Built-in Functions

The Python interpreter has a number of functions and types built into it that are always available. They are listed here in alphabetical order.

Built-in Functions

abs(number, /)

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

aiter(async_iterable, /)

Return an asynchronous iterator for an asynchronous iterable. Equivalent to calling x.__aiter__().

Note: Unlike iter(), aiter() has no 2-argument variant.

Added in version 3.10.

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
awaitable anext(async_iterator, /)
awaitable anext(async_iterator, default, /)

When awaited, return the next item from the given asynchronous iterator, or default if given and the iterator is exhausted.

This is the async variant of the next() builtin, and behaves similarly.

This calls the __anext__() method of async_iterator, returning an awaitable. Awaiting this returns the next value of the iterator. If default is given, it is returned if the iterator is exhausted, otherwise StopAsyncIteration is raised.

Added in version 3.10.

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(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(integer, /)

Convert an integer number to a binary string prefixed with “0b”. The result is a valid Python expression. If integer 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 the 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.

class bool(object=False, /)

Return a Boolean value, i.e. one of True or False. The argument is converted using the standard truth testing procedure. If the argument 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 Type - bool).

Changed in version 3.7: The parameter is now positional-only.

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. If sys.breakpointhook() is not accessible, this function will raise RuntimeError.

By default, the behavior of breakpoint() can be changed with the PYTHONBREAKPOINT environment variable. See sys.breakpointhook() for usage details.

Note that this is not guaranteed if sys.breakpointhook() has been replaced.

Raises an auditing event builtins.breakpoint with argument breakpointhook.

Added in version 3.7.

class bytearray(source=b'')
class bytearray(source, encoding, errors='strict')

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.

class bytes(source=b'')
class bytes(source, encoding, errors='strict')

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(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.

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

chr(codepoint, /)

Return the string representing a character with the specified Unicode code point. 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 it is outside that range.

@classmethod

Transform a method into a class method.

A class method receives the class as an 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 Function definitions for details.

A class method 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, see The standard type hierarchy.

Changed in version 3.9: Class methods can now wrap other descriptors such as property().

Changed in version 3.10: Class methods now inherit the method attributes (__module__, __name__, __qualname__, __doc__ and __annotations__) and have a new __wrapped__ attribute.

Deprecated since version 3.11, removed in version 3.13: Class methods can no longer wrap other descriptors such as property().

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 compiler options should be activated and which future features should be allowed. If neither is present (or both are zero) the code is compiled with the same flags that affect the code that is calling compile(). If the flags argument is given and dont_inherit is not (or is zero) then the compiler options and 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 flags (future features and compiler options) in the surrounding code are ignored.

Compiler options and future statements are specified by bits which can be bitwise ORed together to specify multiple options. The bitfield required to specify a given future feature can be found as the compiler_flag attribute on the _Feature instance in the __future__ module. Compiler flags can be found in ast module, with PyCF_ prefix.

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().

Raises an auditing event compile with arguments source and filename. This event may also be raised by implicit compilation.

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.

Added in version 3.8: ast.PyCF_ALLOW_TOP_LEVEL_AWAIT can now be passed in flags to enable support for top-level await, async for, and async with.

class complex(number=0, /)
class complex(string, /)
class complex(real=0, imag=0)

Convert a single string or number to a complex number, or create a complex number from real and imaginary parts.

Examples:

>>> complex('+1.23')
(1.23+0j)
>>> complex('-4.5j')
-4.5j
>>> complex('-1.23+4.5j')
(-1.23+4.5j)
>>> complex('\t( -1.23+4.5J )\n')
(-1.23+4.5j)
>>> complex('-Infinity+NaNj')
(-inf+nanj)
>>> complex(1.23)
(1.23+0j)
>>> complex(imag=-4.5)
-4.5j
>>> complex(-1.23, 4.5)
(-1.23+4.5j)

If the argument is a string, it must contain either a real part (in the same format as for float()) or an imaginary part (in the same format but with a 'j' or 'J' suffix), or both real and imaginary parts (the sign of the imaginary part is mandatory in this case). The string can optionally be surrounded by whitespaces and the round parentheses '(' and ')', which are ignored. The string must not contain whitespace between '+', '-', the 'j' or 'J' suffix, and the decimal number. For example, complex('1+2j') is fine, but complex('1 + 2j') raises ValueError. More precisely, the input must conform to the complexvalue production rule in the following grammar, after parentheses and leading and trailing whitespace characters are removed:

complexvalue ::= floatvalue |
                 floatvalue ("j" | "J") |
                 floatvalue sign absfloatvalue ("j" | "J")

If the argument is a number, the constructor serves as a numeric conversion like int and float. For a general Python object x, complex(x) delegates to x.__complex__(). If __complex__() is not defined then it falls back to __float__(). If __float__() is not defined then it falls back to __index__().

