Introduction

[Music] welcome to the complete python Mastery course in this course

you're going to learn everything about python from
Basics to more advanced concepts so by the end of the course you'll be
able to confidently use Python for AI machine
learning web development and automation if you have been looking for a
comprehensive easy to follow well
organized and practical course that takes you from Zero to Hero this is the
right python course for you you don't
need any prior knowledge of python to get started I will explain everything
step by step in simple terms so you can
build a solid foundation I'm m hamadani a software engineer with over 20
years of experience and I've taught Millions
how to code and become professional software Engineers through my
YouTube channel and online school quote withm
[Link] if you're new here make sure to subscribe as I upload new videos
all the time now let's jump in and get
[Music]
What is Python?
started in this course you're going to learn everything you need to get
started with python just be aware that I've
designed this course for beginners so if you have some programming
experience check out my other python course for
developers you can see the link on the top right corner of this video so
python
is the world's fastest growing and most popular programming language not
just
amongst software developers but also amongst mathematicians data
analysts
scientists accountants Network engineers and even kids kids in fact it's the
ideal programming language to learn first but what makes python so
special here are six reasons with python you can
solve complex problems in less time with fewer lines of code than many
other
languages that's why huge companies like Google Spotify Dropbox and
Facebook have
embraced this beautiful and Powerful language here is an example let's
say we
want to extract the first three characters of the text hello work this
is the code we would have to write in C this is how we would do this in
JavaScript and here's how we would do it
in Python see how clean and simple the language is and that's just the
beginning python is a multi-purpose
language and you can use it for a wide range of jobs such as data analysis
Ai
and machine learning writing automation scripts building web mobile and
desktop
applications as well as software testing or even hacking so if you want a
high-paying long lasting career in any
of these areas especially Ai and machine learning python is the language
to put
those opportunities at your fingertips in fact according to [Link] the
average salary of a python developer in the US was over
$115,000 in March 2018 and here are four more reasons that make python
the most
desirable language python is a highle language so you don't have to worry
about complex tasks such as memory
management as you do in C++ it's crossplatform which means we can
build and run python apps on Windows
Mac and Linux it has a huge community so whenever you get stuck there
is someone
out there to help and it has a large ecosystem of libraries Frameworks and
tools whatever you want to do it is likely that someone else has done it
before because because python has been
around for over 20 years there are two versions of python out there python
2
which is the Legacy version of python and is going to be supported until
year 2020 and Python 3 which is python for
the future in this course you're going to Learn Python 3 hi my name is msh
hamadani and I'm going to be your instructor in this course I'm a software
engineer with 18 years of experience and
I've taught way over a million people how to codee or how to become top
professional software Engineers to learn more about me and my courses
head over to Cod [Link] all right now let's get
Installing Python
started all right the first thing I want you to do is open your browser and
head over to [Link] on this page under
downloads you can download the latest version of python at the time of
this video the latest version is python 3.13
chances are in the future when you're watching this video there is a new
newer version of python available don't worry
what I'm going to show you in this tutorial will apply to Future versions of
python as well so go ahead and
download the latest version now if you're on windows before you click
install make sure to check
this little box here that says add python to path this step is very important
and it will save you a lot of
headaches later so check this box and follow the installation now to verify
that python
is successfully installed click this magnifier and and here in this search
bar type terminal now here in the terminal window type python D- version
this verifies
that we have successfully installed python 3.13 now if you're on Mac press
command
and space to bring up the spotlight search here type terminal now to verify
that we have
installed python correctly on Mac we should type Python 3
space-- version so as you can see I've successfully installed python 3.13
on this
Python Interpreter
machine so this environment you see here is what we call python
interpreter which
is basically a program that executes python code we can type our python
code in a file and give it to this
interpreter or we can type our code directly here in this interactive shell
so here we can write an expression like two + 2 in programming an
expression is
a piece of code that produces a value so here when we add 2 + 2 we get a
value
that is why we refer to this piece of code as an expression so enter we get
four let's try a different kind of
expression let's see if two is greater than one we get true which is an
example
of a Boolean value you're going to learn about these Boolean values in the
next section now what if we type two is
greater than five enter we get false so in programming we have true and
false
which are similar to yes and no in English now what if we type two is
greater than but we don't add a second value here just press enter we get
a syntax error in
programming syntax means grammar so just like we have the concept of
grammar in the languages that we speak we have the
exact same concept in programming if we write a sentence that is not
grammatically correct chances are some
people may not understand that sentence so in this example we have this
expression which is incomplete it
doesn't have the right grammar or syntax that is why python interpreter is
complaining by returning an error so this interactive shell is a great way to
quickly experiment with a bit of python
code but that's not how we build real world applications to do that we need
a code editor and that's what I'm going to
show you in the next lecture [Music]
Code Editors
when it comes to typing python code you have two options you can use a
code editor or an IDE which is short for
integrated development environment an IDE is basically a code editor with
some
fancy features like autoc completion which means as you type code this
feature helps you complete your code so
you don't have to type every character by hand it's a per activity boosting
feature it also gives you additional
features like debugging which means finding and fixing bugs in your
programs
testing and so on for both code editors and Ides there's so many options
out there the most popular code editors are
vs code atom and Sublime you can use the code editor that you prefer in
terms of
the Ides again there are so many options out there the most popular one is
pie charm in this course I'm going to use vs
code or Visual Studio code because that's my favorite code editor later in
the course I will show you how to
install a Plugin or an extension that will convert vs code to a powerful ID so
before going any further head over to code. visual [Link] and
download the
latest version of vs
Your First Python Program
code now with vs code open on the top from the file menu go to to
open and somewhere on your disk create a new folder let's call this folder
hello
world and then open it beautiful now click this icon on the top this opens up
the Explorer panel in this panel you can see all the files and folders in your
project so let's add a new file and call
that [Link] so all our python files should have the p my extension press
enter now
let's close this and type a bit of python code in this lecture we're going to
use one of
the built-in functions in Python called print so in Python we have a lot of
buil-in functions for performing various kinds of tasks for example as a
metaphor think of the remote control of your TV
on this remote control you have a bunch of functions like turn on turn off
change the channel change the volume and
so on these are the build buin functions in your TV we have the same
concept in
Python and many other programming languages so one of these built-in
functions that comes with python is
print and we can use this to print something on the screen now whenever
you
want to use a function you should open and close parentheses in
programming we
say we're calling the print function calling a function means executing it
now let's display the hello world message on the screen whenever you
want to work with text you should put your
text in between quotes either double quotes or single quote now I'm going
to
go with double quote and add hello world and then put a happy Persian cat
here beautiful save the changes with command and s on Mac or control
and S on
Windows now to execute this code we need to go back to command
prompt on Windows
or terminal on Mac but the good news is that we don't have to switch
programs
here in vs code we have an integrated terminal so press control and back
tick
that is the key before number one on your keyboard that is just below the
escape
button so this is our integrated terminal now if you're on Windows type
python if you're on Mac or Linux type Python 3 and next to that add the
name
of our file that is app p and here's our hello word message in the terminal
beautiful now let's take this to the next level and make it a little bit more
interesting let's close this terminal
window by pressing control and back tick and add a second line of code so
one
more time print this time let's add quotes with a star in between them now
let's say you
want to repeat this star 10 times so here we can multiply this is by 10 save
the changes open up the terminal and run our program and you can see
this star is
repeated 10 times so as you see the instructions in our program are
executed from top to
bottom in order in the next lecture I'm going to show you how to convert
this vs code to a powerful IDE for building
python applications [Music]
Python Extension
in this lecture I'm going to show you how to convert vs code to a powerful
IDE by using an extension called python with
this extension or plug-in we get a number of features such as linting which
basically means analyzing our code for
potential errors we also get debugging which involves finding and fixing
errors
we'll look at this later in the course we also get autoc completion which
basically helps us write code faster so
we don't have to type every character we get code formatting which is all
about making our code clean and readable just
like how we format our articles newspapers books to make them clean and
readable we get unit testing which
involves writing a bunch of tests for our code we can run these tests in an
automated fashion to make sure our code
is behaving correctly and finally we get code Snippets which are reusable
code
blocks that we can quickly generate so we don't have to type them all by
hand now don't worry about memorizing any of
these as we go through the course you're going to learn about these
features so back to vs code on the left
side click this icon this opens the extensions panel where we can install
additional extensions to enhance vs code
up here in the search bar search for python all right look we have an
official extension for python from Microsoft so go ahead and install this
