How do I access the index while iterating over a sequence with a for
loop?
xs = [8, 23, 45]
for x in xs:
print("item #{} = {}".format(index, x))
Desired output:
item #1 = 8
item #2 = 23
item #3 = 45
How do I access the index while iterating over a sequence with a for
loop?
xs = [8, 23, 45]
for x in xs:
print("item #{} = {}".format(index, x))
Desired output:
item #1 = 8
item #2 = 23
item #3 = 45
Use the built-in function enumerate()
:
for idx, x in enumerate(xs):
print(idx, x)
It is non-pythonic to manually index via for i in range(len(xs)): x = xs[i]
or manually manage an additional state variable.
Check out PEP 279 for more.
enumerate
not incur another overhead? –
Sevigny enumerate
. –
Burkes range
and indexing each time, and lower than manually tracking and updating the index separately. enumerate
with unpacking is heavily optimized (if the tuple
s are unpacked to names as in the provided example, it reuses the same tuple
each loop to avoid even the cost of freelist lookup, it has an optimized code path for when the index fits in ssize_t
that performs cheap in-register math, bypassing Python level math operations, and it avoids indexing the list
at the Python level, which is more expensive than you'd think). –
Dempstor for i in range(5)
or for i in range(len(ints))
will do the universally common operation of iterating over an index. But if you want both the item and the index, enumerate
is a very useful syntax. I use it all the time. –
Holdfast Using a for loop, how do I access the loop index, from 1 to 5 in this case?
Use enumerate
to get the index with the element as you iterate:
for index, item in enumerate(items):
print(index, item)
And note that Python's indexes start at zero, so you would get 0 to 4 with the above. If you want the count, 1 to 5, do this:
count = 0 # in case items is empty and you need it after the loop
for count, item in enumerate(items, start=1):
print(count, item)
What you are asking for is the Pythonic equivalent of the following, which is the algorithm most programmers of lower-level languages would use:
index = 0 # Python's indexing starts at zero for item in items: # Python's for loops are a "for each" loop print(index, item) index += 1
Or in languages that do not have a for-each loop:
index = 0 while index < len(items): print(index, items[index]) index += 1
or sometimes more commonly (but unidiomatically) found in Python:
for index in range(len(items)): print(index, items[index])
Python's enumerate
function reduces the visual clutter by hiding the accounting for the indexes, and encapsulating the iterable into another iterable (an enumerate
object) that yields a two-item tuple of the index and the item that the original iterable would provide. That looks like this:
for index, item in enumerate(items, start=0): # default is zero
print(index, item)
This code sample is fairly well the canonical example of the difference between code that is idiomatic of Python and code that is not. Idiomatic code is sophisticated (but not complicated) Python, written in the way that it was intended to be used. Idiomatic code is expected by the designers of the language, which means that usually this code is not just more readable, but also more efficient.
Even if you don't need indexes as you go, but you need a count of the iterations (sometimes desirable) you can start with 1
and the final number will be your count.
count = 0 # in case items is empty
for count, item in enumerate(items, start=1): # default is zero
print(item)
print('there were {0} items printed'.format(count))
The count seems to be more what you intend to ask for (as opposed to index) when you said you wanted from 1 to 5.
To break these examples down, say we have a list of items that we want to iterate over with an index:
items = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
Now we pass this iterable to enumerate, creating an enumerate object:
enumerate_object = enumerate(items) # the enumerate object
We can pull the first item out of this iterable that we would get in a loop with the next
function:
iteration = next(enumerate_object) # first iteration from enumerate
print(iteration)
And we see we get a tuple of 0
, the first index, and 'a'
, the first item:
(0, 'a')
we can use what is referred to as "sequence unpacking" to extract the elements from this two-tuple:
index, item = iteration
# 0, 'a' = (0, 'a') # essentially this.
and when we inspect index
, we find it refers to the first index, 0, and item
refers to the first item, 'a'
.
