Python built-in functions to know

Update: You can find a newer version of this article on Python Morsels.

In every Intro to Python class I teach, there’s always at least one “how can we be expected to know all this” question.

It’s usually along the lines of either:

Python has so many functions in it, what’s the best way to remember all these?
What’s the best way to learn the functions we’ll need day-to-day like enumerate and range?
How do you know about all the ways to solve problems in Python? Do you memorize them?

There are dozens of built-in functions and classes, hundreds of tools bundled in Python’s standard library, and thousands of third-party libraries on PyPI. There’s no way anyone could ever memorize all of these things.

I recommend triaging your knowledge:

Things I should memorize such that I know them well
Things I should know about so I can look them up more effectively later
Things I shouldn’t bother with at all until/unless I need them one day

We’re going to look through the Built-in Functions page in the Python documentation with this approach in mind.

This will be a very long article, so I’ve linked to 5 sub-sections and 25 specific built-in functions in the next section so you can jump ahead if you’re pressed for time or looking for one built-in in particular.

Which built-ins should you know about?

I estimate most Python developers will only ever need about 30 built-in functions, but which 30 depends on what you’re actually doing with Python.

We’re going to take a look at all 71 of Python’s built-in functions, in a birds eye view sort of way.

I’ll attempt to categorize these built-ins into five categories:

Commonly known built-ins: most newer Pythonistas get exposure to these built-ins pretty quickly out of necessity
Overlooked by new Pythonistas: these functions are useful to know about, but they’re easy to overlook when you’re newer to Python
Learn these later: these built-ins are generally useful to know about, but you’ll find them when/if you need them
Maybe learn these eventually: these can come in handy, but only in specific circumstances
You likely don’t need these: you’re unlikely to need these unless you’re doing something fairly specialized

The built-in functions in categories 1 and 2 are the essential built-ins that nearly all Python programmers should eventually learn about. The built-ins in categories 3 and 4 are the specialized built-ins, which are often very useful but your need for them will vary based on your use for Python. And category 5 are arcane built-ins, which might be very handy when you need them but which many Python programmers are likely to never need.

Note for pedantic Pythonistas: I will be referring to all of these built-ins as functions, even though 27 of them aren’t actually functions.

The commonly known built-in functions (which you likely already know about):

print
len
str
int
float
list
tuple
dict
set
range

The built-in functions which are often overlooked by newer Python programmers:

sum
enumerate
zip
bool
reversed
sorted
min
max
any
all

There are also 5 commonly overlooked built-ins which I recommend knowing about solely because they make debugging easier:

dir
vars
breakpoint
type
help

In addition to the 25 built-in functions above, we’ll also briefly see the other 46 built-ins in the learn it later maybe learn it eventually and you likely don’t need these sections.

The 10 commonly known built-in functions

If you’ve been writing Python code, these built-ins are likely familiar already.

print

You already know the print function. Implementing hello world requires print.

You may not know about the various keyword arguments accepted by print though:

>>> words = ["Welcome", "to", "Python"]
>>> print(words)
['Welcome', 'to', 'Python']
>>> print(*words, end="!\n")
Welcome to Python!
>>> print(*words, sep="\n")
Welcome
to
Python

You can look up print on your own.

len

In Python, we don’t write things like my_list.length() or my_string.length; instead we strangely (for new Pythonistas at least) say len(my_list) and len(my_string).

>>> words = ["Welcome", "to", "Python"]
>>> len(words)
3

Regardless of whether you like this operator-like len function, you’re stuck with it so you’ll need to get used to it.

str

Unlike many other programming languages, Python doesn’t have type coercion so you can’t concatenate strings and numbers in Python.

>>> version = 3
>>> "Python " + version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "int") to str

Python refuses to coerce that 3 integer to a string, so we need to manually do it ourselves, using the built-in str function (class technically, but as I said, I’ll be calling these all functions):

>>> version = 3
>>> "Python " + str(version)
'Python 3'

int

Do you have user input and need to convert it to a number? You need the int function!

