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Get unique values from a list in python [duplicate]
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I have recently started trying to learn Python, and I try to improve the way I write code, and make it more "Pythonic".
Therefore, it would really be nice if someone could explain to me if the following can be formulated more elegantly.
Hopefully this is not a duplicate (I checked, but you never know)
I have a list of 5 elements, and I want to return specific elements.
Let's say for example that I have [1, 2, 3, 3, 4].
I already have a function double(list), that if a list element exists twice returns that element (in this case 3).
I would like to generate from this list a tuple that contains the numbers that are exist only once (1, 2, 4).
One option is the following:
Run the double(list) function and get the value of the element that is double.
Create an empty tuple
Iterate over the list items, and if the value is not equal to what the double(list) function returned, add it to the tuple
Return the tuple.
My question is: is there a more elegant/Pythonic way of doing this?
(in one line, using maybe a more complex expression?)
Thanks in advance
The general way to do this is to make a set out of the elements and then count them, or just use collections.Counter, then go through the list and include only the appropriate elements, by either creating an empty list and then adding to it with a traditional loop or by using a comprehension with a filter.
>>> import collections
>>> l = [1, 2, 3, 3, 4]
>>> c = collections.Counter(l)
>>> new_list = [item for item in l if c[item] < 2]
>>> new_list
[1, 2, 4]
Since you want a single-line solution (well except for the actual list declaration of course :) ):
your_list = [1, 2, 3, 3, 4]
uniques = [item for item in your_list if your_list.count(item) == 1]
I would use collections.Counter for that:
>>> import collections
>>> l = [1, 2, 3, 3, 4]
>>> c = collections.Counter(l)
>>> [el for el in l if c[el] == 1]
[1, 2, 4]
I'm doing some Google Python Class exercises and I'm trying to find a pythonic solution to the following problem.
D. Given a list of numbers, return a list where all adjacent ==
elements have been reduced to a single element, so [1, 2, 2, 3]
returns [1, 2, 3]. You may create a new list or modify the passed in
list.
My try, which is working perfectly is the following:
def remove_adjacent(nums):
result = []
for num in nums:
if len(result) == 0 or num != result[-1]:
result.append(num)
return result
For example, with remove_adjacent([2, 2, 3, 3, 3]) the output is [2, 3]. Everything's ok.
I'm trying to use list comprehensions in order to archieve this in a more pythonic way, so my try is the following:
def remove_adjacent(nums):
result = []
result = [num for num in nums if (len(result)==0 or num!=result[-1])]
return result
This, with the same input [2, 2, 3, 3, 3], the output is [2, 2, 3, 3, 3] (the same). Meeeh! Wrong.
What I'm doing wrong with the list comprehensions? Am I trying to do something which is impossible to do with list comprehensions? I know it's a bit weird to initialize the list (result = []), so maybe it's not posible to do it using list comprehensions in this case.
Am I trying to do something which is impossible to do with list comprehensions?
Yep. A list comprehension can't refer to itself by name, because the variable doesn't get bound at all until the comprehension is completely done evaluating. That's why you get a NameError if you don't have result = [] in your second code block.
If it's not cheating to use standard modules, consider using groupby to group together similar values in your list:
>>> import itertools
>>> seq = [1, 2, 2, 3]
>>> [k for k,v in itertools.groupby(seq)]
[1, 2, 3]
>>> seq = [2,2,3,3,3]
>>> [k for k,v in itertools.groupby(seq)]
[2, 3]
For the sake of learning, I'd suggest using core reduce function:
def remove_adjacent(lst):
return reduce(lambda x, y: x+[y] if not x or x[-1] != y else x, lst, [])
I was doing a udacity exercise that required me to multiply all elements of a list together. I was able to do it using a simple loop. I know that there are built in functions to do this, but I wanted to do the exercise as suggested in order to learn the material.
Here's the code:
def product_list(myList):
product = 1
for item in myList:
product = product * item
return product
For the empty list, this returned:
>>>1
which was the function's default return value.
I also noticed in the python interpreter that:
4 * []
>>> []
However
4 * [1, 2, 3]
>>> [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]
What's the logic behind this behavior?
