Clases de Python 2.6.6 Clases de Python 2.6.6
Clases de Python 2.6.6 Clases de Python 2.6.6
Clases de Python 2.6.6 Clases de Python 2.6.6
http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/using/cmdline.html
CPython implementation detail: Other implementations command line schemes may dier. See Alternate Implementations for further resources.
The most common use case is, of course, a simple invocation of a script:
python myscript.py
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An interface option terminates the list of options consumed by the interpreter, all consecutive arguments will end up in sys.argv note that the rst element, subscript zero ( sys.argv[0] ), is a string reecting the programs source.
-c
<command>
Execute the Python code in command. command can be one or more statements separated by newlines, with significant leading whitespace as in normal module code. If this option is given, the first element of sys.argv will be "-c" and the current directory will be added to the start of sys.path (allowing modules in that directory to be imported as top level modules).
-m
<module-name>
Search
__main__
sys.path
module.
Since the argument is a module name, you must not give a file extension ( .py ). The module-name should be a valid Python module name, but the implementation may not always enforce this (e.g. it may allow you to use a name that includes a hyphen). Note: This option cannot be used with built-in modules and extension modules written in C, since they do not have Python module files. However, it can still be used for precompiled modules, even if the original source file is not available. If this option is given, the first element of sys.argv will be the full path to the module file. As with the -c option, the current directory will be added to the start of sys.path . Many standard library modules contain code that is invoked on their execution as a script. An example is the timeit module:
python -mtimeit -s 'setup here' 'benchmarked code here' python -mtimeit -h # for details
See also: runpy.run_module() The actual implementation of this feature. PEP 338 Executing modules as scripts New in version 2.4.
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Changed in version 2.5: The named module can now be located inside a package.
-
Read commands from standard input ( sys.stdin ). If standard input is a terminal, -i is implied. If this option is given, the first element of current directory will be added to the start of
<script>
sys.argv sys.path .
will be
"-"
and the
Execute the Python code contained in script, which must be a filesystem path (absolute or relative) referring to either a Python file, a directory containing a __main__.py file, or a zipfile containing a __main__.py file. If this option is given, the first element of as given on the command line.
sys.argv
If the script name refers directly to a Python file, the directory containing that file is added to the start of sys.path , and the file is executed as the __main__ module. If the script name refers to a directory or zipfile, the script name is added to the start of sys.path and the __main__.py file in that location is executed as the __main__ module. Changed in version 2.5: Directories and zipfiles containing a at the top level are now considered valid Python scripts.
__main__.py
file
If no interface option is given, -i is implied, sys.argv[0] is an empty string ( "" ) and the current directory will be added to the start of sys.path . See also: Invoking the Interpreter
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--help
variant.
Print the Python version number and exit. Example output could be:
Python 2.5.1
--version
variant.
If given, Python wont try to write .pyc or .pyo files on the import of source modules. See also PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE. New in version 2.6.
-d
Turn on parser debugging output (for wizards only, depending on compilation options). See also PYTHONDEBUG.
-E
Ignore all PYTHON* environment variables, e.g. PYTHONPATH and PYTHONHOME, that might be set. New in version 2.2.
-i
When a script is passed as first argument or the -c option is used, enter interactive mode after executing the script or the command, even when sys.stdin does not appear to be a terminal. The PYTHONSTARTUP file is not read. This can be useful to inspect global variables or a stack trace when a script raises an exception. See also PYTHONINSPECT.
-O
Turn on basic optimizations. This changes the filename extension for compiled (bytecode) files from .pyc to .pyo . See also PYTHONOPTIMIZE.
-OO
http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/using/cmdline.html
-Q
<arg>
new division semantics, i.e. division of int/int and long/long returns a float
warn
old division semantics with a warning for all uses of the division operator See also: Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py for a use of PEP 238 Changing the division operator
-s
warnall
Dont add user site directory to sys.path New in version 2.6. See also: PEP 370 Per user site-packages directory
-S
site
and
the
site-dependent
Issue a warning when a source file mixes tabs and spaces for indentation in a way that makes it depend on the worth of a tab expressed in spaces. Issue an error when the option is given twice (-tt).
-u
Force stdin, stdout and stderr to be totally unbuffered. On systems where it matters, also put stdin, stdout and stderr in binary mode. Note that there is internal buffering in
file.readlines()
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which is not influenced by this option. To work around this, you will want to use file.readline() inside a while 1: loop.
Print a message each time a module is initialized, showing the place (filename or built-in module) from which it is loaded. When given twice (-vv), print a message for each file that is checked for when searching for a module. Also provides information on module cleanup at exit. See also PYTHONVERBOSE.
-W
arg
Warning control. Pythons warning machinery by default prints warning messages to sys.stderr . A typical warning message has the following form:
file:line: category: message
By default, each warning is printed once for each source line where it occurs. This option controls how often warnings are printed. Multiple -W options may be given; when a warning matches more than one option, the action for the last matching option is performed. Invalid -W options are ignored (though, a warning message is printed about invalid options when the first warning is issued). Warnings can also be controlled from within a Python program using the warnings module. The simplest form of argument is one of the following action strings (or a unique abbreviation) by themselves:
ignore
Explicitly request the default behavior (printing each warning once per source line).
all
Print a warning each time it occurs (this may generate many messages if a warning is triggered repeatedly for the same source line, such as inside a loop).
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module
Print each warning only the first time it occurs in each module.
once
Print each warning only the first time it occurs in the program.
error
Raise an exception instead of printing a warning message. The full form of argument is:
action:message:category:module:line
Here, action is as explained above but only applies to messages that match the remaining fields. Empty fields match all values; trailing empty fields may be omitted. The message field matches the start of the warning message printed; this match is case-insensitive. The category field matches the warning category. This must be a class name; the match test whether the actual warning category of the message is a subclass of the specified warning category. The full class name must be given. The module field matches the (fully-qualified) module name; this match is case-sensitive. The line field matches the line number, where zero matches all line numbers and is thus equivalent to an omitted line number. See also: warnings the warnings module PEP 230 Warning framework
-x
Skip the first line of the source, allowing use of non-Unix forms of This is intended for a DOS specific hack only. Note: The line numbers in error messages will be off by one.
-3
#!cmd .
Warn about Python 3.x incompatibilities which cannot be fixed trivially by 2to3. Among these are:
dict.has_key() apply() callable()
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DeprecationWarning .
Turns all string literals into unicodes globally. Do not be tempted to use this option as it will probably break your world. It also produces .pyc files with a different magic number than normal. Instead, you can enable unicode literals on a per-module basis by using:
from __future__ import unicode_literals
__future__
for details.
Reserved for alternative implementations of Python to use for their own purposes.
Change the location of the standard Python libraries. By default, the libraries are searched in prefix/lib/pythonversion and exec_prefix/lib/pythonversion , where prefix and exec_prefix are installation-dependent directories, both defaulting to /usr/local . When PYTHONHOME is set to a single directory, its value replaces both prefix and exec_prefix . To specify different values for these, set PYTHONHOME to prefix:exec_prefix .
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PYTHONPATH
Augment the default search path for module les. The format is the same as the shells PATH: one or more directory pathnames separated by os.pathsep (e.g. colons on Unix or semicolons on Windows). Non-existent directories are silently ignored. In addition to normal directories, individual PYTHONPATH entries may refer to zipfiles containing pure Python modules (in either source or compiled form). Extension modules cannot be imported from zipfiles. The default search path is installation dependent, but generally begins with prefix/lib/pythonversion (see PYTHONHOME above). It is always appended to PYTHONPATH. An additional directory will be inserted in the search path in front of PYTHONPATH as described above under Interface options. The search path can be manipulated from within a Python program as the variable sys.path .
PYTHONSTARTUP
If this is the name of a readable file, the Python commands in that file are executed before the first prompt is displayed in interactive mode. The file is executed in the same namespace where interactive commands are executed so that objects defined or imported in it can be used without qualification in the interactive session. You can also change the prompts sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 in this file.
PYTHONY2K
Set this to a non-empty string to cause the time module to require dates specified as strings to include 4-digit years, otherwise 2-digit years are converted based on rules described in the time module documentation.
PYTHONOPTIMIZE
If this is set to a non-empty string it is equivalent to specifying the -O option. If set to an integer, it is equivalent to specifying -O multiple times.
PYTHONDEBUG
If this is set to a non-empty string it is equivalent to specifying the -d option. If set to an integer, it is equivalent to specifying -d multiple times.
PYTHONINSPECT
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option. This variable can also be modified by Python code using inspect mode on program termination.
PYTHONUNBUFFERED
os.environ
to force
If this is set to a non-empty string it is equivalent to specifying the -v option. If set to an integer, it is equivalent to specifying -v multiple times.
PYTHONCASEOK
import
If this is set, Python wont try to write source modules. New in version 2.6.
PYTHONIOENCODING
.pyc
or
.pyo
Overrides the encoding used for stdin/stdout/stderr, in the syntax encodingname:errorhandler . The :errorhandler part is optional and has the same meaning as in str.encode() . New in version 2.6.
PYTHONNOUSERSITE
If this is set, Python wont add the user site directory to sys.path New in version 2.6. See also: PEP 370 Per user site-packages directory
PYTHONUSERBASE
Sets the base directory for the user site directory New in version 2.6.
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If this environment variable is set, sys.argv[0] will be set to its value instead of the value got through the C runtime. Only works on Mac OS X.
If set, Python will print threading debug info. Changed in version 2.6: Previously, this variable was called
PYTHONDUMPREFS
THREADDEBUG .
If set, Python will dump objects and reference counts still alive after shutting down the interpreter.
PYTHONMALLOCSTATS
If set, Python will print memory allocation statistics every time a new object arena is created, and on shutdown.
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to the shell. Since the choice of the directory where the interpreter lives is an installation option, other places are possible; check with your local Python guru or system administrator. (E.g., /usr/local/python is a popular alternative location.) On Windows machines, the Python installation is usually placed in C:\Python26 , though you can change this when youre running the installer. To add this directory to your path, you can type the following command into the command prompt in a DOS box:
set path=%path%;C:\python26
Typing an end-of-file character ( Control-D on Unix, Control-Z on Windows) at the primary prompt causes the interpreter to exit with a zero exit status. If that doesnt work, you can exit the interpreter by typing the following command: quit() . The interpreters line-editing features usually arent very sophisticated. On Unix, whoever installed the interpreter may have enabled support for the GNU readline library, which adds more elaborate interactive editing and history features. Perhaps the quickest check to see whether command line editing is supported is typing Control-P to the rst Python prompt you get. If it beeps, you have command line editing; see Appendix Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution for an introduction to the keys. If nothing appears to happen, or if ^P is echoed, command line editing isnt available; youll only be able to use backspace to remove characters from the current line. The interpreter operates somewhat like the Unix shell: when called with standard input connected to a tty device, it reads and executes commands interactively; when called with a file name argument or with a file as standard
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input, it reads and executes a script from that file. A second way of starting the interpreter is python -c command [arg] ... , which executes the statement(s) in command, analogous to the shells -c option. Since Python statements often contain spaces or other characters that are special to the shell, it is usually advised to quote command in its entirety with single quotes. Some Python modules are also useful as scripts. These can be invoked using python -m module [arg] ... , which executes the source file for module as if you had spelled out its full name on the command line. 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 end-of-file 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.)
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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:
python Python 2.6 (#1, Feb 28 2007, 00:02:06) Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
Continuation lines are needed when entering a multi-line construct. As an example, take a look at this if statement:
>>> the_world_is_flat = 1 >>> if the_world_is_flat: ... print "Be careful not to fall off!" ... Be careful not to fall off!
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#! /usr/bin/env python
(assuming that the interpreter is on the users PATH) at the beginning of the script and giving the file an executable mode. The #! must be the first two characters of the file. On some platforms, this first line must end with a Unix-style line ending ( '\n' ), not a Windows ( '\r\n' ) line ending. Note that the hash, or pound, character, '#' , is used to start a comment in Python. The script can be given an executable mode, or permission, using the chmod command:
$ chmod +x myscript.py
On Windows systems, there is no notion of an executable mode. The Python installer automatically associates .py files with python.exe so that a double-click on a Python file will run it as a script. The extension can also be .pyw , in that case, the console window that normally appears is suppressed.
