INTERNSHIP REPORT

On
Data Science
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Award of Degree of
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
in
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (AIML)
by

ESWARAVAKA VENKATASAI

Regd. No.: 22P11A3315

Under the Supervision

Of
Mrs. S. Latha Rani
Assistant Professor

Coratia Technologies
(Duration: 01/07/2024 – 30/08/2024)

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (AIML)

CHADALAWADA RAMANAMMA ENGINEERING COLLEGE
(An Autonomous Institution)
Approved by AICTE, Permanently affiliated to JNTU, Anantapur
Renigunta road, Tirupati – 517 506,
AndhraPradesh, India
2022 - 2026
 CHADALAWADA RAMANAMMA ENGINEERING COLLEGE
(An Autonomous Institution)

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (AIML)

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the “ Internship report ” on Data Science submitted by

ESWARAVAKA VENKATASAI (Regd. No.: 22P11A3315) is work done by him and submitted
during 2024 – 2025 academic year, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree
of BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY in COMPUTER SCIENCE AND

ENGINEERING(AIML), at Coratia Technologies.

Internship Coordinator HOD

Mrs.S.Latha Rani , Dr.K.Sekar , Ph.D.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First I would like to thank, Mrs.Sowmya HR, of Coratia Technologies for giving me the
opportunity to do an internship within the organization.

I also would like all the people that worked along with me Coratia Technologies with
their patience and openness they created an enjoyable working environment.

It is indeed with a great sense of pleasure and immense sense of gratitude that I
acknowledge the help of these individuals.

I would like to thank our chairman Dr. Chadalawada Krishna Murthy for the facilities
provided to accomplish this internship.

I am highly indebted to Principal Dr. P. Ramesh Kumar for providing the opportunity to
do my internship course and others.

I am very much thankful to Dean (Academics) Dr. C. Subhas for his continuous support
in academics.

I would like to thank my Head of the Department Dr. K. Sekar for his constructive
criticism throughout my internship.

I would like to thank Mrs. S. Latha Rani , internship coordinator, Department of CSE for
her support and advices to get and complete internship in above said organization.

I am sincerely thankful to my Guide Mrs. S. Latha Rani , Department of CSE for her
guidelines and support from beginning to end of internship.

I am extremely great full to my department staff members and friends who helped me in
successful completion of this internship.

ESWARAVAKA VENKATASAI

(22P11A3315)
 DATA SCIENCE INDEX
SL.NO DESCRIPTION DATE & TIME

S.NO
TOPIC
Introduction to Data Science:
Overview of data science, its importance, applications, & tools
1 used in data science.
Introduction to Python and Jupyter Notebook

Python Basics:
Variables, data types, loops, conditions, & functions.
2
Introduction to libraries like NumPy, Pandas, & Matplotlib.

Data Acquisition:
3 Data sources, data formats,
Methods to collect and clean data

4 Data Exploration: Descriptive statistics, data visualization,

& correlation analysis

5 Data Preparation: Data cleaning, feature scaling, encoding

categorical data, & handling missing data.

Introduction to Machine Learning:

Overview of machine learning,
6
types of machine learning algorithms, & supervised learning.

Outcome-driven Project (1 hour): Students will work on a data

7 cleaning project using Python & Pandas

Linear Regression: Simple linear regression, multiple linear

8 regression, & model evaluation.

Classification: Logistic regression, K-Nearest Neighbors,

9 & model evaluation

Decision Trees: Introduction to decision trees, Gini index, &

10 Information gain.
Random Forest: Introduction to random forests, bagging, and
11 boosting.

Unsupervised Learning: Introduction to unsupervised learning,

12 clustering algorithms, and K-Means clustering.
 Dimensionality Reduction:
13 Introduction to principal component analysis (PCA) and
tDistributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE)
Natural Language Processing (NLP):
14 Introduction to NLP, tokenization, stemming, &
lemmatization
Sentiment Analysis: Introduction to sentiment analysis,
preprocessing, feature extraction, and model building
15
Text Classification: Introduction to text classification, bag-
ofwords model, and Naive Bayes.
Neural Networks:
16 Introduction to artificial neural networks, perceptron,
activation functions, & backpropagation.

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN):

17
Introduction to CNN, convolutional layers, & pooling layers.
Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN): Introduction to RNN,
18 LSTM, and GRU.

Time Series Analysis:

19 Introduction to time series analysis, trend, seasonality, and
autocorrelation.

20 RNN project using TensorFlow during the live session.

Time series analysis project using Python during the live

21 session.

Forecasting: Introduction to forecasting, moving average,

22 exponential smoothing
 WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?

Data science encompasses a set of principles, problem

definitions, algorithms, and processes for extracting
nonobvious and useful patterns from large data sets.
Many of the elements of data science have been
developed in related fields such as machine learning and
data mining. In fact, the terms data science, machine
learning, and data mining are often used interchangeably.
The commonality across these disciplines is a focus on
improving decision making through the analysis of data.
However, although data science borrows from these other
fields, it is broader in scope. Machine learning (ML)
focuses on the design and evaluation of algorithms for
extracting patterns from data. Data mining generally
deals with the analysis of structured data and often
implies an emphasis on commercial applications. Data
science takes all of these considerations into account but
also takes up other challenges, such as the capturing,
cleaning, and transforming of unstructured social media
and web data; the use of bigdata technologies to store
and process big, unstructured data sets; and questions
related to data ethics and regulation. Using data science,
we can extract different types of patterns. For example,
we might want to extract patterns
that help us to identify groups of customers exhibiting similar behavior and tastes. In
business jargon, this task is known as customer segmentation, and in data science
terminology it is called clustering. Alternatively, we might want to extract a pattern that
identifies products that are frequently bought together, a process called associationrule
mining. Or we might want to extract patterns that identify strange or abnormal events, such
as fraudulent insurance claims, a process known as anomaly or outlier detection. Finally,
we might want to identify patterns that help us to classify things. For example, the
following rule illustrates what a classification pattern extracted from an email data set
might look like: If an email contains the phrase “Make money easily,” it is likely to be a
spam email. Identifying these types of classification rules is known as prediction. The word
prediction might seem an odd choice because the rule doesn’t predict what will happen in
the future: the email already is or isn’t a spam email. So it is best to think of prediction
patterns as predicting the missing value of an attribute rather than as predicting

A Brief History of Data Science

The term data science has a specific history dating back to the 1990s. However,
the fields that it draws upon have a much longer history. One thread in this
longer history is the history of data collection; another is the history of data
analysis. In this section, we review the main developments in these threads and
describe how and why they converged into the field of data science. Of
necessity, this review introduces new terminology as we describe and name the
important technical innovations as they arose. For each new term, we provide a
brief explanation of its meaning; we return to many of these terms later in the
book and provide a more detailed explanation of them. We begin with a history
of data collection, then give a history of data analysis, and, finally, cover the
development of data science.

