Last updated on July 26th, 2024 at 09:08 am
Given that you’re here, you’re either someone who is looking to clear interviews or just someone curious enough to check out Python interview questions and answers. Whether it's the former or the latter, I’m sure you’re itching to learn what kind of questions are asked during a Python interview!
And hence, we’ve compiled these Python interview questions. Read on to get an idea of the questions that you might face when attending an interview.
Commonly Asked Python Interview Questions
Here is a list of Python interview questions for freshers.
1. What is Python?
Python is an open-source, feature-rich programming language. It is a high-level language used to create automation, software and web development, data science, and more.
2. Why Python?
Python is a solid choice because it is a high-level programming language. It is used to create websites, online applications, and GUI apps. This allows us to focus on the necessary functionalities.
3. How can you make an empty Python class?
We can use the pass command to create an empty class after defining the object class.
4. What are the advantages of the Python language in this particular situation as a tool?
Some of the advantages of using Python are:
- Portable and interactive
- Supports third-party modules
- Extensive support libraries
- Object-oriented language
- Open source with a thriving development community
- Compatible with most operating systems
5. What does Python's "#" symbol mean?
We can use the # symbol to add comments on everything that comes after on the line.
6. Does Python require indentation?
Indentation is an integral part of Python as it signifies a block of code. An indented block contains code within loops, functions, and classes. You can create an indentation using only four space characters. However, we must be careful to indent our code properly, or it will show errors and fail to execute.
7. Why is self used in Python?
Self is an object or a class instance in Python. Self comes in the first parameter. We can use self to distinguish between attributes of a class with local variables and methods.
8. What does a Python lambda function mean?
The lambda function in Python is an anonymous, single-expression function used as an inline function. We can use the lambda function by using the keyword ‘lambda’, and follow it up with input parameters, a colon, and an expression.
9. What are scopes and namespaces in Python?
A namespace is a container. It contains identifiers like functions and variables. In comparison, scopes control the visibility of these identifiers in our code.
10. What is PEP 8?
Guido van Rossum, Barry Warsaw, and Nick Coghlan wrote the Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP 8), which specifies coding style recommendations for developing readable and consistent Python code.
11. What is the difference between a list and a tuple?
Although iterations take time, lists are mutable data types that require more memory and work well for operations like insertion and deletion. Tuples, on the other hand, are efficient for element access with faster iterations, use less memory, and are immutable.
12. What is monkey patching?
The term "monkey patch" in Python exclusively describes run-time, dynamic changes made to a class or module.
13. Is this statement true “Python is a case-sensitive language”?
Yes, it is true that Python is case-sensitive. It is important to remember that “function” and “Function” have different existences, just like Pascal and SQL handle them separately.
14. What is a dictionary in Python?
Python comes equipped with a built-in datatype called dictionary. The dictionary helps create a one-on-one mapping between values and keys. Dictionary values and keys are kept in pairs. Dictionary values are indexed using keys.
15. How can you write comments in Python?
You can use the # symbol to create single-line comments. You can use triple quotes to contain multi-line comments like this: “ “ “text” “ “.
16. What is polymorphism in Python?
Polymorphism means having multiple forms. If a parent class has a method called ABC, for example, the child class can also have a method named ABC, but with different variables and parameters. Python supports polymorphism.
17. How do you do data abstraction in Python?
You can do data abstraction in Python using interfaces and abstract classes.
18. What does the method object() do?
The method object() returns an object with no features that serve as the foundation for all classes. You don’t need any parameters for this method.
19. What is pickling and unpickling?
Pickling is when you transform a Python object hierarchy into a byte stream to store in a database. Pickling is also called serialisation. Unpickling is the exact opposite of pickling. During unpickling, you can convert the byte stream into an object hierarchy.
20. How does Python pass parameters by reference or by value?
In Python, everything is an object, and references to those objects are stored in all variables. We cannot alter the value of the references since the functions set them. On the other hand, we can alter the objects if they are mutable.
21. How do you delete files in Python?
We can either use os.unlink() or os.remove() to delete a file using Python.
22. What is pass in Python?
You can use the pass keyword in Python to represent a null operation. The general use of pass is to fill in blank code blocks that need to be completed. In some cases, they can execute without even a complete runtime. We can encounter issues during code execution without the pass statement.
23. Why is a split used?
Using the split() function, you can split a string.
24. How would you find the most common elements in a list?
The `most_common()} function can be used to identify the elements that are most frequently seen after counting the instances of each element in the list using the `collections.Counter` class.
25. What is docstring in Python?
We can use docstring in Python to associate documentation with methods, classes, and functions. We can describe these components using docstring.
26. What is Pythonpath?
Pythonpath is an environment variable that can be used when importing a module. Whenever a module is imported, Python also runs PythonPath to check for other imported modules in different directories. This helps determine which module to load.