With that declaration, all characters in the source file will be treated as having the encoding encoding, and it will be possible to directly write Unicode string literals in the selected encoding. The list of possible encodings can be found in the Python Library Reference, in the section on codecs . For example, to write Unicode literals including the Euro currency symbol, the ISO-8859-15 encoding can be used, with the Euro symbol having the ordinal value 164. This script will print the value 8364 (the Unicode codepoint corresponding to the Euro symbol) and then exit:
# -*- coding: iso-8859-15 -*currency = u"" print ord(currency)
UTF-8
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BOM), you can use that instead of an encoding declaration. IDLE supports this capability if Options/General/Default Source Encoding/UTF-8 is set. Notice that this signature is not understood in older Python releases (2.2 and earlier), and also not understood by the operating system for script files with #! lines (only used on Unix systems). By using UTF-8 (either through the signature or an encoding declaration), characters of most languages in the world can be used simultaneously in string literals and comments. Using non-ASCII characters in identifiers is not supported. To display all these characters properly, your editor must recognize that the file is UTF-8, and it must use a font that supports all the characters in the file.
Footnotes [1] A problem with the GNU Readline package may prevent this.
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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:
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2+2 # This is a comment 2+2 2+2 # and a comment on the same line as code
The equal sign ( '=' ) is used to assign a value to a variable. Afterwards, no result is displayed before the next interactive prompt:
>>> width = 20 >>> height = 5*9 >>> width * height 900
Variables must be dened (assigned a value) before they can be used, or an error will occur:
>>> # try to access an ... n Traceback (most recent File "<stdin>", line NameError: name 'n' is undefined variable call last): 1, in <module> not defined
There is full support for floating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer operand to floating point:
>>> 3 * 3.75 / 1.5 7.5 >>> 7.0 / 2 3.5
Complex numbers are also supported; imaginary numbers are written with a
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suffix of j or J . Complex numbers with a nonzero real component are written as (real+imagj) , or can be created with the complex(real, imag) function.
>>> 1j * 1J (-1+0j) >>> 1j * complex(0,1) (-1+0j) >>> 3+1j*3 (3+3j) >>> (3+1j)*3 (9+3j) >>> (1+2j)/(1+1j) (1.5+0.5j)
Complex numbers are always represented as two floating point numbers, the real and imaginary part. To extract these parts from a complex number z, use z.real and z.imag .
>>> a=1.5+0.5j >>> a.real 1.5 >>> a.imag 0.5
The conversion functions to floating point and integer ( float() , int() and long() ) dont work for complex numbers there is no one correct way to convert a complex number to a real number. Use abs(z) to get its magnitude (as a float) or z.real to get its real part.
>>> a=3.0+4.0j >>> float(a) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: can't convert complex to float; use abs(z) >>> a.real 3.0 >>> a.imag 4.0 >>> abs(a) # sqrt(a.real**2 + a.imag**2) 5.0
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:
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>>> tax = 12.5 / 100 >>> price = 100.50 >>> price * tax 12.5625 >>> price + _ 113.0625 >>> round(_, 2) 113.06
This variable should be treated as read-only by the user. Dont explicitly assign a value to it you would create an independent local variable with the same name masking the built-in variable with its magic behavior.
3.1.2. Strings
Besides numbers, Python can also manipulate strings, which can be expressed in several ways. They can be enclosed in single quotes or double quotes:
>>> 'spam eggs' 'spam eggs' >>> 'doesn\'t' "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. Continuation lines can be used, with a backslash as the last character on the line indicating that the next line is a logical continuation of the line:
hello = "This is a rather long string containing\n\ several lines of text just as you would do in C.\n\ Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is\ significant." print hello
Note that newlines still need to be embedded in the string using \n ; the newline following the trailing backslash is discarded. This example would print the following:
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This is a rather long string containing several lines of text just as you would do in C. Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is significant.
Or, strings can be surrounded in a pair of matching triple-quotes: """ or ''' . End of lines do not need to be escaped when using triple-quotes, but they will be included in the string.
print """ Usage: thingy [OPTIONS] -h -H hostname """
If we make the string literal a raw string, \n sequences are not converted to newlines, but the backslash at the end of the line, and the newline character in the source, are both included in the string as data. Thus, the example:
hello = r"This is a rather long string containing\n\ several lines of text much as you would do in C." print hello
would print:
This is a rather long string containing\n\ several lines of text much as you would do in C.
The interpreter prints the result of string operations in the same way as they are typed for input: inside quotes, and with quotes and other funny characters escaped by backslashes, to show the precise value. The string is enclosed in double quotes if the string contains a single quote and no double quotes, else its enclosed in single quotes. (The print statement, described later, can be used to write strings without quotes or escapes.) Strings can be concatenated (glued together) with the repeated with * :
+
operator, and
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>>> word = 'Help' + 'A' >>> word 'HelpA' >>> '<' + word*5 + '>' '<HelpAHelpAHelpAHelpAHelpA>'
Two string literals next to each other are automatically concatenated; the first line above could also have been written word = 'Help' 'A' ; this only works with two literals, not with arbitrary string expressions:
>>> 'str' 'ing' 'string' >>> 'str'.strip() 'string' >>> 'str'.strip() File "<stdin>", 'str'.strip() # + 'ing' # <<This is ok
Strings can be subscripted (indexed); like in C, the first character of a string has subscript (index) 0. There is no separate character type; a character is simply a string of size one. Like in Icon, substrings can be specified with the slice notation: two indices separated by a colon.
>>> word[4] 'A' >>> word[0:2] 'He' >>> word[2:4] 'lp'
Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted first index defaults to zero, an omitted second index defaults to the size of the string being sliced.
>>> word[:2] 'He' >>> word[2:] 'lpA' # The first two characters # Everything except the first two characters
Unlike a C string, Python strings cannot be changed. Assigning to an indexed position in the string results in an error:
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>>> word[0] = 'x' Traceback (most recent File "<stdin>", line TypeError: object does >>> word[:1] = 'Splat' Traceback (most recent File "<stdin>", line TypeError: object does
call last): 1, in ? not support item assignment call last): 1, in ? not support slice assignment
However, creating a new string with the combined content is easy and efficient:
>>> 'x' + word[1:] 'xelpA' >>> 'Splat' + word[4] 'SplatA'
s[:i] + s[i:]
equals s .
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] 'A' >>> word[-2] 'p' >>> word[-2:] 'pA' >>> word[:-2] 'Hel' # The last character # The last-but-one character # The last two characters # Everything except the last two characters
But note that -0 is really the same as 0, so it does not count from the right!
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# (since -0 equals 0)
Out-of-range negative slice indices are truncated, but dont try this for singleelement (non-slice) indices:
>>> word[-100:] 'HelpA' >>> word[-10] # error Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? IndexError: string index out of range
One way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters, with the left edge of the first character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n characters has index n, for example:
+---+---+---+---+---+ | H | e | l | p | A | +---+---+---+---+---+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0...5 in the string; the second row gives the corresponding negative indices. The slice from i to j consists of all characters between the edges labeled i and j, respectively. For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices, if both are within bounds. For example, the length of word[1:3] is 2. The built-in function
len()
See also: Sequence Types str, unicode, list, tuple, buer, xrange Strings, and the Unicode strings described in the next section, are examples of sequence types, and support the common operations supported by such types. String Methods Both strings and Unicode strings support a large number of methods for basic transformations and searching.
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str.format()
is described here.
String Formatting Operations The old formatting operations invoked when strings and Unicode strings are the left operand of the % operator are described in more detail here.
The small 'u' in front of the quote indicates that a Unicode string is supposed to be created. If you want to include special characters in the string, you can do so by using the Python Unicode-Escape encoding. The following example shows how:
>>> u'Hello\u0020World !' u'Hello World !'
The escape sequence \u0020 indicates to insert the Unicode character with the ordinal value 0x0020 (the space character) at the given position. Other characters are interpreted by using their respective ordinal values directly as Unicode ordinals. If you have literal strings in the standard Latin-1 encoding that is used in many Western countries, you will find it convenient
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that the lower 256 characters of Unicode are the same as the 256 characters of Latin-1. For experts, there is also a raw mode just like the one for normal strings. You have to prex the opening quote with ur to have Python use the Raw-Unicode-Escape encoding. It will only apply the above \uXXXX conversion if there is an uneven number of backslashes in front of the small u.
>>> ur'Hello\u0020World !' u'Hello World !' >>> ur'Hello\\u0020World !' u'Hello\\\\u0020World !'
The raw mode is most useful when you have to enter lots of backslashes, as can be necessary in regular expressions. Apart from these standard encodings, Python provides a whole set of other ways of creating Unicode strings on the basis of a known encoding. The built-in function unicode() provides access to all registered Unicode codecs (COders and DECoders). Some of the more well known encodings which these codecs can convert are Latin-1, ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16. The latter two are variable-length encodings that store each Unicode character in one or more bytes. The default encoding is normally set to ASCII, which passes through characters in the range 0 to 127 and rejects any other characters with an error. When a Unicode string is printed, written to a file, or converted with str() , conversion takes place using this default encoding.
>>> u"abc" u'abc' >>> str(u"abc") 'abc' >>> u"" u'\xe4\xf6\xfc' >>> str(u"") Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 0-2: ordinal not in range(128)
To convert a Unicode string into an 8-bit string using a specific encoding, Unicode objects provide an encode() method that takes one argument, the name of the encoding. Lowercase names for encodings are preferred.
>>> u"".encode('utf-8') '\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc'
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Unicode string from it, you can use the name as the second argument.
>>> unicode('\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc', 'utf-8') u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'
unicode()
3.1.4. Lists
Python knows a number of compound data types, used to group together other values. The most versatile is the list, which can be written as a list of comma-separated values (items) between square brackets. List items need not all have the same type.
>>> a = ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234] >>> a ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]
Like string indices, list indices start at 0, and lists can be sliced, concatenated and so on:
>>> a[0] 'spam' >>> a[3] 1234 >>> a[-2] 100 >>> a[1:-1] ['eggs', 100] >>> a[:2] + ['bacon', 2*2] ['spam', 'eggs', 'bacon', 4] >>> 3*a[:3] + ['Boo!'] ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 'spam', 'eggs', 100, 'spam', 'eggs', 100, 'Boo!']
All slice operations return a new list containing the requested elements. This means that the following slice returns a shallow copy of the list a:
>>> a[:] ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234]
Unlike strings, which are immutable, it is possible to change individual elements of a list:
>>> a ['spam', 'eggs', 100, 1234] >>> a[2] = a[2] + 23 >>> a ['spam', 'eggs', 123, 1234]
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Assignment to slices is also possible, and this can even change the size of the list or clear it entirely:
>>> # Replace some items: ... a[0:2] = [1, 12] >>> a [1, 12, 123, 1234] >>> # Remove some: ... a[0:2] = [] >>> a [123, 1234] >>> # Insert some: ... a[1:1] = ['bletch', 'xyzzy'] >>> a [123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234] >>> # Insert (a copy of) itself at the beginning >>> a[:0] = a >>> a [123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234, 123, 'bletch', 'xyzzy', 1234] >>> # Clear the list: replace all items with an empty list >>> a[:] = [] >>> a []
len()
It is possible to nest lists (create lists containing other lists), for example:
>>> >>> >>> 3 >>> [2, >>> 2 >>> >>> [1, >>> [2, q = [2, 3] p = [1, q, 4] len(p) p[1] 3] p[1][0] p[1].append('xtra') p [2, 3, 'xtra'], 4] q 3, 'xtra'] # See section 5.1
Note that in the last example, p[1] and come back to object semantics later.
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and two together. For instance, we can write an initial sub-sequence of the Fibonacci series as follows:
>>> ... ... >>> ... ... ... 1 1 2 3 5 8 # Fibonacci series: # the sum of two elements defines the next a, b = 0, 1 while b < 10: print b a, b = b, a+b
This example introduces several new features. The first line contains a multiple assignment: the variables a and b simultaneously get the new values 0 and 1. On the last line this is used again, demonstrating that the expressions on the right-hand side are all evaluated first before any of the assignments take place. The right-hand side expressions are evaluated from the left to the right. The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: b < 10 ) remains true. In Python, like in C, any non-zero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or list value, in fact any sequence; anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are false. The test used in the example is a simple comparison. The standard comparison operators are written the same as in C: < (less than), > (greater than), == (equal to), <= (less than or equal to), >= (greater than or equal to) and != (not equal to). The body of the loop is indented: indentation is Pythons way of grouping statements. 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
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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
Note that the interpreter inserts a newline before it prints the next prompt if the last line was not completed.
