Glossary¶

>>>

The default Python prompt of the interactive shell. Often seen for code examples which can be executed interactively in the interpreter.

...

Can refer to:

The default Python prompt of the interactive shell when entering the code for an indented code block, when within a pair of matching left and right delimiters (parentheses, square brackets, curly braces or triple quotes), or after specifying a decorator.
The Ellipsis built-in constant.

2to3

A tool that tries to convert Python 2.x code to Python 3.x code by handling most of the incompatibilities which can be detected by parsing the source and traversing the parse tree.

2to3 is available in the standard library as lib2to3; a standalone entry point is provided as Tools/scripts/2to3. See 2to3 — Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation.

abstract base class

Abstract base classes complement duck-typing by providing a way to define interfaces when other techniques like hasattr() would be clumsy or subtly wrong (for example with magic methods). ABCs introduce virtual subclasses, which are classes that don’t inherit from a class but are still recognized by isinstance() and issubclass(); see the abc module documentation. Python comes with many built-in ABCs for data structures (in the collections.abc module), numbers (in the numbers module), streams (in the io module), import finders and loaders (in the importlib.abc module). You can create your own ABCs with the abc module.

annotation

A label associated with a variable, a class attribute or a function parameter or return value, used by convention as a type hint.

Annotations of local variables cannot be accessed at runtime, but annotations of global variables, class attributes, and functions are stored in the __annotations__ special attribute of modules, classes, and functions, respectively.

See variable annotation, function annotation, PEP 484 and PEP 526, which describe this functionality. Also see Annotations Best Practices for best practices on working with annotations.

argument

A value passed to a function (or method) when calling the function. There are two kinds of argument:

keyword argument: an argument preceded by an identifier (e.g. name=) in a function call or passed as a value in a dictionary preceded by **. For example, 3 and 5 are both keyword arguments in the following calls to complex():
```
complex(real=3, imag=5)
complex(**{'real': 3, 'imag': 5})
```
positional argument: an argument that is not a keyword argument. Positional arguments can appear at the beginning of an argument list and/or be passed as elements of an iterable preceded by *. For example, 3 and 5 are both positional arguments in the following calls:
```
complex(3, 5)
complex(*(3, 5))
```

Arguments are assigned to the named local variables in a function body. See the Calls section for the rules governing this assignment. Syntactically, any expression can be used to represent an argument; the evaluated value is assigned to the local variable.

See also the parameter glossary entry, the FAQ question on the difference between arguments and parameters, and PEP 362.

asynchronous context manager

An object which controls the environment seen in an async with statement by defining __aenter__() and __aexit__() methods. Introduced by PEP 492.

asynchronous generator

A function which returns an asynchronous generator iterator. It looks like a coroutine function defined with async def except that it contains yield expressions for producing a series of values usable in an async for loop.

Usually refers to an asynchronous generator function, but may refer to an asynchronous generator iterator in some contexts. In cases where the intended meaning isn’t clear, using the full terms avoids ambiguity.

An asynchronous generator function may contain await expressions as well as async for, and async with statements.

asynchronous generator iterator

An object created by a asynchronous generator function.

This is an asynchronous iterator which when called using the __anext__() method returns an awaitable object which will execute the body of the asynchronous generator function until the next yield expression.

Each yield temporarily suspends processing, remembering the location execution state (including local variables and pending try-statements). When the asynchronous generator iterator effectively resumes with another awaitable returned by __anext__(), it picks up where it left off. See PEP 492 and PEP 525.

asynchronous iterable

An object, that can be used in an async for statement. Must return an asynchronous iterator from its __aiter__() method. Introduced by PEP 492.

asynchronous iterator

An object that implements the __aiter__() and __anext__() methods. __anext__ must return an awaitable object. async for resolves the awaitables returned by an asynchronous iterator’s __anext__() method until it raises a StopAsyncIteration exception. Introduced by PEP 492.

attribute

A value associated with an object which is usually referenced by name using dotted expressions. For example, if an object o has an attribute a it would be referenced as o.a.