now you might see a box here saying reload if you see that make sure to
click it to reload vs code now with this
extension installed we have a ton of new functionality in vs code for writing
python code the first one I'm going to
show you in this lesson is the ability to run our code so back to [Link] look
with this extension installed now we have this play icon on the top for
running our code so if we click it we
can see the output of our program in the terminal window
Linting Python Code
in this lecture I'm going to show you linting and action so let's start by
writing some invalid code like this
print space with no parenthesis and then hello world earlier I told you that
print is a built-in function and whenever you want to use or call a function
you should always use
parenthesis now to be more precise this is actually valid python 2 code but
because we're using Python 3 here this is invalid code from python 3's
point of
view so now when I save the changes you can see this red underline here
let's
hover our Mouse over this underline you can see this tool tip it's coming
from
Pilot and here's the error message missing parenthesis in call to print did
you mean print with parenthesis so this is the benefit of lenting as you're
writing code you can see potential
problems in your code you don't have to wait to run your program to see
these errors
so now if we put parenthesis here and save the changes you can see that
red
underline is gone let's look at another error let's type two plus and then
save
the changes earlier we run this code in Python interpreter's interactive shell
there we got a syntax or grammar error so if you hover your mouse here
one more
time you can see pilent is telling us that this is invalid syntax or invalid
grammar it's like an incomplete sentence so this is linting an action now let
me
show you a couple useful shortcuts here on the top look at the view menu
here we
have this problems menu look at the shortcut on Mac it's shift command
and M
on Windows it's probably shift control M so as you're working with vs code
try to
memorize these shortcuts because they really help you write code faster
now let's take a look at this problems panel so this problems panel lists all
the issues in your code in one place so if you have an application with
multiple files this is really useful because some
of those files may not currently be open so this linter pilent will analyze all
your files and if it finds any issues it will list them here in the problems
panel now you can also put this on the
right side of the screen so let's put it here so so as you write code these
problems will appear here now let's fix this issue so I'm going to add three
here save the changes and you can see
the problem disappeared and one last thing before we finish this lecture
once again on the top let's go to the view
menu the first item is command pallet this is a very important feature in vs
code once again look at the shortcut that is shift command and P on Mac
or
shift control p on Windows with this command pallet you can execute
various commands in vsod if you type lint here you can see all commands
related to linting as you can see all these commands are prefixed with
python
because these commands come with the python extension that we
installed earlier so these are additional features
available to us in vs code the First Command here is Select linter in this list
you can see various
linters available for p pent so as you're reading tutorials or talking to other
people you will hear about linters
such as flake 8 my pie pep 8 and so on different developers prefer different
linters I personally prefer py lint that is the most popular one and that is the
default linter set and the python extension of vs code if you're adventurous
you can try using other
linters on your own the difference between these linters is in how they find
and Report errors some error
messages are more meaningful or more friendly the others are more
ambiguous so that's all about linting in the next
lecture we'll talk about formatting
Formatting Python Code
code in Python Community we have a bunch of documents called python
enhancement
proposals or peps here on Google if you search for python
peps you can see the list of all these PS under [Link]
sdev peps let's have a quick look here so here are the peps you can see
each pep has a number and a title the one that is very popular amongst
python
developers is Pep 8 which is a style guide for python code a style guide is
basically a document that defines a bunch of rules for formatting and
styling our code if you follow these
conventions the code that you right will end up being consistent with other
people's code now if you have time you
can go ahead and read this pep eight documentation but if not don't worry
because throughout this course I'm going
to explain the key things in pep 8 in this lecture I'm going to show you a
tool that helps you automatically format
your code according to pep 8 so back in vs code let's write some
python code x equal 1 here I'm declaring a variable and setting it to one if if
you're not familiar with variables don't worry in the next section you're
going to learn about them so according to pep
8 this code is considered ugly because by convention we should add a
space
around this equal sign or the assignment operator now since you're
starting out
with python you probably don't know these rules so let me show you a tool
that helps you automatically format your
code let's revert this back to its original state now we need to go back to
the command pallet remember so it's right here under View and the
shortcut
is shift command and P here if you search for format you can
see this command format document the first time you execute this
command
you're going to see this message here formatter autopep8 is not installed
so
there are a bunch of tools for formatting python code the most popular one
is Auto Pep 8 and this is the tool
that this python extension we installed uses to format our our code now if
you don't see this you can install autopep8
using the extensions panel so once again on the left side click this icon
and
search for Auto Pep 8 there it is let's install
it good so let's go ahead and install
this good now one more time let's open up the command pallet and
execute format
document see this tool automatically formats our code beautiful let's take a
look at
another example I'm going to declare another variable Y and set it to two
and
a variable with a long name like unit underline price and we set this to
three
now some developers have this habit of formatting their variable
declarations
like this so they put all these equal signs in the same column
according to pep 8 this is considered ugly so once again let's format our
code
that is better beautiful now let me show you a trick opening up this
command
palet and searching for format document every time is a little bit timec
consuming so I'm going to show you how
to have your file automatically formatted as soon as you save the changes
on the top let's go to the code
menu preferences and settings here in the search box search
for for format on save so we have this option editor
format on Save take this now back to [Link] I'm going to change the
formatting of these lines make them really ugly now as soon as I save the
changes you can see my code is reformatted
Running Python Code
[Music] beautiful all right now let's talk about
a few different ways to run python code as I told you before one way to run
python code is by opening the terminal
window if you're on Windows type python if you're on Mac type Python 3
followed
by the name of the file this approach is useful in situations where you don't
have access to a code editor okay now
with the python extension in vs code there is a simpler way to run python
code we get this play button on the top
when we click it we see the output in the terminal but clicking this button
every time we change our code is a
little bit tedious so let me show you how to associate a shortcut to this
button first we close this next we bring
up the command pallet the shortcut on Mac is shift command and P on
Windows is
shift control P here we search for open keyboard
shortcuts look we have this command up here now on this window we can
see all
the commands in vs code and the shortcuts associated with them here in
the search bar search for run python
file okay so this is the command that is associated with the play button as
you
can see we don't currently have any key bindings or shortcuts here so
double click in this column now here you can
press any key combination for creating a shortcut I'm going to press
controll and R okay now we press enter with this in
place we can go back to [Link] and press controlr and here we see the
out
Python Implementations
beautiful when we talk about python we mean two separate things that are
closely related Python language and a
particular implementation python as a language is just a specification that
defines a set of rules and grammar for
writing python code a python implementation is basically a program
that understands those rules and can execute python code earlier in the
course we downloaded python from py
[Link] this is the default implementation of python called cpython
It's a program written in C that's why it's called C python so here in terminal
when we run python we get this C python this is the default implementation
of
python there are a few other implementations out there such as jython
written in Java iron python written in C
and piie written in a subset of python itself as new features are added to
the
the Python language they are first supported by cpython because that's the
default implementation and then they
will gradually come to the other implementations in theory if we give some
python code to any of these
implementations we should get the same result but in practice that's not
always the case certain features may be
available in one implementation but not another or they may just behave a
little bit differently in a particular
implementation now you might ask what is the point of this why do we
have several implementations of python wouldn't C
python be enough well it's for the same reason that we have multiple
operating systems or multiple browsers or multiple
programming languages after all these years we programmers haven't
agreed on a single programming language and that's
the same story with python implementations however there is one
technical reason behind these
implementations that you should be aware of since jyon is implemented in
Java it
allows you to reuse some existing Java code in a Python program so if
you're a
Java developer and you want to import some Java code into a Python
program you should use jython instead of
cpython similarly iron python is written in C so if you're a c developer and
want
to bring some C code into a Python program you will have to use iron
python
next we'll look at how exactly cpython executes python code
How Python Code is Executed
[Music] the programming languages we use like C
C Java python these are all Simple Text based languages that we humans
understand computers don't understand them they only understand
machine code so if we have some code written in C we
should convert it to machine code and that's the job of a c compiler so a c
compiler is a program that knows how to convert or compile C code into
machine
code however this machine code is specific to the type of CPU of a
computer so if we compile a c program on a Windows machine we can't
execute it on
a Mac because Windows and Mac have different machine code just like
how people from different countries speak
different languages Java came to solve this problem Java compiler doesn't
compile Java code into machine code
instead it compiles it into a portable language called jav Java bite code
which
is not specific to a hardware platform like Windows or Mac now we still
need to
convert Java bite code to machine code so Java also comes with a
