Python 3.3 Tutorial Notes - 3：Data Structure

1. List

     1.1 list.pop([i]), list.sort(), list.reverse()

     1.2 insert, remove or sort that modify the list have no return value printed – they return None.

     1.3 list.pop() and deque.popleft()

          1.3.1 using "deque" need "from collections import deque"

     1.4 squares = [x**2 for x in range(10)] --> the list will be [0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

          1.4.1 it also could be squares = list(map(lambda x: x**2, range(10)))

          1.4.2 Another sample: [(x, y) for x in [1,2,3] for y in [3,1,4] if x != y]

2. Tuple

     2.1 list a=[1,2,3]; tuple b=(1,2,3)

     2.2 tuple is immutable, list is mutable.

     2.3 create empty tuple: tuple_empty = ()

     2.4 create tuple with only one element: one_element = "hello" , 

3. Sets

     3.1 unordered, no duplication

     3.2 Creation: a = {1, 2, 3}, or a = set()

     3.3 -, |, &, ^

4. Dictionary

     4.1 a dictionary is an unordered set of key: value pairs, with the requirement that the keys are unique (within one dictionary).

5. Loop

     5.1 When looping through a sequence, the position index and corresponding value can be retrieved at the same time using the enumerate() function.

          >>> for i, v in enumerate([’tic’, ’tac’, ’toe’]):

          ... print(i, v)

     5.2 To loop over two or more sequences at the same time, the entries can be paired with the zip() function.

>>> questions = [’name’, ’quest’, ’favorite color’]

>>> answers = [’lancelot’, ’the holy grail’, ’blue’]

>>> for q, a in zip(questions, answers):

... print(’What is your {0}? It is {1}.’.format(q, a))

...

What is your name? It is lancelot.

What is your quest? It is the holy grail.

What is your favorite color? It is blue.

     5.3 To loop over a sequence in reverse, first specify the sequence in a forward direction and then call the reversed() function.

     5.4 To change a sequence you are iterating over while inside the loop (for example to duplicate certain items), it is recommended that you first make a copy.

          5.4.1 To make a copy, use slice: words[...] -> words[:]

6. Other

     6.1 The operators  is  and   is not  compare whether two objects are really the same object; this only matters for mutable objects like lists. 

     6.2 A and not B or C is equivalent to (A and (not B)) or C.

     6.3 Comparisons can be chained. For example, a < b == c tests whether a is less than b and moreover b equals c.

     6.4 The Boolean operators  and  and  or  are so-called short-circuit operators. When used as a general value and not as a Boolean, the return value of a short-circuit operator is the last evaluated argument.