Sorry for the delay in replying.
On Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:51:38 +0300, Carlos Nepomuceno wrote:
>> [1] Technically it's a type, not a function, but the difference makes
>> no difference here.
> Can you explain me the difference of the type and function you've just
> mentioned?
We were talking about dict().
In Python, "type" is another name for "class". There is a built-in class
called "dict":
py> dict
<class 'dict'>
The way we create a new instance of a class is to call it, as if it were
a function:
py> dict()
{}
just like you might call some other function:
py> len([])
0
so sometimes it is convenient to be lazy and just refer to the type/class
as a function. The general term for things which can be called in Python
is "callable", which includes functions, methods, and types.
(Back in the ancient days of Python 1.x, dict *actually was a function*,
just like len() or ord(), and the type/class system was radically
different. But that's ancient history now.)
--
Steven
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