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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1. Introduction
1.1. Alternate
Implementations This reference manual describes the Python programming language. It is not intended as a tutorial.
1.2. Notation
While I am trying to be as precise as possible, I chose to use English rather than formal specifications for
Previous topic everything except syntax and lexical analysis. This should make the document more understandable to the
The Python Language average reader, but will leave room for ambiguities. Consequently, if you were coming from Mars and tried
Reference to re-implement Python from this document alone, you might have to guess things and in fact you would
probably end up implementing quite a different language. On the other hand, if you are using Python and
Next topic wonder what the precise rules about a particular area of the language are, you should definitely be able to
2. Lexical analysis find them here. If you would like to see a more formal definition of the language, maybe you could volunteer
«
your time — or invent a cloning machine :-).
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It is dangerous to add too many implementation details to a language reference document — the
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Show Source implementation may change, and other implementations of the same language may work differently. On
the other hand, CPython is the one Python implementation in widespread use (although alternate
implementations continue to gain support), and its particular quirks are sometimes worth being
mentioned, especially where the implementation imposes additional limitations. Therefore, you’ll find short
“implementation notes” sprinkled throughout the text.

Every Python implementation comes with a number of built-in and standard modules. These are
documented in The Python Standard Library. A few built-in modules are mentioned when they interact in a
significant way with the language definition.

1.1. Alternate Implementations

Though there is one Python implementation which is by far the most popular, there are some alternate
implementations which are of particular interest to different audiences.

Known implementations include:

CPython
This is the original and most-maintained implementation of Python, written in C. New language
features generally appear here first.

Jython
Python implemented in Java. This implementation can be used as a scripting language for Java
applications, or can be used to create applications using the Java class libraries. It is also often used
to create tests for Java libraries. More information can be found at the Jython website.

Python for .NET

This implementation actually uses the CPython implementation, but is a managed .NET application
and makes .NET libraries available. It was created by Brian Lloyd. For more information, see the
Python for .NET home page.

IronPython
An alternate Python for .NET. Unlike Python.NET, this is a complete Python implementation that
generates IL, and compiles Python code directly to .NET assemblies. It was created by Jim Hugunin,
the original creator of Jython. For more information, see the IronPython website.

PyPy
An implementation of Python written completely in Python. It supports several advanced features not
found in other implementations like stackless support and a Just in Time compiler. One of the goals of
the project is to encourage experimentation with the language itself by making it easier to modify the
interpreter (since it is written in Python). Additional information is available on the PyPy project’s
home page.

Each of these implementations varies in some way from the language as documented in this manual, or
introduces specific information beyond what’s covered in the standard Python documentation. Please
refer to the implementation-specific documentation to determine what else you need to know about the
specific implementation you’re using.

1.2. Notation
The descriptions of lexical analysis and syntax use a modified BNF grammar notation. This uses the
following style of definition:

name ::= lc_letter ( lc_letter | "_")*

lc_letter ::= "a"..."z"

The first line says that a name is an lc_letter followed by a sequence of zero or more lc_letter s and
underscores. An lc_letter in turn is any of the single characters 'a' through 'z' . (This rule is actually
adhered to for the names defined in lexical and grammar rules in this document.)

Each rule begins with a name (which is the name defined by the rule) and ::= . A vertical bar ( | ) is used to
separate alternatives; it is the least binding operator in this notation. A star ( * ) means zero or more
repetitions of the preceding item; likewise, a plus ( + ) means one or more repetitions, and a phrase
enclosed in square brackets ( [ ] ) means zero or one occurrences (in other words, the enclosed phrase is
optional). The * and + operators bind as tightly as possible; parentheses are used for grouping. Literal
strings are enclosed in quotes. White space is only meaningful to separate tokens. Rules are normally
contained on a single line; rules with many alternatives may be formatted alternatively with each line after
the first beginning with a vertical bar.

In lexical definitions (as the example above), two more conventions are used: Two literal characters
separated by three dots mean a choice of any single character in the given (inclusive) range of ASCII
characters. A phrase between angular brackets ( <...> ) gives an informal description of the symbol
defined; e.g., this could be used to describe the notion of ‘control character’ if needed.

Even though the notation used is almost the same, there is a big difference between the meaning of
lexical and syntactic definitions: a lexical definition operates on the individual characters of the input
source, while a syntax definition operates on the stream of tokens generated by the lexical analysis. All
uses of BNF in the next chapter (“Lexical Analysis”) are lexical definitions; uses in subsequent chapters
are syntactic definitions.

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