The int function can convert strings to integers:

>>> program_name = "Python 3"
>>> version_number = program_name.split()[-1]
>>> int(version_number)
3

You can also use int to truncate a floating point number to an integer:

>>> from math import sqrt
>>> sqrt(28)
5.291502622129181
>>> int(sqrt(28))
5

Note that if you need to truncate while dividing, the // operator is likely more appropriate (though this works differently with negative numbers): int(3 / 2) == 3 // 2.

float

Is the string you’re converting to a number not actually an integer? Then you’ll want to use float instead of int for this conversion.

>>> program_name = "Python 3"
>>> version_number = program_name.split()[-1]
>>> float(version_number)
3.0
>>> pi_digits = '3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375'
>>> len(pi_digits)
50
>>> float(pi_digits)
3.141592653589793

You can also use float to convert integers to floating point numbers.

In Python 2, we used to use float to convert integers to floating point numbers to force float division instead of integer division. “Integer division” isn’t a thing anymore in Python 3 (unless you’re specifically using the // operator), so we don’t need float for that purpose anymore. So if you ever see float(x) / y in your Python 3 code, you can change that to just x / y.

list

Want to make a list out of some other iterable?

The list function does that:

>>> numbers = [2, 1, 3, 5, 8]
>>> squares = (n**2 for n in numbers)
>>> squares
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x7fd52dbd5930>
>>> list_of_squares = list(squares)
>>> list_of_squares
[4, 1, 9, 25, 64]

If you know you’re working with a list, you could use the copy method to make a new copy of a list:

>>> copy_of_squares = list_of_squares.copy()

But if you don’t know what the iterable you’re working with is, the list function is the more general way to loop over an iterable and copy it:

>>> copy_of_squares = list(list_of_squares)

You could also use a list comprehension for this, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Note that when you want to make an empty list, using the list literal syntax (those [] brackets) is recommended:

>>> my_list = list()  # Don't do this
>>> my_list = []  # Do this instead

Using [] is considered more idiomatic since those square brackets ([]) actually look like a Python list.

tuple

The tuple function is pretty much just like the list function, except it makes tuples instead:

>>> numbers = [2, 1, 3, 4, 7]
>>> tuple(numbers)
(2, 1, 3, 4, 7)

If you need a tuple instead of a list, because you’re trying to make a hashable collection for use in a dictionary key for example, you’ll want to reach for tuple over list.

dict

The dict function makes a new dictionary.

Similar to like list and tuple, the dict function is equivalent to looping over an iterable of key-value pairs and making a dictionary from them.

Given a list of two-item tuples:

>>> color_counts = [('red', 2), ('green', 1), ('blue', 3), ('purple', 5)]

This:

>>> colors = {}
>>> for color, n in color_counts:
...     colors[color] = n
...
>>> colors
{'red': 2, 'green': 1, 'blue' 3, 'purple': 5}

Can instead be done with the dict function:

>>> colors = dict(color_counts)
>>> colors
{'red': 2, 'green': 1, 'blue' 3, 'purple': 5}

The dict function accepts two types of arguments:

another dictionary (mapping is the generic term), in which case that dictionary will be copied
a list of key-value tuples (more correctly, an iterable of two-item iterables), in which case a new dictionary will be constructed from these

So this works as well:

>>> colors
{'red': 2, 'green': 1, 'blue' 3, 'purple': 5}
>>> new_dictionary = dict(colors)
>>> new_dictionary
{'red': 2, 'green': 1, 'blue' 3, 'purple': 5}

The dict function can also accept keyword arguments to make a dictionary with string-based keys:

>>> person = dict(name='Trey Hunner', profession='Python Trainer')
>>> person
{'name': 'Trey Hunner', 'profession': 'Python Trainer'}

But I very much prefer to use a dictionary literal instead:

>>> person = {'name': 'Trey Hunner', 'profession': 'Python Trainer'}
>>> person
{'name': 'Trey Hunner', 'profession': 'Python Trainer'}

The dictionary literal syntax is more flexible and a bit faster but most importantly I find that it more clearly conveys the fact that we are creating a dictionary.

