266\303\274’,’UTF-8’)
u’\344\366\374’
To convert the Unicode string back into a string using the original encoding, the objects provide an encode()
method.
>>> u"".encode(’UTF-8’)
’\303\244\303\266\303\274’
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] + [’Boe!’]
[’spam’, ’eggs’, 100, ’spam’, ’eggs’, 100, ’spam’, ’eggs’, 100, ’Boe!’]
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:
>>> # Replace some items:

... a[0:2] = [1, 12]
>>> a
[1, 12, 123, 1234]
>>> # Remove some:
... a[0:2] = []
>>> a
[123, 1234]
>>> # Insert some:
... a[1:1] = [’bletch’, ’xyzzy’]
>>> a
[123, ’bletch’, ’xyzzy’, 1234]
>>> a[:0] = a # Insert (a copy of) itself at the beginning
>>> a
[123, ’bletch’, ’xyzzy’, 1234, 123, ’bletch’, ’xyzzy’, 1234]
The built-in function len() also applies to lists:
>>> len(a)
8
It is possible to nest lists (create lists containing other lists), for example:

>>> q = [2, 3]
>>> p = [1, q, 4]
>>> len(p)
3
>>> p[1]
[2, 3]
>>> p[1][0]
2
>>> p[1].append(’xtra’) # See section 5.1
>>> p
[1, [2, 3, ’xtra’], 4]
>>> q
[2, 3, ’xtra’]
Note that in the last example, p[1] and q really refer to the same object! We’ll come back to object semantics later.
3.2 First Steps Towards Programming

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

... # the sum of two elements defines the next
... a, b = 0, 1
>>> while b < 10:
... print b
... a, b = b, a+b
...
1
1
2
3
5
8
This example introduces several new features.
• The first line contains a multiple assignment: the variables a and b simultaneously get the new values 0 and 1.
On the last line this is used again, demonstrating that the expressions on the right-hand side are all evaluated
first before any of the assignments take place. The right-hand side expressions are evaluated from the left to the
right.
• The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: b < 10) remains true. In Python, like in C, any non-
zero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or list value, in fact any sequence;
anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are false. The test used in the example is a simple
comparison. The standard comparison operators are written the same as in C: < (less than), > (greater than), ==
(equal to), <= (less than or equal to), >= (greater than or equal to) and != (not equal to).
• The body of the loop is indented: indentation is Python’s way of grouping statements. Python does not (yet!)
provide an intelligent input line editing facility, so you have to type a tab or space(s) for each indented line.
In practice you will prepare more complicated input for Python with a text editor; most text editors have an
auto-indent facility. When a compound statement is entered interactively, it must be followed by a blank line to

indicate completion (since the parser cannot guess when you have typed the last line). Note that each line within
a basic block must be indented by the same amount.
• The print statement writes the value of the expression(s) it is given. It differs from just writing the expression
you want to write (as we did earlier in the calculator examples) in the way it handles multiple expressions and
strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a space is inserted between items, so 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.
3.2. First Steps Towards Programming 17

18
CHAPTER
FOUR
More Control Flow Tools
Besides the while statement just introduced, Python knows the usual control flow statements known from other
languages, with some twists.
4.1 if Statements
Perhaps the most well-known statement type is the if statement. For example:
>>> x = int(raw_input("Please enter a number: "))

>>> if x < 0:
... x = 0
... print ’Negative changed to zero’
... elif x == 0:
... print ’Zero’
... elif x == 1:
... print ’Single’
... else:
... print ’More’
...
There can be zero or more elif parts, and the else part is optional. The keyword ‘elif’ is short for ‘else if’, and
is useful to avoid excessive indentation. An if . . . elif . . . elif . . . sequence is a substitute for the switch or case
statements found in other languages.
4.2 for Statements

The for statement in Python differs a bit from what you may be used to in C or Pascal. Rather than always iterating
over an arithmetic progression of numbers (like in Pascal), or giving the user the ability to define both the iteration step
and halting condition (as C), Python’s for statement iterates over the items of any sequence (e.g., a list or a string),
in the order that they appear in the sequence. For example (no pun intended):
19
>>> # Measure some strings:
... a = [’cat’, ’window’, ’defenestrate’]
>>> for x in a:
... print x, len(x)
...
cat 3
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,
i.e., lists). If you need to modify the list you are iterating over, e.g., 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, e.g.:
>>> 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, exactly 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, combine range() and len() as follows:
20 Chapter 4. More Control Flow Tools

>>> 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
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 exemplified by the following loop, which searches for prime numbers:
>>> for n in range(2, 10):

... for x in range(2, n):
... if n % x == 0:
... print n, ’equals’, x, ’*’, n/x
... break
... else:
... 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 1:
... pass # Busy-wait for keyboard interrupt
...
4.4. break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops 21

4.6 Defining Functions
We can create a function that writes the Fibonacci series to an arbitrary boundary:
>>> def fib(n): # write Fibonacci series up to n

... "Print a Fibonacci series up to n"
... a, b = 0, 1
... while b < n:
... print b,
... a, b = b, a+b
...
>>> # Now call the function we just defined:
... fib(2000)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597
The keyword def introduces a function definition. It must be followed by the function name and the parenthesized list
of formal parameters. The statements that form the body of the function start at the next line, and must be indented. The
first statement of the function body can optionally be a string literal; this string literal is the function’s documentation
string, or docstring.
There are tools which use docstrings to automatically produce online or printed documentation, or to let the user
interactively browse through code; it’s good practice to include docstrings in code that you write, so try to make a
habit of it.
The execution of a function introduces a new symbol table used for the local variables of the function. More precisely,
all variable assignments in a function store the value in the local symbol table; whereas variable references first look in
the local symbol table, then in the global symbol table, and then in the table of built-in names. Thus, global variables
cannot be directly assigned a value within a function (unless named in a global statement), although they may be
referenced.
The actual parameters (arguments) to a function call are introduced in the local symbol table of the called function
when it is called; thus, arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always an object reference, not
the value of the object).1 When a function calls another function, a new local symbol table is created for that call.
A function definition introduces the function name in the current symbol table. The value of the function name has a
type that is recognized by the interpreter as a user-defined function. This value can be assigned to another name which
can then also be used as a function. This serves as a general renaming mechanism:
>>> fib
<function object at 10042ed0>
>>> f = fib
>>> f(100)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89
You might object that fib is not a function but a procedure. In Python, like in C, procedures are just functions that
don’t return a value. In fact, technically speaking, procedures do return a value, albeit a rather boring one. This value
is called None (it’s a built-in name). Writing the value None is normally suppressed by the interpreter if it would be
the only value written. You can see it if you really want to:
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 (e.g., items inserted into a list).

>>> print fib(0)
None
It is simple to write a function that returns a list of the numbers of the Fibonacci series, instead of printing it:
>>> def fib2(n): # return Fibonacci series up to n

... "Return a list containing the Fibonacci series up to n"
... result = []
... a, b = 0, 1
... while b < n:
... result.append(b) # see below
... a, b = b, a+b
... return result
...
>>> f100 = fib2(100) # call it
>>> f100 # write the result
[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
This example, as usual, demonstrates some new Python features:
• The return statement returns with a value from a function. return without an expression argument is used
to return from the middle of a procedure (falling off the end also returns from a procedure), in which case the
None value is returned.
• 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 defined by the object’s type. Different types define different
methods. Methods of different types may have the same name without causing ambiguity. (It is possible to define
your own object types and methods, using classes, as discussed later in this tutorial.) The method append()
shown in the example, is defined for list objects; it adds a new element at the end of the list. In this example it
is equivalent to ‘result = result + [b]’, but more efficient.
4.7 More on Defining Functions

It is also possible to define functions with a variable number of arguments. There are three forms, which can be
combined.
4.7.1 Default Argument Values
The most useful form is to specify a default value for one or more arguments. This creates a function that can be called
with fewer arguments than it is defined, e.g.
4.7. More on Defining Functions 23

def ask_ok(prompt, retries=4, complaint=’Yes or no, please!’):
while 1:
ok = raw_input(prompt)
if ok in (’y’, ’ye’, ’yes’): return 1
if ok in (’n’, ’no’, ’nop’, ’nope’): return 0
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).
The default values are evaluated at the point of function definition in the defining scope, so that e.g.
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 or dictionary. 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)
This will print

