When I first saw this, I was sure it’s a bug. Well—it’s a feature! In today’s short article, you’ll learn about a small Python trick that I call “string concatenation without +”. Let’s start with some code! Plus vs. Adjacent String Literal Concatenation There are two ways to concatenate string literals in Python: Using the … Read more
The Python chr() function takes one number as argument that is the specified Unicode and returns the character associated to this Unicode argument. For example, the call chr(101) returns the Unicode character ‘e’. The allowed range of arguments are all integers between 0 and 1,114,111 (included)—integers outside this interval will raise a ValueError. Here are … Read more
Python has powerful built-in capabilities for string manipulation. That’s why web companies like Google love Python—it’s a perfect fit for the text-based web. This guide shows you how to use string concatenation operators using multiple forms of education: Text Puzzle Video Exercise Ready to learn string concatenation? Let’s get started! A Textual Introduction to String … Read more
Slicing is one of the most popular Python features. Thus, understanding slicing is key to understand existing code bases. In this tutorial, I’m going to train your slicing skills. Ready? So, let’s go! ? Watch the Video Python Slicing Read About Slicing Slicing is a Python-specific concept for accessing a range of values in sequence … Read more
If you work in a data driven career, odds are you will at some point have to perform sorting on your data. Rather than writing your own sorting algorithm (which will most likely be far less efficient), Python provides a built-in function called sorted(). This function allows you to do basic sorting, such as arranging … Read more
Python’s built-in callable(object) returns True if you could call the object argument like a function with the trailing parentheses in object(). You can make any object callable by implementing the instance’s __call__() method. For example, callable(callable) returns True because callable is a function object. But callable(3) returns False because an integer is not a function … Read more
Python’s built-in bytes(source) function creates an immutable bytes object initialized as defined in the function argument source. A bytes object is like a string but it uses only byte characters consisting of a sequence of 8-bit integers in the range 0<=x<256. The returned byte object is immutable—you cannot change it after creation. If you plan … Read more
Python’s built-in bytearray() method takes an iterable such as a list of integers between 0 and 256, converts them to bytes between 00000000 and 11111111, and returns a new array of bytes as a bytearray class. Here’s a minimal example that creates a bytearray from three integers stored in a list: The prefix \x escape … Read more
Python’s built-in bool(x) function converts value x to a Boolean value True or False. It uses implicit Boolean conversion on the input argument x. Any Python object has an associated truth value. The bool(x) function takes only one argument, the object for which a Boolean value is desired. Argument x A Python object for which … Read more
Python’s built-in bin(integer) function takes one integer argument and returns a binary string with prefix “0b”. If you call bin(x) on a non-integer x, it must define the __index__() method that returns an integer associated to x. Otherwise, it’ll throw a TypeError: object cannot be interpreted as an integer. Argument integer An integer value or … Read more
This chapter draft is part of my upcoming book “The Art of Clean Code” (NoStarch 2022). You’ll learn about the concept of premature optimization and why it hurts your programming productivity. Premature optimization is one of the main problems of poorly written code. But what is it anyway? Definition Premature Optimization Definition: Premature optimization is … Read more
Problem: You’ve just learned about the list.clear() method in Python. You wonder, what’s its purpose? Why not creating a new list and overwriting the variable instead of clearing an existing list? Example: Say, you have the following list. If you clear the list, it becomes empty: However, you could have accomplished the same thing by … Read more