SELECTING MEMBERS FROM LIST

 Access List Elements

There are various ways in which we can access the elements of a list.

List Index

We can use the index operator [] to access an item in a list. In Python, indices start at 0. So, a list having 5 elements will have an index from 0 to 4.

Trying to access indexes other than these will raise an IndexError. The index must be an integer. We can't use float or other types, this will result in TypeError.

Nested lists are accessed using nested indexing.

my_list = ['p', 'r', 'o', 'b', 'e']

# first item

print(my_list[0]) # p

# third item

print(my_list[2]) # o

# fifth item

print(my_list[4]) # e

# Nested List

n_list = ["Happy", [2, 0, 1, 5]]

# Nested indexing

print(n_list[0][1])

print(n_list[1][3])

# Error! Only integer can be used for indexing

print(my_list[4.0])

Negative indexing

Python allows negative indexing for its sequences. The index of -1 refers to the last item, -2 to the second last item and so on.

# Negative indexing in lists

my_list = ['p','r','o','b','e']

# last item

print(my_list[-1])

# fifth last item

print(my_list[-5])

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