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Mike Driscoll

Dec 10 • 7 tweets • 3 min read

Today I want to talk about #Python's special escape characters

Join me in another fun thread!

🧵🐍👇

Here is a list of the most common escape characters in #Python

🐍 \n - ASCII Linefeed or Newline
🐍 \t - Horizontal tab
🐍 \r - Carriage return
🐍 \b - Backspace
🐍 \f - Form feed
🐍 \' - Single Quote
🐍 \" - double quote
🐍 \\ -Backslash
🐍 \v -vertical tab

One of the most common escape characters in #Python is `\n` or the line feed character.

Line feed is not printable. It basically tells Python to add a newline on the end of your string.

The line feed is useful for formatting your output. You can add more than one too!

Another common escape character in #Python is `\t` or the tab character

You can use `\t` to add one or more tabs in your strings

`\r` used to be used on old versions of Mac OS as a carriage return.

`\n` is used on current Mac and Linux for new lines

`\r\n` is still the standard on Windows for new lines as far as I know

Technically, they all represent the end of a line

stackoverflow.com/questions/1543…

I have rarely had a need for the other escape characters except in weird edge cases where I needed to escape a backslash on Windows

I hope you've enjoyed this little foray into #Python escape characters.

Follow me for more fun tips on the Python language!

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More from @driscollis

Mike Driscoll

@driscollis

Dec 5

Let's talk about #Python introspection!

Introspection is the examination of Python objects. It gives you a window into your code that lets you learn about Python using Python itself!

Find out how in this mini-thread!

🧵👇🐍

There are multiple ways to introspect #Python code. You will learn about the following tools you can use for introspection:

🐍 type()
🐍 dir()
🐍 help()
🐍 sys

You can use the `type()` function in #Python to learn about any object's type.

This can help you figure out what is going on in your code when you are debugging.

Here are some examples:

Read 8 tweets

Mike Driscoll

@driscollis

Dec 3

#Python includes a `format()` function that is built-in. This function is very similar to the string's `format()` method, but is more low-level than that method

docs.python.org/3/library/func…

#python_builtins_by_driscollis

🧵🐍👇

Here are some examples of how you might use #Python's `format()` function:

The `format()` function uses the Format Specification Mini-Language. You can see this documented here:

docs.python.org/3/library/stri…

You can use the Format Specification Mini-Language to specify alignment, fill, width, precision and more.

Here are a couple of examples:

Read 4 tweets

Mike Driscoll

@driscollis

Nov 29

Today I am going to show you how to create 7️⃣ different file types with #Python:

🐍 Text file
🐍 CSV
🐍 XML
🐍 JSON
🐍 Tar file
🐍 PDF
🐍 Excel

Join me for this fun 🧵👇

1️⃣ Creating a text file with #Python is a breeze! The recommended method is to use Python's `with` statement as it will automatically close the file for you

That means you can create a text file with TWO lines of code if you want to:

2️⃣ Creating a CSV file with #Python can be accomplished using the `csv` module

Here's a small example:

Read 16 tweets

Mike Driscoll

@driscollis

Nov 28

Let's talk about creating dictionaries with #Python 🐍

A dictionary is a key / value pair. The key must be of an immutable type, such as an integer or a string. The value can be of any type

🧵👇

You can create a #Python dictionary in several different ways.

The following shows the most common method of dictionary creation followed by using a dictionary comprehension

You can also create a #Python dictionary by using the `dict()` function

Read 4 tweets

Mike Driscoll

@driscollis

Nov 27

#Python has several Easter eggs built in! 🐍🥚🐣🐇

An Easter egg is a fun little surprise in a programming language, video game or movie.

Let's talk about some of Python's cool Easter eggs!

🧵🐍👇

🥚1️⃣ - The most famous #Python Easter egg is probably The Zen of Python, which you will see if you "import this"

🥚2️⃣ - What you might not know is that Zen of Python's source is really interesting too:

github.com/python/cpython…

Read 10 tweets

Mike Driscoll

@driscollis

Nov 27

Another great tool in #Python's `collections` module is the `defaultdict`! 🐍🔥

`defaultdict` is a subclass of the built-in dict class where the first argument is a factory attribute.

🧵🐍👇

Let's start out by creating a regular dictionary so you can see how `defaultdict` might help clean up your code.

Here you create a dictionary based on words in a string using a conditional statement to add the various words.

You can also see the output in the 2nd screenshot

Now if you use a `defaultdict` with an `int` factory, you can get rid of the conditional statement entirely, which makes your code shorter and easier to read! 🐍🔥

Read 8 tweets

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