From 43ade88faba92eea9755ac66a2f26bf37900a0c8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: jbranchaud <jbranchaud@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:37:12 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Add Access Most Recent Return Value In REPL as a Python TIL

---
 README.md                                     |  3 +-
 ...access-most-recent-return-value-in-repl.md | 34 +++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 create mode 100644 python/access-most-recent-return-value-in-repl.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 3c0dee2..86130eb 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ working across different projects via [VisualMode](https://www.visualmode.dev/).
 
 For a steady stream of TILs, [sign up for my newsletter](https://visualmode.kit.com/newsletter).
 
-_1746 TILs and counting..._
+_1747 TILs and counting..._
 
 See some of the other learning resources I work on:
 
@@ -1038,6 +1038,7 @@ If you've learned something here, support my efforts writing daily TILs by
 ### Python
 
 - [Access Instance Variables](python/access-instance-variables.md)
+- [Access Most Recent Return Value In REPL](python/access-most-recent-return-value-in-repl.md)
 - [Break Debugger On First Line Of Program](python/break-debugger-on-first-line-of-program.md)
 - [Check If Package Is Installed With Pip](python/check-if-package-is-installed-with-pip.md)
 - [Create A Dummy DataFrame In Pandas](python/create-a-dummy-dataframe-in-pandas.md)
diff --git a/python/access-most-recent-return-value-in-repl.md b/python/access-most-recent-return-value-in-repl.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39f8a4c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python/access-most-recent-return-value-in-repl.md
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+# Access Most Recent Return Value In REPL
+
+One of my favorite features of Ruby's `irb` and `pry` are that you can use `_`
+to reference the most recent return value. Often as we use an interpreter or
+REPL, we end up with _intermediate_ values. That is, we've execute some kind of
+statement which returned a value and we now want to use that resulting value in
+our next statement. Python also supports `_`.
+
+Let's say I've run a statement that took a while to process, but I forgot to
+assign it to a variable. Instead of re-running the whole thing, I can create a
+variable that references the previous return value using `_`.
+
+```python
+>>> BytePairEncoding.train_bpe(long_text)
+{'merge_rules': [...], 'vocab': {...}}
+>>> result = _
+>>> list(result.keys())
+['merge_rules', 'vocab']
+```
+
+Even if I don't necessarily want to assign it a variable, it can be nice to
+reference the previous value as I continue with what I'm doing:
+
+```python
+>>> result['merge_rules'][0][1]
+256
+>>> result['vocab'][_]
+b'e '
+```
+
+Notice how the value from the first statement gets used as part of a `dict`
+access.
+
+[source](https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/introduction.html#numbers)