2. Lexical analysis¶
A Python program is read by a parser. Input to the parser is a stream of tokens, generated by the lexical analyzer. This chapter describes how the lexical analyzer breaks a file into tokens.
Python reads program text as Unicode code points; the encoding of a source file
can be given by an encoding declaration and defaults to UTF-8, see PEP 3120
for details. If the source file cannot be decoded, a SyntaxError
is
raised.
2.1. Line structure¶
A Python program is divided into a number of logical lines.
2.1.1. Logical lines¶
The end of a logical line is represented by the token NEWLINE. Statements cannot cross logical line boundaries except where NEWLINE is allowed by the syntax (e.g., between statements in compound statements). A logical line is constructed from one or more physical lines by following the explicit or implicit line joining rules.
2.1.2. Physical lines¶
A physical line is a sequence of characters terminated by an end-of-line sequence. In source files and strings, any of the standard platform line termination sequences can be used - the Unix form using ASCII LF (linefeed), the Windows form using the ASCII sequence CR LF (return followed by linefeed), or the old Macintosh form using the ASCII CR (return) character. All of these forms can be used equally, regardless of platform. The end of input also serves as an implicit terminator for the final physical line.
When embedding Python, source code strings should be passed to Python APIs using
the standard C conventions for newline characters (the \n
character,
representing ASCII LF, is the line terminator).
2.1.4. Encoding declarations¶
If a comment in the first or second line of the Python script matches the
regular expression coding[=:]\s*([-\w.]+)
, this comment is processed as an
encoding declaration; the first group of this expression names the encoding of
the source code file. The encoding declaration must appear on a line of its
own. If it is the second line, the first line must also be a comment-only line.
The recommended forms of an encoding expression are
# -*- coding: <encoding-name> -*-
which is recognized also by GNU Emacs, and
# vim:fileencoding=<encoding-name>
which is recognized by Bram Moolenaar’s VIM.
If no encoding declaration is found, the default encoding is UTF-8. If the implicit or explicit encoding of a file is UTF-8, an initial UTF-8 byte-order mark (b’xefxbbxbf’) is ignored rather than being a syntax error.
If an encoding is declared, the encoding name must be recognized by Python (see Standard Encodings). The encoding is used for all lexical analysis, including string literals, comments and identifiers.
2.1.5. Explicit line joining¶
Two or more physical lines may be joined into logical lines using backslash
characters (\
), as follows: when a physical line ends in a backslash that is
not part of a string literal or comment, it is joined with the following forming
a single logical line, deleting the backslash and the following end-of-line
character. For example:
if 1900 < year < 2100 and 1 <= month <= 12 \
and 1 <= day <= 31 and 0 <= hour < 24 \
and 0 <= minute < 60 and 0 <= second < 60: # Looks like a valid date
return 1
A line ending in a backslash cannot carry a comment. A backslash does not continue a comment. A backslash does not continue a token except for string literals (i.e., tokens other than string literals cannot be split across physical lines using a backslash). A backslash is illegal elsewhere on a line outside a string literal.
2.1.6. Implicit line joining¶
Expressions in parentheses, square brackets or curly braces can be split over more than one physical line without using backslashes. For example:
month_names = ['Januari', 'Februari', 'Maart', # These are the
'April', 'Mei', 'Juni', # Dutch names
'Juli', 'Augustus', 'September', # for the months
'Oktober', 'November', 'December'] # of the year
Implicitly continued lines can carry comments. The indentation of the continuation lines is not important. Blank continuation lines are allowed. There is no NEWLINE token between implicit continuation lines. Implicitly continued lines can also occur within triple-quoted strings (see below); in that case they cannot carry comments.
2.1.7. Blank lines¶
A logical line that contains only spaces, tabs, formfeeds and possibly a comment, is ignored (i.e., no NEWLINE token is generated). During interactive input of statements, handling of a blank line may differ depending on the implementation of the read-eval-print loop. In the standard interactive interpreter, an entirely blank logical line (i.e. one containing not even whitespace or a comment) terminates a multi-line statement.
