1 Introduction
Since I started learning Python, I decided to maintain an oftenvisited list of "tricks". Any time I saw a piece of code (in an example, onStack Overflow, in open source software, etc.) that made me think"Cool! I didn't know you could do that!" I experimented with it until Iunderstood it and then added it to the list. This post is part of that list,after some cleaning up. If you are an experienced Python programmer, chancesare you already know most of these, though you might still find a few that youdidn't know about. If you are a C, C++ or Java programmer who is learningPython, or just brand new to programming, then you might find quite a few ofthem surprisingly useful, like I did.
Each trick or language feature is demonstrated only through examples,with no explanation. While I tried my best to make the examples clear,some of them might still appear cryptic depending on your familiarity level. Soif something still doesn't make sense after looking at the examples, the titleshould be clear enough to allow you to use Google for more information on it.
The list is very roughly ordered by difficulty, with the easier and morecommonly known language features and tricks appearing first.
A table of contents is given at the end.
- Update - March 14th, 2014
- Roy Keyes made a great suggestion ofturning this article into a GitHub repository to allow readers to makeimprovements or additions through pull requests. The repository is now at https://github.com/sahands/python-by-example. Feel free to fork, addimprovements or additions and submit pull requests. I will update thispage periodically with the new additions.
- Update - March 8th, 2014
-
This article generated a lot of good discussion on Reddit(http://redd.it/1zv3q3), Hacker News(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365410), and in the comments below,with many readers suggesting great alternatives and improvements. I haveupdated the list below to include many of the improvements suggested, andadded a few new items based on suggestions that made mehave one of those "Cool! I didn't know you could do that!" moments. Inparticular, I did not know about itertools.chain.from_iterable, anddictionary comprehensions.
There was also a very interesting discussion about the possibility of someof the techniques below leading to harder to debug code. My say on it isthat as far as I can see, none of the items below are inherently harder todebug. But I can definitely see how they can be taken too far, resultingin hard to debug, maintain and understand code. Use your best judgment andif it feels like how short and smart your code is is outweighing howreadable and maintainable it is, then break it down and simplify it. Forexample, I think list comprehensions can be very readable and rather easyto debug and maintain. But a list comprehension inside another listcomprehension that is then passed to map and then toitertools.chain? Probably not the best idea!
1.1 Unpacking
>>> a, b, c = 1, 2, 3
>>> a, b, c
(1, 2, 3)
>>> a, b, c = [1, 2, 3]
>>> a, b, c
(1, 2, 3)
>>> a, b, c = (2 * i + 1 for i in range(3))
>>> a, b, c
(1, 3, 5)
>>> a, (b, c), d = [1, (2, 3), 4]
>>> a
1
>>> b
2
>>> c
3
>>> d
4
1.2 Unpacking for swapping variables
>>> a, b = 1, 2
>>> a, b = b, a
>>> a, b
(2, 1)
1.3 Extended unpacking (Python 3 only)
>>> a, *b, c = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> a
1
>>> b
[2, 3, 4]
>>> c
5
1.4 Negative indexing
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> a[-1]
10
>>> a[-3]
8
1.5 List slices (a[start:end])
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> a[2:8]
[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
1.6 List slices with negative indexing
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> a[-4:-2]
[7, 8]
1.7 List slices with step (a[start:end:step])
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> a[::2]
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
>>> a[::3]
[0, 3, 6, 9]
>>> a[2:8:2]
[2, 4, 6]
1.8 List slices with negative step
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> a[::-1]
[10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0]
>>> a[::-2]
[10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0]
