Data Structures

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 Data Structure: Sequence
A data structure is a group of data elements that are put together under one name. Data structure defines a
particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently.
Sequence is the most basic data structure in Python. In sequence, each element has a specific index. This
index value starts from zero and is automatically incremented for the next element. In Python, sequence is
the generic term for an ordered set. For example, we have already studied strings which are a sequence of
characters.
Python has some basic built-in functions that help programmers to manipulate elements that form a part
of a sequence.These functions include finding the length of a sequence, finding the largest and smallest
elements in a sequence, etc. Other operations that can be performed on a sequence include indexing, slicing,
adding, multiplying, and checking for membership.

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 Lists
List is a versatile data type available in Python. It is a sequence in which elements are written as a list of
comma-separated values (items) between square brackets. The key feature of a list is that it can have
elements that belong to different data types.The syntax of defining a list can be given as,
List_variable = [val1, val2,...]

Examples:

List is mutable which means that value of its elements can be changed
 Access Values in Lists

Similar to strings, lists can also be sliced and concatenated. To access values in lists, square brackets are used
to slice along with the index or indices to get value stored at that index. The syntax for the slice operation is
given as, seq = List[start:stop:step]
Example:

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 Updating Values in Lists
Once created, one or more elements of a list can be easily updated by giving the slice on the left-hand side of
the assignment operator. You can also append new values in the list and remove existing value(s) from the list
using the append() method and del statement respectively.
Example:

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 Nested Lists
Nested list means a list within another list. We have already said that a list has elements of different data
types which can include even a list.

Example: to access second element of the nested list, we

will write:
Print(list[3][1])

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 Cloning Lists
If you want to modify a list and also keep a copy of the original list, then you should create a separate copy
of the list.This process is called cloning.The slice operation is used to clone a list.

Example: list1=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
list2=list1
print("list1 is:", list1)
print("list2 is:", list2)
list2=list1[2:6]
print("list2 after operation is :", list2)

Output:

list1 is: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

list2 is: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
list2 after operation is : [3, 4, 5, 6] 7
Basic List Operations

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List Methods

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 Using Lists as Stack
Stack is an important data structure which stores its elements in an ordered manner. Stack is a linear data
structure which uses the same principle, i.e., the elements in a stack are added and removed only from one
end. Hence, a stack is called a LIFO (Last-In-First-Out) data structure, as the element that was inserted last is
the first one to be taken out.

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In other words, it can be said that, whenever a function calls another function, the calling function is
pushed onto the top of the stack. This is because after the called function gets executed, the control is
passed back to the calling function.

A stack supports three basic operations: push, pop and peep(peek):

Push operation adds an element at the end of the stack

Pop operation removes the last element from the stack

Peep operation returns the value of the last element of the stack(without deleting it)

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Using Lists as Stack

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 Using Lists as Queues
Queue is an important data structure which stores its elements in an ordered manner. In computer systems,
the operating system makes full use of queues for the following tasks.
• To maintain waiting lists for a single shared resource like printer, disk, CPU, etc.
• To transfer data asynchronously (data not necessarily received at same rate as sent) between two processes
(IO buffers), e.g., pipes, file IO, and sockets.
• Handling interrupts.
• Queues are also used in the playlist of jukebox to add songs to the end and play from the front of the list.
Queue supports three basic operations—insert, delete, and peep (or peek). In Python, you can easily
implement a queue by using the append() method to insert an element at the end of the queue, pop()
method with an index 0 to delete the first element from the queue, and slice operation to print the value of
the last the element in the queue. 13
 Using Lists as Queues
Example:

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 Looping in Lists
Python's for and in constructs are extremely useful especially when working with lists. The for var in list
statement is an easy way to access each element in a list (or any other sequence). For example, in the
following code, the for loop is used to access each item in the list.
for i in list: Example:
print(i)

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 Using the enumerate() and range() Functions
enumerate() function is used when you want to print both index as well as an item in the list. The function
returns an enumerate object which contains the index and value of all the items of the list as a tuple.
The range() function is used when you need to print index.

Examples:

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 Functional Programming
Functional programming decomposes a problem into a set of functions. The map(), filter(), reduce() functions
are explicitly utilized for the same.

The filter() function constructs a list from those elements of the list for which a function returns True.The
syntax of the filter() function is given as, filter(function, sequence)
As per the syntax, the filter() function returns a sequence that contains items from the sequence for which the
function is True.

Example:

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 map() Function
The map() function applies a particular function to every element of a list. Its syntax is same as the filter
function

After applying the specified function on the sequence, the map() function returns the modified list.The map()
function calls function(item) for each item in the sequence and returns a list of the return values.
Example: Program that adds 2 to every value in the list

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 reduce() Function
The reduce() function with syntax as given below returns a single value generated by calling the function
on the first two items of the sequence, then on the result and the next item, and so on.

Example: Program to calculate the sum of values in a list using the reduce() function

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 Tuple
Like lists, tuple is another data structure supported by Python. It is very similar to lists but differs in two
things.
• First, a tuple is a sequence of immutable objects. This means that while you can change the value of one or
more items in a list, you cannot change the values in a tuple.
• Second, tuples use parentheses to define its elements whereas lists use square brackets.
Creating Tuple
Creating a tuple is very simple and almost similar to creating a list. For creating a tuple, generally you need
to just put the different comma-separated values within a parentheses as shown below.
Tup1 = (val 1, val 2,...)
where val (or values) can be an integer, a floating number, a character, or a string.
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 Utility of Tuples

In real-world applications, tuples are extremely useful for representing records or structures as we call
in other programming languages.These structures store related information about a subject together.
The information belongs to different data types.

