meanings. These classes are identified by the patterns of leading and

trailing underscore characters:

\begin{description}

\item[\code{_*}]

Not imported by \samp{from \var{module} import *}. The special

identifier \samp{_} is used in the interactive interpreter to store

the result of the last evaluation; it is stored in the

\module{__builtin__} module. When not in interactive mode, \samp{_}

has no special meaning and is not defined.

See section~\ref{import}, ``The \keyword{import} statement.''

\note{The name \samp{_} is often used in conjunction with

internationalization; refer to the documentation for the

\ulink{\module{gettext} module}{../lib/module-gettext.html} for more

information on this convention.}

\item[\code{__*__}]

System-defined names. These names are defined by the interpreter

and it's implementation (including the standard library);

applications should not expect to define additional names using this

convention. The set of names of this class defined by Python may be

extended in future versions.

See section~\ref{specialnames}, ``Special method names.''

\item[\code{__*}]

Class-private names. Names in this category, when used within the

context of a class definition, are re-written to use a mangled for

to help avoid name clashes between ``private'' attributes of base

and derived classes.

See section~\ref{atom-identifiers}, ``Identifiers (Names).''