2.1.8. Indentation¶
Leading whitespace (spaces and tabs) at the beginning of a logical line is used to compute the indentation level of the line, which in turn is used to determine the grouping of statements.
Tabs are replaced (from left to right) by one to eight spaces such that the total number of characters up to and including the replacement is a multiple of eight (this is intended to be the same rule as used by Unix). The total number of spaces preceding the first non-blank character then determines the line’s indentation. Indentation cannot be split over multiple physical lines using backslashes; the whitespace up to the first backslash determines the indentation.
Indentation is rejected as inconsistent if a source file mixes tabs and spaces
in a way that makes the meaning dependent on the worth of a tab in spaces; a
TabError
is raised in that case.
Cross-platform compatibility note: because of the nature of text editors on non-UNIX platforms, it is unwise to use a mixture of spaces and tabs for the indentation in a single source file. It should also be noted that different platforms may explicitly limit the maximum indentation level.
A formfeed character may be present at the start of the line; it will be ignored for the indentation calculations above. Formfeed characters occurring elsewhere in the leading whitespace have an undefined effect (for instance, they may reset the space count to zero).
The indentation levels of consecutive lines are used to generate INDENT and DEDENT tokens, using a stack, as follows.
Before the first line of the file is read, a single zero is pushed on the stack; this will never be popped off again. The numbers pushed on the stack will always be strictly increasing from bottom to top. At the beginning of each logical line, the line’s indentation level is compared to the top of the stack. If it is equal, nothing happens. If it is larger, it is pushed on the stack, and one INDENT token is generated. If it is smaller, it must be one of the numbers occurring on the stack; all numbers on the stack that are larger are popped off, and for each number popped off a DEDENT token is generated. At the end of the file, a DEDENT token is generated for each number remaining on the stack that is larger than zero.
Here is an example of a correctly (though confusingly) indented piece of Python code:
def perm(l):
# Compute the list of all permutations of l
if len(l) <= 1:
return [l]
r = []
for i in range(len(l)):
s = l[:i] + l[i+1:]
p = perm(s)
for x in p:
r.append(l[i:i+1] + x)
return r
The following example shows various indentation errors:
def perm(l): # error: first line indented
for i in range(len(l)): # error: not indented
s = l[:i] + l[i+1:]
p = perm(l[:i] + l[i+1:]) # error: unexpected indent
for x in p:
r.append(l[i:i+1] + x)
return r # error: inconsistent dedent
(Actually, the first three errors are detected by the parser; only the last
error is found by the lexical analyzer — the indentation of return r
does
not match a level popped off the stack.)
2.1.9. Whitespace between tokens¶
Except at the beginning of a logical line or in string literals, the whitespace characters space, tab and formfeed can be used interchangeably to separate tokens. Whitespace is needed between two tokens only if their concatenation could otherwise be interpreted as a different token (e.g., ab is one token, but a b is two tokens).
2.2. Other tokens¶
Besides NEWLINE, INDENT and DEDENT, the following categories of tokens exist: identifiers, keywords, literals, operators, and delimiters. Whitespace characters (other than line terminators, discussed earlier) are not tokens, but serve to delimit tokens. Where ambiguity exists, a token comprises the longest possible string that forms a legal token, when read from left to right.
2.3. Identifiers and keywords¶
Identifiers (also referred to as names) are described by the following lexical definitions.
The syntax of identifiers in Python is based on the Unicode standard annex UAX-31, with elaboration and changes as defined below; see also PEP 3131 for further details.
Within the ASCII range (U+0001..U+007F), the valid characters for identifiers
are the same as in Python 2.x: the uppercase and lowercase letters A
through
Z
, the underscore _
and, except for the first character, the digits
0
through 9
.
Python 3.0 introduces additional characters from outside the ASCII range (see
PEP 3131). For these characters, the classification uses the version of the
Unicode Character Database as included in the unicodedata
module.