SL.NO DESCRIPTION DATE & TIME

A History of Data Gathering

The earliest methods for recording data may have been notches on sticks to
mark the passing of the days or poles stuck in the ground to mark sunrise on the
solstices. With the development of writing, however, our ability to record our
experiences and the events in our world vastly increased the amount of data we
collected. The earliest form of writing developed in Mesopotamia around 3200
BC and was used for commercial record keeping. This type of record keeping
captures what is known as transactional data. Transactional data include event
information such as the sale of an item, the issuing of an invoice, the delivery of
goods, credit card payment, insurance claims, and so on. Nontransactional data,
such as demographic data, also have a long history. The earliest-known censuses
took place in pharaonic Egypt around 3000 BC. The reason that early states put
so much effort and resources into large data-collection operations was that these
states needed to raise taxes and armies, thus proving Benjamin Franklin’s claim
that there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes. In the past 150
years, the development of the electronic sensor, the digitization of data, and the
invention of the computer have contributed to a massive increase in the amount
of data that are collected and stored. A milestone in data collection and storage
occurred in 1970 when Edgar F. Codd published a paper explaining the
relational data model, which was revolutionary in terms of setting out how data
were (at the time) stored, indexed, and retrieved from databases. The relational
data model enabled users to extract data from a database using simple queries
that defined what data the user wanted without requiring the user to worry about
the underlying structure of the data or where they were physically stored.
Codd’s paper provided the foundation for modern databases and the
development of structured query language (SQL), an international standard for
defining database queries. Relational databases store data in tables with a
structure of one row per instance and one column per attribute. This structure is
ideal for storing data because it can be decomposed into natural attributes.
Databases are the natural technology to use for storing and retrieving structured
transactional or operational data (i.e., the type of data generated by a company’s
day-to-day operations). However, as companies have become larger and more
automated, the amount and variety of data generated by different parts of these
companies have dramatically increased. In the 1990s, companies realized that
although they were accumulating tremendous amounts of data, they were
repeatedly running into difficulties in analyzing those data. Part of the problem
was that the data were often stored in numerous separate databases within the
one organization. Another difficulty was that databases were optimized for
storage and retrieval of data, activities characterized by high volumes of simple
operations, such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. In order to
analyze their data, these companies needed technology that was able to bring
together and reconcile the data from disparate databases and that facilitated
more complex analytical data operations. This business challenge led to the
development of data warehouses.
COMPLETE OVERVIEW OF PYTHON
 WHETTING YOUR APPETITE

If you do much work on computers, eventually you find that there’s some task you’d like to automate. For
example, you may wish to perform a search-and-replace over a large number of text files, or rename and
rearrange a bunch of photo files in a complicated way. Perhaps you’d like to write a small custom
database, or a specialized GUI application, or a simple game.
If you’re a professional software developer, you may have to work with several C/C++/Java libraries but
find the usual write/compile/test/re-compile cycle is too slow. Perhaps you’re writing a test suite for such
a library and find writing the testing code a tedious task. Or maybe you’ve written a program that could
use an extension language, and you don’t want to design and implement a whole new language for your
application.
Python is just the language for you.
You could write a Unix shell script or Windows batch files for some of these tasks, but shell scripts are
best at moving around files and changing text data, not well-suited for GUI applications or games. You
could write a C/C++/Java program, but it can take a lot of development time to get even a first-draft
program. Python is simpler to use, available on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix operating systems, and
will help you get the job done more quickly.
Python is simple to use, but it is a real programming language, offering much more structure and support
for large programs than shell scripts or batch files can offer. On the other hand, Python also offers much
more error checking than C, and, being a very-high-level language, it has high-level data types built in,
such as flexible arrays and dictionaries. Because of its more general data types Python is applicable to a
much larger problem domain than Awk or even Perl, yet many things are at least as easy in Python as in
those languages.
Python allows you to split your program into modules that can be reused in other Python programs. It
comes with a large collection of standard modules that you can use as the basis of your programs — or as
examples to start learning to program in Python. Some of these modules provide things like file I/O,
system calls, sockets, and even interfaces to graphical user interface toolkits like Tk.
Python is an interpreted language, which can save you considerable time during program development
because no compilation and linking is necessary. The interpreter can be used interactively, which makes it
easy to experiment with features of the language, to write throw-away programs, or to test functions
during bottom-up program development. It is also a handy desk calculator.
Python enables programs to be written compactly and readably. Programs written in Python are typically
much shorter than equivalent C, C++, or Java programs, for several reasons:
• the high-level data types allow you to express complex operations in a single statement;
• statement grouping is done by indentation instead of beginning and ending brackets;
• no variable or argument declarations are necessary.
Python is extensible: if you know how to program in C it is easy to add a new built-in function or module
to the interpreter, either to perform critical operations at maximum speed, or to link Python programs to
libraries that may only be available in binary form (such as a vendor-specific graphics library). Once you
are really hooked, you can link the Python interpreter into an application written in C and use it as an
extension or command language for that application.
By the way, the language is named after the BBC show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and has nothing
to do with reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only allowed, it is
encouraged! Now that you are all excited about Python, you’ll want to examine it in some more detail.
Since the best way to learn a language is to use it, the tutorial invites you to play with the Python
interpreter as you read. In the next chapter, the mechanics of using the interpreter are explained. This is
rather mundane information, but essential for trying out the examples shown later.
1
The rest of the tutorial introduces various features of the Python language and system through examples,
beginning with simple expressions, statements and data types, through functions and modules, and finally
touching upon advanced concepts like exceptions and user-defined classes.

Chapter 1. Whetting Your Appetite

CHAPTER

TWO

2
 USING THE PYTHON INTERPRETER

2.1 Invoking the Interpreter

The Python interpreter is usually installed as /usr/local/bin/python3.7 on those machines
where it is available; putting /usr/local/bin in your Unix shell’s search path makes it possible to
start it by typing the command:
python3.7

to the shell.1 Since the choice of the directory where the interpreter lives is an installation option, other
places are possible; check with your local Python guru or system administrator. (E.g.,
/usr/local/python is a popular alternative location.)
On Windows machines, the Python installation is usually placed in C:\Program Files\Python37\, though
you can change this when you’re running the installer. To add this directory to your path, you can type the
following command into the command prompt in a DOS box:

set path=%path%;C:\Program Files\Python37\

Typing an end-of-file character (Control-D on Unix, Control-Z on Windows) at the primary

prompt causes the interpreter to exit with a zero exit status. If that doesn’t work, you can exit the
interpreter by typing the following command: quit().
The interpreter’s line-editing features include interactive editing, history substitution and code completion
on systems that support readline. Perhaps the quickest check to see whether command line editing is
supported is typing Control-P to the first Python prompt you get. If it beeps, you have command line
editing; see Appendix Interactive Input Editing and History Substitution for an introduction to the keys. If
nothing appears to happen, or if ^P is echoed, command line editing isn’t available; you’ll only be able
to use backspace to remove characters from the current line.
The interpreter operates somewhat like the Unix shell: when called with standard input connected to a tty
device, it reads and executes commands interactively; when called with a file name argument or with a
file as standard input, it reads and executes a script from that file.
A second way of starting the interpreter is python -c command [arg] ..., which executes the
statement(s) in command, analogous to the shell’s -c option. Since Python statements often contain
spaces or other characters that are special to the shell, it is usually advised to quote command in its
entirety with single quotes.
Some Python modules are also useful as scripts. These can be invoked using python -m module
[arg] ..., which executes the source file for module as if you had spelled out its full name on the
command line.
When a script file is used, it is sometimes useful to be able to run the script and enter interactive
mode afterwards. This can be done by passing -i before the script. All command line options are
described in using-on-general.

