Variables and Types

Open The REPL

Learn about variables by typing along in the Python REPL.

Open the REPL from VS Code by opening the command palette (Ctrl + Shift + P on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + P on Mac) and selecting Python: Start REPL

Any Python code that starts with the >>> symbols indicates that it was typed into a REPL.

You can then use Ctrl + ` (backtick) to open and close the VS Code terminal on Mac, or Ctrl + ' (single quote) on Windows. You won’t lose your work in the REPL unless you close VS Code.

If you’d like to save the contents of your REPL as class goes on, you can right click, select all, and paste it into a new file.

Variables

Values and Names

Variables in Python allow us to store information and give it a label that we can use to retrieve that information later.

We assign values to variables by putting the value to the right of an equal sign.

Python is a Dynamic Language

Because Python is a dynamic language, you’ll notice we don’t need to declare the type of the variables before we store data in them.

That means that this is valid Python code:

>>> x = 42

Unlike typed languages, the type of what’s contained in Python variables can change at any time.

For example, the below is perfectly valid Python code:

>>> x = 42
>>> x = "hello"

Here, the value of the variable x changed from a number to a string.

Because Python is a dynamic language, you don’t have type hints to explain what’s stored inside a variable while reading code. You should do your best to name your variables in a way that describes what is stored in them.

It’s ok to be verbose. For example, n is a poor variable name, while number is a better one. If you’re storing a collection of items, name your variable as a plural, like numbers.

Learn more about great naming practices for dynamic types by watching this 30-minute talk Dynamic Types Meet Smart Conventions.

Naming Variables

Convention says that variables should be named in lowercase and start with a letter or an underscore (not a number). Whole words should be separated by underscores. This is called snake case.

Some names will result in a syntax error, like if you try to name your variables and, if, True, or False. That’s because Python uses these names for program control structure. You can’t start your variable name with a digit, although your variable name can end in a digit. Your variable name also can’t contain special characters, such as !, @, #, $, %.

Other names won’t result in a syntax error, but can cause weird bugs that are hard to diagnose and troubleshoot. You don’t want to name your variables the same as the types that we’ll be working with. For example don’t name your variables int, list, dict, etc.

If you notice your program behaving oddly and you can’t find the source of the bug, double check the list of built-in functions and built-in types to make sure that your variable names don’t conflict.

💣 Python will let you override built-in methods and types without a warning so don’t name your Python variables things like list, str, or int.

If you want to learn more about Python naming conventions look at PEP8 during a break.

No-Value, None, or Null Value

There’s a special type in Python that signifies no value at all. In other languages, it might be called Null. In Python, it’s called None.

If you try to examine a variable on the REPL that’s been set to None, you won’t see any output. We’ll talk more about the None type later in the class.

>>> x = None
>>> x

Using type(), dir(), and help() in the REPL

There are three very useful methods we can use in the REPL to help us understand our Python programs.

type()

Python has a very easy way of determining the type of something: with the type() function.

Just pass any object into the type() method:

>>> num = 42
>>> type(num)
<class 'int'>

For example, in the REPL, let’s make a new variable name, and check its type.

>>> name = "Nina"
>>> type(name)
<class 'str'>

We’ll see that the type is str, Python’s version of a string. Now that we know this object’s type, we can pass the type into other methods.

dir()

dir() stands for directory. If we check the type of str (notice, no quotes here) in the REPL, we’ll see all the methods available on strings in Python. We’ll use some of these methods later in the day.

>>> dir(str)
['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getnewargs__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'capitalize', 'casefold', 'center', 'count', 'encode', 'endswith', 'expandtabs', 'find', 'format', 'format_map', 'index', 'isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isascii', 'isdecimal', 'isdigit', 'isidentifier', 'islower', 'isnumeric', 'isprintable', 'isspace', 'istitle', 'isupper', 'join', 'ljust', 'lower', 'lstrip', 'maketrans', 'partition', 'replace', 'rfind', 'rindex', 'rjust', 'rpartition', 'rsplit', 'rstrip', 'split', 'splitlines', 'startswith', 'strip', 'swapcase', 'title', 'translate', 'upper', 'zfill']

help()

The last useful method is help(). You can pass a type, method, or other object to help() to instantly see available documentation about the method, the parameters it expects, and what it returns.

Let’s try this in the REPL, and look up the documentation for the isupper method in String. We access it with the period symbol (.). This is called dot-notation.

>>> help(str.isupper)

Will show:

isupper(self, /)
    Return True if the string is an uppercase string, False otherwise.

    A string is uppercase if all cased characters in the string are uppercase and
    there is at least one cased character in the string.

Press the ‘q’ key to exit this screen.

Keep note of these three helpful methods; you’ll be using them regularly throughout the class.