3. Python 的非正式介绍

在下面的例子中，通过提示符 (>>> 与 …) 的出现与否来区分输入和输出：如果你想复现这些例子，当提示符出现后，你必须在提示符后键入例子中的每一个词；不以提示符开头的那些行是解释器的输出。注意例子中某行中出现第二个提示符意味着你必须键入一个空白行；这是用来结束多行命令的。

这个手册中的许多例子都包含注释，甚至交互性命令中也有。Python中的注释以井号 # 开头，并且一直延伸到该文本行结束为止。注释可以出现在一行的开头或者是空白和代码的后边，但是不能出现在字符串中间。字符串中的井号就是井号。因为注释是用来阐明代码的，不会被 Python 解释，所以在键入这些例子时，注释是可以被忽略的。

几个例子:

# this is the first comment
spam = 1  # and this is the second comment
          # ... and now a third!
text = "# This is not a comment because it's inside quotes."

3.1. Python 作为计算器使用

让我们尝试一些简单的 Python 命令。启动解释器，等待界面中的提示符，>>> （这应该花不了多少时间）。

3.1.1. 数字

解释器就像一个简单的计算器一样：你可以在里面输入一个表达式然后它会写出答案。 表达式的语法很直接：运算符 +、-、*、/ 的用法和其他大部分语言一样（比如 Pascal 或者 C 语言）；括号 (()) 用来分组。比如:

>>> 2 + 2
4
>>> 50 - 5*6
20
>>> (50 - 5.0*6) / 4
5.0
>>> 8 / 5.0
1.6

整数（比如 2、4、20 ）有 int 类型，有小数部分的（比如 5.0、1.6 ）有 float 类型。在这个手册的后半部分我们会看到更多的数值类型。

The return type of a division (/) operation depends on its operands. If both operands are of type int, floor division is performed and an int is returned. If either operand is a float, classic division is performed and a float is returned. The // operator is also provided for doing floor division no matter what the operands are. The remainder can be calculated with the % operator:

>>> 17 / 3  # int / int -> int
5
>>> 17 / 3.0  # int / float -> float
5.666666666666667
>>> 17 // 3.0  # explicit floor division discards the fractional part
5.0
>>> 17 % 3  # the % operator returns the remainder of the division
2
>>> 5 * 3 + 2  # result * divisor + remainder
17

在Python中，可以使用 ** 运算符来计算乘方 [1]

>>> 5 ** 2  # 5 squared
25
>>> 2 ** 7  # 2 to the power of 7
128

等号 (=) 用于给一个变量赋值。然后在下一个交互提示符之前不会有结果显示出来:

>>> width = 20
>>> height = 5 * 9
>>> width * height
900

如果一个变量未定义(未赋值)，试图使用它时会向你提示错误:

>>> n  # try to access an undefined variable
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'n' is not defined

Python中提供浮点数的完整支持；包含多种混合类型运算数的运算会把整数转换为浮点数:

>>> 3 * 3.75 / 1.5
7.5
>>> 7.0 / 2
3.5

在交互模式下，上一次打印出来的表达式被赋值给变量 _。这意味着当你把Python用作桌面计算器时，继续计算会相对简单，比如:

>>> tax = 12.5 / 100
>>> price = 100.50
>>> price * tax
12.5625
>>> price + _
113.0625
>>> round(_, 2)
113.06

这个变量应该被使用者当作是只读类型。不要向它显式地赋值——你会创建一个和它名字相同独立的本地变量，它会使用魔法行为屏蔽内部变量。

除了 int 和 float，Python也支持其他类型的数字，例如 Decimal 或者 Fraction。Python 也内置对 复数 的支持，使用后缀 j 或者 J 就可以表示虚数部分（例如 3+5j ）。

3.1.2. 字符串

除了数字，Python 也可以操作字符串。字符串有多种形式，可以使用单引号（'……'），双引号（"……"）都可以获得同样的结果 [2]。反斜杠 \ 可以用来转义:

>>> 'spam eggs'  # single quotes
'spam eggs'
>>> 'doesn\'t'  # use \' to escape the single quote...
"doesn't"
>>> "doesn't"  # ...or use double quotes instead
"doesn't"
>>> '"Yes," they said.'
'"Yes," they said.'
>>> "\"Yes,\" they said."
'"Yes," they said.'
>>> '"Isn\'t," they said.'
'"Isn\'t," they said.'