[1]
[1, 2]
[1, 2, 3]
If you don’t want the default to be shared between subsequent calls, you can write the function like this instead:
def f(a, l = None):
if l is None:
l = []
l.append(a)
return l
4.7.2 Keyword Arguments
Functions can also be called using keyword arguments of the form ‘keyword = value’. For instance, the following
function:

def parrot(voltage, state=’a stiff’, action=’voom’, type=’Norwegian Blue’):
print "-- This parrot wouldn’t", action,
print "if you put", voltage, "Volts through it."
print "-- Lovely plumage, the", type
print "-- It’s", 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() # required argument missing

parrot(voltage=5.0, ’dead’) # non-keyword argument following keyword
parrot(110, voltage=220) # duplicate value for argument
parrot(actor=’John Cleese’) # 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. It’s 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. Here’s an example that fails due to this restriction:
>>> def function(a):

... pass
...
>>> function(0, a=0)
TypeError: keyword parameter redefined
When a final formal parameter of the form **name is present, it receives a dictionary containing all keyword argu-
ments whose keyword doesn’t correspond to a formal parameter. This may be combined with a formal parameter of
the form *name (described in the next subsection) which receives a tuple containing the positional arguments beyond
the formal parameter list. (*name must occur before **name.) For example, if we define a function like this:
def cheeseshop(kind, *arguments, **keywords):
print "-- Do you have any", kind, ’?’
print "-- I’m sorry, we’re all out of", kind
for arg in arguments: print arg
print ’-’*40
for kw in keywords.keys(): print kw, ’:’, keywords[kw]
It could be called like this:

cheeseshop(’Limburger’, "It’s very runny, sir.",
"It’s really very, VERY runny, sir.",
client=’John Cleese’,
shopkeeper=’Michael Palin’,
sketch=’Cheese Shop Sketch’)
and of course it would print:

-- Do you have any Limburger ?
-- I’m sorry, we’re all out of Limburger
It’s very runny, sir.
It’s really very, VERY runny, sir.
----------------------------------------
client : John Cleese
shopkeeper : Michael Palin
sketch : Cheese Shop Sketch
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 argu-
ments. These arguments will be wrapped up in a tuple. Before the variable number of arguments, zero or more normal
arguments may occur.
def fprintf(file, format, *args):
file.write(format % args)
4.7.4 Lambda Forms
By popular demand, a few features commonly found in functional programming languages and Lisp have been added
to Python. With the lambda keyword, small anonymous functions can be created. Here’s 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 definition. Like nested function definitions, lambda forms cannot reference variables from the
containing scope, but this can be overcome through the judicious use of default argument values, e.g.
def make_incrementor(n):
return lambda x, incr=n: x+incr
4.7.5 Documentation Strings
There are emerging conventions about the content and formatting of documentation strings.
The first line should always be a short, concise summary of the object’s purpose. For brevity, it should not explicitly
state the object’s name or type, since these are available by other means (except if the name happens to be a verb
describing a function’s operation). This line should begin with a capital letter and end with a period.
If there are more lines in the documentation string, the second line should be blank, visually separating the summary
from the rest of the description. The following lines should be one or more paragraphs describing the object’s calling
conventions, its side effects, etc.

The Python parser does not strip indentation from multi-line string literals in Python, so tools that process documen-
tation have to strip indentation if desired. This is done using the following convention. The first non-blank line after
the first line of the string determines the amount of indentation for the entire documentation string. (We can’t use
the first line since it is generally adjacent to the string’s opening quotes so its indentation is not apparent in the string
literal.) Whitespace “equivalent” to this indentation is then stripped from the start of all lines of the string. Lines that
are indented less should not occur, but if they occur all their leading whitespace should be stripped. Equivalence of
whitespace should be tested after expansion of tabs (to 8 spaces, normally).
Here is an example of a multi-line docstring:
>>> def my_function():

... """Do nothing, but document it.
...
... No, really, it doesn’t do anything.
... """
... pass
...
>>> print my_function.__doc__
Do nothing, but document it.
No, really, it doesn’t do anything.

28
CHAPTER
FIVE
Data Structures
This chapter describes some things you’ve learned about already in more detail, and adds some new things as well.
5.1 More on Lists

The list data type has some more methods. Here are all of the methods of list objects:
append(x) Add an item to the end of the list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = [x].
extend(L) Extend the list by appending all the items in the given list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = L.
insert(i, x) Insert an item at a given position. The first argument is the index of the element before which to
insert, so a.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and a.insert(len(a), x) is equivalent to
a.append(x).
remove(x) Remove the first 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 specified, a.pop() returns
the last item in the list. The item is also removed from the list.
index(x) Return the index in the list of the first item whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such item.
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:
29
>>> a = [66.6, 333, 333, 1, 1234.5]
>>> print a.count(333), a.count(66.6), a.count(’x’)
2 1 0
>>> a.insert(2, -1)
>>> a.append(333)
>>> a
[66.6, 333, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333]
>>> a.index(333)
1
>>> a.remove(333)
>>> a
[66.6, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333]
>>> a.reverse()
>>> a
[333, 1234.5, 1, 333, -1, 66.6]
>>> a.sort()
>>> a
[-1, 1, 66.6, 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 first element retrieved
(“last-in, first-out”). To add an item to the top of the stack, use append(). To retrieve an item from the top of the
stack, use pop() without an explicit index. For example:
>>> stack = [3, 4, 5]

>>> stack.append(6)
>>> stack.append(7)
>>> stack
[3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
>>> stack.pop()
7
>>> stack
[3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> stack.pop()
6
>>> stack.pop()
5
>>> stack
[3, 4]
5.1.2 Using Lists as Queues
You can also use a list conveniently as a queue, where the first element added is the first element retrieved (“first-in,
first-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:
30 Chapter 5. Data Structures

>>> 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’]
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 (of the same type, if possible) consisting of those items from the
sequence for which function(item) is true. 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 sequence’s 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). If None
is passed for the function, a function returning its argument(s) is substituted.
Combining these two special cases, we see that ‘map(None, list1, list2)’ is a convenient way of turning a pair of
lists into a list of pairs. For example:
>>> seq = range(8)

>>> def square(x): return x*x
...
>>> map(None, seq, map(square, seq))
[(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 4), (3, 9), (4, 16), (5, 25), (6, 36), (7, 49)]
‘reduce(func, sequence)’ returns a single value constructed by calling the binary function func on the first two
items of the sequence, then on the result and the next item, and so on. For example, to compute the sum of the numbers
1 through 10:
5.1. More on Lists 31

>>> def add(x,y): return x+y
...
>>> reduce(add, range(1, 11))
55
If there’s only one item in the sequence, its value is returned; if the sequence is empty, an exception is raised.
A third argument can be passed to indicate the starting value. In this case the starting value is returned for an empty
sequence, and the function is first applied to the starting value and the first sequence item, then to the result and the
next item, and so on. For example,
>>> def sum(seq):

... def add(x,y): return x+y
... return reduce(add, seq, 0)
...
>>> sum(range(1, 11))
55
>>> sum([])
0
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 definition tends often to be clearer than lists built using those constructs. Each list
comprehension consists of an expression following 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]
[[2, 4], [4, 16], [6, 36]]
>>> [x, x**2 for x in vec] # error - parens required for tuples
[x, x**2 for x in vec]
ˆ
>>> [(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]
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 can also be
used to remove slices from a list (which we did earlier by assignment of an empty list to the slice). For example:
>>> a
[-1, 1, 66.6, 333, 333, 1234.5]
>>> del a[0]
>>> a
[1, 66.6, 333, 333, 1234.5]
>>> del a[2:4]
>>> a
[1, 66.6, 1234.5]
del can also be used to delete entire variables:
>>> del a
Referencing the name a hereafter is an error (at least until another value is assigned to it). We’ll find other uses for
del later.
5.2. The del statement 33

5.3 Tuples and Sequences
We saw that lists and strings have many common properties, e.g., indexing and slicing operations. They are two
examples of sequence data types. Since Python is an evolving language, other sequence data types may be added.
There is also another standard sequence data type: the tuple.
A tuple consists of a number of values separated by commas, for instance:
>>> t = 12345, 54321, ’hello!’

