4. Built-in Constants

A small number of constants live in the built-in namespace. They are:

False

The false value of the bool type.

New in version 2.3.

True

The true value of the bool type.

New in version 2.3.

None

The sole value of types.NoneType. None is frequently used to represent the absence of a value, as when default arguments are not passed to a function.

Changed in version 2.4: Assignments to None are illegal and raise a SyntaxError.

NotImplemented

Special value which can be returned by the “rich comparison” special methods (__eq__(), __lt__(), and friends), to indicate that the comparison is not implemented with respect to the other type.

Ellipsis

Special value used in conjunction with extended slicing syntax.

__debug__

This constant is true if Python was not started with an -O option. See also the assert statement.

Note

The names None and __debug__ cannot be reassigned (assignments to them, even as an attribute name, raise SyntaxError), so they can be considered “true” constants.

Changed in version 2.7: Assignments to __debug__ as an attribute became illegal.

4.1. Constants added by the site module

The site module (which is imported automatically during startup, except if the -S command-line option is given) adds several constants to the built-in namespace. They are useful for the interactive interpreter shell and should not be used in programs.

quit([code=None])
exit([code=None])

Objects that when printed, print a message like “Use quit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit”, and when called, raise SystemExit with the specified exit code.

credits

Objects that when printed or called, print the text of copyright or credits, respectively.

license

Object that when printed, prints the message “Type license() to see the full license text”, and when called, displays the full license text in a pager-like fashion (one screen at a time).