Page 100 - PYTHON-12

APPENDIX C

VIVA VOCE

1. Who developed Python?
Ans. Guido van Rossum, a Dutch programmer, developed Python in 1991.
2. What is Python and what are its uses?
Ans. Python is a programming language with objects, modules, threads, exceptions and automatic memory
management. The benefits of Python are that it is simple and easy, portable, extensible, has built-in data
structures and is open source.
3. What are the two modes of working in Python?
Ans. Two ways to use the Python interpreter are:
(i) Interactive mode (ii) Script mode
4. How is Python interpreted?
Ans. Python is an interpreted language. Python program runs directly from the source code. It converts the
source code that is written by the programmer into an intermediate language, which is again translated into
machine language that has to be executed.
5. What is the smallest element of Python coding termed as?
Ans. Tokens in Python
6. Differentiate between call by value and call by reference.
Ans. In the event that you pass arguments like whole numbers, strings or tuples to a function, the passing is like
call by value because you cannot change the value of the immutable objects being passed to the function.
Passing mutable objects, however, can be considered as call by reference because when their values are
changed inside the function, it is also reflected outside the function.
7. Identify and write the name of the Python module to which the following functions belong:
(a) ceil() (b) floor() (c) randint()
(d) dump() (e) sqrt() (f) factorial
Ans. (a) math module (b) math module (c) random module
(d) pickle module (e) math module (f) math module
8. What type of objects can be used as keys in dictionaries?
Ans. Only immutable type objects (i.e., Numbers, Strings, Tuples) can be used as keys in dictionaries.
9. What is pickling and unpickling?
Ans. The pickle module accepts any Python object and converts it into a string representation and dumps it into a
file by using dump() function. This process is called pickling. The process of retrieving original Python objects
from the stored string representation is called unpickling.
10. How is memory managed in Python?
Ans. Python memory is managed by Python private heap space. All Python objects and data structures are located
in a private heap. The programmer does not have access to this and the interpreter takes care of this Python
private heap.
• The allocation of Python heap space for Python objects is done by Python memory manager. The core
API gives access to some tools for the programmer to code.
• Python also has an inbuilt garbage collector which recycles all the unused memory, frees up memory and
makes it available to the heap space.
11. State the use of the split() function in Python.
Ans. The split() function breaks a string into shorter strings using a defined separator. It gives a list of all words
present in the string.
12. Can keywords be used as identifiers in Python?
Ans. No, keywords are the reserved words in Python and can’t be used as identifiers or variable names.