>>> t[0]
12345
>>> t
(12345, 54321, ’hello!’)
>>> # Tuples may be nested:
... u = t, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
>>> u
((12345, 54321, ’hello!’), (1, 2, 3, 4, 5))
As you see, on output tuples are alway 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, e.g., (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 accom-
modate these. Empty tuples are constructed by an empty pair of parentheses; a tuple with one item is constructed by
following a value with a comma (it is not sufficient to enclose a single value in parentheses). Ugly, but effective. For
example:
>>> empty = ()
>>> singleton = ’hello’, # <-- note trailing comma
>>> len(empty)
0
>>> len(singleton)
1
>>> singleton
(’hello’,)
The statement t = 12345, 54321, ’hello!’ is an example of tuple packing: the values 12345, 54321 and
’hello!’ are packed together in a tuple. The reverse operation is also possible, e.g.:
>>> x, y, z = t
This is called, appropriately enough, sequence unpacking. Sequence unpacking requires that the list of variables on
the left 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!
There is a small bit of asymmetry here: packing multiple values always creates a tuple, and unpacking works for any
sequence.

5.4 Dictionaries
Another useful data type built into Python is the dictionary. Dictionaries are sometimes found in other languages
as “associative memories” or “associative arrays”. Unlike sequences, which are indexed by a range of numbers,
dictionaries are indexed by keys, which can be any immutable type; strings and numbers can always be keys. Tuples
can be used as keys if they contain only strings, numbers, or tuples; if a tuple contains any mutable object either
directly or indirectly, it cannot be used as a key. You can’t use lists as keys, since lists can be modified in place using
their append() and extend() methods, as well as slice and indexed assignments.
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 random 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 has key() method of the dictionary.
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’]
>>> tel.has_key(’guido’)
1
5.5 More on Conditions

The conditions used in while and if statements above can contain other operators besides 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: e.g., a < b == c tests whether a is less than b and moreover b equals c.
Comparisons may be combined by the Boolean operators and and or, and the outcome of a comparison (or of any
other Boolean expression) may be negated with not. These all have lower priorities than comparison operators again;
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. Of course, parentheses can be used to express the desired composition.
The Boolean operators and and or are so-called shortcut operators: their arguments are evaluated from left to right,
and evaluation stops as soon as the outcome is determined. E.g., if A and C are true but B is false, A and B and C
5.4. Dictionaries 35
does not evaluate the expression C. In general, the return value of a shortcut operator, when used as a general value
and not as a Boolean, 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.
5.6 Comparing Sequences and Other Types

Sequence objects may be compared to other objects with the same sequence type. The comparison uses lexicographical
ordering: first the first two items are compared, and if they differ this determines the outcome of the comparison; if
they are equal, the next two items are compared, and so on, until either sequence is exhausted. If two items to be
compared are themselves sequences of the same type, the lexicographical comparison is carried out recursively. If all
items of two sequences compare equal, the sequences are considered equal. If one sequence is an initial subsequence
of the other, the shorted sequence is the smaller one. Lexicographical ordering for strings uses the ASCII ordering for
individual characters. Some examples of comparisons between sequences with the same types:
(1, 2, 3) < (1, 2, 4)

[1, 2, 3] < [1, 2, 4]
’ABC’ < ’C’ < ’Pascal’ < ’Python’
(1, 2, 3, 4) < (1, 2, 4)
(1, 2) < (1, 2, -1)
(1, 2, 3) == (1.0, 2.0, 3.0)
(1, 2, (’aa’, ’ab’)) < (1, 2, (’abc’, ’a’), 4)
Note that comparing objects of different types 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. Mixed
numeric types are compared according to their numeric value, so 0 equals 0.0, etc.1
1 The rules for comparing objects of different types should not be relied upon; they may change in a future version of the language.

CHAPTER
SIX
Modules
If you quit from the Python interpreter and enter it again, the definitions you have made (functions and variables) are
lost. Therefore, if you want to write a somewhat longer program, you are better off using a text editor to prepare the
input for the interpreter and running it with that file as input instead. This is known as creating a script. As your
program gets longer, you may want to split it into several files for easier maintenance. You may also want to use a
handy function that you’ve written in several programs without copying its definition into each program.
To support this, Python has a way to put definitions in a file and use them in a script or in an interactive instance of the
interpreter. Such a file is called a module; definitions from a module can be imported into other modules or into the
main module (the collection of variables that you have access to in a script executed at the top level and in calculator
mode).
A module is a file containing Python definitions and statements. The file name is the module name with the suffix
‘.py’ appended. Within a module, the module’s name (as a string) is available as the value of the global variable
name . For instance, use your favorite text editor to create a file called ‘fibo.py’ in the current directory with the
following contents:
# Fibonacci numbers module
def fib(n): # write Fibonacci series up to n

a, b = 0, 1
while 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 defined in fibo directly in the current symbol table; it only enters the
module name fibo there. Using the module name you can access the functions:
37
>>> fibo.fib(1000)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987
>>> fibo.fib2(100)
[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
>>> fibo.__name__
’fibo’
If you intend to use a function often you can assign it to a local name:
>>> fib = fibo.fib

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

A module can contain executable statements as well as function definitions. These statements are intended to initialize
the module. They are executed only the first time the module is imported somewhere.1
Each module has its own private symbol table, which is used as the global symbol table by all functions defined in
the module. Thus, the author of a module can use global variables in the module without worrying about accidental
clashes with a user’s global variables. On the other hand, if you know what you are doing you can touch a module’s
global variables with the same notation used to refer to its functions, modname.itemname.
Modules can import other modules. It is customary but not required to place all import statements at the beginning
of a module (or script, for that matter). The imported module names are placed in the importing module’s global
symbol table.
There is a variant of the import statement that imports names from a module directly into the importing module’s
symbol table. For example:
>>> from fibo import fib, fib2

>>> fib(500)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377
This does not introduce the module name from which the imports are taken in the local symbol table (so in the example,
fibo is not defined).
There is even a variant to import all names that a module defines:
>>> from fibo import *

>>> fib(500)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377
This imports all names except those beginning with an underscore ( ).

1 In fact function definitions are also ‘statements’ that are ‘executed’; the execution enters the function name in the module’s global symbol table.
38 Chapter 6. Modules
6.1.1 The Module Search Path
When a module named spam is imported, the interpreter searches for a file named ‘spam.py’ in the current directory,
and then in the list of directories specified by the environment variable $PYTHONPATH. This has the same syntax as
the shell variable $PATH, i.e., a list of directory names. When $PYTHONPATH is not set, or when the file is not found
there, the search continues in an installation-dependent default path; on U NIX, 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 they’re doing to modify or replace the module search path. See
the section on Standard Modules later.
6.1.2 “Compiled” Python files
As an important speed-up of the start-up time for short programs that use a lot of standard modules, if a file called
‘spam.pyc’ exists in the directory where ‘spam.py’ is found, this is assumed to contain an already-“byte-compiled”
version of the module spam. The modification time of the version of ‘spam.py’ used to create ‘spam.pyc’ is recorded
in ‘spam.pyc’, and the ‘.pyc’ file is ignored if these don’t match.
Normally, you don’t need to do anything to create the ‘spam.pyc’ file. Whenever ‘spam.py’ is successfully compiled,
an attempt is made to write the compiled version to ‘spam.pyc’. It is not an error if this attempt fails; if for any reason
the file is not written completely, the resulting ‘spam.pyc’ file will be recognized as invalid and thus ignored later. The
contents of the ‘spam.pyc’ file are platform independent, so a Python module directory can be shared by machines of
different architectures.
Some tips for experts:
• When the Python interpreter is invoked with the -O flag, optimized code is generated and stored in ‘.pyo’
files. The optimizer currently doesn’t help much; it only removes assert statements and SET LINENO
instructions. When -O is used, all bytecode is optimized; .pyc files are ignored and .py files are compiled to
optimized bytecode.
• Passing two -O flags to the Python interpreter (-OO) will cause the bytecode compiler to perform optimizations
that could in some rare cases result in malfunctioning programs. Currently only doc strings are removed
from the bytecode, resulting in more compact ‘.pyo’ files. Since some programs may rely on having these
available, you should only use this option if you know what you’re doing.
• A program doesn’t run any faster when it is read from a ‘.pyc’ or ‘.pyo’ file than when it is read from a ‘.py’ file;
the only thing that’s faster about ‘.pyc’ or ‘.pyo’ files is the speed with which they are loaded.
• When a script is run by giving its name on the command line, the bytecode for the script is never written to a
‘.pyc’ or ‘.pyo’ file. Thus, the startup time of a script may be reduced by moving most of its code to a module
and having a small bootstrap script that imports that module. It is also possible to name a ‘.pyc’ or ‘.pyo’ file
directly on the command line.
• It is possible to have a file called ‘spam.pyc’ (or ‘spam.pyo’ when -O is used) without a file ‘spam.py’ for the
same module. This can be used to distribute a library of Python code in a form that is moderately hard to reverse
engineer.
• The module compileall can create ‘.pyc’ files (or ‘.pyo’ files when -O is used) for all modules in a directory.
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
6.2. Standard Modules 39