program called
Java virtual machine or jvm for doing this when we run a Java program jvm
kicks in it loads our Java bite code and then at runtime it will convert each
instruction to machine code with this model we can run Java bite code on
any platforms that have a jvm we have jvm
implementations for Windows Mac and so on so the jvm implementation on
Windows
knows how to convert Java bite code into machine code that a Windows
machine can
understand C and python have also taken the same route so they are
platform
independent when we run a Python program using cpython first it will
compile our
python code into python bite code then it will pass that bite code to python
virtual machine which will in turn convert it into machine code and execute
it this is how cpython works in the last
lecture we talked about various python implementations I told you that if
you want to reuse some Java code in a Python
program you should use jython now let's see how jython makes this
possible when
you use jython to run a Python program instead of compiling your python
code into python by code it will compile it
to Java by code so we can take this Java bite code and run it using Java
virtual
machine and that's why you can import some Java code into a Python
program when using jython because the end result
is Java bite code which will eventually be executed by Java virtual
[Music] machine so I've got a few questions for
Quiz
you cuz I want to see if you have been really paying attention to this video
or not you better have so here's the first
question for for each question I want you to pause the video think about
the answer for a few seconds when you're
ready continue watching so here's the first question what is an
expression an expression is a piece of code that produces a value here's
an
example of an expression what do you think is the value of this expression
well here we have this string
we're multiplying this by three so the result will be a string of three
asterisk like this here's another question what is a syntax
error a syntax error is a kind of error that is due to bad syntax or bad
grammar
in the code and finally the last question what does a linter do a linter is a
tool that checks our
code for potential errors mostly in the category of syntactical Errors so if
you
have grammatical issues in our code the linter will tell us before running
our program okay okay that's it for now if
you like more quizzes and programming exercises look at the link below
this video and if you have enjoyed this video
I hope you have please support me by giving a thumbs up please like this
video and share it with others in the
next section we're going to look at the fundamentals of [Music] python hey
guys I just wanted to let you
Python Mastery Course
know that this tutorial is actually the first two hours of my complete python
Mastery course if you're finding this
helpful and want to dive even deeper the the full course covers everything
from beginner Basics to advanced concepts
like machine learning web development and automation you'll also get
Hands-On projects to build your skills step by
step I put the link in the description box if you're ready to take your python
knowledge to the next level now let's
Variables
continue let's start this section by a discussion of variables which are one
of the Core Concepts in programming we use
variables to store data in computer's memory here are a few examples I'm
going to Define a variable called students
underline count and setting it to a th000 when we run this program python
interpreter will allocate some memory and store this number thousand in
that
memory space then it will have this variable reference that memory
location
so this variable is just like a label for that memory location we can use this
variable or this label anywhere in our
program program to get access to that memory location and the data
stored there so now if we print students count
and run our program we will get the number thousand so this is the basic
of
variables now what kind of data can we store in computer's memory well
we have
several different kinds of data in this section we're going to look at the built-
in primitive types in Python
primitive types can be numbers booleans and strings let me show you so
here we have a whole number we refer to this as an integer in
programming we can
also have numbers with a decimal point let's take a look so rating we set
this to
4.99 this is what we call a float or a floating Point number and this
terminology is not specific to python in the future when you learn a new
programming language you're going to
hear these terms again now let's take a look at an example of a Boolean is
published we set this to true
or false these are examples of Boolean values in programming so Boolean
values
can either be true or false and these are exactly like yes and no in English
later in the course you will learn that we'll use these Boolean values to
make decisions in our programs for example if
the user is an admin user perhaps we want to give them extra permissions
so these are the Boolean
values now take into account that python is a case sensitive language
which means
lowercase and uppercase characters have different meanings so Boolean
values should always start with a capital
letter like what you see here if we type false or false these are not
accepted
Boolean values in Python only what you see here is a valid Boolean value
so
false or true and finally let's take a look at an example of a string so of
course underline name we set this to a string like Python Programming so
a
string as I told you before is like text whenever you want to work with text
in your programs you need to surround your
text with quotes so these are the basics of
Variable Names
variables so these are the variables from the last lecture now I've got a
question for you there are four things
that I've consistently used in this program can you spot them if you want
you can pause the video think about this
for a few seconds and then continue watching so here are those four
things
the first thing is that all my variable names are descriptive and meaningful
so
students count represents the number of students for a course or course
name
clearly explains that this variable holds the name of a course one of the
issues that I see a lot amongst beginner
programmers is that they use mystical names for their variables something
like
this CN as in short for course name when someone else reads this code
they have
no idea what CN stands for or they use variable names like C1 when I look
at
that code I wonder where is C2 and what is the difference between C1 and
C2 so
these variable names are very mystical that's a bad practice make sure
your variable names are always descriptive
and meaningful because this makes your code more maintainable now
there are times that you can use short variable
names like x y z if you're dealing with things like coordinates so that's an
exception now the second thing that I have consistently used in this code
is
that I have used lowercase letters to name my variables so here we don't
have
course name all in capital or in title case all letter are lowercase right
let's delete this the third thing that I've consistently used here is that I have
used an underscore to separate
multiple words and I've done this to make my variable names more
readable
because in Python we cannot have a space in variable names so we
cannot have course name and if you put these two
words together it's a little bit hard to read that's why we use an underscore
and
the fourth thing that I have used consistently here is that I have put a
space around this equal sign again
that's one of the issues I see a lot amongst beginners they write code like
this this is a little bit ugly this is what we call Dirty code dirty stinky
smelly you should write code that is clean and beautiful so other people
can read it like a story like a newspaper
article it should be formatted properly and that's why we have pep 8 in
Python
now the good thing is if you forget these rules when you save the changes
autopep8 kicks in and it automatically
reformats your code but that aside you should always give yourself the
habit of writing clean code without relying too
much on the tooling so these are all the best practices about naming your
variables next we're going to look at
strings in more
Strings
detail so here we have this course variable set to Python Programming as I
told you before whenever you work with text you should surround your text
with quotes you can either use double quotes
or single quotes that's more of a personal preference but quite often we
use double quotes we also have triple
quotes and we use them to format a long string for example if you have
let's say
a variable message that is the message we want to include in the body of
an
email you can use triple quotes to format it like this hi John this is msh
from code with [Link] blah blah blah so that's when we use triple codes
now we
don't need this in this lecture so delete let me show you a few useful things
you can do with strings first of
all we have this built-in function in Python for getting the length of strings
what is a function a function is basically Bally a reusable piece of code that
carries out a task as a metaphor
think of the remote control of your TV on this remote control you have
buttons for different functions like turn on
turn off change the channel and so on these are the built-in functions in
your TV in Python and many other programming
languages we have the exact same concept so we have functions that are
built into the language on the platform you can
reuse these functions to perform various tasks so here we can use the
built-in
Len function to get the length of a string which means the number of
characters in that string now whenever
you want to use a function you should use parenthesis now we say we're
calling
this function which basically means we're using this function now some
functions take additional data which we
refer to as arguments these arguments are inputs to these functions so this
Len function takes an input or an argument here we pass our course
variable and this will return the number of characters in this string so let's
print that and see what we get run the program we get 18 because we
have 18
characters here let's look at another example if you want to get access to a
specific character in this string you use the square bracket notation so here
we add course square bracket brackets to get the first character you use
the
index zero so in Python like many other languages strings are zero index
which
means the index of the first character or the first element is zero so now
when
we print this we'll get P okay now you can also
use a negative index like minus1 what does that mean well if zero
represents
the first character here what do you think negative 1 represents that takes
us back to the end of the string so that Returns the first character from the
end
of the string let's draun this program you will see we'll get G there you go
using a similar syntax
you can slice strings let me show you so I'm going to duplicate this line and
remove ne1 now let's say we want to extract the first three characters in
this string so
here we need two indexes the start index colon the end index so this will
return
a new string that contains the first three characters in this course variable
that would be P Y and T so the index of these characters are zero 1 and
two so
that means the character at the end index is not included okay let's run the
program and make sure we get the right result there you go PYT now what
if we don't include the end
index what do you think we're going to get it's Common Sense we start
from
index zero and go all the way to the end of the string so this will return a
new string that is exactly the same as the
original string let's take a look so we get Python programming
