Python 2.4 adds the command line switch -m to allow modules to be located using the Python module namespace for execution as scripts. The motivating examples were standard library modules such as pdb and profile, and the Python 2.4 implementation is fine for this limited purpose.
In Python this is simply =. To translate this pseudocode into Python you would need to know the data structures being referenced, and a bit more of the algorithm implementation. Some notes about psuedocode: := is the assignment operator or = in Python = is the equality operator or == in Python There are certain styles, and your mileage may vary:
An @ symbol at the beginning of a line is used for class and function decorators: PEP 318: Decorators Python Decorators - Python Wiki The most common Python decorators are: @property @classmethod @staticmethod An @ in the middle of a line is probably matrix multiplication: @ as a binary operator.
There's the != (not equal) operator that returns True when two values differ, though be careful with the types because "1" != 1. This will always return True and "1" == 1 will always return False, since the types differ. Python is dynamically, but strongly typed, and other statically typed languages would complain about comparing different types. There's also the else clause:
In Python 3.5 though, PEP 484 -- Type Hints attaches a single meaning to this: -> is used to indicate the type that the function returns. It also seems like this will be enforced in future versions as described in What about existing uses of annotations:
Python slicing is a computationally fast way to methodically access parts of your data. In my opinion, to be even an intermediate Python programmer, it's one aspect of the language that it is necessary to be familiar with.
Why is it 'better' to use my_dict.keys() over iterating directly over the dictionary? Iteration over a dictionary is clearly documented as yielding keys. It appears you had Python 2 in mind when you answered this, because in Python 3 for key in my_dict.keys() will still have the same problem with changing the dictionary size during iteration.
Working on a python assignment and was curious as to what [:-1] means in the context of the following code: instructions = f.readline()[:-1] Have searched on here on S.O. and on Google but to no avail.