>>> print(index)
0
>>> print(item)
a
So do this:
for index, item in enumerate(items, start=0): # Python indexes start at zero
print(index, item)
items
is empty? –
Halimeda count = 0
before the loop to ensure it has a value (and it's the correct one when the loop never assigns to count
, since by definition there were no items). –
Dempstor It's pretty simple to start it from 1
other than 0
:
for index, item in enumerate(iterable, start=1):
print index, item # Used to print in python<3.x
print(index, item) # Migrate to print() after 3.x+
index, item
just index
is very misleading, as you noted. Just use for index, item in enumerate(ints)
. –
Birecree index
into (index)
won't change a thing on either Py2 or Py3. I feel like maybe you're thinking of the change to print
; the only way to make that work on both Py2 and Py3 is to add from __future__ import print_function
to the top of your file to get consistent Py3-style print
, and change the print
to print(index, item)
. Or you read an earlier edit of the question when index
was the original tuple
, not unpacked to two names, but the parentheses still don't change anything if you fail to unpack. –
Dempstor Tested on Python 3.12
Here are twelve examples of how you can access the indices with their corresponding array's elements using for loops, while loops and some looping functions. Note that array indices always start from zero by default (see example 4
to change this).
+=
operator.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
counter = 0
for value in items:
print(counter, value)
counter += 1
Result:
# 0 8
# 1 23
# 2 45
# 3 12
# 4 78
enumerate()
built-in function.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for i in enumerate(items):
print("index/value", i)
Result:
# index/value (0, 8)
# index/value (1, 23)
# index/value (2, 45)
# index/value (3, 12)
# index/value (4, 78)
items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for index, value in enumerate(items):
print("index", index, "for value", value)
Result:
# index 0 for value 8
# index 1 for value 23
# index 2 for value 45
# index 3 for value 12
# index 4 for value 78
index
value to any increment.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for i, item in enumerate(items, start=100):
print(i, item)
Result:
# 100 8
# 101 23
# 102 45
# 103 12
# 104 78
range(len(...))
methods.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for i in range(len(items)):
print("Index:", i, "Value:", items[i])
Result:
# ('Index:', 0, 'Value:', 8)
# ('Index:', 1, 'Value:', 23)
# ('Index:', 2, 'Value:', 45)
# ('Index:', 3, 'Value:', 12)
# ('Index:', 4, 'Value:', 78)
for
loop inside function.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
def enum(items, start=0):
counter = start
for value in items:
print(counter, value)
counter += 1
enum(items)
Result:
# 0 8
# 1 23
# 2 45
# 3 12
# 4 78
while
loop.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
counter = 0
while counter < len(items):
print(counter, items[counter])
counter += 1
Result:
# 0 8
# 1 23
# 2 45
# 3 12
# 4 78
yield
statement returning a generator object.def createGenerator():
items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for (j, k) in enumerate(items):
yield (j, k)
generator = createGenerator()
for i in generator:
print(i)
Result:
# (0, 8)
# (1, 23)
# (2, 45)
# (3, 12)
# (4, 78)
for
loop and lambda
.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
xerox = lambda upperBound: [(i, items[i]) for i in range(0, upperBound)]
print(xerox(5))
Result:
# [(0, 8), (1, 23), (2, 45), (3, 12), (4, 78)]
zip()
function.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
indices = []
for index in range(len(items)):
indices.append(index)
for item, index in zip(items, indices):
print("{}: {}".format(index, item))
Result:
# 0: 8
# 1: 23
# 2: 45
# 3: 12
# 4: 78
while
loop and iter()
& next()
methods.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
indices = range(len(items))
iterator1 = iter(indices)
iterator2 = iter(items)
try:
while True:
i = next(iterator1)
element = next(iterator2)
print(i, element)
except StopIteration:
pass
Result:
# 0 8
# 1 23
# 2 45
# 3 12
# 4 78
Static Method
.items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
class ElementPlus:
@staticmethod # decorator
def indexForEachOfMy(iterable):
for pair in enumerate(iterable):
print pair
ElementPlus.indexForEachOfMy(items)
Result:
# (0, 8)
# (1, 23)
# (2, 45)
# (3, 12)
# (4, 78)
zip(range(len(items)), items)
, without having to generate a separate list with the indexes –
Ailbert for i in range(len(ints)):
print(i, ints[i]) # print updated to print() in Python 3.x+
xrange
for pre-3.0. –
Lorettalorette enumerate
saves any logic; you still have to select which object to index with i
, no? –
Crinum range
may make sense. Though zip
is probably more Pythonic for these cases, so using range
would still be a premature optimization, as other comments mention. –
Kawasaki range
would be a premature pessimization, as zip
(itertools.izip
on Py2) is strictly better for that case. About the only use case for range
I know of where there isn't a better alternative is iterating over overlapping slices of a sequence (where you need the index, but then use it to slice, so getting a value with the index isn't helpful). You could make it work without range
(and for non-sequences) with itertools.tee
, but it's ugly. –
Dempstor As is the norm in Python, there are several ways to do this. In all examples assume: lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
for index, element in enumerate(lst):
# Do the things that need doing here
This is also the safest option in my opinion because the chance of going into infinite recursion has been eliminated. Both the item and its index are held in variables and there is no need to write any further code to access the item.