are not part of the core of the language but are nevertheless built in, either for efficiency or to provide access to
operating system primitives such as system calls. The set of such modules is a configuration option; e.g., the amoeba
module is only provided on systems that somehow support Amoeba primitives. One particular module deserves some
attention: sys, which is built into every Python interpreter. The variables sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 define the strings
used as primary and secondary prompts:
>>> import sys

>>> sys.ps1
’>>> ’
>>> sys.ps2
’... ’
>>> sys.ps1 = ’C> ’
C> print ’Yuck!’
Yuck!
C>
These two variables are only defined if the interpreter is in interactive mode.
The variable sys.path is a list of strings that determine the interpreter’s search path for modules. It is initialized to
a default path taken from the environment variable $PYTHONPATH, or from a built-in default if $PYTHONPATH is
not set. You can modify it using standard list operations, e.g.:
>>> import sys

>>> sys.path.append(’/ufs/guido/lib/python’)
6.3 The dir() Function

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

>>> dir(fibo)
[’__name__’, ’fib’, ’fib2’]
>>> dir(sys)
[’__name__’, ’argv’, ’builtin_module_names’, ’copyright’, ’exit’,
’maxint’, ’modules’, ’path’, ’ps1’, ’ps2’, ’setprofile’, ’settrace’,
’stderr’, ’stdin’, ’stdout’, ’version’]
Without arguments, dir() lists the names you have defined currently:
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> import fibo, sys
>>> fib = fibo.fib
>>> dir()
[’__name__’, ’a’, ’fib’, ’fibo’, ’sys’]
Note that it lists all types of names: variables, modules, functions, etc.
dir() does not list the names of built-in functions and variables. If you want a list of those, they are defined in the
standard module builtin :
>>> import __builtin__
>>> dir(__builtin__)
[’AccessError’, ’AttributeError’, ’ConflictError’, ’EOFError’, ’IOError’,
’ImportError’, ’IndexError’, ’KeyError’, ’KeyboardInterrupt’,
’MemoryError’, ’NameError’, ’None’, ’OverflowError’, ’RuntimeError’,
’SyntaxError’, ’SystemError’, ’SystemExit’, ’TypeError’, ’ValueError’,
’ZeroDivisionError’, ’__name__’, ’abs’, ’apply’, ’chr’, ’cmp’, ’coerce’,
’compile’, ’dir’, ’divmod’, ’eval’, ’execfile’, ’filter’, ’float’,
’getattr’, ’hasattr’, ’hash’, ’hex’, ’id’, ’input’, ’int’, ’len’, ’long’,
’map’, ’max’, ’min’, ’oct’, ’open’, ’ord’, ’pow’, ’range’, ’raw_input’,
’reduce’, ’reload’, ’repr’, ’round’, ’setattr’, ’str’, ’type’, ’xrange’]
6.4 Packages
Packages are a way of structuring Python’s module namespace by using “dotted module names”. For example, the
module name A.B designates a submodule named ‘B’ in a package named ‘A’. Just like the use of modules saves the
authors of different modules from having to worry about each other’s global variable names, the use of dotted module
names saves the authors of multi-module packages like NumPy or the Python Imaging Library from having to worry
about each other’s module names.
Suppose you want to design a collection of modules (a “package”) for the uniform handling of sound files and sound
data. There are many different sound file formats (usually recognized by their extension, e.g. ‘.wav’, ‘.aiff’, ‘.au’),
so you may need to create and maintain a growing collection of modules for the conversion between the various file
formats. There are also many different operations you might want to perform on sound data (e.g. mixing, adding echo,
applying an equalizer function, creating an artificial stereo effect), so in addition you will be writing a never-ending
stream of modules to perform these operations. Here’s a possible structure for your package (expressed in terms of a
hierarchical filesystem):
Sound/ Top-level package

__init__.py Initialize the sound package
Formats/ Subpackage for file format conversions
__init__.py
wavread.py
wavwrite.py
aiffread.py
aiffwrite.py
auread.py
auwrite.py
...
Effects/ Subpackage for sound effects
__init__.py
echo.py
surround.py
reverse.py
...
Filters/ Subpackage for filters
__init__.py
equalizer.py
vocoder.py
karaoke.py
...
6.4. Packages 41
The ‘ init .py’ files are required to make Python treat the directories as containing packages; this is done to prevent
directories with a common name, such as ‘string’, from unintentionally hiding valid modules that occur later on the
module search path. In the simplest case, ‘ init .py’ can just be an empty file, but it can also execute initialization
code for the package or set the all variable, described later.
Users of the package can import individual modules from the package, for example:
import Sound.Effects.echo
This loads the submodule Sound.Effects.echo. It must be referenced with its full name, e.g.
Sound.Effects.echo.echofilter(input, output, delay=0.7, atten=4)
An alternative way of importing the submodule is:

from Sound.Effects import echo
This also loads the submodule echo, and makes it available without its package prefix, so it can be used as follows:
echo.echofilter(input, output, delay=0.7, atten=4)
Yet another variation is to import the desired function or variable directly:

from Sound.Effects.echo import echofilter
Again, this loads the submodule echo, but this makes its function echofilter() directly available:
echofilter(input, output, delay=0.7, atten=4)
Note that when using from package import item, the item can be either a submodule (or subpackage) of the
package, or some other name defined in the package, like a function, class or variable. The import statement first
tests whether the item is defined in the package; if not, it assumes it is a module and attempts to load it. If it fails to
find it, an ImportError exception is raised.
Contrarily, when using syntax like import item.subitem.subsubitem, each item except for the last must be a package;
the last item can be a module or a package but can’t be a class or function or variable defined in the previous item.
6.4.1 Importing * From a Package
Now what happens when the user writes from Sound.Effects import *? Ideally, one would hope that this
somehow goes out to the filesystem, finds which submodules are present in the package, and imports them all. Un-
fortunately, this operation does not work very well on Mac and Windows platforms, where the filesystem does not
always have accurate information about the case of a filename! On these platforms, there is no guaranteed way to
know whether a file ‘ECHO.PY’ should be imported as a module echo, Echo or ECHO. (For example, Windows 95
has the annoying practice of showing all file names with a capitalized first letter.) The DOS 8+3 filename 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 package’s ‘ init .py’ code defines a list named all , it is taken to be the list of
module names that should be imported when from package import * is encountered. It is up to the package au-
thor to keep this list up-to-date when a new version of the package is released. Package authors may also decide not to
support it, if they don’t see a use for importing * from their package. For example, the file ‘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 defined, the statement from Sound.Effects import * does not import all submodules
from the package Sound.Effects into the current namespace; it only ensures that the package Sound.Effects
has been imported (possibly running its initialization code, ‘ init .py’) and then imports whatever names are defined
in the package. This includes any names defined (and submodules explicitly loaded) by ‘ init .py’. It also includes
any submodules of the package that were explicitly loaded by previous import statements, e.g.
import Sound.Effects.echo
import Sound.Effects.surround
from Sound.Effects import *
In this example, the echo and surround modules are imported in the current namespace because they are defined in the
Sound.Effects package when the from...import statement is executed. (This also works when all is
defined.)
Note that in general the practicing 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.
6.4.2 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 first looks in the containing package before looking
in the standard module search path. Thus, the surround module can simply use import echo or from echo
import echofilter. If the imported module is not found in the current package (the package of which the
current module is a submodule), the import statement looks for a top-level module with the given name.
When packages are structured into subpackages (as with the Sound package in the example), there’s no shortcut to
refer to submodules of sibling packages - the full name of the subpackage must be used. 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.
6.4. Packages 43
44
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Input and Output
There are several ways to present the output of a program; data can be printed in a human-readable form, or written to
a file for future use. This chapter will discuss some of the possibilities.
7.1 Fancier Output Formatting