It is possible to give an object an attribute whose name is not an identifier as defined by Identifiers and keywords, for example using setattr(), if the object allows it. Such an attribute will not be accessible using a dotted expression, and would instead need to be retrieved with getattr().

awaitable

An object that can be used in an await expression. Can be a coroutine or an object with an __await__() method. See also PEP 492.

BDFL

Benevolent Dictator For Life, a.k.a. Guido van Rossum, Python’s creator.

binary file

A file object able to read and write bytes-like objects. Examples of binary files are files opened in binary mode ('rb', 'wb' or 'rb+'), sys.stdin.buffer, sys.stdout.buffer, and instances of io.BytesIO and gzip.GzipFile.

See also text file for a file object able to read and write str objects.

borrowed reference

In Python’s C API, a borrowed reference is a reference to an object. It does not modify the object reference count. It becomes a dangling pointer if the object is destroyed. For example, a garbage collection can remove the last strong reference to the object and so destroy it.

Calling Py_INCREF() on the borrowed reference is recommended to convert it to a strong reference in-place, except when the object cannot be destroyed before the last usage of the borrowed reference. The Py_NewRef() function can be used to create a new strong reference.

bytes-like object

An object that supports the Buffer Protocol and can export a C-contiguous buffer. This includes all bytes, bytearray, and array.array objects, as well as many common memoryview objects. Bytes-like objects can be used for various operations that work with binary data; these include compression, saving to a binary file, and sending over a socket.

Some operations need the binary data to be mutable. The documentation often refers to these as “read-write bytes-like objects”. Example mutable buffer objects include bytearray and a memoryview of a bytearray. Other operations require the binary data to be stored in immutable objects (“read-only bytes-like objects”); examples of these include bytes and a memoryview of a bytes object.

bytecode

Python source code is compiled into bytecode, the internal representation of a Python program in the CPython interpreter. The bytecode is also cached in .pyc files so that executing the same file is faster the second time (recompilation from source to bytecode can be avoided). This “intermediate language” is said to run on a virtual machine that executes the machine code corresponding to each bytecode. Do note that bytecodes are not expected to work between different Python virtual machines, nor to be stable between Python releases.

A list of bytecode instructions can be found in the documentation for the dis module.

callback

A subroutine function which is passed as an argument to be executed at some point in the future.

class

A template for creating user-defined objects. Class definitions normally contain method definitions which operate on instances of the class.

class variable

A variable defined in a class and intended to be modified only at class level (i.e., not in an instance of the class).

coercion

The implicit conversion of an instance of one type to another during an operation which involves two arguments of the same type. For example, int(3.15) converts the floating point number to the integer 3, but in 3+4.5, each argument is of a different type (one int, one float), and both must be converted to the same type before they can be added or it will raise a TypeError. Without coercion, all arguments of even compatible types would have to be normalized to the same value by the programmer, e.g., float(3)+4.5 rather than just 3+4.5.

complex number

An extension of the familiar real number system in which all numbers are expressed as a sum of a real part and an imaginary part. Imaginary numbers are real multiples of the imaginary unit (the square root of -1), often written i in mathematics or j in engineering. Python has built-in support for complex numbers, which are written with this latter notation; the imaginary part is written with a j suffix, e.g., 3+1j. To get access to complex equivalents of the math module, use cmath. Use of complex numbers is a fairly advanced mathematical feature. If you’re not aware of a need for them, it’s almost certain you can safely ignore them.

context manager

An object which controls the environment seen in a with statement by defining __enter__() and __exit__() methods. See PEP 343.

context variable

A variable which can have different values depending on its context. This is similar to Thread-Local Storage in which each execution thread may have a different value for a variable. However, with context variables, there may be several contexts in one execution thread and the main usage for context variables is to keep track of variables in concurrent asynchronous tasks. See contextvars.

contiguous

A buffer is considered contiguous exactly if it is either C-contiguous or Fortran contiguous. Zero-dimensional buffers are C and Fortran contiguous. In one-dimensional arrays, the items must be laid out in memory next to each other, in order of increasing indexes starting from zero. In multidimensional C-contiguous arrays, the last index varies the fastest when visiting items in order of memory address. However, in Fortran contiguous arrays, the first index varies the fastest.

coroutine

Coroutines are a more generalized form of subroutines. Subroutines are entered at one point and exited at another point. Coroutines can be entered, exited, and resumed at many different points. They can be implemented with the async def statement. See also PEP 492.

coroutine function

A function which returns a coroutine object. A coroutine function may be defined with the async def statement, and may contain await, async for, and async with keywords. These were introduced by PEP 492.

