Glossary — Python 3.14.0 documentation 08.10.

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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 specify-
ing a decorator.

The three dots form of the Ellipsis object.

abstract base class

Abstract base classes complement duck-typing by providing a way to define inter-
«
faces 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.

annotate function
A function that can be called to retrieve the annotations of an object. This function is
accessible as the __annotate__ attribute of functions, classes, and modules. Anno-
tate functions are a subset of evaluate functions.

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 can be retrieved by calling
annotationlib.get_annotations() on modules, classes, and functions, respec-

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tively.

See variable annotation, function annotation, PEP 484, PEP 526, and PEP 649,
which describe this functionality. Also see Annotations Best Practices for best prac-
tices 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 position-
al 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 pro-

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ducing a series of values usable in an async for loop.

Usually refers to an asynchronous generator function, but may refer to an asyn-

chronous 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 an 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 genera-
tor function until the next yield expression.

Each yield temporarily suspends processing, remembering the execution state (in-
cluding local variables and pending try-statements). When the asynchronous gener-
ator 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 asyn-
chronous 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.

attached thread state

A thread state that is active for the current OS thread.

When a thread state is attached, the OS thread has access to the full Python C API
and can safely invoke the bytecode interpreter.

Unless a function explicitly notes otherwise, attempting to call the C API without an
attached thread state will result in a fatal error or undefined behavior. A thread state
can be attached and detached explicitly by the user through the C API, or implicitly

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by the runtime, including during blocking C calls and by the bytecode interpreter in
between calls.

On most builds of Python, having an attached thread state implies that the caller
holds the GIL for the current interpreter, so only one OS thread can have an attached
thread state at a given moment. In free-threaded builds of Python, threads can con-
currently hold an attached thread state, allowing for true parallelism of the bytecode
interpreter.

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 Names (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, where the code
using the object does not own the reference. It becomes a dangling pointer if the ob-
ject is destroyed. For example, a garbage collection can remove the last strong refer-
ence to the object and so destroy it.

Calling Py_INCREF() on the borrowed reference is recommended to convert it to a

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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 ma-
chines, nor to be stable between Python releases.

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

callable
A callable is an object that can be called, possibly with a set of arguments (see argu-
ment), with the following syntax:

callable(argument1, argument2, argumentN)

A function, and by extension a method, is a callable. An instance of a class that im-

plements the __call__() method is also a callable.

callback
A subroutine function which is passed as an argument to be executed at some point

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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).

closure variable
A free variable referenced from a nested scope that is defined in an outer scope
rather than being resolved at runtime from the globals or builtin namespaces. May be
explicitly defined with the nonlocal keyword to allow write access, or implicitly de-
fined if the variable is only being read.

For example, in the inner function in the following code, both x and print are free
variables, but only x is a closure variable:

def outer():
x = 0
def inner():
nonlocal x
x += 1
print(x)
return inner

Due to the codeobject.co_freevars attribute (which, despite its name, only in-
cludes the names of closure variables rather than listing all referenced free vari-
ables), the more general free variable term is sometimes used even when the intend-
ed meaning is to refer specifically to closure variables.

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 en-
gineering. 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

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them, it’s almost certain you can safely ignore them.

context
This term has different meanings depending on where and how it is used. Some
common meanings:

The temporary state or environment established by a context manager via a

with statement.
The collection of keyvalue bindings associated with a particular
contextvars.Context object and accessed via ContextVar objects. Also
see context variable.
A contextvars.Context object. Also see current context.

context management protocol

The __enter__() and __exit__() methods called by the with statement. See
PEP 343.

context manager
An object which implements the context management protocol and controls the envi-
ronment seen in a with statement. See PEP 343.

context variable
A variable whose value depends on which context is the current context. Values are
accessed via contextvars.ContextVar objects. Context variables are primarily
used to isolate state between concurrent asynchronous tasks.

contiguous
A buffer is considered contiguous exactly if it is either C-contiguous or Fortran con-
tiguous. 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 increas-
ing indexes starting from zero. In multidimensional C-contiguous arrays, the last in-
dex 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 re-
sumed at many different points. They can be implemented with the async def
statement. See also PEP 492.