So far we’ve encountered two ways of writing values: expression statements and the print statement. (A third way
is using the write() method of file objects; the standard output file can be referenced as sys.stdout. See the
Library Reference for more information on this.)
Often you’ll want more control over the formatting of your output than simply printing space-separated values. There
are two ways to format your output; the first way is to do all the string handling yourself; using string slicing and
concatenation operations you can create any lay-out 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 % operator with a string as the left argument. The % operator interprets the left argument as a C much
like a sprintf()-style format string to be applied to the right argument, and returns the string resulting from this
formatting operation.
One question remains, of course: how do you convert values to strings? Luckily, Python has a way to convert any
value to a string: pass it to the repr() function, or just write the value between reverse quotes (‘‘). Some examples:
>>> x = 10 * 3.14
>>> y = 200*200
>>> s = ’The value of x is ’ + ‘x‘ + ’, and y is ’ + ‘y‘ + ’...’
>>> print s
The value of x is 31.4, and y is 40000...
>>> # Reverse quotes work on other types besides numbers:
... p = [x, y]
>>> ps = repr(p)
>>> ps
’[31.4, 40000]’
>>> # Converting a string adds string quotes and backslashes:
... hello = ’hello, world\n’
>>> hellos = ‘hello‘
>>> print hellos
’hello, world\012’
>>> # The argument of reverse quotes may be a tuple:
... ‘x, y, (’spam’, ’eggs’)‘
"(31.4, 40000, (’spam’, ’eggs’))"
Here are two ways to write a table of squares and cubes:
45
>>> import string
>>> for x in range(1, 11):
... print string.rjust(‘x‘, 2), string.rjust(‘x*x‘, 3),
... # Note trailing comma on previous line
... print string.rjust(‘x*x*x‘, 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 ’%2d %3d %4d’ % (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 one space between each column was added by the way print works: it always adds spaces between its
arguments.)
This example demonstrates the function string.rjust(), which right-justifies a string in a field of a given width
by padding it with spaces on the left. There are similar functions string.ljust() and string.center().
These functions do not write anything, they just return a new string. If the input string is too long, they don’t trun-
cate it, but return it unchanged; this will mess up your column lay-out but that’s usually better than the alternative,
which would be lying about a value. (If you really want truncation you can always add a slice operation, as in
‘string.ljust(x, n)[0:n]’.)
There is another function, string.zfill(), which pads a numeric string on the left with zeros. It understands
about plus and minus signs:
>>> import string
>>> string.zfill(’12’, 5)
’00012’
>>> string.zfill(’-3.14’, 7)
’-003.14’
>>> string.zfill(’3.14159265359’, 5)
’3.14159265359’
Using the % operator looks like this:
46 Chapter 7. Input and Output

>>> import math
>>> print ’The value of PI is approximately %5.3f.’ % math.pi
The value of PI is approximately 3.142.
If there is more than one format in the string you pass a tuple as right operand, e.g.
>>> table = {’Sjoerd’: 4127, ’Jack’: 4098, ’Dcab’: 7678}

>>> for name, phone in table.items():
... print ’%-10s ==> %10d’ % (name, phone)
...
Jack ==> 4098
Dcab ==> 7678
Sjoerd ==> 4127
Most formats work exactly as in C and require that you pass the proper type; however, if you don’t you get an
exception, not a core dump. The %s format is more relaxed: if the corresponding argument is not a string object, it is
converted to string using the str() built-in function. Using * to pass the width or precision in as a separate (integer)
argument is supported. The C formats %n and %p are not supported.
If you have a really long format string that you don’t want to split up, it would be nice if you could reference the
variables to be formatted by name instead of by position. This can be done by using an extension of C formats using
the form %(name)format, e.g.
>>> table = {’Sjoerd’: 4127, ’Jack’: 4098, ’Dcab’: 8637678}
>>> print ’Jack: %(Jack)d; Sjoerd: %(Sjoerd)d; Dcab: %(Dcab)d’ % table
Jack: 4098; Sjoerd: 4127; Dcab: 8637678
This is particularly useful in combination with the new built-in vars() function, which returns a dictionary contain-
ing all local variables.
7.2 Reading and Writing Files

open() returns a file 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 first argument is a string containing the filename. The second argument is another string containing a few charac-
ters describing the way in which the file will be used. mode can be ’r’ when the file will only be read, ’w’ for only
writing (an existing file with the same name will be erased), and ’a’ opens the file for appending; any data written
to the file is automatically added to the end. ’r+’ opens the file for both reading and writing. The mode argument is
optional; ’r’ will be assumed if it’s omitted.
On Windows and the Macintosh, ’b’ appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode, so there are also modes
like ’rb’, ’wb’, and ’r+b’. Windows makes a distinction between text and binary files; the end-of-line characters
in text files are automatically altered slightly when data is read or written. This behind-the-scenes modification to file
data is fine for ASCII text files, but it’ll corrupt binary data like that in JPEGs or ‘.EXE’ files. Be very careful to use
binary mode when reading and writing such files. (Note that the precise semantics of text mode on the Macintosh
depends on the underlying C library being used.)
7.2. Reading and Writing Files 47

7.2.1 Methods of File Objects
The rest of the examples in this section will assume that a file object called f has already been created.
To read a file’s contents, call f.read(size), which reads some quantity of data and returns it as a string. size is an
optional numeric argument. When size is omitted or negative, the entire contents of the file will be read and returned;
it’s your problem if the file is twice as large as your machine’s memory. Otherwise, at most size bytes are read and
returned. If the end of the file has been reached, f.read() will return an empty string ("").
>>> f.read()
’This is the entire file.\012’
>>> f.read()
’’
f.readline() reads a single line from the file; a newline character (\n) is left at the end of the string, and is only
omitted on the last line of the file if the file doesn’t end in a newline. This makes the return value unambiguous; if
f.readline() returns an empty string, the end of the file has been reached, while a blank line is represented by
’\n’, a string containing only a single newline.
>>> f.readline()
’This is the first line of the file.\012’
>>> f.readline()
’Second line of the file\012’
>>> f.readline()
’’
f.readlines() returns a list containing all the lines of data in the file. If given an optional parameter sizehint,
it reads that many bytes from the file and enough more to complete a line, and returns the lines from that. This is
often used to allow efficient reading of a large file by lines, but without having to load the entire file in memory. Only
complete lines will be returned.
>>> f.readlines()
[’This is the first line of the file.\012’, ’Second line of the file\012’]
f.write(string) writes the contents of string to the file, returning None.

