Short Guide to Best Practices When Naming Variables in Python

Variables in programming are something like containers storing some specific things.

Variables are a way we store store data on computer. This is how we create variables in python:

# Syntax:
variable_name = "data"

But, there’s a catch here, you cannot have some crazy names as variable names in python.

There are some best practices in python being followed by the python community when it comes to naming your variables.

Dos

• Variable names can contain letters, numbers, underscore
• Always start with lowercase letter or an underscore
• snake_case Use lowercase letters and underscores for spaces.

Don'ts

• Do not use reserved keywords of python as variable names, because this is what python will tell you:

... Traceback (most recent call last): File "./program.py", line (x), in <module> ...

• Do not use special characters like !,@,#,$,%,^,&,* in a variable name, because you will get the same error message:

... Traceback (most recent call last): File "./program.py", line (x), in <module> ...

Note

Keep in mind that python is case sensitive, which means the variables like hello and Hello are completely different in python.

Also published at https://dev.to/aswin2001barath/variables-in-python-12d3