.. index:: lexical analysis, parser, token
A Python program is read by a parser. Input to the parser is a stream of tokens, generated by the lexical analyzer. This chapter describes how the lexical analyzer breaks a file into tokens.
Python reads program text as Unicode code points; the encoding of a source file can be given by an encoding declaration and defaults to UTF-8, see :exc:`SyntaxError` is raised.
.. index:: line structure
A Python program is divided into a number of logical lines.
.. index:: logical line, physical line, line joining, NEWLINE token
The end of a logical line is represented by the token NEWLINE. Statements cannot cross logical line boundaries except where NEWLINE is allowed by the syntax (e.g., between statements in compound statements). A logical line is constructed from one or more physical lines by following the explicit or implicit line joining rules.
A physical line is a sequence of characters terminated by an end-of-line sequence. In source files and strings, any of the standard platform line termination sequences can be used - the Unix form using ASCII LF (linefeed), the Windows form using the ASCII sequence CR LF (return followed by linefeed), or the old Macintosh form using the ASCII CR (return) character. All of these forms can be used equally, regardless of platform. The end of input also serves as an implicit terminator for the final physical line.
When embedding Python, source code strings should be passed to Python APIs using
the standard C conventions for newline characters (the \n character,
representing ASCII LF, is the line terminator).
.. index:: comment, hash character single: # (hash); comment
A comment starts with a hash character (#) that is not part of a string
literal, and ends at the end of the physical line. A comment signifies the end
of the logical line unless the implicit line joining rules are invoked. Comments
are ignored by the syntax.
.. index:: source character set, encoding declarations (source file) single: # (hash); source encoding declaration
If a comment in the first or second line of the Python script matches the
regular expression coding[=:]\s*([-\w.]+), this comment is processed as an
encoding declaration; the first group of this expression names the encoding of
the source code file. The encoding declaration must appear on a line of its
own. If it is the second line, the first line must also be a comment-only line.
The recommended forms of an encoding expression are
# -*- coding: <encoding-name> -*-
which is recognized also by GNU Emacs, and
# vim:fileencoding=<encoding-name>
which is recognized by Bram Moolenaar's VIM.
If no encoding declaration is found, the default encoding is UTF-8. In
addition, if the first bytes of the file are the UTF-8 byte-order mark
(b'\xef\xbb\xbf'), the declared file encoding is UTF-8 (this is supported,
among others, by Microsoft's :program:`notepad`).
If an encoding is declared, the encoding name must be recognized by Python. The encoding is used for all lexical analysis, including string literals, comments and identifiers.
.. index:: physical line, line joining, line continuation, backslash character
Two or more physical lines may be joined into logical lines using backslash
characters (\), as follows: when a physical line ends in a backslash that is
not part of a string literal or comment, it is joined with the following forming
a single logical line, deleting the backslash and the following end-of-line
character. For example:
if 1900 < year < 2100 and 1 <= month <= 12 \ and 1 <= day <= 31 and 0 <= hour < 24 \ and 0 <= minute < 60 and 0 <= second < 60: # Looks like a valid date return 1
A line ending in a backslash cannot carry a comment. A backslash does not continue a comment. A backslash does not continue a token except for string literals (i.e., tokens other than string literals cannot be split across physical lines using a backslash). A backslash is illegal elsewhere on a line outside a string literal.
Expressions in parentheses, square brackets or curly braces can be split over more than one physical line without using backslashes. For example:
month_names = ['Januari', 'Februari', 'Maart', # These are the 'April', 'Mei', 'Juni', # Dutch names 'Juli', 'Augustus', 'September', # for the months 'Oktober', 'November', 'December'] # of the year
Implicitly continued lines can carry comments. The indentation of the continuation lines is not important. Blank continuation lines are allowed. There is no NEWLINE token between implicit continuation lines. Implicitly continued lines can also occur within triple-quoted strings (see below); in that case they cannot carry comments.
.. index:: single: blank line
A logical line that contains only spaces, tabs, formfeeds and possibly a comment, is ignored (i.e., no NEWLINE token is generated). During interactive input of statements, handling of a blank line may differ depending on the implementation of the read-eval-print loop. In the standard interactive interpreter, an entirely blank logical line (i.e. one containing not even whitespace or a comment) terminates a multi-line statement.
