New variable?

[tmallen]

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

[Chris]

On Jun 3, 8:40*pm, tmallen <[e-mail]:

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

You don't need to pre-declare your variables. Just assign them as you
need them and they will take the correct type.

[tmallen]

On Jun 3, 3:03 pm, Chris <[e-mail]:

On Jun 3, 8:40 pm, tmallen <[e-mail]:

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

You don't need to pre-declare your variables. Just assign them as you
need them and they will take the correct type.

unless I'm using the += or a similar operator, right? That doesn't
seem to instantiate a variable.

[Dan Upton]

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:16 PM, tmallen <th**********@gmail.comwrote:

On Jun 3, 3:03 pm, Chris <[e-mail]:

>On Jun 3, 8:40 pm, tmallen <[e-mail]:

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

You don't need to pre-declare your variables. Just assign them as you
need them and they will take the correct type.

unless I'm using the += or a similar operator, right? That doesn't
seem to instantiate a variable.

Right... because you don't have anything to increment or append to. I
guess this also comes up in the case of something like lists or
dictionaries you want to uniformly create in a loop. I guess you
could call it instantiating, but really it's more like going ahead and
assigning to them as Chris mentioned and you're just starting them
with a default value. Assuming you're working with strings, x=""
should work just fine in that case. Lists, x=[], dictionaries, x={},
integers, probably x=1 or x=0...

[Reedick, Andrew]

-----Original Message-----

From: py********************************@python.org [mailto:python-
li*************************@python.org] On Behalf Of tmallen
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 2:41 PM
To: py*********@python.org
Subject: New variable?

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

I've always used
X = None
in those cases where I need to pre-declare a variable to set scope.
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[Chris]

On Jun 3, 9:34*pm, "Dan Upton" <[e-mail]:

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:16 PM, tmallen <[e-mail]:

On Jun 3, 3:03 pm, Chris <[e-mail]:

On Jun 3, 8:40 pm, tmallen <[e-mail]:

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

You don't need to pre-declare your variables. *Just assign them as you
need them and they will take the correct type.

unless I'm using the += or a similar operator, right? That doesn't
seem to instantiate a variable.

Right... because you don't have anything to increment or append to. *I
guess this also comes up in the case of something like lists or
dictionaries you want to uniformly create in a loop. *I guess you
could call it instantiating, but really it's more like going ahead and
assigning to them as Chris mentioned and you're just starting them
with a default value. *Assuming you're working with strings, x=""
should work just fine in that case. *Lists, x=[], dictionaries, x={},
integers, probably x=1 or x=0...

You can always use the conversion functions if you want to be explicit
str(), int(), list(), dict(), set() etc

[Lie]

On Jun 4, 1:40*am, tmallen <[e-mail]:

What's the proper way to instantiate a new variable? x = ""?

You don't need to. The reason why you need to "declare" variable when
doing something like a += 1 is because this is actually a shorthand
for a = a + 1 (unless you override __radd__), the a on the right-hand
side is not yet assigned to any objects (remember that python use the
"name tag" model instead of "variable" model).