The Python Report #1

The Python Report has moved to its permanent home at thepythonreport.blogspot.com

Data Structures -- Lists

The Big Idea

Every programming language is based on a few Big Ideas that shape the design of the language. A language will often have special syntax to directly support these big ideas.

For example

• pointers (C)
• classes (Java)
• relationships between entities (SQL)

Lists -- A Big Idea

Lists are one of the Big Ideas in Python. And as you would expect, there is a variety of special syntax for working with lists

• the built-in list operator [ ]
• list slices
• negative subscripts
• list comprehensions
• the for statement, which iterates over a list

In addition, many of the built-in functions take a list as a parameter or return a list as a result.

Learning To Work With Lists

Since lists are such an important part of Python, you should spend extra time learning how to work with them. A program that manipulates lists instead of individual variables is often shorter and easier to understand.

At a minimum, you should

• get comfortable working with list slices and negative indexes
• learn to use list comprehensions instead of for loops
• study the built-in list methods
• learn the built-in list functions
• len and enumerate
• sorted and reversed
• min, max, and sum
• zip

Resources

The Python Tutorial