Fix Python – Why does Pylint object to single-character variable names?

Question 1

I’m still getting used to Python conventions and using Pylint to make my code more Pythonic, but I’m puzzled by the fact that Pylint doesn’t like single character variable names. I have a few loops like this:

for x in x_values:
   my_list.append(x)

and when I run pylint, I’m getting Invalid name "x" for type variable (should match [a-z_][a-z0-9_]{2,30} — that suggests that a valid variable name must be between 3 and 31 characters long, but I’ve looked through the PEP8 naming conventions and I don’t see anything explicit regarding single lower case letters, and I do see a lot of examples that use them.

Is there something I’m missing in PEP8 or is this a standard that is unique to Pylint?

Question 2

Pylint checks not only PEP8 recommendations. It has also its own recommendations, one of which is that a variable name should be descriptive and not too short.

You can use this to avoid such short names:

my_list.extend(x_values)

Or tweak Pylint’s configuration to tell Pylint what variable name are good.

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