Python Literals

A literal is a fixed value written directly in your code: 42, 3.14, "hello", True, None, [1, 2, 3]. Knowing every kind of literal — and the special forms such as binary numbers, raw strings and byte strings — helps you write values exactly the way you mean them.

Numeric Literals

Integers can be written in decimal (255), binary (0b11111111), octal (0o377) or hexadecimal (0xFF); underscores improve readability (1_000_000). Floats use a decimal point or exponent (2.5, 6.02e23). Complex numbers use a j suffix (3 + 4j).

String and Bytes Literals

Strings use single, double or triple quotes (triple quotes span lines). Escape sequences such as \n (newline) and \t (tab) start with a backslash. Prefixes change meaning: r"..." raw strings keep backslashes literally (useful for regex and Windows paths), f"..." f-strings embed expressions, and b"..." creates bytes instead of text.

Boolean, None and Collection Literals

True and False are the Boolean literals, and None represents "no value". Collection literals create lists [1, 2], tuples (1, 2), dictionaries {"a": 1} and sets {1, 2}; note that {} is an empty dict — an empty set is written set().

Examples

print(255, 0b11111111, 0o377, 0xFF)
print(1_000_000)
print(2.5, 6.02e23, 1.5e-3)
z = 3 + 4j
print(z, z.real, z.imag, abs(z))

255 255 255 255
1000000
2.5 6.02e+23 0.0015
(3+4j) 3.0 4.0 5.0

print("Line one\nLine two")
print("Name:\tAsha")
print(r"C:\new\table")          # raw string: backslashes kept
print(b"hello", type(b"hello"))
poem = """Roses are red,
Python is great."""
print(poem)

Line one
Line two
Name:	Asha
C:\new\table
b'hello' <class 'bytes'>
Roses are red,
Python is great.

print(True, False, None)
print(type([]), type(()), type({}), type(set()))
print({1, 2, 2, 3})
print({"course": "Python", "lessons": 130})

True False None
<class 'list'> <class 'tuple'> <class 'dict'> <class 'set'>
{1, 2, 3}
{'course': 'Python', 'lessons': 130}