Python 

is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy

emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation.[33]
Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms,
including structured (particularly procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. It is
often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.[34][35]
Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC
programming language and first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0.[36] Python 2.0 was released
in 2000. Python 3.0, released in 2008, was a major revision not completely backward-
compatible with earlier versions. Python 2.7.18, released in 2020, was the last release of
Python 2.[37]
Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages.[38][39][40][41]

History

The designer of Python, Guido van Rossum, at OSCON 2006

Main article: History of Python

Python was conceived in the late 1980s[42] by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde &
Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands as a successor to the ABC programming language, which
was inspired by SETL,[43] capable of exception handling and interfacing with
the Amoeba operating system.[13] Its implementation began in December 1989.[44] Van Rossum
shouldered sole responsibility for the project, as the lead developer, until 12 July 2018, when he
announced his "permanent vacation" from his responsibilities as Python's "benevolent dictator for
life", a title the Python community bestowed upon him to reflect his long-term commitment as the
project's chief decision-maker.[45] In January 2019, active Python core developers elected a five-
member Steering Council to lead the project.[46][47]
Python 2.0 was released on 16 October 2000, with many major new features such as list
comprehensions, cycle-detecting garbage collection, reference counting, and Unicode support.
[48]
 Python 3.0, released on 3 December 2008, with many of its major features backported to
Python 2.6.x[49] and 2.7.x. Releases of Python 3 include the  2to3  utility, which automates the
translation of Python 2 code to Python 3.[50]
Python 2.7's end-of-life was initially set for 2015, then postponed to 2020 out of concern that a
large body of existing code could not easily be forward-ported to Python 3.[51][52] No further security
patches or other improvements will be released for it.[53][54] Currently only 3.7 and later are
supported. In 2021, Python 3.9.2 and 3.8.8 were expedited[55] as all versions of Python (including
2.7[56]) had security issues leading to possible remote code execution[57] and web cache poisoning.
[58]

In 2022, Python 3.10.4 and 3.9.12 were expedited[59] and 3.8.13, and 3.7.13, because of many
security issues.[60] When Python 3.9.13 was released in May 2022, it was announced that the 3.9
series (joining the older series 3.8 and 3.7) would only receive security fixes in the future.[61] On
September 7, 2022, four new releases were made due to a potential denial-of-service attack:
3.10.7, 3.9.14, 3.8.14, and 3.7.14.[62][63]
As of November 2022, Python 3.11.0 is the current stable release. Notable changes from 3.10
include increased program execution speed and improved error reporting.[64]

Design philosophy and features

Python is a multi-paradigm programming language. Object-oriented programming and structured
programming are fully supported, and many of their features support functional programming
and aspect-oriented programming (including metaprogramming[65] and metaobjects).[66] Many
other paradigms are supported via extensions, including design by contract[67][68] and logic
programming.[69]
Python uses dynamic typing and a combination of reference counting and a cycle-detecting
garbage collector for memory management.[70] It uses dynamic name resolution (late binding),
which binds method and variable names during program execution.
Its design offers some support for functional programming in the Lisp tradition. It
has  filter , map and reduce  functions; list comprehensions, dictionaries, sets,
and generator expressions.[71] The standard library has two modules
( itertools  and  functools ) that implement functional tools borrowed
from Haskell and Standard ML.[72]
Its core philosophy is summarized in the document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which
includes aphorisms such as:[73]

 Beautiful is better than ugly.

 Explicit is better than implicit.
 Simple is better than complex.
 Complex is better than complicated.
 Readability counts.
Rather than building all of its functionality into its core, Python was designed to be
highly extensible via modules. This compact modularity has made it particularly popular as a
means of adding programmable interfaces to existing applications. Van Rossum's vision of a
small core language with a large standard library and easily extensible interpreter stemmed from
his frustrations with ABC, which espoused the opposite approach.[42]
Python strives for a simpler, less-cluttered syntax and grammar while giving developers a choice
in their coding methodology. In contrast to Perl's "there is more than one way to do it" motto,
Python embraces a "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it"
philosophy.[73] Alex Martelli, a Fellow at the Python Software Foundation and Python book author,
wrote: "To describe something as 'clever' is not considered a compliment in the Python
culture."[74]
Python's developers strive to avoid premature optimization and reject patches to non-critical
parts of the CPython reference implementation that would offer marginal increases in speed at
the cost of clarity.[75] When speed is important, a Python programmer can move time-critical
functions to extension modules written in languages such as C; or use PyPy, a just-in-time
compiler. Cython is also available, which translates a Python script into C and makes direct C-
level API calls into the Python interpreter.
Python's developers aim for it to be fun to use. This is reflected in its name—a tribute to the
British comedy group Monty Python[76]—and in occasionally playful approaches to tutorials and
reference materials, such as the use of the terms "spam" and "eggs" (a reference to a Monty
Python sketch) in examples, instead of the often-used "foo" and "bar".[77][78]
A common neologism in the Python community is pythonic, which has a wide range of meanings
related to program style. "Pythonic" code may use Python idioms well, be natural or show fluency
in the language, or conform with Python's minimalist philosophy and emphasis on readability.
Code that is difficult to understand or reads like a rough transcription from another programming
language is called unpythonic.[79][80]