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4.1.
if
Statements
if
statement. For
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 diers a bit from what you may be used to in C or Pascal. Rather than always iterating over an arithmetic progression of numbers (like in Pascal), or giving the user the ability to dene both the iteration step and halting condition (as C), Pythons for statement iterates over the items of any sequence (a list or a string), in the order that they appear in the sequence. For example (no pun intended):
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>>> # 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, such as lists). If you need to modify the list you are iterating over (for example, to duplicate selected items) you must iterate over a copy. The slice notation makes this particularly convenient:
>>> for x in a[:]: # make a slice copy of the entire list ... if len(x) > 6: a.insert(0, x) ... >>> a ['defenestrate', 'cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']
4.3. The
range()
Function
If you do need to iterate over a sequence of numbers, the built-in function range() comes in handy. It generates lists containing arithmetic progressions:
>>> range(10) [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
The given end point is never part of the generated list; range(10) generates a list of 10 values, the legal indices for items of a sequence of length 10. It is possible to let the range start at another number, or to specify a dierent 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]
range()
and
len()
as
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>>> a = ['Mary', 'had', 'a', 'little', 'lamb'] >>> for i in range(len(a)): ... print i, a[i] ... 0 Mary 1 had 2 a 3 little 4 lamb
In most such cases, however, it is convenient to use the see Looping Techniques.
enumerate()
function,
continue
Statements, and
else
Clauses on
for
The break statement, like in C, breaks out of the smallest enclosing loop.
or
while
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: ... # loop fell through without finding a factor ... print n, 'is a prime number' ... 2 is a prime number 3 is a prime number 4 equals 2 * 2 5 is a prime number 6 equals 2 * 3 7 is a prime number 8 equals 2 * 4 9 equals 3 * 3
4.5.
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Statements
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The pass statement does nothing. It can be used when a statement is required syntactically but the program requires no action. For example:
>>> while True: ... pass # Busy-wait for keyboard interrupt (Ctrl+C) ...
Another place pass can be used is as a place-holder for a function or conditional body when you are working on new code, allowing you to keep thinking at a more abstract level. The pass is silently ignored:
>>> def initlog(*args): ... pass # Remember to implement this! ...
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 rst statement of the function body can optionally be a string literal; this string literal is the functions documentation string, or docstring. (More about docstrings can be found in the section Documentation Strings.) There are tools which use docstrings to automatically produce online or printed
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documentation, or to let the user interactively browse through code; its good practice to include docstrings in code that you write, so make a habit of it. The execution of a function introduces a new symbol table used for the local variables of the function. More precisely, all variable assignments in a function store the value in the local symbol table; whereas variable references first look in the local symbol table, then in the local symbol tables of enclosing functions, then in the global symbol table, and finally in the table of built-in names. Thus, global variables cannot be directly assigned a value within a function (unless named in a global statement), although they may be referenced. The actual parameters (arguments) to a function call are introduced in the local symbol table of the called function when it is called; thus, arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always an object reference, not the value of the object). [1] When a function calls another function, a new local symbol table is created for that call. A function definition introduces the function name in the current symbol table. The value of the function name has a type that is recognized by the interpreter as a user-defined function. This value can be assigned to another name which can then also be used as a function. This serves as a general renaming mechanism:
>>> fib <function fib at 10042ed0> >>> f = fib >>> f(100) 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89
Coming from other languages, you might object that fib is not a function but a procedure since it doesnt return a value. In fact, even functions without a return statement do return a value, albeit a rather boring one. This value is called None (its a built-in name). Writing the value None is normally suppressed by the interpreter if it would be the only value written. You can see it if you really want to using print :
>>> fib(0) >>> print fib(0) None
It is simple to write a function that returns a list of the numbers of the Fibonacci series, instead of printing it:
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>>> ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... >>> >>> [0,
def fib2(n): # return Fibonacci series up to n """Return a list containing the Fibonacci series up to n.""" result = [] a, b = 0, 1 while a < n: result.append(a) # see below a, b = b, a+b return result f100 = fib2(100) # call it f100 # write the result 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
This example, as usual, demonstrates some new Python features: The return statement returns with a value from a function. return without an expression argument returns None . Falling off the end of a function also returns None . The statement result.append(a) calls a method of the list object result . A method is a function that belongs to an object and is named obj.methodname , where obj is some object (this may be an expression), and methodname is the name of a method that is dened by the objects type. Dierent types dene dierent methods. Methods of dierent types may have the same name without causing ambiguity. (It is possible to dene your own object types and methods, using classes, see Classes) The method append() shown in the example is defined for list objects; it adds a new element at the end of the list. In this example it is equivalent to result = result + [a] , but more efficient.
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def ask_ok(prompt, retries=4, complaint='Yes or no, please!'): while True: ok = raw_input(prompt) if ok in ('y', 'ye', 'yes'): return True if ok in ('n', 'no', 'nop', 'nope'): return False retries = retries - 1 if retries < 0: raise IOError('refusenik user') print complaint
This function can be called in several ways: giving only the mandatory argument: ask_ok('Do you really want to quit?') giving one of the optional arguments: ask_ok('OK to overwrite the file?', 2) or even giving all arguments: ask_ok('OK to overwrite the file?', 2, 'Come
only yes or no!')
on,
in
The default values are evaluated at the point of function definition in the defining scope, so that
i = 5 def f(arg=i): print arg i = 6 f()
will print 5 . Important warning: The default value is evaluated only once. This makes a difference when the default is a mutable object such as a list, dictionary, or instances of most classes. For example, the following function accumulates the arguments passed to it on subsequent calls:
def f(a, L=[]): L.append(a) return L print f(1) print f(2) print f(3)
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If you dont want the default to be shared between subsequent calls, you can write the function like this instead:
def f(a, L=None): if L is None: L = [] L.append(a) return L
In general, an argument list must have any positional arguments followed by any keyword arguments, where the keywords must be chosen from the formal parameter names. Its not important whether a formal parameter has a default value or not. No argument may receive a value more than once formal parameter names corresponding to positional arguments cannot be used as keywords in the same calls. Heres an example that fails due to this restriction:
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>>> def function(a): ... pass ... >>> function(0, a=0) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: function() got multiple values for keyword argument 'a'
When a final formal parameter of the form **name is present, it receives a dictionary (see Mapping Types dict) containing all keyword arguments except for those corresponding to a formal parameter. This may be combined with a formal parameter of the form *name (described in the next subsection) which receives a tuple containing the positional arguments beyond the formal parameter list. ( *name must occur before **name .) For example, if we define a function like this:
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 keys = keywords.keys() keys.sort() for kw in keys: print kw, ":", keywords[kw]
Note that the sort() method of the list of keyword argument names is called before printing the contents of the keywords dictionary; if this is not done, the order in which the arguments are printed is undefined.
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In the same fashion, dictionaries can deliver keyword arguments with the ** -operator:
>>> def parrot(voltage, state='a stiff', action='voom'): ... print "-- This parrot wouldn't", action, ... print "if you put", voltage, "volts through it.", ... print "E's", state, "!" ... >>> d = {"voltage": "four million", "state": "bleedin' demised", "action": "VOOM"} >>> parrot(**d) -- This parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it. E's bleedin' demised !
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function definition. Like nested function definitions, lambda forms can reference variables from the containing scope:
>>> ... ... >>> >>> 42 >>> 43 def make_incrementor(n): return lambda x: x + n f = make_incrementor(42) f(0) f(1)
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>>> 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.
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Name your classes and functions consistently; the convention is to use CamelCase for classes and lower_case_with_underscores for functions and methods. Always use self as the name for the first method argument (see A First Look at Classes for more on classes and methods). Dont use fancy encodings if your code is meant to be used in international environments. Plain ASCII works best in any case. Footnotes [1] Actually, call by object reference would be a better description, since if a mutable object is passed, the caller will see any changes the callee makes to it (items inserted into a list).
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5. Data Structures
This chapter describes some things youve learned about already in more detail, and adds some new things as well.
a[len(a):] = [x] .
Extend the list by appending all the items in the given list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = L .
list. insert (i,
x)
Insert an item at a given position. The first argument is the index of the element before which to insert, so a.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and a.insert(len(a), x) is equivalent to a.append(x) .
list. remove (x)
Remove the first item from the list whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such item.
list. pop (
[i])
Remove the item at the given position in the list, and return it. If no index is specified, a.pop() removes and returns the last item in the list. (The square brackets around the i in the method signature denote that the parameter is optional, not that you should type square brackets at that position. You will see this notation frequently in the Python Library Reference.)
list. index (x)
Return the index in the list of the first item whose value is x. It is an error if there is no such item.
list. count (x)
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Reverse the elements of the list, in place. An example that uses most of the list methods:
>>> a = [66.25, 333, 333, 1, 1234.5] >>> print a.count(333), a.count(66.25), a.count('x') 2 1 0 >>> a.insert(2, -1) >>> a.append(333) >>> a [66.25, 333, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333] >>> a.index(333) 1 >>> a.remove(333) >>> a [66.25, -1, 333, 1, 1234.5, 333] >>> a.reverse() >>> a [333, 1234.5, 1, 333, -1, 66.25] >>> a.sort() >>> a [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]
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>>> def f(x): return x % 2 != 0 and x % 3 != 0 ... >>> filter(f, range(2, 25)) [5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23]
calls function(item) for each of the sequences items and returns a list of the return values. For example, to compute some cubes:
map(function, sequence)
>>> 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
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many arguments as there are sequences and is called with the corresponding item from each sequence (or None if some sequence is shorter than another). For example:
>>> >>> ... >>> [0, seq = range(8) def add(x, y): return x+y map(add, seq, seq) 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14]
returns a single value constructed by calling the binary function function on the first two items of the sequence, then on the result and the next item, and so on. For example, to compute the sum of the numbers 1 through 10:
reduce(function, sequence)
>>> def add(x,y): return x+y ... >>> reduce(add, range(1, 11)) 55
If theres only one item in the sequence, its value is returned; if the sequence is empty, an exception is raised. A third argument can be passed to indicate the starting value. In this case the starting value is returned for an empty sequence, and the function is 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
Dont use this examples denition of sum() : since summing numbers is such a common need, a built-in function sum(sequence) is already provided, and works exactly like this. New in version 2.3.
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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 followed by a for clause, then zero or more for or if clauses. The result will be a list resulting from evaluating the expression in the context of the for and if clauses which follow it. If the expression would evaluate to a tuple, it must be parenthesized.
>>> freshfruit = [' banana', ' loganberry ', 'passion fruit '] >>> [weapon.strip() for weapon in freshfruit] ['banana', 'loganberry', 'passion fruit'] >>> vec = [2, 4, 6] >>> [3*x for x in vec] [6, 12, 18] >>> [3*x for x in vec if x > 3] [12, 18] >>> [3*x for x in vec if x < 2] [] >>> [[x,x**2] for x in vec] [[2, 4], [4, 16], [6, 36]] >>> [x, x**2 for x in vec] # error - parens required for tuples File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? [x, x**2 for x in vec] ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> [(x, x**2) for x in vec] [(2, 4), (4, 16), (6, 36)] >>> vec1 = [2, 4, 6] >>> vec2 = [4, 3, -9] >>> [x*y for x in vec1 for y in vec2] [8, 6, -18, 16, 12, -36, 24, 18, -54] >>> [x+y for x in vec1 for y in vec2] [6, 5, -7, 8, 7, -5, 10, 9, -3] >>> [vec1[i]*vec2[i] for i in range(len(vec1))] [8, 12, -54]
List comprehensions are much more flexible than complex expressions and nested functions:
>>> [str(round(355/113.0, i)) for i in range(1,6)] ['3.1', '3.14', '3.142', '3.1416', '3.14159']
map()
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>>> mat = [ ... [1, 2, 3], ... [4, 5, 6], ... [7, 8, 9], ... ]
Now, if you wanted to swap rows and columns, you could use a list comprehension:
>>> print [[row[i] for row in mat] for i in [0, 1, 2]] [[1, 4, 7], [2, 5, 8], [3, 6, 9]]
Special care has to be taken for the nested list comprehension: To avoid apprehension when nesting list comprehensions, read from right to left. A more verbose version of this snippet shows the flow explicitly:
for i in [0, 1, 2]: for row in mat: print row[i], print
In real world, you should prefer built-in functions to complex flow statements. The zip() function would do a great job for this use case:
>>> zip(*mat) [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)]
See Unpacking Argument Lists for details on the asterisk in this line.
5.2. The
del
statement
There is a way to remove an item from a list given its index instead of its value: the del statement. This differs from the pop() method which returns a value. The del statement can also be used to remove slices from a list or clear the entire list (which we did earlier by assignment of an empty list to the slice). For example:
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a = [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5] del a[0] a 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5] del a[2:4] a 66.25, 1234.5] del a[:] a
>>> del a
Referencing the name a hereafter is an error (at least until another value is assigned to it). Well nd other uses for del later.