If two arguments are provided or keyword arguments are used, each argument may be any numeric type (including complex). If both arguments are real numbers, return a complex number with the real component real and the imaginary component imag. If both arguments are complex numbers, return a complex number with the real component real.real-imag.imag and the imaginary component real.imag+imag.real. If one of arguments is a real number, only its real component is used in the above expressions.

If all arguments are omitted, returns 0j.

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.

Changed in version 3.8: Falls back to __index__() if __complex__() and __float__() are not defined.

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. name need not be a Python identifier (see setattr()).

class dict(**kwargs)
class dict(mapping, /, **kwargs)
class dict(iterable, /, **kwargs)

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(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(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(iterable, start=0):
    n = start
    for elem in iterable:
        yield n, elem
        n += 1
eval(source, /, globals=None, locals=None)
Parameters:
  • source (str | code object) – A Python expression.

  • globals (dict | None) – The global namespace (default: None).

  • locals (mapping | None) – The local namespace (default: None).

Returns:

The result of the evaluated expression.

Raises:

Syntax errors are reported as exceptions.

Warning

This function executes arbitrary code. Calling it with user-supplied input may lead to security vulnerabilities.

The expression argument is parsed and evaluated as a Python expression (technically speaking, a condition list) using the globals and locals mappings as global and local namespace. If the globals dictionary is present and 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 before expression is parsed. 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 eval(). If the locals mapping is omitted it defaults to the globals dictionary. If both mappings are omitted, the expression is executed with the globals and locals in the environment where eval() is called. Note, eval() will only have access to the nested scopes (non-locals) in the enclosing environment if they are already referenced in the scope that is calling eval() (e.g. via a nonlocal statement).

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 return the current global and local dictionary, respectively, which may be useful to pass around for use by eval() or exec().

If the given source is a string, then leading and trailing spaces and tabs are stripped.

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

Raises an auditing event exec with the code object as the argument. Code compilation events may also be raised.

Changed in version 3.13: The globals and locals arguments can now be passed as keywords.

Changed in version 3.13: The semantics of the default locals namespace have been adjusted as described for the locals() builtin.

exec(source, /, globals=None, locals=None, *, closure=None)

Warning

This function executes arbitrary code. Calling it with user-supplied input may lead to security vulnerabilities.

This function supports dynamic execution of Python code. source 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 nonlocal, yield, and return 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 (and not a subclass of 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 the module level, globals and locals are the same dictionary.

Note

When exec gets two separate objects as globals and locals, the code will be executed as if it were embedded in a class definition. This means functions and classes defined in the executed code will not be able to access variables assigned at the top level (as the “top level” variables are treated as class variables 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().

The closure argument specifies a closure–a tuple of cellvars. It’s only valid when the object is a code object containing free (closure) variables. The length of the tuple must exactly match the length of the code object’s co_freevars attribute.

Raises an auditing event exec with the code object as the argument. Code compilation events may also be raised.

Note

The built-in functions globals() and locals() return the current global and local namespace, 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. Pass an explicit locals dictionary if you need to see effects of the code on locals after function exec() returns.

Changed in version 3.11: Added the closure parameter.

Changed in version 3.13: The globals and locals arguments can now be passed as keywords.

Changed in version 3.13: The semantics of the default locals namespace have been adjusted as described for the locals() builtin.

filter(function, iterable, /)

Construct an iterator from those elements of iterable for which function is 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 is false.

class float(number=0.0, /)
class float(string, /)

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

Examples:

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

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 positive or negative infinity. More precisely, the input must conform to the floatvalue production rule in the following grammar, after leading and trailing whitespace characters are removed:

sign          ::= "+" | "-"
infinity      ::= "Infinity" | "inf"
nan           ::= "nan"
digit         ::= <a Unicode decimal digit, i.e. characters in Unicode general category Nd>
digitpart     ::= digit (["_"] digit)*
number        ::= [digitpart] "." digitpart | digitpart ["."]
exponent      ::= ("e" | "E") [sign] digitpart
floatnumber   ::= number [exponent]
absfloatvalue ::= floatnumber | infinity | nan
floatvalue    ::= [sign] absfloatvalue

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 __float__() is not defined then it falls back to __index__().

