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Posts by Karl Knechtel
These two uses of if are different The if at the end of a list comprehension syntax: [num for num in hand if num != 11] is a filter; its purpose is to decide whether or not the resulting list ...
When I have tried to read technical explanations of the syntax rules for programming languages, and when I am trying to decipher error messages, I often encounter the terms expression and statement...
Sure, I'll step up for this, since nobody else has yet. I think my credentials speak for themselves, but just in case: I'm an accomplished Python developer with a long history of helping people ou...
Consider this code example: def example(param=[]): param.append('value') print(param) When example is repeatedly called with an existing list, it repeatedly appends to the list, as ...
Would it discourage others from posting answers, if they saw that a question had an answer with a "works for me" indication applied immediately? (More so than just seeing an immediate, comprehensiv...
Before attempting this, make sure it makes sense in context. In a few particular situations, it would be better to take a different approach rather than using the normal tools for composing or f...
Never Too Late Due to, shall we say, recent AI-related hallucinations, pretty much everything that was possible PR-wise in 2019 is possible for this site again. People are leaving Stack Overflow a...
My actual motivation is to understand the semantics of the .gitignore file syntax in precise detail, for a program which is expected to emulate them as accurately as possible. However, while coming...
Context: As you may be aware, recent poorly received changes on Some Other website are likely to have pushed a lot of their regulars to a breaking point. Nowadays, Codidact (and specifically S...
These are just my thoughts, not an official policy prescription as a moderator. If you're asking because you need an answer, please ask here first, and only cross-post to Stack Overflow if you...
This answer assumes only installations of the reference "CPython" implementation, as provided by the official website at https://www.python.org. Other installations - such as those provided by th...
Suppose I have some code in a file myscript.py like: def my_function(): print("Test") What steps do I need to take in order to make my_function run? That is to say: how do I get Python to ...
Terminology "Mutable default argument" means exactly what the individual words would suggest: it's an argument which is supplied as the default value for that parameter, which also is mutable. To ...
Yes, re.match matches lines that start with the described pattern: If zero or more characters at the beginning of string match the regular expression pattern, return a corresponding Match. To...
I have multiple installations of Python on my machine. When I run Python, what determines which installation is used? How can I control this?
No. Terms like "too generic", "unclear", "too broad", "off topic" are absolutely not euphemisms for "stupid question, go away". They mean what they say; and when they are used Somewhere Else, mult...
So far, existing Meta discussion seems to have at least hinted at the possibility of using separate categories here: To shuffle closed questions out of the way (globally for Codidact) (also) Fo...
I want to write one or more self-answered Q&As on the topic of text encoding in Python, to serve as canonicals and preempt future lower-quality questions. I can think of the following things th...
Import modules rather than names first to avoid a circular reference in the import statements; then use forward declarations, as before, to avoid a circular reference in the type annotations - like...
Inspired by https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/432242, and the relevant main-space questions. I have heard that C and C++ something called the "strict aliasing rule", which means for exa...
My (non-Windows) operating system came with Python, but that Python didn't include Pip. I followed instructions to install Pip for the included Python, using my system's package manager. But now w...
As part of a general effort to produce basic Q&As for Python, recently I've been focused on issues related to starting up an interpreter and running the code - so, questions about setting up an...
Why The most important ideas behind virtual environments are: Since there is a separate site-packages, you can isolate the dependencies of your project. This is especially important for testi...
How to do it Yes, Python has an equivalent operator. However, it's spelled with keywords rather than punctuation, and it uses a different order of operands. It looks like: condition_value if some...
Are books special? When I see a question like this, I naturally transform it into a more general question about resources. Printed books aren't necessarily the best way to learn about programming ...