1
On Unix, the Python 3.x interpreter is by default not installed with the executable named python, so that it does not conflict with a
simultaneously installed Python 2.x executable.

3
2.1.1 Argument Passing
When known to the interpreter, the script name and additional arguments thereafter are turned into a list of
strings and assigned to the argv variable in the sys module. You can access this list by executing
import sys. The length of the list is at least one; when no script and no arguments are given,

sys.argv[0] is an empty string. When the script name is given as '-' (meaning standard input),
sys.argv[0] is set to '-'. When -c command is used, sys.argv[0] is set to '-c'. When -m
module is used, sys.argv[0] is set to the full name of the located module. Options found after -c
command or -m module are not consumed by the Python interpreter’s option processing but left in
sys.argv for the command or module to handle.

2.1.2 Interactive Mode

When commands are read from a tty, the interpreter is said to be in interactive mode. In this mode it
prompts for the next command with the primary prompt, usually three greater-than signs (>>>); for
continuation lines it prompts with the secondary prompt, by default three dots (...). The interpreter
prints a welcome message stating its version number and a copyright notice before printing the first
prompt:
$ python3.7
Python 3.7 (default, Sep 16 2015, 09:25:04)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license"
for more information. >>>

Continuation lines are needed when entering a multi-line construct. As an example, take a look at this if
statement:
>>> the_world_is_flat = True
>>> if the_world_is_flat:
... print("Be careful not to fall off!") ...
Be careful not to fall off!

For more on interactive mode, see Interactive Mode.

2.2 The Interpreter and Its Environment

2.2.1 Source Code Encoding
By default, Python source files are treated as encoded in UTF-8. In that encoding, characters of most
languages in the world can be used simultaneously in string literals, identifiers and comments — although
the standard library only uses ASCII characters for identifiers, a convention that any portable code should
follow. To display all these characters properly, your editor must recognize that the file is UTF-8, and it
must use a font that supports all the characters in the file.
To declare an encoding other than the default one, a special comment line should be added as the first line
of the file. The syntax is as follows:
# -*- coding: encoding -*-

where encoding is one of the valid codecs supported by Python.

4
 Chapter 2. Using the Python Interpreter

Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0

For example, to declare that Windows-1252 encoding is to be used, the first line of your source code file
should be:
# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-

One exception to the first line rule is when the source code starts with a UNIX “shebang” line. In this
case, the encoding declaration should be added as the second line of the file. For example:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: cp1252 -*-

5
 AN INFORMAL INTRODUCTION TO PYTHON

In the following examples, input and output are distinguished by the presence or absence of prompts
(>>> and …): to repeat the example, you must type everything after the prompt, when the prompt
appears; lines that do not begin with a prompt are output from the interpreter. Note that a secondary
prompt on a line by itself in an example means you must type a blank line; this is used to end a multi-line
command. Many of the examples in this manual, even those entered at the interactive prompt, include
comments. Comments in Python start with the hash character, #, and extend to the end of the physical
line. A comment may appear at the start of a line or following whitespace or code, but not within a string
literal. A hash character within a string literal is just a hash character. Since comments are to clarify code
and are not interpreted by Python, they may be omitted when typing in examples. Some examples:
# this is the first comment spam
= 1 # and this is the second
comment # ... and now a third!
text = "# This is not a comment because it's inside quotes."

3.1 Using Python as a Calculator

Let’s try some simple Python commands. Start the interpreter and wait for the primary prompt, >>>. (It
shouldn’t take long.)

3.1.1 Numbers
The interpreter acts as a simple calculator: you can type an expression at it and it will write the value.
Expression syntax is straightforward: the operators +, -, * and / work just like in most other languages
(for example, Pascal or C); parentheses (()) can be used for grouping. For example:

>>> 2 + 2
4
>>> 50 - 5*6
20
>>> (50 - 5*6) / 4
5.0
>>> 8 / 5 # division always returns a floating point number
1.6

The integer numbers (e.g. 2, 4, 20) have type int, the ones with a fractional part (e.g. 5.0, 1.6) have
type float. We will see more about numeric types later in the tutorial.
Division (/) always returns a float. To do floor division and get an integer result (discarding any
fractional result) you can use the // operator; to calculate the remainder you can use %:
>>> 17 / 3 # classic division returns a float
5.666666666666667
>>>
>>> 17 // 3 # floor division discards the fractional
part 5
>>> 17 % 3 # the % operator returns the remainder of the division
2
>>> 5 * 3 + 2 # result * divisor + remainder 17

6
 Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0

With Python, it is possible to use the ** operator to calculate powers2:

>>> ** 2 # 5 squared
5 25
>>>
2 ** 7 # 2 to the power of 7

128
The equal sign (=) is used to assign a value to a variable. Afterwards, no result is displayed before the
next interactive prompt:
>>> width = 20
>>> height = 5 * 9 >>> width * height 900

If a variable is not “defined” (assigned a value), trying to use it will give you an error:
>>> n # try to access an undefined variable Traceback (most recent
call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'n' is not defined

There is full support for floating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer operand to
floating point:
>>> 4 * 3.75 - 1
14.0

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

This variable should be treated as read-only by the user. Don’t explicitly assign a value to it — you would
create an independent local variable with the same name masking the built-in variable with its magic
behavior.
In addition to int and float, Python supports other types of numbers, such as Decimal and

Fraction. Python also has built-in support for complex numbers, and uses the j or J suffix to
indicate the imaginary part (e.g. 3+5j).

3.1.2 Strings
Besides numbers, Python can also manipulate strings, which can be expressed in several ways. They can
be enclosed in single quotes ('...') or double quotes ("...") with the same result3. \ can be used to
escape quotes:

2
Since ** has higher precedence than -, -3**2 will be interpreted as -(3**2) and thus result in -9. To avoid this and get 9, you can use
(-3)**2.
3
Unlike other languages, special characters such as \n have the same meaning with both single ('...') and double ("...") quotes. The
Using Python as a Calculator 7
 Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0

>>> 'spam eggs' # single quotes

'spam eggs'
>>> 'doesn\'t' # use \' to escape the single quote...
"doesn't"
>>> "doesn't" # ...or use double quotes instead
"doesn't"
>>> '"Yes," they said.' '"Yes,"
they said.'
>>> "\"Yes,\" they said." '"Yes,"
they said.'
>>> '"Isn\'t," they said.'
'"Isn\'t," they said.'
In the interactive interpreter, the output string is enclosed in quotes and special characters are escaped
with backslashes. While this might sometimes look different from the input (the enclosing quotes could
change), the two strings are equivalent. The string is enclosed in double quotes if the string contains a
single quote and no double quotes, otherwise it is enclosed in single quotes. The print() function
produces a more readable output, by omitting the enclosing quotes and by printing escaped and special
characters:
>>> '"Isn\'t," they said.'
'"Isn\'t," they said.'
>>> print('"Isn\'t," they said.') "Isn't,"
they said.
>>> s = 'First line.\nSecond line.' # \n means newline
>>> s # without print(), \n is included in the output
'First line.\nSecond line.'
>>> print(s) # with print(), \n produces a new line
First line.
Second line.