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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 imple-
mentation from others such as Jython or IronPython.

current context
The context ( contextvars.Context object) that is currently used by ContextVar
objects to access (get or set) the values of context variables. Each thread has its own
current context. Frameworks for executing asynchronous tasks (see asyncio ) as-
sociate each task with a context which becomes the current context whenever the
task starts or resumes execution.

cyclic isolate
A subgroup of one or more objects that reference each other in a reference cycle,
but are not referenced by objects outside the group. The goal of the cyclic garbage
collector is to identify these groups and break the reference cycles so that the mem-
ory can be reclaimed.

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 docu-

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mentation 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 under-
standing 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 dic-
tionary with the results. results = {n: n ** 2 for n in range(10)} gener-
ates 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

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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 inter-
faces rather than specific types, well-designed code improves its flexibility by allow-
ing polymorphic substitution. Duck-typing avoids tests using type() or
isinstance() . (Note, however, that duck-typing can be complemented with ab-
stract base classes.) Instead, it typically employs hasattr() tests or EAFP pro-
gramming.

dunder
An informal short-hand for “double underscore”, used when talking about a special
method. For example, __init__ is often pronounced “dunder init”.

EAFP
Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This common Python coding style as-
sumes the existence of valid keys or attributes and catches exceptions if the as-
sumption 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.

evaluate function
A function that can be called to evaluate a lazily evaluated attribute of an object,
such as the value of type aliases created with the type statement.

expression
A piece of syntax which can be evaluated to some value. In other words, an expres-
sion 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 lan-
guages, not all language constructs are expressions. There are also statements
which cannot be used as expressions, such as while . Assignments are also state-
ments, 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
f-strings
String literals prefixed with f or F are commonly called “f-strings” which is short for
formatted string literals. See also PEP 498.

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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 sys-
tem 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.

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 Finders and loaders and importlib for much more detail.

floor division

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Mathematical division that rounds down to nearest integer. The floor division opera-
tor 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.

free threading
A threading model where multiple threads can run Python bytecode simultaneously
within the same interpreter. This is in contrast to the global interpreter lock which
allows only one thread to execute Python bytecode at a time. See PEP 703.

free variable
Formally, as defined in the language execution model, a free variable is any variable
used in a namespace which is not a local variable in that namespace. See closure
variable for an example. Pragmatically, due to the name of the
codeobject.co_freevars attribute, the term is also sometimes used as a syn-
onym for closure variable.

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 ex-
pected 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 An-
notations 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

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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 de-
fault:

>>> 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 execution state (in-
cluding local variables and pending try-statements). When the generator iterator re-
sumes, 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, ...

285

generic function

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A function composed of multiple functions implementing the same operation for dif-
ferent 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 exe-
cutes 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.

As of Python 3.13, the GIL can be disabled using the --disable-gil build configu-
ration. After building Python with this option, code must be run with -X gil=0 or
after setting the PYTHON_GIL=0 environment variable. This feature enables improved
performance for multi-threaded applications and makes it easier to use multi-core
CPUs efficiently. For more details, see PEP 703.

In prior versions of Python’s C API, a function might declare that it requires the GIL to
be held in order to use it. This refers to having an attached thread state.

hash-based pyc
A bytecode cache file that uses the hash rather than the last-modified time of the

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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 — Python
editor and shell is a basic editor and interpreter environment which ships with the
standard distribution of Python.

immortal
Immortal objects are a CPython implementation detail introduced in PEP 683.

If an object is immortal, its reference count is never modified, and therefore it is nev-
er deallocated while the interpreter is running. For example, True and None are im-
mortal in CPython.

Immortal objects can be identified via sys._is_immortal() , or via

PyUnstable_IsImmortal() in the C API.

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

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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 ex-
pressions at the interpreter prompt, immediately execute them and see their results.
Just launch python with no arguments (possibly by selecting it from your comput-
er’s main menu). It is a very powerful way to test out new ideas or inspect modules
and packages (remember help(x) ). For more on interactive mode, see Interactive
Mode.

interpreted
Python is an interpreted language, as opposed to a compiled one, though the dis-
tinction 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 inter-
nal 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 exe-
cuted 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.

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iterable
An object capable of returning its members one at a time. Examples of iterables in-
clude 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 auto-
matically 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 in-
stead. 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 ob-
ject (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 re-
turn 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 require-
ment that an iterator define __iter__() . And also please note that the free-thread-
ing CPython does not guarantee the thread-safety of iterator operations.