Like with list and tuple, an empty dictionary should be made using the literal syntax as well:

>>> my_list = dict()  # Don't do this
>>> my_list = {}  # Do this instead

Using {} is slightly more CPU efficient, but more importantly it’s more idiomatic: it’s common to see curly braces ({}) used for making dictionaries but dict is seen much less frequently.

set

The set function makes a new set. It takes an iterable of hashable values (strings, numbers, or other immutable types) and returns a set:

>>> numbers = [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8]
>>> set(numbers)
{1, 2, 3, 5, 8}

There’s no way to make an empty set with the {} set literal syntax (plain {} makes a dictionary), so the set function is the only way to make an empty set:

>>> numbers = set()
>>> numbers
set()

Actually that’s a lie because we have this:

>>> {*()}  # This makes an empty set
set()

But that syntax is confusing (it relies on a lesser-used feature of the * operator), so I don’t recommend it.

range

The range function gives us a range object, which represents a range of numbers:

>>> range(10_000)
range(0, 10000)
>>> range(-1_000_000_000, 1_000_000_000)
range(-1000000000, 1000000000)

The resulting range of numbers includes the start number but excludes the stop number (range(0, 10) does not include 10).

The range function is useful when you’d like to loop over numbers.

>>> for n in range(0, 50, 10):
...     print(n)
...
0
10
20
30
40

A common use case is to do an operation n times (that’s a list comprehension by the way):

first_five = [get_things() for _ in range(5)]

Python 2’s range function returned a list, which means the expressions above would make very very large lists. Python 3’s range works like Python 2’s xrange (though they’re a bit different) in that numbers are computed lazily as we loop over these range objects.

The 10 commonly overlooked built-ins

If you’ve been programming Python for a bit or if you just taken an introduction to Python class, you probably already knew about the built-in functions above.

I’d now like to show off 10 built-in functions that are very handy to know about, but are more frequently overlooked by new Pythonistas. After this we’ll look at 5 built-in functions that you’ll likely find handy while debugging.

bool

The bool function checks the truthiness of a Python object.

For numbers, truthiness is a question of non-zeroness:

>>> bool(5)
True
>>> bool(-1)
True
>>> bool(0)
False

For collections, truthiness is usually a question of non-emptiness (whether the collection has a length greater than 0):

>>> bool('hello')
True
>>> bool('')
False
>>> bool(['a'])
True
>>> bool([])
False
>>> bool({})
False
>>> bool({1: 1, 2: 4, 3: 9})
True
>>> bool(range(5))
True
>>> bool(range(0))
False
>>> bool(None)
False

Truthiness is kind of a big deal in Python.

Instead of asking questions about the length of a container, many Pythonistas ask questions about truthiness instead:

# Instead of doing this
if len(numbers) == 0:
    print("The numbers list is empty")

# Many of us do this
if not numbers:
    print("The numbers list is empty")

You likely won’t see bool used often, but on the occasion that you need to coerce a value to a boolean to ask about its truthiness, you’ll want to know about bool.

enumerate

Whenever you need to count upward, one number at a time, while looping over an iterable at the same time, the enumerate function will come in handy.

That might seem like a very niche task, but it comes up quite often.

For example we might want to keep track of the line number in a file:

>>> with open('hello.txt', mode='rt') as my_file:
...     for n, line in enumerate(my_file, start=1):
...         print(f"{n:03}", line)
...
001 This is the first line of the file
002 This is the second line
003 This is the last line of the file

The enumerate function is also very commonly used to keep track of the index of items in a sequence.

def palindromic(sequence):
    """Return True if the sequence is the same thing in reverse."""
    for i, item in enumerate(sequence):
        if item != sequence[-(i+1)]:
            return False
    return True

Note that you may see newer Pythonistas use range(len(sequence)) in Python. If you ever see code with range(len(...)), you’ll almost always want to use enumerate instead.

def palindromic(sequence):
    """Return True if the sequence is the same thing in reverse."""
    for i in range(len(sequence)):
        if sequence[i] != sequence[-(i+1)]:
            return False
    return True

If enumerate is news to you (or if you often use range(len(...))), see looping with indexes.

zip

The zip function is even more specialized than enumerate.

