Scribd
Upload
149 views

Pep 8

The document discusses Python style guidelines for whitespace, naming conventions, and expressions/statements based on PEP 8. It recommends using 4 spaces for indentation, 79 character line lengths, and underscores for variable and function names. Functions and classes should be separated by 2 blank lines in a file. Imports should be at the top of files with absolute module names and in sections by type.

Uploaded by

marlon
Copyright
© Public Domain
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
149 views

Pep 8

The document discusses Python style guidelines for whitespace, naming conventions, and expressions/statements based on PEP 8. It recommends using 4 spaces for indentation, 79 character line lengths, and underscores for variable and function names. Functions and classes should be separated by 2 blank lines in a file. Imports should be at the top of files with absolute module names and in sections by type.

Uploaded by

marlon
Copyright
© Public Domain
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Whitespace: In Python, whitespace is syntactically significant.

Python programmers
are especially sensitive to the effects of whitespace on code clarity.

• Use spaces instead of tabs for indentation.

• Use four spaces for each level of syntactically significant indenting.

• Lines should be 79 characters in length or less.

• Continuations of long expressions onto additional lines should be indented by


four extra spaces from their normal indentation level.

• In a file, functions and classes should be separated by two blank lines.

• In a class, methods should be separated by one blank line.

• Don’t put spaces around list indexes, function calls, or keyword argument
assignments.

• Put one—and only one—space before and after variable assignments.

Naming: PEP 8 suggests unique styles of naming for different parts in the language.
This makes it easy to distinguish which type corresponds to each name when reading
code.

• Functions, variables, and attributes should be in lowercase_underscore format.

• Protected instance attributes should be in _leading_underscore format.

• Private instance attributes should be in __double_leading_underscore format.

• Classes and exceptions should be in CapitalizedWord format.

• Module-level constants should be in ALL_CAPS format.

• Instance methods in classes should use self as the name of the first parameter
(which refers to the object).

• Class methods should use cls as the name of the first parameter (which refers to
the class).

Expressions and Statements: The Zen of Python states: “There should be one—and
preferably only one—obvious way to do it.” PEP 8 attempts to codify this style in
its guidance for expressions and statements.

• Use inline negation (if a is not b) instead of negation of positive expressions


(if not a is b).

• Don’t check for empty values (like [] or '') by checking the length (if
len(somelist) == 0). Use if not somelist and assume empty values implicitly
evaluate to False.

• The same thing goes for non-empty values (like [1] or 'hi'). The statement if
somelist is implicitly True for non-empty values.

• Avoid single-line if statements, for and while loops, and except compound
statements. Spread these over multiple lines for clarity.

• Always put import statements at the top of a file.


• Always use absolute names for modules when importing them, not names relative to
the current module’s own path. For example, to import the foo module from the bar
package, you should do from bar import foo, not just import foo.

• If you must do relative imports, use the explicit syntax from . import foo.

• Imports should be in sections in the following order: standard library modules,


third-party modules, your own modules. Each subsection should have imports in
alphabetical order.

You might also like