If no argument is given, 0.0 is returned.

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.

Changed in version 3.7: The parameter is now positional-only.

Changed in version 3.8: Falls back to __index__() if __float__() is not defined.

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.

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(object, name, /)
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. name need not be a Python identifier (see setattr()).

Note

Since private name mangling happens at compilation time, one must manually mangle a private attribute’s (attributes with two leading underscores) name in order to retrieve it with getattr().

globals()

Return the dictionary implementing the current module namespace. For code within functions, this is set when the function is defined and remains the same regardless of where the function is called.

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(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.

help()
help(request)

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.

Note that if a slash(/) appears in the parameter list of a function when invoking help(), it means that the parameters prior to the slash are positional-only. For more info, see the FAQ entry on positional-only parameters.

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(integer, /)

Convert an integer number to a lowercase hexadecimal string prefixed with “0x”. If integer 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(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.

Raises an auditing event builtins.id with argument id.

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.

Raises an auditing event builtins.input with argument prompt before reading input

Raises an auditing event builtins.input/result with the result after successfully reading input.

class int(number=0, /)
class int(string, /, base=10)

Return an integer object constructed from a number or a string, or return 0 if no arguments are given.

Examples:

>>> int(123.45)
123
>>> int('123')
123
>>> int('   -12_345\n')
-12345
>>> int('FACE', 16)
64206
>>> int('0xface', 0)
64206
>>> int('01110011', base=2)
115

If the argument defines __int__(), int(x) returns x.__int__(). If the argument defines __index__(), it returns x.__index__(). If the argument defines __trunc__(), it returns x.__trunc__(). For floating-point numbers, this truncates towards zero.

If the argument is not a number or if base is given, then it must be a string, bytes, or bytearray instance representing an integer in radix base. Optionally, the string can be preceded by + or - (with no space in between), have leading zeros, be surrounded by whitespace, and have single underscores interspersed between digits.

A base-n integer string contains digits, each representing a value from 0 to n-1. The values 0–9 can be represented by any Unicode decimal digit. The values 10–35 can be represented by a to z (or A to Z). The default base is 10. The allowed bases are 0 and 2–36. Base-2, -8, and -16 strings can be optionally prefixed with 0b/0B, 0o/0O, or 0x/0X, as with integer literals in code. For base 0, the string is interpreted in a similar way to an integer literal in code, in that the actual base is 2, 8, 10, or 16 as determined by the prefix. Base 0 also disallows leading zeros: int('010', 0) is not legal, while int('010') and int('010', 8) are.

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.

Changed in version 3.7: The first parameter is now positional-only.

Changed in version 3.8: Falls back to __index__() if __int__() is not defined.

Changed in version 3.11: The delegation to __trunc__() is deprecated.

Changed in version 3.11: int string inputs and string representations can be limited to help avoid denial of service attacks. A ValueError is raised when the limit is exceeded while converting a string to an int or when converting an int into a string would exceed the limit. See the integer string conversion length limitation documentation.

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) or a Union Type of multiple types, 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. TypeError may not be raised for an invalid type if an earlier check succeeds.

Changed in version 3.10: classinfo can be a Union Type.

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 (or recursively, other such tuples) or a Union Type, in which case return True if class is a subclass of any entry in classinfo. In any other case, a TypeError exception is raised.

Changed in version 3.10: classinfo can be a Union Type.

iter(iterable, /)
iter(callable, sentinel, /)

Return an iterator object. The first argument is interpreted very differently depending on the presence of the second argument. Without a second argument, the single argument must be a collection object which supports the iterable 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 the first argument must be a callable object. The iterator created in this case will call callable 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 build a block-reader. For example, reading fixed-width blocks from a binary database file until the end of file is reached:

from functools import partial
with open('mydata.db', 'rb') as f:
    for block in iter(partial(f.read, 64), b''):
        process_block(block)
len(object, /)

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).

CPython implementation detail: len raises OverflowError on lengths larger than sys.maxsize, such as range(2 ** 100).

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()

Return a mapping object representing the current local symbol table, with variable names as the keys, and their currently bound references as the values.

At module scope, as well as when using exec() or eval() with a single namespace, this function returns the same namespace as globals().

At class scope, it returns the namespace that will be passed to the metaclass constructor.

When using exec() or eval() with separate local and global arguments, it returns the local namespace passed in to the function call.

