9.21. Glossary¶

collection data type: A data type in which the values are made up of components, or elements, that are themselves values.
default value: The value given to an optional parameter if no argument for it is provided in the function call.
dot notation: Use of the dot operator, ., to access functions inside a module, or to access methods and attributes of an object.
immutable data type: A data type whose values cannot be changed. Modifying functions create a totally new object that does not change the original one.
index: A variable or value used to select a member of an ordered collection, such as a character from a string, or an element from a list.
optional parameter: 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.
slice: 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]).
traverse: To iterate through the elements of a collection, performing a similar operation on each.
whitespace: Any of the characters that move the cursor without printing visible characters. The constant string.whitespace contains all the white-space characters.