How to Use the pass Statement in Python

Muhammad Waiz Khan Feb 02, 2024

Python Python Keyword

This tutorial will explain the details and use of the pass statement in Python. In almost every high-level programming language, various statements are used for different purposes. Programming languages like C, C++, JAVA, C#, and Python use statements like if ... else, return, break statement, etc., and all these statements are used for different purposes.

However, the pass statement is a Python-specific statement used as a placeholder when the user wants the program to do nothing.

Use the `pass` Statement in Python

The pass statement is used in Python when some code is required syntactically, but the user does not want the program to do anything. There can be different reasons behind it; one can be that the user plans to add the code later, or it can be used to ignore some exceptions raised during the run time.

The below example code demonstrates how to use the pass statement in case where user wants to add the code later:

def myfunc(x):

    if x > 0:
        print("Input is greater than zero")
    else:
        # add code here
        pass

If the pass statement was not added in the above code example, the compiler would have returned SyntaxError or IdentationError.

We can also use the pass statement to ignore an exception in Python as demonstrated in the example code provided below:

def divide(x, y):
    z = None
    try:
        z = x / y
    except:
        pass
    return z


divide(6, 0)

In the above example code, we have used the pass statement along try and except statements to handle the ZeroDivisionError and prevent the code from crashing.

Use the pass Statement in Python

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Use the `pass` Statement in Python