now what if we don't include the start index but include the end index what
do
you think we're going to get once again it's common sense so by default
python will put zero here so it will start from
the beginning of the string so when I run this program we should get PYT
one
more time there you go and finally as the last example if we
don't include the start and the end Index this will return a copy of of the
original string let's look at this so we get Python
Programming now you don't have to memorize any of these just remember
we use the Len function to get the length
of a string we use bracket notation to get access to a specific element or a
specific character and we use this notation to slice a
Escape Sequences
string so we have this string here python Pro programming now let's say
we want to put a double quote in the middle
of this string there is a problem here python interpreter sees this second
string as the end of the string so the rest of the code is meaningless and
invalid how do we solve this problem well there are two ways one way is to
use single Cotes for our string and then we can use a double code in the
middle
of the string but what if for whatever reason perhaps for being consistent in
our code we decided to use double quotes how can we add another
double code in
the middle of this string well we can prefix this with a backs slash
backslash
in Python strings is a special character we have a jargon for that called
Escape
character we use it to escape the character after let me show you what I
mean so let's let's print this course and run this
program what's going on here we don't have the backs slash because we
use that
to escape this double code and basically display it here so backs slash is
an
escape character and back SL double quote is an escape sequence in
Python
strings we have a few other Escape sequences that you should be aware
of let me show you so in Python we use a
hash sign to indicate a comment a comment is like additional note that we
add to our program it's not executed by python interpreter okay so here are
the
Escape sequences you have seen back SL double quote we also have
back SL single
code so we can use that to add a single code here let's run the program
here it
is beautiful we also have double backs slash so if you want to include a
backslash in your strings you should prefix it with another backslash let me
show you so when we run this we get python one back slash
programming and finally we have back sln which is short for new line so
now if I
add a back slash n here see what we get we get a new line after python so
programming will end up on the second line so these are the Escape
sequences
in
Formatted Strings
Python here we have two variables first and last let's say we want to print
my
full name on the console so we can Define another variable full set it to
first then concatenate it with a space and one more time concatenate it
with
last now when we print full we get my full name on the console
beautiful now this approach of using concatenation to build a string is okay
but there is a better and newer approach we can use formatted strings so
here we
can set full to this string and prefix it with an F which can be lowercase or
uppercase this formatted string doesn't have a constant value like these
two
strings here It's actually an expression that will be evaluated at runtime so
here we want to add our first name we use curly braces to print the value
of
the first variable after that we add a space and then we add curly braces
one
more time to print the last name so at run time this expression will be
evaluated what we have in between curly braces will be replaced at
runtime
now let's run this program one more time we get the exact same result just
be
aware that you can put any valid expressions in between curly braces so
earlier you learned about the built-in Len function we can call Len here to
get
the length of this string let's run this program one more time so we get
four we can also replace last with an expression like this 2 + 2 let's run
this program we get four and four so when using formatted strings you can
put
any valid expressions in between curly
String Methods
braces in this lecture we're going to look at a few useful functions available
to work with strings so earlier you
learned about this builtin Len function this function is general purpose so
it's
not limited to Strings later I will show you how to use this function with
other kind of objects but in Python we have
quite a few functions that are specific to a strings let me show you so here
if we type course dot see all these are
functions available on strings now in precise terms we refer to these
functions as methods this is a term in object-oriented programming that
you will learn about later in the course for
now now what I want you to take away is that everything in Python is an
object
and objects have functions we call methods that we can access using the
dot
notation so here course is an object we use the dot notation to access its
functions or more accurately methods let's take a look at a few of these
methods we have upper to convert a
string to uppercase now let's print this and run the program
here's what we get beautiful now note that the methods that you call here
return a new string so the original
string is not affected let me show you so print course run the program one
more
time look this is our original string right so course. upper returns a new
string a new value we can store it in a variable like course underline
Capital like this now to keep this demo simple and consistent I'm going to
revert this back and use a print statement we also have the lower method
to convert a string to lowercase we also have title which will capitalize the
first letter of every word so if our string was like this when we call the
title method we get Python Programming as you see here okay
another useful method is strip and we use it to trim any white space at the
beginning or end of a string this is
particularly useful when we receive input from the user let me show you so
let's
imagine the user entered a couple of white spaces at the beginning of this
string when we call course. strip those white spaces will be removed take a
look
so note that in the first three examples we have the those white spaces but
in the last one it is removed so a strip
removes the white space from both the beginning and end of a string we
also have l strip which is short for left
strip and R strip which is short for Right strip so it will remove the white
space from the end of a string if you
want to get the index of a character or a sequence of characters in your
string
you should use the find method and me show you so of course
find so as an argument here we pass another string we can pass a
character
or a series of characters let's find the index of Pro run the program so the
index of pro
is nine so if we start from zero here all the way to nine this is the index of
pro okay now as I told you before python is a case sensitive language so if
I
pass a capital P here obviously we don't have these exact characters in
our
string so let's see what we get we get -1 that means this string was not
found
in the original string another useful method is replace
so we call replace with this we can replace a character or a sequence of
characters with something else so let's say we want to replace all
lowercase P's
with J with this we get jython durog gramming whatever that
means and finally if you want to check for the existence of a character or a
sequence of characters in your string you can use the in Operator Let Me
Show
You So print we write an expression like this Pro in
course so this is an expression as I told you before an expression is a
piece of code that produces a value so this
expression checks to see if we have Pro in course the difference between
this
expression and calling the fine method is that the fine method Returns the
index of these characters in our string but as this expression returns a
Boolean
so it's a true or false let me show you so run the program we get the
Boolean
true and finally we have the not operator and we use that to see if our
string does not contain a character or a sequence of characters
so let's change this to Swift not in course when this expression
is evaluated what do you think we're going to get well we don't have Swift
in
this string so not in will return true let's take a look there you go
go so these are the useful string Methods next we'll look at
Numbers
numbers in Python we have three types of numbers two of these you have
already seen before they are integers and floats
we also have complex numbers so complex numbers in math are in the
form a plus b
i where I is the imaginary number number now if you're not familiar with
this concept don't worry this is something
that is used a lot in mathematics and electrical engineering if you want to
use Python to build web applications
you're never going to use complex numbers but let me quickly show you
the Syntax for representing complex numbers
instead of I we use J so here is an example 1 + 2 J so X now is a complex
number and by the way as I told you before this is just a common or an
additional note in our program when we
run this program anything after this H sign will be ignored so these are the
three types of numbers we have in Python
for all these types of numbers we have the standard arithmetic operations
that
we have in math let me show you so we have
addition subtraction multiplication division but we actually
have two different types of divisions let me show you first let's run this
program so with this division operator
which is a slash we get a floating Point number if you want an integer you
use
double slashes let me show you so double slash run the
program we get three okay we also have
modulus which is the remainder of a division and finally exponent Which is
less left to the power of right so 10 to the power of 3 will be a th000 these
are
the standard arithmetic operators now for all these operators we have a
special operator called augmented assignment operator let me show you
so
let's imagine we have X set to 10 we want to increment X by let's say three
we can write an expression like this x = x + 3 or we can use an augmented
assignment operator that is a little bit shorter so we write X+ equal three
these
two statements are exactly the same now here I'm using addition as an
example
you can use any of these operators here next I'm going to show you some
useful functions to work with
Working With Numbers
numbers in this lecture we're going to look at a few few useful functions to
work with numbers so we have this
built-in function round for rounding a number so if we pass 2.9 here and
print
the result we will get three we have another useful built-in function called
ABS which Returns the absolute value of a number so if we pass -2.9 here
we'll
get positive 2.9 now teic we have only a handful of built-in functions to
work
with numbers if you want to write a program that involves complex
mathematical calculations you need to
use the math module a module is like a separate file with some python
code so
in Python we have this math module which includes lots of mathematical
functions
for working with numbers but we need to import this module so we can use
it on
the top we type import math now math in
this program is an object so we can use the dot notation to see all the
functions or more accurately all the methods available in this object as an
example we have math. seal for getting the ceiling of a number so if we
pass
2.2 here and run this program we get
three now in this math module we have lots of functions let me show you
how to find the complete list here on Google
search for Python 3 make sure to add the version number math
module on this page you can see all the functions in
the math module so in this lecture we looked at math. seal we also have
math.