Identifiers are unlimited in length. Case is significant.
identifier ::=xid_start
xid_continue
* id_start ::= <all characters in general categories Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, Lo, Nl, the underscore, and characters with the Other_ID_Start property> id_continue ::= <all characters inid_start
, plus characters in the categories Mn, Mc, Nd, Pc and others with the Other_ID_Continue property> xid_start ::= <all characters inid_start
whose NFKC normalization is in "id_start xid_continue*"> xid_continue ::= <all characters inid_continue
whose NFKC normalization is in "id_continue*">
The Unicode category codes mentioned above stand for:
Lu - uppercase letters
Ll - lowercase letters
Lt - titlecase letters
Lm - modifier letters
Lo - other letters
Nl - letter numbers
Mn - nonspacing marks
Mc - spacing combining marks
Nd - decimal numbers
Pc - connector punctuations
Other_ID_Start - explicit list of characters in PropList.txt to support backwards compatibility
Other_ID_Continue - likewise
All identifiers are converted into the normal form NFKC while parsing; comparison of identifiers is based on NFKC.
A non-normative HTML file listing all valid identifier characters for Unicode 15.0.0 can be found at https://www.unicode.org/Public/15.0.0/ucd/DerivedCoreProperties.txt
2.3.1. Keywords¶
The following identifiers are used as reserved words, or keywords of the language, and cannot be used as ordinary identifiers. They must be spelled exactly as written here:
False await else import pass
None break except in raise
True class finally is return
and continue for lambda try
as def from nonlocal while
assert del global not with
async elif if or yield
2.3.2. Soft Keywords¶
Added in version 3.10.
Some identifiers are only reserved under specific contexts. These are known as
soft keywords. The identifiers match
, case
, type
and _
can
syntactically act as keywords in certain contexts,
but this distinction is done at the parser level, not when tokenizing.
As soft keywords, their use in the grammar is possible while still preserving compatibility with existing code that uses these names as identifier names.
match
, case
, and _
are used in the match
statement.
type
is used in the type
statement.
Changed in version 3.12: type
is now a soft keyword.
2.3.3. Reserved classes of identifiers¶
Certain classes of identifiers (besides keywords) have special meanings. These classes are identified by the patterns of leading and trailing underscore characters:
_*
Not imported by
from module import *
._
In a
case
pattern within amatch
statement,_
is a soft keyword that denotes a wildcard.Separately, the interactive interpreter makes the result of the last evaluation available in the variable
_
. (It is stored in thebuiltins
module, alongside built-in functions likeprint
.)Elsewhere,
_
is a regular identifier. It is often used to name “special” items, but it is not special to Python itself.Note
The name
_
is often used in conjunction with internationalization; refer to the documentation for thegettext
module for more information on this convention.It is also commonly used for unused variables.
__*__
System-defined names, informally known as “dunder” names. These names are defined by the interpreter and its implementation (including the standard library). Current system names are discussed in the Special method names section and elsewhere. More will likely be defined in future versions of Python. Any use of
__*__
names, in any context, that does not follow explicitly documented use, is subject to breakage without warning.__*
Class-private names. Names in this category, when used within the context of a class definition, are re-written to use a mangled form to help avoid name clashes between “private” attributes of base and derived classes. See section Identifiers (Names).
2.4. Literals¶
Literals are notations for constant values of some built-in types.