The zip function is used for looping over multiple iterables at the same time.

>>> one_iterable = [2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11]
>>> another_iterable = ['P', 'y', 't', 'h', 'o', 'n']
>>> for n, letter in zip(one_iterable, another_iterable):
...     print(letter, n)
...
P 2
y 1
t 3
h 4
o 7
n 11

If you ever have to loop over two lists (or any other iterables) at the same time, zip is preferred over enumerate. The enumerate function is handy when you need indexes while looping, but zip is great when we care specifically about looping over two iterables at once.

If you’re new to zip, see looping over multiple iterables at the same time.

Both enumerate and zip return iterators to us. Iterators are the lazy iterables that power for loops.

By the way, if you need to use zip on iterables of different lengths, you may want to look up itertools.zip_longest in the Python standard library.

reversed

The reversed function, like enumerate and zip, returns an iterator.

>>> numbers = [2, 1, 3, 4, 7]
>>> reversed(numbers)
<list_reverseiterator object at 0x7f3d4452f8d0>

The only thing we can do with this iterator is loop over it (but only once):

>>> reversed_numbers = reversed(numbers)
>>> list(reversed_numbers)
[7, 4, 3, 1, 2]
>>> list(reversed_numbers)
[]

Like enumerate and zip, reversed is a sort of looping helper function. You’ll pretty much see reversed used exclusively in the for part of a for loop:

>>> for n in reversed(numbers):
...     print(n)
...
7
4
3
1
2

There are some other ways to reverse Python lists besides the reversed function:

# Slicing syntax
for n in numbers[::-1]:
    print(n)

# In-place reverse method
numbers.reverse()
for n in numbers:
    print(n)

But the reversed function is usually the best way to reverse any iterable in Python.

Unlike the list reverse method (e.g. numbers.reverse()), reversed doesn’t mutate the list (it returns an iterator of the reversed items instead).

Unlike the numbers[::-1] slice syntax, reversed(numbers) doesn’t build up a whole new list: the lazy iterator it returns retrieves the next item in reverse as we loop. Also reversed(numbers) is a lot more readable than numbers[::-1] (which just looks weird if you’ve never seen that particular use of slicing before).

If we combine the non-copying nature of the reversed and zip functions, we can rewrite the palindromic function (from enumerate above) without taking any extra memory (no copying of lists is done here):

def palindromic(sequence):
    """Return True if the sequence is the same thing in reverse."""
    for n, m in zip(sequence, reversed(sequence)):
        if n != m:
            return False
    return True

sum

The sum function takes an iterable of numbers and returns the sum of those numbers.

>>> sum([2, 1, 3, 4, 7])
17

There’s not much more to it than that.

Python has lots of helper functions that do the looping for you, partly because they pair nicely with generator expressions:

>>> numbers = [2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18]
>>> sum(n**2 for n in numbers)
524

min and max

The min and max functions do what you’d expect: they give you the minimum and maximum items in an iterable.

>>> numbers = [2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18]
>>> min(numbers)
1
>>> max(numbers)
18

The min and max functions compare the items given to them by using the < operator. So all values need to be orderable and comparable to each other (fortunately many objects are orderable in Python).

The min and max functions also accept a key function to allow customizing what “minimum” and “maximum” really mean for specific objects.

sorted

The sorted function takes any iterable and returns a new list of all the values in that iterable in sorted order.

>>> numbers = [1, 8, 2, 13, 5, 3, 1]
>>> words = ["python", "is", "lovely"]
>>> sorted(words)
['is', 'lovely', 'python']
>>> sorted(numbers, reverse=True)
[13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1]

The sorted function, like min and max, compares the items given to it by using the < operator, so all values given to it need so to be orderable.

