Course Material

Keywords

Sammarth Kumar

What are keywords? Well simply put, keywords are certain words/commands in Python (or any programming language) that have a predefined meaning and cannot be used for anything, except for the predefined purpose.

Let's look at an example of what happens when we use a keyword for something other than its predefined purpose.

    and = 2
                      

        File "<string>", line 1
            and = 2
            ^
        SyntaxError: invalid syntax
                    

Here, we see that we get a SyntaxError which means that something is wrong with the way we have written our code. If you don't already know, and is a keyword (a logical operator to be precise) and it's use in Python is to check whether quantities both hold true or false, we will be covering this in our Logical Operators Tutorial, so don't worry about it for now.

So how many keywords do we have in Python? There are exactly 33 keywords in Python. all of them are lowercase except for True, False and None. As you progress through this course you will start to see where these keywords are used.

Given below is a table with all of the 33 keywords, listed alphabetically. Give it a brief read, there's no need to memorize it. Once you start programming in Python, you will see that it will come to mind automatically.

and	as	assert	break
class	continue	def	del
elif	else	except	False
finally	for	from	global
if	import	in	is
lambda	None	nonlocal	not
or	pass	raise	return
True	try	while	with
yield

Now that you have seen these keywords, keep them in mind. Your IDE (Integrated Development Environment) should highlight these words when you type them, so if you ever use one by mistake for the wrong purpose, you will know that you have made an error. Besides, the Python interpreter will tell you if you make an error, and where!

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