Storing Multiple Values in Collections

Overview

Teaching: 20 min
Exercises: 20 min

Questions

• How can I store many values together?

Objectives

• Explain what a list and a dictionary is.

• Create and index lists of simple values.

• Change the values of individual elements

• Append values to an existing list

• Reorder and slice list elements

• Create and manipulate nested lists

• Create and manipulate dictionaries

• Explain what key:pair mapping is

We have learnt how to store single bits of data in variables but what happens when we have several bits of data that are associated with each other and need to be stored together? For example, a vector, array or list of names? For this we can use the built-in collection types of list and dict (short for dictionary).

Storing Multiple Values in a List

We create a list by putting values inside square brackets and separating the values with commas:

odds = [1, 3, 5, 7]
print('odds are:', odds)

odds are: [1, 3, 5, 7]

We select individual elements from lists by indexing them just as we did for strings:

print('first and third:', odds[0], odds[2])

first and third: 1 5

Starting From Zero

It’s very important to remember that Python (like many other languages) indexes it’s collections from zero rather than one. In other words, the first element of list is given by index 0, the second by index 1, etc. Therefore the last element is given by the number of elements in the list minus one, e.g. for the example above, the last element is odds[3].

Programming languages like Fortran, MATLAB and R start counting at 1 because that’s what human beings have done for thousands of years. Languages in the C family (including C++, Java, Perl, and Python) count from 0 because it represents an offset from the first value in the array (the second value is offset by one index from the first value). This is closer to the way that computers represent arrays (if you are interested in the historical reasons behind counting indices from zero, you can read Mike Hoye’s blog post).

You can use negative indices to access elements from the end of the list as well, so the last element would be -1, the penultimate -2, etc.:

print('first and last:', odds[0], odds[-1])

first and last: 1 7

Lists in Python can contain any object type and different object types with the same list, for example:

sample_ages = [10, 12.5, 'Unknown']

Due to this, python lists can even contain other lists. For example, we could represent the products in the shelves of a small grocery shop:

x = [['pepper', 'zucchini', 'onion'],
     ['cabbage', 'lettuce', 'garlic'],
     ['apple', 'pear', 'banana']]

This is a list containing 3 other lists, each of those containing some strings. You can use the square brackets ([]) to access each of the nested lists, e.g.

print(x[1])

['cabbage', 'lettuce', 'garlic']

You can use another set of square brackets to access elements in this nested list, a string in this case:

print(x[1][2])

'banana'

You can obviously keep this going to 3, 4 or even more levels of lists but be aware that it can start to get confusing!

You may have noticed there is a significant similarity between lists and strings and in fact a lot of the things you can do with strings you can also do with lists. However, there is one important difference between the two: we can change the values in a list, but we cannot change individual characters in a string. For example:

names = ['Curie', 'Darwing', 'Turing']  # typo in Darwin's name
print('names is originally:', names)
names[1] = 'Darwin'  # correct the name
print('final value of names:', names)

names is originally: ['Curie', 'Darwing', 'Turing']
final value of names: ['Curie', 'Darwin', 'Turing']

works, but:

name = 'Darwin'
name[0] = 'd'

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-8-220df48aeb2e> in <module>()
      1 name = 'Darwin'
----> 2 name[0] = 'd'

TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

does not.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Data which can be modified in place is called mutable, while data which cannot be modified is called immutable. Strings and numbers are immutable. This does not mean that variables with string or number values are constants, but when we want to change the value of a string or number variable, we can only replace the old value with a completely new value.

Lists and arrays, on the other hand, are mutable: we can modify them after they have been created. We can change individual elements, append new elements, or reorder the whole list. For some operations, like sorting, we can choose whether to use a function that modifies the data in-place or a function that returns a modified copy and leaves the original unchanged.

Manipulating Lists

There are many ways to change the contents of lists besides assigning new values to individual elements. These generally involve using the additional functions provided by the list type. To call these functions, use the . operator and give the function name with the arguments in brackets afterwards. For example:

odds.append(11)
print('odds after adding a value:', odds)

odds after adding a value: [1, 3, 5, 7, 11]

odds.remove(1)
print('odds after removing the element equal to 1:', odds)

odds after removing the element equal to 1: [3, 5, 7, 11]

odds.reverse()
print('odds after reversing:', odds)

odds after reversing: [11, 7, 5, 3]

While modifying in place, it is useful to remember that Python treats lists in a slightly counter-intuitive way.

If we make a list and (attempt to) copy it then modify in place, we can cause all sorts of trouble:

odds = [1, 3, 5, 7]
primes = odds
primes.append(2)
print('primes:', primes)
print('odds:', odds)

primes: [1, 3, 5, 7, 2]
odds: [1, 3, 5, 7, 2]

This is because Python stores a list in memory, and then can use multiple variables names (or ‘labels’) to refer to the same list. If all we want to do is copy a (simple) list, we can use the list function, so we do not modify a list we did not mean to:

odds = [1, 3, 5, 7]
primes = list(odds)
primes.append(2)
print('primes:', primes)
print('odds:', odds)

primes: [1, 3, 5, 7, 2]
odds: [1, 3, 5, 7]

This is different from how variables worked in lesson 2 when you were storing (immutable) numbers and strings. By default, Python will apply another variable name to the same object rather than copying it if it’s not one of the basic immutable types.