CPython

The canonical implementation of the Python programming language, as distributed on python.org. The term “CPython” is used when necessary to distinguish this implementation from others such as Jython or IronPython.

decorator

A function returning another function, usually applied as a function transformation using the @wrapper syntax. Common examples for decorators are classmethod() and staticmethod().

The decorator syntax is merely syntactic sugar, the following two function definitions are semantically equivalent:

def f(arg):
    ...
f = staticmethod(f)

@staticmethod
def f(arg):
    ...

The same concept exists for classes, but is less commonly used there. See the documentation for function definitions and class definitions for more about decorators.

descriptor

Any object which defines the methods __get__(), __set__(), or __delete__(). When a class attribute is a descriptor, its special binding behavior is triggered upon attribute lookup. Normally, using a.b to get, set or delete an attribute looks up the object named b in the class dictionary for a, but if b is a descriptor, the respective descriptor method gets called. Understanding descriptors is a key to a deep understanding of Python because they are the basis for many features including functions, methods, properties, class methods, static methods, and reference to super classes.

For more information about descriptors’ methods, see Implementing Descriptors or the Descriptor How To Guide.

dictionary

An associative array, where arbitrary keys are mapped to values. The keys can be any object with __hash__() and __eq__() methods. Called a hash in Perl.

dictionary comprehension

A compact way to process all or part of the elements in an iterable and return a dictionary with the results. results = {n: n ** 2 for n in range(10)} generates a dictionary containing key n mapped to value n ** 2. See Displays for lists, sets and dictionaries.

dictionary view

The objects returned from dict.keys(), dict.values(), and dict.items() are called dictionary views. They provide a dynamic view on the dictionary’s entries, which means that when the dictionary changes, the view reflects these changes. To force the dictionary view to become a full list use list(dictview). See Dictionary view objects.

docstring

A string literal which appears as the first expression in a class, function or module. While ignored when the suite is executed, it is recognized by the compiler and put into the __doc__ attribute of the enclosing class, function or module. Since it is available via introspection, it is the canonical place for documentation of the object.

duck-typing

A programming style which does not look at an object’s type to determine if it has the right interface; instead, the method or attribute is simply called or used (“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”) By emphasizing interfaces rather than specific types, well-designed code improves its flexibility by allowing polymorphic substitution. Duck-typing avoids tests using type() or isinstance(). (Note, however, that duck-typing can be complemented with abstract base classes.) Instead, it typically employs hasattr() tests or EAFP programming.

EAFP

Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This common Python coding style assumes the existence of valid keys or attributes and catches exceptions if the assumption proves false. This clean and fast style is characterized by the presence of many try and except statements. The technique contrasts with the LBYL style common to many other languages such as C.

expression

A piece of syntax which can be evaluated to some value. In other words, an expression is an accumulation of expression elements like literals, names, attribute access, operators or function calls which all return a value. In contrast to many other languages, not all language constructs are expressions. There are also statements which cannot be used as expressions, such as while. Assignments are also statements, not expressions.

extension module

A module written in C or C++, using Python’s C API to interact with the core and with user code.

f-string

String literals prefixed with 'f' or 'F' are commonly called “f-strings” which is short for formatted string literals. See also PEP 498.

file object

An object exposing a file-oriented API (with methods such as read() or write()) to an underlying resource. Depending on the way it was created, a file object can mediate access to a real on-disk file or to another type of storage or communication device (for example standard input/output, in-memory buffers, sockets, pipes, etc.). File objects are also called file-like objects or streams.

