Python (programming language)

Python (programming language)

Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy

emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation.[33]

Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming

paradigms, including structured (particularly procedural), object-oriented and functional

programming. It is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its

comprehensive standard library.[34][35]

Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s as a successor to the

ABC programming language and first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0.[36]

Python 2.0 was released in 2000. Python 3.0, released in 2008, was a major revision not

completely backward-compatible with earlier versions. Python 2.7.18, released in 2020,

was the last release of Python 2.[37]

Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages, and has

gained widespread use in the machine learning community.[38][39][40][41]

 Python (programming language)

Python was invented in the late 1980s[42] by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde

& Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands as a successor to the ABC programming

language, which was inspired by SETL,[43] capable of exception handling and

interfacing with the Amoeba operating system.[12] Its implementation began in

December 1989.[44] Van Rossum shouldered sole responsibility for the project, as the

lead developer, until 12 July 2018, when he announced his "permanent vacation" from

his responsibilities as Python's "benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL), a title the Python

community bestowed upon him to reflect his long-term commitment as the project's

chief decision-maker[45] (he's since come out of retirement and is self-titled

"BDFL-emeritus"). In January 2019, active Python core developers elected a

five-member Steering Council to lead the project.[46][47]

Python 2.0 was released on 16 October 2000, with many major new features such as

list comprehensions, cycle-detecting garbage collection, reference counting, and

Unicode support.[48] Python 3.0, released on 3 December 2008, with many of its major

features backported to Python 2.6.x[49] and 2.7.x. Releases of Python 3 include the

2to3 utility, which automates the translation of Python 2 code to Python 3.[50]

Python 2.7's end-of-life was initially set for 2015, then postponed to 2020 out of

concern that a large body of existing code could not easily be forward-ported to

Python 3.[51][52] No further security patches or other improvements will be released

for it.[53][54] Currently only 3.8 and later are supported (2023 security issues were
 Python (programming language)

fixed in e.g. 3.7.17, the final 3.7.x release[55]). While Python 2.7 and older is officially

unsupported, a different unofficial Python implementation, PyPy, continues to support

Python 2, i.e. "2.7.18+" (plus 3.9 and 3.10), with the plus meaning (at least some)

"backported security updates".[56]

In 2021 (and again twice in 2022), security updates were expedited, since all Python

versions were insecure (including 2.7[57]) because of security issues leading to possible

remote code execution[58] and web-cache poisoning.[59] In 2022, Python 3.10.4 and

3.9.12 were expedited[60] and 3.8.13, because of many security issues.[61] When

Python 3.9.13 was released in May 2022, it was announced that the 3.9 series (joining

the older series 3.8 and 3.7) would only receive security fixes in the future.[62] On 7

September 2022, four new releases were made due to a potential denial-of-service

attack: 3.10.7, 3.9.14, 3.8.14, and 3.7.14.[63][64]

As of October 2023,[update] Python 3.12 is the stable release, and 3.12 and 3.11 are

the only versions with active (as opposed to just security) support. Notable changes in

3.11 from 3.10 include increased program execution speed and improved error

reporting.[65]

Every Python release since 3.5 has added some syntax to the language. 3.10 added the

| union type operator [66] and the match and case keywords (for structural pattern

matching statements). 3.11 expanded exception handling functionality. Python 3.12

 Python (programming language)

added the new keyword type.

Python 3.11 claims to be between 10 and 60% faster than Python 3.10, and Python 3.12

adds another 5% on top of that. It also has improved error messages, and many other

changes.

Since 27 June 2023[update], Python 3.8 is the oldest supported version of Python (albeit

in the 'security support' phase), due to Python 3.7 reaching end-of-life.[67]

Python 3.13 introduced an incremental garbage collector (producing shorter pauses for

collection in programs with a lot of objects); an experimental JIT compiler;[68] and

removals from the C API. Some standard library modules and many deprecated classes,

functions and methods, will be removed in Python 3.15 and or 3.16.[69][70] Starting

with 3.13, it and later versions have 2 years of full support (up from one and a half);

followed by 3 years of security support (for same total support as before).

