.

Classes
Compared with other programming languages, Python’s class mechanism adds
classes with a minimum of new syntax and semantics. It is a mixture of the class
mechanisms found in C++ and Modula-3. Python classes provide all the standard
features of Object Oriented Programming: 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 arbitrary amounts and kinds of data. As is true for modules,
classes partake of the dynamic nature of Python: they are created at runtime, and
can be modified further after creation.

In C++ terminology, normally class members (including the data members)

are public (except see below Private Variables and Class-local References), and all
member functions are virtual. As in Modula-3, there are no shorthands for referencing
the object’s members from its methods: the method function is declared with an
explicit first 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 redefined 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.)

9.1. A Word About Names and

Objects
Objects have individuality, and multiple names (in multiple scopes) can be bound to
the same object. This is known as aliasing in other languages. This is usually not
appreciated on a first glance at Python, and can be safely ignored when dealing with
immutable basic types (numbers, strings, tuples). However, aliasing has a possibly
surprising effect on the semantics of Python code involving mutable objects such as
lists, dictionaries, and most other types. This is usually used to the benefit of the
program, since aliases behave like pointers in some respects. For example, passing
an object is cheap since only a pointer is passed by the implementation; and if a
function modifies an object passed as an argument, the caller will see the change —
this eliminates the need for two different argument passing mechanisms as in Pascal.
 9.2. Python Scopes and Namespaces
Before introducing classes, I first have to tell you something about Python’s scope
rules. Class definitions play some neat tricks with namespaces, and you need to
know how scopes and namespaces work to fully understand what’s going on.
Incidentally, knowledge about this subject is useful for any advanced Python
programmer.

Let’s begin with some definitions.

A namespace is a mapping from names to objects. Most namespaces are currently

implemented as Python dictionaries, but that’s normally not noticeable in any way
(except for performance), and it may change in the future. Examples of namespaces
are: the set of built-in names (containing functions such as abs(), and built-in
exception names); the global names in a module; and the local names in a function
invocation. In a sense the set of attributes of an object also form a namespace. The
important thing to know about namespaces is that there is absolutely no relation
between names in different namespaces; for instance, two different modules may
both define a function maximize without confusion — users of the modules must
prefix it with the module name.

By the way, I use the word attribute for any name following a dot — for example, in
the expression z.real, real is an attribute of the object z. Strictly speaking,
references to names in modules are attribute references: in the
expression modname.funcname, modname is a module object andfuncname is an
attribute of it. In this case there happens to be a straightforward mapping between
the module’s attributes and the global names defined in the module: they share the
same namespace! [1]

Attributes may be read-only or writable. In the latter case, assignment to attributes is

possible. Module attributes are writable: you can write modname.the_answer = 42.
Writable attributes may also be deleted with the del statement. For
example, del modname.the_answer will remove the attribute the_answer from
the object named by modname.

Namespaces are created at different moments and have different lifetimes. The
namespace containing the built-in names is created when the Python interpreter
starts up, and is never deleted. The global namespace for a module is created when
the module definition is read in; normally, module 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 unqualified reference to a name
attempts to find 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
module’s 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 module’s 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 module’s namespace. Class definitions place yet another namespace in
the local scope.

It is important to realize that scopes are determined textually: the global scope of a
function defined in a module is that module’s 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 language definition is evolving towards
static name resolution, at “compile” time, so don’t 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 effect – 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.)

9.3. A First Look at Classes

Classes introduce a little bit of new syntax, three new object types, and some new
semantics.

9.3.1. Class Definition Syntax

The simplest form of class definition looks like this:

class ClassName:
<statement-1>
.
.
.
<statement-N>

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 definition will usually be function definitions,
but other statements are allowed, and sometimes useful — we’ll come back to this
later. The function definitions 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 definition 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 definitions bind the name of the new 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; we’ll learn more about class objects in the next section. The original local
scope (the one in effect just before the class definition was entered) is reinstated,
and the class object is bound here to the class name given in the class definition
header (ClassName in the example).

9.3.2. Class Objects

Class objects support two kinds of operations: attribute references and instantiation.

