[1004] Some insights on Python

ref: The Python Tutorial

• 1. Whetting Your Appetite
• 2. Using the Python Interpreter
• 3. An Informal Introduction to Python
• 4. More Control Flow Tools
• 5. Data Structures
• 6. Modules
• 7. Input and Output
• 8. Errors and Exceptions
• 9. Classes
• 10. Brief Tour of the Standard Library
• 11. Brief Tour of the Standard Library — Part II
• 12. Virtual Environments and Packages
• 13. What Now?
• 14. Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution
• 15. Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations
• 16. Appendix

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3.1. Using Python as a Calculator

3.1.1. Numbers

In interactive mode, the last printed expression is assigned to the variable _. This means that when you are using Python as a desk calculator, it is somewhat easier to continue calculations, for example:

>>> tax = 12.5 / 100
>>> price = 100.50
>>> price * tax
12.5625
>>> price + _
113.0625
>>> round(_, 2)
113.06

3.1.2. Text

If you don’t want characters prefaced by \ to be interpreted as special characters, you can use raw strings by adding an r before the first quote:

>>> print('C:\some\name')  # here \n means newline!
C:\some
ame
>>> print(r'C:\some\name')  # note the r before the quote
C:\some\name

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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 files for easier maintenance. You may also want to use a handy function that you’ve written in several programs without copying its definition into each program.

To support this, Python has a way to put definitions in a file and use them in a script or in an interactive instance of the interpreter. Such a file is called a module; definitions from a module can be imported into other modules or into the main module (the collection of variables that you have access to in a script executed at the top level and in calculator mode).

A module is a file containing Python definitions and statements. The file name is the module name with the suffix .py appended. Within a module, the module’s name (as a string) is available as the value of the global variable __name__. For instance, use your favorite text editor to create a file called fibo.py in the current directory with the following contents:

# Fibonacci numbers module
 
def fib(n):    # write Fibonacci series up to n
    a, b = 0, 1
    while a < n:
        print(a, end=' ')
        a, b = b, a+b
    print()
 
def fib2(n):   # return Fibonacci series up to n
    result = []
    a, b = 0, 1
    while a < n:
        result.append(a)
        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 add the names of the functions defined in fibo directly to the current namespace (see Python Scopes and Namespaces for more details); it only adds the module name fibo there. Using the module name you can access the functions:

>>> fibo.fib(1000)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987
>>> fibo.fib2(100)
[0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]
>>> fibo.__name__
'fibo'

If you intend to use a function often you can assign it to a local name:

>>> fib = fibo.fib
>>> fib(500)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377

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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)  
['__breakpointhook__', '__displayhook__', '__doc__', '__excepthook__',
 '__interactivehook__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__',
 '__stderr__', '__stdin__', '__stdout__', '__unraisablehook__',
 '_clear_type_cache', '_current_frames', '_debugmallocstats', '_framework',
 '_getframe', '_git', '_home', '_xoptions', 'abiflags', 'addaudithook',
 'api_version', 'argv', 'audit', 'base_exec_prefix', 'base_prefix',
 'breakpointhook', 'builtin_module_names', 'byteorder', 'call_tracing',
 'callstats', 'copyright', 'displayhook', 'dont_write_bytecode', 'exc_info',
 'excepthook', 'exec_prefix', 'executable', 'exit', 'flags', 'float_info',
 'float_repr_style', 'get_asyncgen_hooks', 'get_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth',
 'getallocatedblocks', 'getdefaultencoding', 'getdlopenflags',
 'getfilesystemencodeerrors', 'getfilesystemencoding', 'getprofile',
 'getrecursionlimit', 'getrefcount', 'getsizeof', 'getswitchinterval',
 'gettrace', 'hash_info', 'hexversion', 'implementation', 'int_info',
 'intern', 'is_finalizing', 'last_traceback', 'last_type', 'last_value',
 'maxsize', 'maxunicode', 'meta_path', 'modules', 'path', 'path_hooks',
 'path_importer_cache', 'platform', 'prefix', 'ps1', 'ps2', 'pycache_prefix',
 'set_asyncgen_hooks', 'set_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth', 'setdlopenflags',
 'setprofile', 'setrecursionlimit', 'setswitchinterval', 'settrace', 'stderr',
 'stdin', 'stdout', 'thread_info', 'unraisablehook', 'version', 'version_info',
 'warnoptions']

Without arguments, dir() lists the names you have defined currently:

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> import fibo
>>> fib = fibo.fib
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__name__', 'a', 'fib', 'fibo', 'sys']

Note that it lists all types of names: variables, modules, functions, etc.

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