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

String literals can span multiple lines. One way is using triple-quotes: """...""" or '''...'''.
End of lines are automatically included in the string, but it’s possible to prevent this by adding a \ at the
end of the line. The following example:

only difference between the two is that within single quotes you don’t need to escape " (but you have to escape \') and vice versa.

3.1.
print("""\
Usage: thingy
[OPTIONS] -h Display this usage message
-H hostname Hostname to connect to
""")

Using Python as a Calculator 8

 Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0

produces the following output (note that the initial newline is not included):
Usage: thingy
[OPTIONS] -h
Display this usage message
-H hostname Hostname to connect to

Strings can be concatenated (glued together) with the + operator, and repeated with *:

>>> # 3 times 'un', followed by 'ium'

>>> 3 * 'un' + 'ium' 'unununium'

Two or more string literals (i.e. the ones enclosed between quotes) next to each other are automatically
concatenated.
>>> 'Py' 'thon' 'Python'

This feature is particularly useful when you want to break long strings:
>>> text = ('Put several strings within parentheses '
... 'to have them joined together.')
>>> text
'Put several strings within parentheses to have them joined
together.'
This only works with two literals though, not with variables or expressions:

>>> prefix = 'Py'

>>> prefix 'thon' # can't concatenate a variable and a string
literal ...
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> ('un' * 3) 'ium' ...
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

If you want to concatenate variables or a variable and a literal, use +:

>>> prefix + 'thon'
'Python'

Strings can be indexed (subscripted), with the first character having index 0. There is no separate
character type; a character is simply a string of size one:
>>> word = 'Python'
>>> word[0] # character in position 0 'P'
>>> word[5] # character in position 5 'n'
Indices may also be negative numbers, to start counting from the right:
>>> word[- # last character
1]
'n' >>> # second-last character
word[2]
'o'
>>> word[6]
'P'

Note that since -0 is the same as 0, negative indices start from -1.
In addition to indexing, slicing is also supported. While indexing is used to obtain individual characters,
slicing allows you to obtain substring:

Using Python as a Calculator 9

 Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0

>>> # characters from position 0 (included) to 2 (excluded)

word[0:2]
'Py' >>>
word[2:5]
# characters from position 2 (included) to 5 (excluded)
'tho'

Note how the start is always included, and the end always excluded. This makes sure that s[:i] +
s[i:] is always equal to s:
>>> word[:2] + word[2:]
'Python'
>>> word[:4] + word[4:]
'Python'

Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted first index defaults to zero, an omitted second index defaults
to the size of the string being sliced.
>>> word[:2] # character from the beginning to position 2 (excluded)
'Py'
>>> word[4:] # characters from position 4 (included) to the end
'on' >>>
word[-
2:] # characters from the second-last (included) to the end
'on'
One way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters, with the
left edge of the first character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n
characters has index n, for example:
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| P | y | t | h | o | n |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0…6 in the string; the second row gives the
corresponding negative indices. The slice from i to j consists of all characters between the edges labeled i
and j, respectively.
For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices, if both are within bounds.
For example, the length of word[1:3] is 2.
Attempting to use an index that is too large will result in an error:
>>> word[42] # the word only has 6
characters Traceback (most recent call
last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: string index out of range
3.1.
However, out of range slice indexes are handled gracefully when used for slicing:
>>> word[4:42] 'on'
>>> word[42:]
''

Python strings cannot be changed — they are immutable. Therefore, assigning to an indexed position in
the string results in an error:
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 Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0

>>> word[0] = 'J' ...

TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment
>>> word[2:] = 'py' ...
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

If you need a different string, you should create a new one:

>>> 'J' + word[1:]
'Jython'
>>> word[:2] + 'py' 'Pypy'

The built-in function len() returns the length of a string:

>>> s =
'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'
>>> len(s) 34

See also:
textseq Strings are examples of sequence types, and support the common operations supported by such
types.
string-methods Strings support a large number of methods for basic transformations and searching. f-
strings String literals that have embedded expressions. formatstrings Information about string
formatting with str.format().
old-string-formatting The old formatting operations invoked when strings are the left operand of the %
operator are described in more detail here.

3.1.3 Lists
Python knows a number of compound data types, used to group together other values. The most versatile
is the list, which can be written as a list of comma-separated values (items) between square brackets. Lists
might contain items of different types, but usually the items all have the same type.
>>> squares = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>> squares
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
Like strings (and all other built-in sequence type), lists can be indexed and sliced:
>>> squares[0] # indexing returns the item
1
>>> squares[-1]
(continues on next page)
(continued from previous page)
25
>>> squares[-
# slicing returns a new list
3:]
[9, 16, 25]
All slice operations return a new list containing the requested elements. This means that the following
slice returns a new (shallow) copy of the list:
>>> squares[:]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
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Lists also support operations like concatenation:

>>> squares + [36, 49, 64, 81, 100]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]

Unlike strings, which are immutable, lists are a mutable type, i.e. it is possible to change their content:
>>> cubes = [1, 8, 27, 65, 125] # something's wrong here >>> 4 ** 3
# the cube of 4 is 64, not 65! 64
>>> cubes[3] = 64 # replace the wrong value >>>
cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125]

You can also add new items at the end of the list, by using the append() method (we will see more
about methods later):
>>> cubes.append(216) # add the cube of 6
>>> cubes.append(7 ** 3) # and the cube of 7
>>> cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343]

Assignment to slices is also possible, and this can even change the size of the list or clear it entirely:
>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g'] >>>
letters
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']
>>> # replace some values
>>> letters[2:5] = ['C', 'D', 'E']
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'f', 'g']
>>> # now remove them
>>>
letters[2:5] = []
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'f', 'g']
>>> # clear the list by replacing all the elements with an
empty list >>> letters[:] = []
>>> letters []

The built-in function len() also applies to lists:

>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

>>> len(letters)
4

It is possible to nest lists (create lists containing other lists), for example:

3.1.
>>> a = ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> n = [1, 2, 3]
>>> x = [a, n]
>>> x
[['a', 'b', 'c'], [1, 2, 3]]
>>> x[0]
['a', 'b', 'c']

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>>> x[0][1] 'b'

3.2 First Steps Towards Programming

Of course, we can use Python for more complicated tasks than adding two and two together. For instance,
we can write an initial sub-sequence of the Fibonacci series as follows:
>>> # Fibonacci series:
... # the sum of two elements defines the next
... a, b = 0, 1 >>>
while a < 10:
... print(a) ...
a, b = b, a+b
...
0
1
1
2
3
5
8

This example introduces several new features.

• The first line contains a multiple assignment: the variables a and b simultaneously get the new
values 0 and 1. On the last line this is used again, demonstrating that the expressions on the righthand
side are all evaluated first before any of the assignments take place. The right-hand side expressions
are evaluated from the left to the right.
• The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: a < 10) remains true. In Python, like in
C, any non-zero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or list value, in
fact any sequence; anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are false. The test used
in the example is a simple comparison. The standard comparison operators are written the same as in
C: < (less than), > (greater than), == (equal to), <= (less than or equal to), >= (greater than or
equal to) and != (not equal to).

