Python: Essential Reference, Third Edition

Lists

Lists are sequences of arbitrary objects. You create a list as follows:

names = [ "Dave", "Mark", "Ann", "Phil" ]

Lists are indexed by integers, starting with zero. Use the indexing operator to access and modify individual items of the list:

a = names[2]              # Returns the third item of the list, "Ann"
names[0] = "Jeff"         # Changes the first item to "Jeff"

To append new items to the end of a list, use the append() method:

names.append("Kate")

To insert an item in the list, use the insert() method:

names.insert(2, "Sydney")

You can extract or reassign a portion of a list by using the slicing operator:

 b = names[0:2] # Returns [ "Jeff", "Mark" ] c = names[2:] # Returns [ "Sydney", "Ann", "Phil", "Kate" ] names[1] = 'Jeff' # Replace the 2nd ...