Attribute references use the standard syntax used for all attribute references in
Python: obj.name. Valid attribute names are all the names that were in the class’s
namespace when the class object was created. So, if the class definition looked like
this:

class MyClass:
"""A simple example class"""
i = 12345
def f(self):
return 'hello world'

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 specific initial state.
Therefore a class may define a special method named __init__(), like this:

def __init__(self):
self.data = []

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)

9.3.3. Instance Objects

Now what can we do with instance objects? The only operations understood by
instance objects are attribute references. There are two kinds of valid attribute
names, data attributes and methods.

data attributes correspond to “instance variables” in Smalltalk, and to “data members”

in C++. Data attributes need not be declared; like local variables, they spring into
existence when they are first assigned to. For example, if x is the instance
of MyClass created above, the following piece of code will print the value 16, without
leaving a trace:

x.counter = 1
while x.counter < 10:
x.counter = x.counter * 2
print x.counter
del x.counter

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,
we’ll use the term method 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, sinceMyClass.i is not. But x.f is not the same thing
as MyClass.f — it is a method object, not a function object.

9.3.4. Method Objects

Usually, a method is called right after it is bound:

x.f()
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()

will continue to print hello world until the end of time.

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() specified 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 isn’t 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 method’s object before the first
argument.

If you still don’t understand how methods work, a look at the implementation can
perhaps clarify matters. When an instance attribute is referenced that isn’t 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 (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.

9.3.5. Class and Instance Variables

Generally speaking, instance variables are for data unique to each instance and
class variables are for attributes and methods shared by all instances of the class:

class Dog:

kind = 'canine' # class variable shared by all instances

def __init__(self, name):

self.name = name # instance variable unique to each instance

>>> d = Dog('Fido')
>>> e = Dog('Buddy')
>>> d.kind # shared by all dogs
'canine'
>>> e.kind # shared by all dogs
'canine'
>>> d.name # unique to d
'Fido'
>>> e.name # unique to e
'Buddy'

As discussed in A Word About Names and Objects, shared data can have possibly
surprising effects with involving mutable objects such as lists and dictionaries. For
example, the tricks list in the following code should not be used as a class variable
because just a single list would be shared by all Dog instances:

class Dog:

tricks = [] # mistaken use of a class variable

def __init__(self, name):

self.name = name

def add_trick(self, trick):

self.tricks.append(trick)

>>> d = Dog('Fido')
>>> e = Dog('Buddy')
>>> d.add_trick('roll over')
>>> e.add_trick('play dead')
>>> d.tricks # unexpectedly shared by all dogs
['roll over', 'play dead']

Correct design of the class should use an instance variable instead:

class Dog:

def __init__(self, name):

self.name = name
self.tricks = [] # creates a new empty list for each dog

def add_trick(self, trick):

self.tricks.append(trick)

>>> d = Dog('Fido')
>>> e = Dog('Buddy')
>>> d.add_trick('roll over')
>>> e.add_trick('play dead')
>>> d.tricks
['roll over']
>>> e.tricks
['play dead']

9.4. Random Remarks

Data attributes override method attributes with the same name; to avoid accidental
name conflicts, which may cause hard-to-find bugs in large programs, it is wise to
use some kind of convention that minimizes the chance of conflicts. Possible
conventions include capitalizing method names, prefixing data attribute names with a
small unique string (perhaps just an underscore), or using verbs for methods and
nouns for data attributes.

Data attributes may be referenced by methods as well as by ordinary users (“clients”)

of an object. In other words, classes are not usable to implement pure abstract data
types. In fact, nothing in Python makes it possible to enforce data hiding — it is all
based upon convention. (On the other hand, the Python implementation, written in C,
can completely hide implementation details and control access to an object if
necessary; this can be used by extensions to Python written in C.)

Clients should use data attributes with care — clients may mess up invariants
maintained by the methods by stamping on their data attributes. Note that clients
may add data attributes of their own to an instance object without affecting the
validity of the methods, as long as name conflicts are avoided — again, a naming
convention can save a lot of headaches here.

There is no shorthand for referencing data attributes (or other methods!) from within
methods. I find that this actually increases the readability of methods: there is no
chance of confusing local variables and instance variables when glancing through a
method.

Often, the first argument of a method is called self. This is nothing more than a
convention: the name self has absolutely no special meaning to Python. Note,
however, that by not following the convention your code may be less readable to
other Python programmers, and it is also conceivable that a class browser program
might be written that relies upon such a convention.

Any function object that is a class attribute defines a method for instances of that
class. It is not necessary that the function definition is textually enclosed 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 self 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)

Methods may reference global names in the same way as ordinary functions. The
global scope associated with a method is the module containing its definition. (A
class 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 defined in it. Usually, the class containing
the method is itself defined in this global scope, and in the next section we’ll find
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” without
supporting inheritance. The syntax for a derived class definition 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.