copy sign Fabs and so on as an exercise I encourage you to play with a
couple of
functions in this
Type Conversion
module all right now let's take a look at another useful built-in function in
Python we use the input function to get
input from the user as an argument we pass a string this will be a label that
will be displayed in the terminal you'll see that in a second so let's add X
colon now this function returns a string so we can store it in this variable
now
let's imagine that y should be x + 1 save the changes now don't run this
program using the code Runner extension because code Runner by
default runs your
program in the output window which is read only so you won't be able to
enter a value so open up the terminal using
control and backspace once again if you're on Windows type python if
you're on Mac or Linux Linux type Python 3 and
then [Link] so here's our label let's enter a value like one we got an error
type
error what is going on here well when we receive input from the user this
input
always comes as a string so this expression at runtime will look like
this string 1 + 1 note that the number one is different from string one
because
these are two different types now when python sees this expression it
doesn't know what to do because two objects can
be concatenated if they are of the same type so here we need to convert
this
string one to a number in Python we have a few built-in functions for type
conversion we have int for converting a number to an integer we have
float we have bull and stir or string
now in this case we don't need to convert X to a string because X is
already a string if you don't believe me
let me show you so I'm going to comment out these few lines now let's
print type of X so type is another built-in function we pass an object as
an argument and it returns its type also I'm going to comment out this line
because that's the bad boy we don't want to execute this save the changes
back in the terminal let's run this program one
more time enter one look this is what the type function returns now don't
worry about the class we'll talk about classes later in the course so the
type of X is a stir or
string so let's delete this line to fix this problem we need to convert X to an
integer and then we can print both X and Y using a format of string
remember so
we add an F quotes right here we add a label like X then we'll add a field
so
here we want to print the value of x variable after that we add some more
text and finally we want to print the value of y let's run this program one
more time so here in the terminal let's enter
one and here's the result X is one and Y is two beautiful
now all these built-in functions are self-explanatory the only tricky one is
bull because in Python we have this
concept of truthy and falsey values these are values that are not exactly a
Boolean true or false but they can be interpreted as a Boolean true or false
so here are the falsy values in Python M2 strings are considered falsy so
they're interpreted as a Boolean false numbers Z is also falsy we have an
object called non which represents the absence of a value we'll look at this
later in the course so whenever we use
these values in a boan context we get false anything else will be true let
me
show you a few examples so in this interactive shell in Python let's
convert number zero to Bull that's falsy so we get false what about bull of
one
we get true if we pass a negative number we also get true if we pass a
number
larger than one like five we still get true so we only get false when we try to
convert zero to aoia now with strings I told you that an empty string is
falsey
so here we'll get false anything else is true so even if I have a string that is
false we'll get true because the this is not an empty string it's a string with a
few characters that's why it's evaluated as
Quiz
true all right once again it's time for another quiz let's see if you have been
really paying attention to this tutorial
so here's the first question what are the built-in primitive types in
Python we have strings numbers and booleans numbers can can be
integers
Floats or complex numbers here's the second question you have this
variable
fruit set to Apple what do you think we will see on the terminal when we
print
fruit of
one well using screw brackets we can access individual characters the
index
of the first character is zero so this expression Returns the second
character which is p what if we add a colon and
negative one
here well using the syntax we can slice a string our start index is one and
our
end index is negative -1 which refers to the first character from the end of
the string now when slicing a string the
character at the end index or1 is not included so with this expression we'll
get all the characters starting from the second character which is p all the
way
until we get to e so the result of this expression is PPL L here's another
question what is the result of this
expression well this is what we call the modulus operator and it Returns
the
remainder of a division which is in this case one and finally the last
question what
do you think we will see when we print bull of
false well earlier I told you about falsy values in Python so number zero an
mty string and the non-ob these are all falsy values anything that is not
falsey
is considered truthy here we have a string that has five characters it
doesn't matter what those characters are
this is not an empty string so it's not falsey it's truy so when we convert it
using the bull function we'll get the Boolean true and this brings us to the
end of the section in the next section
you're going to learn the fundamentals of computer programming I hope
you have enjoyed this section and thank you for
Comparison Operators
watching we're going to start this section by exploring comparison
operators we use comparison operators to
compare values here are a few examples so 10 is greater than three we
get true
so what we have here is a Boolean expression because when this
expression is evaluated we'll get a Boolean value
that is true or false here is another example 10 is greater than or equal to
three once again we get true we also have less than so 10 is less than 20
we
have less than or equal to here's the equality operator so 10 is equal to 10
what about this expression what do you think we're going to get we get
false
because this values have different types and they're stored differently in
the computer's memory and finally we have
the not equal operator so now with this expression we should get true
beautiful
we can also use these comparison operators with strings let me show you
so we can check to see if bag is greater
than and apple we get true because when we sort these two words bag
comes after
so it's considered greater now what about this one bag equals Capital bag
we
get false here's the reason every character you see here has a numeric
representation in programming let me
show you so we have this built-in function called or don't worry about
memorizing this because you're probably
never going to use this in the future but let me show you the numeric
representation of the letter B so that
is 98 in contrast capital B is represented as
66 that is the reason these two strings are not equal so these are the
comparison operators in Python next we'll look at conditional
Conditional Statements
statements in almost every program there are times you need to make
decisions and that's when you use use an if statement
here's an example let's say we have a variable called temperature we set it
to
35 now if temperature is greater than 30 perhaps we want to display a
message to
the user so we use an if statement if after if we add a condition which is
basically a Boolean expression an expression that produces a Boolean
value
so if temperature is greater than 30 here we have a Boolean expression if
this expression evaluates to true the following statements will be executed
let me show you now here's the important
part that a lot of beginners miss when you use an if statement you should
always terminate your statement with a colon now let's see what happens
when I
press enter our cursor is indented so here we have two white spaces this
is very
important because using these indentations python interpreter will know
what statements should be executed
if this condition is true here we want to print a message like it's warm we
can
print another message as well drink water so we can have as many
statements
as we want here as long as they are indented they belong to this if block
now when we finish here we should remove indentation to indicate the end
of this if block so here we can add a print
statement with a message like Don this statement will always be executed
whether this condition is true or not now note that when I save the changes
this indentation you see here is going to be doubled up take a look save
there you go so when we save the changes autop
pep 8 reformats our code and uses four white spaces for indentation so
one 2 3
4 it uses four white spaces because that's what pep 8 recommends
all right now let's run this program so because temperature is greater than
30 we see the first two
messages and we see the dawn message regardless so if I change the
temperature to let's say 15 and run the
program one more time look this Dawn message is executed whether our
condition is true or not so pay great attention to these indentations that's
one of the issues I see in beginner's
code let's say they want both these print statements to be executed if the
condition is true accidentally they
remove the indentation on the fourth line and that's why their program
doesn't work as they expect so be
careful about this now what if you want to have multiple conditions we use
an L
if statement so L if that is short for L's if here we can add another condition
another expression so temperature is greater than 20 one once again
colon
enter now by default here vs code is using two white spaces so don't worry
about this as soon as you save the changes those two white spaces will be
converted to four white spaces so let's
print a different message it's nice save the changes now look all these
lines are indented consistently you can have as many l statements as you
want and optionally
you can also have an else statement so if none of the previous conditions
are
true then what you have in the else block will be executed once again we
add
the colon annotation print here we can add a message like
it's called save the changes in this case temperature is 15 so none of these
two
conditions will be true and we will see it's called let's run the program there
you go
Ternary Operator
in this lecture I'm going to show you a technique for writing cleaner code so
let's say we're building an application
for University and we want to check to see if the person who's applying for
this University program is eligible or not so we start by defining a variable
called age set it to 22 now if age is greater than or equal to 18 colon
print eligible remove the initation else colon
print not eligible let's run the program make sure it works beautiful now
there
is nothing wrong in this piece of code but I want to show you a cleaner way
to achieve the same result instead of
having a print statement here we can define a variable like message and
set
it to this string that is the first step so message equals
this string and then we will print this message now when you have an if L
statement with this structure where you're basically assigning a value to a
variable you can rewrite this in a
simpler way so this is how it works all we want to do over these VI lines is
to
assign a value to this message variable right so with start with message
we set
it to eligible if age is greater than or equal to 18 else we set it to not
eligible this statement is almost like plain English so what we have on line
seven is exactly equivalent to these four lines of code delete save the
changes run the program you can see this person is eligible if I change the
age
to 12 12 and run the program we get not eligible so what we have here is
called
Turner
Logical Operators
