Basic Definitions VII

Question 1

compound data type

Answer 1

A data type in which the values are made up of components, or elements, that are themselves values.

Question 2

default value

Answer 2

The value given to an optional parameter if no argument for it is provided in the function call.

Question 3

docstring

Answer 3

A string constant on the first line of a function or module definition (and as we will see later, in class and method definitions as well). Docstrings provide a convenient way to associate documentation with code. Docstrings are also used by the doctest module for automated testing.

Question 4

dot notation

Answer 4

Use of the dot operator, ., to access functions inside a module.

Question 5

immutable

Answer 5

A compound data type whose elements cannot be assigned new values.

Question 6

index

Answer 6

A variable or value used to select a member of an ordered set, such as a character from a string.

Question 7

optional parameter

Answer 7

A parameter written in a function header with an assignment to a default value which it will receive if no corresponding argument is given for it in the function call.

Question 8

slice

Answer 8

A part of a string (substring) specified by a range of indices. More generally, a subsequence of any sequence type in Python can be created using the slice operator (sequence[start:stop]).

Question 9

traverse

Answer 9

To iterate through the elements of a set, performing a similar operation on each.

Question 10

whitespace

Answer 10

Any of the characters that move the cursor without printing visible characters. The constant string.whitespace contains all the white-space characters.