Python Lists

Python List

Python List is an ordered collection of items.

list is the class name for List datatype in Python. To define a list in Python, you can use square brackets or list() inbuilt function.

list1 = [4, 8, 7, 6, 9]
list2 = list([4, 8, 7, 6, 9])

Datatype of Items in a List

Items in a list can be of any datatype. It could be any of the inbuilt datatypes: int, float, list, dict, str, etc., or user defined datatype.

In the following example, we will define a list with different datatypes.

Python Program

list1 = ["Apple", 54, 87.36, True]
print(list1)

Output

['Apple', 54, 87.36, True]

Access Items

Python List is an ordered collection of items. So, you can access a specific element using index.

Index of first item is 0, the second is 1, third is 2, and so on.

In the following example, we will define a list with some items and access the elements using index.

Python Program

list1 = ["Apple", 54, 87.36, True]
print(list1[0])
print(list1[1])
print(list1[2])
print(list1[3])

Output

Apple
54
87.36
True

Update Items

You can update items in Python List with new values using index and assignment operator.

The syntax to update items in Python list is

list[index] = new_value

In the following example, we will take a list with some items, and update the item at index 2.

Python Program

list1 = ['apple', 'banana', 'cherry', 'fig']
list1[2] = 'orange'
print(list1)

Output

['apple', 'banana', 'orange', 'fig']

List Operations

Similar to how we have accessed or updated Python Lists, you can perform many operations on lists and their elements. For complete list of operations on Python Lists, follow Python List Operations tutorial.

Python List Methods

The following are the methods of list data type. You can call these methods on list type objects. Each of the following tutorial gives the syntax and usage of the respective method with examples.

Summary

In this tutorial of Python Examples, we learned about Python List, and got hands on Python Lists to create them, access the elements and update the elements of Lists.