2.4.1. String and Bytes literals¶
String literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
stringliteral ::= [stringprefix
](shortstring
|longstring
) stringprefix ::= "r" | "u" | "R" | "U" | "f" | "F" | "fr" | "Fr" | "fR" | "FR" | "rf" | "rF" | "Rf" | "RF" shortstring ::= "'"shortstringitem
* "'" | '"'shortstringitem
* '"' longstring ::= "'''"longstringitem
* "'''" | '"""'longstringitem
* '"""' shortstringitem ::=shortstringchar
|stringescapeseq
longstringitem ::=longstringchar
|stringescapeseq
shortstringchar ::= <any source character except "\" or newline or the quote> longstringchar ::= <any source character except "\"> stringescapeseq ::= "\" <any source character>
bytesliteral ::=bytesprefix
(shortbytes
|longbytes
) bytesprefix ::= "b" | "B" | "br" | "Br" | "bR" | "BR" | "rb" | "rB" | "Rb" | "RB" shortbytes ::= "'"shortbytesitem
* "'" | '"'shortbytesitem
* '"' longbytes ::= "'''"longbytesitem
* "'''" | '"""'longbytesitem
* '"""' shortbytesitem ::=shortbyteschar
|bytesescapeseq
longbytesitem ::=longbyteschar
|bytesescapeseq
shortbyteschar ::= <any ASCII character except "\" or newline or the quote> longbyteschar ::= <any ASCII character except "\"> bytesescapeseq ::= "\" <any ASCII character>
One syntactic restriction not indicated by these productions is that whitespace
is not allowed between the stringprefix
or
bytesprefix
and the rest of the literal. The source
character set is defined by the encoding declaration; it is UTF-8 if no encoding
declaration is given in the source file; see section Encoding declarations.
In plain English: Both types of literals can be enclosed in matching single quotes
('
) or double quotes ("
). They can also be enclosed in matching groups
of three single or double quotes (these are generally referred to as
triple-quoted strings). The backslash (\
) character is used to give special
meaning to otherwise ordinary characters like n
, which means ‘newline’ when
escaped (\n
). It can also be used to escape characters that otherwise have a
special meaning, such as newline, backslash itself, or the quote character.
See escape sequences below for examples.
Bytes literals are always prefixed with 'b'
or 'B'
; they produce an
instance of the bytes
type instead of the str
type. They
may only contain ASCII characters; bytes with a numeric value of 128 or greater
must be expressed with escapes.
Both string and bytes literals may optionally be prefixed with a letter 'r'
or 'R'
; such constructs are called raw string literals
and raw bytes literals respectively and treat backslashes as
literal characters. As a result, in raw string literals, '\U'
and '\u'
escapes are not treated specially.
Added in version 3.3: The 'rb'
prefix of raw bytes literals has been added as a synonym
of 'br'
.
Support for the unicode legacy literal (u'value'
) was reintroduced
to simplify the maintenance of dual Python 2.x and 3.x codebases.
See PEP 414 for more information.
A string literal with 'f'
or 'F'
in its prefix is a
formatted string literal; see f-strings. The 'f'
may be
combined with 'r'
, but not with 'b'
or 'u'
, therefore raw
formatted strings are possible, but formatted bytes literals are not.
In triple-quoted literals, unescaped newlines and quotes are allowed (and are
retained), except that three unescaped quotes in a row terminate the literal. (A
“quote” is the character used to open the literal, i.e. either '
or "
.)
2.4.1.1. Escape sequences¶
Unless an 'r'
or 'R'
prefix is present, escape sequences in string and
bytes literals are interpreted according to rules similar to those used by
Standard C. The recognized escape sequences are:
Escape Sequence |
Meaning |
Notes |
---|---|---|
|
Backslash and newline ignored |
(1) |
|
Backslash ( |
|
|
Single quote ( |
|
|
Double quote ( |
|
|
ASCII Bell (BEL) |
|
|
ASCII Backspace (BS) |
|
|
ASCII Formfeed (FF) |
|
|
ASCII Linefeed (LF) |
|
|
ASCII Carriage Return (CR) |
|
|
ASCII Horizontal Tab (TAB) |
|
|
ASCII Vertical Tab (VT) |
|
|
Character with octal value ooo |
(2,4) |
|
Character with hex value hh |
(3,4) |
Escape sequences only recognized in string literals are:
Escape Sequence |
Meaning |
Notes |
---|---|---|
|
Character named name in the Unicode database |
(5) |
|
Character with 16-bit hex value xxxx |
(6) |
|
Character with 32-bit hex value xxxxxxxx |
(7) |
Notes:
A backslash can be added at the end of a line to ignore the newline:
>>> 'This string will not include \ ... backslashes or newline characters.' 'This string will not include backslashes or newline characters.'
