9.

Classes
Classes provide a means of bundling data and functionality together. Creating a new class creates a
new type of object, allowing new instances of that type to be made. Each class instance can have
attributes attached to it for maintaining its state. Class instances can also have methods (defined by
its class) for modifying its state.

Compared with other programming languages, Python’s class mechanism adds classes with a mini-
mum of new syntax and semantics. It is a mixture of the class mechanisms found in C++ and Modu-
la-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 cre-
ation.

In C++ terminology, normally class members (including the data members) are public (except see
below Private Variables), and all member functions are virtual. As in Modula-3, there are no short-
hands 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. Un-
like 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, tu-
ples). 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 defi-
nitions 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 func-
tions 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 and
funcname 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 name-
space! [1]

Attributes may be read-only or writable. In the latter case, assignment to attributes is possible. Mod-
ule 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 contain-
ing 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 builtins .)

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 3 or 4 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, contain 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 next-to-last
scope containing the module’s global names. To rebind variables found outside of the innermost
scope, the nonlocal statement can be used; if not declared nonlocal, those variables 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 func-
tions, the local scope references the same namespace as the global scope: the module’s name-
space. 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 or nonlocal 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 and
should be rebound there; the nonlocal statement indicates that particular variables live in an en-
closing scope and should be rebound there.

9.2.1. Scopes and Namespaces Example

:
This is an example demonstrating how to reference the different scopes and namespaces, and how
global and nonlocal affect variable binding:

def scope_test():
def do_local():
spam = "local spam"

def do_nonlocal():
nonlocal spam
spam = "nonlocal spam"

def do_global():
global spam
spam = "global spam"

spam = "test spam"

do_local()
print("After local assignment:", spam)
do_nonlocal()
print("After nonlocal assignment:", spam)
do_global()
print("After global assignment:", spam)

scope_test()
print("In global scope:", spam)

The output of the example code is:

After local assignment: test spam

After nonlocal assignment: nonlocal spam
After global assignment: nonlocal spam
In global scope: global spam

Note how the local assignment (which is default) didn’t change scope_test's binding of spam. The
nonlocal assignment changed scope_test's binding of spam, and the global assignment
changed the module-level binding.

You can also see that there was no previous binding for spam before the global assignment.

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 defini-
tions inside a class normally have a peculiar form of argument list, dictated by the calling conven-
tions 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 giv-
en 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 func-
tion 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, argu-
ments 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, since MyClass.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 with-
out 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 ar-
gument 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 instance
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 in-
stance object before the first argument.

In general, methods work as follows. When a non-data attribute of an instance is referenced, the in-
stance’s class is searched. If the name denotes a valid class attribute that is a function object, refer-
ences to both the instance object and the function object are packed into a 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

3.12.2 Quick search Go

:
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 follow-
ing 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

If the same attribute name occurs in both an instance and in a class, then attribute lookup prioritizes
the instance:

>>> class Warehouse: >>>

... purpose = 'storage'
... region = 'west'
...
>>> w1 = Warehouse()
>>> print(w1.purpose, w1.region)
storage west
>>> w2 = Warehouse()
>>> w2.region = 'east'
>>> print(w2.purpose, w2.region)
storage east

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 con-
trol 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 vari-
ables 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 nec-
essary 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 as-
sociated 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 inheri-
tance. 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 namespace accessible from the scope containing
the derived class definition. In place of a base class name, other arbitrary expressions are also al-
lowed. 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 ob-
ject 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 at-
tribute is searched, descending down the chain of base classes if necessary, and the method refer-
ence 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 anoth-
er method defined in the same base class may end up calling a method of a derived class that over-
rides 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 from int .
Use issubclass() to check class inheritance: issubclass(bool, int) is True since
bool is a subclass of int . However, issubclass(float, int) is False since float is not
a subclass of int .

9.5.1. Multiple Inheritance

Python supports a 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 most purposes, in the simplest cases, you can think of the search for attributes inherited from a
parent class as depth-first, left-to-right, not searching twice in the same class where there is an over-
lap in the hierarchy. Thus, if an attribute is not found in DerivedClassName , it is searched for in
Base1 , then (recursively) in the base classes of Base1 , and if it was not found there, it was
searched for in Base2 , and so on.

In fact, it is slightly more complex than that; 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.

Dynamic ordering is necessary because all cases of multiple inheritance exhibit one or more dia-
mond relationships (where at least one of the parent classes can be accessed through multiple
paths from the bottommost class). For example, all 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

“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 func-
tion, 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 po-
sition 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)

The above example would work even if MappingSubclass were to introduce a __update identifi-
er since it is replaced with _Mapping__update in the Mapping class and
_MappingSubclass__update in the MappingSubclass class respectively.

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() or eval() 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 to-
gether a few named data items. The idiomatic approach is to use dataclasses for this purpose:

from dataclasses import dataclass

@dataclass
class Employee:
name: str
dept: str
salary: int

>>> john = Employee('john', 'computer lab', 1000) >>>

:
>>> 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() and readline() that
get the data from a string buffer instead, and pass it as an argument.

Instance method objects have attributes, too: m.__self__ is the instance object with the method
m() , and m.__func__ is the function object corresponding to the method.

9.8. 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, end='')

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. You can call the __next__()
method using the next() built-in function; this example shows how it all works:

>>> s = 'abc' >>>

>>> it = iter(s)
>>> it
<str_iterator object at 0x10c90e650>
>>> next(it)
'a'
>>> next(it)
'b'
>>> next(it)
'c'
>>> next(it)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
:
 next(it)
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

9.9. Generators

Generators are a simple and powerful tool for creating iterators. They are written like regular func-
tions 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.

9.10. Generator Expressions

Some simple generators can be coded succinctly as expressions using a syntax similar to list com-
prehensions but with parentheses instead of square 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

>>> 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

[1] Except for one thing. Module objects have a secret read-only attribute called __dict__ which
returns the dictionary used to implement the module’s namespace; the name __dict__ is an
attribute but not a global name. Obviously, using this violates the abstraction of namespace im-
plementation, and should be restricted to things like post-mortem debuggers.
: