The Python Language Reference¶

This reference manual describes the syntax and “core semantics” of thelanguage. It is terse, but attempts to be exact and complete. The semantics ofnon-essential built-in object types and of the built-in functions and modulesare described inThe Python Standard Library. For an informal introduction to thelanguage, seeThe Python Tutorial. For C or C++ programmers, two additionalmanuals exist:Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter describes the high-level picture of how towrite a Python extension module, and thePython/C API Reference Manual describes theinterfaces available to C/C++ programmers in detail.

• Introduction
  • Alternate Implementations
  • Notation
• Lexical analysis
  • Line structure
  • Other tokens
  • Identifiers and keywords
  • Literals
  • Operators
  • Delimiters
• Data model
  • Objects, values and types
  • The standard type hierarchy
  • Special method names
• Execution model
  • Naming and binding
  • Exceptions
• Expressions
  • Arithmetic conversions
  • Atoms
  • Primaries
  • The power operator
  • Unary arithmetic operations
  • Binary arithmetic operations
  • Shifting operations
  • Binary bitwise operations
  • Comparisons
  • Boolean operations
  • Lambdas
  • Expression lists
  • Evaluation order
  • Summary
• Simple statements
  • Expression statements
  • Assignment statements
  • Theassert statement
  • Thepass statement
  • Thedel statement
  • Thereturn statement
  • Theyield statement
  • Theraise statement
  • Thebreak statement
  • Thecontinue statement
  • Theimport statement
  • Theglobal statement
  • Thenonlocal statement
• Compound statements
  • Theif statement
  • Thewhile statement
  • Thefor statement
  • Thetry statement
  • Thewith statement
  • Function definitions
  • Class definitions
• Top-level components
  • Complete Python programs
  • File input
  • Interactive input
  • Expression input
• Full Grammar specification