Online Summer Training Program – 2020

R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON

Task 1.2 - Basic Syntax
In Task 0 you learnt how to install Jupyter Notebook. So, now we will go through some very basic
codes snippets to get you familiar with the platform.

Follow the steps in Task 0 to execute/run the code.

Example 1:

Add new cell by clicking on + tab available in menu bar at top

Example 2:

Hope you’ve understood how to write and run a code in Jupyter Notebook.

So, moving forward, in this section you will be learning about the basic syntax of python 3.x. The
prescribed rule of writing a code is called syntax.

1. Lines/statement and Indentation

1.1 Lines/statement
In C/C++/C#, a semicolon (;) denotes the end of a statement. But in Python, a piece of text
terminated by pressing “Enter” key is considered as one statement.

Example:

Outcome:

Here print(“Hello”) and print(“Welcome”) are the 2 lines/statements.

Note: print( )is a function in python used to diplay the output. Detailed examples of the same are
given in point 5 of this section.

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 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON
1.1.1 Continuation of Statement
However, you can show the text spread over more than one line to be a single statement by
using the backslash (\) as a continuation character. Look at the following example.

Example:

Outcome:

1.1.2 Multiple Statements in Single Line

If you want to print multiple statements on single line, use semicolon

Example:

Outcome:

1.2 Indentation
 The meaning of indentation is “to start a line/ block of text few spaces away from the
margin than from the main part of the text.”
 In C, C++, statements inside curly brackets ‘{’ and ‘}’ are treated as a block.
For example:
void main()
{
Statement 1;
Statement 2;
}
From the above example, Statement 1& Statement 2, are considered as the part of the part
of the ‘main’ function. We could identify it as a part of main function because they were
enclosed in curly brackets.

 Similarly in python, uniform indentation is used to denote a block of statements.

 When a block is to be started, type the colon symbol (:) and press Enter.

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of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON
 After pressing ‘Enter’, the cursor goes to the next line and automatically leaves an
additional whitespaces (called indent).
Note: By default the indent consists of ‘4 spaces (of spacebar)’ which is equivalent to ‘1
Tab’. So if you want to give indentation you need to give ‘4 spaces’ or ‘1 Tab’.
Example:
// Code in C language # Code in python language
int a = 10; a = 10
if(a = = 10 ) if a = = 10:
{ print(“ Value of a is 10. ”)
printf(" Value of a is 10 " ); else:
} print(“ Value of a is not 10.
else ”)
{
printf(" Value of a is not 10 " );
}

Explanation:
Explanation of C code Explanation of python code
1. After ‘if’ condition is given 1. After ‘if’ condition, a semicolon (:) if given,
a ‘{’ is placed, indicating indicating the start of ‘if’ statement..
the start of ‘if’ statement.
2. Statement is written inside the ‘if’ condition.
if a = = 10:
2. Statement is written inside
print(“ Value of a is 10 ”)
the ‘if’ condition.
Here, you can see the print statement doesn’t
printf(“ Value of a is 10 ”)
start from the level of ‘if’ condition.
It has few spaces called indent.
3. To close ‘if’ condition, the indent on next
line is removed.
3. To close the ‘if’ condition a if a = = 10:
‘}’ is placed. print(“ Value of a is 10. ”)
. else:
Here, the ‘else’ condition starts from the
level of ‘if’ condition.
4. Similarly an else statement 4. Similarly, the statement is also written in
is also written. ‘else’ condition.

You can also add a block inside a block. In such cases, indentation of inner block will increase.
Example:
a =10; b = 6
if a = = 10:
print(“a is equal 10”)
if b = = 6:
print(“b is equal to 6”)

St. Vincent Pallotti College

of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON
2 Comments
2.1 Single line-comments
 A comment is a piece of text to let someone know what is being done in a block of code.
 It doesn't affect the outcome of a code.
 In a Python, the symbol ‘#’ indicates the start of a comment line. It is effective till the end
of the line in the editor.
 If # is the first character of the line, then the entire line is a comment.