.. index:: indentation, leading whitespace, space, tab, grouping, statement grouping
Leading whitespace (spaces and tabs) at the beginning of a logical line is used to compute the indentation level of the line, which in turn is used to determine the grouping of statements.
Tabs are replaced (from left to right) by one to eight spaces such that the total number of characters up to and including the replacement is a multiple of eight (this is intended to be the same rule as used by Unix). The total number of spaces preceding the first non-blank character then determines the line's indentation. Indentation cannot be split over multiple physical lines using backslashes; the whitespace up to the first backslash determines the indentation.
Indentation is rejected as inconsistent if a source file mixes tabs and spaces in a way that makes the meaning dependent on the worth of a tab in spaces; a :exc:`TabError` is raised in that case.
Cross-platform compatibility note: because of the nature of text editors on non-UNIX platforms, it is unwise to use a mixture of spaces and tabs for the indentation in a single source file. It should also be noted that different platforms may explicitly limit the maximum indentation level.
A formfeed character may be present at the start of the line; it will be ignored for the indentation calculations above. Formfeed characters occurring elsewhere in the leading whitespace have an undefined effect (for instance, they may reset the space count to zero).
.. index:: INDENT token, DEDENT token
The indentation levels of consecutive lines are used to generate INDENT and DEDENT tokens, using a stack, as follows.
Before the first line of the file is read, a single zero is pushed on the stack; this will never be popped off again. The numbers pushed on the stack will always be strictly increasing from bottom to top. At the beginning of each logical line, the line's indentation level is compared to the top of the stack. If it is equal, nothing happens. If it is larger, it is pushed on the stack, and one INDENT token is generated. If it is smaller, it must be one of the numbers occurring on the stack; all numbers on the stack that are larger are popped off, and for each number popped off a DEDENT token is generated. At the end of the file, a DEDENT token is generated for each number remaining on the stack that is larger than zero.
Here is an example of a correctly (though confusingly) indented piece of Python code:
def perm(l): # Compute the list of all permutations of l if len(l) <= 1: return [l] r = [] for i in range(len(l)): s = l[:i] + l[i+1:] p = perm(s) for x in p: r.append(l[i:i+1] + x) return r
The following example shows various indentation errors:
def perm(l): # error: first line indented for i in range(len(l)): # error: not indented s = l[:i] + l[i+1:] p = perm(l[:i] + l[i+1:]) # error: unexpected indent for x in p: r.append(l[i:i+1] + x) return r # error: inconsistent dedent
(Actually, the first three errors are detected by the parser; only the last
error is found by the lexical analyzer --- the indentation of return r does
not match a level popped off the stack.)
Except at the beginning of a logical line or in string literals, the whitespace characters space, tab and formfeed can be used interchangeably to separate tokens. Whitespace is needed between two tokens only if their concatenation could otherwise be interpreted as a different token (e.g., ab is one token, but a b is two tokens).
Besides NEWLINE, INDENT and DEDENT, the following categories of tokens exist: identifiers, keywords, literals, operators, and delimiters. Whitespace characters (other than line terminators, discussed earlier) are not tokens, but serve to delimit tokens. Where ambiguity exists, a token comprises the longest possible string that forms a legal token, when read from left to right.
.. index:: identifier, name
Identifiers (also referred to as names) are described by the following lexical definitions.
The syntax of identifiers in Python is based on the Unicode standard annex UAX-31, with elaboration and changes as defined below; see also PEP 3131). For these characters, the classification uses the version of the Unicode Character Database as included in the :mod:`unicodedata` module.
Identifiers are unlimited in length. Case is significant.
