CS105: Introduction to Python

At this point the syntax error you are most likely to make is an illegal variable name, like class and yield, which are keywords, or odd~job  and US$, which contain illegal characters.

If you put a space in a variable name, Python thinks it is two operands without an operator:

>>> bad name = 5
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

For syntax errors, the error messages don't help much. The most common messages are SyntaxError: invalid syntax and SyntaxError: invalid token, neither of which is very informative.

The runtime error you are most likely to make is a "use before def"; that is, trying to use a variable before you have assigned a value. This can happen if you spell a variable name wrong:

>>> principal = 327.68
>>> interest = principle * rate
NameError: name 'principle' is not defined

Variable names are case sensitive, so LaTeX is not the same as latex.

At this point, the most likely cause of a semantic error is the order of operations. For example, to evaluate 1/2 π, you might be tempted to write

>>> 1.0 / 2.0 * pi

But the division happens first, so you would get π / 2, which is not the same thing! There is no way for Python to know what you meant to write, so in this case, you don't get an error message; you just get the wrong answer.