Example:

Here you can see that the output is only “Hello World”. The comments are not reflected in
the output.

 We can also comment after a statement of the code

Example:

2.2 Multi-line Comments

 In Python, there is no provision to write multi-line comments, or a block comment. Each
line should have the # symbol at the start to be marked as a comment.
 A triple quoted multi-line string is also treated as a comment (if it is not a docstring of a
function or a class).

Example:

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of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON
3 Getting User’s Input
 In some codes you might need to take inputs from the user.
 This is done with the help of input( ) function in python.
 The input taken with the input( ) function is in form of a string (you will learn about strings
in future sections).

Syntax:

input( prompt )

Here, the prompt is the message that you want to display to the user. This message is to be written
between inverted quotes (“message”).

Example 1:

Here, “Enter your college name: ” is the message/prompt, which will be visible to the user once
the code is run.

Once the code is run, you’ll get a block below the cell, with your message/prompt. You need to
type your answer in that block.

Then press Enter. You will get the following output.

Here, the name of the college which you have entered is stored in the variable ‘college’.
So if you print the variable ‘college’, you’ll get the following output.

St. Vincent Pallotti College

of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON

Example 2:
Writing a code to input 2 numbers from user and perform addition on them.

Note: In the topic ’Getting user’s input’, we learnt that the input( )function always takes inputs in
form of strings. Thus we need to convert it into integer before adding. The ‘int’ written
before input( ) does this conversion for us. This is called ’typecasting’. You will learn about
this in future sections.

Run the code.

You’ll be asked to enter the value for ‘a’.

Enter the value as shown below & press ‘Enter’.

Next you’ll be asked to enter the value for ‘b’.

Enter the value as shown below & press ‘Enter’.

You will get the following output.

Now we will add the values of ‘a’ & ‘b’ and print the result.

St. Vincent Pallotti College

of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON

4 Keywords
 All computer programming languages comprise of a set of predefined words which are
called keywords.
 These are predefined words, hence cannot be used for any other purpose, than for which it
is defined.
 Some of the keywords which you might come across in this training are mentioned below.

and break class or

continue def del pass
elif else if return
for while import from
not False True in

Note: All these are case sensitive, hence while using these keywords make sure that you use
the correct casing.
 If you want to know what exactly is the use these keywords, then you can use the following
command on Jupyter Notebook.

Syntax:
help(“name_of_the_keyword”)

Example:

Output:

St. Vincent Pallotti College

of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON
5 Displaying output
Any statement can be displayed in the output with the help of print( ) function in python.
Different ways to use print( ) function is as shown below.
Example 1:
Printing a string.

Output 1:

Example 2:
Printing a value stored in a variable.

Output 2:

Here “college” is the variable.

Example 3:
Printing multiple strings and variable values using single print.

Output 3:

Example 4:
Printing multiple values separated by separators.

From Example 3, it is clear that the default separator is ‘space’.

Thus to replace the space with a separator we use the parameter ‘sep’

Output 4:

In this example, we have used comma (,) as the separator. You can use any symbol, alphabet,
numbers as a separator

St. Vincent Pallotti College

of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur
 Online Summer Training Program – 2020
R - Labs BASICS OF PYTHON
Example 5:
Using multiple print statements.

Output 5:

Here you can see that all the elements of same print statement are displayed on the same line.

Example 6:
Display values in separate print functions on single line.

In the previous example you saw that, the elements of separate print functions were displayed
of separate lines.
This is because the output of print function ends with a newline (equivalent to Enter).
Thus to do this we use the parameter ‘end’.

Output 6:

… Happy Learning ! ...

Video link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KeVPFuhV53KooSU84Cw7Ncw4dQmp6dRO

References:

1. https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_ref_keywords.asp
2. https://www.tutorialsteacher.com/python/python-basic-syntax
3. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/statement-indentation-and-comment-in-python/

St. Vincent Pallotti College

of Engineering & Technology, Nagpur