As you see, on output tuples are always enclosed in parentheses, so that nested tuples are interpreted correctly; they may be input with or without surrounding parentheses, although often parentheses are necessary anyway (if the tuple is part of a larger expression). Tuples have many uses. For example: (x, y) coordinate pairs, employee records from a database, etc. Tuples, like strings, are immutable: it is not possible to assign to the individual items of a tuple (you can simulate much of the same effect with slicing and concatenation, though). It is also possible to
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create tuples which contain mutable objects, such as lists. A special problem is the construction of tuples containing 0 or 1 items: the syntax has some extra quirks to accommodate these. Empty tuples are constructed by an empty pair of parentheses; a tuple with one item is constructed by following a value with a comma (it is not sufficient to enclose a single value in parentheses). Ugly, but effective. For example:
>>> empty = () >>> singleton = 'hello', >>> len(empty) 0 >>> len(singleton) 1 >>> singleton ('hello',) # <-- note trailing comma
The statement t = 12345, 54321, 'hello!' is an example of tuple packing: the values 12345 , 54321 and 'hello!' are packed together in a tuple. The reverse operation is also possible:
>>> x, y, z = t
This is called, appropriately enough, sequence unpacking and works for any sequence on the right-hand side. Sequence unpacking requires the list of variables on the left to have the same number of elements as the length of the sequence. Note that multiple assignment is really just a combination of tuple packing and sequence unpacking.
5.4. Sets
Python also includes a data type for sets. A set is an unordered collection with no duplicate elements. Basic uses include membership testing and eliminating duplicate entries. Set objects also support mathematical operations like union, intersection, difference, and symmetric difference. Here is a brief demonstration:
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>>> basket = ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana'] >>> fruit = set(basket) # create a set without duplicates >>> fruit set(['orange', 'pear', 'apple', 'banana']) >>> 'orange' in fruit # fast membership testing True >>> 'crabgrass' in fruit False >>> # Demonstrate set operations on unique letters from two words ... >>> a = set('abracadabra') >>> b = set('alacazam') >>> a # unique letters in a set(['a', 'r', 'b', 'c', 'd']) >>> a - b # letters in a but not in b set(['r', 'd', 'b']) >>> a | b # letters in either a or b set(['a', 'c', 'r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l']) >>> a & b # letters in both a and b set(['a', 'c']) >>> a ^ b # letters in a or b but not both set(['r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'])
5.5. Dictionaries
Another useful data type built into Python is the dictionary (see Mapping Types dict). Dictionaries are sometimes found in other languages as associative memories or associative arrays. Unlike sequences, which are indexed by a range of numbers, dictionaries are indexed by keys, which can be any immutable type; strings and numbers can always be keys. Tuples can be used as keys if they contain only strings, numbers, or tuples; if a tuple contains any mutable object either directly or indirectly, it cannot be used as a key. You cant use lists as keys, since lists can be modied in place using index assignments, slice assignments, or methods like append() and extend() . It is best to think of a dictionary as an unordered set of key: value pairs, with the requirement that the keys are unique (within one dictionary). A pair of braces creates an empty dictionary: {} . Placing a comma-separated list of key:value pairs within the braces adds initial key:value pairs to the dictionary; this is also the way dictionaries are written on output. The main operations on a dictionary are storing a value with some key and extracting the value given the key. It is also possible to delete a key:value pair with del . If you store using a key that is already in use, the old value associated with that key is forgotten. It is an error to extract a value using a non-existent key.
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The keys() method of a dictionary object returns a list of all the keys used in the dictionary, in arbitrary order (if you want it sorted, just apply the sort() method to the list of keys). To check whether a single key is in the dictionary, use the in keyword. Here is a small example using a dictionary:
>>> tel = {'jack': 4098, 'sape': 4139} >>> tel['guido'] = 4127 >>> tel {'sape': 4139, 'guido': 4127, 'jack': 4098} >>> tel['jack'] 4098 >>> del tel['sape'] >>> tel['irv'] = 4127 >>> tel {'guido': 4127, 'irv': 4127, 'jack': 4098} >>> tel.keys() ['guido', 'irv', 'jack'] >>> 'guido' in tel True
The dict() constructor builds dictionaries directly from lists of key-value pairs stored as tuples. When the pairs form a pattern, list comprehensions can compactly specify the key-value list.
>>> dict([('sape', 4139), ('guido', 4127), ('jack', 4098)]) {'sape': 4139, 'jack': 4098, 'guido': 4127} >>> dict([(x, x**2) for x in (2, 4, 6)]) # use a list comprehension {2: 4, 4: 16, 6: 36}
Later in the tutorial, we will learn about Generator Expressions which are even better suited for the task of supplying key-values pairs to the dict() constructor. When the keys are simple strings, it is sometimes easier to specify pairs using keyword arguments:
>>> dict(sape=4139, guido=4127, jack=4098) {'sape': 4139, 'jack': 4098, 'guido': 4127}
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>>> knights = {'gallahad': 'the pure', 'robin': 'the brave'} >>> for k, v in knights.iteritems(): ... print k, v ... gallahad the pure robin the brave
When looping through a sequence, the position index and corresponding value can be retrieved at the same time using the enumerate() function.
>>> for i, v in enumerate(['tic', 'tac', 'toe']): ... print i, v ... 0 tic 1 tac 2 toe
To loop over two or more sequences at the same time, the entries can be paired with the zip() function.
>>> questions = ['name', 'quest', 'favorite color'] >>> answers = ['lancelot', 'the holy grail', 'blue'] >>> for q, a in zip(questions, answers): ... print 'What is your {0}? It is {1}.'.format(q, a) ... What is your name? It is lancelot. What is your quest? It is the holy grail. What is your favorite color? It is blue.
To loop over a sequence in reverse, first specify the sequence in a forward direction and then call the reversed() function.
>>> for i in reversed(xrange(1,10,2)): ... print i ... 9 7 5 3 1
To loop over a sequence in sorted order, use the sorted() function which returns a new sorted list while leaving the source unaltered.
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>>> basket = ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana'] >>> for f in sorted(set(basket)): ... print f ... apple banana orange pear
and
if
The comparison operators in and not in check whether a value occurs (does not occur) in a sequence. The operators is and is not compare whether two objects are really the same object; this only matters for mutable objects like lists. All comparison operators have the same priority, which is lower than that of all numerical operators. Comparisons can be chained. For example, than b and moreover b equals c .
a < b == c
tests whether
is less
Comparisons may be combined using the Boolean operators and and or , and the outcome of a comparison (or of any other Boolean expression) may be negated with not . These have lower priorities than comparison operators; between them, not has the highest priority and or the lowest, so that A and not B or C is equivalent to (A and (not B)) or C . As always, parentheses can be used to express the desired composition. The Boolean operators and and or are so-called short-circuit operators: their arguments are evaluated from left to right, and evaluation stops as soon as the outcome is determined. For example, if A and C are true but B is false, A and B and C does not evaluate the expression C . When used as a general value and not as a Boolean, the return value of a short-circuit operator is the last evaluated argument. It is possible to assign the result of a comparison or other Boolean expression to a variable. For example,
>>> string1, string2, string3 = '', 'Trondheim', 'Hammer Dance' >>> non_null = string1 or string2 or string3 >>> non_null 'Trondheim'
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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.
Note that comparing objects of different types is legal. The outcome is deterministic but arbitrary: the types are ordered by their name. Thus, a list is always smaller than a string, a string is always smaller than a tuple, etc. [1] Mixed numeric types are compared according to their numeric value, so 0 equals 0.0, etc. Footnotes [1] The rules for comparing objects of different types should not be relied upon; they may change in a future version of the language.
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6. 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 les for easier maintenance. You may also want to use a handy function that youve written in several programs without copying its denition into each program. To support this, Python has a way to put definitions in a file and use them in a script or in an interactive instance of the interpreter. Such a file is called a module; definitions from a module can be imported into other modules or into the main module (the collection of variables that you have access to in a script executed at the top level and in calculator mode). A module is a file containing Python definitions and statements. The file name is the module name with the suffix .py appended. Within a module, the modules name (as a string) is available as the value of the global variable __name__ . For instance, use your favorite text editor to create a file called fibo.py in the current directory with the following contents:
# 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
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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
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:
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This imports all names except those beginning with an underscore ( _ ). Note that in general the practice of importing * from a module or package is frowned upon, since it often causes poorly readable code. However, it is okay to use it to save typing in interactive sessions. Note: For eciency reasons, each module is only imported once per interpreter session. Therefore, if you change your modules, you must restart the interpreter or, if its just one module you want to test interactively, use reload() , e.g. reload(modulename) .
the code in the module will be executed, just as if you imported it, but with the __name__ set to "__main__" . That means that by adding this code at the end of your module:
if __name__ == "__main__": import sys fib(int(sys.argv[1]))
you can make the le usable as a script as well as an importable module, because the code that parses the command line only runs if the module is executed as the main le:
$ python fibo.py 50 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34
This is often used either to provide a convenient user interface to a module, or for testing purposes (running the module as a script executes a test suite).
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is generated and stored in .pyo les. The optimizer currently doesnt help much; it only removes assert statements. When -O is used, all bytecode is optimized; .pyc 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 les. Since some programs may rely on having these available, you should only use this option if you know what youre doing. A program doesnt run any faster when it is read from a .pyc or .pyo file than when it is read from a .py le; the only thing thats faster about .pyc or .pyo files is the speed with which they are loaded. When a script is run by giving its name on the command line, the bytecode for the script is never written to a .pyc or .pyo file. Thus, the startup time of a script may be reduced by moving most of its code to a module and having a small bootstrap script that imports that module. It is also possible to name a .pyc or .pyo file directly on the command line. It is possible to have a file called spam.pyc (or spam.pyo when -O is used) without a file spam.py for the same module. This can be used to distribute a library of Python code in a form that is moderately hard to reverse engineer. The module compileall can create for all modules in a directory.
.pyc
files (or
.pyo
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sys.ps1
and
sys.ps2
>>> 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 determines the interpreters search path for modules. It is initialized to a default path taken from the environment variable PYTHONPATH, or from a built-in default if PYTHONPATH is not set. You can modify it using standard list operations:
>>> import sys >>> sys.path.append('/ufs/guido/lib/python')
6.3. The
dir()
Function
The built-in function dir() is used to find out which names a module defines. It returns a sorted list of strings:
>>> import fibo, sys >>> dir(fibo) ['__name__', 'fib', 'fib2'] >>> dir(sys) ['__displayhook__', '__doc__', '__excepthook__', '__name__', '__stderr__', '__stdin__', '__stdout__', '_getframe', 'api_version', 'argv', 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder', 'callstats', 'copyright', 'displayhook', 'exc_clear', 'exc_info', 'exc_type', 'excepthook', 'exec_prefix', 'executable', 'exit', 'getdefaultencoding', 'getdlopenflags', 'getrecursionlimit', 'getrefcount', 'hexversion', 'maxint', 'maxunicode', 'meta_path', 'modules', 'path', 'path_hooks', 'path_importer_cache', 'platform', 'prefix', 'ps1', 'ps2', 'setcheckinterval', 'setdlopenflags', 'setprofile', 'setrecursionlimit', 'settrace', 'stderr', 'stdin', 'stdout', 'version', 'version_info', 'warnoptions']
Without arguments,
dir()
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] >>> import fibo >>> fib = fibo.fib >>> dir() ['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'a', 'fib', 'fibo', 'sys']
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Note that it lists all types of names: variables, modules, functions, etc. 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__ :
dir()
>>> import __builtin__ >>> dir(__builtin__) ['ArithmeticError', 'AssertionError', 'AttributeError', 'DeprecationWarning', 'EOFError', 'Ellipsis', 'EnvironmentError', 'Exception', 'False', 'FloatingPointError', 'FutureWarning', 'IOError', 'ImportError', 'IndentationError', 'IndexError', 'KeyError', 'KeyboardInterrupt', 'LookupError', 'MemoryError', 'NameError', 'None', 'NotImplemented', 'NotImplementedError', 'OSError', 'OverflowError', 'PendingDeprecationWarning', 'ReferenceError', 'RuntimeError', 'RuntimeWarning', 'StandardError', 'StopIteration', 'SyntaxError', 'SyntaxWarning', 'SystemError', 'SystemExit', 'TabError', 'True', 'TypeError', 'UnboundLocalError', 'UnicodeDecodeError', 'UnicodeEncodeError', 'UnicodeError', 'UnicodeTranslateError', 'UserWarning', 'ValueError', 'Warning', 'WindowsError', 'ZeroDivisionError', '_', '__debug__', '__doc__', '__import__', '__name__', 'abs', 'apply', 'basestring', 'bool', 'buffer', 'callable', 'chr', 'classmethod', 'cmp', 'coerce', 'compile', 'complex', 'copyright', 'credits', 'delattr', 'dict', 'dir', 'divmod', 'enumerate', 'eval', 'execfile', 'exit', 'file', 'filter', 'float', 'frozenset', 'getattr', 'globals', 'hasattr', 'hash', 'help', 'hex', 'id', 'input', 'int', 'intern', 'isinstance', 'issubclass', 'iter', 'len', 'license', 'list', 'locals', 'long', 'map', 'max', 'min', 'object', 'oct', 'open', 'ord', 'pow', 'property', 'quit', 'range', 'raw_input', 'reduce', 'reload', 'repr', 'reversed', 'round', 'set', 'setattr', 'slice', 'sorted', 'staticmethod', 'str', 'sum', 'super', 'tuple', 'type', 'unichr', 'unicode', 'vars', 'xrange', 'zip']
6.4. Packages
Packages are a way of structuring Pythons module namespace by using dotted module names. For example, the module name A.B designates a submodule named B in a package named A . Just like the use of modules saves the authors of dierent modules from having to worry about each others global variable names, the use of dotted module names saves the authors of multi-module packages like NumPy or the Python Imaging Library from having to worry about each others module names. Suppose you want to design a collection of modules (a package) for the uniform handling of sound les and sound data. There are many dierent sound le formats (usually recognized by their extension, for example: .wav , .aiff , .au ), so you may need to create and maintain a growing collection of modules for the conversion between the various le formats. There are also many dierent operations you might want to perform on sound data (such as mixing, adding echo, applying an equalizer function, creating an articial
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stereo eect), so in addition you will be writing a never-ending stream of modules to perform these operations. Heres a possible structure for your package (expressed in terms of a hierarchical lesystem):
sound/ __init__.py formats/ __init__.py wavread.py wavwrite.py aiffread.py aiffwrite.py auread.py auwrite.py ... effects/ __init__.py echo.py surround.py reverse.py ... filters/ __init__.py equalizer.py vocoder.py karaoke.py ... Top-level package Initialize the sound package Subpackage for file format conversions
When importing the package, Python searches through the directories on sys.path looking for the package subdirectory. The __init__.py files are required to make Python treat the directories as containing packages; this is done to prevent directories with a common name, such as string , from unintentionally hiding valid modules that occur later on the module search path. In the simplest case, __init__.py can just be an empty file, but it can also execute initialization code for the package or set the __all__ variable, described later. Users of the package can import individual modules from the package, for example:
import sound.effects.echo
sound.effects.echo .