1.9 List slice assignment
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> a[2:3] = [0, 0]
>>> a
[1, 2, 0, 0, 4, 5]
>>> a[1:1] = [8, 9]
>>> a
[1, 8, 9, 2, 0, 0, 4, 5]
>>> a[1:-1] = []
>>> a
[1, 5]
1.10 Naming slices (slice(start, end, step))
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> LASTTHREE = slice(-3, None)
>>> LASTTHREE
slice(-3, None, None)
>>> a[LASTTHREE]
[3, 4, 5]
1.11 Zipping and unzipping lists and iterables
>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> z = zip(a, b)
>>> z
[(1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, 'c')]
>>> zip(*z)
[(1, 2, 3), ('a', 'b', 'c')]
1.12 Grouping adjacent list items using zip
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> zip(*([iter(a)] * 2))
[(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>> group_adjacent = lambda a, k: zip(*([iter(a)] * k))
>>> group_adjacent(a, 3)
[(1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6)]
>>> group_adjacent(a, 2)
[(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>> group_adjacent(a, 1)
[(1,), (2,), (3,), (4,), (5,), (6,)]
>>> zip(a[::2], a[1::2])
[(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>> zip(a[::3], a[1::3], a[2::3])
[(1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6)]
>>> group_adjacent = lambda a, k: zip(*(a[i::k] for i in range(k)))
>>> group_adjacent(a, 3)
[(1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6)]
>>> group_adjacent(a, 2)
[(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>> group_adjacent(a, 1)
[(1,), (2,), (3,), (4,), (5,), (6,)]
1.13 Sliding windows ( n -grams) using zip and iterators
>>> def n_grams(a, n):
... z = [iter(a[i:]) for i in range(n)]
... return zip(*z)
...
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> n_grams(a, 3)
[(1, 2, 3), (2, 3, 4), (3, 4, 5), (4, 5, 6)]
>>> n_grams(a, 2)
[(1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 4), (4, 5), (5, 6)]
>>> n_grams(a, 4)
[(1, 2, 3, 4), (2, 3, 4, 5), (3, 4, 5, 6)]
1.14 Inverting a dictionary using zip
>>> m = {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}
>>> m.items()
[('a', 1), ('c', 3), ('b', 2), ('d', 4)]
>>> zip(m.values(), m.keys())
[(1, 'a'), (3, 'c'), (2, 'b'), (4, 'd')]
>>> mi = dict(zip(m.values(), m.keys()))
>>> mi
{1: 'a', 2: 'b', 3: 'c', 4: 'd'}
1.15 Flattening lists:
>>> a = [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]
>>> list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(a))
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> sum(a, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> [x for l in a for x in l]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> a = [[[1, 2], [3, 4]], [[5, 6], [7, 8]]]
>>> [x for l1 in a for l2 in l1 for x in l2]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
>>> a = [1, 2, [3, 4], [[5, 6], [7, 8]]]
>>> flatten = lambda x: [y for l in x for y in flatten(l)] if type(x) is list else [x]
>>> flatten(a)
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
Note: according to Python's documentation on sum,itertools.chain.from_iterable is the preferred method for this.
1.16 Generator expressions
>>> g = (x ** 2 for x in xrange(10))
>>> next(g)
0
>>> next(g)
1
>>> next(g)
4
>>> next(g)
9
>>> sum(x ** 3 for x in xrange(10))
2025
>>> sum(x ** 3 for x in xrange(10) if x % 3 == 1)
408
1.17 Dictionary comprehensions
>>> m = {x: x ** 2 for x in range(5)}
>>> m
{0: 0, 1: 1, 2: 4, 3: 9, 4: 16}
>>> m = {x: 'A' + str(x) for x in range(10)}
>>> m
{0: 'A0', 1: 'A1', 2: 'A2', 3: 'A3', 4: 'A4', 5: 'A5', 6: 'A6', 7: 'A7', 8: 'A8', 9: 'A9'}
1.18 Inverting a dictionary using a dictionary comprehension
>>> m = {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}
>>> m
{'d': 4, 'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3}
>>> {v: k for k, v in m.items()}
{1: 'a', 2: 'b', 3: 'c', 4: 'd'}
1.19 Named tuples (collections.namedtuple)
>>> Point = collections.namedtuple('Point', ['x', 'y'])
>>> p = Point(x=1.0, y=2.0)
>>> p
Point(x=1.0, y=2.0)
>>> p.x
1.0
>>> p.y
2.0
1.20 Inheriting from named tuples:
>>> class Point(collections.namedtuple('PointBase', ['x', 'y'])):
... __slots__ = ()
... def __add__(self, other):
... return Point(x=self.x + other.x, y=self.y + other.y)
...