operator in Python we have three logical operators and we use these
operators to
model more complex conditions so these operators are and or and not let's
see a
real word example of using these operators so imagine we're building an
application for processing loans so we
need two variables High income we can set this to
true and good underlined credit we set it to true now here's the condition
we
want to implement if the applicant has high income and good credit score
then
they are eligible for the loan so if High income and good credit
we add the colon and print eligible now note that here I have not
compared the value of this variable with true that is one of the issues I see
in
a lot of beginners code this is redundant and unprofessional because High
income is a Boolean so it's either
true or false we don't need to compare true with true so if this condition is
true and this second condition is true then we will print eligible in the
terminal so save the changes and run the program obviously this person is
eligible however if one of these conditions is false we will not see
eligible in the terminal so let's add an lse statement here and
print not eligible run the program we see not
eligible so this is how the and operator works with and operator if both
conditions are true the result will be true in contrast with the or operator as
long as at least one of the conditions is true the result will be true so if I
replace and with or here we should see eligible in the terminal let's run it
one more time there you go so these are the and and or operators now
let's take
a look at an example of the not operator so I'm going to Define another
variable
student set it to True temporarily I'm going to remove this expression and
simplify it we'll come back to this later so let's say if the person is
eligible if they are not a student the not operator basically inverses the
value of a Boolean so in this case student is true when we apply the not
operator the result will be false so in this case our condition will be false
and that's why this print statement will not not be executed let me show
you so
save run the program they're not eligible if student was
false when we apply the not operator will get true so our condition will be
true and we'll see eligible let's run it
one more time there you go with these operators we can model even more
complex
conditions here's an example a person can be eligible if they have either
High
income or good CR credit and they should not be a student let me show
you how to
implement this condition so if High income or good credit we want at least
one of these conditions to be true so we put these in parenthesis we want
to
separate these from the other condition which is not a student now the
result of
this should be true which means at least one of these conditions should be
true
after that will add and not student and finally call so with these
operators you can model all kinds of real word
Short-circuit Evaluations
scenarios so here's the example from the last lecture a person is eligible
for a
loan if they have high income and good credit and they're not a student
now one
thing you need to know about this Boolean operator is that they are short
circuit what do I
mean by that well when python interpreter wants to evaluate this
expression it starts from the first
argument if this is true it continues the evaluation to see if the second
argument is also true so it continues
the evaluation all the way to the end of this expression however as soon as
one of
these arguments is false the evaluation stops let me show you what I
mean so if
I change High income to false when python interpreter sees this
expression
it starts here it knows that high income is false so it doesn't matter what
comes
after the result of this entire expression will always be false because at
least one of the arguments or one of
the operant is false this is what we call short circuiting just like the short
circuit concept we have in
electronics so the evaluation stops as as soon as one of these arguments
evaluates to false we have the same concept with the or operator so if I
change these and operators to or let's see what happens with the or
operator we
know that at least one of the arguments should be true so the evaluation
stops as soon as we find an argument that
evaluates to true in this case when python interpreter evaluates this
expression it sees that high income is
false so so it continues the evaluation hoping that the next argument will
be
true here good credit is true so evaluation stops and the result of this
entire expression will be true so in Python logical operators are short
Chaining Comparison Operators
circuit in this lecture I'm going to show you how to chain comparison
operators this is a very powerful
technique for writing clean code here's an example let's say we want to
implement a rule that says age should be
between 18 and 65 here's how we can implement it so we
Define a variable like AG set it to 22 now if age is greater than or equal to
18 and age is less than 65 then we print
eligible now here's a question for you how do we write this rule in math we
can
write it like this well more accurately we should have an
equal sign here so age should be between 18 and 65 this is how we write
this rule
in math now I've got some good news for you we can write the exact same
expression in Python so I'm going to
move this up put an if statement here line four and line three are exactly
equivalent but as you can see line four is cleaner and easier to read so
let's
get rid of line three this is what we call chaining comparison
Quiz
operators all right here's a little quiz for you I want you to pause the video
and think about this quiz for 10 to 20
seconds what do you think we'll see on the terminal when we run this
program so
pause the video figure out the answer when you're ready come back
continue
watching all right let's see what happens when we run this program first we
get this if statement in this case
we're comparing two different objects for equality and these objects have
different types we have a number
compared with a string so number 10 and string 10 are not equal that is
why a
will not be printed on the terminal so the control moves to the L If part here
we have two Boolean Expressions here's the first one here's the second
one and
they are combined using the logical end so if both these expressions are
evaluated to true then this entire
expression will be true and we will see be on the terminal let's see if both
these expressions are evaluated to True
here's the first part bag is greater than Apple that is true because when we
sort these words bag comes after Apple but look at the second part part
this
expression is evaluated to false because bag is not greater than cat so
when we
apply The Logical end between true and false the result will be false that is
why this statement will not be executed so to control moves to the lse part
and
when we run this program the letter c will be printed on the
For Loops
terminal there are times that we may want to repeat a task a number of
times
for example let's say we send a message to a user if that message cannot
be delivered perhaps we want to retry three
times now for Simplicity let's imagine this print statement is equivalent to
sending a message in a real world program to send a message to a user
we
have to write five to 10 lines of code now if you want to retry three times
we don't want to repeat all that code that
is ugly that's when we use a loop we use Loops to create repetition so here
is
how it works we start with four number in we have a built-in function called
range now how many times we want to repeat this task let's say three
times
so we call range and pass three as an argument now similar to our if
statements we need to terminate this line with a colon enter we get
indentation so in
this block we can write all this statements that should be repeated three
times let's do a print a message like
attempt save the changes run the program so we have attempt printed
three times
beautiful now what is this number let's take a look it's a variable of type
integer so let's pass it as the second argument to the print function number
run the program this is what we get 012
so here we have a for Loop this for Loop is executed three times in each
iteration number will have a different value initially it will be zero in the
second iteration it will be one and
finally in the last iteration it will be two now here we can do something fun
we can
add one to this around the program and now the messages that we print
are kind
of more meaningful or more user friendly like attempting number one
attempting number two and so on we can take this to
the next level so we can pass another argument here I'm going to add an
expression one more time number + one so
we'll get 1 2 3 now I want to put this expression in parenthesis so let's
select this put it in parenthesis and then multiply it by a DOT so here we
have a string that is multiplied by a number the result will be that string
repeated that number of times let's take
a look so run the program see that's pretty cool isn't it now let me show you
one more thing before we finish this lecture as you saw this range function
generates numbers starting from zero all
the way up to this number here but it doesn't include this number here we
can pass another argument say start from one
and finish before four with this change we don't need to add one to number
every time because in
the first ation this number variable will be set to one so we can simplify
our code and make it cleaner let's run it one more time we get the exact
same result we can also
pass a third argument as a step so I'm going to change the second
argument to
10 and pass two as a step look at the result these are the numbers we get
13
5 and so on so pretty useful you're going to use this function a lot in real
world application
For..Else
continuing with the example from the last lecture let's imagine the scenario
where after the first attempt we can
successfully send the message in that case we want to jump out of this
Loop we don't want to repeat this task of
sending a message three times let me show you how to implement this so
in this demo I'm going to simulate the
scenario where we can successfully send a message so we Define a
variable
successful and set it to true now here after this print statement
we'll have an if statement if successful colon then perhaps we can
print successful now here we want to jump out of this Loop for that we use
the Breck
statement let's trun this program and see what happens so there you go
after
the first attempt you're successful and there are no more attempts so once
again I want you to pay
great attention to the indentation here because that's one of the common
issues amongst beginners so here's our for Loop
these two lines are indented with four spaces and they belong to our for
Loop
in every iteration these two lines will be executed now when we get to line
four
if this condition is true then these two lines will be executed because both
these lines are indented below this if statement now let's take this program
to
the next level what if we attempt three times and we still cannot send an
email
perhaps we want to display a different message to the user we say hey we
Tred three times but it didn't work so I'm
going to change successful to false now at the end here we can add an L
statement this is what we call a for l statement what we put under this L
statement will
only be executed if this Loop completes without an early termination so if
we
never break out of this Loop then the L statement will be executed so here
we
can print a message like attempted three times and
failed so run the program see what we get three attempts
followed by this message attempted three times and failed in contrast if we
change successful to
true because we terminate this Loop using this break statement what we
have
in the else block will not be executed take a look R the program we have
one
attempt successful
Nested Loops
done in programming we have this concept called nested Loops so we can
put one
