Certain functions being assigned to variables

Question

Why are some functions like so
my_file = open(“my.file”,”r”)
assigned to variables? I thought about this when looking at the Pygame module, as it has a certain function to create a surface that was put in an example like this:
Win = pygame.display.set_mode((500,500))
I don’t know why I brought that up, but you hopefully get what I mean.

Answer 1

Because they return a value. Then you can assign the returned value to a variable-in other languages- of the same type.

Answer 2

so what would be the value of the first example? The contents of the file?

Answer 3

You should check what open() returns and what functionality is available to that object.

Answer 4

so it is the contents of the file

Answer 5

But it is not just an string. Its an object with some methods contained within, so that you can do things with it.

Answer 6

ohh ok, thank you!