.. productionlist:: identifier: `xid_start` `xid_continue`* id_start: <all characters in general categories Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, Lo, Nl, the underscore, and characters with the Other_ID_Start property> id_continue: <all characters in `id_start`, plus characters in the categories Mn, Mc, Nd, Pc and others with the Other_ID_Continue property> xid_start: <all characters in `id_start` whose NFKC normalization is in "id_start xid_continue*"> xid_continue: <all characters in `id_continue` whose NFKC normalization is in "id_continue*">
The Unicode category codes mentioned above stand for:
.. index:: single: keyword single: reserved word
The following identifiers are used as reserved words, or keywords of the language, and cannot be used as ordinary identifiers. They must be spelled exactly as written here:
False await else import pass
None break except in raise
True class finally is return
and continue for lambda try
as def from nonlocal while
assert del global not with
async elif if or yield
.. index:: single: _, identifiers single: __, identifiers
Certain classes of identifiers (besides keywords) have special meanings. These classes are identified by the patterns of leading and trailing underscore characters:
_*Not imported by from module import *. The special identifier _ is used
in the interactive interpreter to store the result of the last evaluation; it is
stored in the :mod:`builtins` module. When not in interactive mode, _
has no special meaning and is not defined. See section :ref:`import`.
Note
The name _ is often used in conjunction with internationalization;
refer to the documentation for the :mod:`gettext` module for more
information on this convention.
__*____*__ names, in
any context, that does not follow explicitly documented use, is subject to
breakage without warning.__*.. index:: literal, constant
Literals are notations for constant values of some built-in types.
.. index:: string literal, bytes literal, ASCII single: ' (single quote); string literal single: " (double quote); string literal single: u'; string literal single: u"; string literal
String literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
.. productionlist:: stringliteral: [`stringprefix`](`shortstring` | `longstring`) stringprefix: "r" | "u" | "R" | "U" | "f" | "F" : | "fr" | "Fr" | "fR" | "FR" | "rf" | "rF" | "Rf" | "RF" shortstring: "'" `shortstringitem`* "'" | '"' `shortstringitem`* '"' longstring: "'''" `longstringitem`* "'''" | '"""' `longstringitem`* '"""' shortstringitem: `shortstringchar` | `stringescapeseq` longstringitem: `longstringchar` | `stringescapeseq` shortstringchar: <any source character except "\" or newline or the quote> longstringchar: <any source character except "\"> stringescapeseq: "\" <any source character>
.. productionlist:: bytesliteral: `bytesprefix`(`shortbytes` | `longbytes`) bytesprefix: "b" | "B" | "br" | "Br" | "bR" | "BR" | "rb" | "rB" | "Rb" | "RB" shortbytes: "'" `shortbytesitem`* "'" | '"' `shortbytesitem`* '"' longbytes: "'''" `longbytesitem`* "'''" | '"""' `longbytesitem`* '"""' shortbytesitem: `shortbyteschar` | `bytesescapeseq` longbytesitem: `longbyteschar` | `bytesescapeseq` shortbyteschar: <any ASCII character except "\" or newline or the quote> longbyteschar: <any ASCII character except "\"> bytesescapeseq: "\" <any ASCII character>
One syntactic restriction not indicated by these productions is that whitespace is not allowed between the :token:`stringprefix` or :token:`bytesprefix` and the rest of the literal. The source character set is defined by the encoding declaration; it is UTF-8 if no encoding declaration is given in the source file; see section :ref:`encodings`.
.. index:: triple-quoted string, Unicode Consortium, raw string single: """; string literal single: '''; string literal
In plain English: Both types of literals can be enclosed in matching single quotes
(') or double quotes ("). They can also be enclosed in matching groups
of three single or double quotes (these are generally referred to as
triple-quoted strings). The backslash (\) character is used to escape
characters that otherwise have a special meaning, such as newline, backslash
itself, or the quote character.
.. index:: single: b'; bytes literal single: b"; bytes literal
Bytes literals are always prefixed with 'b' or 'B'; they produce an
instance of the :class:`bytes` type instead of the :class:`str` type. They
may only contain ASCII characters; bytes with a numeric value of 128 or greater
must be expressed with escapes.
.. index:: single: r'; raw string literal single: r"; raw string literal
Both string and bytes literals may optionally be prefixed with a letter 'r'
or 'R'; such strings are called :dfn:`raw strings` and treat backslashes as
literal characters. As a result, in string literals, '\U' and '\u'
escapes in raw strings are not treated specially. Given that Python 2.x's raw
unicode literals behave differently than Python 3.x's the 'ur' syntax
is not supported.
.. versionadded:: 3.3 The ``'rb'`` prefix of raw bytes literals has been added as a synonym of ``'br'``.
.. versionadded:: 3.3 Support for the unicode legacy literal (``u'value'``) was reintroduced to simplify the maintenance of dual Python 2.x and 3.x codebases. See :pep:`414` for more information.