Loop inside of another loop and with this we can get some interesting
results let me show you so I'm going to start
with this Loop for X in range five colon
now inside of this Loop I'm going to add another loop so for y in range
three
colon and then in our second Loop I'm going to add a print statement here
we
can use formatted strings to display coordinates remember formatted
strings
so we have F followed by quotes now here we add parentheses for our
coordinates
first we want to display X and then comma followed by y let's run this
program and see what happens there you go pretty cool isn't it so we get
zero
and zero 0o and one zero and two then we get one and zero one and one
one and two
and so on now let me explain how exactly python interpreter executes this
code so
here we have two Loops this is what we call the outer loop and this is the
inner loop so the execution of our program starts here in the first iteration
of this Loop X is zero now we
get to this statement which is a child of this four statement because it's
indented four times this statement itself is a loop so what we have inside
of this Loop will be executed three times in the first iteration X is zero
because we're still in the first iteration of the outer loop and Y is also zero
because we are in the first
iteration of the inner loop that is why we get zero and zero now we go to
the
second iteration of this Inner Loop in this iteration y will be one whereas X
is still zero that is why we get 0 and one and similarly in the third iteration
of our inner loop we'll get zero and two in the terminal now we're
done with the execution of the inner loop so the control moves back to our
outer loop here will be in the second
iteration so X will be one and then we start here again so we have to
execute
this inner loop three times in the first iteration y will be zero and X is one so
here we have one and zero then we'll get one and one and one and two
you got the point so this is all about nested
Iterables
Loops so you have learned how to use for Loops to repeat one or more
statements
in your programs now let's dive deeper and see what this range function
returns
so earlier you learned about the built-in type function with this
function we can get the type of an object so if I pass Five here and run
this program this is what we get so the type of this number or this object is
int or integer now let's look at the type of the value that we get from the
range function so as an argument we pass range of a number let's run this
program
so this range function returns an object of type range so in Python we have
primitive types like numbers strings and booleans but we also have
complex types
range is an example of one of those complex types throughout this course
you're going to learn about a lot of
other complex types now what is interesting about this range object is
that it's iterable which means we can iterate over it or use it in a for Loop
that is why we can write code like this so This range function returns a
range object which is iterable which means we can iterate over it in each
iteration X will have a different value now range objects are not the only
iterable objects in Python strings are also iterable so here we can add a
string like python now in each iteration X will hold
one character in this string let me show you so print X and I'm going to
delete
these two lines here let's run this program so in each
iteration we'll get one character and print it we have another complex type
called list which we use to store a list of objects so we add square brackets
this indicates a list now we can add a list of numbers or a list of strings like
a list of names you will learn
about lists later in the course so let's run this one more time as you can
see we
can iterate over lists in in each iteration will get one object in this
list now later in the course I will show you how to create your own custom
objects that are iterable for example you will learn how to write code like
this for item in shopping cart print
item so shopping cart is going to be a custom object that you will create it's
not going to be an integer or string or
Boolean it's a custom object it has a different structure and we'll make it
iterable so we can use it in a for Loop
and in each iteration we can get one item in the shopping cart and printed
on a
While Loops
terminal so you have learned that we use four Loops to iterate over iterable
objects in Python we have another kind
of loop that is a while loop and we use that to repeat something as long as
a condition is true here's an example so
let's define a variable number and set it to a 100 now we use while and
here we
add a condition as long as number is greater than zero we add a colon
once
again we have indentation so we can repeat one or more statements we
can
print this number and then we can divide it by half so number equals
number use the integer division to divide it by two or we can use the
augmented assignment
operator to shorten this code like this now let's run this
program so here's what we get initially our number is 100 we divide it by
half
we get 50 then 25 and so on so as you can see in this example we are not
iterating over an itable like a range object or a string or a list we are
evaluating a condition and repeating a task let me show you a real word
example
of a y Loop in this interactive shell python is waiting for an input we can
type something like 2 + 2 it will evaluate it and ask for the next input
we can add another expression like 10 is greater than two so these steps
will continue until we press contrl D so
behind the scene we have a y Loop that continues execution until we press
contr
D that is the condition that causes the Y Loop to terminate let me show you
how
to build something like this in Python so let's Define a variable
command and set it to an empty string now here we need a y Loop we
want this y
Loop to execute as long as command does not equal to quit so command
does not
equal to quit colon in this Loop we want to continue
continuously get input from the user so we use the built-in input function
we
add a label like this get the result and store it in the command
variable now at this point python interactive shell will evaluate this
command we're not going to do that in
this lecture because that's way too complex for Simplicity we can just Echo
back what the user entered so
print Echo and as the second argument we as this command so this is our
y Loop it
will execute until we type quit now as I told you before don't run this
program
using the code Runner extension because by default it will run your
program in the output window which is read only so
open up the terminal using control and back tick and run python or Python
3
[Link] so here's our Command Prompt let's type 2+ two it echoes back
let's
type 3 * 2 there you go if we type quit our program terminates now let's try
it
one more time what if we type quit in uppercase the program doesn't
terminate
because as you learned before lowercase and uppercase characters have
different numeric
representations so quit in lowercase is different from quit in uppercase now
to solve this problem an
amateur programmer may do something like this and command does not
equal to Capital
quit so while command does not equal quit in lowercase and quit in
uppercase
continue getting input from the user let's run this program in terminal and
see what
happens so one more time python [Link] we type quit beautiful it works
we type quit in uppercase that would work too but what if I type quit with an
uppercase q and lowercase U our program doesn't terminate so this is a
poor way
of checking for the quit command what is a better way let me show you so
we don't
need this end operator here instead because command is a string we can
call
the lower method so whatever the user types in first will'll convert it to
lowercase and then compare it with quit in lowercase with this change it
doesn't
matter how the user types the word quit will always terminate the
Infinite Loops
program now the last thing I want to discuss in this section is the concept
of infinite Loops an infinite Loop is a
loop that runs forever so if I change this condition to true because true is
always true this y Loop will will run forever so to jump out of this we need a
break statement so after we get the input from the user we can get the
command convert it to lowercase and see if it equals to quit
if that's the case we want to break now with this change we no longer need
to initialize command to an empty
string previously we needed this because we had a while statement like
this while
command does not equal will quit so we had to Define this command
variable and
that's why we have set it to an empty string without this line when python
interpreter tries to execute this code
it doesn't know what command is so now that we have an infinite Loop we
no
longer need to Define command and set it to an empty string so in terms of
functionality this program is exactly
the same as the program we wrote in the last lecture just be aware of
these infinite Loops because they run for ever
you should always have a way to jump out of them otherwise your program
will run
forever and this can sometimes cause issues because if you're executing
operations that consume memory at some
point your program may run out of memory and
Exercise
crash all right time for an exercise I want you to write a program to display
the even numbers between 1 to 10 so when you run this program you
should see 2 4
6 and 8 and after these I want you to print this message we have four even
numbers now here's a quick hint before you get started you should call the
range function with one and 10 do not
use the third argument which is called Step so basically I want you to
iterate over all the numbers between 1 to 10
check if each number is an even number and then print it on the terminal
so
pause the video spend 2 minutes on this exercise when you're done come
back continue
watching so we start with a for Loop for number in range 1 to 10
colon we check to see if the remainder of division of this number by two
equal
Z so if number modulus 2 equal Z then
reprint this number now let's run this
program so we get 2 4 6 8 beautiful now to count the even numbers we
need a
separate variable so let's call that count initially we set it to zero now in
this if block every time we find an even number we need to increment
count so we
said count plus equals 1 and finally after our for Loop we can print a
formatted string we have count count even
numbers let's run the program and here's the result so that brings us to the
end
of this section in the next section you're going to learn how to create your
own functions I hope you enjoyed the
section and thank you for
Defining Functions
watching so far you have learned how to use some of the built-in functions
in Python such as print round and so on in
this section you're going to learn how to write your own functions now you
might ask but why do we even need to
write our own functions well when you build a real program that program is
going to consist hundreds or thousands of lines of code you shouldn't write
all that code in one file like we have done
so far you should break that code into a smaller more maintainable and
potentially more reusable chunks you refer to these chunks as functions so
let me show you how to create your own custom functions we start with the
defa
keyword which is short for Define next we need to give our function a
name so
let's call this greet all the best practices you learn about naming your
variables also apply to naming your
functions so make sure your function names are meaningful descriptive
use
lowercase letters to name your functions and an underscore to separate
multiple
words now after the name we need to add parentheses you will see why
shortly and
then we'll add a column now what is going to happen you know it we're
going
to get indentation which means the following statements will belong to this
function so here I'm going to add two
statements hi there and welcome
aboard both these lines belong to this function because they're indented
now we're done with this