Python is a multi-paradigm programming language. Object-oriented programming and

structured programming are fully supported, and many of their features support

functional programming and aspect-oriented programming (including

metaprogramming[71] and metaobjects).[72] Many other paradigms are supported via

extensions, including design by contract[73][74] and logic programming.[75]

 Python (programming language)

Python uses dynamic typing and a combination of reference counting and a

cycle-detecting garbage collector for memory management.[76] It uses dynamic name

resolution (late binding), which binds method and variable names during program

execution.

Its design offers some support for functional programming in the Lisp tradition. It has

filter,mapandreduce functions; list comprehensions, dictionaries, sets, and generator

expressions.[77] The standard library has two modules (itertools and functools) that

implement functional tools borrowed from Haskell and Standard ML.[78]

Its core philosophy is summarized in the Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes

aphorisms such as:[79]

However, Python features regularly violate these principles and received criticism for

adding unnecessary language bloat.[80][81] Responses to these criticisms are that the

Zen of Python is a guideline rather than a rule.[82] The addition of some new features

had been so controversial that Guido van Rossum resigned as Benevolent Dictator for

Life following vitriol over the addition of the assignment expression operator in Python

3.8.[83][84]
 Python (programming language)

Nevertheless, rather than building all of its functionality into its core, Python was

designed to be highly extensible via modules. This compact modularity has made it

particularly popular as a means of adding programmable interfaces to existing

applications. Van Rossum's vision of a small core language with a large standard library

and easily extensible interpreter stemmed from his frustrations with ABC, which

espoused the opposite approach.[42]

Python claims to strive for a simpler, less-cluttered syntax and grammar while giving

developers a choice in their coding methodology. In contrast to Perl's "there is more

than one way to do it" motto, Python embraces a "there should be one—and preferably

only one—obvious way to do it." philosophy.[79] In practice, however, Python provides

many ways to achieve the same task. There are, for example, at least three ways to

format a string literal, with no certainty as to which one a programmer should use.[85]

Alex Martelli, a Fellow at the Python Software Foundation and Python book author,

wrote: "To describe something as 'clever' is not considered a compliment in the Python

culture."[86]

Python's developers usually strive to avoid premature optimization and reject patches

to non-critical parts of the CPython reference implementation that would offer marginal

increases in speed at the cost of clarity.[87] Execution speed can be improved by

moving speed-critical functions to extension modules written in languages such as C, or

by using a just-in-time compiler like PyPy. It is also possible to cross-compile to other

 Python (programming language)

languages, but it either doesn't provide the full speed-up that might be expected, since

Python is a very dynamic language, or a restricted subset of Python is compiled, and

possibly semantics are slightly changed.[88]

Python's developers aim for it to be fun to use. This is reflected in its name—a tribute to

the British comedy group Monty Python[89]—and in occasionally playful approaches to

tutorials and reference materials, such as the use of the terms "spam" and "eggs" (a

reference to a Monty Python sketch) in examples, instead of the often-used "foo" and

"bar".[90][91] A common neologism in the Python community is pythonic, which has a

wide range of meanings related to program style. "Pythonic" code may use Python

idioms well, be natural or show fluency in the language, or conform with Python's

minimalist philosophy and emphasis on readability. Code that is difficult to understand

or reads like a rough transcription from another programming language is called

unpythonic.[92]

Python is meant to be an easily readable language. Its formatting is visually uncluttered

and often uses English keywords where other languages use punctuation. Unlike many

other languages, it does not use curly brackets to delimit blocks, and semicolons after

statements are allowed but rarely used. It has fewer syntactic exceptions and special

cases than C or Pascal.[93]

Python uses whitespace indentation, rather than curly brackets or keywords, to delimit
 Python (programming language)

blocks. An increase in indentation comes after certain statements; a decrease in

indentation signifies the end of the current block.[94] Thus, the program's visual

structure accurately represents its semantic structure.[95] This feature is sometimes

termed the off-side rule. Some other languages use indentation this way; but in most,

indentation has no semantic meaning. The recommended indent size is four spaces.[96]

Python's statements include:

The assignment statement (=) binds a name as a reference to a separate, dynamically

allocated object. Variables may subsequently be rebound at any time to any object. In

Python, a variable name is a generic reference holder without a fixed data type;

however, it always refers to some object with a type. This is called dynamic typing—in

contrast to statically-typed languages, where each variable may contain only a value of

a certain type.

