What Is ** In Python?

Question

I read the following python code:

 a=2**b

I know several languages like c,c++,c#,java... i even googled ** operator without any results.

so what does 2**b means?

Answer 1

It is the exponentiation operator. In your example, a will have the result of 2 to the bth power.

Check out the last entry in the table in this section.

Answer 2

it's simple ** means power, so 2**b means 2 to the power of b

Answer 3

It's python's power operator. You can write this as a = pow(2, b)

Answer 4

In that example ** does represent exponation. but **(and also * ) can be used as unpacking operators. for instance when using a list of variables of unknown length as args for a function. I'm new to programming and python so I have difficulty using this in an example. perhaps one of you more experienced users can demonstrate

Answer 5

** can also be used as a function parameter to pass a variable number of keyword arguments to a function. Example:

def x(**kwargs):
    for key, value in kwargs.items():
        print "%s: %s" % (key, value)

x(y=2, z=3, a=1, b=2)

Prints:

y: 2
z: 3
a: 1
b: 2

Answer 6

It means 2^b in other languages. Or math.pow(2, 4) if you were using the math module.

See operator documentation here: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#numeric-types-int-float-long-complex

Answer 7

This means to raise 2 to the power b.

See http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#numeric-types-int-float-long-complex