Calling Functions on Objects

The list, dict and string types are actually more complicated objects than basic numbers and therefore have certain built-in bits of code that you can run on them. This is done through a function call. For example:

my_str.find("a")

This code asks Python to run the function find on the object pointed at by the variable my_str. This dotted notation is used everywhere in Python: the thing that appears before the dot contains the thing that appears after. find has one parameter: the sub-string to look for in the string This is sent to the code referened by the find name (the function) and after this code is run, it return the index of the sub-string (if found) and then continues. You can also have functions that don’t need any input, for example my_str.split().

Slicing Lists

Subsets of lists and strings can be accessed by specifying ranges of values in the square brackets using a colon to separate the first and last+1 index required. This is commonly referred to as “slicing” the list/string.

binomial_name = "Drosophila melanogaster"
group = binomial_name[0:10]
print("group:", group)

species = binomial_name[11:24]
print("species:", species)

group: Drosophila
species: melanogaster

If you want to take a slice from the beginning of a sequence, you can omit the first index in the range:

date = "Monday 4 January 2016"
day = date[0:6]
print("Using 0 to begin range:", day)
day = date[:6]
print("Omitting beginning index:", day)

Using 0 to begin range: Monday
Omitting beginning index: Monday

And similarly, you can omit the ending index in the range to take a slice to the very end of the sequence:

months = ["jan", "feb", "mar", "apr", "may", "jun", "jul", "aug", "sep", "oct", "nov", "dec"]
sond = months[8:12]
print("With known last position:", sond)
sond = months[8:len(months)]
print("Using len() to get last entry:", sond)
sond = months[8:]
print("Omitting ending index:", sond)

With known last position: ["sep", "oct", "nov", "dec"]
Using len() to get last entry: ["sep", "oct", "nov", "dec"]
Omitting ending index: ["sep", "oct", "nov", "dec"]

Using Dictionaries to Store Associative Data

Lists are used to store ordered collections of objects that you need to access with a simple index value. However, not all data is like this. For example, how would you store data from an address book where you have ‘fields’ that have values associated with them? In Python, you can use a type of collection called a Dictionary. Values stored in a dictionary are associated with a key that you can then use to retrieve the value instead of using an index:

info_dict = { "First Name" : "Fred", "Surname": "Peterson", "Age": 25 }
print( info_dict["Surname"] )
print( info_dict["Age"] )

You can use any immutable object as a key (in practise this is generally numbers or strings!) and store any object as the value including lists or other dicts. As with lists, there are several ways to add entries to a dictionary. The easiest of these is to simply reference a new key and assign it a value:

info_dict["Country"] = "UK"
print(info_dict)

{'First Name': 'Fred', 'Surname': 'Peterson', 'Age': 25, 'Country': 'UK'}

Overloading

+ usually means addition, but when used on strings or lists, it means “concatenate”. Given that, what do you think the multiplication operator * does on lists? In particular, what will be the output of the following code?

counts = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
repeats = counts * 2
print(repeats)

1. [2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
2. [4, 8, 12, 16, 20]
3. [[2, 4, 6, 8, 10],[2, 4, 6, 8, 10]]
4. [2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20]

The technical term for this is operator overloading: a single operator, like + or *, can do different things depending on what it’s applied to.

Solution

The multiplication operator * used on a list replicates elements of the list and concatenates them together:

[2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

It’s equivalent to:

counts + counts

Slicing From the End

Use slicing to access only the last four characters of a string or entries of a list.

string_for_slicing = "Observation date: 02-Feb-2013"
list_for_slicing = [["fluorine", "F"], ["chlorine", "Cl"], ["bromine", "Br"], ["iodine", "I"], ["astatine", "At"]]

"2013"
[["chlorine", "Cl"], ["bromine", "Br"], ["iodine", "I"], ["astatine", "At"]]

Would your solution work regardless of whether you knew beforehand the length of the string or list (e.g. if you wanted to apply the solution to a set of lists of different lengths)? If not, try to change your approach to make it more robust.

Solution

Use negative indices to count elements from the end of a container (such as list or string):

string_for_slicing[-4:]
list_for_slicing[-4:]

Key Points

• [value1, value2, value3, ...] creates a list.

• Lists can contain any Python object, including lists (i.e., list of lists).

• Lists are indexed and sliced with square brackets (e.g., list[0] and list[2:9]), in the same way as strings and arrays.

• Lists are mutable (i.e., their values can be changed in place).

• Strings are immutable (i.e., the characters in them cannot be changed).

• { key1:value1, key2:value2, ...} creates a dictionary

• The keys are used to reference and retrieve the values

• As with lists, they are mutable - their values can be changed in place