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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)
echo ,
echofilter()
Note that when using from package import item , the item can be either a submodule (or subpackage) of the package, or some other name defined in the package, like a function, class or variable. The import statement first tests whether the item is defined in the package; if not, it assumes it is a module and attempts to load it. If it fails to find it, an ImportError exception is raised. Contrarily, when using syntax like import item.subitem.subsubitem , each item except for the last must be a package; the last item can be a module or a package but cant be a class or function or variable dened in the previous item.
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sounds/effects/__init__.py
This would mean that from sound.effects submodules of the sound package.
import *
If __all__ is not defined, the statement from sound.effects import * does not import all submodules from the package sound.effects into the current namespace; it only ensures that the package sound.effects has been imported (possibly running any initialization code in __init__.py ) and then imports whatever names are defined in the package. This includes any names defined (and submodules explicitly loaded) by __init__.py . It also includes any submodules of the package that were explicitly loaded by previous import statements. Consider this code:
import sound.effects.echo import sound.effects.surround from sound.effects import *
In this example, the echo and surround modules are imported in the current namespace because they are defined in the sound.effects package when the from...import statement is executed. (This also works when __all__ is defined.) Although certain modules are designed to export only names that follow certain patterns when you use import * , it is still considered bad practise in production code. 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. Remember,
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import
When packages are structured into subpackages (as with the sound package in the example), you can use absolute imports to refer to submodules of siblings packages. For example, if the module sound.filters.vocoder needs to use the echo module in the sound.effects package, it can use from sound.effects import echo . Starting with Python 2.5, in addition to the implicit relative imports described above, you can write explicit relative imports with the from module import name form of import statement. These explicit relative imports use leading dots to indicate the current and parent packages involved in the relative import. From the surround module for example, you might use:
from . import echo from .. import formats from ..filters import equalizer
Note that both explicit and implicit relative imports are based on the name of the current module. Since the name of the main module is always "__main__" , modules intended for use as the main module of a Python application should always use absolute imports.
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>>> s = 'Hello, world.' >>> str(s) 'Hello, world.' >>> repr(s) "'Hello, world.'" >>> str(0.1) '0.1' >>> repr(0.1) '0.10000000000000001' >>> x = 10 * 3.25 >>> y = 200 * 200 >>> s = 'The value of x is ' + repr(x) + ', and y is ' + repr(y) + '...' >>> print s The value of x is 32.5, and y is 40000... >>> # The repr() of a string adds string quotes and backslashes: ... hello = 'hello, world\n' >>> hellos = repr(hello) >>> print hellos 'hello, world\n' >>> # The argument to repr() may be any Python object: ... repr((x, y, ('spam', 'eggs'))) "(32.5, 40000, ('spam', 'eggs'))"
(Note that in the first example, one space between each column was added by the way print works: it always adds spaces between its arguments.)
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This example demonstrates the rjust() method of string objects, which rightjustifies a string in a field of a given width by padding it with spaces on the left. There are similar methods ljust() and center() . These methods do not write anything, they just return a new string. If the input string is too long, they dont truncate it, but return it unchanged; this will mess up your column lay-out but thats usually better than the alternative, which would be lying about a value. (If you really want truncation you can always add a slice operation, as in x.ljust(n)[:n] .) There is another method, zfill() , which pads a numeric string on the left with zeros. It understands about plus and minus signs:
>>> '12'.zfill(5) '00012' >>> '-3.14'.zfill(7) '-003.14' >>> '3.14159265359'.zfill(5) '3.14159265359'
str.format()
>>> print 'We are the {0} who say "{1}!"'.format('knights', 'Ni') We are the knights who say "Ni!"
The brackets and characters within them (called format fields) are replaced with the objects passed into the format() method. A number in the brackets refers to the position of the object passed into the format() method.
>>> print '{0} and {1}'.format('spam', 'eggs') spam and eggs >>> print '{1} and {0}'.format('spam', 'eggs') eggs and spam
If keyword arguments are used in the format() method, their values are referred to by using the name of the argument.
>>> print 'This {food} is {adjective}.'.format( ... food='spam', adjective='absolutely horrible') This spam is absolutely horrible.
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repr() )
'!r'
(apply
import math print 'The value of PI is approximately {0}.'.format(math.pi) value of PI is approximately 3.14159265359. print 'The value of PI is approximately {0!r}.'.format(math.pi) value of PI is approximately 3.141592653589793.
An optional ':' and format specifier can follow the field name. This allows greater control over how the value is formatted. The following example truncates Pi to three places after the decimal.
>>> import math >>> print 'The value of PI is approximately {0:.3f}.'.format(math.pi) The value of PI is approximately 3.142.
Passing an integer after the ':' will cause that field to be a minimum number of characters wide. This is useful for making tables pretty.
>>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 7678} >>> for name, phone in table.items(): ... print '{0:10} ==> {1:10d}'.format(name, phone) ... Jack ==> 4098 Dcab ==> 7678 Sjoerd ==> 4127
If you have a really long format string that you dont want to split up, it would be nice if you could reference the variables to be formatted by name instead of by position. This can be done by simply passing the dict and using square brackets '[]' to access the keys
>>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 8637678} >>> print ('Jack: {0[Jack]:d}; Sjoerd: {0[Sjoerd]:d}; ' ... 'Dcab: {0[Dcab]:d}'.format(table)) Jack: 4098; Sjoerd: 4127; Dcab: 8637678
This could also be done by passing the table as keyword arguments with the ** notation.
>>> table = {'Sjoerd': 4127, 'Jack': 4098, 'Dcab': 8637678} >>> print 'Jack: {Jack:d}; Sjoerd: {Sjoerd:d}; Dcab: {Dcab:d}'.format(**table) Jack: 4098; Sjoerd: 4127; Dcab: 8637678
This is particularly useful in combination with the new built-in which returns a dictionary containing all local variables.
vars()
function,
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str.format() ,
see Format
Since str.format() is quite new, a lot of Python code still uses the % operator. However, because this old style of formatting will eventually be removed from the language, str.format() should generally be used. More information can be found in the String Formatting Operations section.
>>> 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 characters describing the way in which the file will be used. mode can be 'r' when the file will only be read, 'w' for only writing (an existing file with the same name will be erased), and 'a' opens the file for appending; any data written to the file is automatically added to the end. 'r+' opens the file for both reading and writing. The mode argument is optional; 'r' will be assumed if its omitted. On Windows, 'b' appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode, so there are also modes like 'rb' , 'wb' , and 'r+b' . Python on Windows makes a distinction between text and binary les; the end-of-line characters in text les are automatically altered slightly when data is read or written. This
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behind-the-scenes modication to le data is ne for ASCII text les, but itll corrupt binary data like that in JPEG or EXE les. Be very careful to use binary mode when reading and writing such les. On Unix, it doesnt hurt to append a 'b' to the mode, so you can use it platform-independently for all binary files.
To read a les contents, call f.read(size) , which reads some quantity of data and returns it as a string. size is an optional numeric argument. When size is omitted or negative, the entire contents of the le will be read and returned; its your problem if the le is twice as large as your machines memory. Otherwise, at most size bytes are read and returned. If the end of the file has been reached, f.read() will return an empty string ( "" ).
>>> f.read() 'This is the entire file.\n' >>> f.read() ''
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 le if the le doesnt end in a newline. This makes the return value unambiguous; if f.readline() returns an empty string, the end of the file has been reached, while a blank line is represented by '\n' , a string containing only a single newline.
f.readline()
>>> f.readline() 'This is the first line of the file.\n' >>> f.readline() 'Second line of the file\n' >>> f.readline() ''
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()
>>> f.readlines() ['This is the first line of the file.\n', 'Second line of the file\n']
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An alternative approach to reading lines is to loop over the file object. This is memory efficient, fast, and leads to simpler code:
>>> for line in f: print line, This is the first line of the file. Second line of the file
The alternative approach is simpler but does not provide as fine-grained control. Since the two approaches manage line buffering differently, they should not be mixed.
f.write(string)
None .
returns an integer giving the le objects current position in the le, measured in bytes from the beginning of the le. To change the le objects position, use f.seek(offset, from_what) . The position is computed from adding offset to a reference point; the reference point is selected by the from_what argument. A from_what value of 0 measures from the beginning of the file, 1 uses the current file position, and 2 uses the end of the file as the reference point. from_what can be omitted and defaults to 0, using the beginning of the file as the reference point.
f.tell()
f = open('/tmp/workfile', 'r+') f.write('0123456789abcdef') f.seek(5) # Go to the 6th byte in the file f.read(1) f.seek(-3, 2) # Go to the 3rd byte before the end f.read(1)
When youre done with a le, call f.close() to close it and free up any system resources taken up by the open file. After calling f.close() , attempts to use the file object will automatically fail.
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>>> f.close() >>> f.read() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? ValueError: I/O operation on closed file
It is good practice to use the with keyword when dealing with file objects. This has the advantage that the file is properly closed after its suite finishes, even if an exception is raised on the way. It is also much shorter than writing equivalent try - finally blocks:
>>> with open('/tmp/workfile', 'r') as f: ... read_data = f.read() >>> f.closed True
File objects have some additional methods, such as isatty() and truncate() which are less frequently used; consult the Library Reference for a complete guide to 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 int() , which takes a string like '123' and returns its numeric value 123. However, when you want to save more complex data types like lists, dictionaries, or class instances, things get a lot more complicated. Rather than have users be constantly writing and debugging code to save complicated data types, Python provides a standard module called pickle . This is an amazing module that can take almost any Python object (even some forms of Python code!), and convert it to a string representation; this process is called pickling. Reconstructing the object from the string representation is called unpickling. Between pickling and unpickling, the string representing the object may have been stored in a file or data, or sent over a network connection to some distant machine. If you have an object x , and a file object f thats been opened for writing, the simplest way to pickle the object takes only one line of code:
pickle.dump(x, f)
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(There are other variants of this, used when pickling many objects or when you dont want to write the pickled data to a le; consult the complete documentation for pickle in the Python Library Reference.) 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.
pickle
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The parser repeats the oending line and displays a little arrow pointing at the earliest point in the line where the error was detected. The error is caused by (or at least detected at) the token preceding the arrow: in the example, the error is detected at the keyword print , since a colon ( ':' ) is missing before it. File name and line number are printed so you know where to look in case the input came from a script.