There are actually three categories of file objects: raw binary files, buffered binary files and text files. Their interfaces are defined in the io module. The canonical way to create a file object is by using the open() function.

file-like object

A synonym for file object.

filesystem encoding and error handler

Encoding and error handler used by Python to decode bytes from the operating system and encode Unicode to the operating system.

The filesystem encoding must guarantee to successfully decode all bytes below 128. If the file system encoding fails to provide this guarantee, API functions can raise UnicodeError.

The sys.getfilesystemencoding() and sys.getfilesystemencodeerrors() functions can be used to get the filesystem encoding and error handler.

The filesystem encoding and error handler are configured at Python startup by the PyConfig_Read() function: see filesystem_encoding and filesystem_errors members of PyConfig.

See also the locale encoding.

finder

An object that tries to find the loader for a module that is being imported.

Since Python 3.3, there are two types of finder: meta path finders for use with sys.meta_path, and path entry finders for use with sys.path_hooks.

See PEP 302, PEP 420 and PEP 451 for much more detail.

floor division

Mathematical division that rounds down to nearest integer. The floor division operator is //. For example, the expression 11 // 4 evaluates to 2 in contrast to the 2.75 returned by float true division. Note that (-11) // 4 is -3 because that is -2.75 rounded downward. See PEP 238.

function

A series of statements which returns some value to a caller. It can also be passed zero or more arguments which may be used in the execution of the body. See also parameter, method, and the Function definitions section.

function annotation

An annotation of a function parameter or return value.

Function annotations are usually used for type hints: for example, this function is expected to take two int arguments and is also expected to have an int return value:

def sum_two_numbers(a: int, b: int) -> int:
   return a + b

Function annotation syntax is explained in section Function definitions.

See variable annotation and PEP 484, which describe this functionality. Also see Annotations Best Practices for best practices on working with annotations.

__future__

A future statement, from __future__ import <feature>, directs the compiler to compile the current module using syntax or semantics that will become standard in a future release of Python. The __future__ module documents the possible values of feature. By importing this module and evaluating its variables, you can see when a new feature was first added to the language and when it will (or did) become the default:

>>> import __future__
>>> __future__.division
_Feature((2, 2, 0, 'alpha', 2), (3, 0, 0, 'alpha', 0), 8192)

garbage collection

The process of freeing memory when it is not used anymore. Python performs garbage collection via reference counting and a cyclic garbage collector that is able to detect and break reference cycles. The garbage collector can be controlled using the gc module.

generator

A function which returns a generator iterator. It looks like a normal function except that it contains yield expressions for producing a series of values usable in a for-loop or that can be retrieved one at a time with the next() function.

Usually refers to a generator function, but may refer to a generator iterator in some contexts. In cases where the intended meaning isn’t clear, using the full terms avoids ambiguity.

generator iterator

An object created by a generator function.

Each yield temporarily suspends processing, remembering the location execution state (including local variables and pending try-statements). When the generator iterator resumes, it picks up where it left off (in contrast to functions which start fresh on every invocation).

generator expression

An expression that returns an iterator. It looks like a normal expression followed by a for clause defining a loop variable, range, and an optional if clause. The combined expression generates values for an enclosing function:

>>> sum(i*i for i in range(10))         # sum of squares 0, 1, 4, ... 81
285

generic function

A function composed of multiple functions implementing the same operation for different types. Which implementation should be used during a call is determined by the dispatch algorithm.

See also the single dispatch glossary entry, the functools.singledispatch() decorator, and PEP 443.

generic type

A type that can be parameterized; typically a container class such as list or dict. Used for type hints and annotations.

For more details, see generic alias types, PEP 483, PEP 484, PEP 585, and the typing module.

GIL

See global interpreter lock.

global interpreter lock

The mechanism used by the CPython interpreter to assure that only one thread executes Python bytecode at a time. This simplifies the CPython implementation by making the object model (including critical built-in types such as dict) implicitly safe against concurrent access. Locking the entire interpreter makes it easier for the interpreter to be multi-threaded, at the expense of much of the parallelism afforded by multi-processor machines.