Multiplying a list causes it to repeat the contents. An empty list has no contents to repeat.
From the Sequences Types documentation:
s * n, n * s
n shallow copies of s concatenated
If you wanted to produce a new list containing the referenced list repeatedly, put it in another list first:
>>> [[]] * 4
[[], [], [], []]
but take into account that that creates 4 references, all pointing to the same nested list. Manipulations to that list are then shared:
>>> a = []
>>> b = [a] * 4
>>> b
[[], [], [], []]
>>> a.append('foo')
>>> b
[['foo'], ['foo'], ['foo'], ['foo']]
If you need separate copies, use a list comprehension and create copies explicitly:
[lstobj[:] for _ in range(4)]
[]
The above expression represents an empty list, in other words its a list that contains nothing. The multiplication expression works by multiplying the sequence of items that is stored in the list by a value specified :
[1,2,3] * 2
[1,2,3,1,2,3] # output
Multiplying "nothing" by any number will give you "nothing".
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I was trying to do something in Python that uses the following general procedure, and I want to know what the best way to approch this is.
First, an initialization step:
Create an item M.
Create a list L and add M to L.
Second, loop through the following:
Create a new item by modifying the last item added to L.
Add the new item to L.
As a simple example, say I want to create a list of lists where the nth list contains the numbers from 1 to n. I could use the following (silly) procedure.
Initially M is [1] and L=[[1]].
Next, modify [1] by adding 2 to it to create the new item [1,2], then add [1,2] to L so L=[[1],[1,2]].
Next, modify [1,2] by adding 3 to it to create the new item [1,2,3], then add [1,2,3] to L so L=[[1],[1,2],[1,2,3]].
Next, modify [1,2,3] by adding 4 to it to create the new item [1,2,3,4], then add [1,2,3,4] to L so L=[[1],[1,2],[1,2,3],[1,2,3,4]].
etc.
I tried a few things, but most of them would modify not just the last item added but also items added to L in previous steps. For the particular problem I was interested in, I did manage to find a solution that behaves properly (at least for small cases), but it seems inelegant, I’m not sure why it works when other things didn’t, and I’m not even confident that it would still behave as desired for large cases. I’m also not confident that I could adapt my approach to similar problems. It's not a case of me not understanding the problem, since I've coded the same thing in other programming languages without issues.
So I’m wondering how more experienced Python programmers would handle this general task.
(I’m omitting my own code in part because I’m new here and I haven’t figured out how to enter it on stackoverflow, but also because it's long-ish and I don’t want help with the particular problem, but rather with how to handle the more general procedure I described above.)
When adding a list object M to another list, you are only adding a reference; continuing to manipulate the list M means you will see those changes reflected through the other reference(s) too:
>>> M = []
>>> resultlist = []
>>> resultlist.append(M)
>>> M is resultlist[0]
True
>>> M.append(1)
>>> resultlist[0]
[1]
>>> M
[1]
Note that M is resultlist[0] is True; it is the same object.
You'd add a copy of M instead:
resultlist.append(M[:])
The whole slice here ([:] means to slice from start to end) creates a new list with a shallow copy of the contents of M.
The generic way to build produce a series L from a continuously altered starting point M is to use a generator function. Your simple add the next number to M series could be implemented as:
def growing_sequence():
M = []
counter = 0
while True:
M.append(counter)
counter += 1
yield M[:]
This will yield ever longer lists each time you iterate, on demand:
>>> gen = growing_sequence()
>>> next(gen)
[0]
>>> next(gen)
[0, 1]
>>> for i, lst in enumerate(gen):
... print i, lst
... if i == 2: break
...
0 [0, 1, 2]
1 [0, 1, 2, 3]
2 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
You can do:
M=[1]
L=[M]
for e in range(5):
li=L[-1][:]
li.append(li[-1]+1)
L.append(li)
Or more tersely:
for e in range(5):
L.append(L[-1][:]+[L[-1][-1]+1])
I think that the best way to do this is with a generator. That way, you don't have to deal with list.append, deep-copying lists or any of that nonsense.
def my_generator(max):
for n in range(max+1):
yield list(range(n+1))
Then, you just have to list-ify it:
>>> list(my_generator(5))
[[0], [0,1], [0,1,2], [0,1,2,3], [0,1,2,3,4], [0,1,2,3,4,5]]
This approach is also more flexible if you wanted to make it an infinite generator. Simply switch the for loop for a while true.
