I want to add one more thing to the other responses. People new to Python often seem unaware that being an interpreted language, often the best way to figure something out is to simply try it at the interpreter prompt. The OP saw "var ** 2" in done code. The most obvious thing to me would have been to type
var = 42 var ** 2 and see what happened. It's unlikely to trigger a nuclear meltdown, or even crash the interpreter. Skip
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