Tuples

The Tuple Data Structure

• In Python, a tuple is an immutable
sequence of values

What does
immutable
mean?

Tuples are immutable which means

you cannot update or change the
values of tuple elements

www.umbc.edu
The Tuple Data Structure
• Each value in the tuple is an element or
item
• Elements can be any Python data type
– Tuples can mix data types
– Elements can be nested tuples

year_born = ("Paris Hilton", 1981)

tuple name first element: second

a string element: an
integer www.umbc.edu
Creating Tuples
• The empty tuple is written as two
parentheses containing nothing
tup1 = ()
• To cast a list as a tuple, you use tuple()
myList = [5, 15, 23]
myTuple = tuple(myList)
print(type(myTuple))
<class 'tuple'>
www.umbc.edu
Creating Tuples

numbers = (1, 2, 3, 4)
print (numbers)
(1, 2, 3, 4)

cheeses = ('swiss', 'cheddar',

'ricotta', 'gouda')
print (cheeses)
('swiss', 'cheddar', 'ricotta', 'gouda')

www.umbc.edu
 Creating Tuples

t2 = ('a',)
print (t2, type(t2))

('a',) <class 'tuple'>

Tuples with one element require a

comma

www.umbc.edu
Creating Tuples
t3 = tuple('a',)
print (t3, type(t3)) ('a',) <class 'tuple'>

empty = tuple() ()

print (empty)

www.umbc.edu
Creating Tuples
aList = [1, 2, 3, 4]
aTuple = tuple(aList) What does this
print (aTuple) output?
(1, 2, 3, 4)

aStr = 'parrot'
('p', 'a', 'r', 'r', 'o', 't')
aTuple2 = tuple(aStr)
print (aTuple2)

www.umbc.edu
Indexing and Slicing Tuples
Tuple Indexing
• Just like other sequences (strings),
elements within a tuple are indexed
cheeses = ('swiss', 'cheddar',
'ricotta', 'gouda')
print (cheeses[0])
What does this
cheeses[0] = 'swiss' do?
Tuples are immutable.
www.umbc.edu
Slicing a Tuple
• Like other sequences, tuples can be sliced
• Slicing a tuple creates a new tuple. It does
not change the original tuple.
cheeses = ('swiss', 'cheddar',
'ricotta', 'gouda')
print (cheeses[1:4])
What does this
output?
('cheddar', 'ricotta', 'gouda')

www.umbc.edu
Tuple Operations
Operations on Tuples
• Tuples support all the standard sequence
operations, including:
– Membership tests (using the in keyword)
– Comparison (element-wise)
– Iteration (e.g., in a for loop)
– Concatenation and repetition
– The len() function
– The min() and max() functions

www.umbc.edu
Membership Tests (in)
• In Python, the in keyword is used to test if
a sequence (list, tuple, string etc.) contains
a value.
– Returns True or False

What does this

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
output?
print(5 in a)
print(10 in a)
True
False
www.umbc.edu
 Comparison
• In Python 3.3, we can use the comparison
operator, ==, to do tuple comparison
– Returns True or False

tuple1, tuple2 = (123, 'xyz'), (456, 'abc')

tuple3 = (456, 'abc')
print (tuple1==tuple2) What does this
print (tuple2==tuple3) output?
False
True
From: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/tuple_cmp.htm www.umbc.edu
Iteration
teams = ((1, 'Ravens'),(2, 'Panthers'),
(5, 'Eagles'),(7, 'Steelers'))
Notice tuple of
for (index, name) in teams: tuples
print(index, name)
What does this
1 Ravens output?
2 Panthers
5 Eagles
7 Steelers

www.umbc.edu
Iteration
t = [('a', 0), ('b', 1), ('c', 2)]
for letter, number in t:
print (number, letter) Notice list of
tuples

What does this

0 a output?

1 b
2 c
www.umbc.edu
Concatenation (+)
• The + operator returns a new tuple that is a
concatenation of two tuples
a = (1, 2, 3)
b = (4, 5, 6)
What does this
c = a + b output?
print (a, b, c)

(1, 2, 3) (4, 5, 6) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

www.umbc.edu
Repetition (*)
• The * operator returns a new tuple that
repeats the tuple.

a = (1, 2, 3)
b = (4, 5, 6) What does this
output?
print (a*2, b)

(1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3) (4, 5, 6)

www.umbc.edu
len() Functions
• The method len() returns the number of
elements in the tuple.
tuple0 = ()
print(len(tuple0))
tupleA = ("UMBC", "is", "the", "best")
print(len(tupleA))
What does this
0 output?

4
www.umbc.edu
 min() and max() Functions
• max(tuple)
– Returns item from the tuple with max value
• min(tuple)
– Returns item from the tuple with min value

x=[10,15,25.5,3,2,9/5,40,70] What does this

print("Maximum number is :",max(x)) output?
print("\nMinimum number is :",min(x))
Maximum number is : 70

Minimum number is : 1.8

www.umbc.edu
Tuples and Functions
(return)
Tuples and functions
• Python functions (as is true of most
languages) can only return one value
– But… but… we’ve returned multiple values
before!
• If multiple objects are packaged together
into a tuple, then the function can return
the objects as a single tuple

• Many Python functions return tuples

www.umbc.edu
Example: min_max.py
# Returns the smallest and largest
# elements of a sequence as a tuple
def min_max(t):
return min(t), max(t)

seq = [12, 98, 23, 74, 3, 54]

print (min_max(seq))
What does this
output?
x=[10,15,25.5,3,2,9/5,40,70]
print("Maximum number is :",max(x))
print("\nMinimum number is :",min(x))
(3, 98)
Maximum number is : 70

Minimum number is : 1.8

www.umbc.edu