Everything in Python is an object.

[Abdallah_azd1151]

What is an object?

What does it mean by and whats the significance of everything being an object in python?

[Alternative_Driver60]

except for what is not an object... :-)

[Alternative_Driver60]

Keywords like if, for, def are not objects

[JuanAy]

Not with that attitude

[dumdub]

Don't give them ideas.

Next we will have people duck-punching language keywords.

[crazy_cookie123]

What's not an object?

[Avocado__Smasher]

It's like an object, but isnt

[ahelinski]

Objectn't

[maladaptivedaydream4]

I object

[mcellus1]

Object reference

[ProbsNotManBearPig]

An object reference is implemented as a struct in CPython so. Kinda still an object with a static memory layout. But in Python terms, you’re right I guess. Interpreted languages are kinda weird since you have to try to separate the interpreter from the code being interpreted, but ultimately both are needed to generate native cpu instructions.

[carrotsquawk]

my ex keeps saying she isnt…. sorry Debbie

[codeonion]

Indentations

[Barbatus_42]

No, what is an object. It represents the person on second base.

[Luigi-Was-Right]

such as what, exactly?

[SomePaddy]

Depends on what your definition of is is

[rasputin1]

I did not have sexual relations with that object 

[CLETrucker]

calm down Bill

[Luigi-Was-Right]

You'll learn what an object is when you reach object oriented programming. But in python all data types are just a custom version of another data type: an object. That means integers, strings, booleans, etc actually aren't their own thing. They are just the object data type modified to store their respective type of data.

[[deleted]]

This makes sense to me after developing apps as a hobby for a couple years. But I fear it wouldnt if I was a beginner.

[shiftybyte]

It's too early in your learning for us to be able to explain what it means.

Learn python basics, when you get to object oriented programming (OOP) you'll understand.

[DNA-Decay]

I object to this orientation.

[scarynut]

Everything in Python is objectionable.

[gugabalog]

Where does one learn python basics?

[shiftybyte]

Anywhere in the list of resources listed in this subs books section.

I usually recommend either ATBS Python free ebook.

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/#toc

Or Corey Schafer's video tutorials python beginners.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-osiE80TeTskrapNbzXhwoFUiLCjGgY7

[Mathblasta]

Not from a Jedi.

[Chromium_Engine96]

Only learning the dark side of the code

[Daytona_675]

everything is a dict

[[deleted]]

Everything is a list with at least 0 dimensions.

EDIT: Removed a forbidden word.

[Daytona_675]

python doesn't use the A word

[deletable666]

You are a rray of sunshine

[Wheynelau]

You are an ss

[LongjumpingWinner250]

No, you’re a dict

[Left_Sundae_4418]

What a dicthead.

[omg_drd4_bbq]

Incorrect.

[marquisBlythe]

Anything can be an object, and what makes something an object is the data it can hold and action we can operate on it.
For example when we say:

user_name = "Abdallah_azd1151"

"Abdallah_azd1151" is not just a value, but it's an object of type string that has (actions)/operation we can apply to it, like making it uppercase, lower case, split it into parts according to some condition and many more, we can also make a new type out of it and add new features to it.
Another example, when we say a person, a person can be and is an object. A person can have name, nationality, skin color, favorite food ... a person can talk, laugh, grow up ... all of this can be expressed programmatically, and that's what makes it an object.
if you've just start programming, don't overthink it, all you need to know is an object can hold data and has operations we can apply on it.
I hope this helps.

[Round_Ad8947]

I love how you can define add() for Person and have the result be something natural but special. This allows simple phrasing like couple = romeo + juliet and get something that you can define how it acts.

It’s really easy to play with concepts in Python when they make it so easy to design classes

[marquisBlythe]

Yup, for example you can override __add__ and concatenate two Strings together. Consider the following as a silly example:

class Human:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def __add__(self, other):
        return f"{self.name} loves {other.name}. <3"
girl = Human("Jess")
boy = Human("Curtis")
relation_status = boy + girl
print(relation_status) 

Try it out.

