Chapter 7

Lists and Tuples

7-1
Topics (1 of 2)
• Sequences
• Introduction to Lists
• List Slicing
• Finding Items in Lists with the in Operator
• List Methods and Useful Built-in Functions

7-2
Topics (2 of 2)
• Copying Lists
• Processing Lists
• List Comprehensions
• Two-Dimensional Lists
• Tuples
• Plotting List Data with the matplotlib Package

7-3
Sequences
• Sequence: an object that contains multiple items of
data
– The items are stored in sequence one after another
• Python provides different types of sequences,
including lists and tuples
– The difference between these is that a list is mutable
and a tuple is immutable

7-4
Introduction to Lists (1 of 2)
• List: an object that contains multiple data items
– Element: An item in a list
– Format: list = [item1, item2, etc.]
– Can hold items of different types
• print function can be used to display an entire
list
• list() function can convert certain types of
objects to lists

7-5
Introduction to Lists (2 of 2)

Figure 7-1 A list of integers

Figure 7-2 A list of strings

Figure 7-3 A list holding different types

7-6
The Repetition Operator and Iterating
over a List
• Repetition operator: makes multiple copies of a list
and joins them together
– The * symbol is a repetition operator when applied to a
sequence and an integer
§ Sequence is left operand, number is right
– General format: list * n
• You can iterate over a list using a for loop
– Format: for x in list:

7-7
Indexing
• Index: a number specifying the position of an element
in a list
– Enables access to individual element in list
– Index of first element in the list is 0, second element is
1, and n’th element is n-1
– Negative indexes identify positions relative to the end
of the list
§ The index -1 identifies the last element, -2 identifies the
next to last element, etc.

7-8
The len function
• An IndexError exception is raised if an invalid index
is used
• len function: returns the length of a sequence such
as a list
– Example: size = len(my_list)
– Returns the number of elements in the list, so the index
of last element is len(list)-1
– Can be used to prevent an IndexError exception
when iterating over a list with a loop

7-9
Lists Are Mutable
• Mutable sequence: the items in the sequence can be
changed
– Lists are mutable, and so their elements can be
changed
• An expression such as
• list[1] = new_value can be used to assign a
new value to a list element
– Must use a valid index to prevent raising of an
IndexError exception

7 - 10
Concatenating Lists
• Concatenate: join two things together
• The + operator can be used to concatenate two lists
– Cannot concatenate a list with another data type, such
as a number
• The += augmented assignment operator can also be
used to concatenate lists

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List Slicing
• Slice: a span of items that are taken from a sequence
– List slicing format: list[start : end]
– Span is a list containing copies of elements from
start up to, but not including, end
§ If start not specified, 0 is used for start index
§ If end not specified, len(list) is used for end index
– Slicing expressions can include a step value and
negative indexes relative to end of list

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Finding Items in Lists with the in
Operator
• You can use the in operator to determine whether an
item is contained in a list
– General format: item in list
– Returns True if the item is in the list, or False if it is
not in the list
• Similarly you can use the not in operator to
determine whether an item is not in a list

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List Methods and Useful Built-in
Functions (1 of 4)
• append(item): used to add items to a list – item is
appended to the end of the existing list
• index(item): used to determine where an item is
located in a list
– Returns the index of the first element in the list
containing item
– Raises ValueError exception if item not in the list

7 - 14
List Methods and Useful Built-in
Functions (2 of 4)
• insert(index, item): used to insert item at
position index in the list
• sort(): used to sort the elements of the list in
ascending order
• remove(item): removes the first occurrence of item
in the list
• reverse(): reverses the order of the elements in the
list

7 - 15
List Methods and Useful Built-in
Functions (3 of 4)
Table 7-1 A few of the list methods

Method Description
append(item) Adds item to the end of the list.

index(item) Returns the index of the first element whose value is equal to item.
A ValueError exception is raised if item is not found in the list.
insert(index, item) Inserts item into the list at the specified index. When an item is inserted into a
list, the list is expanded in size to accommodate the new item. The item that
was previously at the specified index, and all the items after it, are shifted by
one position toward the end of the list. No exceptions will occur if you specify an
invalid index. If you specify an index beyond the end of the list, the item will be
added to the end of the list. If you use a negative index that specifies an invalid
position, the item will be inserted at the beginning of the list.
sort() Sorts the items in the list so they appear in ascending order (from the lowest
value to the highest value).
remove(item) Removes the first occurrence of item from the list. A ValueError exception
is raised if item is not found in the list.
reverse() Reverses the order of the items in the list.