The sorted function also allows customization of its sorting via a key function (just like min and max).

By the way, if you’re curious about sorted versus the list.sort method, Florian Dahlitz wrote an article comparing the two.

any and all

The any and all functions can be paired with a generator expression to determine whether any or all items in an iterable match a given condition.

Our palindromic function from earlier checked whether all items were equal to their corresponding item in the reversed sequence (is the first value equal to the last, second to the second from last, etc.).

We could rewrite palindromic using all like this:

def palindromic(sequence):
    """Return True if the sequence is the same thing in reverse."""
    return all(
        n == m
        for n, m in zip(sequence, reversed(sequence))
    )

Negating the condition and the return value from all would allow us to use any equivalently (though this is more confusing in this example):

def palindromic(sequence):
    """Return True if the sequence is the same thing in reverse."""
    return not any(
        n != m
        for n, m in zip(sequence, reversed(sequence))
    )

If the any and all functions are new to you, you may want to read my article on them: Checking Whether All Items Match a Condition in Python.

The 5 built-ins for debugging

The following 5 functions will be useful for debugging and troubleshooting code.

breakpoint

Need to pause the execution of your code and drop into a Python command prompt? You need breakpoint!

Calling the breakpoint function will drop you into pdb, the Python debugger. There are many tutorials and talks out there on PDB: here’s a short one and here’s a long one.

This built-in function was added in Python 3.7. On older versions of Python you can use import pdb ; pdb.set_trace() instead.

dir

The dir function can be used for two things:

Seeing a list of all your local variables
Seeing a list of all attributes on a particular object

Here we can see that our local variables, right after starting a new Python shell and then after creating a new variable x:

>>> dir()
['__annotations__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__']
>>> x = [1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> dir()
['__annotations__', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', 'x']

If we pass that x list into dir we can see all the attributes it has:

>>> dir(x)
['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'copy', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']

We can see the typical list methods, append, pop, remove, and more as well as many dunder methods for operator overloading.

vars

The vars function is sort of a mashup of two related things: checking locals() and testing the __dict__ attribute of objects.

When vars is called with no arguments, it’s equivalent to calling the locals() built-in function (which shows a dictionary of all local variables and their values).

>>> vars()
{'__name__': '__main__', '__doc__': None, '__package__': None, '__loader__': <class '_frozen_importlib.BuiltinImporter'>, '__spec__': None, '__annotations__': {}, '__builtins__': <module 'builtins' (built-in)>}

When it’s called with an argument, it accesses the __dict__ attribute on that object (which on many objects represents a dictionary of all instance attributes).

>>> from itertools import chain
>>> vars(chain)
mappingproxy({'__getattribute__': <slot wrapper '__getattribute__' of 'itertools.chain' objects>, '__iter__': <slot wrapper '__iter__' of 'itertools.chain' objects>, '__next__': <slot wrapper '__next__' of 'itertools.chain' objects>, '__new__': <built-in method __new__ of type object at 0x5611ee76fac0>, 'from_iterable': <method 'from_iterable' of 'itertools.chain' objects>, '__reduce__': <method '__reduce__' of 'itertools.chain' objects>, '__setstate__': <method '__setstate__' of 'itertools.chain' objects>, '__doc__': 'chain(*iterables) --> chain object\n\nReturn a chain object whose .__next__() method returns elements from the\nfirst iterable until it is exhausted, then elements from the next\niterable, until all of the iterables are exhausted.'})

If you ever try to use my_object.__dict__, you can use vars instead.

I usually reach for dir just before using vars.

type

The type function will tell you the type of the object you pass to it.

The type of a class instance is the class itself:

>>> x = [1, 2, 3]
>>> type(x)
<class 'list'>

The type of a class is its metaclass, which is usually type:

>>> type(list)
<class 'type'>
>>> type(type(x))
<class 'type'>

If you ever see someone reach for __class__, know that they could reach for the higher-level type function instead:

>>> x.__class__
<class 'list'>
>>> type(x)
<class 'list'>

The type function is sometimes helpful in actual code (especially object-oriented code with inheritance and custom string representations), but it’s also useful when debugging.

