Python Fundamentals - Python Tuples

Python Fundamentals - Python Tuples

Python Tuples, What is Tuple?, Operations on Tuples, Access Tuple Items, Range of Indexes, Change Tuple Values, Loop Through a Tuple, Check if Item Exists, Find Tuple Length, Add Items, Remove Items, and Join Two Tuples.

What is Tuple?

A tuple is a collection which is ordered and unchangeable. In Python, tuples are written with round brackets.

A Data Structure of Python or a Compound data type of Python language

Example

Create a Tuple:

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")
print (fruits)

Operations on Tuples

1) Access Tuple Items

We can access tuple items by referring to the index number, inside square brackets:

Example

Print the second item in the tuple:

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry", "orange", "kiwi", "melon", "mango")
print(fruits [1])

Negative Indexing

Negative indexing means beginning from the end, -1 refers to the last item, -2 refers to the second last item etc.

Example
Print the last item of the tuple:

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry", "orange", "kiwi", "melon", "mango")
print(fruits[-1])

2) Range of Indexes

We can specify a range of indexes by specifying where to start and where to end the range.

When specifying a range, the return value will be a new tuple with the specified items.

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry", "orange", "kiwi", "melon", "mango")
print(fruits [2:5])

It will print: ('cherry', 'orange', 'kiwi')

Note: the item in position 5 is Not included

Range of Negative Indexes

Specify negative indexes if you want to start the search from the end of the tuple:

Example

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry", "orange", "kiwi", "melon", "mango")
print(fruits [-4:-1])

It will print: ('orange', 'kiwi', 'melon')
This example returns the items from index -4 (included) to index -1 (excluded)

3) Change Tuple Values

Once a tuple is created, you cannot change its values. Tuples are unchangeable, or immutable, but we can convert the tuple into a list, change the list, and convert the list back into a tuple.

Example

x = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")
y = list(x)
y[1] = "kiwi"
x = tuple(y)

print(x)

4) Loop Through a Tuple

We can loop through the tuple items by using a for loop.

Example
Iterate through the items and print the values:

fruits= ("apple", "banana", "cherry")
for x in thistuple:
print(x)

5) Check if Item Exists

To determine if a specified item is present in a tuple,

Example

Check if "apple" is present in the tuple:

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")

if "apple" in fruits:
print("Yes, 'apple' is in the fruits tuple")

6) Find Tuple Length

To determine how many items a tuple has, use the len() keyword

Example

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")
print(len(fruits))

7) Add Items

Once a tuple is created, we cannot add items to it. Tuples are unchangeable.

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")
fruits[3] = "orange" # This will raise an error
print(fruits)

8) Remove Items

Note: We cannot remove items in a tuple.

Tuples are unchangeable, so we cannot remove items from it, but we can delete the tuple completely:

Example

The del keyword can delete the tuple completely:

fruits = ("apple", "banana", "cherry")
del fruits
print(fruits ) #this will raise an error because the tuple no longer exists

9) Join Two Tuples

To join two or more tuples you can use the + operator:

Example
Join two tuples:

tuple1 = ("a", "b" , "c")
tuple2 = (1, 2, 3)

tuple3 = tuple1 + tuple2
print(tuple3)