Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Built-in Functions

This section documents the Python functions available in module _ _builtin_ _ in alphabetical order. Note that the names of these built-ins are not reserved words. Thus, your program can bind for its own purposes, in local or global scope, an identifier that has the same name as a built-in function. Names bound in local or global scope have priority over names bound in built-in scope, so local and global names hide built-in ones. You can also rebind names in built-in scope, as covered in Python built-ins. Be very careful, however, to avoid accidentally hiding built-ins that your code might need. It’s tempting to use, for your own variables, natural names such as file, input, list, filter, but don’t do it: these are all names of built-in Python types or functions, and, unless you get into the habit of never shadowing such built-in names with your own, you’ll end up with some mysterious bug in your code sooner or later due to such hiding.

Like most built-in functions and types, the functions documented in this section cannot normally be called with named arguments, only with positional ones; in the following, I specifically mention any case in which this limitation does not hold.

_ _import_ _

_ _import_ _(module_name[,globals[,locals[,fromlist]]]) Loads the module named by string module_name and returns the resulting module object. globals, which defaults to the result of globals( ), and locals, which defaults to the result of locals( ) (both covered in this section), ...