Python interview questions

Python Interview Questions and Answers

1.  How are arguments passed – by reference of by value?                                                                 

First of all you can not say “it is by value or by reference”, because there is no such a thing in Python. May be more clear answer will be something like this (there is no short answer): Python works differently compared to other languages and there is no such a thing like passing an argument by reference or by value. If we want to compare it it will be closer to passing by reference because the object is not copied into memory instead a new name is assigned to it.

2.  Do you know what list and dict comprehensions are? Can you give an example?

List/Dict comprehensions are syntax constructions to ease the creation of a list/dict based on existing iterable.

# simple iteration
a = []
for x in range(10):
    a.append(x*2)
# a == [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18]

# list comprehension
a = [x*2 for x in range(10)]

# dict comprehension
a = {x: x*2 for x in range(10)}
# a == {0: 0, 1: 2, 2: 4, 3: 6, 4: 8, 5: 10, 6: 12, 7: 14, 8: 16, 9: 18}

3.  What is PEP 8?

PEP 8 is a coding convention(a set of recommendations) how to write your Python code in order to make it more readable and useful for those after you.

4.  Can you sum all of the elements in the list, how about to multuply them and get the result?

# the basic way
s = 0
for x in range(10):
    s += x

# the right way
s = sum(range(10))

# the basic way
s = 1
for x in range(1, 10):
    s = s * x

# the other way
from operator import mul
reduce(mul, range(1, 10))

5.  Do you use virtual environments?

A Virtual Environment, put simply, is an isolated working copy of Python which allows you to work on a specific project without worry of affecting other projects.

For example, you can work on a project which requires Django 1.3 while also maintaining a project which requires Django 1.0.

6.  Can you sum all of the elements in the list, how about to multuply them and get the result?

# the basic way

s = 0

for x in range(10):

    s += x

# the right way

s = sum(range(10))

# the basic way

s = 1

for x in range(1, 10):

    s = s * x

# the other way

from operator import mul

reduce(mul, range(1, 10))

7.  Do you know what is the difference between lists and tuples? Can you give me an example for their usage?

First list are mutable while tuples are not, and second tuples can be hashed e.g. to be used as keys for dictionaries. As an example of their usage, tuples are used when the order of the elements in the sequence matters e.g. a geographic coordinates, “list” of points in a path or route, or set of actions that should be executed in specific order.

8.  Do you know the difference between range and xrange?

Range returns a list while xrange returns a xrange object which takes the same memory no matter of the range size. In the first case you have all items already generated(this can take a lot of time and memory) while in the second you get the elements one by one e.g. only one element is generated and available per iteration.

9.  Tell me a few differences between Python 2.x and 3.x ?

There are many answers here but for me some of the major changes in Python 3.x are: all strings are now Unicode, print is now function not a statement. There is no range, it has been replaced by xrange which is removed. All classes are new style and the division of integers now returns float.

10.  What are decorators and what is their usage?

“Decorators allow you to inject or modify code in functions or classes”. In other words decorators allow you to wrap a function or class method call and execute some code before or after the execution of the original code. And also you can nest them e.g. to use more than one decorator for a specific function. Usage examples include – logging the calls to specific method, checking for permission(s), checking and/or modifying the arguments passed to the method etc.

11.  The with statement and its usage.

In a few words the with statement allows you to executed code before and/or after a specific set of operations. For example if you open a file for reading and parsing no matter what happens during the parsing you want to be sure that at the end the file is closed. This is normally achieved using the try… finally construction but the with statement simplifies it usin the so called “context management protocol”.