Variable Naming Conventions

Python: Code Style Guides

These notes cover Python code style guides, focusing on best practices and tools for ensuring consistent and readable code.

Key aspects:

• Consistency: The most important aspect. Choose a style and stick to it throughout your project.

• Readability: Code should be easy to understand and maintain. This includes using meaningful names, adding comments where necessary, and following consistent formatting.

Main Style Guides:

• PEP 8: The official Python Enhancement Proposal for style. It’s the de facto standard and widely adopted. Consider this your starting point. See the detailed explanation in PEP 8 Deep Dive.

  • Indentation: Use 4 spaces, never tabs.
  • Line Length: Aim for 79 characters per line.
  • Naming Conventions: snake_case for variables and functions, CamelCase for classes.
  • Blank Lines: Use blank lines to separate logical sections of code.

• Google Python Style Guide: A stricter, more comprehensive guide often used in larger projects. It builds on PEP 8, adding further details and rules. Google Style Guide Details

• Other Guides: Various organizations and companies have their own style guides (e.g., internal standards). These often extend or modify PEP 8.

Tools for Enforcing Style:

• pylint: A popular tool for static code analysis that checks for style violations, as well as other potential problems. Pylint Usage

• flake8: Combines pycodestyle (PEP 8 checker), pyflakes (finds errors), and mccabe (complexity checker). Often preferred for its speed and comprehensive coverage. Flake8 Usage

• IDE Integration: Most IDEs (e.g., VS Code, PyCharm) have built-in support for PEP 8 and other linters, providing real-time feedback and automatic code formatting.

Example (Illustrative):

# Good Example (PEP 8 Compliant):

def calculate_sum(a, b):
    """Calculates the sum of two numbers."""
    total = a + b
    return total

# Bad Example (Violates PEP 8):
def CalculateSum(a,b):#no spaces, poor naming
    total=a+b  #no spaces
    return total #missing blank line before return

Further Considerations:

• Docstrings: Write clear and concise docstrings to explain the purpose of functions, classes, and modules. See Docstring Best Practices.

• Comments: Use comments to explain complex logic or non-obvious code sections. Avoid over-commenting.

This is a summary. Refer to the linked notes for more detailed explanations.