However, some extension modules, either standard or third-party, are designed so as to release the GIL when doing computationally intensive tasks such as compression or hashing. Also, the GIL is always released when doing I/O.

Past efforts to create a “free-threaded” interpreter (one which locks shared data at a much finer granularity) have not been successful because performance suffered in the common single-processor case. It is believed that overcoming this performance issue would make the implementation much more complicated and therefore costlier to maintain.

hash-based pyc

A bytecode cache file that uses the hash rather than the last-modified time of the corresponding source file to determine its validity. See Cached bytecode invalidation.

hashable

An object is hashable if it has a hash value which never changes during its lifetime (it needs a __hash__() method), and can be compared to other objects (it needs an __eq__() method). Hashable objects which compare equal must have the same hash value.

Hashability makes an object usable as a dictionary key and a set member, because these data structures use the hash value internally.

Most of Python’s immutable built-in objects are hashable; mutable containers (such as lists or dictionaries) are not; immutable containers (such as tuples and frozensets) are only hashable if their elements are hashable. Objects which are instances of user-defined classes are hashable by default. They all compare unequal (except with themselves), and their hash value is derived from their id().

IDLE

An Integrated Development and Learning Environment for Python. IDLE is a basic editor and interpreter environment which ships with the standard distribution of Python.

immutable

An object with a fixed value. Immutable objects include numbers, strings and tuples. Such an object cannot be altered. A new object has to be created if a different value has to be stored. They play an important role in places where a constant hash value is needed, for example as a key in a dictionary.

import path

A list of locations (or path entries) that are searched by the path based finder for modules to import. During import, this list of locations usually comes from sys.path, but for subpackages it may also come from the parent package’s __path__ attribute.

importing

The process by which Python code in one module is made available to Python code in another module.

importer

An object that both finds and loads a module; both a finder and loader object.

interactive

Python has an interactive interpreter which means you can enter statements and expressions at the interpreter prompt, immediately execute them and see their results. Just launch python with no arguments (possibly by selecting it from your computer’s main menu). It is a very powerful way to test out new ideas or inspect modules and packages (remember help(x)).

interpreted

Python is an interpreted language, as opposed to a compiled one, though the distinction can be blurry because of the presence of the bytecode compiler. This means that source files can be run directly without explicitly creating an executable which is then run. Interpreted languages typically have a shorter development/debug cycle than compiled ones, though their programs generally also run more slowly. See also interactive.

interpreter shutdown

When asked to shut down, the Python interpreter enters a special phase where it gradually releases all allocated resources, such as modules and various critical internal structures. It also makes several calls to the garbage collector. This can trigger the execution of code in user-defined destructors or weakref callbacks. Code executed during the shutdown phase can encounter various exceptions as the resources it relies on may not function anymore (common examples are library modules or the warnings machinery).

The main reason for interpreter shutdown is that the __main__ module or the script being run has finished executing.

iterable

An object capable of returning its members one at a time. Examples of iterables include all sequence types (such as list, str, and tuple) and some non-sequence types like dict, file objects, and objects of any classes you define with an __iter__() method or with a __getitem__() method that implements Sequence semantics.

Iterables can be used in a for loop and in many other places where a sequence is needed (zip(), map(), …). When an iterable object is passed as an argument to the built-in function iter(), it returns an iterator for the object. This iterator is good for one pass over the set of values. When using iterables, it is usually not necessary to call iter() or deal with iterator objects yourself. The for statement does that automatically for you, creating a temporary unnamed variable to hold the iterator for the duration of the loop. See also iterator, sequence, and generator.

iterator

An object representing a stream of data. Repeated calls to the iterator’s __next__() method (or passing it to the built-in function next()) return successive items in the stream. When no more data are available a StopIteration exception is raised instead. At this point, the iterator object is exhausted and any further calls to its __next__() method just raise StopIteration again. Iterators are required to have an __iter__() method that returns the iterator object itself so every iterator is also iterable and may be used in most places where other iterables are accepted. One notable exception is code which attempts multiple iteration passes. A container object (such as a list) produces a fresh new iterator each time you pass it to the iter() function or use it in a for loop. Attempting this with an iterator will just return the same exhausted iterator object used in the previous iteration pass, making it appear like an empty container.

