Python Language Reference Manual Guido van Rossum Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor Python Software Foundation November 2006 (Release 2.5) Copyright © 2001-2006 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2000 BeOpen.com. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum. All rights reserved.

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• Publisher's Preface
• Overview
• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Alternate Implementations
  • 1.2 Notation
• 2 Lexical analysis
  • 2.1 Line structure
    • 2.1.1 Logical lines
    • 2.1.2 Physical lines
    • 2.1.3 Comments
    • 2.1.4 Encoding declarations
    • 2.1.5 Explicit line joining
    • 2.1.6 Implicit line joining
    • 2.1.7 Blank lines
    • 2.1.8 Indentation
    • 2.1.9 Whitespace between tokens
  • 2.2 Other tokens
  • 2.3 Identifiers and keywords
    • 2.3.1 Keywords
    • 2.3.2 Reserved classes of identifiers
  • 2.4 Literals
    • 2.4.1 String literals
    • 2.4.2 String literal concatenation
    • 2.4.3 Numeric literals
    • 2.4.4 Integer and long integer literals
    • 2.4.5 Floating point literals
    • 2.4.6 Imaginary literals
  • 2.5 Operators
  • 2.6 Delimiters
• 3 Data model
  • 3.1 Objects, values and types
  • 3.2 The standard type hierarchy
  • 3.3 New-style and classic classes
  • 3.4 Special method names
    • 3.4.1 Basic customization
    • 3.4.2 Customizing attribute access
      • 3.4.2.1 More attribute access for new-style classes
      • 3.4.2.2 Implementing Descriptors
      • 3.4.2.3 Invoking Descriptors
      • 3.4.2.4 __slots__
    • 3.4.3 Customizing class creation
    • 3.4.4 Emulating callable objects
    • 3.4.5 Emulating container types
    • 3.4.6 Additional methods for emulation of sequence types
    • 3.4.7 Emulating numeric types
    • 3.4.8 Coercion rules
    • 3.4.9 With Statement Context Managers
• 4 Execution model
  • 4.1 Naming and binding
    • 4.1.1 Interaction with dynamic features
  • 4.2 Exceptions
• 5 Expressions
  • 5.1 Arithmetic conversions
  • 5.2 Atoms
    • 5.2.1 Identifiers (Names)
    • 5.2.2 Literals
    • 5.2.3 Parenthesized forms
    • 5.2.4 List displays
    • 5.2.5 Generator expressions
    • 5.2.6 Dictionary displays
    • 5.2.7 String conversions
  • 5.3 Primaries
    • 5.3.1 Attribute references
    • 5.3.2 Subscriptions
    • 5.3.3 Slicings
    • 5.3.4 Calls
  • 5.4 The power operator
  • 5.5 Unary arithmetic operations
  • 5.6 Binary arithmetic operations
  • 5.7 Shifting operations
  • 5.8 Binary bit-wise operations
  • 5.9 Comparisons
  • 5.10 Boolean operations
  • 5.11 Lambdas
  • 5.12 Expression lists
  • 5.13 Evaluation order
  • 5.14 Summary
• 6 Simple statements
  • 6.1 Expression statements
  • 6.2 Assert statements
  • 6.3 Assignment statements
    • 6.3.1 Augmented assignment statements
  • 6.4 The pass statement
  • 6.5 The del statement
  • 6.6 The print statement
  • 6.7 The return statement
  • 6.8 The yield statement
  • 6.9 The raise statement
  • 6.10 The break statement
  • 6.11 The continue statement
  • 6.12 The import statement
    • 6.12.1 Future statements
  • 6.13 The global statement
  • 6.14 The exec statement
• 7 Compound statements
  • 7.1 The if statement
  • 7.2 The while statement
  • 7.3 The for statement
  • 7.4 The try statement
  • 7.5 The with statement
  • 7.6 Function definitions
  • 7.7 Class definitions
• 8 Top-level components
  • 8.1 Complete Python programs
  • 8.2 File input
  • 8.3 Interactive input
  • 8.4 Expression input
• 9 History and License
  • 9.1 History of the software
  • 9.2 Terms and conditions for Python
  • 9.3 Other licenses and acknowledgements
    • 9.3.1 Mersenne Twister
    • 9.3.2 Sockets
    • 9.3.3 Floating point exception control
    • 9.3.4 MD5 message digest algorithm
    • 9.3.5 Asynchronous socket services
    • 9.3.6 Cookie management
    • 9.3.7 Profiling
    • 9.3.8 Execution tracing
    • 9.3.9 UUencode and UUdecode functions
    • 9.3.10 XML Remote Procedure Calls