Python

From FUKTwiki

Python is a programming language.

It is:

• Interpreted, which means it is not normally compiled into machine code.
• Garbage collecting, which means it allocates memory and creates and destroys objects automatically.
• Dynamically typed, which means that variables do not have a type, only values have a type.
• Widely used.
• Very actively developed and improved.
• Object-oriented, although it does not force this onto the programmer.
• Powerful, since it has many advanced data types and a very large standard library.
• Platform-independent.

[edit] Example Code

import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "")
 
print u"Hello world!"

[edit] Functions

def do_nothing():
    pass
 
def one():
    return 1
 
def add_one(x):
    return x+1
 
def print_number(n):
    print "Number:", n

With the above functions defined, print_number(add_one(one())) would print “Number: 2”.

# A more complex function demonstrating more of the language.
 
def blargh(x, y, z=None):
    """This function is just nonsense."""
    if z is None:
        z = x + y
    else:
        z += x
    while z > x:
        y += z
        z -= 1
    return y, z

Note that the language does not have any { braces } like C or Java, or any BEGIN/END constructs. Instead, the whitespace determines where a block of code ends.

[edit] Classes

# This class does nothing.
 
class Empty(object):
    pass
 
# This class inherits from “Empty” and has a method.
 
class Foo(Empty):
    def bar(self):
        return "baz"
 
# This class has a constructor which takes no arguments.  The
# constructor creates an attribute named "some_string".
 
class Bar(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.some_string = "whatever"
    def pretty_value(self):
        return "The value is: " + self.some_string

The language has many datatypes, like unicode strings, lists (like a C++ std::vector), dictionaries (an associative array, like a C++ std::map), sets and more. The language also has advanced features like exceptions, iterators, generators, introspection, metaclasses, etc.

[edit] See Also

• There is an article about this subject on SpelWiki, the Game Programmer Programme Wiki.
• There is an article about this subject on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.