Numbers & Math
6 min · Python
Use Python as a calculator — and do math with your variables.
Enemy 1 of 5
At its core, Python is a calculator that also happens to be able to do everything else. If you print a math expression, Python evaluates it first — works out the numeric answer — and only then hands the result to print. The expression itself never appears in the output; only its value does.
Run this — notice it prints 5, not the text 2 + 3, because there are no quotes around it. That's the key difference between code and text: 2 + 3 without quotes is an instruction to compute, while "2 + 3" with quotes is just four characters to display as-is. Mixing these up — forgetting quotes around text, or accidentally adding quotes around a number you meant to calculate with — is one of the most common early mistakes.
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