This will be based on iterate from Haskell.
iterate :: (a -> a) -> a -> [a]
iterate f x returns an infinite list of repeated applications of f to x:
iterate f x == [x, f x, f (f x), ...]
In Python:
def iterate(f, x):
while True:
yield x
x = f(x)
Example usage:
>>> import itertools.islice
>>> def take(n, iterable):
... return list(islice(iterable, n))
>>> take(4, iterate(lambda x: x + [len(x) + 1], [1]))
[[1], [1, 2], [1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3, 4]]
To produce a finite list, the type signature (again starting in Haskell just for clarity) could be infiniteFinitely :: (a -> Maybe a) -> a -> [a].
If we were to use list in place of Maybe in Python:
from itertools import takewhile
def iterateFinitely(f, x):
return map(lambda a: a[0], takewhile(len, iterate(lambda y: f(y[0]), [x])))
Example usage:
>>> list(iterateFinitely(lambda x: [x / 2] if x else [], 20))
[20, 10, 5, 2, 1, 0]
Since ending with a falsy value is probably pretty common, you might also add a version of this function that does that.
def iterateUntilFalsy(f, x):
return iterateFinitely(lambda y: [f(y)] if y else [], x)
Example usage:
>>> list(iterateUntilFalsy(lambda x: x / 2, 20))
[20, 10, 5, 2, 1, 0]
>>> list(iterateUntilFalsy(lambda x: x[1:], [1,2,3,4]))
[[1, 2, 3, 4], [2, 3, 4], [3, 4], [4], []]
Try this:
M = [1]
L = [M]
for _ in xrange(3):
L += [L[-1] + [L[-1][-1] + 1]]
After the above code is executed, L will contain [[1], [1, 2], [1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3, 4]]. Explanation:
The first two lines simply seed the iteration with initial values
The for line states how many loops we want to perform after the initial value has been set, 3 in this case. I'm using _ as the iteration variable because we're not interested in its value, we just want to do a certain number of loops
Now for the interesting part; and remember that in Python a negative index in a list starts counting from the end, so an index of -1 points to the last element.
This: L += … updates the list, appending a new sublist at the end as many times as specified in the loop
This: [L[-1] + …] creates a new sublist by taking the last sublist and adding a new element at the end
And finally this: [L[-1][-1] + 1] obtains the previous last element in the last sublist, adds one to it and returns a single-element list to be concatenated at the end of the previous expression
How do I create an empty list that can hold 10 elements?
After that, I want to assign values in that list. For example:
xs = list()
for i in range(0, 9):
xs[i] = i
However, that gives IndexError: list assignment index out of range. Why?
Editor's note:
In Python, lists do not have a set capacity, but it is not possible to assign to elements that aren't already present. Answers here show code that creates a list with 10 "dummy" elements to replace later. However, most beginners encountering this problem really just want to build a list by adding elements to it. That should be done using the .append method, although there will often be problem-specific ways to create the list more directly. Please see Why does this iterative list-growing code give IndexError: list assignment index out of range? How can I repeatedly add elements to a list? for details.
You cannot assign to a list like xs[i] = value, unless the list already is initialized with at least i+1 elements. Instead, use xs.append(value) to add elements to the end of the list. (Though you could use the assignment notation if you were using a dictionary instead of a list.)
Creating an empty list:
>>> xs = [None] * 10
>>> xs
[None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None]
Assigning a value to an existing element of the above list:
>>> xs[1] = 5
>>> xs
[None, 5, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None]
Keep in mind that something like xs[15] = 5 would still fail, as our list has only 10 elements.
range(x) creates a list from [0, 1, 2, ... x-1]
# 2.X only. Use list(range(10)) in 3.X.
>>> xs = range(10)
>>> xs
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Using a function to create a list:
>>> def display():
... xs = []
... for i in range(9): # This is just to tell you how to create a list.
