Talk:Python Programming/Data Types

A page called "Programming:Python features" which was just a list of data types had the following text, which duplicates what's already on this page. Some of it may be useful in this page.

Data Containers

Python has four basic types of data:

String A sequence of alpha numeric characters which is immutable.

e.g. mystring="fourteen and five" (The letters to the left are the name of the string, quotes marks denote a string, and the letters and spaces within the quotes are elements of the string)

Python has a very flexible quoting syntax. Quotes can be either single quotes (tics) or double quotes (regular quotation marks) and either can contain the other as quoted text, as follows:

"Will's foot hurt"

'Ben said, "Would you look at that!"'

A string may also be prefaced with the character 'r' for 'raw', which means that escape characters will be taken as literals.

'This string contains \n a newline'

r'This string contains just a \n slash and an en'

Either quote may also be used tripled to contain any characters, including newlines, as below:

""" Most Python methods and objects

are commented in blocks surrounded by tripled quotes, like this.

"""

List

A sequence of elements, either strings, numbers or other objects.

e.g. mylist=[1,3,"four", Python.class] The square brackets denote a list, and the enclosed items are elements (of various types) within the list. Lists are mutable, i.e. they can be concatenated or added together, with the result being a list.

Dictionary

Dictionaries are arrays which are indexed more flexibly than simply with an integer. A dictionary contains pairs in the form (key, value). The keys in these key-value pairs can be most Python objects, with a few exceptions you don't need to worry about until you've got more of the language behind you. The values can be any Python object, as far as I know. Dictionaries are represented with curly braces - {}

A dictionary is declared like this:

person = {'name':'Phil', 'address':'1234 Blue Lane', 'spouse':anotherPerson}

The values are accessed in a number of ways, but the most common are:

aName = person['name'] (stores the value 'Phil' in aName)

person['shoesize']= 9 (stores the value 9 in the new key 'shoesize')

Tuple

A tuple is a sequence of values much like a list, except that it is immutable, like a string. Tuples are represented by parentheses, like this:

(1,2,3,'a',anObject)

A tuple can be a sequence of length one, but the literal form has a trailing comma so the interpreter can tell what you're doing:

(1,)

Yath 20:27, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Right out?
Maybe somebody should clarify that. I don't think "right out" is a common phrase and it could be confusing.

Example of long integers

 * = $$111111111^2$$
 * = $$30!$$
 * = $$60!$$
 * = $$2^{128}$$

Please make some long integers within these examples! Preceding comment signature by an IP address: 2405:9800:BA30:C21A:BD93:B478:D224:4256 (discuss) 09:34, 18 August 2019 (UTC)