In all of the above cases, each call to locals() in a given frame of execution will return the same mapping object. Changes made through the mapping object returned from locals() will be visible as assigned, reassigned, or deleted local variables, and assigning, reassigning, or deleting local variables will immediately affect the contents of the returned mapping object.

In an optimized scope (including functions, generators, and coroutines), each call to locals() instead returns a fresh dictionary containing the current bindings of the function’s local variables and any nonlocal cell references. In this case, name binding changes made via the returned dict are not written back to the corresponding local variables or nonlocal cell references, and assigning, reassigning, or deleting local variables and nonlocal cell references does not affect the contents of previously returned dictionaries.

Calling locals() as part of a comprehension in a function, generator, or coroutine is equivalent to calling it in the containing scope, except that the comprehension’s initialised iteration variables will be included. In other scopes, it behaves as if the comprehension were running as a nested function.

Calling locals() as part of a generator expression is equivalent to calling it in a nested generator function.

Changed in version 3.12: The behaviour of locals() in a comprehension has been updated as described in PEP 709.

Changed in version 3.13: As part of PEP 667, the semantics of mutating the mapping objects returned from this function are now defined. The behavior in optimized scopes is now as described above. Aside from being defined, the behaviour in other scopes remains unchanged from previous versions.

map(function, iterable, *iterables)

Return an iterator that applies function to every item of iterable, yielding the results. If additional iterables 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(iterable, /, *, key=None)
max(iterable, /, *, default, key=None)
max(arg1, arg2, /, *args, key=None)

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).

Changed in version 3.4: Added the default keyword-only parameter.

Changed in version 3.8: The key can be None.

class memoryview(object)

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

min(iterable, /, *, key=None)
min(iterable, /, *, default, key=None)
min(arg1, arg2, /, *args, key=None)

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).

Changed in version 3.4: Added the default keyword-only parameter.

Changed in version 3.8: The key can be None.

next(iterator, /)
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.

class object

This is the ultimate base class of all other classes. It has methods that are common to all instances of Python classes. When the constructor is called, it returns a new featureless object. The constructor does not accept any arguments.

Note

object instances do not have __dict__ attributes, so you can’t assign arbitrary attributes to an instance of object.

oct(integer, /)

Convert an integer number to an octal string prefixed with “0o”. The result is a valid Python expression. If integer is not a Python int object, it has to define an __index__() method that returns an integer. For example:

>>> oct(8)
'0o10'
>>> oct(-56)
'-0o70'

If you want to convert an integer number to an octal string either with the prefix “0o” or not, you can use either of the following ways.

>>> '%#o' % 10, '%o' % 10
('0o12', '12')
>>> format(10, '#o'), format(10, 'o')
('0o12', '12')
>>> f'{10:#o}', f'{10:o}'
('0o12', '12')

See also format() for more information.

open(file, mode='r', buffering=-1, encoding=None, errors=None, newline=None, closefd=True, opener=None)

Open file and return a corresponding file object. If the file cannot be opened, an OSError is raised. See Reading and Writing Files for more examples of how to use this function.

file is a path-like object giving the pathname (absolute or relative to the current working directory) of the file to be opened or an integer file descriptor of the file to be wrapped. (If a file descriptor is given, it is closed when the returned I/O object is closed unless closefd is set to False.)

mode is an optional string that specifies the mode in which the file is opened. It defaults to 'r' which means open for reading in text mode. Other common values are 'w' for writing (truncating the file if it already exists), 'x' for exclusive creation, and 'a' for appending (which on some Unix systems, means that all writes append to the end of the file regardless of the current seek position). In text mode, if encoding is not specified the encoding used is platform-dependent: locale.getencoding() is called to get the current locale encoding. (For reading and writing raw bytes use binary mode and leave encoding unspecified.) The available modes are:

Character

Meaning

'r'

open for reading (default)

'w'

open for writing, truncating the file first

'x'

open for exclusive creation, failing if the file already exists

'a'

open for writing, appending to the end of file if it exists

'b'

binary mode

't'

text mode (default)

'+'

open for updating (reading and writing)

The default mode is 'r' (open for reading text, a synonym of 'rt'). Modes 'w+' and 'w+b' open and truncate the file. Modes 'r+' and 'r+b' open the file with no truncation.

As mentioned in the Overview, Python distinguishes between binary and text I/O. Files opened in binary mode (including 'b' in the mode argument) return contents as bytes objects without any decoding. In text mode (the default, or when 't' is included in the mode argument), the contents of the file are returned as str, the bytes having been first decoded using a platform-dependent encoding or using the specified encoding if given.