... xs.append(i)
... return xs
...
>>> print display()
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
List comprehension (Using the squares because for range you don't need to do all this, you can just return range(0,9) ):
>>> def display():
... return [x**2 for x in range(9)]
...
>>> print display()
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64]
Try this instead:
lst = [None] * 10
The above will create a list of size 10, where each position is initialized to None. After that, you can add elements to it:
lst = [None] * 10
for i in range(10):
lst[i] = i
Admittedly, that's not the Pythonic way to do things. Better do this:
lst = []
for i in range(10):
lst.append(i)
Or even simpler, in Python 2.x you can do this to initialize a list with values from 0 to 9:
lst = range(10)
And in Python 3.x:
lst = list(range(10))
varunl's currently accepted answer
>>> l = [None] * 10
>>> l
[None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None]
Works well for non-reference types like numbers. Unfortunately if you want to create a list-of-lists you will run into referencing errors. Example in Python 2.7.6:
>>> a = [[]]*10
>>> a
[[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]
>>> a[0].append(0)
>>> a
[[0], [0], [0], [0], [0], [0], [0], [0], [0], [0]]
>>>
As you can see, each element is pointing to the same list object. To get around this, you can create a method that will initialize each position to a different object reference.
def init_list_of_objects(size):
list_of_objects = list()
for i in range(0,size):
list_of_objects.append( list() ) #different object reference each time
return list_of_objects
>>> a = init_list_of_objects(10)
>>> a
[[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]
>>> a[0].append(0)
>>> a
[[0], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]
>>>
There is likely a default, built-in python way of doing this (instead of writing a function), but I'm not sure what it is. Would be happy to be corrected!
Edit: It's [ [] for _ in range(10)]
Example :
>>> [ [random.random() for _ in range(2) ] for _ in range(5)]
>>> [[0.7528051908943816, 0.4325669600055032], [0.510983236521753, 0.7789949902294716], [0.09475179523690558, 0.30216475640534635], [0.3996890132468158, 0.6374322093017013], [0.3374204010027543, 0.4514925173253973]]
There are two "quick" methods:
x = length_of_your_list
a = [None]*x
# or
a = [None for _ in xrange(x)]
It appears that [None]*x is faster:
>>> from timeit import timeit
>>> timeit("[None]*100",number=10000)
0.023542165756225586
>>> timeit("[None for _ in xrange(100)]",number=10000)
0.07616496086120605
But if you are ok with a range (e.g. [0,1,2,3,...,x-1]), then range(x) might be fastest:
>>> timeit("range(100)",number=10000)
0.012513160705566406
You can .append(element) to the list, e.g.:
s1.append(i)
What you are currently trying to do is access an element (s1[i]) that does not exist.
I'm surprised nobody suggest this simple approach to creating a list of empty lists. This is an old thread, but just adding this for completeness. This will create a list of 10 empty lists
x = [[] for i in range(10)]
The accepted answer has some gotchas. For example:
>>> a = [{}] * 3
>>> a
[{}, {}, {}]
>>> a[0]['hello'] = 5
>>> a
[{'hello': 5}, {'hello': 5}, {'hello': 5}]
>>>
So each dictionary refers to the same object. Same holds true if you initialize with arrays or objects.
You could do this instead:
>>> b = [{} for i in range(0, 3)]
>>> b
[{}, {}, {}]
>>> b[0]['hello'] = 6
>>> b
[{'hello': 6}, {}, {}]
>>>
How do I create an empty list that can hold 10 elements?
All lists can hold as many elements as you like, subject only to the limit of available memory. The only "size" of a list that matters is the number of elements currently in it.
However, that gives IndexError: list assignment index out of range. Why?
The first time through the loop, i is equal to 0. Thus, we attempt xs[0] = 0. This does not work because there are currently 0 elements in the list, so 0 is not a valid index.