Note that when type checking, the isinstance function is usually used instead of type (also note that we tend not to type check in Python because we prefer to practice duck typing).

help

If you’re in an interactive Python shell (the Python REPL as I usually call it), maybe debugging code using breakpoint, and you’d like to know how a certain object, method, or attribute works, the help function will come in handy.

Realistically, you’ll likely resort to getting help from your favorite search engine more often than using help. But if you’re already in a Python REPL, it’s quicker to call help(list.insert) than it would be to look up the list.insert method documentation in Google.

Learn these later

There are quite a few built-in functions you’ll likely want eventually, but you may not need right now.

I’m going to mention 14 more built-in functions which are handy to know about, but not worth learning until you actually need to use them.

open

Need to read from a file or write to a file in Python? You need the open function!

Don’t work with files directly? Then you likely don’t need the open function!

You might think it’s odd that I’ve put open in this section because working with files is so common. While most programmers will read or write to files using open at some point, some Python programmers, such as Django developers, may not use the open function very much (if at all).

Once you need to work with files, you’ll learn about open. Until then, don’t worry about it.

By the way, you might want to look into pathlib (which is in the Python standard library) as an alternative to using open. I love the pathlib module so much I’ve considered teaching files in Python by mentioning pathlib first and the built-in open function later.

input

The input function prompts the user for input, waits for them to hit the Enter key, and then returns the text they typed.

Reading from standard input (which is what the input function does) is one way to get inputs into your Python program, but there are so many other ways too! You could accept command-line arguments, read from a configuration file, read from a database, and much more.

You’ll learn this once you need to prompt the user of a command-line program for input. Until then, you won’t need it. And if you’ve been writing Python for a while and don’t know about this function, you may simply never need it.

repr

Need the programmer-readable representation of an object? You need the repr function!

All Python objects have two different string representations: str and repr. For most objects, the str and repr representations are the same:

>>> str(4), repr(4)
('4', '4')
>>> str([]), repr([])
('[]', '[]')

But for some objects, they’re different:

>>> str('hello'), repr("hello")
('hello', "'hello'")
>>> from datetime import date
>>> str(date(2020, 1, 1)), repr(date(2020, 1, 1))
('2020-01-01', 'datetime.date(2020, 1, 1)')

The string representation we see at the Python REPL uses repr, while the print function relies on str:

>>> date(2020, 1, 1)
datetime.date(2020, 1, 1)
>>> "hello!"
'hello!'
>>> print(date(2020, 1, 1))
2020-01-01
>>> print("hello!")
hello!

You’ll see repr used when logging, handling exceptions, and implementing dunder methods.

super

If you create classes in Python, you’ll likely need to use super. The super function is pretty much essential whenever you’re inheriting from another Python class.

Many Python users rarely create classes. Creating classes isn’t an essential part of Python, though many types of programming require it. For example, you can’t really use the Django web framework without creating classes.

If you don’t already know about super, you’ll end up learning this if and when you need it.

property

The property function is a decorator and a descriptor (only click those weird terms if you’re extra curious) and it’ll likely seem somewhat magical when you first learn about it.

This decorator allows us to create an attribute which will always seem to contain the return value of a particular function call. It’s easiest to understand with an example.

Here’s a class that uses property:

class Circle:

    def __init__(self, radius=1):
        self.radius = radius

    @property
    def diameter(self):
        return self.radius * 2

Here’s an access of that diameter attribute on a Circle object:

>>> circle = Circle()
>>> circle.diameter
2
>>> circle.radius = 5
>>> circle.diameter
10

If you’re doing object-oriented Python programming (you’re making classes a whole bunch), you’ll likely want to learn about property at some point. Unlike other object-oriented programming languages, we use properties instead of getter methods and setter methods.

For more on using properties, see making an auto-updating attribute and customizing what happens when you assign an attribute.

issubclass and isinstance

The issubclass function checks whether a class is a subclass of one or more other classes.