The same result can be achieved using triple-quoted strings, or parentheses and string literal concatenation.
As in Standard C, up to three octal digits are accepted.
Changed in version 3.11: Octal escapes with value larger than
0o377
produce aDeprecationWarning
.Changed in version 3.12: Octal escapes with value larger than
0o377
produce aSyntaxWarning
. In a future Python version they will be eventually aSyntaxError
.Unlike in Standard C, exactly two hex digits are required.
In a bytes literal, hexadecimal and octal escapes denote the byte with the given value. In a string literal, these escapes denote a Unicode character with the given value.
Changed in version 3.3: Support for name aliases [1] has been added.
Exactly four hex digits are required.
Any Unicode character can be encoded this way. Exactly eight hex digits are required.
Unlike Standard C, all unrecognized escape sequences are left in the string unchanged, i.e., the backslash is left in the result. (This behavior is useful when debugging: if an escape sequence is mistyped, the resulting output is more easily recognized as broken.) It is also important to note that the escape sequences only recognized in string literals fall into the category of unrecognized escapes for bytes literals.
Changed in version 3.6: Unrecognized escape sequences produce a DeprecationWarning
.
Changed in version 3.12: Unrecognized escape sequences produce a SyntaxWarning
. In a future
Python version they will be eventually a SyntaxError
.
Even in a raw literal, quotes can be escaped with a backslash, but the
backslash remains in the result; for example, r"\""
is a valid string
literal consisting of two characters: a backslash and a double quote; r"\"
is not a valid string literal (even a raw string cannot end in an odd number of
backslashes). Specifically, a raw literal cannot end in a single backslash
(since the backslash would escape the following quote character). Note also
that a single backslash followed by a newline is interpreted as those two
characters as part of the literal, not as a line continuation.
2.4.2. String literal concatenation¶
Multiple adjacent string or bytes literals (delimited by whitespace), possibly
using different quoting conventions, are allowed, and their meaning is the same
as their concatenation. Thus, "hello" 'world'
is equivalent to
"helloworld"
. This feature can be used to reduce the number of backslashes
needed, to split long strings conveniently across long lines, or even to add
comments to parts of strings, for example:
re.compile("[A-Za-z_]" # letter or underscore
"[A-Za-z0-9_]*" # letter, digit or underscore
)
Note that this feature is defined at the syntactical level, but implemented at compile time. The ‘+’ operator must be used to concatenate string expressions at run time. Also note that literal concatenation can use different quoting styles for each component (even mixing raw strings and triple quoted strings), and formatted string literals may be concatenated with plain string literals.
2.4.3. f-strings¶
Added in version 3.6.
A formatted string literal or f-string is a string literal
that is prefixed with 'f'
or 'F'
. These strings may contain
replacement fields, which are expressions delimited by curly braces {}
.
While other string literals always have a constant value, formatted strings
are really expressions evaluated at run time.
Escape sequences are decoded like in ordinary string literals (except when a literal is also marked as a raw string). After decoding, the grammar for the contents of the string is:
f_string ::= (literal_char
| "{{" | "}}" |replacement_field
)* replacement_field ::= "{"f_expression
["="] ["!"conversion
] [":"format_spec
] "}" f_expression ::= (conditional_expression
| "*"or_expr
) (","conditional_expression
| "," "*"or_expr
)* [","] |yield_expression
conversion ::= "s" | "r" | "a" format_spec ::= (literal_char
|replacement_field
)* literal_char ::= <any code point except "{", "}" or NULL>
The parts of the string outside curly braces are treated literally,
except that any doubled curly braces '{{'
or '}}'
are replaced
with the corresponding single curly brace. A single opening curly
bracket '{'
marks a replacement field, which starts with a
Python expression. To display both the expression text and its value after
evaluation, (useful in debugging), an equal sign '='
may be added after the
expression. A conversion field, introduced by an exclamation point '!'
may
follow. A format specifier may also be appended, introduced by a colon ':'
.
A replacement field ends with a closing curly bracket '}'
.