Python does not support tail call optimization or first-class continuations, and, according

to Van Rossum, it never will.[99][100] However, better support for coroutine-like

functionality is provided by extending Python's generators.[101] Before 2.5, generators

were lazy iterators; data was passed unidirectionally out of the generator. From

Python 2.5 on, it is possible to pass data back into a generator function; and from

version 3.3, it can be passed through multiple stack levels.[102]

 Python (programming language)

Python's expressions include:

In Python, a distinction between expressions and statements is rigidly enforced, in

contrast to languages such as Common Lisp, Scheme, or Ruby. This leads to duplicating

some functionality. For example:

Statements cannot be a part of an expression—so list and other comprehensions or

lambda expressions, all being expressions, cannot contain statements. A particular case

is that an assignment statement such as a = 1 cannot form part of the conditional

expression of a conditional statement.

Methods on objects are functions attached to the object's class; the syntax

instance.method(argument) is, for normal methods and functions, syntactic sugar for

Class.method(instance, argument). Python methods have an explicit self parameter to

access instance data, in contrast to the implicit self (or this) in some other

object-oriented programming languages (e.g., C++, Java, Objective-C, Ruby).[111]

Python also provides methods, often called dunder methods (due to their names

beginning and ending with double-underscores), to allow user-defined classes to modify

how they are handled by native operations including length, comparison, in arithmetic

operations and type conversion.[112]

 Python (programming language)

Python uses duck typing and has typed objects but untyped variable names. Type

constraints are not checked at compile time; rather, operations on an object may fail,

signifying that it is not of a suitable type. Despite being dynamically typed, Python is

strongly typed, forbidding operations that are not well-defined (for example, adding a

number to a string) rather than silently attempting to make sense of them.

Python allows programmers to define their own types using classes, most often used for

object-oriented programming. New instances of classes are constructed by calling the

class (for example, SpamClass() or EggsClass()), and the classes are instances of the

metaclass type (itself an instance of itself), allowing metaprogramming and reflection.

Before version 3.0, Python had two kinds of classes (both using the same syntax):

old-style and new-style;[113] current Python versions only support the semantics of the

new style.

Python supports optional type annotations.[4][114] These annotations are not enforced

by the language, but may be used by external tools such as mypy to catch

errors.[115][116] Mypy also supports a Python compiler called mypyc, which leverages

type annotations for optimization.[117]

 Python (programming language)

1.33333

Python has the usual symbols for arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /), the floor division

operator // and the modulo operation % (where the remainder can be negative, e.g. 4 %

-3 == -2). It also has ** for exponentiation, e.g. 5**3 == 125 and 9**0.5 == 3.0, and a

matrix‑multiplication operator @ .[121] These operators work like in traditional math;

with the same precedence rules, the operators infix (+ and - can also be unary to

represent positive and negative numbers respectively).

