Strings: continuation lines, with a backslash can used; \n need to be included explicitly; spaces at the beginning of the next line are significant.
hello = "String continuing\ on and on\ and on and on…" print hello
In a raw string ("quotes" prefixed by "r"), escapes are not escape, continuation is honored but printed, newline is allowed.
hello2 = r"String continuing\ on and on" print hello2
Triple quotes will allow end of lines.
hello3 = «"String going to the next line»" print hello3
Slice notation: first number is beginning character, second number is ending character, not included; [:n] goes from beginning, [n:] goes to end, [:] gets all AND FORCES COPY negative indices are counted from the end; degenerate slices are handled gracefully.
mystr = 'alpha' print mystr[0],mystr[4],mystr[:2]
Strings are immutable! Can't assign to slices… But LISTS are mutable.
mylist = ['a','b','c'] mylist[0] = 'A' print mylist
Removing items, adding items…
mylist[0:1] = [] print mylist mylist[:0] = ['t'] print mylist mylist[4:5] = ['y']
or
mylist = mylist + ['y'] print mylist
The length function is len(str).
print len(mylist)
Control statements: iterate over list
for i in mylist: print i
iterate over indices of a sequence
for i in range(len(mylist)): print i, mylist[i]
range(n) generates list of n values starting from 0
print range(5)
for and while can have break, continue.
A string literal at the beginning of a function is its "docstring".
Global values are accessible from functions, but they cannot be assigned a value.
The value of a function name can be assigned to another name, that can then be used as a function.
Functions that do not return a value return "None".
The "in" keyword tests whether a sequence contains a value.
Functions can have default parameter value, which if mutable provide a method to implement static variables; can also use the keyword call notation "**name" will receive a dictionary with keyword arguments whose keyword does not correspond to a formal parameter; "*name" will receive a tuple containing the positional arguments beyond the formal parameter list; the "*args" notation can also be used to specify arbitrary number of arguments, or to unpack parameter lists when calling functions.
lambda forms "lambda a, b: a+b" are just syntactic sugar for a function definition.
pythontidbits
(/progtricks)
2005-02-15, 15:03
[edit]
© M. Vallisneri 2012 — last modified on 2010/01/29
Tantum in modicis, quantum in maximis