ChrisThe Python complex() method returns a complex number object. You can either pass a string argument to convert the string to a complex number, or you provide the real and imaginary parts to create a new complex number from those. This article shows you how to use Python’s built-in complex() constructor. You’ll not only learn … Read more
This tutorial introduces the concept of default arguments in Python. A default argument is a function argument that takes on a default value if you don’t pass an explicit value for when calling the function. For example, the function definition def f(x=0): <body> allows you to call it with or without the optional argument x—valid … Read more
Static methods are special cases of class methods. They’re bound to a class rather than an instance, so they’re independent on any instance’s state. Python’s built-in function staticmethod() prefixes a method definition as an annotation @staticmethod. This annotation transforms a normal instance method into a static method. The difference between static (class) methods and instance … Read more
String slicing is a concept to carve out a substring from a given string. Use slicing notation s[start:stop:step] to access every step-th element starting from index start (included) and ending in index stop (excluded). All three arguments are optional, so you can skip them to use the default values (start=0, stop=len(string), step=1). For example, the … Read more
Python’s built-in function classmethod() prefixes a method definition in a class as an annotation @classmethod. This annotation transforms a normal instance method into a class method. The difference between class and instance method is that Python passes the class itself as a first implicit argument of the method rather than the instance on which it … Read more
In contrast to a normal Python method, an alias method accesses an original method via a different name—mostly for programming convenience. An example is the iterable method __next__() that can also be accessed with next(). You can define your own alias method by adding the statement a = b to your class definition. This creates … Read more
An arbitrary argument list is a Python feature to call a function with an arbitrary number of arguments. It’s based on the asterisk “unpacking” operator *. To catch an arbitrary number of function arguments in a tuple args, use the asterisk syntax *args within your function definition. For example, the function def f(*args): … allows … Read more
Challenge: Given is function f. How to assign the function to variable g, so that you can call g() and it runs function f()? Your desired output is function f‘s output: How to accomplish this in the most Pythonic way? Overview: We examine two methods to accomplish this challenge. You can run them in our … Read more
If you learn Python with the excellent Sololearn app, you may find yourself with this code snippet: What’s the output of this code snippet? And, most importantly, how does it work? This short guide will tell you! The code creates a function that returns x^y. It leverages the important programming concept of recursion: it calls … Read more
When I studied computer science, the professors pushed us to learn the theory behind modulo operations and residual classes. But many of us lacked motivation. We could not see why calculating the remainder of the division, i.e., modulo, is such an important concept. Yet, many practical code projects later, I have gained the experience that … Read more
The Python range() function creates an iterable of subsequent integers within a given range of values. You can pass either only a stop argument in which case the range object will include all integers from 0 to stop (excluded). Or you can pass start, stop, and step arguments in which case the range object will … Read more
Python slicing means to access a subsequence of a sequence type using the notation [start:end]. A little-known feature of slicing is that it has robust end indices. Slicing is robust even if the end index is greater than the maximal sequence index. The slice just takes all elements up to the maximal element. If the … Read more