for
)for index in range(len(lst)): # or xrange
# you will have to write extra code to get the element
while
)index = 0
while index < len(lst):
# You will have to write extra code to get the element
index += 1 # escape infinite recursion
As explained before, there are other ways to do this that have not been explained here and they may even apply more in other situations. For example, using itertools.chain
with for. It handles nested loops better than the other examples.
Old fashioned way:
for ix in range(len(ints)):
print(ints[ix])
List comprehension:
[ (ix, ints[ix]) for ix in range(len(ints))]
>>> ints
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> for ix in range(len(ints)): print ints[ix]
...
1
2
3
4
5
>>> [ (ix, ints[ix]) for ix in range(len(ints))]
[(0, 1), (1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 4), (4, 5)]
>>> lc = [ (ix, ints[ix]) for ix in range(len(ints))]
>>> for tup in lc:
... print(tup)
...
(0, 1)
(1, 2)
(2, 3)
(3, 4)
(4, 5)
>>>
The fastest way to access indexes of list within loop in Python 3.7 is to use the enumerate method for small, medium and huge lists.
Please see different approaches which can be used to iterate over list and access index value and their performance metrics (which I suppose would be useful for you) in code samples below:
# Using range
def range_loop(iterable):
for i in range(len(iterable)):
1 + iterable[i]
# Using enumerate
def enumerate_loop(iterable):
for i, val in enumerate(iterable):
1 + val
# Manual indexing
def manual_indexing_loop(iterable):
index = 0
for item in iterable:
1 + item
index += 1
See performance metrics for each method below:
from timeit import timeit
def measure(l, number=10000):
print("Measure speed for list with %d items" % len(l))
print("range: ", timeit(lambda :range_loop(l), number=number))
print("enumerate: ", timeit(lambda :enumerate_loop(l), number=number))
print("manual_indexing: ", timeit(lambda :manual_indexing_loop(l), number=number))
# Measure speed for list with 1000 items
measure(range(1000))
# range: 1.161622366
# enumerate: 0.5661940879999996
# manual_indexing: 0.610455682
# Measure speed for list with 100000 items
measure(range(10000))
# range: 11.794482958
# enumerate: 6.197628574000001
# manual_indexing: 6.935181098000001
# Measure speed for list with 10000000 items
measure(range(10000000), number=100)
# range: 121.416859069
# enumerate: 62.718909123
# manual_indexing: 69.59575057400002
As the result, using enumerate
method is the fastest method for iteration when the index needed.
Adding some useful links below:
You can use enumerate
and embed expressions inside string literals to obtain the solution.