Syntax and semantics

Main article: Python syntax and semantics
Python is meant to be an easily readable language. Its formatting is visually uncluttered and
often uses English keywords where other languages use punctuation. Unlike many other
languages, it does not use curly brackets to delimit blocks, and semicolons after statements are
allowed but rarely used. It has fewer syntactic exceptions and special cases than C or Pascal.[81]

Indentation
Main article: Python syntax and semantics §  Indentation
Python uses whitespace indentation, rather than curly brackets or keywords, to delimit blocks. An
increase in indentation comes after certain statements; a decrease in indentation signifies the
end of the current block.[82] Thus, the program's visual structure accurately represents its
semantic structure.[83] This feature is sometimes termed the off-side rule. Some other languages
use indentation this way; but in most, indentation has no semantic meaning. The recommended
indent size is four spaces.[84]

Statements and control flow

Python's statements include:

 The assignment statement, using a single equals sign  =

 The  if  statement, which conditionally executes a block of code, along
with  else  and  elif  (a contraction of else-if)
 The  for  statement, which iterates over an iterable object, capturing each element to a local
variable for use by the attached block
 The  while  statement, which executes a block of code as long as its condition is true
 The  try  statement, which allows exceptions raised in its attached code block to be caught
and handled by  except  clauses (or new syntax  except*  in Python 3.11 for exception
groups[85]); it also ensures that clean-up code in a  finally  block is always run regardless of
how the block exits
 The  raise  statement, used to raise a specified exception or re-raise a caught exception
 The  class  statement, which executes a block of code and attaches its local namespace to
a class, for use in object-oriented programming
 The  def  statement, which defines a function or method
 The  with  statement, which encloses a code block within a context manager (for example,
acquiring a lock before it is run, then releasing the lock; or opening and closing a file),
allowing resource-acquisition-is-initialization (RAII)-like behavior and replacing a common
try/finally idiom[86]
 The  break  statement, which exits a loop
 The  continue  statement, which skips the rest of the current iteration and continues with the
next
 The  del  statement, which removes a variable—deleting the reference from the name to the
value, and producing an error if the variable is referred to before it is redefined
 The  pass  statement, serving as a NOP, syntactically needed to create an empty code block
 The  assert  statement, used in debugging to check for conditions that should apply
 The  yield  statement, which returns a value from a generator function (and also an
operator); used to implement coroutines
 The  return  statement, used to return a value from a function
 The  import  and  from  statements, used to import modules whose functions or variables
can be used in the current program
The assignment statement ( = ) binds a name as a reference to a separate, dynamically
allocated object. Variables may subsequently be rebound at any time to any object. In Python, a
variable name is a generic reference holder without a fixed data type; however, it always refers
to some object with a type. This is called dynamic typing—in contrast to statically-
typed languages, where each variable may contain only a value of a certain type.
Python does not support tail call optimization or first-class continuations, and, according to Van
Rossum, it never will.[87][88] However, better support for coroutine-like functionality is provided by
extending Python's generators.[89] Before 2.5, generators were lazy iterators; data was passed
unidirectionally out of the generator. From Python 2.5 on, it is possible to pass data back into a
generator function; and from version 3.3, it can be passed through multiple stack levels.[90]

Expressions
Python's expressions include:

 The  + ,  - , and  *  operators for mathematical addition, subtraction, and multiplication are
similar to other languages, but the behavior of division differs. There are two types of
divisions in Python: floor division (or integer division)  //  and floating-point / division.
[91]
 Python uses the  **  operator for exponentiation.
 Python uses the  +  operator for string concatenation. Python uses the  *  operator for
duplicating a string a specified number of times.
 The  @  infix operator. It is intended to be used by libraries such as NumPy for matrix
multiplication.[92][93]
 The syntax  := , called the "walrus operator", was introduced in Python 3.8. It assigns values
to variables as part of a larger expression.[94]
 In Python,  ==  compares by value. Python's  is  operator may be used to compare object
identities (comparison by reference), and comparisons may be chained—for
example,  a <= b <= c .
 Python uses  and ,  or , and  not  as boolean operators.
 Python has a type of expression called a list comprehension, as well as a more general
expression called a generator expression.[71]
 Anonymous functions are implemented using lambda expressions; however, there may be
only one expression in each body.
 Conditional expressions are written as  x if c else y [95] (different in order of operands
from the  c ? x : y  operator common to many other languages).
 Python makes a distinction between lists and tuples. Lists are written as  [1, 2, 3] , are
mutable, and cannot be used as the keys of dictionaries (dictionary keys must
be immutable in Python). Tuples, written as  (1, 2, 3) , are immutable and thus can be
used as keys of dictionaries, provided all of the tuple's elements are immutable.
The  +  operator can be used to concatenate two tuples, which does not directly modify their
contents, but produces a new tuple containing the elements of both. Thus, given the
variable  t  initially equal to  (1, 2, 3) , executing  t = t + (4, 5)  first
evaluates  t + (4, 5) , which yields  (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) , which is then assigned back to  t
—thereby effectively "modifying the contents" of  t  while conforming to the immutable nature
of tuple objects. Parentheses are optional for tuples in unambiguous contexts.[96]
 Python features sequence unpacking where multiple expressions, each evaluating to
anything that can be assigned (to a variable, writable property, etc.) are associated in an
identical manner to that forming tuple literals—and, as a whole, are put on the left-hand side
of the equal sign in an assignment statement. The statement expects an iterable object on
the right-hand side of the equal sign that produces the same number of values as the
provided writable expressions; when iterated through them, it assigns each of the produced
values to the corresponding expression on the left.[97]
 Python has a "string format" operator  %  that functions analogously to  printf  format strings
in C—e.g.  "spam=%s eggs=%d" % ("blah", 2)  evaluates to  "spam=blah eggs=2" . In
Python 2.6+ and 3+, this was supplemented by the  format()  method of the  str  class,
e.g.  "spam={0} eggs={1}".format("blah", 2) . Python 3.6 added "f-
strings":  spam = "blah"; eggs = 2; f'spam={spam} eggs={eggs}' .[98]
 Strings in Python can be concatenated by "adding" them (with the same operator as for
adding integers and floats), e.g.  "spam" + "eggs"  returns  "spameggs" . If strings contain
numbers, they are added as strings rather than integers, e.g.  "2" + "2"  returns  "22" .
 Python has various string literals:
o Delimited by single or double quote marks; unlike in Unix shells, Perl, and Perl-
influenced languages, single and double quote marks work the same. Both use the
backslash ( \ ) as an escape character. String interpolation became available in
Python 3.6 as "formatted string literals".[98]
o Triple-quoted (beginning and ending with three single or double quote marks), which
may span multiple lines and function like here documents in shells, Perl, and Ruby.
o Raw string varieties, denoted by prefixing the string literal with  r . Escape sequences are
not interpreted; hence raw strings are useful where literal backslashes are common,
such as regular expressions and Windows-style paths. (Compare " @ -quoting" in C#.)
 Python has array index and array slicing expressions in lists, denoted
as  a[key] ,  a[start:stop]  or  a[start:stop:step] . Indexes are zero-based, and
negative indexes are relative to the end. Slices take elements from the start index up to, but
not including, the stop index. The third slice parameter called step or stride, allows elements
to be skipped and reversed. Slice indexes may be omitted—for example,  a[:]  returns a
copy of the entire list. Each element of a slice is a shallow copy.
In Python, a distinction between expressions and statements is rigidly enforced, in contrast to
languages such as Common Lisp, Scheme, or Ruby. This leads to duplicating some functionality.
For example:

 List comprehensions vs.  for -loops

 Conditional expressions vs.  if  blocks
 The  eval()  vs.  exec()  built-in functions (in Python 2,  exec  is a statement); the former is
for expressions, the latter is for statements
Statements cannot be a part of an expression—so list and other comprehensions or lambda
expressions, all being expressions, cannot contain statements. A particular case is that an
assignment statement such as  a = 1  cannot form part of the conditional expression of a
conditional statement. This has the advantage of avoiding a classic C error of mistaking an
assignment operator  =  for an equality operator  ==  in conditions:  if (c = 1) { ... }  is
syntactically valid (but probably unintended) C code, but  if c = 1: ...  causes a syntax error
in Python.

Methods
Methods on objects are functions attached to the object's class; the
syntax  instance.method(argument)  is, for normal methods and functions, syntactic
sugar for  Class.method(instance, argument) . Python methods have an
explicit  self  parameter to access instance data, in contrast to the implicit self (or  this ) in
some other object-oriented programming languages (e.g., C++, Java, Objective-C, Ruby).
[99]
 Python also provides methods, often called dunder methods (due to their names beginning
and ending with double-underscores), to allow user-defined classes to modify how they are
handled by native operations including length, comparison, in arithmetic operations and type
conversion.[100]