.. index:: single: f'; formatted string literal single: f"; formatted string literal
A string literal with 'f' or 'F' in its prefix is a
:dfn:`formatted string literal`; see :ref:`f-strings`. The 'f' may be
combined with 'r', but not with 'b' or 'u', therefore raw
formatted strings are possible, but formatted bytes literals are not.
In triple-quoted literals, unescaped newlines and quotes are allowed (and are
retained), except that three unescaped quotes in a row terminate the literal. (A
"quote" is the character used to open the literal, i.e. either ' or ".)
.. index:: physical line, escape sequence, Standard C, C single: \ (backslash); escape sequence single: \\; escape sequence single: \a; escape sequence single: \b; escape sequence single: \f; escape sequence single: \n; escape sequence single: \r; escape sequence single: \t; escape sequence single: \v; escape sequence single: \x; escape sequence single: \N; escape sequence single: \u; escape sequence single: \U; escape sequence
Unless an 'r' or 'R' prefix is present, escape sequences in string and
bytes literals are interpreted according to rules similar to those used by
Standard C. The recognized escape sequences are:
| Escape Sequence | Meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|
\newline |
Backslash and newline ignored | |
\\ |
Backslash (\) |
|
\' |
Single quote (') |
|
\" |
Double quote (") |
|
\a |
ASCII Bell (BEL) | |
\b |
ASCII Backspace (BS) | |
\f |
ASCII Formfeed (FF) | |
\n |
ASCII Linefeed (LF) | |
\r |
ASCII Carriage Return (CR) | |
\t |
ASCII Horizontal Tab (TAB) | |
\v |
ASCII Vertical Tab (VT) | |
\ooo |
Character with octal value ooo | (1,3) |
\xhh |
Character with hex value hh | (2,3) |
Escape sequences only recognized in string literals are:
| Escape Sequence | Meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|
\N{name} |
Character named name in the Unicode database | (4) |
\uxxxx |
Character with 16-bit hex value xxxx | (5) |
\Uxxxxxxxx |
Character with 32-bit hex value xxxxxxxx | (6) |
Notes:
As in Standard C, up to three octal digits are accepted.
Unlike in Standard C, exactly two hex digits are required.
In a bytes literal, hexadecimal and octal escapes denote the byte with the given value. In a string literal, these escapes denote a Unicode character with the given value.
.. versionchanged:: 3.3 Support for name aliases [#]_ has been added.
Exactly four hex digits are required.
Any Unicode character can be encoded this way. Exactly eight hex digits are required.
.. index:: unrecognized escape sequence
Unlike Standard C, all unrecognized escape sequences are left in the string unchanged, i.e., the backslash is left in the result. (This behavior is useful when debugging: if an escape sequence is mistyped, the resulting output is more easily recognized as broken.) It is also important to note that the escape sequences only recognized in string literals fall into the category of unrecognized escapes for bytes literals.
.. versionchanged:: 3.6 Unrecognized escape sequences produce a :exc:`DeprecationWarning`. In a future Python version they will be a :exc:`SyntaxWarning` and eventually a :exc:`SyntaxError`.
Even in a raw literal, quotes can be escaped with a backslash, but the
backslash remains in the result; for example, r"\"" is a valid string
literal consisting of two characters: a backslash and a double quote; r"\"
is not a valid string literal (even a raw string cannot end in an odd number of
backslashes). Specifically, a raw literal cannot end in a single backslash
(since the backslash would escape the following quote character). Note also
that a single backslash followed by a newline is interpreted as those two
characters as part of the literal, not as a line continuation.
Multiple adjacent string or bytes literals (delimited by whitespace), possibly
using different quoting conventions, are allowed, and their meaning is the same
as their concatenation. Thus, "hello" 'world' is equivalent to
"helloworld". This feature can be used to reduce the number of backslashes
needed, to split long strings conveniently across long lines, or even to add
comments to parts of strings, for example:
re.compile("[A-Za-z_]" # letter or underscore
"[A-Za-z0-9_]*" # letter, digit or underscore
)
Note that this feature is defined at the syntactical level, but implemented at compile time. The '+' operator must be used to concatenate string expressions at run time. Also note that literal concatenation can use different quoting styles for each component (even mixing raw strings and triple quoted strings), and formatted string literals may be concatenated with plain string literals.
