What does the underscore mean in python
Question: Hi everyone as it obvious from my question I am like a brand new to python. I
am so confused when I am reading the documentation on python or even here in
the Stackoverflow forum...

Why do they write like that

    
    
    from __future__ import division
    

What does the underscore around the Future word mean ?? And Are we supposed to
use it like that with the underscore in the python interpreter ? This is just
one of tons of examples. Any help would be greatly appericated.


Answer: According to [PEP 236](http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0236/) where this
module was proposed, the double underscores make it a reserved name.

    
    
    [5] This ensures that a future_statement run under a release prior to
        the first one in which a given feature is known (but >= 2.1) will
        raise a compile-time error rather than silently do a wrong thing.
        If transported to a release prior to 2.1, a runtime error will be
        raised because of the failure to import __future__ (no such module
        existed in the standard distribution before the 2.1 release, and
        the double underscores make it a reserved name).
    