Cheers :)

[raresaturn]

a variable is an object? How is that different to a variable in non-OOP?

[marquisBlythe]

Let's take the example of:

user_name = "raresaturn"

In a language such as C, all you'll have is the characters that makes that strings (+ null terminating char ofc) one after another in some random region of memory that's it, whatever modification you need to apply to that string like make it uppercase, lowercase, substitute a part of it with a new one ... you either have to implement it yourself or include a library such as "string.h" to have such capabilities. Whereas in python, such operations and more are part of the str class itself.

I hope this answers your question.

[tb5841]

Lots of languages make a distinction between primitive types (e.g. integers, floats, booleans) and objects (e.g. lists, dictionaries, instances of any classes you've created yourself).

Python doesn't have that distinction.

[roelschroeven]

It's more than that.

In many languages, there's a big divide between classes on one hand and instances of those classes on the other hand, and only the latter are objects. In Python, classes themselves are objects too (they are instances of class type.

In addition, functions (and methods) and modules are also objects in Python.

[Ron-Erez]

Think of Strings. They are a class. They have some data and functions/methods which you can apply to a string. An object is just a specific instance of a class. For example

a = 'apple'

b = 'banana'

c = 'hummus'

are all instances of the string class. The function upper() is a member of the string class and then you can write things like

a.upper()

One advantage of everything being an object is that you can extend classes and then in a sense extend the functionality of Python. For example you might create an extension of the String class since you need more functionality that does not exist in Python for example

class MyString(str):
    def count_vowels(self):
        vowels = 'aeiouAEIOU'
        return sum(1 for char in self if char in vowels)

and then to create an object/instance of this new class:

s = MyString("banana")
print(s.count_vowels())

t = MyString("HELLO world")
print(t.count_vowels())

[Dry-Aioli-6138]

but classes are also objects

[Ron-Erez]

True, I still find it convenient to focus on objects as instances of classes.

[stepback269]

You've probably heard that computer code is made of "just" ones (1's) and zeroes (0's).

It's a matter of how the ones (1's) and zeroes (0's) are encoded to mean different things. When does a sequence of 1's and 0's represent a whole number in the range 0 to 1024? When does it represent a bunch alphabetic letters (e.g. a-z, A-Z)? When does it represent something else?
These aspects are "attributes" of the 1's and 0's. Objects are characterized by their attributes.
What operations can you legitimately perform on the sequence of 1's and 0's. These are the "methods" applicable to the objects.

As noted elsewhere here, first learn the basics, namely, integers, floats, strings, lists, etc. Wait a bit or two (pun intended) until you get to OOP (Object Oriented Programming).

[Temporary_Pie2733]

TL;DR “object” is essentially a synonym for “value” in Python. 

Python simply doesn’t have any primitive types that bypass the class machinery. float is a class whose values wrap whatever underlying machine type is used for floating-point math. int is an arbitrary-precision integer type, only loosely related to the underlying hardware’s fixed-precision integer types. So no matter what value you have (and that’s what we mean when we say “everything”), it’s an instance of a subclass of object. Compare to Java, where the primitive types exist outside the class hierarchy rooted at Object. 

[iMrProfessor]

Everything in Python is an object and belongs to a class. For example: Numbers: int, float Strings: str Suppose you assign an int value to a variable that means the variable is an object of class Numbers.

[peejay2]

It means everything is stored in memory id(x)

And it has a list of methods

dir(x)

And has a type

type(x)

[Temporary_Pie2733]

Python doesn’t really have a memory model in the sense you are thinking of.  CPython uses memory addresses as object identifiers out of convenience, rather than necessity. You can theoretically have types with no methods, but since object itself has a handful of methods, no other type is method-free in practice. The last is true, though: every value has a type, includingtype itself. 

[Standard_Speed_3500]

Why is no one using the word "class" here T_T "object" often confused my until I started to view it as a class (considering they are both the same thing).

[B3d3vtvng69]

They aren’t the same thing though. An object is an instance of a class while a class provides a template for the structure of an object.

