Conventions and Grammar versions in Python

Conventions in Python
The keywords in Python
Statement and Block
Rule writing a string
Comment
Grammar Versions in Python

1. Conventions in Python

Like other languages, Python has some naming conventions such as naming rules of variable, function, class, module,...

A name can begin with capital letters (A-Z), or lowercase ones (a-z), or undercore (_), followed by other letters or nothing.
Python does not accept the characters: @, $ and % in the name.
Python is a programming language that distinguishes between uppercase and lowercase, MyObject and myobject are two different ones.

Some naming rules in Python:

Class name should begin with a capital letter, other names should begin with lowercase ones.
A name begins with an underscore, it means that the name is private.
A name begins with two underscores, it means that the name is very private.
If a name bigins with two underscores and ends with two underscores, it means the name is special one that has already defined by Python.

2. The keywords in Python

There are a few the keywords in Python which can not be used to name and has no capital letters. Below is list of all the keywords in Python.

** keywords **

and      assert      break      class      

continue      def      del      elif      else

except      exec      finally      for      

from      global      if      import      in      is

lambda      not      or      pass      

raise      return      try      yield      while

List of special words:

** special words **

None         True         False        

self         cls         class_

The common functions:

** func **

__import__   abs   all   any   apply   

basestring   bin   bool   buffer   callable    

chr   classmethod   cmp   coerce   

compile   complex   delattr   dict   dir    

divmod   enumerate   eval   execfile   

file   filter   float   format   frozenset  

getattr   globals   hasattr   hash   

help   hex   id   input   int   intern    

isinstance   issubclass   iter   len   

list   locals   long   map   max   min   next  

object   oct   open   ord   pow   print   

property   range   raw_input   reduce  

reload   repr   reversed   round   set   

setattr   slice   sorted   staticmethod    

str   sum   super   tuple   type   type   

unichr   unicode   vars   xrange   zip

3. Statement and Block

Unlike other programming languages, Python does not use the pairs of keywords such as “begin” and “end” or “{” và “}” to open or close a set of commands. Instead, Python makes rules that sequential commands having the same line indentation belongs in the same set of commands.

if True:
    print ("Hello")
    print ("True")
else:
    print ("False")

You will get error report if you do it as below:

The rule of writing a statement on multiple lines:

Normally, a statement of Python will be written in 1 line, and a line break means the end of that statement. However, there are long statement that you want to write them on multiple lines, you need to inform Python of your intent. Let's use symbol \ to inform Python that the statement includes the next line. For example:

value  = 1   +  \
         2 +  \
         3

The rules of writing multiple statements on a line

You can write multiple statements on a line, you need to use a semicolon (;) to separate them. For example:

a = 'One'; b = "Two"; c ="Three"

4. Rule writing a string

Python allows you to use single quotes ('), or double quotes (") to denote a string on a line:

str1 = 'Hello every body'

str2 = "Hello Python"

If a string is written on multiple lines, you need to use a pair of 3 quotes (And not use \):

multiLineStr = """This is a paragraph. It is
    made up of multiple lines and sentences."""

5. Comment

The notation (#) not being in the string will begin with a comment line.
All the characters behind it until the end of line are considered a part of the comment and interpreter of Python and they will be ignored when running the programme.

# First comment
print ("Hello, Python!") # second comment

# This is a comment.
# This is a comment, too.
# This is a comment, too.
print ("Finish")

6. Grammar Versions in Python

Currently, the latest version of Python is 3.x, Python 3.x has some stricter rules of grammar compared to Python 2.x, most the Python current documents on Internet are using Grammar 2.x and it can confuse you because you have carried out according to the guide but still getting error report.

Example:

In order to print out on the screen with the words "Hello World", for the version 2.x you need to use the "print" statement without round brackets ( ):

# Grammar Python 2.x

print "Hello World"

For the Python 3.x grammar, in order to print out the words "Hello World", you have to put it into round brackets ( ), or you will get error report.

# Grammar Python 3.x

print ("Hello World")

Therefore, when you create a project, you need to specify which the grammar version you use. The example below illustrates "Create a project" on Eclipse, and specifies "Python Grammar" version 3.6.