.. index::
single: formatted string literal
single: interpolated string literal
single: string; formatted literal
single: string; interpolated literal
single: f-string
single: {} (curly brackets); in formatted string literal
single: ! (exclamation); in formatted string literal
single: : (colon); in formatted string literal
.. versionadded:: 3.6
A :dfn:`formatted string literal` or :dfn:`f-string` is a string literal
that is prefixed with 'f' or 'F'. These strings may contain
replacement fields, which are expressions delimited by curly braces {}.
While other string literals always have a constant value, formatted strings
are really expressions evaluated at run time.
Escape sequences are decoded like in ordinary string literals (except when a literal is also marked as a raw string). After decoding, the grammar for the contents of the string is:
.. productionlist::
f_string: (`literal_char` | "{{" | "}}" | `replacement_field`)*
replacement_field: "{" `f_expression` ["!" `conversion`] [":" `format_spec`] "}"
f_expression: (`conditional_expression` | "*" `or_expr`)
: ("," `conditional_expression` | "," "*" `or_expr`)* [","]
: | `yield_expression`
conversion: "s" | "r" | "a"
format_spec: (`literal_char` | NULL | `replacement_field`)*
literal_char: <any code point except "{", "}" or NULL>
The parts of the string outside curly braces are treated literally,
except that any doubled curly braces '{{' or '}}' are replaced
with the corresponding single curly brace. A single opening curly
bracket '{' marks a replacement field, which starts with a
Python expression. After the expression, there may be a conversion field,
introduced by an exclamation point '!'. A format specifier may also
be appended, introduced by a colon ':'. A replacement field ends
with a closing curly bracket '}'.
Expressions in formatted string literals are treated like regular
Python expressions surrounded by parentheses, with a few exceptions.
An empty expression is not allowed, and both :keyword:`lambda` and
assignment expressions := must be surrounded by explicit parentheses.
Replacement expressions can contain line breaks (e.g. in triple-quoted
strings), but they cannot contain comments. Each expression is evaluated
in the context where the formatted string literal appears, in order from
left to right.
If a conversion is specified, the result of evaluating the expression
is converted before formatting. Conversion '!s' calls :func:`str` on
the result, '!r' calls :func:`repr`, and '!a' calls :func:`ascii`.
The result is then formatted using the :func:`format` protocol. The format specifier is passed to the :meth:`__format__` method of the expression or conversion result. An empty string is passed when the format specifier is omitted. The formatted result is then included in the final value of the whole string.
Top-level format specifiers may include nested replacement fields. These nested fields may include their own conversion fields and :ref:`format specifiers <formatspec>`, but may not include more deeply-nested replacement fields. The :ref:`format specifier mini-language <formatspec>` is the same as that used by the string .format() method.
Formatted string literals may be concatenated, but replacement fields cannot be split across literals.
Some examples of formatted string literals:
>>> name = "Fred"
>>> f"He said his name is {name!r}."
"He said his name is 'Fred'."
>>> f"He said his name is {repr(name)}." # repr() is equivalent to !r
"He said his name is 'Fred'."
>>> width = 10
>>> precision = 4
>>> value = decimal.Decimal("12.34567")
>>> f"result: {value:{width}.{precision}}" # nested fields
'result: 12.35'
>>> today = datetime(year=2017, month=1, day=27)
>>> f"{today:%B %d, %Y}" # using date format specifier
'January 27, 2017'
>>> number = 1024
>>> f"{number:#0x}" # using integer format specifier
'0x400'
A consequence of sharing the same syntax as regular string literals is that characters in the replacement fields must not conflict with the quoting used in the outer formatted string literal:
f"abc {a["x"]} def" # error: outer string literal ended prematurely
f"abc {a['x']} def" # workaround: use different quoting
Backslashes are not allowed in format expressions and will raise an error:
f"newline: {ord('\n')}" # raises SyntaxError
To include a value in which a backslash escape is required, create a temporary variable.
>>> newline = ord('\n')
>>> f"newline: {newline}"
'newline: 10'
Formatted string literals cannot be used as docstrings, even if they do not include expressions.
