Programmer Humor

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The meaning of this (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by bestelbus22@lemmy.world to c/programmerhumor@lemmy.ml

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[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 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()

[–] Archr@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

_ can also be used in the python interactive terminal to mean 'last return value'

Ie:

> 'string'
'string'
> a = _
> print(a)
string

[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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 used to indicate a "private" class variable or method (Python doesn't have private so it's just a convention).