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List Methods and Useful Built-in
Functions (4 of 4)
• del statement: removes an element from a specific
index in a list
– General format: del list[i]
• min and max functions: built-in functions that
returns the item that has the lowest or highest value in
a sequence
– The sequence is passed as an argument

7 - 17
Copying Lists (1 of 2)
• To make a copy of a list you must copy each element
of the list
– Two methods to do this:
§ Creating a new empty list and using a for loop to add a
copy of each element from the original list to the new list
§ Creating a new empty list and concatenating the old list
to the new empty list

7 - 18
Copying Lists (2 of 2)

Figure 7-5 list1 and list2 reference the same list

7 - 19
Processing Lists (1 of 2)
• List elements can be used in calculations
• To calculate total of numeric values in a list use loop
with accumulator variable
• To average numeric values in a list:
– Calculate total of the values
– Divide total of the values by len(list)
• List can be passed as an argument to a function

7 - 20
Processing Lists (2 of 2)
• A function can return a reference to a list
• To save the contents of a list to a file:
– Use the file object’s writelines method
§ Does not automatically write \n at then end of each item
– Use a for loop to write each element and \n
• To read data from a file use the file object’s
readlines method

7 - 21
List Comprehensions (1 of 7)
• List comprehension: a concise expression that creates
a new list by iterating over the elements of an existing
list.

7 - 22
List Comprehensions (2 of 7)
• The following code uses a for loop to make a copy of
a list:
list1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
list2 = []

for item in list1:

list2.append(item)

• The following code uses a list comprehension to make

a copy of a list:
list1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
list2 = [item for item in list1]

7 - 23
List Comprehensions (3 of 7)

• The iteration expression works like a for loop

• In this example, it iterates over the elements of list1
• Each time it iterates, the target variable item is assigned
the value of an element.
• At the end of each iteration, the value of the result
expression is appended to the new list.

7 - 24
List Comprehensions (4 of 7)

list1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
list2 = [item**2 for item in list1]

• After this code executes, list2 will contain the values

[1, 4, 9, 16]

7 - 25
List Comprehensions (5 of 7)

str_list = ['Winken', 'Blinken', 'Nod']

len_list = [len(s) for s in str_list]

• After this code executes, len_list will contain the

values [6, 7, 3]

7 - 26
List Comprehensions (6 of 7)
• You can use an if clause in a list comprehension to select
only certain elements when processing a list
list1 = [1, 12, 2, 20, 3, 15, 4]
list2 = []

for n in list1:
if n < 10:
list2.append(n)

Works the same as…

list1 = [1, 12, 2, 20, 3, 15, 4]

list2 = [item for item in list1 if item < 10]

7 - 27
List Comprehensions (7 of 7)

list1 = [1, 12, 2, 20, 3, 15, 4]

list2 = [item for item in list1 if item < 10]

• After this code executes, list2 will contain [1, 2, 3, 4]

7 - 28
Two-Dimensional Lists (1 of 3)
• Two-dimensional list: a list that contains other lists as
its elements
– Also known as nested list
– Common to think of two-dimensional lists as having
rows and columns
– Useful for working with multiple sets of data
• To process data in a two-dimensional list need to use
two indexes
• Typically use nested loops to process

7 - 29
Two-Dimensional Lists (2 of 3)

Figure 7-8 A two-dimensional list

7 - 30
Two-Dimensional Lists (3 of 3)

Figure 7-10 Subscripts for each element of the scores list

7 - 31
Tuples (1 of 3)
• Tuple: an immutable sequence
– Very similar to a list
– Once it is created it cannot be changed
– Format: tuple_name = (item1, item2)
– Tuples support operations as lists
§ Subscript indexing for retrieving elements
§ Methods such as index
§ Built in functions such as len, min, max
§ Slicing expressions
§ The in, +, and * operators

7 - 32
Tuples (2 of 3)
• Tuples do not support the methods:
– append
– remove
– insert
– reverse
– sort

7 - 33
Tuples (3 of 3)
• Advantages for using tuples over lists:
– Processing tuples is faster than processing lists
– Tuples are safe
– Some operations in Python require use of tuples
• list() function: converts tuple to list
• tuple() function: converts list to tuple

7 - 34
Summary
• This chapter covered:
– Lists, including:
§ Repetition and concatenation operators
§ Indexing
§ Techniques for processing lists
§ Slicing and copying lists
§ List methods and built-in functions for lists
§ Two-dimensional lists
– Tuples, including:
§ Immutability
§ Difference from and advantages over lists

7 - 35