• The body of the loop is indented: indentation is Python’s way of grouping statements. At the
interactive prompt, you have to type a tab or space(s) for each indented line. In practice you will
prepare more complicated input for Python with a text editor; all decent text editors have an autoindent
facility. When a compound statement is entered interactively, it must be followed by a blank line to
indicate completion (since the parser cannot guess when you have typed the last line). Note that each
line within a basic block must be indented by the same amount.
• The print() function writes the value of the argument(s) it is given. It differs from just writing the
expression you want to write (as we did earlier in the calculator examples) in the way it handles
multiple arguments, floating point quantities, and strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a
space is inserted between items, so you can format things nicely, like this:

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 Python Tutorial, Release 3.7.0
>>> i = 256*256
>>> print('The value of i is', i)
The value of i is 65536

The keyword argument end can be used to avoid the newline after the output, or end the output
with a different string:
>>> a, b = 0, 1 >>> while a < 1000:
... print(a, end=',')
... a, b = b, a+b ...
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,

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 MORE CONTROL FLOW TOOLS

Besides the while statement just introduced, Python knows the usual control flow statements known
from other languages, with some twists.

4.1 if Statements
Perhaps the most well-known statement type is the if statement. For example:
>>> x = int(input("Please enter an integer: ")) Please
enter an integer:
42 >>> if x < 0:
... x = 0
... print('Negative changed to zero')
... elif x == 0: ...
print('Zero') ... elif x == 1:
... print('Single') ... else:
... print('More')
...
More

There can be zero or more elif parts, and the else part is optional. The keyword ‘elif’ is short for
‘else if’, and is useful to avoid excessive indentation. An if … elif … elif … sequence is a
substitute for the switch or case statements found in other languages.

4.2 for Statements

The for statement in Python differs a bit from what you may be used to in C or Pascal. Rather than
always iterating over an arithmetic progression of numbers (like in Pascal), or giving the user the ability
to define both the iteration step and halting condition (as C), Python’s for statement iterates over the
items of any sequence (a list or a string), in the order that they appear in the sequence. For example (no
pun intended):
>>> # Measure some strings:
... words = ['cat', 'window',
'defenestrate'] >>> for w in words: ...
print(w, len(w))
... cat 3 window
6
defenestrate
12

15
If you need to modify the sequence you are iterating over while inside the loop (for example to duplicate
selected items), it is recommended that you first make a copy. Iterating over a sequence does not
implicitly make a copy. The slice notation makes this especially convenient:
>>> for w in words[:]: # Loop over a slice copy of the entire list.
... if len(w) > 6: ... words.insert(0, w)
...
>>> words
['defenestrate', 'cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']

With for w in words:, the example would attempt to create an infinite list, inserting

defenestrate over and over again. 4.3 The range() Function

If you do need to iterate over a sequence of numbers, the built-in function range() comes in handy. It
generates arithmetic progressions:
>>> for i in range(5):
... print(i)
...
0
1
2
3
4
The given end point is never part of the generated sequence; range(10) generates 10 values, the legal
indices for items of a sequence of length 10. It is possible to let the range start at another number, or to
specify a different increment (even negative; sometimes this is called the ‘step’):
range(5, 10)
5, 6, 7, 8, 9

range(0, 10,
3) 0, 3, 6,
9

range(-10, -100, -30)

-10, -40, -70

To iterate over the indices of a sequence, you can combine range() and len() as follows:
>>> a = ['Mary', 'had', 'a', 'little', 'lamb'] >>> for i in
range(len(a)):
... print(i, a[i]) ...
0 Mary
1 had
2 a
3 little
4 lamb
In most such cases, however, it is convenient to use the enumerate() function, see Looping
Techniques.
A strange thing happens if you just print a range:
>>> print(range(10))

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range(0, 10)

In many ways the object returned by range() behaves as if it is a list, but in fact it isn’t. It is an object
which returns the successive items of the desired sequence when you iterate over it, but it doesn’t really
make the list, thus saving space.
We say such an object is iterable, that is, suitable as a target for functions and constructs that expect
something from which they can obtain successive items until the supply is exhausted. We have seen that
the for statement is such an iterator. The function list() is another; it creates lists from iterables:
>>> list(range(5))
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]

Later we will see more functions that return iterables and take iterables as argument.

4.4 break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops

The break statement, like in C, breaks out of the innermost enclosing for or while loop. Loop
statements may have an else clause; it is executed when the loop terminates through exhaustion of the
list (with for) or when the condition becomes false (with while), but not when the loop is terminated
by a break statement. This is exemplified by the following loop, which searches for prime numbers:
>>> for n in range(2, 10):
... for x in range(2, n):
... if n % x == 0:
... print(n, 'equals', x, '*', n//x)
... break
... else:
... # loop fell through without finding a factor
... print(n, 'is a prime number')
...
2 is a prime number
3 is a prime number
4 equals 2 * 2
5 is a prime number
6 equals 2 * 3
7 is a prime number
8 equals 2 * 4
9 equals 3 * 3
(Yes, this is the correct code. Look closely: the else clause belongs to the for loop, not the if
statement.)
When used with a loop, the else clause has more in common with the else clause of a try
statement than it does that of if statements: a try statement’s else clause runs when no exception
occurs, and a loop’s else clause runs when no break occurs. For more on the try statement and
exceptions, see Handling Exceptions.
The continue statement, also borrowed from C, continues with the next iteration of the loop:
>>> for num in range(2, 10):
... if num % 2 == 0:
... print("Found an even number", num)
... continue
... print("Found a number", num)

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Found an even number 2

(continues on next page)

4.4. break and continue Statements, and else Clauses on Loops

(continued from previous page)
Found a number 3
Found an even number 4
Found a number 5
Found an even number 6
Found a number 7
Found an even number 8

Found a number 9

4.5 pass Statements

The pass statement does nothing. It can be used when a statement is required syntactically but the
program requires no action. For example:
>>> while True:
... pass # Busy-wait for keyboard interrupt (Ctrl+C) ...

This is commonly used for creating minimal classes:

>>> class MyEmptyClass:
... pass
...
Another place pass can be used is as a place-holder for a function or conditional body when you are
working on new code, allowing you to keep thinking at a more abstract level. The pass is silently
ignored:
>>> def initlog(*args):
... pass # Remember to implement this!
...
4.6 Defining Functions
We can create a function that writes the Fibonacci series to an arbitrary boundary:
>>> def fib(n):# write Fibonacci series up to n
... """Print a Fibonacci series up to n."""
... a, b = 0, 1 ... while a < n:
... print(a, end=' ')
... a, b = b, a+b
... print()
...
>>> # Now call the function we just defined:
... fib(2000)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597

