What does a semicolon do?

Question

I got a function online to help me with my current project and it had semicolons on some of the lines. I was wondering why? Is it to break the function?

def containsAny(self, strings=[]):     alphabet = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789'     for string in strings:         for char in string:             if char in alphabet: return 1;     return 0; 

The function I got online with little modification:

for string in strings:     for char in string:         if char in alphabet: return 1; 

Is the above saying the following?

if char in alphabet:     return 1     break 

Answer 1

The semicolon does nothing in the code you show.

I suspect this is someone who programs in another language (C, Java, ...) that requires semicolons at the end of statements and it's just a habit (happens to me sometimes too).

If you want to put several Python statements on the same line, you can use a semi-colon to separate them, see this Python Doc:

A suite is a group of statements controlled by a clause. A suite can be one or more semicolon-separated simple statements on the same line as the header, following the header’s colon, or it can be one or more indented statements on subsequent lines

Answer 2

The semicolon here does not do anything. People who come from C/C++/Java/(many other language) backgrounds tend to use the semicolon out of habit.