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Collections in python
Lists – mutable (can change), ordered collection
o Defined using square brackets and commas
o E.g.: ages=[21, 24, 40]
o Index starts with 0 not 1.
o Print(age[2])
40
o Heterogenous – can include numbers, string, etc
o Strings are really lists of characters
o Slicing
o Append, extend
o Del fruit = no variable
o Fruit.clear = no entries in variable
o Multidimensional lists (lists of lists / nested lists). Useful to store matrices
o List comprehensions
Tuples are immutable (cannot change)
Sets.
o Set of green, blue, red is the same as the set red, blue, green
o Do not contain duplicates.
o If you put a list in a set, duplicates are removed
o Unordered list. So e.g. for a genome you need to use a list because you need
it in order
Dictionaries
o Data structure which has a key and a value
o Very fast to read and write
o Use curly brackets
o Example:
If you have a list with names. The fastest would be the 1st on list and slowest would be the
last on list. Average time is n/2.
If you use a function e.g. number of letters in each name – you can create buckets. When
you search for a record, instead of going linearly, you will use function of what you’re
searching and you go directly to that bucket.
In a list you only have 1 best case. If there are 6 buckets, there are 6 best cases.
This is called a hash function. You want many shallow buckets. It has to be deterministic –
same input always gets the same output. Average time is log n