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The keyword def introduces a function definition. It must be followed by the function name and the
parenthesized list of formal parameters. The statements that form the body of the function start at the next
line, and must be indented.
The first statement of the function body can optionally be a string literal; this string literal is the function’s
documentation string, or docstring. (More about docstrings can be found in the section Documentation
Strings.) There are tools which use docstrings to automatically produce online or printed documentation,
or to let the user interactively browse through code; it’s good practice to include docstrings in code that
you write, so make a habit of it.
The execution of a function introduces a new symbol table used for the local variables of the function.
More precisely, all variable assignments in a function store the value in the local symbol table; whereas
variable references first look in the local symbol table, then in the local symbol tables of enclosing
functions, then in the global symbol table, and finally in the table of built-in names. Thus, global variables
cannot be directly assigned a value within a function (unless named in a global statement), although
they may be referenced.
The actual parameters (arguments) to a function call are introduced in the local symbol table of the called
function when it is called; thus, arguments are passed using call by value (where the value is always an
object reference, not the value of the object).1 When a function calls another function, a new local symbol
table is created for that call.
A function definition introduces the function name in the current symbol table. The value of the function
name has a type that is recognized by the interpreter as a user-defined function. This value can be assigned
to another name which can then also be used as a function. This serves as a general renaming mechanism:
>>> fib
<function fib at 10042ed0>
>>> f = fib
>>> f(100)
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89
Coming from other languages, you might object that fib is not a function but a procedure since it
doesn’t return a value. In fact, even functions without a return statement do return a value, albeit a
rather boring one. This value is called None (it’s a built-in name). Writing the value None is normally
suppressed by the interpreter if it would be the only value written. You can see it if you really want to
using print():
>>> fib(0)
>>> print(fib(0))
None

It is simple to write a function that returns a list of the numbers of the Fibonacci series, instead of printing
it:
>>> def fib2(n): # return Fibonacci series up to n
... """Return a list containing the Fibonacci series up to n."""
... result = [] ...
a, b = 0, 1 ... while
a < n:
... result.append(a) # see below
... a, b = b, a+b ...
return result
...
>>> f100 = fib2(100) # call it
>>> f100 # write the result
[0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89]

This example, as usual, demonstrates some new Python features:

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• The return statement returns with a value from a function. return without an expression
argument returns None. Falling off the end of a function also returns None.
• The statement result.append(a) calls a method of the list object result. A method is a
function that ‘belongs’ to an object and is named obj.methodname, where obj is some object
(this may be an
1 Actually, call by object reference would be a better description,
since if a mutable object is passed, the caller will see any changes the callee makes to it (items inserted into a list).

4.6. Defining Functions expression), and methodname is the name of a method that is defined by
the object’s type. Different types define different methods. Methods of different types may have
the same name without causing ambiguity. (It is possible to define your own object types and
methods, using classes, see Classes) The method append() shown in the example is defined
for list objects; it adds a new element at the end of the list. In this example it is equivalent to
result = result + [a], but more efficient.

4.7 More on Defining Functions

It is also possible to define functions with a variable number of arguments. There are three forms, which
can be combined.

4.7.1 Default Argument Values

The most useful form is to specify a default value for one or more arguments. This creates a function that
can be called with fewer arguments than it is defined to allow. For example:
def ask_ok(prompt, retries=4, reminder='Please try again!'):
while True:
ok = input(prompt) if ok in
('y', 'ye', 'yes'):
return True
if ok in ('n', 'no', 'nop', 'nope'):
return False
retries = retries - 1 if retries < 0:
raise ValueError('invalid user
response') print(reminder)

This function can be called in several ways:

• giving only the mandatory argument: ask_ok('Do you really want to quit?')

• giving one of the optional arguments: ask_ok('OK to overwrite the file?',

2)

• or even giving all arguments: ask_ok('OK to overwrite the file?', 2,

'Come on, only yes or no!')
This example also introduces the in keyword. This tests whether or not a sequence contains a certain
value. The default values are evaluated at the point of function definition in the defining scope, so that

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i = 5

def f(arg=i):
print(arg)

i = 6 f()

will print 5.
Important warning: The default value is evaluated only once. This makes a difference when the default
is a mutable object such as a list, dictionary, or instances of most classes. For example, the following
function accumulates the arguments passed to it on subsequent calls:
def f(a, L=[]):
L.append(a)
return L

print(f(1)) print(f(2))
print(f(3))

This will print

[1]
[1, 2]
[1, 2, 3]

If you don’t want the default to be shared between subsequent calls, you can write the function like this
instead:
def f(a, L=None):
if L is
None: L
= []
L.append(a) return
L

4.7.2 Keyword Arguments

Functions can also be called using keyword arguments of the form kwarg=value. For instance, the
following function:
def parrot(voltage, state='a stiff', action='voom', type='Norwegian Blue'):
print("-- This parrot wouldn't", action,
end=' ') print("if you put", voltage, "volts
through it.") print("-- Lovely plumage,
the", type) print("-- It's", state, "!")

accepts one required argument (voltage) and three optional arguments (state, action, and type).
This function can be called in any of the following ways:
parrot(1000) # 1 positional argument
parrot(voltage=1000) # 1 keyword argument
parrot(voltage=1000000, action='VOOOOOM') # 2 keyword arguments
parrot(action='VOOOOOM', voltage=1000000) # 2 keyword arguments
parrot('a million', 'bereft of life', 'jump') # 3 positional arguments
parrot('a thousand', state='pushing up the # 1 positional, 1 keyword
daisies')
but all the following calls would be invalid:
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parrot() # required argument missing

parrot(voltage=5.0, # non-keyword argument after a keyword argument

'dead') parrot(110, voltage=220) # duplicate value for the same
argument parrot(actor='John # unknown keyword argument
Cleese')

In a function call, keyword arguments must follow positional arguments. All the keyword arguments
passed must match one of the arguments accepted by the function (e.g. actor is not a valid argument for
the parrot function), and their order is not important. This also includes non-optional arguments (e.g.
parrot(voltage=1000) is valid too). No argument may receive a value more than once. Here’s an
example that fails due to this restriction:

4.7. More on Defining Functions

>>> def function(a): ...
pass
...
>>> function(0, a=0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: function() got multiple values for keyword argument 'a'

When a final formal parameter of the form **name is present, it receives a dictionary (see
typesmapping) containing all keyword arguments except for those corresponding to a formal parameter.
This may be combined with a formal parameter of the form *name (described in the next subsection)
which receives a tuple containing the positional arguments beyond the formal parameter list. (*name
must occur before **name.) For example, if we define a function like this:
def cheeseshop(kind, *arguments,
**keywords): print("-- Do you have any",
kind, "?") print("-- I'm sorry, we're all
out of", kind) for arg in arguments:
print(arg)
print("-" * 40) for
kw in keywords:
print(kw, ":", keywords[kw])

It could be called like this:

cheeseshop("Limburger", "It's very runny,
sir.", "It's really very, VERY
runny, sir.", shopkeeper="Michael
Palin", client="John Cleese",
sketch="Cheese Shop Sketch")

and of course it would print:

-- Do you have any Limburger ?
-- I'm sorry, we're all out of Limburger It's very runny, sir.
It's really very, VERY runny, sir.
---------------------------------------shopkeeper :
Michael Palin client : John Cleese sketch : Cheese
Shop Sketch

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Note that the order in which the keyword arguments are printed is guaranteed to match the order in which
they were provided in the function call.