>>> issubclass(int, bool)
False
>>> issubclass(bool, int)
True
>>> issubclass(bool, object)
True

The isinstance function checks whether an object is an instance of one or more classes.

>>> isinstance(True, str)
False
>>> isinstance(True, bool)
True
>>> isinstance(True, int)
True
>>> isinstance(True, object)
True

You can think of isinstance as delegating to issubclass:

>>> issubclass(type(True), str)
False
>>> issubclass(type(True), bool)
True
>>> issubclass(type(True), int)
True
>>> issubclass(type(True), object)
True

If you’re overloading operators (e.g. customizing what the + operator does on your class) you might need to use isinstance, but in general we try to avoid strong type checking in Python so we don’t see these much.

In Python we usually prefer duck typing over type checking. These functions actually do a bit more than the strong type checking I noted above (the behavior of both can be customized) so it’s actually possible to practice a sort of isinstance-powered duck typing with abstract base classes like collections.abc.Iterable. But this isn’t seen much either (partly because we tend to practice exception-handling and EAFP a bit more than condition-checking and LBYL in Python).

The last two paragraphs were filled with confusing jargon that I may explain more thoroughly in a future serious of articles if there’s enough interest.

hasattr, getattr, setattr, and delattr

Need to work with an attribute on an object but the attribute name is dynamic? You need hasattr, getattr, setattr, and delattr.

Say we have some thing object we want to check for a particular value on:

>>> class Thing: pass
...
>>> thing = Thing()

The hasattr function allows us to check whether the object has a certain attribute (note that hasattr has some quirks, though most have been ironed out in Python 3):

>>> hasattr(thing, 'x')
False
>>> thing.x = 4
>>> hasattr(thing, 'x')
True

The getattr function allows us to retrieve the value of that attribute (with an optional default if the attribute doesn’t exist):

>>> getattr(thing, 'x')
4
>>> getattr(thing, 'x', 0)
4
>>> getattr(thing, 'y', 0)
0

The setattr function allows for setting the value:

>>> setattr(thing, 'x', 5)
>>> thing.x
5

And delattr deletes the attribute:

>>> delattr(thing, 'x')
>>> thing.x
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'Thing' object has no attribute 'x'

These functions allow for a specific flavor of metaprogramming and you likely won’t see them often.

classmethod and staticmethod

The classmethod and staticmethod decorators are somewhat magical in the same way the property decorator is somewhat magical.

If you have a method that should be callable on either an instance or a class, you want the classmethod decorator. Factory methods (alternative constructors) are a common use case for this:

class RomanNumeral:

    """A Roman numeral, represented as a string and numerically."""

    def __init__(self, number):
        self.value = number

    @classmethod
    def from_string(cls, string):
        return cls(roman_to_int(string))  # function doesn't exist yet

It’s a bit harder to come up with a good use for staticmethod, since you can pretty much always use a module-level function instead of a static method.

class RomanNumeral:

    """A Roman numeral, represented as a string and numerically."""

    SYMBOLS = {'M': 1000, 'D': 500, 'C': 100, 'L': 50, 'X': 10, 'V': 5, 'I': 1}

    def __init__(self, number):
        self.value = number

    @classmethod
    def from_string(cls, string):
        return cls(cls.roman_to_int(string))

    @staticmethod
    def roman_to_int(numeral):
        total = 0
        for symbol, next_symbol in zip_longest(numeral, numeral[1:]):
            value = RomanNumeral.SYMBOLS[symbol]
            next_value = RomanNumeral.SYMBOLS.get(next_symbol, 0)
            if value < next_value:
                value = -value
            total += value
        return total

The above roman_to_int function doesn’t require access to the instance or the class, so it doesn’t even need to be a @classmethod. There’s no actual need to make this function a staticmethod (instead of a classmethod): staticmethod is just more restrictive to signal the fact that we’re not reliant on the class our function lives on.

I find that learning these causes folks to think they need them when they often don’t. You can go looking for these if you really need them eventually.