In the interactive interpreter, the output string is enclosed in quotes and special characters are escaped with backslashes. While this might sometimes look different from the input (the enclosing quotes could change), the two strings are equivalent. The string is enclosed in double quotes if the string contains a single quote and no double quotes, otherwise it is enclosed in single quotes. The print statement produces a more readable output, by omitting the enclosing quotes and by printing escaped and special characters:

>>> '"Isn\'t," they said.'
'"Isn\'t," they said.'
>>> print '"Isn\'t," they said.'
"Isn't," they said.
>>> s = 'First line.\nSecond line.'  # \n means newline
>>> s  # without print, \n is included in the output
'First line.\nSecond line.'
>>> print s  # with print, \n produces a new line
First line.
Second line.

如果你不希望前置了 \ 的字符转义成特殊字符，可以使用 原始字符串 方式，在引号前添加 r 即可:

>>> print 'C:\some\name'  # here \n means newline!
C:\some
ame
>>> print r'C:\some\name'  # note the r before the quote
C:\some\name

字符串字面值可以跨行连续输入。一种方式是用三重引号："""...""" 或 '''...'''。字符串中的回车换行会自动包含到字符串中，如果不想包含，在行尾添加一个 \ 即可。如下例:

print """\
Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]
     -h                        Display this usage message
     -H hostname               Hostname to connect to
"""

将产生如下输出（注意最开始的换行没有包括进来）:

Usage: thingy [OPTIONS]
     -h                        Display this usage message
     -H hostname               Hostname to connect to

字符串可以用 + 进行连接（粘到一起），也可以用 * 进行重复:

>>> # 3 times 'un', followed by 'ium'
>>> 3 * 'un' + 'ium'
'unununium'

相邻的两个或多个 字符串字面值 （引号引起来的字符）将会自动连接到一起.

>>> 'Py' 'thon'
'Python'

把很长的字符串拆开分别输入的时候尤其有用:

>>> text = ('Put several strings within parentheses '
...         'to have them joined together.')
>>> text
'Put several strings within parentheses to have them joined together.'

只能对两个字面值这样操作，变量或表达式不行:

>>> prefix = 'Py'
>>> prefix 'thon'  # can't concatenate a variable and a string literal
  ...
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> ('un' * 3) 'ium'
  ...
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

如果你想连接变量，或者连接变量和字面值，可以用 + 号:

>>> prefix + 'thon'
'Python'

字符串是可以被 索引 （下标访问）的，第一个字符索引是 0。单个字符并没有特殊的类型，只是一个长度为一的字符串:

>>> word = 'Python'
>>> word[0]  # character in position 0
'P'
>>> word[5]  # character in position 5
'n'

索引也可以用负数，这种会从右边开始数:

>>> word[-1]  # last character
'n'
>>> word[-2]  # second-last character
'o'
>>> word[-6]
'P'

注意 -0 和 0 是一样的，所以负数索引从 -1 开始。

In addition to indexing, slicing is also supported. While indexing is used to obtain individual characters, slicing allows you to obtain a substring:

>>> word[0:2]  # characters from position 0 (included) to 2 (excluded)
'Py'
>>> word[2:5]  # characters from position 2 (included) to 5 (excluded)
'tho'

注意切片的开始总是被包括在结果中，而结束不被包括。这使得 s[:i] + s[i:] 总是等于 s

>>> word[:2] + word[2:]
'Python'
>>> word[:4] + word[4:]
'Python'

切片的索引有默认值；省略开始索引时默认为0，省略结束索引时默认为到字符串的结束:

>>> word[:2]   # character from the beginning to position 2 (excluded)
'Py'
>>> word[4:]   # characters from position 4 (included) to the end
'on'
>>> word[-2:]  # characters from the second-last (included) to the end
'on'

您也可以这么理解切片：将索引视作指向字符 之间 ，第一个字符的左侧标为0，最后一个字符的右侧标为 n ，其中 n 是字符串长度。例如:

 +---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | P | y | t | h | o | n |
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+
 0   1   2   3   4   5   6
-6  -5  -4  -3  -2  -1

第一行数标注了字符串非负的索引的位置，第二行标注了对应的负的索引。那么从 i 到 j 的切片就包括了标有 i 和 j 的位置之间的所有字符。

对于使用非负索引的切片，如果索引不越界，那么得到的切片长度就是起止索引之差。例如， word[1:3] 的长度为2.