>>> def foo(): ... f"Not a docstring" ... >>> foo.__doc__ is None True
See also :meth:`str.format`, which uses a related format string mechanism.
.. index:: number, numeric literal, integer literal floating point literal, hexadecimal literal octal literal, binary literal, decimal literal, imaginary literal, complex literal
There are three types of numeric literals: integers, floating point numbers, and imaginary numbers. There are no complex literals (complex numbers can be formed by adding a real number and an imaginary number).
Note that numeric literals do not include a sign; a phrase like -1 is
actually an expression composed of the unary operator '-' and the literal
1.
.. index:: single: 0b; integer literal single: 0o; integer literal single: 0x; integer literal single: _ (underscore); in numeric literal
Integer literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
.. productionlist::
integer: `decinteger` | `bininteger` | `octinteger` | `hexinteger`
decinteger: `nonzerodigit` (["_"] `digit`)* | "0"+ (["_"] "0")*
bininteger: "0" ("b" | "B") (["_"] `bindigit`)+
octinteger: "0" ("o" | "O") (["_"] `octdigit`)+
hexinteger: "0" ("x" | "X") (["_"] `hexdigit`)+
nonzerodigit: "1"..."9"
digit: "0"..."9"
bindigit: "0" | "1"
octdigit: "0"..."7"
hexdigit: `digit` | "a"..."f" | "A"..."F"
There is no limit for the length of integer literals apart from what can be stored in available memory.
Underscores are ignored for determining the numeric value of the literal. They
can be used to group digits for enhanced readability. One underscore can occur
between digits, and after base specifiers like 0x.
Note that leading zeros in a non-zero decimal number are not allowed. This is for disambiguation with C-style octal literals, which Python used before version 3.0.
Some examples of integer literals:
7 2147483647 0o177 0b100110111 3 79228162514264337593543950336 0o377 0xdeadbeef 100_000_000_000 0b_1110_0101
.. versionchanged:: 3.6 Underscores are now allowed for grouping purposes in literals.
.. index:: single: . (dot); in numeric literal single: e; in numeric literal single: _ (underscore); in numeric literal
Floating point literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
.. productionlist::
floatnumber: `pointfloat` | `exponentfloat`
pointfloat: [`digitpart`] `fraction` | `digitpart` "."
exponentfloat: (`digitpart` | `pointfloat`) `exponent`
digitpart: `digit` (["_"] `digit`)*
fraction: "." `digitpart`
exponent: ("e" | "E") ["+" | "-"] `digitpart`
Note that the integer and exponent parts are always interpreted using radix 10.
For example, 077e010 is legal, and denotes the same number as 77e10. The
allowed range of floating point literals is implementation-dependent. As in
integer literals, underscores are supported for digit grouping.
Some examples of floating point literals:
3.14 10. .001 1e100 3.14e-10 0e0 3.14_15_93
.. versionchanged:: 3.6 Underscores are now allowed for grouping purposes in literals.
.. index:: single: j; in numeric literal
Imaginary literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
.. productionlist::
imagnumber: (`floatnumber` | `digitpart`) ("j" | "J")
An imaginary literal yields a complex number with a real part of 0.0. Complex
numbers are represented as a pair of floating point numbers and have the same
restrictions on their range. To create a complex number with a nonzero real
part, add a floating point number to it, e.g., (3+4j). Some examples of
imaginary literals:
3.14j 10.j 10j .001j 1e100j 3.14e-10j 3.14_15_93j
.. index:: single: operators
The following tokens are operators:
+ - * ** / // % @
<< >> & | ^ ~ :=
< > <= >= == !=
.. index:: single: delimiters
The following tokens serve as delimiters in the grammar:
( ) [ ] { }
, : . ; @ = ->
+= -= *= /= //= %= @=
&= |= ^= >>= <<= **=
The period can also occur in floating-point and imaginary literals. A sequence of three periods has a special meaning as an ellipsis literal. The second half of the list, the augmented assignment operators, serve lexically as delimiters, but also perform an operation.
The following printing ASCII characters have special meaning as part of other tokens or are otherwise significant to the lexical analyzer:
' " # \
The following printing ASCII characters are not used in Python. Their occurrence outside string literals and comments is an unconditional error:
$ ? `
Footnotes