2. Lexical analysis¶
A Python program is read by a parser. Input to the parser is a stream of tokens, generated by the lexical analyzer (also known as the tokenizer). 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 PEP 3120
for details. If the source file cannot be decoded, a SyntaxError is
raised.
2.1. Line structure¶
A Python program is divided into a number of logical lines.
2.1.1. Logical lines¶
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.
2.1.2. Physical lines¶
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).
2.1.4. Encoding declarations¶
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. If the
implicit or explicit encoding of a file is UTF-8, an initial UTF-8 byte-order
mark (b'\xef\xbb\xbf') is ignored rather than being a syntax error.
If an encoding is declared, the encoding name must be recognized by Python (see Standard Encodings). The encoding is used for all lexical analysis, including string literals, comments and identifiers.
2.1.5. Explicit line joining¶
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.
2.1.6. Implicit line joining¶
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.
2.1.7. Blank lines¶
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.
2.1.8. Indentation¶
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
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).
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.)
2.1.9. Whitespace between tokens¶
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).
2.2. Other 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.
2.3. Identifiers and keywords¶
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 further details.
Within the ASCII range (U+0001..U+007F), the valid characters for identifiers
include the uppercase and lowercase letters A through
Z, the underscore _ and, except for the first character, the digits
0 through 9.
Python 3.0 introduced additional characters from outside the ASCII range (see
PEP 3131). For these characters, the classification uses the version of the
Unicode Character Database as included in the unicodedata module.
Identifiers are unlimited in length. Case is significant.
identifier ::=xid_startxid_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 inid_start, plus characters in the categories Mn, Mc, Nd, Pc and others with the Other_ID_Continue property> xid_start ::= <all characters inid_startwhose NFKC normalization is in "id_start xid_continue*"> xid_continue ::= <all characters inid_continuewhose NFKC normalization is in "id_continue*">
The Unicode category codes mentioned above stand for:
Lu - uppercase letters
Ll - lowercase letters
Lt - titlecase letters
Lm - modifier letters
Lo - other letters
Nl - letter numbers
Mn - nonspacing marks
Mc - spacing combining marks
Nd - decimal numbers
Pc - connector punctuations
Other_ID_Start - explicit list of characters in PropList.txt to support backwards compatibility
Other_ID_Continue - likewise
All identifiers are converted into the normal form NFKC while parsing; comparison of identifiers is based on NFKC.
A non-normative HTML file listing all valid identifier characters for Unicode 15.1.0 can be found at https://www.unicode.org/Public/15.1.0/ucd/DerivedCoreProperties.txt
2.3.1. Keywords¶
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
2.3.2. Soft Keywords¶
Added in version 3.10.
Some identifiers are only reserved under specific contexts. These are known as
soft keywords. The identifiers match, case, type and _ can
syntactically act as keywords in certain contexts,
but this distinction is done at the parser level, not when tokenizing.
As soft keywords, their use in the grammar is possible while still preserving compatibility with existing code that uses these names as identifier names.
match, case, and _ are used in the match statement.
type is used in the type statement.
Changed in version 3.12: type is now a soft keyword.
2.3.3. Reserved classes of 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 *._In a
casepattern within amatchstatement,_is a soft keyword that denotes a wildcard.Separately, the interactive interpreter makes the result of the last evaluation available in the variable
_. (It is stored in thebuiltinsmodule, alongside built-in functions likeprint.)Elsewhere,
_is a regular identifier. It is often used to name “special” items, but it is not special to Python itself.Note
The name
_is often used in conjunction with internationalization; refer to the documentation for thegettextmodule for more information on this convention.It is also commonly used for unused variables.
__*__System-defined names, informally known as “dunder” names. These names are defined by the interpreter and its implementation (including the standard library). Current system names are discussed in the Special method names section and elsewhere. More will likely be defined in future versions of Python. Any use of
__*__names, in any context, that does not follow explicitly documented use, is subject to breakage without warning.__*Class-private names. Names in this category, when used within the context of a class definition, are re-written to use a mangled form to help avoid name clashes between “private” attributes of base and derived classes. See section Identifiers (Names).
2.4. Literals¶
Literals are notations for constant values of some built-in types.
2.4.1. String and Bytes literals¶
String literals are described by the following lexical definitions:
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|stringescapeseqlongstringitem ::=longstringchar|stringescapeseqshortstringchar ::= <any source character except "\" or newline or the quote> longstringchar ::= <any source character except "\"> stringescapeseq ::= "\" <any source character>
bytesliteral ::=bytesprefix(shortbytes|longbytes) bytesprefix ::= "b" | "B" | "br" | "Br" | "bR" | "BR" | "rb" | "rB" | "Rb" | "RB" shortbytes ::= "'"shortbytesitem* "'" | '"'shortbytesitem* '"' longbytes ::= "'''"longbytesitem* "'''" | '"""'longbytesitem* '"""' shortbytesitem ::=shortbyteschar|bytesescapeseqlongbytesitem ::=longbyteschar|bytesescapeseqshortbyteschar ::= <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 stringprefix or
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 Encoding declarations.
In plain English: Both types of literals can be enclosed in matching single quotes
(
2.1.3. Comments¶
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.