The division between integers produces floating-point results. The behavior of division

has changed significantly over time:[122]

In Python terms, / is true division (or simply division), and // is floor division. / before

version 3.0 is classic division.[122]

Rounding towards negative infinity, though different from most languages, adds

consistency. For instance, it means that the equation (a + b)//b == a//b + 1 is always

true. It also means that the equation b*(a//b) + a%b == a is valid for both positive and

negative values of a. However, maintaining the validity of this equation means that

while the result of a%b is, as expected, in the half-open interval [0, b), where b is a

positive integer, it has to lie in the interval (b, 0] when b is negative.[123]

 Python (programming language)

Python provides a round function for rounding a float to the nearest integer. For

tie-breaking, Python 3 uses round to even: round(1.5) and round(2.5) both produce

2.[124] Versions before 3 used round-away-from-zero: round(0.5) is 1.0, round(-0.5) is

−1.0.[125]

Python allows Boolean expressions with multiple equality relations in a manner that is

consistent with general use in mathematics. For example, the expression a < b < c

tests whether a is less than b and b is less than c.[126] C-derived languages interpret

this expression differently: in C, the expression would first evaluate a < b, resulting in 0

or 1, and that result would then be compared with c.[127]

Python uses arbitrary-precision arithmetic for all integer operations. The Decimal

type/class in the decimal module provides decimal floating-point numbers to a

pre-defined arbitrary precision and several rounding modes.[128] The Fraction class in

the fractions module provides arbitrary precision for rational numbers.[129]

Due to Python's extensive mathematics library, and the third-party library NumPy that

further extends the native capabilities, it is frequently used as a scientific scripting

language to aid in problems such as numerical data processing and

manipulation.[130][131]
 Python (programming language)

"Hello, World!" program:

Program to calculate the factorial of a positive integer:

Python's large standard library[132] provides tools suited to many tasks and is

commonly cited as one of its greatest strengths. For Internet-facing applications, many

standard formats and protocols such as MIME and HTTP are supported. It includes

modules for creating graphical user interfaces, connecting to relational databases,

generating pseudorandom numbers, arithmetic with arbitrary-precision decimals,[128]

manipulating regular expressions, and unit testing.

Some parts of the standard library are covered by specifications—for example, the Web

Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) implementation wsgiref follows PEP 333[133]—but

most are specified by their code, internal documentation, and test suites. However,

because most of the standard library is cross-platform Python code, only a few modules

need altering or rewriting for variant implementations.

As of 17 March 2024,[update] the Python Package Index (PyPI), the official repository

for third-party Python software, contains over 523,000[134] packages with a wide range
 Python (programming language)

of functionality, including:

Most Python implementations (including CPython) include a read–eval–print loop (REPL),

permitting them to function as a command line interpreter for which users enter

statements sequentially and receive results immediately.

Python also comes with an Integrated development environment (IDE) called IDLE,

which is more beginner-oriented.

Other shells, including IDLE and IPython, add further abilities such as improved

auto-completion, session state retention, and syntax highlighting.

As well as standard desktop integrated development environments including PyCharm,

IntelliJ Idea, Visual Studio Code etc, there are web browser-based IDEs, including

SageMath, for developing science- and math-related programs; PythonAnywhere, a

browser-based IDE and hosting environment; and Canopy IDE, a commercial IDE

emphasizing scientific computing.[135]

CPython is the reference implementation of Python. It is written in C, meeting the C89

standard (Python 3.11 uses C11[136]) with several select C99 features. CPython
 Python (programming language)

includes its own C extensions, but third-party extensions are not limited to older C

versions—e.g. they can be implemented with C11 or C++.[137][138] CPython compiles

Python programs into an intermediate bytecode[139] which is then executed by its

virtual machine.[140] CPython is distributed with a large standard library written in a

mixture of C and native Python, and is available for many platforms, including Windows

(starting with Python 3.9, the Python installer deliberately fails to install on Windows 7

and 8;[141][142] Windows XP was supported until Python 3.5) and most modern

Unix-like systems, including macOS (and Apple M1 Macs, since Python 3.9.1, with

experimental installer), with unofficial support for VMS.[143] Platform portability was

one of its earliest priorities.[144] (During Python 1 and 2 development, even OS/2 and

Solaris were supported,[145] but support has since been dropped for many platforms.)

Python, since 3.7, only supports operating systems with multi-threading support.

