Python language: Core data
structures
The FOSSEE Group
Department of Aerospace Engineering
IIT Bombay
Mumbai, India
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Outline
1 Data structures
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures
Outline
1 Data structures
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures Lists
Outline
1 Data structures
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures Lists
Lists
We already know that
num = [1, 2, 3, 4]
is a list
Lists can contain different types
including nested lists
x = [’apple’, 1, ’banana’, 2.5,
’shirt’, [1,2,3]]
len(x)
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Data structures Lists
Lists
We already know that
num = [1, 2, 3, 4]
is a list
Lists can contain different types
including nested lists
x = [’apple’, 1, ’banana’, 2.5,
’shirt’, [1,2,3]]
len(x)
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Data structures Lists
Lists: methods
In []: num = [9, 8, 2, 3, 7]
In []: num + [4, 5, 6]
Out[]: [9, 8, 2, 3, 7, 4, 5, 6]
In []: num.append([4, 5, 6])
In []: num
Out[]: [9, 8, 2, 3, 7, [4, 5, 6]]
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Data structures Lists
Lists: methods
In []: num = [9, 8, 2, 3, 7]
In []: num.extend([4, 5, 6])
In []: num
Out[]: [9, 8, 2, 3, 7, 4, 5, 6]
In []: num.reverse()
In []: num
Out[]: [6, 5, 4, 7, 3, 2, 8, 9]
In []: num.remove(6)
In []: num
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Data structures Lists
Lists: methods
In []: num = [9, 8, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4]
In []: num.count(2)
Out[]: 2
In []: num.index(2)
Out[]: 2
In []: num.pop()
4
In []: num
[9, 8, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]
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Data structures Lists
Removing elements
Elements can be removed based on their index OR
based on the value of the element
In []: del num[1]
In []: num.remove(3)
When removing by value, first element is removed
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Data structures Lists
Sorting
In []: a = [5, 1, 6, 7, 7, 10]
In []: a.sort()
In []: a
sort method sorts the list in-place
Use sorted if you require a new list
Pass reverse=True to reverse the ordering
In []: a = [5, 1, 6, 7, 7, 10]
In []: sorted(a, reverse=True)
In []: a
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Data structures Lists
List containership
Recall num is [9, 8, 2, 3, 7]
In []: 4 in num
Out[]: False
In []: b = 8
In []: b in num
Out[]: True
In []: b not in num
Out[]: False
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Data structures Tuples
Outline
1 Data structures
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures Tuples
Tuples: Immutable sequence
In []: x = 1, 2, 3
In []: x
(1, 2, 3)
In []: t = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
In []: t[0] + t[3] + t[-1]
Out[]: 13
In []: t[4] = 7
Note:
Tuples are immutable - cannot be changed
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Data structures Tuples
Tuples: Immutable sequence
In []: x = 1, 2, 3
In []: x
(1, 2, 3)
In []: t = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
In []: t[0] + t[3] + t[-1]
Out[]: 13
In []: t[4] = 7
Note:
Tuples are immutable - cannot be changed
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Data structures Tuples
Tuple packing and expansion
Try these:
In []: a, b = 1, 2
In []: a, b, c = 1, 2, 3
In []: a, b = 1, 2, 3
In []: a, = [1]
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Data structures Tuples
Swapping values
In[]: a, b = 5, 7
In[]: temp = a
In[]: a = b
In[]: b = temp
Here’s the Pythonic way of doing it
In[]: a, b = b, a
The variables can be of different data-types
In[]: a = 2.5
In[]: b = "hello"
In[]: a, b = b, a
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Data structures Tuples
tuple, list functions
Try these:
In []: x = 1,2,3
In []: list(x)
Out[]: [1, 2, 3]
In []: tuple(list(x))
Out[]: (1, 2, 3)
In []: tuple(’hello’)
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Data structures Tuples
Slicing
Slicing works the same way for all sequence types
Indices also work the same way
Lists, tuples, and strings
sequence[initial:final:step]
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Data structures Tuples
Slicing & Striding examples
In[]: primes = [2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17]
In[]: primes[2:6]
In[]: primes[:4]
In[]: num = list(range(14))
In[]: num[1:10:2]
In[]: num[:10]
In[]: num[10:]
In[]: num[::2]
In[]: num[::-1]
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Data structures Tuples
Problem - Day of the Week?
Strings have methods to manipulate them
Problem
Given a list, week, containing names of the days of the
week and a string s, check if the string is a day of the
week. We should be able to check for any of the forms
like, sat, Sat, SAT
Get the first 3 characters of the string
Convert it all to lower case
Check for existence in the list, week
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Data structures Tuples
Solution - Day of the Week?
week = ’mon tue wed thu fri sat sun’.split()
s = ’Sunday’
s.lower()[:3] in week
OR
s[:3].lower() in week
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Data structures Dictionaries
Outline
1 Data structures
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries: Introduction
Lists index using integers; recall that :
If p = [2, 3, 5, 7]
p[1] is equal to 3
Dictionaries index not just with integers!
Following examples are for string indices
Will also work for integers, floats, tuples, and
others
No ordering of keys!