More information can be found in Iterator Types.

CPython implementation detail: CPython does not consistently apply the requirement that an iterator define __iter__().

key function

A key function or collation function is a callable that returns a value used for sorting or ordering. For example, locale.strxfrm() is used to produce a sort key that is aware of locale specific sort conventions.

A number of tools in Python accept key functions to control how elements are ordered or grouped. They include min(), max(), sorted(), list.sort(), heapq.merge(), heapq.nsmallest(), heapq.nlargest(), and itertools.groupby().

There are several ways to create a key function. For example. the str.lower() method can serve as a key function for case insensitive sorts. Alternatively, a key function can be built from a lambda expression such as lambda r: (r[0], r[2]). Also, the operator module provides three key function constructors: attrgetter(), itemgetter(), and methodcaller(). See the Sorting HOW TO for examples of how to create and use key functions.

keyword argument

See argument.

lambda

An anonymous inline function consisting of a single expression which is evaluated when the function is called. The syntax to create a lambda function is lambda [parameters]: expression

LBYL

Look before you leap. This coding style explicitly tests for pre-conditions before making calls or lookups. This style contrasts with the EAFP approach and is characterized by the presence of many if statements.

In a multi-threaded environment, the LBYL approach can risk introducing a race condition between “the looking” and “the leaping”. For example, the code, if key in mapping: return mapping[key] can fail if another thread removes key from mapping after the test, but before the lookup. This issue can be solved with locks or by using the EAFP approach.

locale encoding

On Unix, it is the encoding of the LC_CTYPE locale. It can be set with locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, new_locale).

On Windows, it is the ANSI code page (ex: cp1252).

locale.getpreferredencoding(False) can be used to get the locale encoding.

Python uses the filesystem encoding and error handler to convert between Unicode filenames and bytes filenames.

list

A built-in Python sequence. Despite its name it is more akin to an array in other languages than to a linked list since access to elements is O(1).

list comprehension

A compact way to process all or part of the elements in a sequence and return a list with the results. result = ['{:#04x}'.format(x) for x in range(256) if x % 2 == 0] generates a list of strings containing even hex numbers (0x..) in the range from 0 to 255. The if clause is optional. If omitted, all elements in range(256) are processed.

loader

An object that loads a module. It must define a method named load_module(). A loader is typically returned by a finder. See PEP 302 for details and importlib.abc.Loader for an abstract base class.

magic method

An informal synonym for special method.

mapping

A container object that supports arbitrary key lookups and implements the methods specified in the Mapping or MutableMapping abstract base classes. Examples include dict, collections.defaultdict, collections.OrderedDict and collections.Counter.

meta path finder

A finder returned by a search of sys.meta_path. Meta path finders are related to, but different from path entry finders.

See importlib.abc.MetaPathFinder for the methods that meta path finders implement.

metaclass

The class of a class. Class definitions create a class name, a class dictionary, and a list of base classes. The metaclass is responsible for taking those three arguments and creating the class. Most object oriented programming languages provide a default implementation. What makes Python special is that it is possible to create custom metaclasses. Most users never need this tool, but when the need arises, metaclasses can provide powerful, elegant solutions. They have been used for logging attribute access, adding thread-safety, tracking object creation, implementing singletons, and many other tasks.

More information can be found in Metaclasses.

method

A function which is defined inside a class body. If called as an attribute of an instance of that class, the method will get the instance object as its first argument (which is usually called self). See function and nested scope.

method resolution order

Method Resolution Order is the order in which base classes are searched for a member during lookup. See The Python 2.3 Method Resolution Order for details of the algorithm used by the Python interpreter since the 2.3 release.

module

An object that serves as an organizational unit of Python code. Modules have a namespace containing arbitrary Python objects. Modules are loaded into Python by the process of importing.

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