The next function returns the next item in an iterator.

Here’s a very quick summary of iterators you’ll likely run into includes:

enumerate objects
zip objects
the return value of the reversed function
files (the thing you get back from the open function)
csv.reader objects
generator expressions
generator functions

You can think of next as a way to manually loop over an iterator to get a single item and then break.

>>> numbers = [2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11]
>>> squares = (n**2 for n in numbers)
>>> next(squares)
4
>>> for n in squares:
...     break
...
>>> n
1
>>> next(squares)
9

Maybe learn these eventually

We’ve already covered nearly half of the built-in functions.

The rest of Python’s built-in functions definitely aren’t useless, but they’re a bit more special-purposed.

The 15 built-ins I’m mentioning in this section are things you may eventually need to learn, but it’s also very possible you’ll never reach for these in your own code.

iter: get an iterator from an iterable: this function powers for loops and it can be very useful when you’re making helper functions for looping lazily
callable: return True if the argument is a callable (I talked about this a bit in my article functions and callables)
filter and map: as discussed in map and filter in Python, I recommend using generator expressions instead of map and filter
id, locals, and globals: these are great tools for teaching Python and you may have already seen them, but you won’t see these much in real Python code
round: you’ll look this up if you need to round a number
divmod: this function does a floor division (//) and a modulo operation (%) at the same time
bin, oct, and hex: if you need to display a number as a string in binary, octal, or hexadecimal form, you’ll want these functions
abs: when you need the absolute value of a number, you’ll look this up
hash: dictionaries and sets rely on the hash function to test for hashability, but you likely won’t need it unless you’re implementing a clever de-duplication algorithm
object: this function (yes it’s a class) is useful for making unique default values and sentinel values, if you ever need those

You’re unlikely to need all the above built-ins, but if you write Python code for long enough you’re likely to see nearly all of them.

You likely don’t need these

You’re unlikely to need these built-ins. There are sometimes really appropriate uses for a few of these, but you’ll likely be able to get away with never learning about these.

ord and chr: these are fun for teaching ASCII tables and unicode code points, but I’ve never really found a use for them in my own code
exec and eval: for evaluating a string as if it was code
compile: this is related to exec and eval
slice: if you’re implementing __getitem__ to make a custom sequence, you may need this (some Python Morsels exercises require this actually), but unless you make your own custom sequence you’ll likely never see slice
bytes, bytearray, and memoryview: if you’re working with bytes often, you’ll reach for some of these (just ignore them until then)
ascii: like repr but returns an ASCII-only representation of an object; I haven’t needed this in my code yet
frozenset: like set, but it’s immutable (and hashable!); very neat but not something I’ve needed often
aiter and anext: if you’re deep into asynchronous programming in Python, you may reach for these to work with asynchronous iterators (just ignore them until then)
__import__: this function isn’t really meant to be used by you, use importlib instead
format: this calls the __format__ method, which is used for string formatting; you usually don’t need to call this function directly
pow: the exponentiation operator (**) usually supplants this… unless you’re doing modulo-math (maybe you’re implementing RSA encryption from scratch…?)
complex: if you didn’t know that 4j+3 is valid Python code, you likely don’t need the complex function

There’s always more to learn

There are 71 built-in functions in Python (technically only 44 of them are actually functions).

When you’re newer in your Python journey, I recommend focusing on only 25 of these built-in functions in your own code:

The 10 commonly known built-ins
The 10 built-ins that are often overlooked
The 5 debugging functions

After that there are 14 more built-ins which you’ll probably learn later (depending on the style of programming you do).

Then come the 15 built-ins which you may or may not ever end up needing in your own code. Some people love these built-ins and some people never use them: as you get more specific in your coding needs, you’ll likely find yourself reaching for considerably more niche tools.

After that I mentioned the last 17 built-ins which you’ll likely never need (again, very much depending on how you use Python).

You don’t need to learn all the Python built-in functions today. Take it slow: focus on those first 25 important built-ins and then work your way into learning about others if and when you eventually need them.