>>> p = Point(x=1.0, y=2.0)
>>> q = Point(x=2.0, y=3.0)
>>> p + q
Point(x=3.0, y=5.0)
1.21 Sets and set operations
>>> A = {1, 2, 3, 3}
>>> A
set([1, 2, 3])
>>> B = {3, 4, 5, 6, 7}
>>> B
set([3, 4, 5, 6, 7])
>>> A | B
set([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7])
>>> A & B
set([3])
>>> A - B
set([1, 2])
>>> B - A
set([4, 5, 6, 7])
>>> A ^ B
set([1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7])
>>> (A ^ B) == ((A - B) | (B - A))
True
1.22 Multisets and multiset operations (collections.Counter)
>>> A = collections.Counter([1, 2, 2])
>>> B = collections.Counter([2, 2, 3])
>>> A
Counter({2: 2, 1: 1})
>>> B
Counter({2: 2, 3: 1})
>>> A | B
Counter({2: 2, 1: 1, 3: 1})
>>> A & B
Counter({2: 2})
>>> A + B
Counter({2: 4, 1: 1, 3: 1})
>>> A - B
Counter({1: 1})
>>> B - A
Counter({3: 1})
1.23 Most common elements in an iterable (collections.Counter)
>>> A = collections.Counter([1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7])
>>> A
Counter({3: 4, 1: 2, 2: 2, 4: 1, 5: 1, 6: 1, 7: 1})
>>> A.most_common(1)
[(3, 4)]
>>> A.most_common(3)
[(3, 4), (1, 2), (2, 2)]
1.24 Double-ended queue (collections.deque)
>>> Q = collections.deque()
>>> Q.append(1)
>>> Q.appendleft(2)
>>> Q.extend([3, 4])
>>> Q.extendleft([5, 6])
>>> Q
deque([6, 5, 2, 1, 3, 4])
>>> Q.pop()
4
>>> Q.popleft()
6
>>> Q
deque([5, 2, 1, 3])
>>> Q.rotate(3)
>>> Q
deque([2, 1, 3, 5])
>>> Q.rotate(-3)
>>> Q
deque([5, 2, 1, 3])
1.25 Double-ended queue with maximum length (collections.deque)
>>> last_three = collections.deque(maxlen=3)
>>> for i in xrange(10):
... last_three.append(i)
... print ', '.join(str(x) for x in last_three)
...
0
0, 1
0, 1, 2
1, 2, 3
2, 3, 4
3, 4, 5
4, 5, 6
5, 6, 7
6, 7, 8
7, 8, 9
1.26 Ordered dictionaries (collections.OrderedDict)
>>> m = dict((str(x), x) for x in range(10))
>>> print ', '.join(m.keys())
1, 0, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 8
>>> m = collections.OrderedDict((str(x), x) for x in range(10))
>>> print ', '.join(m.keys())
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
>>> m = collections.OrderedDict((str(x), x) for x in range(10, 0, -1))
>>> print ', '.join(m.keys())
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
1.27 Default dictionaries (collections.defaultdict)
>>> m = dict()
>>> m['a']
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 'a'
>>>
>>> m = collections.defaultdict(int)
>>> m['a']
0
>>> m['b']
0
>>> m = collections.defaultdict(str)
>>> m['a']
''
>>> m['b'] += 'a'
>>> m['b']
'a'
>>> m = collections.defaultdict(lambda: '[default value]')
>>> m['a']
'[default value]'
>>> m['b']
'[default value]'
1.28 Using default dictionaries to represent simple trees
>>> import json
>>> tree = lambda: collections.defaultdict(tree)
>>> root = tree()
>>> root['menu']['id'] = 'file'
>>> root['menu']['value'] = 'File'
>>> root['menu']['menuitems']['new']['value'] = 'New'
>>> root['menu']['menuitems']['new']['onclick'] = 'new();'
>>> root['menu']['menuitems']['open']['value'] = 'Open'
>>> root['menu']['menuitems']['open']['onclick'] = 'open();'
>>> root['menu']['menuitems']['close']['value'] = 'Close'
>>> root['menu']['menuitems']['close']['onclick'] = 'close();'
>>> print json.dumps(root, sort_keys=True, indent=4, separators=(',', ': '))
{
"menu": {
"id": "file",
"menuitems": {
"close": {
"onclick": "close();",
"value": "Close"
},
"new": {
"onclick": "new();",
"value": "New"
},
"open": {
"onclick": "open();",
"value": "Open"
}
},
"value": "File"
}
}
(See https://gist.github.com/hrldcpr/2012250 for more on this.)