Other just-in-time Python compilers have been developed, but are now unsupported:

There are several compilers/transpilers to high-level object languages, with either

unrestricted Python, a restricted subset of Python, or a language similar to Python as

the source language:

Specialized:
 Python (programming language)

Older projects (or not to be used with Python 3.x and latest syntax):

Performance comparison of various Python implementations on a non-numerical

(combinatorial) workload was presented at EuroSciPy '13.[173] Python's performance

compared to other programming languages is also benchmarked by The Computer

Language Benchmarks Game.[174]

Python's development is conducted largely through the Python Enhancement Proposal

(PEP) process, the primary mechanism for proposing major new features, collecting

community input on issues, and documenting Python design decisions.[175] Python

coding style is covered in PEP 8.[176] Outstanding PEPs are reviewed and commented

on by the Python community and the steering council.[175]

Enhancement of the language corresponds with the development of the CPython

reference implementation. The mailing list python-dev is the primary forum for the

language's development. Specific issues were originally discussed in the Roundup bug

tracker hosted at by the foundation.[177] In 2022, all issues and discussions were

migrated to GitHub.[178] Development originally took place on a self-hosted

source-code repository running Mercurial, until Python moved to GitHub in January

2017.[179]
 Python (programming language)

CPython's public releases come in three types, distinguished by which part of the

version number is incremented:

Many alpha, beta, and release-candidates are also released as previews and for testing

before final releases. Although there is a rough schedule for each release, they are

often delayed if the code is not ready. Python's development team monitors the state of

the code by running the large unit test suite during development.[185]

The major academic conference on Python is PyCon. There are also special Python

mentoring programs, such as PyLadies.

Python 3.12 removed wstr meaning Python extensions[186] need to be modified,[187]

and 3.10 added pattern matching to the language.[188]

Python 3.12 dropped some outdated modules, and more will be dropped in the future,

deprecated as of 3.13; already deprecated array 'u' format code will emit

DeprecationWarning since 3.13 and will be removed in Python 3.16. The 'w' format

code should be used instead. Part of ctypes is also deprecated and

http.server.CGIHTTPRequestHandler will emit a DeprecationWarning, and will be

 Python (programming language)

removed in 3.15. Using that code already has a high potential for both security and

functionality bugs. Parts of the typing module are deprecated, e.g. creating a

typing.NamedTuple class using keyword arguments to denote the fields and such (and

more) will be disallowed in Python 3.15.

Tools that can generate documentation for Python API include pydoc (available as part

of the standard library), Sphinx, Pdoc and its forks, Doxygen and Graphviz, among

others.[189]

Python's name is derived from the British comedy group Monty Python, whom Python

creator Guido van Rossum enjoyed while developing the language. Monty Python

references appear frequently in Python code and culture;[190] for example, the

metasyntactic variables often used in Python literature are spam and eggs instead of

the traditional foo and bar.[190][191] The official Python documentation also contains

various references to Monty Python routines.[192][193] Users of Python are sometimes

referred to as "Pythonistas".[194]

The prefix Py- is used to show that something is related to Python. Examples of the use

of this prefix in names of Python applications or libraries include Pygame, a binding of

SDL to Python (commonly used to create games); PyQt and PyGTK, which bind Qt and

GTK to Python respectively; and PyPy, a Python implementation originally written in

Python.
 Python (programming language)

Since 2003, Python has consistently ranked in the top ten most popular programming

languages in the TIOBE Programming Community Index where as of

December 2022[update] it was the most popular language (ahead of C, C++, and

Java).[40] It was selected as Programming Language of the Year (for "the highest rise in

ratings in a year") in 2007, 2010, 2018, and 2020 (the only language to have done so

four times as of 2020[update][195]).

