Learn Python

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 / work just like in most other languages (for example, Pascal or C); parentheses can be used for grouping. For example:

>>> 2+2
4
>>> # This is a comment
... 2+2
4
>>> 2+2  # and a comment on the same line as code
4
>>> (50-5*6)/4
5.0
>>> 8/5 # Fractions aren't lost when dividing integers
1.6000000000000001 

Note: You might not see exactly the same result; floating point results can differ from one machine to another. We will say more later about controlling the appearance of floating point output; what we see here is the most informative display but not as easy to read as we would get with:

>>> print(8/5)
1.6 

For clarity in this tutorial we will show the simpler floating point output unless we are specifically discussing output formatting, and explain later why these two ways of displaying floating point data come to be different. See Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations for a full discussion.

To do integer division and get an integer result, discarding any fractional result, there is another operator, //:

>>> # Integer division returns the floor:
... 7//3
2
>>> 7//-3
-3 

The equal sign ('=') is used to assign a value to a variable. Afterwards, no result is displayed before the next interactive prompt:

>>> width = 20
>>> height = 5*9
>>> width * height
900 

A value can be assigned to several variables simultaneously:

>>> x = y = z = 0  # Zero x, y and z
>>> x
0
>>> y
0
>>> z
0 

There is full support for floating point; operators with mixed type operands convert the integer operand to floating point:

>>> 3 * 3.75 / 1.5
7.5
>>> 7.0 / 2
3.5 

Complex numbers are also supported; imaginary numbers are written with a suffix of j or J. Complex numbers with a nonzero real component are written as (real+imagj), or can be created with the complex(real, imag) function.

>>> 1j * 1J
(-1+0j)
>>> 1j * complex(0, 1)
(-1+0j)
>>> 3+1j*3
(3+3j)
>>> (3+1j)*3
(9+3j)
>>> (1+2j)/(1+1j)
(1.5+0.5j) 

Complex numbers are always represented as two floating point numbers, the real and imaginary part. To extract these parts from a complex number z, use z.real and z.imag.

>>> a=1.5+0.5j
>>> a.real
1.5
>>> a.imag
0.5 

The conversion functions to floating point and integer (float(), int()) don’t work for complex numbers — there is not one correct way to convert a complex number to a real number. Use abs(z) to get its magnitude (as a float) or z.real to get its real part:

>>> a=3.0+4.0j
>>> float(a)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in ?
TypeError: can't convert complex to float; use abs(z)
>>> a.real
3.0
>>> a.imag
4.0
>>> abs(a)  # sqrt(a.real**2 + a.imag**2)
5.0
>>> 

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:

>>> tax = 12.5 / 100
>>> price = 100.50
>>> price * tax
12.5625
>>> price + _
113.0625
>>> round(_, 2)
113.06
>>> 

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.