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

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aware of locale specific sort conventions.

A number of tools in Python accept key functions to control how elements are or-
dered 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, operator.attrgetter() , operator.itemgetter() , and
operator.methodcaller() are three key function constructors. 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 charac-
terized by the presence of many if statements.

In a multi-threaded environment, the LBYL approach can risk introducing a race con-
dition 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.

lexical analyzer
Formal name for the tokenizer; see token.

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

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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 the exec_module() and
create_module() methods to implement the Loader interface. A loader is typically
returned by a finder. See also:

Finders and loaders

importlib.abc.Loader
PEP 302

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" ).

On Android and VxWorks, Python uses "utf-8" as the locale encoding.

locale.getencoding() can be used to get the locale encoding.

See also the filesystem encoding and error handler.

magic method
An informal synonym for special method.

mapping
A container object that supports arbitrary key lookups and implements the methods
specified in the collections.abc.Mapping or
collections.abc.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,

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but different from path entry finders.

See importlib.abc.MetaPathFinder for the methods that meta path finders im-
plement.

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 de-
fault implementation. What makes Python special is that it is possible to create cus-
tom metaclasses. Most users never need this tool, but when the need arises, meta-
classes can provide powerful, elegant solutions. They have been used for logging
attribute access, adding thread-safety, tracking object creation, implementing sin-
gletons, 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 mem-
ber 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.

See also package.

module spec
A namespace containing the import-related information used to load a module. An
instance of importlib.machinery.ModuleSpec .

See also Module specs.

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MRO
See method resolution order.

mutable
Mutable objects can change their value but keep their id() . See also immutable.

named tuple
The term “named tuple” applies to any type or class that inherits from tuple and
whose indexable elements are also accessible using named attributes. The type or
class may have other features as well.

Several built-in types are named tuples, including the values returned by
time.localtime() and os.stat() . Another example is sys.float_info :

>>> sys.float_info[1] # indexed access

1024
>>> sys.float_info.max_exp # named field access
1024
>>> isinstance(sys.float_info, tuple) # kind of tuple
True

Some named tuples are built-in types (such as the above examples). Alternatively, a
named tuple can be created from a regular class definition that inherits from tuple
and that defines named fields. Such a class can be written by hand, or it can be cre-
ated by inheriting typing.NamedTuple , or with the factory function
collections.namedtuple() . The latter techniques also add some extra methods
that may not be found in hand-written or built-in named tuples.

namespace
The place where a variable is stored. Namespaces are implemented as dictionaries.
There are the local, global and built-in namespaces as well as nested namespaces in
objects (in methods). Namespaces support modularity by preventing naming con-
flicts. For instance, the functions builtins.open and os.open() are distinguished
by their namespaces. Namespaces also aid readability and maintainability by making
it clear which module implements a function. For instance, writing random.seed()
or itertools.islice() makes it clear that those functions are implemented by
the random and itertools modules, respectively.

namespace package
A package which serves only as a container for subpackages. Namespace packages

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may have no physical representation, and specifically are not like a regular package
because they have no __init__.py file.

Namespace packages allow several individually installable packages to have a com-

mon parent package. Otherwise, it is recommended to use a regular package.

For more information, see PEP 420 and Namespace packages.

See also module.

nested scope
The ability to refer to a variable in an enclosing definition. For instance, a function
defined inside another function can refer to variables in the outer function. Note that
nested scopes by default work only for reference and not for assignment. Local vari-
ables both read and write in the innermost scope. Likewise, global variables read and
write to the global namespace. The nonlocal allows writing to outer scopes.

new-style class
Old name for the flavor of classes now used for all class objects. In earlier Python
versions, only new-style classes could use Python’s newer, versatile features like
__slots__ , descriptors, properties, __getattribute__() , class methods, and
static methods.

object
Any data with state (attributes or value) and defined behavior (methods). Also the
ultimate base class of any new-style class.

optimized scope
A scope where target local variable names are reliably known to the compiler when
the code is compiled, allowing optimization of read and write access to these names.
The local namespaces for functions, generators, coroutines, comprehensions, and
generator expressions are optimized in this fashion. Note: most interpreter optimiza-
tions are applied to all scopes, only those relying on a known set of local and nonlo-
cal variable names are restricted to optimized scopes.

package
A Python module which can contain submodules or recursively, subpackages. Tech-
nically, a package is a Python module with a __path__ attribute.

