AmigaOS Manual: Python Functions

Built-in Functions Reference

abs()

abs(x)

Return the absolute value of a number. The argument may be an integer or a floating point number. If the argument is a complex number, its magnitude is returned.

all()

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()

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

ascii()

ascii(object)

As repr(), return a string containing a printable representation of an object, but escape the non-ASCII characters in the string returned by repr() using \x, \u or \U escapes. This generates a string similar to that returned by repr() in Python 2.

bin()

bin(x)

Convert an integer number to a binary string prefixed with “0b”. 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. Some examples:

>>> bin(3)
'0b11'

>>> bin(-10)
'-0b1010'

If prefix “0b” is desired or not, you can use either of the following ways.

>>> format(14, '#b'), format(14, 'b')
('0b1110', '1110')
>>> f'{14:#b}', f'{14:b}'
('0b1110', '1110')

See also format() for more information.

bool()

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. The bool class is a subclass of int (see Numeric Types — int, float, complex). It cannot be subclassed further. Its only instances are False and True (see Boolean Values).

breakpoint()

breakpoint(*args, **kws)

This function drops you into the debugger at the call site. Specifically, it calls sys.breakpointhook(), passing args and kws straight through. By default, sys.breakpointhook() calls pdb.set_trace() expecting no arguments. In this case, it is purely a convenience function so you don’t have to explicitly import pdb or type as much code to enter the debugger. However, sys.breakpointhook() can be set to some other function and breakpoint() will automatically call that, allowing you to drop into the debugger of choice.

bytearray()

class bytearray([source[, encoding[, errors]]])

Return a new array of bytes. The bytearray class is a mutable sequence of integers in the range 0 <= x < 256. It has most of the usual methods of mutable sequences, described in Mutable Sequence Types, as well as most methods that the bytes type has, see Bytes and Bytearray Operations.

The optional source parameter can be used to initialize the array in a few different ways:

If it is a string, you must also give the encoding (and optionally, errors) parameters; bytearray() then converts the string to bytes using str.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 <= x < 256, which are used as the initial contents of the array.

Without an argument, an array of size 0 is created.

See also Binary Sequence Types — bytes, bytearray, memoryview and Bytearray Objects.

bytes()

class bytes([source[, encoding[, errors]]])

Return a new “bytes” object, which is an immutable sequence of integers in the range 0 <= x < 256. bytes is an immutable version of bytearray – it has the same non-mutating methods and the same indexing and slicing behavior.

Accordingly, constructor arguments are interpreted as for bytearray().

Bytes objects can also be created with literals, see String and Bytes literals.

See also Binary Sequence Types — bytes, bytearray, memoryview, Bytes Objects, and Bytes and Bytearray Operations.

callable()

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); instances are callable if their class has a __call__() method.

New in version 3.2: This function was first removed in Python 3.0 and then brought back in Python 3.2.

chr()

chr(i)

Return the string representing a character whose Unicode code point is the integer i. For example, chr(97) returns the string 'a', while chr(8364) returns the string '€'. This is the inverse of ord().

The valid range for the argument is from 0 through 1,114,111 (0x10FFFF in base 16). ValueError will be raised if i is outside that range.

classmethod

@classmethod

Transform a method into a class method.

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:
    @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.

compile()

compile(source, filename, mode, flags=0, dont_inherit=False, optimize=-1)

Compile the source into a code or AST object. Code objects can be executed by exec() or eval(). source can either be a normal string, a byte 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 ('<string>' 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 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.

The argument optimize specifies the optimization level of the compiler; the default value of -1 selects the optimization level of the interpreter as given by -O options. Explicit levels are 0 (no optimization; __debug__ is true), 1 (asserts are removed, __debug__ is false) or 2 (docstrings are removed too).

This function raises SyntaxError if the compiled source is invalid, and ValueError 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.

Warning
It is possible to crash the Python interpreter with a sufficiently large/complex string when compiling to an AST object due to stack depth limitations in Python’s AST compiler.

Changed in version 3.2: Allowed use of Windows and Mac newlines. Also input in 'exec' mode does not have to end in a newline anymore. Added the optimize parameter.

Changed in version 3.5: Previously, TypeError was raised when null bytes were encountered in source.

complex()

class complex([real[, imag]])

Return a complex number with the value real + imag*1j 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 constructor serves as a numeric conversion like int 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, complex.

Changed in version 3.6: Grouping digits with underscores as in code literals is allowed.

delattr()

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.

dict()

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()

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__', '__name__', 'struct']
>>> dir(struct)   # show the names in the struct module 
['Struct', '__all__', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__',
 '__initializing__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__',
 '_clearcache', 'calcsize', 'error', 'pack', 'pack_into',
 'unpack', 'unpack_from']
>>> class Shape:
...     def __dir__(self):
...         return ['area', 'perimeter', 'location']
>>> s = Shape()
>>> dir(s)
['area', 'location', 'perimeter']

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()

divmod(a, b)

Take two (non complex) numbers as arguments and return a pair of numbers consisting of their quotient and remainder when using integer division. With mixed operand types, the rules for binary arithmetic operators apply. For 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(a % b) < abs(b).

enumerate()

enumerate(iterable, start=0)

Return an enumerate object. iterable 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 iterable.

>>> 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()

eval(expression, globals=None, locals=None)

The arguments are a string and optional globals and locals. If provided, globals must be a dictionary. If provided, locals can be any mapping object.

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 builtins 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
>>> 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() 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 exec().

See ast.literal_eval() for a function that can safely evaluate strings with expressions containing only literals.

exec()

exec(object[, globals[, locals]])

This function supports dynamic execution of Python code. object must be either a string or a code object. If it is a string, the string is parsed as a suite of Python statements which is then executed (unless a syntax error occurs). [1] If it is a code object, it is simply executed. In all cases, the code that’s executed is expected to be valid as file input (see the section “File input” in the Reference Manual). Be aware that the return and yield statements may not be used outside of function definitions even within the context of code passed to the exec() function. The return value is None.

In all cases, if the optional parts are omitted, the code is executed in the current scope. If only globals is provided, it must be a dictionary, which will be used for both the global and the local variables. If globals and locals are given, they are used for the global and local variables, respectively. If provided, locals can be any mapping object. Remember that at module level, globals and locals are the same dictionary. If exec gets two separate objects as globals and locals, the code will be executed as if it were embedded in a class definition.

If the globals dictionary does not contain a value for the key __builtins__, a reference to the dictionary of the built-in module builtins is inserted under that key. That way you can control what builtins are available to the executed code by inserting your own __builtins__ dictionary into globals before passing it to exec().

Note
The built-in functions globals() and locals() return the current global and local dictionary, respectively, which may be useful to pass around for use as the second and third argument to exec().

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 exec() returns.

filter()

filter(function, iterable)

Construct an iterator 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 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 the generator expression (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.filterfalse() for the complementary function that returns elements of iterable for which function returns false.

float()

class float([x])

Return a floating point number constructed from a number or string x.

If the argument is a string, it should contain a decimal number, optionally preceded by a sign, and optionally embedded in whitespace. The optional sign may be '+' or '-'; a '+' sign has no effect on the value produced. The argument may also be a string representing a NaN (not-a-number), or a positive or negative infinity. More precisely, the input must conform to the following grammar after leading and trailing whitespace characters are removed:

sign           ::=  "+" | "-"
infinity       ::=  "Infinity" | "inf"
nan            ::=  "nan"
numeric_value  ::=  floatnumber | infinity | nan
numeric_string ::=  [sign] numeric_value

Here floatnumber is the form of a Python floating-point literal, described in Floating point literals. Case is not significant, so, for example, “inf”, “Inf”, “INFINITY” and “iNfINity” are all acceptable spellings for positive infinity.

Otherwise, if the argument is an integer or a floating point number, a floating point number with the same value (within Python’s floating point precision) is returned. If the argument is outside the range of a Python float, an OverflowError will be raised.

For a general Python object x, float(x) delegates to x.__float__().

If no argument is given, 0.0 is returned.

Examples:

>>> float('+1.23')
1.23
>>> float('   -12345\n')
-12345.0
>>> float('1e-003')
0.001
>>> float('+1E6')
1000000.0
>>> float('-Infinity')
-inf

The float type is described in Numeric Types — int, float, complex.

Changed in version 3.6: Grouping digits with underscores as in code literals is allowed.

format()

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.

The default format_spec is an empty string which usually gives the same effect as calling str(value).

A call to format(value, format_spec) is translated to type(value).__format__(value, format_spec) which bypasses the instance dictionary when searching for the value’s __format__() method. A TypeError exception is raised if the method search reaches object and the format_spec is non-empty, or if either the format_spec or the return value are not strings.

Changed in version 3.4: object().__format__(format_spec) raises TypeError if format_spec is not an empty string.

frozenset()

class frozenset([iterable])

Return a new frozenset object, optionally with elements taken from iterable. frozenset is a built-in class. See frozenset and Set Types — set, frozenset for documentation about this class.

For other containers see the built-in set, list, tuple, and dict classes, as well as the collections module.

getattr()

getattr(object, name[, default])

Return the value of the named attribute of object. name must be a string. If the string is the name of one of the object’s attributes, the result is the value of that attribute. For example, getattr(x, 'foobar') is equivalent to x.foobar. If the named attribute does not exist, default is returned if provided, otherwise AttributeError is raised.

globals()

globals()

Return a dictionary representing the current global symbol table. This is always the dictionary of the current module (inside a function or method, this is the module where it is defined, not the module from which it is called).

hasattr()

hasattr(object, name)

The arguments are an object and a string. The result is True if the string is the name of one of the object’s attributes, False if not. (This is implemented by calling getattr(object, name) and seeing whether it raises an AttributeError or not.)

hash()

hash(object)

Return the hash value of the object (if it has one). Hash values are integers. They are used to quickly compare dictionary keys during a dictionary lookup. Numeric values that compare equal have the same hash value (even if they are of different types, as is the case for 1 and 1.0).

Note
For objects with custom __hash__() methods, note that hash() truncates the return value based on the bit width of the host machine. See __hash__() for details.

help()

help([object])

Invoke the built-in help system. (This function is intended for interactive use.) If no argument is given, the interactive help system starts on the interpreter console. If the argument is a string, then the string is looked up as the name of a module, function, class, method, keyword, or documentation topic, and a help page is printed on the console. If the argument is any other kind of object, a help page on the object is generated.

This function is added to the built-in namespace by the site module.

Changed in version 3.4: Changes to pydoc and inspect mean that the reported signatures for callables are now more comprehensive and consistent.

hex()

hex(x)

Convert an integer number to a lowercase hexadecimal string prefixed with “0x”. If x is not a Python int object, it has to define an __index__() method that returns an integer. Some examples:

>>> hex(255)
'0xff'
>>> hex(-42)
'-0x2a'

If you want to convert an integer number to an uppercase or lower hexadecimal string with prefix or not, you can use either of the following ways:

>>> '%#x' % 255, '%x' % 255, '%X' % 255
('0xff', 'ff', 'FF')
>>> format(255, '#x'), format(255, 'x'), format(255, 'X')
('0xff', 'ff', 'FF')
>>> f'{255:#x}', f'{255:x}', f'{255:X}'
('0xff', 'ff', 'FF')

See also format() for more information.

See also int() for converting a hexadecimal string to an integer using a base of 16.

Note
To obtain a hexadecimal string representation for a float, use the float.hex() method.

id()

id(object)

Return the “identity” of an object. This is an integer which is guaranteed to be unique and constant for this object during its lifetime. Two objects with non-overlapping lifetimes may have the same id() value.

CPython implementation detail: This is the address of the object in memory.

input()

input([prompt])

If the prompt argument is present, it is written to standard output without a trailing newline. The function then reads a line from input, converts it to a string (stripping a trailing newline), and returns that. When EOF is read, EOFError is raised. Example:

>>> s = input('--> ')  
--> Monty Python's Flying Circus
>>> s  
"Monty Python's Flying Circus"

If the readline module was loaded, then input() will use it to provide elaborate line editing and history features.

int()

class int(x=0)
class int(x, base=10)

Return an integer object constructed from a number or string x, or return 0 if no arguments are given. If x defines __int__(), int(x) returns x.__int__(). If x defines __trunc__(), it returns x.__trunc__(). For floating point numbers, this truncates towards zero.

If x is not a number or if base is given, then x must be a string, bytes, or bytearray instance representing an integer literal in radix base. Optionally, the literal can be preceded by + or - (with no space in between) and surrounded by whitespace. A base-n literal consists of the digits 0 to n-1, with a to z (or A to Z) having values 10 to 35. The default base is 10. The allowed values are 0 and 2–36. Base-2, -8, and -16 literals can be optionally prefixed with 0b/0B, 0o/0O, or 0x/0X, as with integer literals in code. Base 0 means to interpret exactly as a code literal, so that the actual base is 2, 8, 10, or 16, and so that int('010', 0) is not legal, while int('010') is, as well as int('010', 8).

The integer type is described in Numeric Types — int, float, complex.

Changed in version 3.4: If base is not an instance of int and the base object has a base.__index__ method, that method is called to obtain an integer for the base. Previous versions used base.__int__ instead of base.__index__.

