CSCI2040:

Lists and Tuples

Yim-Pan CHUI
Computer Science & Engineering Department
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 1

Strings
• Text is most common form of data in our daily life
• In Python, they are stored as a sequence of characters internally
• The length of a string can be varied during program execution
• Use single quote 'or double quote " to delimit

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 2

 Strings
• Enclosed either by single quote 'or double quote "

• >>> 'doesn\'t' Use \ to tell not delimit

"doesn't" character, \ is called escape
>>> "doesn't" char
"doesn't"
>>> '"Yes," \nhe said.' \n move the cursor to next
'"Yes," \nhe said.' line, a.k.a newline character
>>> print ('"Yes," \nhe said.')
"Yes,"
he said. Another way to print " when
>>> "\"Yes,\" he said." delimit is also "
'"Yes," he said.'
>>> '"Isn\'t," she said.'
'"Isn\'t," she said.'
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 3
 Strings
• Concatenated or repeated with + and * respectively

>>> word = 'CUHK'+ 'super'

>>> word
'CUHKsuper'
>>> '['+word*3 + ']'
'[CUHKsuperCUHKsuperCUHKsuper]'

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 4

 Strings
• Access can be in subscripted notation
>>> word[2]
'H'

• substrings can be specified with the slice notation

>>> word[0:2]
'CU'
>>> word[:2]
'CU'
>>> word[1:]
'UHKsuper'

• For non-negative indices, the length of a slice is the difference of the indices,
if both are within bounds

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 5

 Strings
• Immutable – can't be modified once created
>>> word[0] = 2
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#14>", line 1, in <module>
word[0] = 2
TypeError: 'str'object does not support item assignment

• But we can create a new string in this case

>>> word[0:3]+ " course"
'CUH course'
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 6
 Splitting Strings
• useful to break a string into, say words
• takes one argument, the character that separates the parts of the string
1 message = "CSCI2040 is really boring !!!, really very boring."
2 words = message.split(' ') # split uses ' '(or space) as separator
3 print(words)
4
5 words = message.split('really') # split uses 'really'as separator
6 print(words)
7
8
['CSCI2040', 'is', 'really', 'boring', '!!!,', 'really', 'very', 'boring.']
['CSCI2040 is ', ' boring !!!, ', ' very boring.']
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 7
 String functions
Note the use of '.'to call the string function
• Operation Description
s.capitalize() capitalize the first character of s
s.count(sub) count number of occurrence of sub in s
s.find(sub) find first index of sub in s, or -1 if not found
s.index(sub) find first index of sub in s, or raise a ValueError if not found
s.rfind(sub) find last index of sub in s, or -1 if not found
s.rindex(sub) find last index of sub in s, or raise a ValueError if not found
s.lower() convert s to lowercase
s.split() return a list of words in s
s.join(lst) join a list of words into a single string with s as separator
s.strip() strips leading/trailing white space from s
s.upper() convert s to upper case
s.replace(old,new) replace all instances of old with new in string
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 8
What is a list?
List
• A list is a collection of things!
Like a cabinet
containing many
Ordinary drawers.
Variable
Each drawer stores one
Like a box for storing one value.
value
We can refer to each
drawer as 1st drawer, 2nd
drawer, 3rd drawer, etc.

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 9

Lists
• A compound data types that group a number of comma separated
values
>>> squares = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

• Access to individual entry is possible through index

>>> squares[1]
4

• Note that index of list start from 0

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 10

 Lists
• Data type of list entries can be of different
>>> squares[1] = 'Hello'
>>> squares
[1, 'Hello', 9, 16, 25]

• Can index backward, -1 means the last item

>>> squares[-1]
25
>>> squares[-4] = 4
>>> squares
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 11

Lists
• Also support slicing operation
• >>> squares[-3:]
[9, 16, 25]

• >>> squares[:3]
[1, 4, 9]
• >>> squares[:]
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 12

Lists
• Support concatenation
>>> squares = squares + [36, 49, 64, 81, 100]
>>> squares
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]

• Can also add entry through built-in methods

>>> squares.append(121)
>>> squares[10]
121

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 13

Lists
• Changes to slice is also possible
>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']
>>> letters[2:5] = ['C', 'D', 'E']
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'f', 'g']

• Removing slice
>>> letters[2:5]=[]
>>> letters
['a', 'b', 'f', 'g']

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 14

Lists
• Sometimes we may want to know how many entries are there in a list
• Built-in function len() can help

>>> letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']

>>> len(letters)
7

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 15

 for statement
• Iterate over items in a sequence i.e. lists
• Best suit operating on list

1 a = ['HKU', 'CUHK', 'UST']