See also regular package and namespace package.

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parameter
A named entity in a function (or method) definition that specifies an argument (or in
some cases, arguments) that the function can accept. There are five kinds of para-
meter:

positional-or-keyword: specifies an argument that can be passed either posi-

tionally or as a keyword argument. This is the default kind of parameter, for ex-
ample foo and bar in the following:

def func(foo, bar=None): ...

positional-only: specifies an argument that can be supplied only by position.

Positional-only parameters can be defined by including a / character in the pa-
rameter list of the function definition after them, for example posonly1 and
posonly2 in the following:

def func(posonly1, posonly2, /, positional_or_keyword): ...

keyword-only: specifies an argument that can be supplied only by keyword.

Keyword-only parameters can be defined by including a single var-positional
parameter or bare * in the parameter list of the function definition before them,
for example kw_only1 and kw_only2 in the following:

def func(arg, *, kw_only1, kw_only2): ...

var-positional: specifies that an arbitrary sequence of positional arguments can

be provided (in addition to any positional arguments already accepted by other
parameters). Such a parameter can be defined by prepending the parameter
name with * , for example args in the following:

def func(*args, **kwargs): ...

var-keyword: specifies that arbitrarily many keyword arguments can be provid-

ed (in addition to any keyword arguments already accepted by other parame-
ters). Such a parameter can be defined by prepending the parameter name with
** , for example kwargs in the example above.

Parameters can specify both optional and required arguments, as well as default val-
ues for some optional arguments.

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See also the argument glossary entry, the FAQ question on the difference between
arguments and parameters, the inspect.Parameter class, the Function definitions
section, and PEP 362.

path entry
A single location on the import path which the path based finder consults to find
modules for importing.

path entry finder

A finder returned by a callable on sys.path_hooks (i.e. a path entry hook) which
knows how to locate modules given a path entry.

See importlib.abc.PathEntryFinder for the methods that path entry finders

implement.

path entry hook

A callable on the sys.path_hooks list which returns a path entry finder if it knows
how to find modules on a specific path entry.

path based finder

One of the default meta path finders which searches an import path for modules.

path-like object
An object representing a file system path. A path-like object is either a str or bytes
object representing a path, or an object implementing the os.PathLike protocol. An
object that supports the os.PathLike protocol can be converted to a str or bytes
file system path by calling the os.fspath() function; os.fsdecode() and
os.fsencode() can be used to guarantee a str or bytes result instead, respec-
tively. Introduced by PEP 519.

PEP
Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design document providing information to
the Python community, or describing a new feature for Python or its processes or
environment. PEPs should provide a concise technical specification and a rationale
for proposed features.

PEPs are intended to be the primary mechanisms for proposing major new features,
for collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting the design deci-
sions that have gone into Python. The PEP author is responsible for building consen-

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sus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions.

See PEP 1.

portion
A set of files in a single directory (possibly stored in a zip file) that contribute to a
namespace package, as defined in PEP 420.

positional argument
See argument.

provisional API
A provisional API is one which has been deliberately excluded from the standard li-
brary’s backwards compatibility guarantees. While major changes to such interfaces
are not expected, as long as they are marked provisional, backwards incompatible
changes (up to and including removal of the interface) may occur if deemed neces-
sary by core developers. Such changes will not be made gratuitously – they will oc-
cur only if serious fundamental flaws are uncovered that were missed prior to the in-
clusion of the API.

Even for provisional APIs, backwards incompatible changes are seen as a “solution of
last resort” - every attempt will still be made to find a backwards compatible resolu-
tion to any identified problems.

This process allows the standard library to continue to evolve over time, without
locking in problematic design errors for extended periods of time. See PEP 411 for
more details.

provisional package
See provisional API.

Python 3000
Nickname for the Python 3.x release line (coined long ago when the release of ver-
sion 3 was something in the distant future.) This is also abbreviated “Py3k”.

