The “Print()” Instruction
The “Print()” Instruction
You can toggle the display of prompts and output by clicking on >>> in the upper-right corner of an
example box. If you hide the prompts and output for an example, then you can easily copy and paste
the input lines into your interpreter.
Many of the examples in this manual, even those entered at the interactive prompt, include comments.
Comments in Python start with the hash character, # , and extend to the end of the physical line. A
comment may appear at the start of a line or following whitespace or code, but not within a string liter-
al. A hash character within a string literal is just a hash character. Since comments are to clarify code
and are not interpreted by Python, they may be omitted when typing in examples.
Some examples:
Let’s try some simple Python commands. Start the interpreter and wait for the primary prompt, >>> . (It
shouldn’t take long.)
3.1.1. Numbers
The interpreter acts as a simple calculator: you can type an expression at it and it will write the value.
Expression syntax is straightforward: the operators + , - , * and / can be used to perform arithmetic;
parentheses ( () ) can be used for grouping. For example:
>>> 2 + 2 >>>
4
>>> 50 - 5*6
20
>>> (50 - 5*6) / 4
5.0
>>> 8 / 5 # division always returns a floating-point number
1.6
The integer numbers (e.g. 2 , 4 , 20 ) have type int , the ones with a fractional part (e.g. 5.0 , 1.6 ) have
type float . We will see more about numeric types later in the tutorial.
Division ( / ) always returns a float. To do floor division and get an integer result you can use the // op-
erator; to calculate the remainder you can use % :
The equal sign ( = ) is used to assign a value to a variable. Afterwards, no result is displayed before the
next interactive prompt:
If a variable is not “defined” (assigned a value), trying to use it will give you an error:
There is full support for floating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer operand
to floating point:
In interactive mode, the last printed expression is assigned to the variable _ . This means that when you
are using Python as a desk calculator, it is somewhat easier to continue calculations, for example:
This variable should be treated as read-only by the user. Don’t explicitly assign a value to it — you
would create an independent local variable with the same name masking the built-in variable with its
magic behavior.
In addition to int and float , Python supports other types of numbers, such as Decimal and
Fraction . Python also has built-in support for complex numbers, and uses the j or J suffix to indi-
cate the imaginary part (e.g. 3+5j ).
3.1.2. Text
Python can manipulate text (represented by type str , so-called “strings”) as well as numbers. This
includes characters “ ! ”, words “ rabbit ”, names “ Paris ”, sentences “ Got your back. ”, etc. “ Yay!
:) ”. They can be enclosed in single quotes ( '...' ) or double quotes ( "..." ) with the same result [2].
To quote a quote, we need to “escape” it, by preceding it with \ . Alternatively, we can use the other
type of quotation marks:
In the Python shell, the string definition and output string can look different. The print() function
produces a more readable output, by omitting the enclosing quotes and by printing escaped and spe-
cial characters:
If you don’t want characters prefaced by \ to be interpreted as special characters, you can use raw
strings by adding an r before the first quote:
There is one subtle aspect to raw strings: a raw string may not end in an odd number of \ characters;
see the FAQ entry for more information and workarounds.
String literals can span multiple lines. One way is using triple-quotes: """...""" or '''...''' . End-
of-line characters are automatically included in the string, but it’s possible to prevent this by adding a \
at the end of the line. In the following example, the initial newline is not included:
>>>
Strings can be concatenated (glued together) with the + operator, and repeated with * :
Two or more string literals (i.e. the ones enclosed between quotes) next to each other are automatically
concatenated.
This feature is particularly useful when you want to break long strings:
This only works with two literals though, not with variables or expressions:
Strings can be indexed (subscripted), with the first character having index 0. There is no separate
character type; a character is simply a string of size one:
Indices may also be negative numbers, to start counting from the right:
Note that since -0 is the same as 0, negative indices start from -1.
In addition to indexing, slicing is also supported. While indexing is used to obtain individual characters,
slicing allows you to obtain a substring:
Slice indices have useful defaults; an omitted first index defaults to zero, an omitted second index de-
faults to the size of the string being sliced.
