Why does Pylint object to single-character variable names?

Solution 1:

A little more detail on what gurney alex noted: you can tell Pylint to make exceptions for variable names which (you pinky swear) are perfectly clear even though less than three characters. Find in or add to your pylintrc file, under the [FORMAT] header:

# Good variable names which should always be accepted, separated by a comma
good-names=i,j,k,ex,Run,_,pk,x,y

Here pk (for the primary key), x, and y are variable names I've added.

Solution 2:

Pylint checks not only PEP8 recommendations. It has also its own recommendations, one of which is that a variable name should be descriptive and not too short.

You can use this to avoid such short names:

my_list.extend(x_values)

Or tweak Pylint's configuration to tell Pylint what variable name are good.