Large organizations that use Python include Wikipedia, Google,[196] Yahoo!,[197]

CERN,[198] NASA,[199] Facebook,[200] Amazon, Instagram,[201] Spotify,[202] and

some smaller entities like ILM[203] and ITA.[204] The social news networking site

Reddit was written mostly in Python.[205]

Python can serve as a scripting language for web applications, e.g. via mod_wsgi for the

Apache webserver.[206] With Web Server Gateway Interface, a standard API has

evolved to facilitate these applications. Web frameworks like Django, Pylons, Pyramid,

TurboGears, web2py, Tornado, Flask, Bottle, and Zope support developers in the design

and maintenance of complex applications. Pyjs and IronPython can be used to develop

the client-side of Ajax-based applications. SQLAlchemy can be used as a data mapper

to a relational database. Twisted is a framework to program communications between

computers, and is used (for example) by Dropbox.

 Python (programming language)

Libraries such as NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib allow the effective use of Python in

scientific computing,[207][208] with specialized libraries such as Biopython and Astropy

providing domain-specific functionality. SageMath is a computer algebra system with a

notebook interface programmable in Python: its library covers many aspects of

mathematics, including algebra, combinatorics, numerical mathematics, number

theory, and calculus.[209] OpenCV has Python bindings with a rich set of features for

computer vision and image processing.[210]

Python is commonly used in artificial intelligence projects and machine learning

projects with the help of libraries like TensorFlow, Keras, Pytorch, scikit-learn and the

Logic language ProbLog.[211][212][213][214][215] As a scripting language with a

modular architecture, simple syntax, and rich text processing tools, Python is often

used for natural language processing.[216]

The combination of Python and Prolog has proved to be particularly useful for AI

applications, with Prolog providing knowledge representation and reasoning capablities.

The Janus system, in particular, exploits the similarites between these two languages,

in part because of their use of dynamic typing, and the simple recursive nature of their

data structures. Typical applications of this combination include natural language

processing, visual query

answering, geospatial reasoning, and handling of semantic web data.[217][218]

The Natlog system, implemented in Python, uses Definite Clause Grammars (DCGs) as
 Python (programming language)

prompt generators for text-to-text generators like GPT3 and text-to-image generators

like DALL-E or Stable Diffusion.[219]

Python can also be used for graphical user interface (GUI) by using libraries like

Tkinter.[220][221]

Python has been successfully embedded in many software products as a scripting

language, including in finite element method software such as Abaqus, 3D parametric

modelers like FreeCAD, 3D animation packages such as 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D,

Lightwave, Houdini, Maya, modo, MotionBuilder, Softimage, the visual effects

compositor Nuke, 2D imaging programs like GIMP,[222] Inkscape, Scribus and Paint

Shop Pro,[223] and musical notation programs like scorewriter and capella. GNU

Debugger uses Python as a pretty printer to show complex structures such as C++

containers. Esri promotes Python as the best choice for writing scripts in ArcGIS.[224] It

has also been used in several video games,[225][226] and has been adopted as first of

the three available programming languages in Google App Engine, the other two being

Java and Go.[227]

Many operating systems include Python as a standard component. It ships with most

Linux distributions,[228] AmigaOS 4 (using Python 2.7), FreeBSD (as a package),

NetBSD, and OpenBSD (as a package) and can be used from the command line

(terminal). Many Linux distributions use installers written in Python: Ubuntu uses the
 Python (programming language)

Ubiquity installer, while Red Hat Linux and Fedora Linux use the Anaconda installer.

Gentoo Linux uses Python in its package management system, Portage.

Python is used extensively in the information security industry, including in exploit

development.[229][230]

Most of the Sugar software for the One Laptop per Child XO, developed at Sugar Labs

as of 2008[update], is written in Python.[231] The Raspberry Pi single-board computer

project has adopted Python as its main user-programming language.

LibreOffice includes Python and intends to replace Java with Python. Its Python Scripting

Provider is a core feature[232] since Version 4.0 from 7 February 2013.

Python's design and philosophy have influenced many other programming languages:

Python's development practices have also been emulated by other languages. For

example, the practice of requiring a document describing the rationale for, and issues

surrounding, a change to the language (in Python, a PEP) is also used in Tcl,[245]

Erlang,[246] and Swift.[247]

Python (programming language)