1.29 Mapping objects to unique counting numbers (collections.defaultdict)
>>> import itertools, collections
>>> value_to_numeric_map = collections.defaultdict(itertools.count().next)
>>> value_to_numeric_map['a']
0
>>> value_to_numeric_map['b']
1
>>> value_to_numeric_map['c']
2
>>> value_to_numeric_map['a']
0
>>> value_to_numeric_map['b']
1
1.30 Largest and smallest elements (heapq.nlargest and heapq.nsmallest)
>>> a = [random.randint(0, 100) for __ in xrange(100)]
>>> heapq.nsmallest(5, a)
[3, 3, 5, 6, 8]
>>> heapq.nlargest(5, a)
[100, 100, 99, 98, 98]
1.31 Cartesian products (itertools.product)
>>> for p in itertools.product([1, 2, 3], [4, 5]):
(1, 4)
(1, 5)
(2, 4)
(2, 5)
(3, 4)
(3, 5)
>>> for p in itertools.product([0, 1], repeat=4):
... print ''.join(str(x) for x in p)
...
0000
0001
0010
0011
0100
0101
0110
0111
1000
1001
1010
1011
1100
1101
1110
1111
1.32 Combinations and combinations with replacement (itertools.combinations and itertools.combinations_with_replacement)
>>> for c in itertools.combinations([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], 3):
... print ''.join(str(x) for x in c)
...
123
124
125
134
135
145
234
235
245
345
>>> for c in itertools.combinations_with_replacement([1, 2, 3], 2):
... print ''.join(str(x) for x in c)
...
11
12
13
22
23
33
1.33 Permutations (itertools.permutations)
>>> for p in itertools.permutations([1, 2, 3, 4]):
... print ''.join(str(x) for x in p)
...
1234
1243
1324
1342
1423
1432
2134
2143
2314
2341
2413
2431
3124
3142
3214
3241
3412
3421
4123
4132
4213
4231
4312
4321
1.34 Chaining iterables (itertools.chain)
>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> for p in itertools.chain(itertools.combinations(a, 2), itertools.combinations(a, 3)):
... print p
...
(1, 2)
(1, 3)
(1, 4)
(2, 3)
(2, 4)
(3, 4)
(1, 2, 3)
(1, 2, 4)
(1, 3, 4)
(2, 3, 4)
>>> for subset in itertools.chain.from_iterable(itertools.combinations(a, n) for n in range(len(a) + 1))
... print subset
...
()
(1,)
(2,)
(3,)
(4,)
(1, 2)
(1, 3)
(1, 4)
(2, 3)
(2, 4)
(3, 4)
(1, 2, 3)
(1, 2, 4)
(1, 3, 4)
(2, 3, 4)
(1, 2, 3, 4)
1.35 Grouping rows by a given key (itertools.groupby)
>>> import itertools
>>> with open('contactlenses.csv', 'r') as infile:
... data = [line.strip().split(',') for line in infile]
...
>>> data = data[1:]
>>> def print_data(rows):
... print '\n'.join('\t'.join('{: <16}'.format(s) for s in row) for row in rows)
...