We cannot use indexing to write list elements that don't already exist - we can only overwrite existing ones. Instead, we should use the .append method:
xs = list();
for i in range(0, 9):
xs.append(i)
The next problem you will note is that your list will actually have only 9 elements, because the end point is skipped by the range function. (As side notes: [] works just as well as list(), the semicolon is unnecessary, and only one parameter is needed for range if you're starting from 0.) Addressing those issues gives:
xs = []
for i in range(10):
xs.append(i)
However, this is still missing the mark - range is not some magical keyword that's part of the language the way for (or, say, def) is.
In 2.x, range is a function, which directly returns the list that we already wanted:
xs = range(10) # 2.x specific!
# In 3.x, we don't get a list; we can do a lot of things with the
# result, but we can't e.g. append or replace elements.
In 3.x, range is a cleverly designed class, and range(10) creates an instance. To get the desired list, we can simply feed it to the list constructor:
xs = list(range(10)) # correct in 3.x, redundant in 2.x
One simple way to create a 2D matrix of size n using nested list comprehensions:
m = [[None for _ in range(n)] for _ in range(n)]
I'm a bit surprised that the easiest way to create an initialised list is not in any of these answers. Just use a generator in the list function:
list(range(9))
Another option is to use numpy for fixed size arrays (of pointers):
> pip install numpy
import numpy as np
a = np.empty(10, dtype=np.object)
a[1] = 2
a[5] = "john"
a[3] = []
If you just want numbers, you can do with numpy:
a = np.arange(10)
Here's my code for 2D list in python which would read no. of rows from the input :
empty = []
row = int(input())
for i in range(row):
temp = list(map(int, input().split()))
empty.append(temp)
for i in empty:
for j in i:
print(j, end=' ')
print('')
A list is always "iterable" and you can always add new elements to it:
insert: list.insert(indexPosition, value)
append: list.append(value)
extend: list.extend(value)
In your case, you had instantiated an empty list of length 0. Therefore, when you try to add any value to the list using the list index (i), it is referring to a location that does not exist. Therefore, you were getting the error "IndexError: list assignment index out of range".
You can try this instead:
s1 = list();
for i in range(0,9):
s1.append(i)
print (s1)
To create a list of size 10(let's say), you can first create an empty array, like np.empty(10) and then convert it to list using arrayName.tolist(). Alternately, you can chain them as well.
**`np.empty(10).tolist()`**
I came across this SO question while searching for a similar problem. I had to build a 2D array and then replace some elements of each list (in 2D array) with elements from a dict.
I then came across this SO question which helped me, maybe this will help other beginners to get around.
The key trick was to initialize the 2D array as an numpy array and then using array[i,j] instead of array[i][j].
For reference this is the piece of code where I had to use this :
nd_array = []
for i in range(30):
nd_array.append(np.zeros(shape = (32,1)))
new_array = []
for i in range(len(lines)):
new_array.append(nd_array)
new_array = np.asarray(new_array)
for i in range(len(lines)):
splits = lines[i].split(' ')
for j in range(len(splits)):
#print(new_array[i][j])
new_array[i,j] = final_embeddings[dictionary[str(splits[j])]-1].reshape(32,1)
Now I know we can use list comprehension but for simplicity sake I am using a nested for loop. Hope this helps others who come across this post.
Not technically a list but similar to a list in terms of functionality and it's a fixed length
from collections import deque
my_deque_size_10 = deque(maxlen=10)
If it's full, ie got 10 items then adding another item results in item #index 0 being discarded. FIFO..but you can also append in either direction.
Used in say
a rolling average of stats
piping a list through it aka sliding a window over a list until you get a match against another deque object.
If you need a list then when full just use list(deque object)
s1 = []
for i in range(11):
s1.append(i)
print s1
To create a list, just use these brackets: "[]"
To add something to a list, use list.append()
Make it more reusable as a function.
def createEmptyList(length,fill=None):
'''
return a (empty) list of a given length
Example:
print createEmptyList(3,-1)
>> [-1, -1, -1]
print createEmptyList(4)
>> [None, None, None, None]
'''
return [fill] * length
This code generates an array that contains 10 random numbers.
import random
numrand=[]
for i in range(0,10):
a = random.randint(1,50)
numrand.append(a)
print(a,i)
print(numrand)