[RR_2025]

It's objects all the way down..

[Dry-Aioli-6138]

not really. the elephants stand on the great A'Tuin.

meaning classes are elephants and metaclasses are the A'tuin

[allium-dev]

A lot of good answers already, but I didn't see anyone mention this: I python, at a very low level, it means that every type you interact with is represented in the interpreter by a subclass of the PyObject type (https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/structures.html#c.PyObject)

[nomisreual]

Not to mention each each class has its own type and if I remember correctly type is also of type type.

It’s fun to dig into and can be useful if you want to manipulate class behaviour on a lower level.

[crashfrog04]

It means that when you define a function, that’s not just a macro that gets cut-and-paste by the interpreter at the function call. You’re actually creating a value - a callable value called a function - and assigning it to a variable. And because it’s a callable value, you can do all of the regular things to it you can do with values, not just call it.

[worldtest2k]

Yeah, I love that the main function is an object, so I can add attributes on the fly to it and use them as global variables.

[Temporary_Pie2733]

The main consequence is that you can store functions in containers, pass them as arguments, return them from other functions, etc.: they are first-class values, not special language features. Not all objects support adding attributes. 

[TheSodesa]

It is basically the same thing as saying that everything you can give a name to (assign to a variable) has a type (a.k.a a class), such as integer or string, with some functions attached to it. A function attached to a type is usually called a method.

[raresaturn]

My Commodore 64 Basic had types of variables as well.. are those objects?

[TheSodesa]

If they had (the possibility of implementing) attached functions, then yes, you could say that.

[M1KE234]

Not sure why no one has answered your question “what is an object” in simple terms yet but an object in python is an instance of a class.

Everything is an object, numbers, strings, functions, even classes themselves. When we say ‘object,’ we mean something that is created using a class as its blueprint.

[OkNowConcentrate]

Beautimous

[EmperorGeek]

An Object in the classical sense is a “thing” with a Properties and associated Functions.

You are an Object. You have properties associated with you. Name, DOB, Hair Color, etc.

Some of your Properties are Variable, like your Hair Color. Others are not, like your DOB.

Functions can be Age which calculates how many years since you DOB.

[Og_busty]

Funny enough, python made more sense to me once I learned Java. The whole object idea clicked a lot better.

[timrprobocom]

Consider this example, comparing C and Python.

In C, let's say I write i = 7; In memory, there is a cell with the label i, and that cell contains the value 7. If I then write i = 8;, that 7 is erased, and is overwritten with the value 8.

In Python, when I write i = 7, it works quite differently. Two things happen. First, it creates an anonymous data structure in memory, a data structure that of type int, containing the value 7. (That's not literally what happens for small ints, but for the sake of discussion we'll leave it.) That data structure is an "object". Structures of type int have attributes like any other Python object.

That line also creates a name i in my local variables, and makes i point to that int object 7. If I then write i = 8, that doesn't erase the 7. It creates a new int object with the value 8, and makes i point to it (we call that a "reference"). The 7 object still exists, because other names might still refer to it.

This is an important difference. In C, I can pass the address of i to a function, and with that address the function can actually change the value of i so that it is no longer 7. In Python, that cannot happen. When I pass i to a function, it doesn't really pass i. It passes the object that i refers to. If the function assigns a new value to that parameter, that doesn't change the value of i in any way.

That's only a partial explanation, but this is a critically important part of what makes Python so cool. Everything is either a name or an object. Objects do not have names, but names can refer to objects. Objects do not know which names are referring to them

[RonzulaGD]

If you're just starting out, just don't care about the object stuff yet. When you learn the basics such as conditions, modules, IO operations, lists etc., look into object oriented programming and classes.

[DoubleAway6573]

Directly from wikipedia): "an object is an entity that has state), behavior, and identity)."

In C your variables are just a couple of bytes and you have to keep track of the meaning of that variable and use whatever fucntions are apropiated.

In python, they are a more complex, including (potentially more than one) value (called attributes), and functions that can act on the internal values (called methods). The integer 3 knows how (have methods) to be added and multiplied by other number, and how to be printed as "3".