>>> print_data(data)
young myope no reduced none
young myope no normal soft
young myope yes reduced none
young myope yes normal hard
young hypermetrope no reduced none
young hypermetrope no normal soft
young hypermetrope yes reduced none
young hypermetrope yes normal hard
pre-presbyopic myope no reduced none
pre-presbyopic myope no normal soft
pre-presbyopic myope yes reduced none
pre-presbyopic myope yes normal hard
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope no reduced none
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope no normal soft
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope yes reduced none
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope yes normal none
presbyopic myope no reduced none
presbyopic myope no normal none
presbyopic myope yes reduced none
presbyopic myope yes normal hard
presbyopic hypermetrope no reduced none
presbyopic hypermetrope no normal soft
presbyopic hypermetrope yes reduced none
presbyopic hypermetrope yes normal none
>>> data.sort(key=lambda r: r[-1])
>>> for value, group in itertools.groupby(data, lambda r: r[-1]):
... print '-----------'
... print 'Group: ' + value
... print_data(group)
...
-----------
Group: hard
young myope yes normal hard
young hypermetrope yes normal hard
pre-presbyopic myope yes normal hard
presbyopic myope yes normal hard
-----------
Group: none
young myope no reduced none
young myope yes reduced none
young hypermetrope no reduced none
young hypermetrope yes reduced none
pre-presbyopic myope no reduced none
pre-presbyopic myope yes reduced none
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope no reduced none
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope yes reduced none
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope yes normal none
presbyopic myope no reduced none
presbyopic myope no normal none
presbyopic myope yes reduced none
presbyopic hypermetrope no reduced none
presbyopic hypermetrope yes reduced none
presbyopic hypermetrope yes normal none
-----------
Group: soft
young myope no normal soft
young hypermetrope no normal soft
pre-presbyopic myope no normal soft
pre-presbyopic hypermetrope no normal soft
presbyopic hypermetrope no normal soft
2 Table of contents
List of language features and tricks in this article:
- 1 Introduction
- 1.1 Unpacking
- 1.2 Unpacking for swapping variables
- 1.3 Extended unpacking (Python 3 only)
- 1.4 Negative indexing
- 1.5 List slices (a[start:end])
- 1.6 List slices with negative indexing
- 1.7 List slices with step (a[start:end:step])
- 1.8 List slices with negative step
- 1.9 List slice assignment
- 1.10 Naming slices (slice(start, end, step))
- 1.11 Zipping and unzipping lists and iterables
- 1.12 Grouping adjacent list items using zip
- 1.13 Sliding windows ( n -grams) using zip and iterators
- 1.14 Inverting a dictionary using zip
- 1.15 Flattening lists:
- 1.16 Generator expressions
- 1.17 Dictionary comprehensions
- 1.18 Inverting a dictionary using a dictionary comprehension
- 1.19 Named tuples (collections.namedtuple)
- 1.20 Inheriting from named tuples:
- 1.21 Sets and set operations
- 1.22 Multisets and multiset operations (collections.Counter)
- 1.23 Most common elements in an iterable (collections.Counter)
- 1.24 Double-ended queue (collections.deque)
- 1.25 Double-ended queue with maximum length (collections.deque)
- 1.26 Ordered dictionaries (collections.OrderedDict)
- 1.27 Default dictionaries (collections.defaultdict)
- 1.28 Using default dictionaries to represent simple trees
- 1.29 Mapping objects to unique counting numbers (collections.defaultdict)
- 1.30 Largest and smallest elements (heapq.nlargest and heapq.nsmallest)
- 1.31 Cartesian products (itertools.product)
- 1.32 Combinations and combinations with replacement (itertools.combinations and itertools.combinations_with_replacement)
- 1.33 Permutations (itertools.permutations)
- 1.34 Chaining iterables (itertools.chain)
- 1.35 Grouping rows by a given key (itertools.groupby)
- 2 Table of contents