Python Lists

The intentions of this article is to host a set of example operations that can be performed around lists, a crucial data structure in Python.

Lists

In Python, List is an object that contains a sequence of other arbitrary objects. Lists unlike tuples are mutable objects.

Defining a list

Lists are defined by enclosing a sequence of objects inside square brackets, “[” and “]”. A list can contain sequence of mixed data types.

>>> # empty list
...
>>> a = []
>>>
>>> type(a)
<class 'list'>
>>>
>>> # list containing same data types
...
>>>
>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16]
>>>
>>> type(a)
<class 'list'>
>>>
>>> # list containing different data types
...
>>> a = [1, "python", 7.4, True]
>>>
>>> type(a)
<class 'list'>
>>>

A list can be nested

>>> # nested list
...
>>> a = [[1, 4, 9], ["thetaranights.com", "blog", "python"]]
>>> type(a)
<class 'list'>
>>>
>>>
>>> a = [[1, 4, 9], "thetaranights.com"]
>>>
>>> type(a)
<class 'list'>
>>>

Accessing elements from a list via index

List index is used to access elements of a list. List index starts from 0 and should be an integer.

>>> a = [[1, 4, 9], ["thetaranights.com", "blog", "python"]]
>>> a[0]
[1, 4, 9]
>>> a[0][2]
9
>>> a[1][0]
'thetaranights.com'
>>>

Negative Indexing

Python allows accessing elements from a list via negative indexes such that the last element would be accessed via list_name[-1] and second last element would be accessed via list_name[-2]

>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16]
>>> a[-1]
16
>>> a[-2]
9
>>> a[-3]
4
>>>

Slicing

>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>> a[1:3]
[4, 9]
>>> a[:4]
[1, 4, 9, 16]
>>> a[3:]
[16, 25]
>>> a[:-1]
[1, 4, 9, 16]
>>>

Lists are mutable

>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>>
>>> a [0] = "mutable"
>>> a
['mutable', 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>>
>>> a[:2] = [256, 1024] # changing a range of elements of a list to the sequence given in the right of assignment operator
>>> a
[256, 1024, 9, 16, 25]
>>>

Adding elements to an existing list

>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>> a.append(36)
>>> a
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36]
>>>

Extending a list with another sequence

>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16]
>>> a.extend([25, 36, 49])
>>> a
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49]
>>> a.extend((64, 91))
>>> a
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 91]
>>>

Concatenation and Multiplication

>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16]
>>> a + [25, 36, 49]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49]
>>>

>>> # multiplication
...
>>> a * 7
[1, 4, 9, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16, 1, 4, 9, 16]
>>>

Add items to a list before certain index

>>> # first item to the insert() is the index and the later is the value to insert
...
>>> a = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
>>> a.insert(2, "new value")
>>> a
[1, 4, 'new value', 9, 16, 25]
>>>

Various other methods on a list

List built-ins

List Comprehension

One of the major features of python is list comprehension. It is a natural way of creating a new list where each element is the result of some operations applied to each member of another sequence of an iterable. The construct of a list comprehension is such that it consists of square brackets containing an expression followed by a for clause then by zero or more for or if clause. List comprehensions always returns a list.

>>> [x ** 2 for x in range(1, 11)]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]
>>>

In a rather real usage scenarios, the expression after the bracket ‘[‘ is a call to a method/function.

some_list = [function_name(x) for x in some_iterable]