>>> f.write(’This is a test\n’)
f.tell() returns an integer giving the file object’s current position in the file, measured in bytes from the beginning
of the file. To change the file object’s position, use ‘f.seek(offset, from what)’. The position is computed from
adding offset to a reference point; the reference point is selected by the from what argument. A from what value of 0
measures from the beginning of the file, 1 uses the current file position, and 2 uses the end of the file as the reference
point. from what can be omitted and defaults to 0, using the beginning of the file as the reference point.
48 Chapter 7. Input and Output

>>> f=open(’/tmp/workfile’, ’r+’)
>>> f.write(’0123456789abcdef’)
>>> f.seek(5) # Go to the 5th byte in the file
>>> f.read(1)
’5’
>>> f.seek(-3, 2) # Go to the 3rd byte before the end
>>> f.read(1)
’d’
When you’re done with a file, call f.close() to close it and free up any system resources taken up by the open file.
After calling f.close(), attempts to use the file object will automatically fail.
>>> f.close()
>>> f.read()
ValueError: I/O operation on closed file
File objects have some additional methods, such as isatty() and truncate() which are less frequently used;
consult the Library Reference for a complete guide to file objects.
7.2.2 The pickle Module
Strings can easily be written to and read from a file. Numbers take a bit more effort, since the read() method only
returns strings, which will have to be passed to a function like string.atoi(), 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 file or data, or sent over a network connection to some distant machine.
If you have an object x, and a file object f that’s 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 file 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 don’t want to write the pickled data to
a file; consult the complete documentation for pickle in the 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.
7.2. Reading and Writing Files 49

50
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Errors and Exceptions
Until now error messages haven’t been more than mentioned, but if you have tried out the examples you have probably
seen some. There are (at least) two distinguishable kinds of errors: syntax errors and exceptions.
8.1 Syntax Errors

Syntax errors, also known as parsing errors, are perhaps the most common kind of complaint you get while you are
still learning Python:
>>> while 1 print ’Hello world’

while 1 print ’Hello world’
ˆ
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:
51
>>> 10 * (1/0)
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo
>>> 4 + spam*3
NameError: spam
>>> ’2’ + 2
TypeError: illegal argument type for built-in operation
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 name for the exception that occurred. This is true for
all built-in exceptions, but need not be true for user-defined exceptions (although it is a useful convention). Standard
exception names are built-in identifiers (not reserved keywords).
The rest of the line is a detail whose interpretation depends on the exception type; its meaning is dependent on the
exception type.
The preceding part of the error message shows the context where the exception happened, in the form of a stack
backtrace. In general it contains a stack backtrace listing source lines; however, it will not display lines read from
standard input.
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 Key-
boardInterrupt exception.
>>> while 1:
... 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 finished.
• If an exception occurs during execution of the try clause, the rest of the clause is skipped. Then if its type
matches the exception named after the except keyword, the rest of the try clause is skipped, the except clause
is executed, and then execution continues after the try statement.
52 Chapter 8. Errors and Exceptions

• 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 list, e.g.:
... 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 string, sys
try:
f = open(’myfile.txt’)
s = f.readline()
i = int(string.strip(s))
except IOError, (errno, strerror):
print "I/O error(%s): %s" % (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 wasn’t raised by the code being protected by the try . . . except statement.
When an exception occurs, it may have an associated value, also known as the exception’s argument. The presence
and type of the argument depend on the exception type. For exception types which have an argument, the except clause
may specify a variable after the exception name (or list) to receive the argument’s value, as follows:
8.3. Handling Exceptions 53

>>> try:
... spam()
... except NameError, x:
... print ’name’, x, ’undefined’
...
name spam undefined
If an exception has an argument, it is printed as the last part (‘detail’) of the message for unhandled exceptions.
Exception handlers don’t just handle exceptions if they occur immediately in the try clause, but also if they occur
inside functions that are called (even indirectly) in the try clause. For example:
>>> def this_fails():

... x = 1/0
...
>>> try:
... this_fails()
... except ZeroDivisionError, detail:
... print ’Handling run-time error:’, detail
...
Handling run-time error: integer division or modulo
8.4 Raising Exceptions

The raise statement allows the programmer to force a specified exception to occur. For example:
>>> raise NameError, ’HiThere’

NameError: HiThere
The first argument to raise names the exception to be raised. The optional second argument specifies the exception’s
argument.
8.5 User-defined Exceptions

Programs may name their own exceptions by assigning a string to a variable or creating a new exception class. For
example:
54 Chapter 8. Errors and Exceptions

>>> class MyError:
... def __init__(self, value):
... self.value = value
... def __str__(self):
... return ‘self.value‘
...
>>> try:
... raise MyError(2*2)
... except MyError, e:
... print ’My exception occurred, value:’, e.value
...
My exception occurred, value: 4
>>> raise MyError, 1
__main__.MyError: 1
Many standard modules use this to report errors that may occur in functions they define.
More information on classes is presented in chapter 9, “Classes.”
8.6 Defining Clean-up Actions

The try statement has another optional clause which is intended to define clean-up actions that must be executed
under all circumstances. For example:
>>> try:
... raise KeyboardInterrupt
... finally:
... print ’Goodbye, world!’
...
Goodbye, world!
KeyboardInterrupt
A finally clause is executed whether or not an exception has occurred in the try clause. When an exception has
occurred, it is re-raised after the finally clause is executed. The finally clause is also executed “on the way out” when
the try statement is left via a break or return statement.
A try statement must either have one or more except clauses or one finally clause, but not both.
8.6. Defining Clean-up Actions 55

56
CHAPTER
NINE
Classes
Python’s 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 definition and user, but rather rely on the politeness of the user not to “break into the definition.”
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, 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 object’s
members from its methods: the method function is declared with an explicit first argument representing the object,
which is provided implicitly by the call. As in Smalltalk, classes themselves are objects, albeit in the wider sense of
the word: in Python, all data types are objects. This provides semantics for importing and renaming. But, just like in
C++ or Modula-3, built-in types cannot 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 redefined 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.)
I also have to warn you that there’s a terminological pitfall for object-oriented readers: the word “object” in Python
does not necessarily mean a class instance. Like C++ and Modula-3, and unlike Smalltalk, not all types in Python are
classes: the basic built-in types like integers and lists are not, and even somewhat more exotic types like files aren’t.
However, all Python types share a little bit of common semantics that is best described by using the word object.
Objects have individuality, and multiple names (in multiple scopes) can be bound to the same object. This is known
as aliasing in other languages. This is usually not appreciated on a first glance at Python, and can be safely ignored
when dealing with immutable basic types (numbers, strings, tuples). However, aliasing has an (intended!) effect
on the semantics of Python code involving mutable objects such as lists, dictionaries, and most types representing
entities outside the program (files, windows, etc.). This is usually used to the benefit of the program, since aliases
behave like pointers in some respects. For example, passing an object is cheap since only a pointer is passed by the
implementation; and if a function modifies an object passed as an argument, the caller will see the change — this
obviates the need for two different argument passing mechanisms as in Pascal.
57
9.2 Python Scopes and Name Spaces
Before introducing classes, I first have to tell you something about Python’s scope rules. Class definitions play some
neat tricks with namespaces, and you need to know how scopes and namespaces work to fully understand what’s going
on. Incidentally, knowledge about this subject is useful for any advanced Python programmer.
Let’s begin with some definitions.
A namespace is a mapping from names to objects. Most namespaces are currently implemented as Python dictionaries,
but that’s normally not noticeable in any way (except for performance), and it may change in the future. Examples of
namespaces are: the set of built-in names (functions such as abs(), and built-in exception names); the global names
in a module; and the local names in a function invocation. In a sense the set of attributes of an object also form a
namespace. The important thing to know about namespaces is that there is absolutely no relation between names in
different namespaces; for instance, two different modules may both define a function “maximize” without confusion
— users of the modules must prefix it with the module name.
By the way, I use the word attribute for any name following a dot — for example, in the expression z.real, real is
an attribute of the object z. Strictly speaking, references to names in modules are attribute references: in the expression
modname.funcname, modname is a module object and funcname is an attribute of it. In this case there happens
to be a straightforward mapping between the module’s attributes and the global names defined in the module: they
share the same namespace! 1
Attributes may be read-only or writable. In the latter case, assignment to attributes is possible. Module attributes are
writable: you can write ‘modname.the answer = 42’. Writable attributes may also be deleted with the del
statement, e.g. ‘del modname.the answer’.
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 definition is read in; normally, module namespaces also last until the interpreter quits.
The statements executed by the top-level invocation of the interpreter, either read from a script file or interactively,
are considered part of a module called main , so they have their own global namespace. (The built-in names
actually also live in a module; this is called builtin .)
The local namespace for a function is created when the function is called, and deleted when the function returns or
raises an exception that is not handled within the function. (Actually, forgetting would be a better way to describe
what actually happens.) Of course, recursive invocations each have their own local namespace.
A scope is a textual region of a Python program where a namespace is directly accessible. “Directly accessible” here
means that an unqualified reference to a name attempts to find the name in the namespace.
Although scopes are determined statically, they are used dynamically. At any time during execution, exactly three
nested scopes are in use (i.e., exactly three namespaces are directly accessible): the innermost scope, which is searched
first, contains the local names, the middle scope, searched next, contains the current module’s global names, and the
outermost scope (searched last) is the namespace containing built-in names.
Usually, the local scope references the local names of the (textually) current function. Outside of functions, the local
scope references the same namespace as the global scope: the module’s namespace. Class definitions place yet another
namespace in the local scope.
It is important to realize that scopes are determined textually: the global scope of a function defined in a module
is that module’s namespace, no matter from where or by what alias the function is called. On the other hand, the
actual search for names is done dynamically, at run time — however, the language definition is evolving towards static
name resolution, at “compile” time, so don’t rely on dynamic name resolution! (In fact, local variables are already
determined statically.)
A special quirk of Python is that assignments always go into the innermost scope. Assignments do not copy data —
1 Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute called dict which returns the dictionary used to implement
the module’s namespace; the name dict is an attribute but not a global name. Obviously, using this violates the abstraction of namespace
implementation, and should be restricted to things like post-mortem debuggers.
58 Chapter 9. Classes
they just bind names to objects. The same is true for deletions: the statement ‘del x’ removes the binding of x from
the namespace referenced by the local scope. In fact, all operations that introduce new names use the local scope:
in particular, import statements and function definitions bind the module or function name in the local scope. (The
global statement can be used to indicate that particular variables live in the global scope.)
9.3 A First Look at Classes