This is a simple way:
a=[4,5,6,8]
for b, val in enumerate(a):
print('item #{} = {}'.format(b+1, val))
First of all, the indexes will be from 0 to 4. Programming languages start counting from 0; don't forget that or you will come across an index-out-of-bounds exception. All you need in the for loop is a variable counting from 0 to 4 like so:
for x in range(0, 5):
Keep in mind that I wrote 0 to 5 because the loop stops one number before the maximum. :)
To get the value of an index, use
list[index]
According to this discussion: object's list index
Loop counter iteration
The current idiom for looping over the indices makes use of the built-in range
function:
for i in range(len(sequence)):
# Work with index i
Looping over both elements and indices can be achieved either by the old idiom or by using the new zip
built-in function:
for i in range(len(sequence)):
e = sequence[i]
# Work with index i and element e
or
for i, e in zip(range(len(sequence)), sequence):
# Work with index i and element e
You can do it with this code:
ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
index = 0
for value in (ints):
index +=1
print index, value
Use this code if you need to reset the index value at the end of the loop:
ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
index = 0
for value in (ints):
index +=1
print index, value
if index >= len(ints)-1:
index = 0
If I were to iterate nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
I would do
for i, num in enumerate(nums, start=1):
print(i, num)
Or get the length as l = len(nums)
for i in range(l):
print(i+1, nums[i])
In your question, you write "how do I access the loop index, from 1 to 5 in this case?"
However, the index for a list runs from zero. So, then we need to know if what you actually want is the index and item for each item in a list, or whether you really want numbers starting from 1. Fortunately, in Python, it is easy to do either or both.
First, to clarify, the enumerate
function iteratively returns the index and corresponding item for each item in a list.
alist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
for n, a in enumerate(alist):
print("%d %d" % (n, a))
The output for the above is then,
0 1
1 2
2 3
3 4
4 5
Notice that the index runs from 0. This kind of indexing is common among modern programming languages including Python and C.
If you want your loop to span a part of the list, you can use the standard Python syntax for a part of the list. For example, to loop from the second item in a list up to but not including the last item, you could use
for n, a in enumerate(alist[1:-1]):
print("%d %d" % (n, a))
Note that once again, the output index runs from 0,
0 2
1 3
2 4
That brings us to the start=n
switch for enumerate()
. This simply offsets the index, you can equivalently simply add a number to the index inside the loop.
for n, a in enumerate(alist, start=1):
print("%d %d" % (n, a))
for which the output is
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
You can also try this:
data = ['itemA.ABC', 'itemB.defg', 'itemC.drug', 'itemD.ashok']
x = []
for (i, item) in enumerate(data):
a = (i, str(item).split('.'))
x.append(a)
for index, value in x:
print(index, value)
The output is
0 ['itemA', 'ABC']
1 ['itemB', 'defg']
2 ['itemC', 'drug']
3 ['itemD', 'ashok']
If there is no duplicate value in the list:
for i in ints:
indx = ints.index(i)
print(i, indx)
enumerate
. You should delete this answer. –
Absquatulate A simple answer using a while loop:
arr = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
i = 0
while i < len(arr):
print("Item ", i + 1, " = ", arr[i])
i += 1
Output:
Item 1 = 8
Item 2 = 23
Item 3 = 45
Item 4 = 12
Item 5 = 78
You can use the index
method:
ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
inds = [ints.index(i) for i in ints]
It is highlighted in a comment that this method doesn’t work if there are duplicates in ints
. The method below should work for any values in ints
:
ints = [8, 8, 8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
inds = [tup[0] for tup in enumerate(ints)]
Or alternatively
ints = [8, 8, 8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
inds = [tup for tup in enumerate(ints)]
if you want to get both the index and the value in ints
as a list of tuples.
It uses the method of enumerate
in the selected answer to this question, but with list comprehension, making it faster with less code.
