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3. Built-in Constants
A small number of constants live in the built-in namespace. They are:
- False
The false value of the bool type. Assignments to False are illegal and raise a SyntaxError.
- True
The true value of the bool type. Assignments to True are illegal and raise a SyntaxError.
- None
The sole value of the type NoneType. None is frequently used to represent the absence of a value, as when default arguments are not passed to a function. Assignments to None are illegal and raise a SyntaxError.
- NotImplemented
Special value which should be returned by the binary special methods (e.g. __eq__(), __lt__(), __add__(), __rsub__(), etc.) to indicate that the operation is not implemented with respect to the other type; may be returned by the in-place binary special methods (e.g. __imul__(), __iand__(), etc.) for the same purpose. Its truth value is true.
Note
When NotImplemented is returned, the interpreter will then try the reflected operation on the other type, or some other fallback, depending on the operator. If all attempted operations return NotImplemented, the interpreter will raise an appropriate exception.
See Implementing the arithmetic operations for more details.
- Ellipsis
The same as .... Special value used mostly in conjunction with extended slicing syntax for user-defined container data types.
- __debug__
This constant is true if Python was not started with an -O option. See also the assert statement.
Note
The names None, False, True and __debug__ cannot be reassigned (assignments to them, even as an attribute name, raise SyntaxError), so they can be considered “true” constants.
3.1. Constants added by the site module
The site module (which is imported automatically during startup, except if the -S command-line option is given) adds several constants to the built-in namespace. They are useful for the interactive interpreter shell and should not be used in programs.
- quit(code=None)
- exit(code=None)
Objects that when printed, print a message like “Use quit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit”, and when called, raise SystemExit with the specified exit code.
- copyright
- license
- credits
Objects that when printed, print a message like “Type license() to see the full license text”, and when called, display the corresponding text in a pager-like fashion (one screen at a time).