8.2. Exceptions
Even if a statement or expression is syntactically correct, it may cause an error when an attempt is made to execute it. Errors detected during execution are called exceptions and are not unconditionally fatal: you will soon learn how to handle them in Python programs. Most exceptions are not handled by programs, however, and result in error messages as shown here:
>>> 10 * (1/0) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero >>> 4 + spam*3 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? NameError: name 'spam' is not defined >>> '2' + 2 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects
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The last line of the error message indicates what happened. Exceptions come in different types, and the type is printed as part of the message: the types in the example are ZeroDivisionError , NameError and TypeError . The string printed as the exception type is the name of the built-in exception that occurred. This is true for all built-in exceptions, but need not be true for user-defined exceptions (although it is a useful convention). Standard exception names are built-in identifiers (not reserved keywords). The rest of the line provides detail based on the type of exception and what caused it. The preceding part of the error message shows the context where the exception happened, in the form of a stack traceback. In general it contains a stack traceback listing source lines; however, it will not display lines read from standard input. Built-in Exceptions lists the built-in exceptions and their meanings.
The
try
First, the try clause (the statement(s) between the try and except keywords) is executed. If no exception occurs, the except clause is skipped and execution of the try statement is finished. If an exception occurs during execution of the try clause, the rest of the clause is skipped. Then if its type matches the exception named after the except keyword, the except clause is executed, and then execution
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continues after the try statement. If an exception occurs which does not match the exception named in the except clause, it is passed on to outer try statements; if no handler is found, it is an unhandled exception and execution stops with a message as shown above. A try statement may have more than one except clause, to specify handlers for different exceptions. At most one handler will be executed. Handlers only handle exceptions that occur in the corresponding try clause, not in other handlers of the same try statement. An except clause may name multiple exceptions as a parenthesized tuple, for example:
... except (RuntimeError, TypeError, NameError): ... pass
The last except clause may omit the exception name(s), to serve as a wildcard. Use this with extreme caution, since it is easy to mask a real programming error in this way! It can also be used to print an error message and then re-raise the exception (allowing a caller to handle the exception as well):
import sys try: f = open('myfile.txt') s = f.readline() i = int(s.strip()) except IOError as (errno, strerror): print "I/O error({0}): {1}".format(errno, strerror) except ValueError: print "Could not convert data to an integer." except: print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0] raise
The try ... except statement has an optional else clause, which, when present, must follow all except clauses. It is useful for code that must be executed if the try clause does not raise an exception. For example:
for arg in sys.argv[1:]: try: f = open(arg, 'r') except IOError: print 'cannot open', arg else: print arg, 'has', len(f.readlines()), 'lines' f.close()
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The use of the else clause is better than adding additional code to the try clause because it avoids accidentally catching an exception that wasnt raised by the code being protected by the try ... except statement. When an exception occurs, it may have an associated value, also known as the exceptions argument. The presence and type of the argument depend on the exception type. The except clause may specify a variable after the exception name (or tuple). The variable is bound to an exception instance with the arguments stored in instance.args . For convenience, the exception instance defines __str__() so the arguments can be printed directly without having to reference .args . One may also instantiate an exception first before raising it and add any attributes to it as desired.
>>> try: ... raise Exception('spam', 'eggs') ... except Exception as inst: ... print type(inst) # the exception instance ... print inst.args # arguments stored in .args ... print inst # __str__ allows args to printed directly ... x, y = inst # __getitem__ allows args to be unpacked directly ... print 'x =', x ... print 'y =', y ... <type 'exceptions.Exception'> ('spam', 'eggs') ('spam', 'eggs') x = spam y = eggs
If an exception has an argument, it is printed as the last part (detail) of the message for unhandled exceptions. Exception handlers dont just handle exceptions if they occur immediately in the try clause, but also if they occur inside functions that are called (even indirectly) in the try clause. For example:
>>> def this_fails(): ... x = 1/0 ... >>> try: ... this_fails() ... except ZeroDivisionError as detail: ... print 'Handling run-time error:', detail ... Handling run-time error: integer division or modulo by zero
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The argument to raise is an exception class or instance to be raised. There is a deprecated alternate syntax that separates class and constructor arguments; the above could be written as raise NameError, 'HiThere' . Since it once was the only one available, the latter form is prevalent in older code. If you need to determine whether an exception was raised but dont intend to handle it, a simpler form of the raise statement allows you to re-raise the exception:
>>> try: ... raise NameError('HiThere') ... except NameError: ... print 'An exception flew by!' ... raise ... An exception flew by! Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 2, in ? NameError: HiThere
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>>> class MyError(Exception): ... def __init__(self, value): ... self.value = value ... def __str__(self): ... return repr(self.value) ... >>> try: ... raise MyError(2*2) ... except MyError as e: ... print 'My exception occurred, value:', e.value ... My exception occurred, value: 4 >>> raise MyError('oops!') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? __main__.MyError: 'oops!'
In this example, the default __init__() of Exception has been overridden. The new behavior simply creates the value attribute. This replaces the default behavior of creating the args attribute. Exception classes can be defined which do anything any other class can do, but are usually kept simple, often only offering a number of attributes that allow information about the error to be extracted by handlers for the exception. When creating a module that can raise several distinct errors, a common practice is to create a base class for exceptions defined by that module, and subclass that to create specific exception classes for different error conditions:
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class Error(Exception): """Base class for exceptions in this module.""" pass class InputError(Error): """Exception raised for errors in the input. Attributes: expr -- input expression in which the error occurred msg -- explanation of the error """ def __init__(self, expr, msg): self.expr = expr self.msg = msg class TransitionError(Error): """Raised when an operation attempts a state transition that's not allowed. Attributes: prev -- state at beginning of transition next -- attempted new state msg -- explanation of why the specific transition is not allowed """ def __init__(self, prev, next, msg): self.prev = prev self.next = next self.msg = msg
Most exceptions are dened with names that end in Error, similar to the naming of the standard exceptions. Many standard modules define their own exceptions to report errors that may occur in functions they define. More information on classes is presented in chapter Classes.
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A finally clause is always executed before leaving the try statement, whether an exception has occurred or not. When an exception has occurred in the try clause and has not been handled by an except clause (or it has occurred in a except or else clause), it is re-raised after the finally clause has been executed. The finally clause is also executed on the way out when any other clause of the try statement is left via a break , continue or return statement. A more complicated example (having except and finally clauses in the same try statement works as of Python 2.5):
>>> def divide(x, y): ... try: ... result = x / y ... except ZeroDivisionError: ... print "division by zero!" ... else: ... print "result is", result ... finally: ... print "executing finally clause" ... >>> divide(2, 1) result is 2 executing finally clause >>> divide(2, 0) division by zero! executing finally clause >>> divide("2", "1") executing finally clause Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? File "<stdin>", line 3, in divide TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'str' and 'str'
As you can see, the finally clause is executed in any event. The TypeError raised by dividing two strings is not handled by the except clause and therefore re-raised after the finally clause has been executed. In real world applications, the finally clause is useful for releasing external resources (such as files or network connections), regardless of whether the use of the resource was successful.
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The problem with this code is that it leaves the file open for an indeterminate amount of time after the code has finished executing. This is not an issue in simple scripts, but can be a problem for larger applications. The with statement allows objects like files to be used in a way that ensures they are always cleaned up promptly and correctly.
with open("myfile.txt") as f: for line in f: print line
After the statement is executed, the file f is always closed, even if a problem was encountered while processing the lines. Other objects which provide predefined clean-up actions will indicate this in their documentation.
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9. Classes
Pythons class mechanism adds classes to the language with a minimum of new syntax and semantics. It is a mixture of the class mechanisms found in C++ and Modula-3. As is true for modules, classes in Python do not put an absolute barrier between denition and user, but rather rely on the politeness of the user not to break into the denition. The most important features of classes are retained with full power, however: the class inheritance mechanism allows multiple base classes, a derived class can override any methods of its base class or classes, and a method can call the method of a base class with the same name. Objects can contain an arbitrary amount of data. In C++ terminology, all class members (including the data members) are public, and all member functions are virtual. As in Modula-3, there are no shorthands for referencing the objects members from its methods: the method function is declared with an explicit rst argument representing the object, which is provided implicitly by the call. As in Smalltalk, classes themselves are objects. This provides semantics for importing and renaming. Unlike C++ and Modula-3, built-in types can be used as base classes for extension by the user. Also, like in C++, most built-in operators with special syntax (arithmetic operators, subscripting etc.) can be redened for class instances. (Lacking universally accepted terminology to talk about classes, I will make occasional use of Smalltalk and C++ terms. I would use Modula-3 terms, since its object-oriented semantics are closer to those of Python than C++, but I expect that few readers have heard of it.)
http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/tutorial/classes...
http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/tutorial/classes...
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 unqualied reference to a name attempts to nd the name in the namespace. Although scopes are determined statically, they are used dynamically. At any time during execution, there are at least three nested scopes whose namespaces are directly accessible: the innermost scope, which is searched first, contains the local names the scopes of any enclosing functions, which are searched starting with the nearest enclosing scope, contains non-local, but also non-global names the next-to-last scope contains the current modules global names the outermost scope (searched last) is the namespace containing built-in names If a name is declared global, then all references and assignments go directly to the middle scope containing the modules global names. Otherwise, all variables found outside of the innermost scope are read-only (an attempt to write to such a variable will simply create a new local variable in the innermost scope, leaving the identically named outer variable unchanged). Usually, the local scope references the local names of the (textually) current function. Outside functions, the local scope references the same namespace as the global scope: the modules namespace. Class denitions place yet another namespace in the local scope. It is important to realize that scopes are determined textually: the global scope of a function dened in a module is that modules namespace, no matter from where or by what alias the function is called. On the other hand, the actual search for names is done dynamically, at run time however, the
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language denition is evolving towards static name resolution, at compile time, so dont rely on dynamic name resolution! (In fact, local variables are already determined statically.) A special quirk of Python is that if no global statement is in eect assignments to names always go into the innermost scope. Assignments do not copy data they just bind names to objects. The same is true for deletions: the statement del x removes the binding of x from the namespace referenced by the local scope. In fact, all operations that introduce new names use the local scope: in particular, import statements and function definitions bind the module or function name in the local scope. (The global statement can be used to indicate that particular variables live in the global scope.)
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 denition will usually be function denitions, but other statements are allowed, and sometimes useful well come back to this later. The function denitions inside a class normally have a peculiar form of argument list, dictated by the calling conventions for methods again, this is explained later. When a class denition is entered, a new namespace is created, and used as the local scope thus, all assignments to local variables go into this new namespace. In particular, function denitions bind the name of the new
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function here. When a class definition is left normally (via the end), a class object is created. This is basically a wrapper around the contents of the namespace created by the class definition; well learn more about class objects in the next section. The original local scope (the one in eect just before the class denition was entered) is reinstated, and the class object is bound here to the class name given in the class denition header ( ClassName in the example).
then MyClass.i and MyClass.f are valid attribute references, returning an integer and a function object, respectively. Class attributes can also be assigned to, so you can change the value of MyClass.i by assignment. __doc__ is also a valid attribute, returning the docstring belonging to the class: "A simple example class" . Class instantiation uses function notation. Just pretend that the class object is a parameterless function that returns a new instance of the class. For example (assuming the above class):
x = MyClass()
creates a new instance of the class and assigns this object to the local variable x . The instantiation operation (calling a class object) creates an empty object. Many classes like to create objects with instances customized to a specic initial state. Therefore a class may dene a special method named __init__() , like this:
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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)
The other kind of instance attribute reference is a method. A method is a function that belongs to an object. (In Python, the term method is not unique to class instances: other object types can have methods as well. For example, list objects have methods called append, insert, remove, sort, and so on. However, in the following discussion, well use the term method
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exclusively to mean methods of class instance objects, unless explicitly stated otherwise.) Valid method names of an instance object depend on its class. By definition, all attributes of a class that are function objects define corresponding methods of its instances. So in our example, x.f is a valid method reference, since MyClass.f is a function, but x.i is not, since MyClass.i is not. But x.f is not the same thing as MyClass.f it is a method object, not a function object.
In the MyClass example, this will return the string 'hello world' . However, it is not necessary to call a method right away: x.f is a method object, and can be stored away and called at a later time. For example:
xf = x.f while True: print xf()
hello world
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() specied an argument. What happened to the argument? Surely Python raises an exception when a function that requires an argument is called without any even if the argument isnt actually used... Actually, you may have guessed the answer: the special thing about methods is that the object is passed as the 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 methods object before the rst argument. If you still dont understand how methods work, a look at the implementation can perhaps clarify matters. When an instance attribute is referenced that isnt a data attribute, its class is searched. If the name denotes a valid class attribute that is a function object, a method object is created by packing
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(pointers to) the instance object and the function object just found together in an abstract object: this is the method object. When the method object is called with an argument list, a new argument list is constructed from the instance object and the argument list, and the function object is called with this new argument list.
