How to set a Python variable to undefined?
How to set a Python variable to undefined?
You probably want to set it to None.
variable = None
Check if variable is defined
is_defined = variable is not None
You could delete the variable, but it is not really pythonic.
variable = 1
del variable
try:
print(variable)
except (NameError, AttributeError):
# AttributeError if you are using del obj.variable and print(obj.variable)
print(variable does not exist)
Having to catch a NameError is not very conventional, so setting the variable to None is typically preferred.
You can delete a global name x
using
del x
Python doesnt have variables in the sense C or Java have. In Python, a variable is just a tag you can apply to any object, as opposed to a name refencing some fixed memory location.
Deleting doesnt necessarily remove the object the name pointed to.
How to set a Python variable to undefined?
If you want to be able to test its undefined state, you should set it to None :
variable = None
and test with
if variable is None:
If you want to clean stuff, you can delete it, del variable
but that should be task of the garbage collector.