🔒 what is the purpose of a double underscore?

[lucid pelican]

Ive seen some people say for naming convention purposed but why? Also some syntax requires a double underscore? I cant seem to wrap my head around the purpose of it.

Like sometimes i see [name] and others its like init

[pale pier]

@lucid pelican

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[faint spade]

double underscores are oft referred to as "dunders", and they have special meaning
__init__ is similar to constructors for classes that you may be familiar with from languages like Java/JS

[candid crypt]

there are a few different uses

• __name__, __module__, __file__ etc. are special variables that refer to some sorts of metadata like the name of the file you're running
• classes can have some special methods like def __init__ or def __add__ that modify their behaviour
• using self.__var indicates that this variable should only be used within the class

[pale pier]

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