Reserved Words in Computer Programming

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This article tells you

• What are reserved words in computer programming?
• How to get a list of reserved words for Python (and other languages)
• How to work around reserved words

What are reserved words in computer programming?

Reserved words are words that you, the user, cannot define in a programming language. They are part of the language specifications and will always do exactly what the language intends for them to do. A few examples are

• if
• and
• or
• else
• return
• (and many more)

How to get a list of reserved words for Python (and other languages)

I’m assuming that you have downloaded Python. If so, you can follow along with this Gist:

In order to get a list of reserved words for other languages, one simple way is to just Google, “Keywords for <Language>” or “Reserved words for <Language>”

How to work around reserved words

Here is an example of how to work around the reserved word, “else” in the Python REPL:

If you’ve gotten this far, I salute you for reading all the way to the end! Stay tuned for the next article!