5.1.
More on Lists
The list data type has some more methods. Here are all of the methods of list objects:
list.append(x)
Add an item to the end of the list. Equivalent to a[len(a):] = [x].
list.extend(iterable)
Extend the list by appending all the items from the iterable. Equivalent to a[len(a):] = iterable.
list.insert(i, x)
Insert an item at a given position. The first argument is the index of the element before which to
insert, so a.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and a.insert(len(a), x) is equivalent to
a.append(x).
list.remove(x)
Remove the first item from the list whose value is equal to x. It raises a ValueError if there is no
such item.
list.pop([i])
Remove the item at the given position in the list, and return it. If no index is specified, a.pop()
removes and returns the last item in the list. It raises an IndexError if the list is empty or the index
is outside the list range.
list.clear()
Remove all items from the list. Equivalent to del a[:].
list.index(x[, start[, end]])
Return zero-based index in the list of the first item whose value is equal to x. Raises a ValueError if
there is no such item.
The optional arguments start and end are interpreted as in the slice notation and are used to limit
the search to a particular subsequence of the list. The returned index is computed relative to the
beginning of the full sequence rather than the start argument.
list.count(x)
Return the number of times x appears in the list.
list.sort(*, key=None, reverse=False)
Sort the items of the list in place (the arguments can be used for sort customization, see sorted() for
their explanation).
list.reverse()
Reverse the elements of the list in place.
list.copy()
Return a shallow copy of the list. Equivalent to a[:].
An example that uses most of the list methods:
>>>
fruits = ['orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'banana', 'kiwi', 'apple', 'banana']
fruits.count('apple')
2
fruits.count('tangerine')
0
fruits.index('banana')
3
fruits.index('banana', 4) # Find next banana starting at position 4
6
fruits.reverse()
fruits
['banana', 'apple', 'kiwi', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange']
fruits.append('grape')
fruits
['banana', 'apple', 'kiwi', 'banana', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange', 'grape']
fruits.sort()
fruits
['apple', 'apple', 'banana', 'banana', 'grape', 'kiwi', 'orange', 'pear']
fruits.pop()
'pear'
You might have noticed that methods like insert, remove or sort that only modify the list have no
return value printed – they return the default None. [1] This is a design principle for all mutable
data structures in Python.
Another thing you might notice is that not all data can be sorted or compared. For instance, [None,
'hello', 10] doesn’t sort because integers can’t be compared to strings and None can’t be compared
to other types. Also, there are some types that don’t have a defined ordering relation. For example,
3+4j < 5+7j isn’t a valid comparison.
