What does a semicolon do?
PythonFunctionIf StatementSyntaxBreakPython Problem Overview
I got a function online to help me with my current project and it had semicolons on some of the lines. I was wondering why? Is it to break the function?
def containsAny(self, strings=[]):
alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789'
for string in strings:
for char in string:
if char in alphabet: return 1;
return 0;
The function I got online with little modification:
for string in strings:
for char in string:
if char in alphabet: return 1;
Is the above saying the following?
if char in alphabet:
return 1
break
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
The semicolon does nothing in the code you show.
I suspect this is someone who programs in another language (C, Java, ...) that requires semicolons at the end of statements and it's just a habit (happens to me sometimes too).
If you want to put several Python statements on the same line, you can use a semi-colon to separate them, see this Python Doc:
> A suite is a group of statements controlled by a clause. A suite can > be one or more semicolon-separated simple statements on the same line > as the header, following the header’s colon, or it can be one or more > indented statements on subsequent lines
Solution 2 - Python
The semicolon here does not do anything. People who come from C/C++/Java/(many other language) backgrounds tend to use the semicolon out of habit.
Solution 3 - Python
Programmers of C, C++, and Java are habituated of using a semicolon to tell the compiler that this is the end of a statement, but for Python this is not the case.
The reason is that in Python, newlines are an unambiguous way of separating code lines; this is by design, and the way this works has been thoroughly thought through. As a result, Python code is perfectly readable and unambiguous without any special end-of-statement markers (apart from the newline).
Solution 4 - Python
In general the semicolon does nothing. But if you are using the jupyter notebook (depending on your version), you might get a figure plotted twice. The semicolon at the end of your plot command prevents this:
df.plot();
Solution 5 - Python
As other answers point out, the semicolon does nothing there. It's a separator (e.g. print 1;print 2). But it does not work like this: def func():print 1;print 2;;print'Defined!' (;; is a syntax error). Out of habit, people tend to use it (as it is required in languages such as C/Java...).