Single leading dash in member variable names?

[Ian Kelly]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 12:45 PM,  <e.doxtator at gmail.com> wrote:
> All
>
> Python noob here.  Trying to understand a particular syntax:
>
> class stuff:
>     def __init__(self):
>          self._bongo = "BongoWorld"
>
> -----------
>
> What is the significance of the leading underscore in "self._bongo"?  I've seen this a few times and, after looking through PEP 8, I didn't see anything relevant, but I could have missed it.

Single leading underscore is a convention indicating that the name
should be considered private and not used externally.  It's a softer
version of the double leading underscore that means basically the same
thing but has syntactic significance.