Classes introduce a little bit of new syntax, three new object types, and some new semantics.
9.3.1 Class Definition Syntax
The simplest form of class definition looks like this:
class ClassName:
<statement-1>
.
.
.
<statement-N>
Class definitions, like function definitions (def statements) must be executed before they have any effect. (You could
conceivably place a class definition in a branch of an if statement, or inside a function.)
In practice, the statements inside a class definition will usually be function definitions, but other statements are allowed,
and sometimes useful — we’ll come back to this later. The function definitions inside a class normally have a peculiar
form of argument list, dictated by the calling conventions for methods — again, this is explained later.
When a class definition is entered, a new namespace is created, and used as the local scope — thus, all assignments to
local variables go into this new namespace. In particular, function definitions bind the name of the new function here.
When a class definition is left normally (via the end), a class object is created. This is basically a wrapper around the
contents of the namespace created by the class definition; we’ll learn more about class objects in the next section. The
original local scope (the one in effect just before the class definitions was entered) is reinstated, and the class object is
bound here to the class name given in the class definition header (ClassName in the example).
9.3.2 Class Objects
Class objects support two kinds of operations: attribute references and instantiation.
Attribute references use the standard syntax used for all attribute references in Python: obj.name. Valid attribute
names are all the names that were in the class’s namespace when the class object was created. So, if the class definition
looked like this:
class MyClass:
"A simple example class"
i = 12345
def f(x):
return ’hello world’
then MyClass.i and MyClass.f are valid attribute references, returning an integer and a method object, respec-
tively. 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").
9.3. A First Look at Classes 59

Class instantiation uses function notation. Just pretend that the class object is a parameterless function that returns a
new instance of the class. For example (assuming the above class):
x = MyClass()
creates a new instance of the class and assigns this object to the local variable x.
The instantiation operation (“calling” a class object) creates an empty object. Many classes like to create objects in a
known initial state. Therefore a class may define a special method named init (), like this:
def __init__(self):
self.data = []
When a class defines an init () method, class instantiation automatically invokes init () for the
newly-created class instance. So in this example, a new, initialized instance can be obtained by:
x = MyClass()
Of course, the init () method may have arguments for greater flexibility. In that case, arguments given to the
class instantiation operator are passed on to init (). For example,
>>> class Complex:
... def __init__(self, realpart, imagpart):
... self.r = realpart
... self.i = imagpart
...
>>> x = Complex(3.0,-4.5)
>>> x.r, x.i
(3.0, -4.5)
9.3.3 Instance Objects
Now what can we do with instance objects? The only operations understood by instance objects are attribute refer-
ences. There are two kinds of valid attribute names.
The first I’ll call data attributes. These correspond to “instance variables” in Smalltalk, and to “data members” in
C++. Data attributes need not be declared; like local variables, they spring into existence when they are first assigned
to. For example, if x is the instance of MyClass created above, the following piece of code will print the value 16,
without leaving a trace:
x.counter = 1
while x.counter < 10:
x.counter = x.counter * 2
print x.counter
del x.counter
The second kind of attribute references understood by instance objects are methods. 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, e.g., list objects have methods called append, insert, remove, sort, and so on. However, below, we’ll
use the term method exclusively to mean methods of class instance objects, unless explicitly stated otherwise.)
Valid method names of an instance object depend on its class. By definition, all attributes of a class that are (user-
defined) function objects define corresponding methods of its instances. So in our example, x.f is a valid method
reference, since MyClass.f is a function, but x.i is not, since MyClass.i is not. But x.f is not the same thing
as MyClass.f — it is a method object, not a function object.
9.3.4 Method Objects
Usually, a method is called immediately, e.g.:
x.f()
In our 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 1:
print xf()
will continue to print ‘hello world’ until the end of time.

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

[These should perhaps be placed more carefully...]
Data attributes override method attributes with the same name; to avoid accidental name conflicts, which may cause
hard-to-find bugs in large programs, it is wise to use some kind of convention that minimizes the chance of conflicts,
e.g., capitalize method names, prefix data attribute names with a small unique string (perhaps just an underscore), or
use 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
9.4. Random Remarks 61

on their data attributes. Note that clients may add data attributes of their own to an instance object without affecting
the validity of the methods, as long as name conflicts are avoided — again, a naming convention can save a lot of
headaches here.
There is no shorthand for referencing data attributes (or other methods!) from within methods. I find that this actually
increases the readability of methods: there is no chance of confusing local variables and instance variables when
glancing through a method.
Conventionally, the first argument of methods is often 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 by other Python programmers, and it is also conceivable that a class browser program be written
which relies upon such a convention.)
Any function object that is a class attribute defines a method for instances of that class. It is not necessary that the
function definition is textually enclosed in the class definition: assigning a function object to a local variable in the
class is also ok. For example:
# Function defined outside the class

def f1(self, x, y):
return min(x, x+y)
class C:
f = f1
def g(self):
return ’hello world’
h = g
Now f, g and h are all attributes of class C that refer to function objects, and consequently they are all methods of
instances of C — h being exactly equivalent to g. Note that this practice usually only serves to confuse the reader of a
program.
Methods may call other methods by using method attributes of the self argument, e.g.:
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 definition. (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 defined in it. Usually, the class containing the method is itself defined in this global scope, and in the next
section we’ll find some good reasons why a method would want to reference its own class!
9.5 Inheritance
Of course, a language feature would not be worthy of the name “class” without supporting inheritance. The syntax for
a derived class definition looks as follows:
class DerivedClassName(BaseClassName):
<statement-1>
.
.
.
<statement-N>
The name BaseClassName must be defined in a scope containing the derived class definition. Instead of a base
class name, an expression is also allowed. This is useful when the base class is defined in another module, e.g.,
class DerivedClassName(modname.BaseClassName):
Execution of a derived class definition proceeds the same as for a base class. When the class object is constructed, the
base class is remembered. This is used for resolving attribute references: if a requested attribute is not found in the
class, it is searched in the base class. This rule is applied recursively if the base class itself is derived from some other
class.
There’s nothing special about instantiation of derived classes: DerivedClassName() creates a new instance of
the class. Method references are resolved as follows: the corresponding class attribute is searched, descending down
the chain of base classes if necessary, and the method reference is valid if this yields a function object.
Derived classes may override methods of their base classes. Because methods have no special privileges when calling
other methods of the same object, a method of a base class that calls another method defined in the same base class,
may in fact 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 defined or imported directly in the global scope.)
9.5.1 Multiple Inheritance
Python supports a limited form of multiple inheritance as well. A class definition with multiple base classes looks as
follows:
class DerivedClassName(Base1, Base2, Base3):

