Built-in Functions Flashcards
(75 cards)
abs(x)
Return the absolute value of a number. The ‘x’ arg may be plain, int, or float. If the argument is a complex number, its magnitude is returned.
all(iterable)
Return True if all elements of the iterable are true (or if the iterable is empty). Equivalent to:
def all(iterable):
for element in iterable:
if not element:
return False
return True
any(iterable)
Return True if any element of the iterable is true. If the iterable is empty, return False. Equivalent to:
def any(iterable):
for element in iterable:
if element:
return True
return False
basestring()
This abstract type is the superclass for str and unicode. It cannot be called or instantiated, but it can be used to test whether an object is an instance of str or unicode. isinstance(obj, basestring) is equivalent to isinstance(obj, (str, unicode)).
bin(x)
Convert an integer number to a binary string. The result is a valid Python expression. If x is not a Python int object, it has to define an __index__() method that returns an integer.
class bool([x])
Return a Boolean value, i.e. one of True or False. x is converted using the standard truth testing procedure. If x is false or omitted, this returns False; otherwise it returns True. bool is also a class, which is a subclass of int. Class bool cannot be subclassed further. Its only instances are False and True.
class bytearray([source[, encoding[, errors]]])
Return a new array of bytes. The bytearray class is a mutable sequence of integers in the range 0 < 256. It has most of the usual methods of mutable sequences, described in Mutable Sequence Types, as well as most methods that the str type has, see String Methods.
The optional source parameter can be used to initialize the array in a few different ways:
If it is unicode, you must also give the encoding (and optionally, errors) parameters; bytearray() then converts the unicode to bytes using unicode.encode().
If it is an integer, the array will have that size and will be initialized with null bytes.
If it is an object conforming to the buffer interface, a read-only buffer of the object will be used to initialize the bytes array.
If it is an iterable, it must be an iterable of integers in the range 0 < 256, which are used as the initial contents of the array.
Without an argument, an array of size 0 is created.
callable(object)
Return True if the object argument appears callable, False if not. If this returns True, it is still possible that a call fails, but if it is false, calling object will never succeed. Note that classes are callable (calling a class returns a new instance); class instances are callable if they have a __call__() method.
chr(i)
Return a string of one character whose ASCII code is the integer i. For example, chr(97) returns the string ‘a’. This is the inverse of ord(). The argument must be in the range [0..255], inclusive; ValueError will be raised if i is outside that range. See also unichr().
classmethod(function)
Return a class method for function.
A class method receives the class as implicit first argument, just like an instance method receives the instance. To declare a class method, use this idiom:
class C(object):
@classmethod
def f(cls, arg1, arg2, ...):
...
The @classmethod form is a function decorator – see the description of function definitions in Function definitions for details.
It can be called either on the class (such as C.f()) or on an instance (such as C().f()). The instance is ignored except for its class. If a class method is called for a derived class, the derived class object is passed as the implied first argument.
Class methods are different than C++ or Java static methods. If you want those, see staticmethod() in this section.
For more information on class methods, consult the documentation on the standard type hierarchy in The standard type hierarchy.
cmp(x, y)
Compare the two objects x and y and return an integer according to the outcome. The return value is negative if x < y, zero if x == y and strictly positive if x > y.
compile(source, filename, mode[, flags[, dont_inherit]])
Compile the source into a code or AST object. Code objects can be executed by an exec statement or evaluated by a call to eval(). source can either be a Unicode string, a Latin-1 encoded string or an AST object. Refer to the ast module documentation for information on how to work with AST objects.
The filename argument should give the file from which the code was read; pass some recognizable value if it wasn’t read from a file (‘’ is commonly used).
The mode argument specifies what kind of code must be compiled; it can be ‘exec’ if source consists of a sequence of statements, ‘eval’ if it consists of a single expression, or ‘single’ if it consists of a single interactive statement (in the latter case, expression statements that evaluate to something other than None will be printed).
The optional arguments flags and dont_inherit control which future statements (see PEP 236) affect the compilation of source. If neither is present (or both are zero) the code is compiled with those future statements that are in effect in the code that is calling compile(). If the flags argument is given and dont_inherit is not (or is zero) then the future statements specified by the flags argument are used in addition to those that would be used anyway. If dont_inherit is a non-zero integer then the flags argument is it – the future statements in effect around the call to compile are ignored.
Future statements are specified by bits which can be bitwise ORed together to specify multiple statements. The bitfield required to specify a given feature can be found as the compiler_flag attribute on the _Feature instance in the __future__ module.
