this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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Programmer Humor

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[โ€“] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

_ (sic) as a variable name is often used when a function returns multiple outputs but you only want one

 def my_function:
      return 1, 2, 3

 _, two, _ = my_function()
[โ€“] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 6 points 20 hours ago

Underscore alone is a special variable name and I'm pretty sure anything assigned to it goes straight to garbage collection. Whereas _myvariable is typically use to indicate a "private" class variable or method (Python doesn't have private so it's just a convention).