<statement-1>
.
.
.
<statement-N>
The only rule necessary to explain the semantics is the resolution rule used for class attribute references. This is
depth-first, left-to-right. Thus, if an attribute is not found in DerivedClassName, it is searched in Base1, then
(recursively) in the base classes of Base1, and only if it is not found there, it is searched in Base2, and so on.
(To some people breadth first — searching Base2 and Base3 before the base classes of Base1 — looks more
natural. However, this would require you to know whether a particular attribute of Base1 is actually defined in
Base1 or in one of its base classes before you can figure out the consequences of a name conflict with an attribute of
Base2. The depth-first rule makes no differences between direct and inherited attributes of Base1.)
9.5. Inheritance 63
It is clear that indiscriminate use of multiple inheritance is a maintenance nightmare, given the reliance in Python on
conventions to avoid accidental name conflicts. A well-known problem with multiple inheritance is a class derived
from two classes that happen to have a common base class. While it is easy enough to figure out what happens in this
case (the instance will have a single copy of “instance variables” or data attributes used by the common base class), it
is not clear that these semantics are in any way useful.
9.6 Private Variables

There is limited support for class-private identifiers. Any identifier of the form spam (at least two leading under-
scores, at most one trailing underscore) is now textually replaced with classname spam, where classname
is the current class name with leading underscore(s) stripped. This mangling is done without regard of the syntactic
position of the identifier, so it can be used to define class-private instance and class variables, methods, as well as
globals, and even to store instance variables 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 define “private” instance variables and methods, without
having to worry about instance variables defined 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, e.g. for the debugger, and that’s 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 evalfile() 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.
Here’s an example of a class that implements its own getattr () and setattr () methods and stores
all attributes in a private variable, in a way that works in all versions of Python, including those available before this
feature was added:
class VirtualAttributes:
__vdict = None
__vdict_name = locals().keys()[0]
def __init__(self):
self.__dict__[self.__vdict_name] = {}
def __getattr__(self, name):

return self.__vdict[name]
def __setattr__(self, name, value):

self.__vdict[name] = value
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 couple of
named data items. An empty class definition will do nicely, e.g.:
class Employee:
pass
john = Employee() # Create an empty employee record
# Fill the fields of the record

john.name = ’John Doe’
john.dept = ’computer lab’
john.salary = 1000
A piece of Python code that expects a particular abstract data type can often be passed a class that emulates the methods
of that data type instead. For instance, if you have a function that formats some data from a file object, you can define
a class with methods read() and readline() that gets the data from a string buffer instead, and pass it as an
argument.
Instance method objects have attributes, too: m.im self is the object of which the method is an instance, and
m.im func is the function object corresponding to the method.
9.7.1 Exceptions Can Be Classes
User-defined exceptions are no longer limited to being string objects — they can be identified by classes as well. Using
this mechanism it is possible to create extensible hierarchies of exceptions.
There are two new valid (semantic) forms for the raise statement:
raise Class, instance
raise instance
In the first form, instance must be an instance of Class or of a class derived from it. The second form is a
shorthand for:
raise instance.__class__, instance
An except clause may list classes as well as string objects. 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:
9.7. Odds and Ends 65

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’ first), it would have printed B, B, B — the first
matching except clause is triggered.
When an error message is printed for an unhandled exception which is a class, the class name is printed, then a colon
and a space, and finally the instance converted to a string using the built-in function str().
CHAPTER
TEN
What Now?
Hopefully reading this tutorial has reinforced your interest in using Python. Now what should you do?
You should read, or at least page through, the Library Reference, which gives complete (though terse) reference
material about types, functions, and modules that can save you a lot of time when writing Python programs. The
standard Python distribution includes a lot of code in both C and Python; there are modules to read U NIX mailboxes,
retrieve documents via HTTP, generate random numbers, parse command-line options, write CGI programs, compress
data, and a lot more; skimming through the Library Reference will give you an idea of what’s available.
The major Python Web site is http://www.python.org/; it contains code, documentation, and pointers to Python-related
pages around the Web. This web site is mirrored in various places around the world, such as Europe, Japan, and
Australia; a mirror may be faster than the main site, depending on your geographical location. A more informal
site is http://starship.python.net/, which contains a bunch of Python-related personal home pages; many people have
downloadable software there.
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, 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), at http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html, or look for it in the ‘Misc/’ directory of the
Python source distribution. Mailing list archives are available at http://www.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.
67
68
APPENDIX
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 won’t duplicate here;
however, the basics are easily explained. The interactive editing and history described here are optionally available in
the U NIX and CygWin versions of the interpreter.
This chapter does not document the editing facilities of Mark Hammond’s PythonWin package or the Tk-based envi-
ronment, IDLE, distributed with Python. The command line history recall which operates within DOS boxes on NT
and some other DOS and Windows flavors is yet another beast.
A.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.
A.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 modified. Pressing the Return key passes the current line to the interpreter. C-R starts an
incremental reverse search; C-S starts a forward search.
A.3 Key Bindings

The key bindings and some other parameters of the Readline library can be customized by placing commands in an
initialization file called ‘˜/.inputrc’. Key bindings have the form
69
key-name: function-name
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 Readline’s default filename
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.)
Automatic completion of variable and module names is optionally available. To enable it in the interpreter’s interactive
mode, add the following to your startup file: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 the expression up to the final ‘.’ and then suggest completions from the attributes
of the resulting object. Note that this may execute application-defined code if an object with a getattr ()
method is part of the expression.
1 Python will execute the contents of a file identified by the $PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable when you start an interactive interpreter.
70 Appendix A. Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution

A.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 interpreter’s symbol table. A command to check (or
even suggest) matching parentheses, quotes, etc., would also be useful.
A.4. Commentary 71

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Python Tutorial

Guido van Rossum

October 16, 2000

CNRI OPEN SOURCE LICENSE AGREEMENT

1 Whetting Your Appetite 1

2 Using the Python Interpreter 3

3 An Informal Introduction to Python 7

4 More Control Flow Tools 19

7 Input and Output 45

8 Errors and Exceptions 51

A Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution 69

Whetting Your Appetite

2 Chapter 1. Whetting Your Appetite

Using the Python Interpreter

2.1 Invoking the Interpreter

2.1.2 Interactive Mode

2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment

2.2.1 Error Handling

2.2.2 Executable Python Scripts

4 Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter

2.2.3 The Interactive Startup File

2.2. The Interpreter and Its Environment 5

An Informal Introduction to Python

# this is the first comment

3.1 Using Python as a Calculator

A value can be assigned to several variables simultaneously:

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

>>> 4 * 2.5 / 3.3

8 Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

3.1. Using Python as a Calculator 9

which would print the following:

produces the following output:

10 Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

>>> import string

>>> word[0] = ’x’

>>> ’x’ + word[1:]

3.1. Using Python as a Calculator 11

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

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

12 Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

3.1.3 Unicode Strings

>>> u’Hello World !’

The escape sequence

3.1. Using Python as a Calculator 13

>>> a = [’spam’, ’eggs’, 100, 1234]

14 Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

>>> # Replace some items:

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

3.1. Using Python as a Calculator 15

3.2 First Steps Towards Programming

>>> # Fibonacci series:

This example introduces several new features.

16 Chapter 3. An Informal Introduction to Python

A trailing comma avoids the newline after the output:

3.2. First Steps Towards Programming 17

More Control Flow Tools

>>> x = int(raw_input("Please enter a number: "))

4.2 for Statements

>>> for x in a[:]: # make a slice copy of the entire list

>>> def cube(x): return xxx