This function raises SyntaxError if the compiled source is invalid, and TypeError if the source contains null bytes.
If you want to parse Python code into its AST representation, see ast.parse().
Note When compiling a string with multi-line code in ‘single’ or ‘eval’ mode, input must be terminated by at least one newline character. This is to facilitate detection of incomplete and complete statements in the code module.
class complex([real[, imag]])
Return a complex number with the value real + imag*j or convert a string or number to a complex number. If the first parameter is a string, it will be interpreted as a complex number and the function must be called without a second parameter. The second parameter can never be a string. Each argument may be any numeric type (including complex). If imag is omitted, it defaults to zero and the function serves as a numeric conversion function like int(), long() and float(). If both arguments are omitted, returns 0j.
Note When converting from a string, the string must not contain whitespace around the central + or - operator. For example, complex(‘1+2j’) is fine, but complex(‘1 + 2j’) raises ValueError.
The complex type is described in Numeric Types — int, float, long, complex.
delattr(object, name)
This is a relative of setattr(). The arguments are an object and a string. The string must be the name of one of the object’s attributes. The function deletes the named attribute, provided the object allows it. For example, delattr(x, ‘foobar’) is equivalent to del x.foobar.
class dict(**kwarg) class dict(mapping, **kwarg) class dict(iterable, **kwarg)
Create a new dictionary. The dict object is the dictionary class. See dict and Mapping Types — dict for documentation about this class.
For other containers see the built-in list, set, and tuple classes, as well as the collections module.
dir([object])
Without arguments, return the list of names in the current local scope. With an argument, attempt to return a list of valid attributes for that object.
If the object has a method named __dir__(), this method will be called and must return the list of attributes. This allows objects that implement a custom __getattr__() or __getattribute__() function to customize the way dir() reports their attributes.
If the object does not provide __dir__(), the function tries its best to gather information from the object’s __dict__ attribute, if defined, and from its type object. The resulting list is not necessarily complete, and may be inaccurate when the object has a custom __getattr__().
The default dir() mechanism behaves differently with different types of objects, as it attempts to produce the most relevant, rather than complete, information:
If the object is a module object, the list contains the names of the module’s attributes. If the object is a type or class object, the list contains the names of its attributes, and recursively of the attributes of its bases. Otherwise, the list contains the object’s attributes’ names, the names of its class’s attributes, and recursively of the attributes of its class’s base classes. The resulting list is sorted alphabetically. For example:
> > > import struct
dir() # show the names in the module namespace
[‘__builtins__’, ‘__doc__’, ‘__name__’, ‘struct’]
dir(struct) # show the names in the struct module
[‘Struct’, ‘__builtins__’, ‘__doc__’, ‘__file__’, ‘__name__’,
‘__package__’, ‘_clearcache’, ‘calcsize’, ‘error’, ‘pack’, ‘pack_into’,
‘unpack’, ‘unpack_from’]
class Shape(object):
def __dir__(self):
return [‘area’, ‘perimeter’, ‘location’]
s = Shape()
dir(s)
[‘area’, ‘perimeter’, ‘location’]
Note Because dir() is supplied primarily as a convenience for use at an interactive prompt, it tries to supply an interesting set of names more than it tries to supply a rigorously or consistently defined set of names, and its detailed behavior may change across releases. For example, metaclass attributes are not in the result list when the argument is a class.
divmod(a, b)
Take two (non complex) numbers as arguments and return a pair of numbers consisting of their quotient and remainder when using long division. With mixed operand types, the rules for binary arithmetic operators apply. For plain and long integers, the result is the same as (a // b, a % b). For floating point numbers the result is (q, a % b), where q is usually math.floor(a / b) but may be 1 less than that. In any case q * b + a % b is very close to a, if a % b is non-zero it has the same sign as b, and 0 < abs(b).
enumerate(sequence, start=0)
Return an enumerate object. sequence must be a sequence, an iterator, or some other object which supports iteration. The next() method of the iterator returned by enumerate() returns a tuple containing a count (from start which defaults to 0) and the values obtained from iterating over sequence:
> > > seasons = [‘Spring’, ‘Summer’, ‘Fall’, ‘Winter’]
list(enumerate(seasons))
[(0, ‘Spring’), (1, ‘Summer’), (2, ‘Fall’), (3, ‘Winter’)]
list(enumerate(seasons, start=1))
[(1, ‘Spring’), (2, ‘Summer’), (3, ‘Fall’), (4, ‘Winter’)]
Equivalent to:
def enumerate(sequence, start=0):
n = start
for elem in sequence:
yield n, elem
n += 1
eval(expression[, globals[, locals]])
The arguments are a Unicode or Latin-1 encoded string and optional globals and locals. If provided, globals must be a dictionary. If provided, locals can be any mapping object.
