Built-in functions

• breakpoint(): Python’s version of MATLAB’s keyboard() command
• callable(): Like MATLAB’s isfunction() but it really checks if there’s a __call__ method
• getattr()/hasattr(): MATLAB’s getfield()/isfield(). The 3rd parameter of getattr() is a shortcut to spit out a default if there’s no such field/attribute, which MATLAB doesn’t have
• globals()/locals(): more convenient than MATLAB because the whole workspace (current variables) are accessed as a dictionary in Python by calling locals() and globals()
• id(): memory address of the item where the variable (reference) is pointing to. Think of it as &x in C. MATLAB doesn’t do alias or pointers.
• isinstance(): MATLAB’s isa()
• next(): Python favors not actually computing the values until needed so instead it offers a generator (forward iterable) function that spits out one value at each time you kick it with next() and you can’t go back. MATLAB does not do iterators.
• chr()/ord(): analogous to MATLAB’s char()/double() cast for characters
• Python’s exponentiation is **, not ^ like most other languages (C does not have exponentiation symbol, and ^ was used for xor)
• print(..., flush=false) allows a courtesy flush
• repr(): MATLAB’s version of disp(), also overloadable standard interface
• slice(): MATLAB’s equivalent of colon() special interface

Context Manager

@contextlib.contextmanager decorators basically splits a set-try-yield-finally boilerplate function into 3 parts: __enter__ (everything above yield), BODY (where the yield goes to) and __exit__ (everything below yield), since a with-as statement is a rigidly defined try-finally block, roughly like this:

with EXPR as f:
  BODY(using f)

__enter__: f=EVAL(EXPR)
try:
  # f isn't evaluated till yield  
  yield f  # Goes to BODY
finally:
  __exit__: cleanup(f)

… more to come as I have came across noteworthy cases.