There’s 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:

 Use isinstance() to check an instance’s

type: isinstance(obj, int) will
be True only if obj.__class__ is int or
some class derived fromint.
 Use issubclass() to check class
inheritance: issubclass(bool, int) is Tr
ue since bool is a subclass of int.
However, issubclass(unicode,str) is Fa
lse since unicode is not a subclass
of str (they only share a common
ancestor, basestring).

9.5.1. Multiple Inheritance

Python supports a limited form of multiple inheritance as well. A class definition with
multiple base classes looks like this:
class DerivedClassName(Base1, Base2, Base3):
<statement-1>
.
.
.
<statement-N>

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 first — 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 ofBase1.)

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 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 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 https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.3/mro/.

9.6. Private Variables and Class-

local References
“Private” instance variables that cannot be accessed except from inside an object
don’t exist in Python. However, there is a convention that is followed by most Python
code: a name prefixed with an underscore (e.g. _spam) should be treated as a non-
public part of the API (whether it is a function, a method or a data member). It should
be considered an implementation detail and subject to change without notice.
Since there is a valid use-case for class-private members (namely to avoid name
clashes of names with names defined by subclasses), there is limited support for
such a mechanism, called name mangling. Any identifier of the form __spam (at least
two leading underscores, at most one trailing underscore) is textually replaced
with _classname__spam, where classname is the current class name with leading
underscore(s) stripped. This mangling is done without regard to the syntactic position
of the identifier, as long as it occurs within the definition of a class.

Name mangling is helpful for letting subclasses override methods without breaking
intraclass method calls. For example:

class Mapping:
def __init__(self, iterable):
self.items_list = []
self.__update(iterable)

def update(self, iterable):

for item in iterable:
self.items_list.append(item)

__update = update # private copy of original update() method

class MappingSubclass(Mapping):

def update(self, keys, values):

# provides new signature for update()
# but does not break __init__()
for item in zip(keys, values):
self.items_list.append(item)

Note that the mangling rules are designed mostly to avoid accidents; it still is possible
to access or modify a variable that is considered private. This can even be useful in
special circumstances, such as in the debugger.

Notice that code passed to exec, eval() or execfile() does not consider the
classname of the invoking class to be the current class; this is similar to the effect of
the global statement, the effect of which is likewise restricted to code that is byte-
compiled together. The same restriction applies
to getattr(), setattr() and delattr(), as well as when
referencing __dict__ directly.

9.7. Odds and Ends

Sometimes it is useful to have a data type similar to the Pascal “record” or C “struct”,
bundling together a few named data items. An empty class definition will do nicely:

class Employee:
pass
john = Employee() # Create an empty employee record

# Fill the fields of the record

john.name = 'John Doe'
john.dept = 'computer lab'
john.salary = 1000

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() andreadline() 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.

9.8. Exceptions Are Classes Too

User-defined exceptions are identified by classes as well. Using this mechanism it is
possible to create extensible hierarchies of exceptions.

There are two new valid (semantic) forms for the raise statement:

raise Class, instance

raise instance

In the first form, instance must be an instance of Class or of a class derived from
it. The second form is a shorthand for:

raise instance.__class__, instance

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:

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 first matching except clause is triggered.

When an error message is printed for an unhandled exception, the exception’s class
name is printed, then a colon and a space, and finally 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:

>>>
>>> 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 on it, the generator resumes where it left off (it
remembers all the data values and which statement was last executed). An example
shows that generators can be trivially easy to create:

def reverse(data):
for index in range(len(data)-1, -1, -1):
yield data[index]
>>>
>>> for char in reverse('golf'):
... print char
...
f
l
o
g

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.

9.11. Generator Expressions

Some simple generators can be coded succinctly as expressions using a syntax
similar to list comprehensions but with parentheses instead of brackets. These
expressions are designed for situations where the generator is used right away by an
enclosing function. Generator expressions are more compact but less versatile than
full generator definitions and tend to be more memory friendly than equivalent list
comprehensions.

Examples:

>>>
>>> sum(i*i for i in range(10)) # sum of squares
285

>>> xvec = [10, 20, 30]

>>> yvec = [7, 5, 3]
>>> sum(x*y for x,y in zip(xvec, yvec)) # dot product
260

>>> 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
 Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute
called __dict__ which returns the dictionary used to implement the module’s
[1
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.
Table Of Contents

Previous topic

Next topic

This Page

Quick search
Go

Enter search terms or a module, class or function name.

«

 index

 modules |

 next |

 previous |


 Python »

2.7.10

 Documentation »

 The Python Tutorial »

© Copyright 1990-2015, Python Software Foundation.

The Python Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation. Please donate.
Last updated on May 23, 2015. Found a bug?
Created using Sphinx 1.2.3.