2 for x in a:
3 print (x, len(x))
4 HKU 3
5 CUHK 4
6 UST 3
7
8
9
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 16
 for statement
• range() function to help iterate over number sequence similar to while
• Note it start from 0

1 for i in range(5):
2 print (i)
3
4 Output
5 0
6 1
7 2
8 3
9 4
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 17
 for statement
• range() function combine with len() can iterate over elements in a list
• We retrieve the item through their index here

1 a = ['Mary', 'had', 'a', 'little', 'lamb']

2 for i in (range(len(a))):
3 print (i, a[i])
4 Output
5 0 Mary
6 1 had
7 2 a
8 3 little
9 4 lamb
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 18
 More about range()
• You can have more precise control over range()
• range(initial, final, step)

• range(5, 10)
5, 6, 7, 8, 9

• range(0, 10, 3)
0, 3, 6, 9

• range(-10, -100, -30)

-10, -40, -70

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 19

Lists
• we can't use a number larger (or less than) the dimension of the list

cse_teachers = ['John C.S. Lui', 'Patrick P.C. Lee', 'James Cheng', 'Wei Meng']
print ("first element in the list is =", cse_teachers[6])
#print ("first element in the list is =", cse_teachers[-7])

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/COURSE/2040/list1.py", line 5, in <module>
print ("first element in the list is =", cse_teachers[6])
IndexError: list index out of range

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 20

 Enumerating a list
cse_teachers = ['john c. s. lui', 'patrick p. c. lee', 'james cheng', 'wei Meng']
print ("------- use enumerate -----------")
for index, teacher in enumerate(cse_teachers):
position = str(index)
print("Position: " + position + " Teacher: " + teacher.title())
print ("------- use list.index(value) -----------")
for teacher in cse_teachers:
print("Position:", cse_teachers.index(teacher), "Teacher: " + teacher)

------- use enumerate -----------

Position: 0 Teacher: John C. S. Lui
Position: 1 Teacher: Patrick P. C. Lee
Position: 2 Teacher: James Cheng
Position: 3 Teacher: Wei Meng
------- use list.index(value) -----------
Position: 0 Teacher: john c. s. lui
Position: 1 Teacher: patrick p. c. lee
Position: 2 Teacher: james cheng
Position: 3 Teacher: wei Meng CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 21
 Testing for item membership
cse_teachers = ['john c. s. lui', 'patrick p. c. lee', 'y.p.chui', 's.h.or']

print ("Is 'john c. s. lui'in the list?", 'john c. s. lui'in cse_teachers)

print ("Is 'John C. S. Lui'in the list?", 'John C. S. Lui'in cse_teachers)

Is 'john c. s. lui'in the list? True

Is 'John C. S. Lui'in the list? False

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 22

List Operations
Operation Description
s.append(x) appends element x to s
s.extend(ls) appends list s with ls
s.count(x) count number of occurrence of x in s
s.index(x) return index of first occurrence of x
s.pop() return and remove last element from s
s.pop(i) return and remove element i from s
s.remove(x) search for x and remove it from s
s.reverse() reverse element of s in place
s.sort() sort elements of s into ascending order
s.insert(i, x) inserts x at location i

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 23

Tuples
• Similar to list, but form using parenthesis
• Immutable, major difference compare with list
• Non-mutable operations in list can apply to tuple

>>> tup = (1,7,3,1,7,3)

>>> 3 in tup
True
>>> list(tup)
[1, 7, 3, 1, 7, 3]
>>> tuple(['a', 'b', 'c'])
('a', 'b', 'c')
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 24
Tuples
• Comma operator implicitly creates a tuple
>>> 'a','b','c'
('a', 'b', 'c')

• Application in function returning more than 1 result

def minAndMax( info ):

return (min(info), max(info))
>>> x, y = minAndMax( 'abcd')
>>> x
'a'
>>> y
'd'
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 25
What good list & strings brings?
• Consider the following problem:
Write a program to check whether an input string is a strong password,
which has to contain…

1. lower case letters,

2. upper case letters,
3. digits,
4. special characters, and
5. the length has to be no shorter than 12.

• We would do this by testing one by one

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 26
What good list & strings brings?
• In C language, we would proceed to test the ASCII code of input string
character by character

• char pw[100];
int cnt=0;
Need to think of character, loop ,
character function
scanf("%s", pw); Many low level thinking
for (i=0; i<strlen(pw); i++)
if (islower(pw[i]) cnt++;
if (cnt<=0) printf("No lower case ");

CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 27

What good list & strings brings?
• In Python, the thinking is different

password=input("Enter your password: ")

has_lowercase = False
lowercase='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
for c in password:
has_lowercase = has_lowercase or (c in lowercase)
if not has_lowercase:
print('No lowercase ')
CSCI2040 Introduction to Python 28