Expressions in formatted string literals are treated like regular
Python expressions surrounded by parentheses, with a few exceptions.
An empty expression is not allowed, and both lambda
and
assignment expressions :=
must be surrounded by explicit parentheses.
Each expression is evaluated in the context where the formatted string literal
appears, in order from left to right. Replacement expressions can contain
newlines in both single-quoted and triple-quoted f-strings and they can contain
comments. Everything that comes after a #
inside a replacement field
is a comment (even closing braces and quotes). In that case, replacement fields
must be closed in a different line.
>>> f"abc{a # This is a comment }"
... + 3}"
'abc5'
Changed in version 3.7: Prior to Python 3.7, an await
expression and comprehensions
containing an async for
clause were illegal in the expressions
in formatted string literals due to a problem with the implementation.
Changed in version 3.12: Prior to Python 3.12, comments were not allowed inside f-string replacement fields.
When the equal sign '='
is provided, the output will have the expression
text, the '='
and the evaluated value. Spaces after the opening brace
'{'
, within the expression and after the '='
are all retained in the
output. By default, the '='
causes the repr()
of the expression to be
provided, unless there is a format specified. When a format is specified it
defaults to the str()
of the expression unless a conversion '!r'
is
declared.
Added in version 3.8: The equal sign '='
.
If a conversion is specified, the result of evaluating the expression
is converted before formatting. Conversion '!s'
calls str()
on
the result, '!r'
calls repr()
, and '!a'
calls ascii()
.
The result is then formatted using the format()
protocol. The
format specifier is passed to the __format__()
method of the
expression or conversion result. An empty string is passed when the
format specifier is omitted. The formatted result is then included in
the final value of the whole string.
Top-level format specifiers may include nested replacement fields. These nested
fields may include their own conversion fields and format specifiers, but may not include more deeply nested replacement fields. The
format specifier mini-language is the same as that used by
the str.format()
method.
Formatted string literals may be concatenated, but replacement fields cannot be split across literals.
Some examples of formatted string literals:
>>> name = "Fred"
>>> f"He said his name is {name!r}."
"He said his name is 'Fred'."
>>> f"He said his name is {repr(name)}." # repr() is equivalent to !r
"He said his name is 'Fred'."
>>> width = 10
>>> precision = 4
>>> value = decimal.Decimal("12.34567")
>>> f"result: {value:{width}.{precision}}" # nested fields
'result: 12.35'
>>> today = datetime(year=2017, month=1, day=27)
>>> f"{today:%B %d, %Y}" # using date format specifier
'January 27, 2017'
>>> f"{today=:%B %d, %Y}" # using date format specifier and debugging
'today=January 27, 2017'
>>> number = 1024
>>> f"{number:#0x}" # using integer format specifier
'0x400'
>>> foo = "bar"
>>> f"{ foo = }" # preserves whitespace
" foo = 'bar'"
>>> line = "The mill's closed"
>>> f"{line = }"
'line = "The mill\'s closed"'
>>> f"{line = :20}"
"line = The mill's closed "
>>> f"{line = !r:20}"
'line = "The mill\'s closed" '
Reusing the outer f-string quoting type inside a replacement field is permitted:
>>> a = dict(x=2)
>>> f"abc {a["x"]} def"
'abc 2 def'
Changed in version 3.12: Prior to Python 3.12, reuse of the same quoting type of the outer f-string inside a replacement field was not possible.
Backslashes are also allowed in replacement fields and are evaluated the same way as in any other context:
>>> a = ["a", "b", "c"]
>>> print(f"List a contains:\n{"\n".join(a)}")
List a contains:
a
b
c
Changed in version 3.12: Prior to Python 3.12, backslashes were not permitted inside an f-string replacement field.
Formatted string literals cannot be used as docstrings, even if they do not include expressions.
>>> def foo():
... f"Not a docstring"
...
>>> foo.__doc__ is None
True
See also PEP 498 for the proposal that added formatted string literals,
and str.format()
, which uses a related format string mechanism.
