Welcome to Python quirks’s documentation!

>>> import __hello__
Hello world...

I have picked some lesser known Python features. To check them on your python version run:

python -m doctest -v *.rst

Enjoy reading.

Contents:

• Control structures
  • Chaining comparison operators
  • The for...else syntax
• Functions
  • Be careful with mutable default arguments
  • Partial functions
  • Operators can be called as functions
  • Manipulating Recursion Limit
  • “Unpacking” to function parameters
• Sequences and iteration
  • Slices
    • The step argument in slice operators
    • Ellipsis
    • Slices & Mutability
    • Slices as lvalues
  • Comprehension
    • Nested list comprehensions and generator expressions
    • Multiple if statements in comprehension
  • enumerate
  • enumerate with different starting index
  • Sequence multiplication and reflected operands
  • Infinite recursion in list
  • iter() can take a callable and a sentinel
  • Passing generator comprehension to as argument of function
• Data types
  • Dictionary
    • dict‘s constructor accepts keyword arguments
    • You can build up a dictionary from a set of length-2 sequences
    • Dicts have a special method __missing__ that is invoked for missing items
  • String
    • Implicit concatenation
    • Cast from string using float()
  • Multiplying by a boolean
  • Creating enums
  • getattr takes a third parameter
  • Creating new types in a fully dynamic manner
• Tips and tricks
  • In-place value swapping
  • Multiple assignment to variables
  • Readable regular expressions
  • Named formatting
  • pow() can also calculate (x ** y) % z efficiently
  • You can easily transpose an array with zip()

Indices and tables

• Index
• Module Index
• Search Page