Pythonic
An idea or piece of code which closely follows the most common idioms of the
Python language, rather than implementing code using concepts common to other
languages. For example, a common idiom in Python is to loop over all elements of an
iterable using a for statement. Many other languages don’t have this type of con-

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struct, so people unfamiliar with Python sometimes use a numerical counter instead:

for i in range(len(food)):
print(food[i])

As opposed to the cleaner, Pythonic method:

for piece in food:

print(piece)

qualified name
A dotted name showing the “path” from a module’s global scope to a class, function
or method defined in that module, as defined in PEP 3155. For top-level functions
and classes, the qualified name is the same as the object’s name:

>>> class C:
... class D:
... def meth(self):
... pass
...
>>> C.__qualname__
'C'
>>> C.D.__qualname__
'C.D'
>>> C.D.meth.__qualname__
'C.D.meth'

When used to refer to modules, the fully qualified name means the entire dotted path
to the module, including any parent packages, e.g. email.mime.text :

>>> import email.mime.text

>>> email.mime.text.__name__
'email.mime.text'

reference count
The number of references to an object. When the reference count of an object drops
to zero, it is deallocated. Some objects are immortal and have reference counts that
are never modified, and therefore the objects are never deallocated. Reference
counting is generally not visible to Python code, but it is a key element of the
CPython implementation. Programmers can call the sys.getrefcount() function
to return the reference count for a particular object.

In CPython, reference counts are not considered to be stable or well-defined values;

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the number of references to an object, and how that number is affected by Python
code, may be different between versions.

regular package
A traditional package, such as a directory containing an __init__.py file.

See also namespace package.

REPL
An acronym for the “read–eval–print loop”, another name for the interactive inter-
preter shell.

__slots__
A declaration inside a class that saves memory by pre-declaring space for instance
attributes and eliminating instance dictionaries. Though popular, the technique is
somewhat tricky to get right and is best reserved for rare cases where there are large
numbers of instances in a memory-critical application.

sequence
An iterable which supports efficient element access using integer indices via the
__getitem__() special method and defines a __len__() method that returns the
length of the sequence. Some built-in sequence types are list , str , tuple , and
bytes . Note that dict also supports __getitem__() and __len__() , but is con-
sidered a mapping rather than a sequence because the lookups use arbitrary hash-
able keys rather than integers.

The collections.abc.Sequence abstract base class defines a much richer inter-

face that goes beyond just __getitem__() and __len__() , adding count() ,
index() , __contains__() , and __reversed__() . Types that implement this ex-
panded interface can be registered explicitly using register() . For more docu-
mentation on sequence methods generally, see Common Sequence Operations.

set comprehension
A compact way to process all or part of the elements in an iterable and return a set
with the results. results = {c for c in 'abracadabra' if c not in
'abc'} generates the set of strings {'r', 'd'} . See Displays for lists, sets and
dictionaries.

single dispatch

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A form of generic function dispatch where the implementation is chosen based on

the type of a single argument.

slice
An object usually containing a portion of a sequence. A slice is created using the
subscript notation, [] with colons between numbers when several are given, such as
in variable_name[1:3:5] . The bracket (subscript) notation uses slice objects
internally.

soft deprecated
A soft deprecated API should not be used in new code, but it is safe for already exist-
ing code to use it. The API remains documented and tested, but will not be enhanced
further.

Soft deprecation, unlike normal deprecation, does not plan on removing the API and
will not emit warnings.

See PEP 387: Soft Deprecation.

special method
A method that is called implicitly by Python to execute a certain operation on a type,
such as addition. Such methods have names starting and ending with double under-
scores. Special methods are documented in Special method names.

standard library
The collection of packages, modules and extension modules distributed as a part of
the official Python interpreter package. The exact membership of the collection may
vary based on platform, available system libraries, or other criteria. Documentation
can be found at The Python Standard Library.

See also sys.stdlib_module_names for a list of all possible standard library mod-
ule names.

statement
A statement is part of a suite (a “block” of code). A statement is either an expression
or one of several constructs with a keyword, such as if , while or for .

static type checker

An external tool that reads Python code and analyzes it, looking for issues such as
incorrect types. See also type hints and the typing module.

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stdlib
An abbreviation of standard library.

strong reference
In Python’s C API, a strong reference is a reference to an object which is owned by
the code holding the reference. The strong reference is taken by calling
Py_INCREF() when the reference is created and released with Py_DECREF() when
the reference is deleted.

The Py_NewRef() function can be used to create a strong reference to an object.

Usually, the Py_DECREF() function must be called on the strong reference before
exiting the scope of the strong reference, to avoid leaking one reference.