27. Do we need to declare variables in Python with their corresponding data types?
No, we don’t need to declare variables because Python is a dynamically typed language. For example, we can identify a variable’s data by its assigned value.
28. What is unittest in Python?
Python’s unittest is a unit testing framework. With unittest we can share shutdown and setup codes, aggregate tests into collections, and make tests independent from the reporting framework.
29. What is a Python Decorator?
We can use a Python decorator to contain a Python method and add additional code to change its behaviour. We can use the ‘@’ symbol to invoke a Python decorator function.
30. What is the difference between Python arrays and lists?
Python arrays must contain elements of the same data type and are more memory-efficient, while Python lists can contain elements of different data types but consume more memory.
31. What are the different types of operators in Python?
The commonly used operators in Python are Arithmetic, Logical, Bitwise, Assignment, Comparison/Relational, Identity, and Membership operators.
32. What are Python libraries? Name a few of them.
Python libraries are collections of Python packages. Scikit-learn, Numpy, Matplotlib, and Pandas are a few examples of Python libraries.
33. What is an interpreted language?
We can use an interpreted language when we need to execute statements line by line. Some popular interpreted languages are Javascript, PHP, R, Ruby, and Python. Using interpreted languages we can run programs directly from the source, without using any compilation step in between.
34. What are access Specifiers in Python?
We can determine a class member’s visibility using access specifiers (private, protected, public). We can use public members anywhere, private members only in the class, and protected within derived classes.
35. Why don’t lambda forms have statements?
Python lambda forms do not include the statement since it is needed to generate and return the new function object at runtime.
36. What is slicing in Python?
We can use slicing to access certain parts of sequences like tuples, strings, and lists.
37. How do you make a Python script executable on UNIX?
To execute on UNIX, we need to start our script with #!/usr/bin/env python.
38. What are the different built-in data types in Python?
We can access many built-in data types in Python, including mapping types (dictionary), sequence types (range, tuple, list, string), numeric types (complex, float, int), and set types.
39. Is multiple inheritance supported in Python?
Python supports multiple inheritance and its uses. Multiple instances are when a class is created from multiple individual parent classes. Multiple instances are feature-rich and beneficial to users.
40. What is PIP?
PIP is short for Python Installer Package. We can use PIP to install various Python modules seamlessly. Since PIP is a command-line tool, we can use it to look for packages online and install them without interacting with anyone.
41. What is _init_?
In Python, _init_ is a method or constructor. We can use the _init_ method to allocate memory to newly created objects.
42. How will you capitalise the first letter of the string?
We can use the capitalise() method when we need to capitalise a string’s first letter. The method will return the original string if the string already has a capital letter at the beginning.
43. What is the difference between ‘return’ and ‘yield’ keywords?
In Python, 'return' transmits a value and terminates a function, whereas 'yield' provides a value while retaining the function's state, allowing it to continue from where it stopped.
44. What method will you use to convert a string to all lowercase?
To convert a string to lowercase we can use the lower() function.
45. What are built-in types of Python?
Some of the commonly used built-in types of Python are Boolean, floating point, built-in functions, complex numbers, and string.
46. What does negative indexing Mean?
Negative indexing is when we start indexing from the opposite end of a sequence. For example, the last element in a list is the -1 index, -2 for the second-to-last, and so on. We can skip calculating the exact index and access elements easily using negative indexing.
47. What are the uses of ternary operators in Python?
We can use the ternary operator to show conditional statements in Python. This comprises a statement that needs to be verified and boolean true or false values.
48. How to add values to a Python array?
We can use the insert (i,x), extend(), and append() functions to add an element to an array.
49. Write a code to display the current time?
From datetime import datetime
# Get the current time
current_time = datetime.now().strftime("%H:%M:%S")
# Display the current time
print("Current Time:", current_time)
50. What is the difference between .py and .pyc files?
.py files are Python source code interpreted by the Python interpreter, while .pyc files are bytecode compiled by the Python compiler, typically for built-in modules.
Wrapping Up
Python is a popular programming language and has countless users. Python serves a purpose for everyone, from students to professionals. If you’re aiming to be the latter, you probably have a basic grasp of the Python basic interview questions after reading through this blog.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What are Python basic interview questions like?
Basic Python interview questions for freshers include questions like “What is Python?”; “How to install Python?”; “What are the key features of Python?”
- How can you crack Python interview questions?
You can crack Python interview questions by polishing your practical and theoretical knowledge.
- Can I self-study Python?
Yes, you can. It is absolutely possible to start learning Python on your own.
- What is Python best used for?
Python is best used for tasks like data visualisation, cleaning, analysis, and manipulation.