2.4.4. Numeric literals¶
There are three types of numeric literals: integers, floating-point numbers, and imaginary numbers. There are no complex literals (complex numbers can be formed by adding a real number and an imaginary number).
Note that numeric literals do not include a sign; a phrase like -1
is
actually an expression composed of the unary operator ‘-
’ and the literal
1
.
2.4.5. Integer literals¶
Integer literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
integer ::=decinteger
|bininteger
|octinteger
|hexinteger
decinteger ::=nonzerodigit
(["_"]digit
)* | "0"+ (["_"] "0")* bininteger ::= "0" ("b" | "B") (["_"]bindigit
)+ octinteger ::= "0" ("o" | "O") (["_"]octdigit
)+ hexinteger ::= "0" ("x" | "X") (["_"]hexdigit
)+ nonzerodigit ::= "1"..."9" digit ::= "0"..."9" bindigit ::= "0" | "1" octdigit ::= "0"..."7" hexdigit ::=digit
| "a"..."f" | "A"..."F"
There is no limit for the length of integer literals apart from what can be stored in available memory.
Underscores are ignored for determining the numeric value of the literal. They
can be used to group digits for enhanced readability. One underscore can occur
between digits, and after base specifiers like 0x
.
Note that leading zeros in a non-zero decimal number are not allowed. This is for disambiguation with C-style octal literals, which Python used before version 3.0.
Some examples of integer literals:
7 2147483647 0o177 0b100110111
3 79228162514264337593543950336 0o377 0xdeadbeef
100_000_000_000 0b_1110_0101
Changed in version 3.6: Underscores are now allowed for grouping purposes in literals.
2.4.6. Floating-point literals¶
Floating-point literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
floatnumber ::=pointfloat
|exponentfloat
pointfloat ::= [digitpart
]fraction
|digitpart
"." exponentfloat ::= (digitpart
|pointfloat
)exponent
digitpart ::=digit
(["_"]digit
)* fraction ::= "."digitpart
exponent ::= ("e" | "E") ["+" | "-"]digitpart
Note that the integer and exponent parts are always interpreted using radix 10.
For example, 077e010
is legal, and denotes the same number as 77e10
. The
allowed range of floating-point literals is implementation-dependent. As in
integer literals, underscores are supported for digit grouping.
Some examples of floating-point literals:
3.14 10. .001 1e100 3.14e-10 0e0 3.14_15_93
Changed in version 3.6: Underscores are now allowed for grouping purposes in literals.
2.4.7. Imaginary literals¶
Imaginary literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
imagnumber ::= (floatnumber
|digitpart
) ("j" | "J")
An imaginary literal yields a complex number with a real part of 0.0. Complex
numbers are represented as a pair of floating-point numbers and have the same
restrictions on their range. To create a complex number with a nonzero real
part, add a floating-point number to it, e.g., (3+4j)
. Some examples of
imaginary literals:
3.14j 10.j 10j .001j 1e100j 3.14e-10j 3.14_15_93j
2.5. Operators¶
The following tokens are operators:
+ - * ** / // % @
<< >> & | ^ ~ :=
< > <= >= == !=
2.6. Delimiters¶
The following tokens serve as delimiters in the grammar:
( ) [ ] { }
, : . ; @ = ->
+= -= *= /= //= %= @=
&= |= ^= >>= <<= **=
The period can also occur in floating-point and imaginary literals. A sequence of three periods has a special meaning as an ellipsis literal. The second half of the list, the augmented assignment operators, serve lexically as delimiters, but also perform an operation.
The following printing ASCII characters have special meaning as part of other tokens or are otherwise significant to the lexical analyzer:
' " # \
The following printing ASCII characters are not used in Python. Their occurrence outside string literals and comments is an unconditional error:
$ ? `
Footnotes
2.1.3. Comments¶
A comment starts with a hash character (
#
) that is not part of a string literal, and ends at the end of the physical line. A comment signifies the end of the logical line unless the implicit line joining rules are invoked. Comments are ignored by the syntax.