Lists are linear sequences that provide constant time data lookup. They can be resized, searched, sorted (using a custom compare function) and are not restricted to a single data type (e.g. you can define lists with mixed data). Lists in Python are 0 indexed.

Defining a pre-initialized list with 10 numeric values (all zeros):

A = [0] * 10

Defining a pre-initialized list with 10 numeric values (powers of 2):

A = [ 2**i for i in xrange(0, 10) ]

Note1: xrange above returns values from 0 to 9 inclusive.

Note2: this syntax is known as list comprehension.

Iterating through all the elements (read only):

A = [ 0, 'a', {'b':'c'} ]
for e in A:
	print e

Iterating through all the elements (read/write):

A = [ 0, 'a', {'b':'c'} ]
for i in xrange(len(A)):
	print i, A[i]

Adding new elements at the end of the list:

A = [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]
A += [ 4 ]

Note: there is an append method that can also be used for this purpose.

Insert new elements:

A = [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]
A.insert(0, -1)	#position, value

Note: the insert above puts a new element at the front of the list.

Find elements in the list:

A = [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]
A.index(2)

Note: index does a linear search for the element with the value provided. A ValueError exception is thrown if the element cannot be found.

Remove elements from the list:

A = [ 0, 1, 2, 3 ]
A.remove(2)		#by value
del A[1]		#by index

Using a Python List as a Stack:

A = [ ]
A.append(1)
A.append(2)			#always add elements at the end
stacktop = A.pop()	#returns 2, the last element added

Note: pop throws the exception IndexError if the list is empty.

Using a Python List as a Queue:

A = [ ]
A.insert(0, 1)
A.insert(0, 2)	#always insert at the beginning of the list
elem = A.pop()	#returns 1, the first element added

Note: for an optimized implementation for both Stacks and Queues you may want to look at the collections.deque data structure.

That’s it for today, have fun!