List Manipulation in Python

Overview

List is one of the simplest and most important data structures in Python.

Lists are enclosed in square brackets [ ] and each item is separated by a comma.

Lists are collections of items where each item in the list has an assigned index value.

A list is mutable, meaning you can change its contents.

Lists are very fexible and have many built-in control functions.

Methods of List objects

Calls to list methods have the list they operate on appear before the method name separated by a dot, e.g. L.reverse()

Creation
L = ['yellow', 'red', 'blue', 'green', 'black']
>>>print L
returns: ['yellow', 'red', 'blue', 'green', 'black']

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Accessing / Indexing
L[0]  = returns 'yellow'

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Slicing
L[1:4]  = returns ['red', 'blue', 'green']
L[2:] 	= returns ['blue', 'green', 'black']
L[:2] 	= returns ['yellow', 'red']
L[-1]  	= returns 'black'
L[1:-1] = returns ['red', 'blue', 'green']

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Length - number of items in list
len(L)  = returns 5

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Sorting - sorting the list
sorted(L) = returns ['black', 'blue', 'green', 'red', 'yellow']

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Append - append to end of list
L.append("pink")

>>> print L
returns: ['black', 'blue', 'green', 'red', 'yellow', 'pink']

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Insert - insert into list
L.insert(0, "white")

>>> print L
returns: ['white', 'black', 'blue', 'green', 'red', 'yellow', 'pink']

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Extend - grow list

L.extend(L2)

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Remove - remove first item in list with value "white"

L.remove("white")

>>> print L
returns: ['black', 'blue', 'green', 'red', 'yellow', 'pink']

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Delete

Remove an item from a list given its index instead of its value
del.L[0]

>>> print L
['blue', 'green', 'red', 'yellow', 'pink']

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Pop

Remove last item in the list
L.pop()  = returns 'pink'

# remove indexed value from list
L.pop(1) = returns 'green'  

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Reverse - reversing the list
L.reverse()

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Count

Search list and return number of instances found
L.count('red')

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Keyword "in" - can be used to test if an item is in a list
 
if 'red' in L:
    print "list contains", 'red'

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For-in statement - makes it easy to loop over the items in a list
for item in L:
    print item

L = ['red', 'blue', 'green']
for col in L:
    print col