Changed in version 3.6: Grouping digits with underscores as in code literals is allowed.

isinstance()

isinstance(object, classinfo)

Return true if the object argument is an instance of the classinfo argument, or of a (direct, indirect or virtual) subclass thereof. If object is not an object of the given type, the function always returns false. If classinfo is a tuple of type objects (or recursively, other such tuples), return true if object is an instance of any of the types. If classinfo is not a type or tuple of types and such tuples, a TypeError exception is raised.

issubclass()

issubclass(class, classinfo)

Return true if class is a subclass (direct, indirect or virtual) of classinfo. A class is considered a subclass of itself. classinfo may be a tuple of class objects, in which case every entry in classinfo will be checked. In any other case, a TypeError exception is raised.

iter()

iter(object[, sentinel])

Return an iterator object. The first argument is interpreted very differently depending on the presence of the second argument. Without a second argument, object must be a collection object which supports the iteration protocol (the __iter__() method), or it must support the sequence protocol (the __getitem__() method with integer arguments starting at 0). If it does not support either of those protocols, TypeError is raised. If the second argument, sentinel, is given, then object must be a callable object. The iterator created in this case will call object with no arguments for each call to its __next__() method; if the value returned is equal to sentinel, StopIteration will be raised, otherwise the value will be returned.

See also Iterator Types.

One useful application of the second form of iter() is to read lines of a file until a certain line is reached. The following example reads a file until the readline() method returns an empty string:

with open('mydata.txt') as fp:
    for line in iter(fp.readline, ''):
        process_line(line)

len()

len(s)

Return the length (the number of items) of an object. The argument may be a sequence (such as a string, bytes, tuple, list, or range) or a collection (such as a dictionary, set, or frozen set).

list()

class list([iterable])

Rather than being a function, list is actually a mutable sequence type, as documented in Lists and Sequence Types — list, tuple, range.

locals()

locals()

Update and return a dictionary representing the current local symbol table. Free variables are returned by locals() when it is called in function blocks, but not in class blocks.

Note
The contents of this dictionary should not be modified; changes may not affect the values of local and free variables used by the interpreter.

map()

map(function, iterable, ...)

Return an iterator that applies function to every item of iterable, yielding the results. If additional iterable arguments are passed, function must take that many arguments and is applied to the items from all iterables in parallel. With multiple iterables, the iterator stops when the shortest iterable is exhausted. For cases where the function inputs are already arranged into argument tuples, see itertools.starmap().

max()

max(iterable, *[, key, default])
max(arg1, arg2, *args[, key])

Return the largest item in an iterable or the largest of two or more arguments.

If one positional argument is provided, it should be an iterable. The largest item in the iterable is returned. If two or more positional arguments are provided, the largest of the positional arguments is returned.

There are two optional keyword-only arguments. The key argument specifies a one-argument ordering function like that used for list.sort(). The default argument specifies an object to return if the provided iterable is empty. If the iterable is empty and default is not provided, a ValueError is raised.

If multiple items are maximal, the function returns the first one encountered. This is consistent with other sort-stability preserving tools such as sorted(iterable, key=keyfunc, reverse=True)[0] and heapq.nlargest(1, iterable, key=keyfunc).

New in version 3.4: The default keyword-only argument.

memoryview()

memoryview(obj)

Return a “memory view” object created from the given argument. See Memory Views for more information.

min()

min(iterable, *[, key, default])
min(arg1, arg2, *args[, key])

Return the smallest item in an iterable or the smallest of two or more arguments.

If one positional argument is provided, it should be an iterable. The smallest item in the iterable is returned. If two or more positional arguments are provided, the smallest of the positional arguments is returned.

There are two optional keyword-only arguments. The key argument specifies a one-argument ordering function like that used for list.sort(). The default argument specifies an object to return if the provided iterable is empty. If the iterable is empty and default is not provided, a ValueError is raised.

If multiple items are minimal, the function returns the first one encountered. This is consistent with other sort-stability preserving tools such as sorted(iterable, key=keyfunc)[0] and heapq.nsmallest(1, iterable, key=keyfunc).

New in version 3.4: The default keyword-only argument.

next()

next(iterator[, default])

Retrieve the next item from the iterator by calling its __next__() method. If default is given, it is returned if the iterator is exhausted, otherwise StopIteration is raised.

object

class object

Return a new featureless object. object is a base for all classes. It has the methods that are common to all instances of Python classes. This function does not accept any arguments.

Note
object does not have a __dict__, so you can’t assign arbitrary attributes to an instance of the object class.