Note

Python doesn’t depend on the underlying operating system’s notion of text files; all the processing is done by Python itself, and is therefore platform-independent.

buffering is an optional integer used to set the buffering policy. Pass 0 to switch buffering off (only allowed in binary mode), 1 to select line buffering (only usable when writing in text mode), and an integer > 1 to indicate the size in bytes of a fixed-size chunk buffer. Note that specifying a buffer size this way applies for binary buffered I/O, but TextIOWrapper (i.e., files opened with mode='r+') would have another buffering. To disable buffering in TextIOWrapper, consider using the write_through flag for io.TextIOWrapper.reconfigure(). When no buffering argument is given, the default buffering policy works as follows:

  • Binary files are buffered in fixed-size chunks; the size of the buffer is chosen using a heuristic trying to determine the underlying device’s “block size” and falling back on io.DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE. On many systems, the buffer will typically be 4096 or 8192 bytes long.

  • “Interactive” text files (files for which isatty() returns True) use line buffering. Other text files use the policy described above for binary files.

encoding is the name of the encoding used to decode or encode the file. This should only be used in text mode. The default encoding is platform dependent (whatever locale.getencoding() returns), but any text encoding supported by Python can be used. See the codecs module for the list of supported encodings.

errors is an optional string that specifies how encoding and decoding errors are to be handled—this cannot be used in binary mode. A variety of standard error handlers are available (listed under Error Handlers), though any error handling name that has been registered with codecs.register_error() is also valid. The standard names include:

  • 'strict' to raise a ValueError exception if there is an encoding error. The default value of None has the same effect.

  • 'ignore' ignores errors. Note that ignoring encoding errors can lead to data loss.

  • 'replace' causes a replacement marker (such as '?') to be inserted where there is malformed data.

  • 'surrogateescape' will represent any incorrect bytes as low surrogate code units ranging from U+DC80 to U+DCFF. These surrogate code units will then be turned back into the same bytes when the surrogateescape error handler is used when writing data. This is useful for processing files in an unknown encoding.

  • 'xmlcharrefreplace' is only supported when writing to a file. Characters not supported by the encoding are replaced with the appropriate XML character reference &#nnn;.

  • 'backslashreplace' replaces malformed data by Python’s backslashed escape sequences.

  • 'namereplace' (also only supported when writing) replaces unsupported characters with \N{...} escape sequences.

newline determines how to parse newline characters from the stream. It can be None, '', '\n', '\r', and '\r\n'. It works as follows:

  • When reading input from the stream, if newline is None, universal newlines mode is enabled. Lines in the input can end in '\n', '\r', or '\r\n', and these are translated into '\n' before being returned to the caller. If it is '', universal newlines mode is enabled, but line endings are returned to the caller untranslated. If it has any of the other legal values, input lines are only terminated by the given string, and the line ending is returned to the caller untranslated.

  • When writing output to the stream, if newline is None, any '\n' characters written are translated to the system default line separator, os.linesep. If newline is '' or '\n', no translation takes place. If newline is any of the other legal values, any '\n' characters written are translated to the given string.

If closefd is False and a file descriptor rather than a filename was given, the underlying file descriptor will be kept open when the file is closed. If a filename is given closefd must be True (the default); otherwise, an error will be raised.

A custom opener can be used by passing a callable as opener. The underlying file descriptor for the file object is then obtained by calling opener with (file, flags). opener must return an open file descriptor (passing os.open as opener results in functionality similar to passing None).

The newly created file is non-inheritable.

The following example uses the dir_fd parameter of the os.open() function to open a file relative to a given directory:

>>> import os
>>> dir_fd = os.open('somedir', os.O_RDONLY)
>>> def opener(path, flags):
...     return os.open(path, flags, dir_fd=dir_fd)
...
>>> with open('spamspam.txt', 'w', opener=opener) as f:
...     print('This will be written to somedir/spamspam.txt', file=f)
...
>>> os.close(dir_fd)  # don't leak a file descriptor

The type of file object returned by the open() function depends on the mode. When open() is used to open a file in a text mode ('w', 'r', 'wt', 'rt', etc.), it returns a subclass of io.TextIOBase (specifically io.TextIOWrapper). When used to open a file in a binary mode with buffering, the returned class is a subclass of io.BufferedIOBase. The exact class varies: in read binary mode, it returns an io.BufferedReader; in write binary and append binary modes, it returns an io.BufferedWriter, and in read/write mode, it returns an io.BufferedRandom. When buffering is disabled, the raw stream, a subclass of io.RawIOBase,