List Methods

• Introduction

  The aim of this paper is to help the reader get familiar with the standard functions of lists in Python.

• Functions

1. .append() : This function adds an element at the end of the list, since Python allows the user to add multiple data types to the same list, you can append an element of any data type without any errors. Syntax:

       list=[1,3]
       new_element=3
       list.append(new_element) #This is the generic syntax
       print(list)
   

   • The output for the snippet above will be [1,3,3]

2. .clear() : This function will remove all elements from the list, be careful while using it. Syntax:

       list=[1,2,3]
       list.clear() #This is the generic syntax
       print(list)
   

   • The output for the snippet above will be [] (Empty list)

3. .copy() : This function will simply return a copy of a list. Syntax:

       old_list=[1,2,3]
       new_list=old_list.copy() #This is the generic syntax
       print(new_list)
   

   • The output for the code above will be [1,2,3]

4. .count(): Returns the frequency of a given element that is passed as an argument. Syntax:

       list=[1,1,1,4]
       element_to_be_counted=1
       frequency=list.count(element_to_be_counted) #This is the generic syntax.
       print(frequency)
   

   • The output for the snippet above will be 3 (The number of time 1 appears in the list)

5. .extend(): This function essentially concatenates one list with another. Syntax:

       list1=[1,2,3]
       list2=[4,5,6]
       list1.extend(list2) # This is the generic syntax
       print(list1)
   

   • The output for the code above will be [1,2,3,4,5,6]

6. .index(): Returns the first index of the element that's passed in the argument. Syntax

    list1=[1,2,3,3,3,4]
    index=list1.index(3)
    print(index)
   

   • The snippet above will print: 2 (The first "3" appears in the list)

7. .insert(): This function will help you out if you want to place a certain element at a certain index, but be careful because it will obviously shift the indexes of all subsequent elements by "1". Syntax:

   list=[1,2,3,4]
   index=1
   element=6
   list.insert(index,element) #This is the generic syntax.
   print(list)
   

   -The above snippet will add 6 at index 1. The output will be:[1,6,2,3,4]

8. .pop(): This function will remove an element from a specified index, however the argument is optional, The default value is -1 , which means the function will remove the last element by default. Syntax:

   list=[1,2,3,4]
   index_to_be_removed=2
   list.pop(index_to_be_removed) #This is the generic syntax
   print(list)
   

   • The output for the above snippet is: [1,2,4]

     list.pop()

• The code above will further remove the last element , Output: [1,2]

9 . .remove(): This function has the similar functionality as .pop() but this function removes by value instead of index, This removes the first occurrence of the specified value. Syntax:

    list=[1,2,2,2,3,4]
    element_to_be_removed=2
    list.remove(element_to_be_removed) #This is the generic syntax
    print(list)

• The output for the above code will be: [1,2,2,3,4]

10 . .reverse(): This function will simply reverse the given list. Syntax

    list=[1,2,3,4,5]
    list.reverse() #This is the generic syntax.
    print(list)

• The output for the snippet above will be: [5,4,3,2,1]

11 . .sort(): This function will sort the given list,It sorts by ascending order by default , However you can specify the order as an optional argument. You can also customize this function by specifying a key according to which you want the function to sort the elements. Syntax:

           list=[3,4,2,1,5]
           list.sort() #This is the generic syntax
           print(list)

• The snippet above will sort the list by ascending order, Output: [1,2,3,4,5]

      list.sort(reverse=True)
      print(list)
  

• The snippet above will sort the list by descending order, Output: [5,4,3,2,1]

      def function(s):
          return len(s)
      list=["aaaa", "bb" , "c"]
      list.sort(key=function)
      print(list)
  

• The code above will sort the list of strings by their lengths instead of their lexicographical order.

List as stacks

Stacks follow the Last In First Out (LIFO) structure, files are appended and popped from the same location, they are used to track "states" in algorithms, but that's a topic for another paper.

stack=[1,2,3,4]
def push(x):
    stack.append(x)
def pop():
    return stack.pop()

• This successfully emulates the concept of stacks

List as queues

We can emulate queues using lists as well, queues follow the First In First Out (FIFO) structure.

queue=[1,2,3,4]
def push(x):
    queue.append(x)
def pop():
    return queue.pop(0)

.pop(0) removes the first element, successfully imitating the concept of queues