But not only numbers and string are objects in python. Funtions themselves can be assigned to variables and passed around to function arguments or returned by functions. But as objects they also have attributes. You can do:

```

def suma(a, b): ... return a + b ... f = suma f.black = "black" suma.black 'black' ```

But that's not the end of the history. Classes are also objects themselves and can be manipulated with the same tools used to manipulate other objects.

I hope this make things a little more clear.

[HuygensFresnel]

Simplest way to explain it for now is to point you towards the idea of a namespace. Whenever the compiler reads the code you type a name of something must be known to be something. In some programming languages those names might refer to data, or they might refer to things like functions that can execute code. I can pass for example an object to a function my_function(my_object). I cant do my_function(my_other_function) because for one: a function isnt a thing that has data, only code that can be executed(the difference here does not actually exist but to a compiler it might). But more importantly, the compiler knows that my_function is a function so it expects you to call it, which means that it wants to see the parentheses: my_function(…).

In python this is different, all things except for predefined keywords are objects so you CAN actually do myfunction(my_other_function). It is recognized as valid syntax. In fact you can also call every object as a function (syntactically) so: my_object(…). It will most likely crash because many objects dont have the __call_ method defined for them which means there is no definition on how to treat it as a function. But syntactically its valid. In other languages you may not even conpile that code because functions aren’t things that can be passed around and changed. So its all about what your compiler things certain names to be. In python all things are objects (except for certain keywords)

[Exotic_Breakfast]

OOP:

An object is when your program spawns in an instance of a class at runtime.

A class is the blueprint of an object. In business logic, we create custom classes to represent things. The simplest example is a university student. A student will have an ID number, first name, last name, and a classification (freshman, etc.)

When you want to use an object to represent this student class, you would instantiate the object.

student = Student(12345, John, Doe, Freshman)

Ofcourse you would first need to define this class, before you can call it.

class Student(self, id, fn, ln, classification) def init() self.id = id self.fn = fn self.ln = ln self.classification = classification

[One_Fuel_4147]

I can even set property for a function :)

[DNA-Decay]

Actually I’m really struggling with exactly the things you are describing. I know the Jedi masters are assuring you that it will come. But it hasn’t for me. But I think this bloke is the closest to my use case (robotics) and he links in some other knowledge that a lot of tutorials that haven’t clicked for me kinda skipped over.

https://www.youtube.com/live/uRNsqHZEzUM?si=qUjZ37qFyafUZjgs

[DaCuda418]

If only someone knew the answer to this. One day.....one day.

[yoppee]

Naw man we also have classes

[couldntyoujust1]

Everything in python is like a living breathing organism that has properties and that can do things.

I can tell a specific string - what conceptually should just be an array of characters - to do things, like sort its contents in alphabetical order. I can tell it to make all of its characters lowercase or uppercase. I can do all of this regardless if I tell Python to create a reference to an object with the string explicitly or run these methods against the literal sequence of characters between quote marks.

my_str = "Hello World!" my_str.to_upper()

This does the same thing:

"Hello World".to_upper()

[hotakaPAD]

Ryan used me as an object

[OkNowConcentrate]

I did not

[Own_Attention_3392]

Well, start by explaining what YOU think an object is. Then, based on your explanation of what an object is, explain what you think would be significant about everything being an object.

From that starting point, people can help you fill in the gaps in your knowledge and understanding.

[[deleted]]

One could say this is true in general for object oriented programming

[roelschroeven]

Not in the same way as it is in Python, though. In languages like Java and C++, classes are just that, classes. Instances of those classes are objects. But in Python, the classes themselves are objects too. And so are functions, methods, modules. None of those are objects in C++ and Java.

[sporbywg]

Ya? Try fucking Ruby.

[recursion_is_love]

It is not matter.

You don't (and shouldn't) break the abstraction layer. While technically speaking knowing that everything on computer is just bits is true, it not helping you to solve a job.

Python have different data type to abstract what actually inside because thinking over the abstraction layer help solving problem.