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries . . .
In []: mtdict = {}
In []: d = {’png’ : ’image file’,
’txt’ : ’text file’,
’py’ : ’python code’,
’java’: ’bad code’,
’cpp’: ’complex code’}
In []: d[’txt’]
Out[]: ’text file’
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries . . .
In []: ’py’ in d
Out[]: True
In []: ’jpg’ in d
Out[]: False
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries . . .
In []: list(d.keys())
Out[]: [’cpp’, ’py’, ’txt’, ’java’, ’png’]
In []: list(d.values())
Out[]: [’complex code’, ’python code’,
’text file’, ’bad code’,
’image file’]
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Data structures Dictionaries
Inserting elements
d[key] = value
In []: d[’bin’] = ’binary file’
In []: d
Out[]:
{’bin’: ’binary file’,
’cpp’: ’complex code’,
’java’: ’bad code’,
’png’: ’image file’,
’py’: ’python code’,
’txt’: ’text file’}
Duplicate keys are overwritten!
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Data structures Dictionaries
Adding & Removing Elements
Adding a new key-value pair
In[]: d[’c++’] = ’C++ code’
In[]: d
Deleting a key-value pair
In[]: del d[’java’]
In[]: d
Assigning to existing key, modifies the value
In[]: d[’cpp’] = ’C++ source code’
In[]: d
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries: methods
In []: d.keys()
In []: d.values()
In []: d.get(’bin’)
Out[]: ’binary file’
In []: d.get(’junk’) # No error!
In []: d.update({’bin’: ’Binary file’,
.....: ’exe’: ’executable’})
In []: d.clear()
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries: containership
In []: ’bin’ in d
Out[]: True
In []: ’hs’ in d
Out[]: False
Note
We can check for the containership of keys only
Not values
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Data structures Dictionaries
Dictionaries: iteration
In []: for v in d:
.....: print(v)
.....:
In []: for v in d.values():
.....: print(v)
.....:
In []: for k, v in d.items():
.....: print(k, v)
.....:
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Data structures Dictionaries
dict built-in
Like list, tuple can also create dicts like so:
In []: d = dict(png=’image file’,
.....: txt=’text file’,
.....: py=’python code’)
Check more of the dictionary methods yourself
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Data structures Dictionaries
Problem 2.1
You are given date strings of the form “29 Jul, 2009”, or
“4 January 2008”. In other words a number, a string
and another number, with a comma sometimes
separating the items.
Write a program that takes such a string as input and
prints a tuple (yyyy, mm, dd) where all three elements
are ints.
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Data structures Dictionaries
Some hints
Simplify the problem
Try to explain how someone can do it
Replace ’,’ with space
string.split() method is your friend
Need a mapping from month (string) to a number:
use a dict
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Data structures Dictionaries
Partial solution
month2mm = {’jan’: 1, ’feb’: 2, #...
}
date = input(’Enter a date string: ’)
date = date.replace(’,’, ’ ’)
day, month, year = date.split()
dd, yyyy = int(day), int(year)
mon = month[:3].lower()
mm = month2mm[mon]
print((yyyy, mm, dd))
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Data structures Sets
Outline
1 Data structures
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures Sets
Sets
Conceptually identical to the sets in mathematics
Simplest container, mutable
No ordering, no duplicates
usual suspects: union, intersection, subset . . .
>, >=, <, <=, in, . . .
In[]: a_list = [1, 2, 1, 4, 5, 6, 2]
In[]: a = set(a_list)
In[]: a
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Operations on Sets
In []: f10 = set([1, 2, 3, 5, 8])
In []: p10 = set([2, 3, 5, 7])
Mathematical operations can be performed on sets
Union
In []: f10 | p10
Intersection
In []: f10 & p10
Difference
In []: f10 - p10
Symmetric Difference
In []: f10 ^ p10
Data structures Sets
Sub-sets
Proper Subset
In[]: b = set([1, 2])
In[]: b < f10
Subsets
In[]: f10 <= f10
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Data structures Sets
Elements of sets
Containership
In[]: 1 in f10
In[]: 4 in f10
Iterating over elements
In[]: for i in f10:
....: print(i)
....:
Subsets
In[]: f10 <= f10
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Data structures Sets
Problem 2.2
Given a dictionary of the names of students and their
marks,
1
identify how many duplicate marks are there?
2
and what are these duplicate marks?
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Data structures Sets
Hints
Use a set to find the unique marks: first part
Second part can be done in a few different ways
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Data structures Sets
Possible solution
students = {’x’: 60, ’y’: 60, ’z’: 55}
all_marks = list(students.values())
unique = set(all_marks)
n_dups = len(all_marks) - len(unique)
print(n_dups, ’duplicates’)
# Part 2
for i in unique:
all_marks.remove(i)
print(’Duplicates are’, set(all_marks))
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Data structures Sets
What did we learn?
Core Python data structures:
Lists
Tuples
Dictionaries
Sets
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Data structures Sets
Homework
Explore all the methods of the various data
structures you have seen so far.
Read the documentation for each of these
methods.
Solve all problems discussed
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