Note how the start is always included, and the end always excluded. This makes sure that s[:i] +
s[i:] is always equal to s :
>>> word[:2] + word[2:] >>>
'Python'
>>> word[:4] + word[4:]
'Python'
One way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters, with
the left edge of the first character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n
characters has index n, for example:
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| P | y | t | h | o | n |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
The first row of numbers gives the position of the indices 0…6 in the string; the second row gives the
corresponding negative indices. The slice from i to j consists of all characters between the edges la-
beled i and j, respectively.
For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices, if both are within bounds.
For example, the length of word[1:3] is 2.
However, out of range slice indexes are handled gracefully when used for slicing:
Python strings cannot be changed — they are immutable. Therefore, assigning to an indexed position in
the string results in an error:
See also:
String Methods
Strings support a large number of methods for basic transformations and searching.
f-strings
String literals that have embedded expressions.
3.1.3. Lists
Python knows a number of compound data types, used to group together other values. The most ver-
satile is the list, which can be written as a list of comma-separated values (items) between square
brackets. Lists might contain items of different types, but usually the items all have the same type.
Like strings (and all other built-in sequence types), lists can be indexed and sliced:
Unlike strings, which are immutable, lists are a mutable type, i.e. it is possible to change their content:
>>> cubes = [1, 8, 27, 65, 125] # something's wrong here >>>
>>> 4 ** 3 # the cube of 4 is 64, not 65!
64
>>> cubes[3] = 64 # replace the wrong value
>>> cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125]
You can also add new items at the end of the list, by using the list.append() method (we will see
more about methods later):
Simple assignment in Python never copies data. When you assign a list to a variable, the variable refers
to the existing list. Any changes you make to the list through one variable will be seen through all other
variables that refer to it.:
All slice operations return a new list containing the requested elements. This means that the following
slice returns a shallow copy of the list:
Assignment to slices is also possible, and this can even change the size of the list or clear it entirely:
>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g'] >>>
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']
>>> # replace some values
>>> letters[2:5] = ['C', 'D', 'E']
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'f', 'g']
>>> # now remove them
>>> letters[2:5] = []
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'f', 'g']
['a', 'b', 'f', 'g']
>>> # clear the list by replacing all the elements with an empty list
>>> letters[:] = []
>>> letters
[]
It is possible to nest lists (create lists containing other lists), for example:
Of course, we can use Python for more complicated tasks than adding two and two together. For in-
stance, we can write an initial sub-sequence of the Fibonacci series as follows:
The first line contains a multiple assignment: the variables a and b simultaneously get the new val-
ues 0 and 1. On the last line this is used again, demonstrating that the expressions on the right-hand
side are all evaluated first before any of the assignments take place. The right-hand side expressions
are evaluated from the left to the right.
The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: a < 10 ) remains true. In Python, like in C,
any non-zero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or list value, in
fact any sequence; anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are false. The test
used in the example is a simple comparison. The standard comparison operators are written the
same as in C: < (less than), > (greater than), == (equal to), <= (less than or equal to), >= (greater
than or equal to) and != (not equal to).
The body of the loop is indented: indentation is Python’s way of grouping statements. At the interac-
tive prompt, you have to type a tab or space(s) for each indented line. In practice you will prepare
more complicated input for Python with a text editor; all decent text editors have an auto-indent fa-
cility. When a compound statement is entered interactively, it must be followed by a blank line to in-
dicate completion (since the parser cannot guess when you have typed the last line). Note that each
line within a basic block must be indented by the same amount.
The print() function writes the value of the argument(s) it is given. It differs from just writing the
expression you want to write (as we did earlier in the calculator examples) in the way it handles mul-
tiple arguments, floating-point quantities, and strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a
space is inserted between items, so you can format things nicely, like this:
The keyword argument end can be used to avoid the newline after the output, or end the output with
a different string:
>>> a, b = 0, 1 >>>
>>> while a < 1000:
... print(a, end=',')
... a, b = b, a+b
...
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987,
Footnotes
[1] Since ** has higher precedence than - , -3**2 will be interpreted as -(3**2) and thus result in
-9 . To avoid this and get 9 , you can use (-3)**2 .
[2] Unlike other languages, special characters such as \n have the same meaning with both single
( '...' ) and double ( "..." ) quotes. The only difference between the two is that within single
quotes you don’t need to escape " (but you have to escape \' ) and vice versa.