See also borrowed reference.

t-string
t-strings
String literals prefixed with t or T are commonly called “t-strings” which is short for
template string literals.

text encoding
A string in Python is a sequence of Unicode code points (in range U+0000 –
U+10FFFF ). To store or transfer a string, it needs to be serialized as a sequence of
bytes.

Serializing a string into a sequence of bytes is known as “encoding”, and recreating

the string from the sequence of bytes is known as “decoding”.

There are a variety of different text serialization codecs, which are collectively re-
ferred to as “text encodings”.

text file
A file object able to read and write str objects. Often, a text file actually accesses a
byte-oriented datastream and handles the text encoding automatically. Examples of
text files are files opened in text mode ( 'r' or 'w' ), sys.stdin , sys.stdout , and
instances of io.StringIO .

See also binary file for a file object able to read and write bytes-like objects.

thread state

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The information used by the CPython runtime to run in an OS thread. For example,
this includes the current exception, if any, and the state of the bytecode interpreter.

Each thread state is bound to a single OS thread, but threads may have many thread
states available. At most, one of them may be attached at once.

An attached thread state is required to call most of Python’s C API, unless a function
explicitly documents otherwise. The bytecode interpreter only runs under an at-
tached thread state.

Each thread state belongs to a single interpreter, but each interpreter may have many
thread states, including multiple for the same OS thread. Thread states from multiple
interpreters may be bound to the same thread, but only one can be attached in that
thread at any given moment.

See Thread State and the Global Interpreter Lock for more information.

token
A small unit of source code, generated by the lexical analyzer (also called the tok-
enizer). Names, numbers, strings, operators, newlines and similar are represented by
tokens.

The tokenize module exposes Python’s lexical analyzer. The token module con-
tains information on the various types of tokens.

triple-quoted string
A string which is bound by three instances of either a quotation mark (”) or an apos-
trophe (‘). While they don’t provide any functionality not available with single-quoted
strings, they are useful for a number of reasons. They allow you to include un-
escaped single and double quotes within a string and they can span multiple lines
without the use of the continuation character, making them especially useful when
writing docstrings.

type
The type of a Python object determines what kind of object it is; every object has a
type. An object’s type is accessible as its __class__ attribute or can be retrieved
with type(obj) .

type alias
A synonym for a type, created by assigning the type to an identifier.

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Type aliases are useful for simplifying type hints. For example:

def remove_gray_shades(
colors: list[tuple[int, int, int]]) -> list[tuple[int, int, in
pass

could be made more readable like this:

Color = tuple[int, int, int]

def remove_gray_shades(colors: list[Color]) -> list[Color]:

pass

See typing and PEP 484, which describe this functionality.

type hint
An annotation that specifies the expected type for a variable, a class attribute, or a
function parameter or return value.

Type hints are optional and are not enforced by Python but they are useful to static
type checkers. They can also aid IDEs with code completion and refactoring.

Type hints of global variables, class attributes, and functions, but not local variables,
can be accessed using typing.get_type_hints() .

See typing and PEP 484, which describe this functionality.

universal newlines
A manner of interpreting text streams in which all of the following are recognized as
ending a line: the Unix end-of-line convention '\n' , the Windows convention
'\r\n' , and the old Macintosh convention '\r' . See PEP 278 and PEP 3116, as
well as bytes.splitlines() for an additional use.

variable annotation
An annotation of a variable or a class attribute.

When annotating a variable or a class attribute, assignment is optional:

class C:
field: 'annotation'

Variable annotations are usually used for type hints: for example this variable is ex-

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pected to take int values:

count: int = 0

Variable annotation syntax is explained in section Annotated assignment statements.

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

virtual environment
A cooperatively isolated runtime environment that allows Python users and ap-
plications to install and upgrade Python distribution packages without interfering
with the behaviour of other Python applications running on the same system.

See also venv .

virtual machine
A computer defined entirely in software. Python’s virtual machine executes the byte-
code emitted by the bytecode compiler.

walrus operator
A light-hearted way to refer to the assignment expression operator := because it
looks a bit like a walrus if you turn your head.

Zen of Python
Listing of Python design principles and philosophies that are helpful in understanding
and using the language. The listing can be found by typing “ import this ” at the
interactive prompt.

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