🔒 Hello! I am new to this language and I have two small questions.

[nova basin]

When do we use quotation marks in Python code? Typically, we use them with strings, but there are times when we do not. For example, in the following line of code for a DataFrame:

a = pd.DataFrame(columnname, index=['a', 'b', 'c'])

we used quotation marks for the index values 'a', 'b', and 'c', but not for columnname. Why is that?

Another is the ValueError we encounter when we provide fewer index labels than the number of rows. But what happens if we provide more index labels than there are rows? And what about columns—what occurs if we specify more or fewer column names than the data structure allows?

[bronze fjord]

@nova basin

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[earnest night]

those are still strings

that is a list of a strings

[lavish horizon]

columnname is a variable that stores a string, but is not a string itself.

[nova basin]

Okay, so we don’t need quotes for variables, right? And what about the second one?

[thorn vale]

right

[earnest night]

for the second one, try it and see

[nova basin]

Lol alright

[earnest night]

experimenting is a great way to see

[vocal moon]

so both are strings as said but there’s an important time when you should use speech marks over quotations
lets say you want to print a string that also showcases a quote, if you only use quotation marks, you would end the string abruptly as it would signify the end. therefore, in a case like that, you would need to open your string with speech marks.

eg: my_string = “This is how I would put a quote inside a string: ‘Hi there Discord’”

i’ve always use speech marks because of this and because other languages don’t allow for both speech and quotation marks
you can use either as long as you are aware of when to not use quotation marks for a string

(if that’s what you were asking)

also with variable names, you don’t need quotes
a variable can or cannot be a string
it can be any data type
but if you assign a string to it, think of it as a house for that string
it, itself, is not the value.. it is just a representation of to store it

so you wouldn’t need to put it in quotes

[earnest night]

you've actually used the invalid type of quotation marks here

“”

these are not valid for a string

[vocal moon]

i’m on phone so forgive me 😭

i can never find the right stuff on iphone

took me about 10 mins to embed that code alone

[earnest night]

also you can simply escape the quotes if you need to mix and match

!e

print("I said \"Hello Discord!\"")

[bronze fjord]

:white_check_mark: Your 3.12 eval job has completed with return code 0.

I said "Hello Discord!"

[earnest night]

the \ in front of the " tells python "I want a literal quotation mark and this isn't the end of the string"

[vocal moon]

that’s acc really useful, thanks

i did not know that

ill use that for my openai api to show how prompts might be made

[earnest night]

it wouldn't matter for raw input

[vocal moon]

still useful for a more clean look compared to quotes and speech marks all getting tangled at the end of a string

thanks

[earnest night]

it gets real crazy when you start using string representations

!e

text = ''

for _ in range(6):
    text = repr(text)

print(text)

[bronze fjord]

:white_check_mark: Your 3.12 eval job has completed with return code 0.

'\'\\\'\\\\\\\'"\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'"\\\\\\\'\\\'\''

[earnest night]

one of my favourite silly python things

[vocal moon]

this is amazing

[bronze fjord]

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