Python - List

List is the basic Container type in Python. A List in Python is a Ordered list of Objects. These objects can be numbers, Strings and so on. List is a Sequence of Data and list is a structure which can be changed.

One important thing is those python lists are mutable objects that can be changed in place.

Some of the features of List in Python are –

Ordered Collection – The List can hold other types of objects thus helping them to be managed as a group. Python list are a sequence which means they maintain a left to right positional ordering just like we saw in strings.

Objects can be accessed by indexing

List in Python are mutable object thus allowing things to be changed in place

Creating a List – A List in Python can be created by

b = ['abc', 123, ['def', 456], {}]

See a List can contain different types of objects like string , number and also other Container types like Tuple or Set etc.

In order to create a Empty List, we use

>>> a = []

>>> print a

[]

>>> b = list()

>>> print b

[]

List() is a function available in Python by which we can create a List or by using “[]”

We can use the list() function available and can be used as

>>> list('Mississippi')

['M', 'i', 's', 's', 'i', 's', 's', 'i', 'p', 'p', 'i']

Iteration – Iterating through the Python list can be done as,

>>> a = [1, 2, 3]

>>> for var in a:

...   print(var)

...

1

2

3

Concatenating – Python provides Concatenating feature for List. We can do a Concatenation in Python using

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

>>> b = [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

>>> a + b

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Repetition – We can use multiplication Operator if we want to do a repetition of List as

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

>>> a * 2

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Indexing – Indexing allows to access the List objects by index as,

>>> a = ['List', 12345, [123, 456]]

>>> a[1]

12345

We can use a negative value if we want to access the List from last, like

>>> a = ['List', 12345, [123, 456]]

>>> a[-1]

[123, 456]

Length – The Length of the List can be obtained using len() funcation as,

>>> len([1,2,3,4,5])

5

There are 2 important functions for List and they are extend and append

append: Appends object at end

extend: extends list by appending elements to the existing ones

x = [1, 2, 3]

x.append([4, 5])

x.append([4,5])

print (x) -  

append - [1, 2, 3, [4, 5]]

extend – [1,2,3,4,5]

Deletion – A Element in the list can be deleted as

list1 = ['physics', 'chemistry', 1997, 2000];

del list1[2];

Now the element 2 from the List1 will be deleted.

Slice - A slice extracts elements, based on a start and stop. in Slicing we specify an optional first index, an optional last index, and an optional step. When we omit a value, a default is used. The Syntax for the slicing includes,

values[1:3]  Index 1 through index 3.

values[2:-1] Index 2 through index one from last.

values[:2]   Start through index 2.

values[2:]   Index 2 through end.

values[::2]  Start through end, skipping ahead 2 places each time.

A Example of List Slicing is,

>>> numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

>>> print numbers[3:6]

[4, 5, 6]

>>> print numbers[0:1]

[1]

>>> print numbers[7:10]

[8, 9, 10]

>>> print numbers[-3:-1]

[8, 9]

>>> print numbers[-3:]

[8, 9, 10]

>>> print numbers[:3]

[1, 2, 3]

>>> print numbers[:]

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Nested List – Python Supports Nested Lists as

>>> q =[2,3]

>>> p =[1,q,4]

>>> print len(q)

2

>>> print p[1]

[2, 3]

>>> print p[1][0]

2

Reversing - Reversing is fast, so temporarily reversing the list can often speed things up if you need to remove and insert a bunch of items at the beginning of the list:  list.reverse()

Some more important methods in Python are,

list.append(object)

 list.count(object)

 list.extend(sequence)

 list.index(object)

list.pop([index])

 list.remove(object)