For example, a tuple that stores information about a student can have elements like roll_no, name, course,
total marks, avg, etc. Some built-in functions return a tuple. For example, the divmod() function returns two
values—quotient as well as the remainder after performing the divide operation.

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 Accessing Values and updating in a Tuple
Like other sequences (strings and lists) covered so far, indices in a tuple also starts at 0.You can even perform
operations like slice, concatenate, etc. on a tuple. For example, to access values in tuple, slice operation is
used along with the index or indices to obtain value stored at that index

Example:

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 Deleting Elements in Tuple
Since tuple is an immutable data structure, you cannot delete value(s) from it. Of course, you can create a
new tuple that has all elements in your tuple except the ones you don't want (those you wanted to be
deleted).

Examples:

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Basic Tuple Operations

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 Tuple Assignment
Tuple assignment is a very powerful feature in Python. It allows a tuple of variables on the left side of the
assignment operator to be assigned values from a tuple given on the right side of the assignment operator.
Each value is assigned to its respective variable. In case, an expression is specified on the right side of the
assignment operator, first that expression is evaluated and then assignment is done.

Example:

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 Tuples for Returning Multiple Values and Nested Tuples
Examples:

Unlike lists, tuples do not support remove(), pop(), append(), sort(), reverse() and insert() methods.

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 Checking the Index: index() method
The index of an element in the tuple can be obtained by using the index() method. If the element being
searched is not present in the list, then error is generated. The syntax of index() is given as, list.index(obj)
where, obj is the object to be found out.

Examples:

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 count()Method

Examples:

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 Variable-length Argument Tuples
Many built-in functions like max(), min(), sum(), etc. use variable-length arguments since these functions
themselves do not know how many arguments will be passed to them. It allows a function to accept a variable
(different) number of arguments. This is especially useful in defining functions that are applicable to a large
variety of arguments. For example, if you have a function that displays all the parameters passed to it, then
even the function does not know how many values it will be passed. In such cases, we use a variable-length
argument that begins with a '*' symbol. Any argument that starts with a '*' symbol is known as gather and
specifies a variable-length argument.
Example:

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 The zip() Function

The zip() is a built-in function that takes two or more sequences and "zips" them into a list of tuples.The
tuple thus, formed has one element from each sequence.

Example: Program to show the use of zip() function

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 Advantages of Tuple over List

• Tuples are used to store values of different data types. Lists can however, store data of similar data types.
• Since tuples are immutable, iterating through tuples is faster than iterating over a list.This means that a
tuple performs better than a list.
• Tuples can be used as key for a dictionary but lists cannot be used as keys.
• Tuples are best suited for storing data that is write-protected.
• Tuples can be used in place of lists where the number of values is known and small.
• If you are passing a tuple as an argument to a function, then the potential for unexpected behavior due to
aliasing gets reduced.
• Multiple values from a function can be returned using a tuple.
• Tuples are used to format strings.
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 Sets

Sets is another data structure supported by Python. Basically, sets are same as lists but with a difference that
sets are lists with no duplicate entries.Technically, a set is a mutable and an unordered collection of items.This
means that we can easily add or remove items from it.
A set is created by placing all the elements inside curly brackets {}, separated by comma or by using the
built-in function set().The syntax of creating a set can be given as,

Example: To create a set, you can write,

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Set Operations

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Set Operations

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Set Operations

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Set Operations

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 Dictionaries
Dictionary is a data structure in which we store values as a pair of key and value. Each key is separated from its
value by a colon (:), and consecutive items are separated by commas.The entire items in a dictionary are
enclosed in curly brackets({}).The syntax for defining a dictionary is
dictionary_name = {key_1: value_1, key_2: value_2, key_3: value_3}
Keys in the dictionary must be unique
and of any immutable data type
(strings,numbers,tuples), but there is
no stringent requirement for
uniqueness and type of values.

Dictionary are not sequences, rather

they are mappings.

Mappings are collections of objects

that store objects by key instead
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relative position
 Accessing Values

Example:

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 Adding and Modifying an Item in a Dictionary

Example:

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 Modifying an Entry
Example:

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 Deleting Items
You can delete one or more items using the del keyword. To delete or remove all the items in just one
statement, use the clear() function. Finally, to remove an entire dictionary from the memory, we can gain
use the del statement as del Dict_name.The syntax to use the del statement can be given as,
del dictionary_variable[key]
Example:

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 Sorting Items and Looping over Items in a Dictinonary
Examples:

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 Nested Dictionaries

Example:

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Built-in Dictionary Functions and Methods

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Built-in Dictionary Functions and Methods

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Built-in Dictionary Functions and Methods

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 Difference between a List and a Dictionary
First, a list is an ordered set of items. But, a dictionary is a data structure that is used for matching one item
(key) with another (value).
• Second, in lists, you can use indexing to access a particular item. But, these indexes should be a number. In
dictionaries, you can use any type (immutable) of value as an index. For example, when we write Dict['Name'],
Name acts as an index but it is not a number but a string.
• Third, lists are used to look up a value whereas a dictionary is used to take one value and look up another
value. For this reason, dictionary is also known as a lookup table.
Fourth, the key-value pair may not be displayed in the order in which it was specified while defining the
dictionary. This is because Python uses complex algorithms (called hashing) to provide fast access to the items
stored in the dictionary.This also makes dictionary preferable to use over a list of tuples.
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 When to use which Data Structure?
• Use lists to store a collection of data that does not need random access.
• Use lists if the data has to be modified frequently.
• Use a set if you want to ensure that every element in the data structure must be unique.
• Use tuples when you want that your data should not be altered.

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