python's pre-declared constants are kinda weird

python has 6 pre-declared "constants": True, False, None, __debug__, Ellipsis (or equivalently ...), and NotImplemented. but they all behave slightly differently, for some reason.

True, False, and None

True, False, and None are keywords. they aren't identifiers, they're just straight up their own lexical tokens. which is really weird; nothing else is like this in python. usually stuff is resolved during regular name resolution, not in the lexer itself.

an interesting side effect of this is that expressions like x.True raise a SyntaxError. i'm curious as to what the rationale was for this decision (if there was one).

there's some more interesting stuff with these constants, but i'll get to it later, since it ties in with the other constants.

__debug__

__debug__ is a boolean constant: it's normally True, but when running with -O, it's False. the idea is similar to how assert is disabled in non-debug builds: you can wrap code in if __debug__ if the check would be too expensive in an "optimized" build, or something.

__debug__ is really interesting though, because although it's a normal identifier (unlike True, False, and None), it's the only identifier in the language which can't be assigned to:

>>> __debug__ = 67
  File "", line 1
SyntaxError: cannot assign to __debug__

you can't even assign to it as an attribute:

>>> x.__debug__ = 67
  File "", line 1
SyntaxError: cannot assign to __debug__

again, no other identifier behaves like this. this is a true special case.

but because it's not a keyword, it behaves slightly differently to True, False, and None:
x.__debug__ raises AttributeError (rather than SyntaxError), since it's syntactically valid; it's just looking up an attribute which doesn't exist.

interestingly, there's also a special error message for attempting to delete __debug__ (despite the fact that this would raise a NameError anyway if not for the special case), but this doesn't apply for deleting an attribute named __debug__:

>>> del __debug__
  File "", line 1
SyntaxError: cannot delete __debug__
>>> del x.__debug__
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
NameError: name 'x' is not defined

if x were defined, an AttributeError would be raised instead. in either case, it's not a SyntaxError (unlike assignment), for some reason.

tangent: SyntaxError is a lie

speaking of errors: assigning to __debug__ is one of only a few cases i'm aware of where a SyntaxError is raised despite something not actually being invalid syntax. here, you can confirm it yourself:

>>> assert (__debug__ := 67)

running that assert in a debug build raises a SyntaxError, but with -O, the assertion is never compiled, and so no exception is raised.

two other instances of this are using yield or await outside of a function:

>>> assert (yield)
>>> assert (await 67)

Ellipsis and NotImplemented

Ellipsis and NotImplemented are documented in the "constants" section of the reference, but unlike the other 4 constants, they aren't "real" constants. they're just normal builtins, so they can be shadowed by globals:

>>> NotImplemented = 67
>>> NotImplemented
67

again, i'm curious about the rationale here. why is it that these aren't special, but the other constants are?

overwriting constants

here's something interesting: despite being lexical tokens, True, False, and None also exist as normal builtins:

>>> import builtins
>>> getattr(builtins, 'True')
True
>>> getattr(builtins, 'False')
False
>>> getattr(builtins, 'None') is None
True

there's no way to directly access these without using getattr.

but here's where things get really interesting: setattr also works!

>>> setattr(builtins, 'True', 67)
>>> getattr(builtins, 'True')
67

however, this doesn't change the value when accessed with the lexical token:

>>> True
True

but __debug__ has the same behavior!

>>> setattr(builtins, '__debug__', 67)
>>> builtins.__debug__
67
>>> __debug__
True

so __debug__ can sorta be assigned to, but despite not being a lexical token, it's special cased just like True, False, and None: its value is unaffected by changes to the builtins module. so it really is a constant!

Ellipsis and NotImplemented are, once again, not actually constants:

>>> setattr(builtins, 'Ellipsis', 67)
>>> Ellipsis
67

this doesn't change the value of ... though:

>>> ...
Ellipsis

so in some sense, ... is a real constant, but Ellipsis isn't. weird, right?