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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 argument:
class Bag: def __init__(self): self.data = [] def add(self, x): self.data.append(x) def addtwice(self, x): self.add(x) self.add(x)
self
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 dened in it. Usually, the class containing the method is itself dened in this global scope, and in the next section well nd some good reasons why a method would want to reference its own class. Each value is an object, and therefore has a class (also called its type). It is stored as object.__class__ .
9.5. Inheritance
Of course, a language feature would not be worthy of the name class
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without supporting inheritance. The syntax for a derived class denition looks like this:
class DerivedClassName(BaseClassName): <statement-1> . . . <statement-N>
The name BaseClassName must be defined in a scope containing the derived class definition. In place of a base class name, other arbitrary expressions are also allowed. This can be useful, for example, when the base class is defined in another module:
class DerivedClassName(modname.BaseClassName):
Execution of a derived class definition proceeds the same as for a base class. When the class object is constructed, the base class is remembered. This is used for resolving attribute references: if a requested attribute is not found in the class, the search proceeds to look in the base class. This rule is applied recursively if the base class itself is derived from some other class. Theres nothing special about instantiation of derived classes: DerivedClassName() creates a new instance of the class. Method references are resolved as follows: the corresponding class attribute is searched, descending down the chain of base classes if necessary, and the method reference is valid if this yields a function object. Derived classes may override methods of their base classes. Because methods have no special privileges when calling other methods of the same object, a method of a base class that calls another method defined in the same base class may end up calling a method of a derived class that overrides it. (For C++ programmers: all methods in Python are effectively virtual .) An overriding method in a derived class may in fact want to extend rather than simply replace the base class method of the same name. There is a simple way to call the base class method directly: just call BaseClassName.methodname(self, arguments) . This is occasionally useful to clients as well. (Note that this only works if the base class is accessible as BaseClassName in the global scope.) Python has two built-in functions that work with inheritance:
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Use isinstance() to check an instances type: isinstance(obj, int) will be True only if obj.__class__ is int or some class derived from int . Use issubclass() to check class inheritance: issubclass(bool, int) is True since bool is a subclass of int . However, issubclass(unicode, str) is False since unicode is not a subclass of str (they only share a common ancestor, basestring ).
For old-style classes, the only rule is depth-first, left-to-right. Thus, if an attribute is not found in DerivedClassName , it is searched in Base1 , then (recursively) in the base classes of Base1 , and only if it is not found there, it is searched in Base2 , and so on. (To some people breadth rst searching Base2 and Base3 before the base classes of Base1 looks more natural. However, this would require you to know whether a particular attribute of Base1 is actually defined in Base1 or in one of its base classes before you can figure out the consequences of a name conflict with an attribute of Base2 . The depth-first rule makes no differences between direct and inherited attributes of Base1 .) For new-style classes, the method resolution order changes dynamically to support cooperative calls to super() . This approach is known in some other multiple-inheritance languages as call-next-method and is more powerful than the super call found in single-inheritance languages. With new-style classes, dynamic ordering is necessary because all cases of multiple inheritance exhibit one or more diamond relationships (where one at least one of the parent classes can be accessed through multiple paths from the bottommost class). For example, all new-style classes inherit from object , so any case of multiple inheritance provides more than one path to reach object . To keep the base classes from being accessed more than once, the
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dynamic algorithm linearizes the search order in a way that preserves the left-to-right ordering specified in each class, that calls each parent only once, and that is monotonic (meaning that a class can be subclassed without affecting the precedence order of its parents). Taken together, these properties make it possible to design reliable and extensible classes with multiple inheritance. For more detail, see http://www.python.org/download /releases/2.3/mro/.
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A piece of Python code that expects a particular abstract data type can often be passed a class that emulates the methods of that data type instead. For instance, if you have a function that formats some data from a file object, you can define a class with methods read() and readline() that get the data from a string buffer instead, and pass it as an argument. Instance method objects have attributes, too: m.im_self is the instance object with the method m() , and m.im_func is the function object corresponding to the method.
this
statement:
In the first form, instance must be an instance of it. The second form is a shorthand for:
raise instance.__class__, instance
Class
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:
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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 rst matching except clause is triggered. When an error message is printed for an unhandled exception, the exceptions class name is printed, then a colon and a space, and nally the instance converted to a string using the built-in function str() .
9.9. Iterators
By now you have probably noticed that most container objects can be looped over using a for statement:
for element in [1, 2, 3]: print element for element in (1, 2, 3): print element for key in {'one':1, 'two':2}: print key for char in "123": print char for line in open("myfile.txt"): print line
This style of access is clear, concise, and convenient. The use of iterators pervades and unifies Python. Behind the scenes, the for statement calls iter() on the container object. The function returns an iterator object that defines the method next() which accesses elements in the container one at a time. When there are no more elements, next() raises a StopIteration exception which tells the for loop to terminate. This example shows how it all works:
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>>> s = 'abc' >>> it = iter(s) >>> it <iterator object at 0x00A1DB50> >>> it.next() 'a' >>> it.next() 'b' >>> it.next() 'c' >>> it.next() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? it.next() StopIteration
Having seen the mechanics behind the iterator protocol, it is easy to add iterator behavior to your classes. Define an __iter__() method which returns an object with a next() method. If the class defines next() , then __iter__() can just return self :
class Reverse: "Iterator for looping over a sequence backwards" def __init__(self, data): self.data = data self.index = len(data) def __iter__(self): return self def next(self): if self.index == 0: raise StopIteration self.index = self.index - 1 return self.data[self.index] >>> rev = Reverse('spam') >>> iter(rev) <__main__.Reverse object at 0x00A1DB50> >>> for char in rev: ... print char ... m a p s
9.10. Generators
Generators are a simple and powerful tool for creating iterators. They are written like regular functions but use the yield statement whenever they want to return data. Each time next() is called, the generator resumes where it left-off (it remembers all the data values and which statement was last
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Anything that can be done with generators can also be done with class based iterators as described in the previous section. What makes generators so compact is that the __iter__() and next() methods are created automatically. Another key feature is that the local variables and execution state are automatically saved between calls. This made the function easier to write and much more clear than an approach using instance variables like self.index and self.data . In addition to automatic method creation and saving program state, when generators terminate, they automatically raise StopIteration . In combination, these features make it easy to create iterators with no more effort than writing a regular function.
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>>> sum(i*i for i in range(10)) 285 >>> xvec = [10, 20, 30] >>> yvec = [7, 5, 3] >>> sum(x*y for x,y in zip(xvec, yvec)) 260
# sum of squares
# dot product
>>> from math import pi, sin >>> sine_table = dict((x, sin(x*pi/180)) for x in range(0, 91)) >>> unique_words = set(word for line in page for word in line.split())
>>> valedictorian = max((student.gpa, student.name) for student in graduates) >>> data = 'golf' >>> list(data[i] for i in range(len(data)-1,-1,-1)) ['f', 'l', 'o', 'g']
Footnotes [1] Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute called __dict__ which returns the dictionary used to implement the modules namespace; the name __dict__ is an attribute but not a global name. Obviously, using this violates the abstraction of namespace implementation, and should be restricted to things like post-mortem debuggers.
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Be sure to use the import os style instead of from os import * . This will keep os.open() from shadowing the built-in open() function which operates much differently. The built-in dir() and help() functions are useful as interactive aids for working with large modules like os :
>>> import os >>> dir(os) <returns a list of all module functions> >>> help(os) <returns an extensive manual page created from the module's docstrings>
For daily file and directory management tasks, the higher level interface that is easier to use:
>>> import shutil >>> shutil.copyfile('data.db', 'archive.db') >>> shutil.move('/build/executables', 'installdir')
shutil
module provides a
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The
module processes sys.argv using the conventions of the Unix getopt() function. More powerful and flexible command line processing is provided by the optparse module.
getopt
sys.exit() .
When only simple capabilities are needed, string methods are preferred because they are easier to read and debug:
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10.6. Mathematics
The math module gives access to the underlying C library functions for floating point math:
>>> import math >>> math.cos(math.pi / 4.0) 0.70710678118654757 >>> math.log(1024, 2) 10.0
The
random
>>> import random >>> random.choice(['apple', 'pear', 'banana']) 'apple' >>> random.sample(xrange(100), 10) # sampling without replacement [30, 83, 16, 4, 8, 81, 41, 50, 18, 33] >>> random.random() # random float 0.17970987693706186 >>> random.randrange(6) # random integer chosen from range(6) 4
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For example, it may be tempting to use the tuple packing and unpacking feature instead of the traditional approach to swapping arguments. The timeit module quickly demonstrates a modest performance advantage:
>>> from timeit import Timer >>> Timer('t=a; a=b; b=t', 'a=1; b=2').timeit() 0.57535828626024577 >>> Timer('a,b = b,a', 'a=1; b=2').timeit() 0.54962537085770791
In contrast to timeit s ne level of granularity, the profile and pstats modules provide tools for identifying time critical sections in larger blocks of code.
The unittest module is not as effortless as the doctest module, but it allows a more comprehensive set of tests to be maintained in a separate file:
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import unittest class TestStatisticalFunctions(unittest.TestCase): def test_average(self): self.assertEqual(average([20, 30, 70]), 40.0) self.assertEqual(round(average([1, 5, 7]), 1), 4.3) self.assertRaises(ZeroDivisionError, average, []) self.assertRaises(TypeError, average, 20, 30, 70) unittest.main() # Calling from the command line invokes all tests
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The pprint module oers more sophisticated control over printing both built-in and user dened objects in a way that is readable by the interpreter. When the result is longer than one line, the pretty printer adds line breaks and indentation to more clearly reveal data structure:
>>> import pprint >>> t = [[[['black', 'cyan'], 'white', ['green', 'red']], [['magenta', ... 'yellow'], 'blue']]] ... >>> pprint.pprint(t, width=30) [[[['black', 'cyan'], 'white', ['green', 'red']], [['magenta', 'yellow'], 'blue']]]
The
textwrap
>>> import textwrap >>> doc = """The wrap() method is just like fill() except that it returns ... a list of strings instead of one big string with newlines to separate ... the wrapped lines.""" ... >>> print textwrap.fill(doc, width=40) The wrap() method is just like fill() except that it returns a list of strings instead of one big string with newlines to separate the wrapped lines.
The locale module accesses a database of culture specic data formats. The grouping attribute of locales format function provides a direct way of
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11.2. Templating
The string module includes a versatile Template class with a simplified syntax suitable for editing by end-users. This allows users to customize their applications without having to alter the application. The format uses placeholder names formed by $ with valid Python identifiers (alphanumeric characters and underscores). Surrounding the placeholder with braces allows it to be followed by more alphanumeric letters with no intervening spaces. Writing $$ creates a single escaped $ :
>>> from string import Template >>> t = Template('${village}folk send $$10 to $cause.') >>> t.substitute(village='Nottingham', cause='the ditch fund') 'Nottinghamfolk send $10 to the ditch fund.'
The substitute() method raises a KeyError when a placeholder is not supplied in a dictionary or a keyword argument. For mail-merge style applications, user supplied data may be incomplete and the safe_substitute() method may be more appropriate it will leave placeholders unchanged if data is missing:
>>> t = Template('Return the $item to $owner.') >>> d = dict(item='unladen swallow') >>> t.substitute(d) Traceback (most recent call last): . . . KeyError: 'owner' >>> t.safe_substitute(d) 'Return the unladen swallow to $owner.'
Template subclasses can specify a custom delimiter. For example, a batch renaming utility for a photo browser may elect to use percent signs for placeholders such as the current date, image sequence number, or file format:
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>>> import time, os.path >>> photofiles = ['img_1074.jpg', 'img_1076.jpg', 'img_1077.jpg'] >>> class BatchRename(Template): ... delimiter = '%' >>> fmt = raw_input('Enter rename style (%d-date %n-seqnum %f-format): Enter rename style (%d-date %n-seqnum %f-format): Ashley_%n%f >>> t = BatchRename(fmt) >>> date = time.strftime('%d%b%y') >>> for i, filename in enumerate(photofiles): ... base, ext = os.path.splitext(filename) ... newname = t.substitute(d=date, n=i, f=ext) ... print '{0} --> {1}'.format(filename, newname) img_1074.jpg --> Ashley_0.jpg img_1076.jpg --> Ashley_1.jpg img_1077.jpg --> Ashley_2.jpg
')
Another application for templating is separating program logic from the details of multiple output formats. This makes it possible to substitute custom templates for XML files, plain text reports, and HTML web reports.
11.4. Multi-threading
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Threading is a technique for decoupling tasks which are not sequentially dependent. Threads can be used to improve the responsiveness of applications that accept user input while other tasks run in the background. A related use case is running I/O in parallel with computations in another thread. The following code shows how the high level threading module can run tasks in background while the main program continues to run:
import threading, zipfile class AsyncZip(threading.Thread): def __init__(self, infile, outfile): threading.Thread.__init__(self) self.infile = infile self.outfile = outfile def run(self): f = zipfile.ZipFile(self.outfile, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) f.write(self.infile) f.close() print 'Finished background zip of: ', self.infile background = AsyncZip('mydata.txt', 'myarchive.zip') background.start() print 'The main program continues to run in foreground.' background.join() # Wait for the background task to finish print 'Main program waited until background was done.'