Changed in version 2.4: formerly locals was required to be a dictionary.
The expression argument is parsed and evaluated as a Python expression (technically speaking, a condition list) using the globals and locals dictionaries as global and local namespace. If the globals dictionary is present and lacks ‘__builtins__’, the current globals are copied into globals before expression is parsed. This means that expression normally has full access to the standard __builtin__ module and restricted environments are propagated. If the locals dictionary is omitted it defaults to the globals dictionary. If both dictionaries are omitted, the expression is executed in the environment where eval() is called. The return value is the result of the evaluated expression. Syntax errors are reported as exceptions. Example:
>>>
>>> x = 1
>>> print eval('x+1')
2
This function can also be used to execute arbitrary code objects (such as those created by compile()). In this case pass a code object instead of a string. If the code object has been compiled with 'exec' as the mode argument, eval()‘s return value will be None.
Hints: dynamic execution of statements is supported by the exec statement. Execution of statements from a file is supported by the execfile() function. The globals() and locals() functions returns the current global and local dictionary, respectively, which may be useful to pass around for use by eval() or execfile().
See ast.literal_eval() for a function that can safely evaluate strings with expressions containing only literals.
execfile(filename[, globals[, locals]])
This function is similar to the exec statement, but parses a file instead of a string. It is different from the import statement in that it does not use the module administration — it reads the file unconditionally and does not create a new module. [1]
The arguments are a file name and two optional dictionaries. The file is parsed and evaluated as a sequence of Python statements (similarly to a module) using the globals and locals dictionaries as global and local namespace. If provided, locals can be any mapping object. Remember that at module level, globals and locals are the same dictionary. If two separate objects are passed as globals and locals, the code will be executed as if it were embedded in a class definition.
Changed in version 2.4: formerly locals was required to be a dictionary.
If the locals dictionary is omitted it defaults to the globals dictionary. If both dictionaries are omitted, the expression is executed in the environment where execfile() is called. The return value is None.
Note The default locals act as described for function locals() below: modifications to the default locals dictionary should not be attempted. Pass an explicit locals dictionary if you need to see effects of the code on locals after function execfile() returns. execfile() cannot be used reliably to modify a function’s locals.
file(name[, mode[, buffering]])
Constructor function for the file type, described further in section File Objects. The constructor’s arguments are the same as those of the open() built-in function described below.
When opening a file, it’s preferable to use open() instead of invoking this constructor directly. file is more suited to type testing (for example, writing isinstance(f, file)).
filter(function, iterable)
filter(function, iterable)
Construct a list from those elements of iterable for which function returns true. iterable may be either a sequence, a container which supports iteration, or an iterator. If iterable is a string or a tuple, the result also has that type; otherwise it is always a list. If function is None, the identity function is assumed, that is, all elements of iterable that are false are removed.
Note that filter(function, iterable) is equivalent to [item for item in iterable if function(item)] if function is not None and [item for item in iterable if item] if function is None.
See itertools.ifilter() and itertools.ifilterfalse() for iterator versions of this function, including a variation that filters for elements where the function returns false.
class float([x])
Return a floating point number constructed from a number or string x.
If the argument is a string, it must contain a possibly signed decimal or floating point number, possibly embedded in whitespace. The argument may also be [+|-]nan or [+|-]inf. Otherwise, the argument may be a plain or long integer or a floating point number, and a floating point number with the same value (within Python’s floating point precision) is returned. If no argument is given, returns 0.0.
Note When passing in a string, values for NaN and Infinity may be returned, depending on the underlying C library. Float accepts the strings nan, inf and -inf for NaN and positive or negative infinity. The case and a leading + are ignored as well as a leading - is ignored for NaN. Float always represents NaN and infinity as nan, inf or -inf.
The float type is described in Numeric Types — int, float, long, complex.
format(value[, format_spec])
Convert a value to a “formatted” representation, as controlled by format_spec. The interpretation of format_spec will depend on the type of the value argument, however there is a standard formatting syntax that is used by most built-in types: Format Specification Mini-Language.
Note format(value, format_spec) merely calls value.__format__(format_spec).