4.7.3 Arbitrary Argument Lists

Finally, the least frequently used option is to specify that a function can be called with an arbitrary number
of arguments. These arguments will be wrapped up in a tuple (see Tuples and Sequences). Before the
variable number of arguments, zero or more normal arguments may occur.
def write_multiple_items(file, separator, *args):
file.write(separator.join(args))

Normally, these variadic arguments will be last in the list of formal parameters, because they scoop up
all remaining input arguments that are passed to the function. Any formal parameters which occur after the
*args parameter are ‘keyword-only’ arguments, meaning that they can only be used as keywords rather
than positional arguments.
>>> def concat(*args, sep="/"): ... return sep.join(args) ...
>>> concat("earth", "mars", "venus")
'earth/mars/venus'
>>> concat("earth", "mars", "venus", sep=".")
'earth.mars.venus'

4.7.4 Unpacking Argument Lists

The reverse situation occurs when the arguments are already in a list or tuple but need to be unpacked for a
function call requiring separate positional arguments. For instance, the built-in range() function
expects separate start and stop arguments. If they are not available separately, write the function call with
the *-operator to unpack the arguments out of a list or tuple:
>>> 6)) # normal call with separate arguments
list(range(3,

[3, 4, 5]
>>> args = [3, 6]
>>> list(range(*args))
[3, 4, 5]
# call with arguments unpacked from a list
In the same fashion, dictionaries can deliver keyword arguments with the **-operator:
>>> def parrot(voltage, state='a stiff', action='voom'):
... print("-- This parrot wouldn't", action, end=' ')
... print("if you put", voltage, "volts through it.", end=' ')
... print("E's", state, "!") ...
>>> d = {"voltage": "four million", "state": "bleedin' demised", "action":
"VOOM"} >>> parrot(**d)
-- This parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it. E's bleedin'
demised !

4.7.5 Lambda Expressions

Small anonymous functions can be created with the lambda keyword. This function returns the sum of
its two arguments: lambda a, b: a+b. Lambda functions can be used wherever function objects are
required. They are syntactically restricted to a single expression. Semantically, they are just syntactic sugar
for a normal function definition. Like nested function definitions, lambda functions can reference variables
from the containing scope:
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>>> def make_incrementor(n): ... return lambda x: x + n ...

>>> f = make_incrementor(42)
>>> f(0)
42
>>> f(1)
43

The above example uses a lambda expression to return a function. Another use is to pass a small function
as an argument:

4.7. More on Defining Functions

>>> pairs = [(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three'), (4, 'four')] >>>
pairs.sort(key=lambda pair: pair[1])
>>> pairs
[(4, 'four'), (1, 'one'), (3, 'three'), (2, 'two')]

4.7.6 Documentation Strings

Here are some conventions about the content and formatting of documentation strings.
The first line should always be a short, concise summary of the object’s purpose. For brevity, it should not
explicitly state the object’s name or type, since these are available by other means (except if the name
happens to be a verb describing a function’s operation). This line should begin with a capital letter and end
with a period.
If there are more lines in the documentation string, the second line should be blank, visually separating the
summary from the rest of the description. The following lines should be one or more paragraphs
describing the object’s calling conventions, its side effects, etc.
The Python parser does not strip indentation from multi-line string literals in Python, so tools that process
documentation have to strip indentation if desired. This is done using the following convention. The first
non-blank line after the first line of the string determines the amount of indentation for the entire
documentation string. (We can’t use the first line since it is generally adjacent to the string’s opening
quotes so its indentation is not apparent in the string literal.) Whitespace “equivalent” to this indentation
is then stripped from the start of all lines of the string. Lines that are indented less should not occur, but if
they occur all their leading whitespace should be stripped. Equivalence of whitespace should be tested
after expansion of tabs (to 8 spaces, normally). Here is an example of a multi-line docstring:
>>> def my_function():
... """Do nothing, but document it.
...
... No, really, it doesn't do anything.
... """ ...
pass
... >>>
print(my_function.__doc__)
Do nothing, but document
it.

No, really, it doesn't do anything.

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4.7.7 Function Annotations

Function annotations are completely optional metadata information about the types used by user-defined
functions (see PEP 3107 and PEP 484 for more information).
Annotations are stored in the __annotations__ attribute of the function as a dictionary and have no
effect on any other part of the function. Parameter annotations are defined by a colon after the parameter
name, followed by an expression evaluating to the value of the annotation. Return annotations are defined
by a literal ->, followed by an expression, between the parameter list and the colon denoting the end of
the def statement. The following example has a positional argument, a keyword argument, and the return
value annotated:
>>> def f(ham: str, eggs: str = 'eggs') -> str:
... print("Annotations:", f.__annotations__)
(continues on next page)
(continued from previous page)
... print("Arguments:", ham, eggs) ... return ham + ' and ' + eggs ...
>>> f('spam')
Annotations: {'ham': <class 'str'>, 'return': <class 'str'>, 'eggs':
<class 'str'>}
Arguments: spam eggs
'spam and eggs'

4.8 Intermezzo: Coding Style

Now that you are about to write longer, more complex pieces of Python, it is a good time to talk about
coding style. Most languages can be written (or more concise, formatted) in different styles; some are
more readable than others. Making it easy for others to read your code is always a good idea, and adopting
a nice coding style helps tremendously for that.
For Python, PEP 8 has emerged as the style guide that most projects adhere to; it promotes a very readable
and eye-pleasing coding style. Every Python developer should read it at some point; here are the most
important points extracted for you:
• Use 4-space indentation, and no tabs.
4 spaces are a good compromise between small indentation (allows greater nesting depth) and large
indentation (easier to read). Tabs introduce confusion, and are best left out.
• Wrap lines so that they don’t exceed 79 characters.
This helps users with small displays and makes it possible to have several code files side-by-side on
larger displays.
• Use blank lines to separate functions and classes, and larger blocks of code inside functions.
• When possible, put comments on a line of their own.
• Use docstrings.
• Use spaces around operators and after commas, but not directly inside bracketing constructs: a =
f(1, 2) + g(3, 4).
• Name your classes and functions consistently; the convention is to use CamelCase for classes and
lower_case_with_underscores for functions and methods. Always use self as the name
for the first method argument (see A First Look at Classes for more on classes and methods). • Don’t
use fancy encodings if your code is meant to be used in international environments. Python’s
default, UTF-8, or even plain ASCII work best in any case.

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DATA STRUCTURES

This chapter describes some things you’ve learned about already in more detail, and adds some new things
as well.

5.1 More on Lists

The list data type has some more methods. Here are all of the methods of list objects: list.append(x)
Add an item to the end of the list. Equivalent to a[len(a):] = [x].
list.extend(iterable)
Extend the list by appending all the items from the iterable. Equivalent to a[len(a):] =

iterable. list.insert(i, x)
Insert an item at a given position. The first argument is the index of the element before which to
insert, so a.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and a.insert(len(a), x) is
equivalent to a.append(x).
list.remove(x)
Remove the first item from the list whose value is equal to x. It raises a ValueError if there is no
such item.

list.pop([i ])
Remove the item at the given position in the list, and return it. If no index is specified, a.pop()
removes and returns the last item in the list. (The square brackets around the i in the method signature
denote that the parameter is optional, not that you should type square brackets at that position. You will
see this notation frequently in the Python Library Reference.) list.clear()
Remove all items from the list. Equivalent to del a[:].

list.index(x[, start[, end ]])

Return zero-based index in the list of the first item whose value is equal to x. Raises a
ValueError if there is no such item.
The optional arguments start and end are interpreted as in the slice notation and are used to limit the
search to a particular subsequence of the list. The returned index is computed relative to the beginning of
the full sequence rather than the start argument. list.count(x) Return the number of times x appears
in the list. list.sort(key=None, reverse=False)
Sort the items of the list in place (the arguments can be used for sort customization, see sorted()
for their explanation). list.reverse()
Reverse the elements of the list in place.
list.copy()
Return a shallow copy of the list. Equivalent to a[:].
An example that uses most of the list methods:

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>>> fruits = ['orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'banana', 'kiwi', 'apple',

'banana'] >>> fruits.count('apple')
2
>>> fruits.count('tangerine')
0
>>> fruits.index('banana')
3
>>> fruits.index('banana', 4) # Find next banana starting a
position 4 6
>>> fruits.reverse()
>>> fruits
['banana', 'apple', 'kiwi', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange']
>>> fruits.append('grape')
>>> fruits
['banana', 'apple', 'kiwi', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange',
'grape'] >>> fruits.sort()
>>> fruits
['apple', 'apple', 'banana', 'banana', 'grape', 'kiwi', 'orange',
'pear'] >>> fruits.pop() 'pear'

You might have noticed that methods like insert, remove or sort that only modify the list have no
return value printed – they return the default None.4 This is a design principle for all mutable data
structures in Python.