The principal challenge of multi-threaded applications is coordinating threads that share data or other resources. To that end, the threading module provides a number of synchronization primitives including locks, events, condition variables, and semaphores. While those tools are powerful, minor design errors can result in problems that are difficult to reproduce. So, the preferred approach to task coordination is to concentrate all access to a resource in a single thread and then use the Queue module to feed that thread with requests from other threads. Applications using Queue.Queue objects for inter-thread communication and coordination are easier to design, more readable, and more reliable.
11.5. Logging
The logging module offers a full featured and flexible logging system. At its simplest, log messages are sent to a file or to sys.stderr :
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import logging logging.debug('Debugging information') logging.info('Informational message') logging.warning('Warning:config file %s not found', 'server.conf') logging.error('Error occurred') logging.critical('Critical error -- shutting down')
By default, informational and debugging messages are suppressed and the output is sent to standard error. Other output options include routing messages through email, datagrams, sockets, or to an HTTP Server. New filters can select different routing based on message priority: DEBUG , INFO , WARNING , ERROR , and CRITICAL . The logging system can be configured directly from Python or can be loaded from a user editable configuration file for customized logging without altering the application.
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>>> import weakref, gc >>> class A: ... def __init__(self, value): ... self.value = value ... def __repr__(self): ... return str(self.value) ... >>> a = A(10) # create a reference >>> d = weakref.WeakValueDictionary() >>> d['primary'] = a # does not create a reference >>> d['primary'] # fetch the object if it is still alive 10 >>> del a # remove the one reference >>> gc.collect() # run garbage collection right away 0 >>> d['primary'] # entry was automatically removed Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> d['primary'] # entry was automatically removed File "C:/python26/lib/weakref.py", line 46, in __getitem__ o = self.data[key]() KeyError: 'primary'
The collections module provides a deque() object that is like a list with faster appends and pops from the left side but slower lookups in the middle. These objects are well suited for implementing queues and breadth first tree searches:
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>>> from collections import deque >>> d = deque(["task1", "task2", "task3"]) >>> d.append("task4") >>> print "Handling", d.popleft() Handling task1 unsearched = deque([starting_node]) def breadth_first_search(unsearched): node = unsearched.popleft() for m in gen_moves(node): if is_goal(m): return m unsearched.append(m)
In addition to alternative list implementations, the library also offers other tools such as the bisect module with functions for manipulating sorted lists:
>>> import bisect >>> scores = [(100, 'perl'), (200, 'tcl'), (400, 'lua'), (500, 'python')] >>> bisect.insort(scores, (300, 'ruby')) >>> scores [(100, 'perl'), (200, 'tcl'), (300, 'ruby'), (400, 'lua'), (500, 'python')]
The heapq module provides functions for implementing heaps based on regular lists. The lowest valued entry is always kept at position zero. This is useful for applications which repeatedly access the smallest element but do not want to run a full list sort:
>>> from heapq import heapify, heappop, heappush >>> data = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 0] >>> heapify(data) # rearrange the list into heap order >>> heappush(data, -5) # add a new entry >>> [heappop(data) for i in range(3)] # fetch the three smallest entries [-5, 0, 1]
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done by hand. For example, calculating a 5% tax on a 70 cent phone charge gives different results in decimal floating point and binary floating point. The difference becomes significant if the results are rounded to the nearest cent:
>>> from decimal import * >>> Decimal('0.70') * Decimal('1.05') Decimal('0.7350') >>> .70 * 1.05 0.73499999999999999
The Decimal result keeps a trailing zero, automatically inferring four place significance from multiplicands with two place significance. Decimal reproduces mathematics as done by hand and avoids issues that can arise when binary floating point cannot exactly represent decimal quantities. Exact representation enables the Decimal class to perform modulo calculations and equality tests that are unsuitable for binary floating point:
>>> Decimal('1.00') % Decimal('.10') Decimal('0.00') >>> 1.00 % 0.10 0.09999999999999995 >>> sum([Decimal('0.1')]*10) == Decimal('1.0') True >>> sum([0.1]*10) == 1.0 False
The
decimal
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For Python-related questions and problem reports, you can post to the newsgroup comp.lang.python, or send them to the mailing list at [email protected]. The newsgroup and mailing list are gatewayed, so messages posted to one will automatically be forwarded to the other. There are around 120 postings a day (with peaks up to several hundred), asking (and answering) questions, suggesting new features, and announcing new modules. Before posting, be sure to check the list of Frequently Asked Questions (also called the FAQ), or look for it in the Misc/ directory of the Python source distribution. Mailing list archives are available at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/. The FAQ answers many of the questions that come up again and again, and may already contain the solution for your problem.
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or
"string": function-name
For example:
# I prefer vi-style editing: set editing-mode vi # Edit using a single line: set horizontal-scroll-mode On # Rebind some keys: Meta-h: backward-kill-word "\C-u": universal-argument "\C-x\C-r": re-read-init-file
Note that the default binding for Tab in Python is to insert a Tab character instead of Readlines default lename completion function. If you insist, you can override this by putting
Tab: complete
in your ~/.inputrc . (Of course, this makes it harder to type indented continuation lines if youre accustomed to using Tab for that purpose.) Automatic completion of variable and module names is optionally available. To enable it in the interpreters interactive mode, add the following to your startup le: [1]
import rlcompleter, readline readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')
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This binds the Tab key to the completion function, so hitting the Tab key twice suggests completions; it looks at Python statement names, the current local variables, and the available module names. For dotted expressions such as string.a , it will evaluate the expression up to the final '.' and then suggest completions from the attributes of the resulting object. Note that this may execute application-defined code if an object with a __getattr__() method is part of the expression. A more capable startup file might look like this example. Note that this deletes the names it creates once they are no longer needed; this is done since the startup file is executed in the same namespace as the interactive commands, and removing the names avoids creating side effects in the interactive environment. You may find it convenient to keep some of the imported modules, such as os , which turn out to be needed in most sessions with the interpreter.
# # # # # # # # # Add auto-completion and a stored history file of commands to your Python interactive interpreter. Requires Python 2.0+, readline. Autocomplete is bound to the Esc key by default (you can change it - see readline docs). Store the file in ~/.pystartup, and set an environment variable to point to it: "export PYTHONSTARTUP=/home/user/.pystartup" in bash. Note that PYTHONSTARTUP does *not* expand "~", so you have to put in the full path to your home directory. atexit os readline rlcompleter
historyPath = os.path.expanduser("~/.pyhistory") def save_history(historyPath=historyPath): import readline readline.write_history_file(historyPath) if os.path.exists(historyPath): readline.read_history_file(historyPath) atexit.register(save_history) del os, atexit, readline, rlcompleter, save_history, historyPath
http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/tutorial/interac...
interpreters symbol table. A command to check (or even suggest) matching parentheses, quotes, etc., would also be useful. One alternative enhanced interactive interpreter that has been around for quite some time is IPython, which features tab completion, object exploration and advanced history management. It can also be thoroughly customized and embedded into other applications. Another similar enhanced interactive environment is bpython. Footnotes [1] Python will execute the contents of a file identified by the PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable when you start an interactive interpreter.
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has value 1/10 + 2/100 + 5/1000, and in the same way the binary fraction
0.001
has value 0/2 + 0/4 + 1/8. These two fractions have identical values, the only real difference being that the first is written in base 10 fractional notation, and the second in base 2. Unfortunately, most decimal fractions cannot be represented exactly as binary fractions. A consequence is that, in general, the decimal floating-point numbers you enter are only approximated by the binary floating-point numbers actually stored in the machine. The problem is easier to understand at first in base 10. Consider the fraction 1/3. You can approximate that as a base 10 fraction:
0.3
or, better,
0.33
or, better,
0.333
and so on. No matter how many digits youre willing to write down, the result will never be exactly 1/3, but will be an increasingly better approximation of 1/3. In the same way, no matter how many base 2 digits youre willing to use, the decimal value 0.1 cannot be represented exactly as a base 2 fraction. In base 2, 1/10 is the infinitely repeating fraction
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0.0001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011...
Stop at any finite number of bits, and you get an approximation. This is why you see things like:
>>> 0.1 0.10000000000000001
On most machines today, that is what youll see if you enter 0.1 at a Python prompt. You may not, though, because the number of bits used by the hardware to store oating-point values can vary across machines, and Python only prints a decimal approximation to the true decimal value of the binary approximation stored by the machine. On most machines, if Python were to print the true decimal value of the binary approximation stored for 0.1, it would have to display
>>> 0.1 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625
instead! The Python prompt uses the built-in repr() function to obtain a string version of everything it displays. For floats, repr(float) rounds the true decimal value to 17 significant digits, giving
0.10000000000000001
produces 17 signicant digits because it turns out thats enough (on most machines) so that eval(repr(x)) == x exactly for all finite floats x, but rounding to 16 digits is not enough to make that true.
repr(float)
Note that this is in the very nature of binary oating-point: this is not a bug in Python, and it is not a bug in your code either. Youll see the same kind of thing in all languages that support your hardwares oating-point arithmetic (although some languages may not display the difference by default, or in all output modes). Pythons built-in str() function produces only 12 signicant digits, and you may wish to use that instead. Its unusual for eval(str(x)) to reproduce x, but the output may be more pleasant to look at:
>>> print str(0.1) 0.1
Its important to realize that this is, in a real sense, an illusion: the value in the
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machine is not exactly 1/10, youre simply rounding the display of the true machine value. Other surprises follow from this one. For example, after seeing
>>> 0.1 0.10000000000000001
you may be tempted to use the round() function to chop it back to the single digit you expect. But that makes no difference:
>>> round(0.1, 1) 0.10000000000000001
The problem is that the binary oating-point value stored for 0.1 was already the best possible binary approximation to 1/10, so trying to round it again cant make it better: it was already as good as it gets. Another consequence is that since 0.1 is not exactly 1/10, summing ten values of 0.1 may not yield exactly 1.0, either:
>>> sum = 0.0 >>> for i in range(10): ... sum += 0.1 ... >>> sum 0.99999999999999989
Binary oating-point arithmetic holds many surprises like this. The problem with 0.1 is explained in precise detail below, in the Representation Error section. See The Perils of Floating Point for a more complete account of other common surprises. As that says near the end, there are no easy answers. Still, dont be unduly wary of oating-point! The errors in Python oat operations are inherited from the oating-point hardware, and on most machines are on the order of no more than 1 part in 2**53 per operation. Thats more than adequate for most tasks, but you do need to keep in mind that its not decimal arithmetic, and that every oat operation can suer a new rounding error. While pathological cases do exist, for most casual use arithmetic youll see the result you expect in the end if you display of your final results to the number of decimal digits usually suffices, and for finer control see the str.format() speciers in Format String Syntax. of oating-point simply round the you expect. str() methods format
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Why is that? 1/10 is not exactly representable as a binary fraction. Almost all machines today (November 2000) use IEEE-754 oating point arithmetic, and almost all platforms map Python oats to IEEE-754 double precision. 754 doubles contain 53 bits of precision, so on input the computer strives to convert 0.1 to the closest fraction it can of the form J/2**N where J is an integer containing exactly 53 bits. Rewriting
1 / 10 ~= J / (2**N)
as
J ~= 2**N / 10
>= 2**52
but
< 2**53 ),
That is, 56 is the only value for N that leaves J with exactly 53 bits. The best possible value for J is then that quotient rounded:
>>> q, r = divmod(2**56, 10) >>> r 6L
Since the remainder is more than half of 10, the best approximation is
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Therefore the best possible approximation to 1/10 in 754 double precision is that over 2**56, or
7205759403792794 / 72057594037927936
Note that since we rounded up, this is actually a little bit larger than 1/10; if we had not rounded up, the quotient would have been a little bit smaller than 1/10. But in no case can it be exactly 1/10! So the computer never sees 1/10: what it sees is the exact fraction given above, the best 754 double approximation it can get:
>>> .1 * 2**56 7205759403792794.0
If we multiply that fraction by 10**30, we can see the (truncated) value of its 30 most significant decimal digits:
>>> 7205759403792794 * 10**30 / 2**56 100000000000000005551115123125L
meaning that the exact number stored in the computer is approximately equal to the decimal value 0.100000000000000005551115123125. Rounding that to 17 signicant digits gives the 0.10000000000000001 that Python displays (well, will display on any 754-conforming platform that does best-possible input and output conversions in its C library yours may not!).
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