使用过大的索引会产生一个错误:

>>> word[42]  # the word only has 6 characters
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: string index out of range

但是，切片中的越界索引会被自动处理:

>>> word[4:42]
'on'
>>> word[42:]
''

Python 中的字符串不能被修改，它们是 immutable 的。因此，向字符串的某个索引位置赋值会产生一个错误:

>>> word[0] = 'J'
  ...
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment
>>> word[2:] = 'py'
  ...
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

如果需要一个不同的字符串，应当新建一个:

>>> 'J' + word[1:]
'Jython'
>>> word[:2] + 'py'
'Pypy'

内建函数 len() 返回一个字符串的长度:

>>> s = 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'
>>> len(s)
34

参见

Sequence Types — str, unicode, list, tuple, bytearray, buffer, xrange

Strings, and the Unicode strings described in the next section, are examples of sequence types, and support the common operations supported by such types.

字符串的方法

Both strings and Unicode strings support a large number of methods for basic transformations and searching.

Format String Syntax

使用 str.format() 进行字符串格式化。

String Formatting Operations

The old formatting operations invoked when strings and Unicode strings are the left operand of the % operator are described in more detail here.

3.1.3. Unicode Strings

Starting with Python 2.0 a new data type for storing text data is available to the programmer: the Unicode object. It can be used to store and manipulate Unicode data (see http://www.unicode.org/) and integrates well with the existing string objects, providing auto-conversions where necessary.

Unicode has the advantage of providing one ordinal for every character in every script used in modern and ancient texts. Previously, there were only 256 possible ordinals for script characters. Texts were typically bound to a code page which mapped the ordinals to script characters. This lead to very much confusion especially with respect to internationalization (usually written as i18n — 'i' + 18 characters + 'n') of software. Unicode solves these problems by defining one code page for all scripts.

Creating Unicode strings in Python is just as simple as creating normal strings:

>>> u'Hello World !'
u'Hello World !'

The small 'u' in front of the quote indicates that a Unicode string is supposed to be created. If you want to include special characters in the string, you can do so by using the Python Unicode-Escape encoding. The following example shows how:

>>> u'Hello\u0020World !'
u'Hello World !'

The escape sequence \u0020 indicates to insert the Unicode character with the ordinal value 0x0020 (the space character) at the given position.

Other characters are interpreted by using their respective ordinal values directly as Unicode ordinals. If you have literal strings in the standard Latin-1 encoding that is used in many Western countries, you will find it convenient that the lower 256 characters of Unicode are the same as the 256 characters of Latin-1.

For experts, there is also a raw mode just like the one for normal strings. You have to prefix the opening quote with ‘ur’ to have Python use the Raw-Unicode-Escape encoding. It will only apply the above \uXXXX conversion if there is an uneven number of backslashes in front of the small ‘u’.

>>> ur'Hello\u0020World !'
u'Hello World !'
>>> ur'Hello\\u0020World !'
u'Hello\\\\u0020World !'

The raw mode is most useful when you have to enter lots of backslashes, as can be necessary in regular expressions.

Apart from these standard encodings, Python provides a whole set of other ways of creating Unicode strings on the basis of a known encoding.

The built-in function unicode() provides access to all registered Unicode codecs (COders and DECoders). Some of the more well known encodings which these codecs can convert are Latin-1, ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16. The latter two are variable-length encodings that store each Unicode character in one or more bytes. The default encoding is normally set to ASCII, which passes through characters in the range 0 to 127 and rejects any other characters with an error. When a Unicode string is printed, written to a file, or converted with str(), conversion takes place using this default encoding.

>>> u"abc"
u'abc'
>>> str(u"abc")
'abc'
>>> u"äöü"
u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'
>>> str(u"äöü")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 0-2: ordinal not in range(128)

To convert a Unicode string into an 8-bit string using a specific encoding, Unicode objects provide an encode() method that takes one argument, the name of the encoding. Lowercase names for encodings are preferred.

>>> u"äöü".encode('utf-8')
'\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc'

If you have data in a specific encoding and want to produce a corresponding Unicode string from it, you can use the unicode() function with the encoding name as the second argument.

