https://realpython.com/null-in-python/

Table of Contents

If you have experience with other programming languages, like C or Java, then you’ve probably heard of the concept of null. Many languages use this to represent a pointer that doesn’t point to anything, to denote when a variable is empty, or to mark default parameters that you haven’t yet supplied. null is often defined to be 0 in those languages, but null in Python is different.

Python uses the keyword None to define null objects and variables. While None does serve some of the same purposes as null in other languages, it’s another beast entirely. As the null in Python, None is not defined to be 0 or any other value. In Python, None is an object and a first-class citizen!

In this tutorial, you’ll learn:

• What None is and how to test for it
• When and why to use None as a default parameter
• What None and NoneType mean in your traceback
• How to use None in type checking
• How null in Python works under the hood

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Understanding Null in Python

None is the value a function returns when there is no return statement in the function:

>>> def has_no_return():
...     pass
>>> has_no_return()
>>> print(has_no_return())
None

When you call has_no_return(), there’s no output for you to see. When you print a call to it, however, you’ll see the hidden None it returns.

In fact, None so frequently appears as a return value that the Python REPL won’t print None unless you explicitly tell it to:

>>> None
>>> print(None)
None

None by itself has no output, but printing it displays None to the console.