5.1.1 Using Lists as Stacks

The list methods make it very easy to use a list as a stack, where the last element added is the first element
retrieved (“last-in, first-out”). To add an item to the top of the stack, use append(). To retrieve an item
from the top of the stack, use pop() without an explicit index. For example:
>>> stack = [3, 4, 5]
>>> stack.append(6)
>>> stack.append(7)
>>> stack
[3, 4, 5, 6, 7] >>> stack.pop()
7
>>> stack
[3, 4, 5, 6] >>>
stack.pop()
6
>>> stack.pop()
5
>>> stack
[3, 4]
5.1.2 Using Lists as Queues
It is also possible to use a list as a queue, where the first element added is the first element retrieved
(“first-in, first-out”); however, lists are not efficient for this purpose. While appends and pops from the end
of list are fast, doing inserts or pops from the beginning of a list is slow (because all of the other elements
have to be shifted by one).

4
Other languages may return the mutated object, which allows method chaining, such as d-
>insert("a")->remove("b")->sort();.
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To implement a queue, use collections.deque which was designed to have fast appends and pops
from both ends. For example:
>>> from collections import deque

>>> queue = deque(["Eric", "John", "Michael"])

>>> queue.append("Terry") # Terry arrives
>>> queue.append("Graham") # Graham arrives
>>> queue.popleft() # The first to arrive now leaves
'Eric'
>>> queue.popleft() # The second to arrive now leaves
'John'
>>> queue # Remaining queue in order of arrival
deque(['Michael', 'Terry', 'Graham'])
5.1.3 List Comprehensions
List comprehensions provide a concise way to create lists. Common applications are to make new lists
where each element is the result of some operations applied to each member of another sequence or
iterable, or to create a subsequence of those elements that satisfy a certain condition. For example,
assume we want to create a list of squares, like:
>>> squares = []
>>> for x in range(10):
... squares.append(x**
2) ...
>>> squares
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]
Note that this creates (or overwrites) a variable named x that still exists after the loop completes. We can
calculate the list of squares without any side effects using:
squares = list(map(lambda x: x**2, range(10)))

or, equivalently:
squares = [x**2 for x in range(10)]

which is more concise and readable.

A list comprehension consists of brackets containing an expression followed by a for clause, then zero
or more for or if clauses. The result will be a new list resulting from evaluating the expression in the
context of the for and if clauses which follow it. For example, this listcomp combines the elements of
two lists if they are not equal:
>>> [(x, y) for x in [1,2,3] for y in [3,1,4] if x != y] [(1,
3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 1), (2, 4), (3,
1), (3, 4)]

and it’s equivalent to:

5.1. More on Lists

>>> combs = []
>>> for x in [1,2,3]:
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... for y in [3,1,4]:

... if x != y: ... combs.append((x, y))

...
>>> combs
[(1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 1), (2, 4), (3, 1), (3, 4)]

Note how the order of the for and if statements is the same in both these snippets.
If the expression is a tuple (e.g. the (x, y) in the previous example), it must be parenthesized.

>>> vec = [-4, -2, 0, 2, 4]

>>> # create a new list with the values doubled
>>> [x*2 for x in vec]
[-8, -4, 0, 4, 8]
>>> # filter the list to exclude negative numbers
>>> [x for x in vec if x >= 0]
[0, 2, 4]
>>> # apply a function to all the elements
>>> [abs(x) for x in vec]
[4, 2, 0, 2, 4]
>>> # call a method on each element
>>> freshfruit = [' banana', ' loganberry ', 'passion fruit ']
>>> [weapon.strip() for weapon in freshfruit]
['banana', 'loganberry', 'passion fruit']
>>> # create a list of 2-tuples like (number, square)
>>> [(x, x**2) for x in range(6)]
[(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 4), (3, 9), (4, 16), (5, 25)]
>>> # the tuple must be parenthesized, otherwise an error is raised
>>> [x, x**2 for x in range(6)] File
"<stdin>", line 1, in <module> [x,
x**2 for x in range(6)]
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> # flatten a list using a listcomp with two 'for'
>>> vec = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
>>> [num for elem in vec for num in elem]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
List comprehensions can contain complex expressions and nested functions:

>>> from math import pi

>>> [str(round(pi, i)) for i in range(1, 6)] ['3.1', '3.14',
'3.142', '3.1416', '3.14159']

5.1.4 Nested List Comprehensions

The initial expression in a list comprehension can be any arbitrary expression, including another list
comprehension.
Consider the following example of a 3x4 matrix implemented as a list of 3 lists of length 4:
>>> matrix = [
... [1, 2, 3, 4],
... [5, 6, 7, 8],
(continues on next page)

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(continued from previous page)

... [9, 10, 11, 12],
... ]

The following list comprehension will transpose rows and columns:

>>> [[row[i] for row in matrix] for i in range(4)]
[[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7, 11], [4, 8, 12]]

As we saw in the previous section, the nested listcomp is evaluated in the context of the for that
follows it, so this example is equivalent to:
>>> transposed = []
>>> for i in range(4):
... transposed.append([row[i] for row in matrix])
...
>>> transposed
[[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7, 11], [4, 8, 12]]

which, in turn, is the same as:

>>> transposed = []
>>> for i in range(4):
... # the following 3 lines implement the nested listcomp
... transposed_row = [] ... for row in matrix:
... transposed_row.append(row[i]) ...
transposed.append(transposed_ro
w) ...
>>> transposed
[[1, 5, 9], [2, 6, 10], [3, 7, 11], [4, 8, 12]]

In the real world, you should prefer built-in functions to complex flow statements. The zip() function
would do a great job for this use case:
>>> list(zip(*matrix))
[(1, 5, 9), (2, 6, 10), (3, 7, 11), (4, 8, 12)]

See Unpacking Argument Lists for details on the asterisk in this line.

5.2 The del statement

There is a way to remove an item from a list given its index instead of its value: the del statement. This
differs from the pop() method which returns a value. The del statement can also be used to remove
slices from a list or clear the entire list (which we did earlier by assignment of an empty list to the slice).
For example:
>>> a = [-1, 1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]
>>> del a[0]
>>> a
[1, 66.25, 333, 333, 1234.5]
>>> del a[2:4]
>>> a

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