>>> unicode('\xc3\xa4\xc3\xb6\xc3\xbc', 'utf-8')
u'\xe4\xf6\xfc'

3.1.4. 列表

Python 中可以通过组合一些值得到多种 复合 数据类型。其中最常用的 列表 ，可以通过方括号括起、逗号分隔的一组值得到。一个 列表 可以包含不同类型的元素，但通常使用时各个元素类型相同:

>>> squares = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>> squares
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

和字符串及各种内建的 sequence 类型一样，列表也支持索引和切片:

>>> squares[0]  # indexing returns the item
1
>>> squares[-1]
25
>>> squares[-3:]  # slicing returns a new list
[9, 16, 25]

所有的切片操作都返回一个新列表，这个新列表包含所需要的元素。就是说，如下的切片会返回列表的一个新的(浅)拷贝:

>>> squares[:]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

Lists also supports operations like concatenation:

>>> squares + [36, 49, 64, 81, 100]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]

与 immutable 的字符串不同, 列表是一个 mutable 类型，就是说，它自己的内容可以改变:

>>> cubes = [1, 8, 27, 65, 125]  # something's wrong here
>>> 4 ** 3  # the cube of 4 is 64, not 65!
64
>>> cubes[3] = 64  # replace the wrong value
>>> cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125]

你也可以在列表结尾，通过 append() 方法 添加新元素 (我们会在后面解释更多关于方法的内容):

>>> cubes.append(216)  # add the cube of 6
>>> cubes.append(7 ** 3)  # and the cube of 7
>>> cubes
[1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343]

给切片赋值也是可以的，这样甚至可以改变列表大小，或者把列表整个清空:

>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']
>>> # replace some values
>>> letters[2:5] = ['C', 'D', 'E']
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'f', 'g']
>>> # now remove them
>>> letters[2:5] = []
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'f', 'g']
>>> # clear the list by replacing all the elements with an empty list
>>> letters[:] = []
>>> letters
[]

内置函数 len() 也可以作用到列表上:

>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
>>> len(letters)
4

也可以嵌套列表 (创建包含其他列表的列表), 比如说:

>>> a = ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> n = [1, 2, 3]
>>> x = [a, n]
>>> x
[['a', 'b', 'c'], [1, 2, 3]]
>>> x[0]
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> x[0][1]
'b'

3.2. 走向编程的第一步

Of course, we can use Python for more complicated tasks than adding two and two together. For instance, we can write an initial sub-sequence of the Fibonacci series as follows:

>>> # Fibonacci series:
... # the sum of two elements defines the next
... a, b = 0, 1
>>> while b < 10:
...     print b
...     a, b = b, a+b
...
1
1
2
3
5
8

这个例子引入了几个新的特点。

• 第一行含有一个 多重赋值: 变量 a 和 b 同时得到了新值 0 和 1. 最后一行又用了一次多重赋值, 这体现出了右手边的表达式，在任何赋值发生之前就被求值了。右手边的表达式是从左到右被求值的。

• The while loop executes as long as the condition (here: b < 10) remains true. In Python, like in C, any non-zero integer value is true; zero is false. The condition may also be a string or list value, in fact any sequence; anything with a non-zero length is true, empty sequences are false. The test used in the example is a simple comparison. The standard comparison operators are written the same as in C: < (less than), > (greater than), == (equal to), <= (less than or equal to), >= (greater than or equal to) and != (not equal to).

• 循环体 是 缩进的 ：缩进是 Python 组织语句的方式。在交互式命令行里，你得给每个缩进的行敲下 Tab 键或者（多个）空格键。实际上用文本编辑器的话，你要准备更复杂的输入方式；所有像样的文本编辑器都有自动缩进的设置。交互式命令行里，当一个组合的语句输入时, 需要在最后敲一个空白行表示完成（因为语法分析器猜不出来你什么时候打的是最后一行）。注意，在同一块语句中的每一行，都要缩进相同的长度。

• The print statement writes the value of the expression(s) it is given. It differs from just writing the expression you want to write (as we did earlier in the calculator examples) in the way it handles multiple expressions and strings. Strings are printed without quotes, and a space is inserted between items, so you can format things nicely, like this:

  >>> i = 256*256
  >>> print 'The value of i is', i
  The value of i is 65536
  

  A trailing comma avoids the newline after the output:

  >>> a, b = 0, 1
  >>> while b < 1000:
  ...     print b,
  ...     a, b = b, a+b
  ...
  1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987
  

  Note that the interpreter inserts a newline before it prints the next prompt if the last line was not completed.

脚注

[1]	因为 ** 比 - 有更高的优先级, 所以 -3**2 会被解释成 -(3**2) ，因此结果是 -9. 为了避免这个并且得到结果 9, 你可以用这个式子 (-3)**2.

[2]	和其他语言不一样的是, 特殊字符比如说 \n 在单引号 ('...') 和双引号 ("...") 里有一样的意义. 这两种引号唯一的区别是，你不需要在单引号里转义双引号 " (但是你必须把单引号转义成 \') ， 反之亦然.