function we need to call it so we remove the indentation and we add two
line
breaks after this function this is what pep8 recommends to keep our code
clean
and maintainable now if you forget to add two line braks don't worry as
soon as you save the changes autopep8 will
automatically add these line braks for you let me show you so I'm going to
remove these line braks and call this
function great with parenthesis just like how we call the built-in functions
now save the changes there you go so we get two line breaks after our
function
now let's run this program so we get these two messages on
the
Arguments
terminal now here's a question for you what is the difference between the
GRE
and print functions the difference is that this print function takes an input
whereas our grd function doesn't take any inputs so let me show you how
to
pass inputs like first name and last name to this function when defining a
function in between parentheses we list
our parameters so here we add two parameters like first underline name
and
last underline name now when calling this function we need to supply two
values for those parameters we refer to them as arguments so m
hamedani these are the arguments to the greed function that's one of the
terms that a lot of developers out there don't
know they don't know the difference between parameters and arguments a
parameter is the input that you define
for your function whereas an argument is the actual value for a given
parameter
okay now let's change line two and instead of saying hi there we can greet
a person by their full name so we can convert this to a formatted string
and pass two Fields here first name as well as last name save the changes
run
the program and this is what we get in terminal now this function is more
useful we can reuse it and call it with
different arguments so let's greet John Smith as well run the program so
we get
Hi msh hamadani and hi John Smith now note that by default all the
paramet
that you define for a function are required so here our greed function takes
two parameters if I exclude one of
these arguments and save the changes you can see we have this red
underline so
pilent is complaining and saying there is no value for argument last name
also
if we run the program we get this type error greet missing one required
positional argument so let's put this back now let
ler I will show you how to define optional
Types of Functions
parameters so this is the simplified version of this great function we
created earlier now in programming we
have two types of functions functions that perform a task and functions that
calculate and return a value here are some examples both the print and
GD
functions are example of type one they're performing a task which is
printing something on the terminal in
contrast the round function is an example of a function that calculates and
returns a value so
the functions that you create fall into these two categories now let me show
you how to rewrite this great function but
in the second form so instead of printing this string on the terminal we
simply return it let me show you so I'm I'm going to delete all this code
Define a new function but call it
get underline greeting we add the name parameter and simply return this
formatted string High name that's all we have to do so we use
the return statement to return a value from this function now we can call
this
function get underlined greeting pass a name like msh because it returns a
value
we can store that value in a separate variable like message now you might
be
curious which form of these gting functions is better well with this first
implementation we loged to printing something in the terminal in the future
if we want to write that message in a
file or send it in an email we have to create another function so we cannot
reuse this great function in other scenarios in contrast this second form
is not tied to printing something on the terminal it simply returns a value
now
we get this value and we can do whatever we want with it we can print it on
the
terminal or we can use the built-in open function to write this message to a
file
so we can create a file like content. txt open it for writing this returns a
file object and then we can call file. write message now and don't worry
about
these two lines later in the course I'm going to talk about working with files
but what I want you to take away here is
that we have this message variable and we can do whatever we want with
it we can print it on the terminal write it to
a file send it in an email and so on and one more thing before we finish this
lecture so here's our GD function and as
you can see we're simply printing a string now if we call GRE give it a
name
run the program we get this message hi msh but what if we put this inside
of a
call to the print function let's see what we get we get high M followed by
nonan what is this nonan is the return value of the great function so in
Python
all functions by default return the non value non is an object that
represents
the absence of a value later in the course you're going to learn more about
nonone what matters now is that all
functions return non by default unless you specifically return a value so
here
if we return some string none will no longer be returned
now I just want to clarify something earlier I told you that we have two
types of functions in programming
functions that carry out a task or functions that calculate and return a value
so back to the code we previously
had so even though this function returns nonone by default it is still
classified
as a function that carries out a
Keyword Arguments
task let's create another function we call it increment we want to use this
function to increment a number by a given value so here we simply return
number plus by now we can call this function like
this and commment two and one this returns a value so we can store it in a
variable like result and then print it on the terminal let's run the program we
get three beautiful now we can simplify this code we have used this result
variable only in a single place that is line six so we don't really need it so
on line six we can replace result with a call to increment function like this
so when python interpreter executes this code first it will call the increment
function it will get the result and temporarily store it in a variable for us we
don't see that variable and then
it will pass that variable as an argument to the print function now if we
run this program we get the exact same result beautiful now we can make
this
code more readable if someone else looks at line five they may not know
exactly
what these arguments are four we can use a keyword argument to make
this code
more readable so this one here is the value of this by parameter we can
prefix
it with the name of the parameter like this now we can read this code
almost
like plain English increment to by one so if you're calling a function with
multiple arguments and it's not quite clear what these arguments are for
you can make your code more read
by using keyword arguments so here y equals 1 is a keyword
Default Arguments
argument earlier I told you that all the parameters that you define for a
function are required by default in this
lecture I'm going to show you how to make the by parameter optional so
let's
say we don't want to explicitly pass by equals 1 every time
we want to call this incr function we want to use this function to increment
a value by one so we remove the second
argument now we need to give this parameter a default value so we set it
to one now if we call this function and don't Supply the second argument
this
default value will be used otherwise the value that we specify here will be
used let me show you so we run this program
the result is three but if we pass the second AR argument here will
increment
two by five so we will get seven so you can see it's pretty easy to make a
parameter optional just be aware that all these optional parameters should
come after the required parameters in other words I cannot add another
required parameter here let's call that another I cannot add that here if I
save
the changes you can see we get a red underline here so all the optional
parameters should come after the required parameters now obviously in
this case we don't need the second parameter so let's delete
xargs
it there are times that you may want to create a function that takes a
variable number of arguments here is an example
let's define this function multiply that takes two parameters X and Y and
simply
returns x * y now we can call this function like
this so far so good but what if you want to pass one or two more
arguments here
that doesn't work because our multiply function takes only two parameters
to solve this problem we need to replace
these two parameters with a single parameter we use a plural name here
to
indicate that this is a collection of arguments and then we prefix it with an
asterisk
this is the magical part let me show you what happens when you use an
asterisk here so temporarily let's delete this
line and simply print numbers let's see what we get here so run the
program you can see all our arguments and they're packed in parenthesis
what
is this well earlier you learned about lists I briefly mentioned that you can
use square bracket to create a list of objects like 2 3 4 5 now later in the
course we have a comprehensive section about lists so don't worry about
the details of lists and how they work but
what I want you to note here is that the only difference between this list
and what we have here is in the notation so
we use square brackets to create lists and parentheses to create toles
some
people call it tles or tuples so a topple is similar to a list and that
it's a collection of objects the difference is that we cannot modify this
collection we cannot add a new object to
this toppo once again later in the course we're going to have a
comprehensive section about lists top
holes and other data structures what matters now is that these topples just
like lists are iterable so we can iterate over them which means we can use
them in Loops let me show you
so let's write for number in numbers
colon let's just print one number at a time actually we don't need this line
so
delete and run the program so we iterate over this top hole and in each
iteration
we get one number and printed on the terminal so now with a simple
change we can calculate the product of all these
numbers all we have to do is to Define a variable like total initially we set it
to one and then in each each iteration we get total and multiply it
by the current number or we can rewrite this statement using an
augmented
assignment operator so total times equal number line five and four are
exactly
identical so I'm going to use LINE five because it's shorter and cleaner
delete
and finally we'll return the total now one of the issues I see often in
beginnner code is that they don't use this indentation properly so they put
the return statement here and then they wonder why their function doesn't
work properly if you put the return statement
here it will be part of the for Loop so it will be executed in each iteration in
this case after the first iteration because of this return statement will return
from this multiply function so
the total will not be calculated properly we need to put this at the same
level of indentation as other statements
in this function so here we have our four statement we Loop over all the
numbers we calculate the total and then
finally return it so with this implementation we can get the result and
printed on the terminal let's run the program and you can see the product
of
these numbers is 120 hey guys I just wanted to let you know that this
tutorial is actually the
first two hours of my complete python Mastery course if you're finding this
helpful and want to dive even deeper the
full course covers everything from beginner Basics to advanced concepts
like machine learning web development
and automation you'll also get Hands-On projects to build your skills step
by step I put the link in the description
box if you're ready to take your python knowledge to the next level.