The Python Language Reference

This reference manual describes the syntax and “core semantics” of the language. It is terse, but attempts to be exact and complete. The semantics of non-essential built-in object types and of the built-in functions and modules are described inThe Python Standard Library.For an informal introduction to the language, seeThe Python Tutorial.For C or C++ programmers, two additional manuals exist:Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreterdescribes the high-level picture of how to write a Python extension module, and thePython/C API Reference Manualdescribes the interfaces available to C/C++ programmers in detail.

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. Alternate Implementations
  • 1.2. Notation
• 2. Lexical analysis
  • 2.1. Line structure
  • 2.2. Other tokens
  • 2.3. Identifiers and keywords
  • 2.4. Literals
  • 2.5. Operators
  • 2.6. Delimiters
• 3. Data model
  • 3.1. Objects, values and types
  • 3.2. The standard type hierarchy
  • 3.3. Special method names
  • 3.4. Coroutines
• 4. Execution model
  • 4.1. Structure of a program
  • 4.2. Naming and binding
  • 4.3. Exceptions
• 5. The import system
  • 5.1.importlib
  • 5.2. Packages
  • 5.3. Searching
  • 5.4. Loading
  • 5.5. The Path Based Finder
  • 5.6. Replacing the standard import system
  • 5.7. Package Relative Imports
  • 5.8. Special considerations for __main__
  • 5.9. References
• 6. Expressions
  • 6.1. Arithmetic conversions
  • 6.2. Atoms
  • 6.3. Primaries
  • 6.4. Await expression
  • 6.5. The power operator
  • 6.6. Unary arithmetic and bitwise operations
  • 6.7. Binary arithmetic operations
  • 6.8. Shifting operations
  • 6.9. Binary bitwise operations
  • 6.10. Comparisons
  • 6.11. Boolean operations
  • 6.12. Assignment expressions
  • 6.13. Conditional expressions
  • 6.14. Lambdas
  • 6.15. Expression lists
  • 6.16. Evaluation order
  • 6.17. Operator precedence
• 7. Simple statements
  • 7.1. Expression statements
  • 7.2. Assignment statements
  • 7.3. Theassertstatement
  • 7.4. Thepassstatement
  • 7.5. Thedelstatement
  • 7.6. Thereturnstatement
  • 7.7. Theyieldstatement
  • 7.8. Theraisestatement
  • 7.9. Thebreakstatement
  • 7.10. Thecontinuestatement
  • 7.11. Theimportstatement
  • 7.12. Theglobalstatement
  • 7.13. Thenonlocalstatement
  • 7.14. Thetypestatement
• 8. Compound statements
  • 8.1. Theifstatement
  • 8.2. Thewhilestatement
  • 8.3. Theforstatement
  • 8.4. Thetrystatement
  • 8.5. Thewithstatement
  • 8.6. Thematchstatement
  • 8.7. Function definitions
  • 8.8. Class definitions
  • 8.9. Coroutines
  • 8.10. Type parameter lists
  • 8.11. Annotations
• 9. Top-level components
  • 9.1. Complete Python programs
  • 9.2. File input
  • 9.3. Interactive input
  • 9.4. Expression input
• 10. Full Grammar specification