On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Marc Tompkins <marc.tompk...@gmail.com> wrote: > > If you put quotes around your input, Python recognizes it as a string > literal. Python "executes" string literals by simply printing them to > standard output - try it at a Python prompt sometime - which is probably not > the behavior you were expecting, but doesn't throw an error either.
It's only printed in Python's interactive REPL (read-eval-print loop). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93print_loop String literals, like all literals, are handled by the compiler. The instantiated string gets stored somewhere such as a __doc__ attribute, a code object's constants, a function's defaults, etc. In 2.x, built-in input() compiles and evaluates a temporary code object (in CPython it uses PyRun_StringFlags) in the current globals and locals. If the source string is just the literal, the compiled bytecode is a LOAD followed by a RETURN: >>> code = compile('"boB"', '', 'eval') >>> dis.dis(code) 1 0 LOAD_CONST 0 ('boB') 3 RETURN_VALUE _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