Yet another way to run a counter in a for loop is to use itertools.count
.
from itertools import count
my_list = ['a', 'b', 'a']
for i, item in zip(count(), my_list):
print(i, item)
This is useful especially if you want the counters to be fractional numbers. In the following example, the "index" starts from 1.0 and is incremented by 0.5 in each iteration.
my_list = ['a', 'b', 'a']
for i, item in zip(count(start=1., step=0.5), my_list):
print(f"loc={i}, item={item}")
# loc=1.0, item=a
# loc=1.5, item=b
# loc=2.0, item=a
Another method is to use list.index()
inside a loop. However, in contrast to other answers on this page mentioning this method (1, 2, 3), the starting point of the index search (which is the second argument) must be passed to the list.index()
method. This lets you achieve 2 things: (1) Doesn't expensively loop over the list from the beginning again; (2) Can find the index of all values, even duplicates.
my_list = ['a', 'b', 'a']
idx = -1
for item in my_list:
idx = my_list.index(item, idx+1)
# ^^^^^ <---- start the search from the next index
print(f"index={idx}, item={item}")
# index=0, item=a
# index=1, item=b
# index=2, item=a
In terms of performance, if you want all/most of the indices, enumerate()
is the fastest option. If you were looking for only specific indices, then list.index()
may be more efficient. Below are two examples where list.index()
is more efficient.
Suppose you want to find all indices where a specific value appears in a list (e.g. highest value). For example, in the following case, we want to find all indices that 2 appears in. This is a one-liner using enumerate()
. However, we can also search for the indices of 2 by using the list.index()
method in a while-loop; as mentioned before, in each iteration, we start the index search from where we left off in the previous iteration.
lst = [0, 2, 1, 2]
target = 2
result = []
pos = -1
while True:
try:
pos = lst.index(target, pos+1)
result.append(pos)
except ValueError:
break
print(result) # [1, 3]
In fact, in certain cases, it's much faster than enumerate()
option that produces the same output especially if the list is long.
Another common exercise where index is often needed in a loop is to find the index of the first item in a list that satisfies some condition (e.g. greater/smaller than some target value). In the following example, we want to find the index of the first value that exceeds 2.5. This is a one-liner using enumerate()
but using list.index()
is more efficient because getting indices that won't be used as in enumerate()
has a cost (which list.index()
doesn't incur).
my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4]
target = 2.5
for item in my_list:
if item > target:
idx = my_list.index(item)
break
or as a one-liner:
idx = next(my_list.index(item) for item in my_list if item > target)
Code used to produce the plot of runtime speed ratios:
import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import perfplot
def enumerate_1(lst, target=3):
return [i for i, v in enumerate(lst) if v == target]
def list_index_1(lst, target=3):
result = []
pos = -1
while True:
try:
pos = lst.index(target, pos+1)
result.append(pos)
except ValueError:
break
return result
def list_index_2(lst, target):
for item in lst:
if item > target:
return lst.index(item)
def enumerate_2(lst, target):
return next(i for i, item in enumerate(lst) if item > target)
setups = [lambda n: [random.randint(1, 10) for _ in range(n)],
lambda n: (list(range(n)), n-1.5)]
kernels_list = [[enumerate_1, list_index_1], [enumerate_2, list_index_2]]
titles = ['Get indices of a value', 'Get index that satisfies a condition']
n_range = [2**k for k in range(1,21)]
labels = ['enumerate', 'list.index']
xlabel = 'list length'
fig, axs = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5), facecolor='white', dpi=60)
for i, (ax, su, ks, t) in enumerate(zip(axs, setups, kernels_list, titles)):
plt.sca(ax)
perfplot.plot(ks, n_range, su, None, labels, xlabel, t, relative_to=1)
ax.xaxis.set_tick_params(labelsize=13)
plt.setp(axs, ylim=(0.7, 2.4), yticks=[i*0.25 + 0.75 for i in range(7)],
xlim=(1, 1100000), xscale='log', xticks=[1, 100, 10000, 1000000])
fig.tight_layout();
To print a tuple of (index, value) in a list comprehension using a for loop:
ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
print [(i,ints[i]) for i in range(len(ints))]
Output:
[(0, 8), (1, 23), (2, 45), (3, 12), (4, 78)]
You can simply use a variable such as count
to count the number of elements in the list:
ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
count = 0
for i in ints:
count = count + 1
print('item #{} = {}'.format(count, i))
In addition to all the excellent answers above, here is a solution to this problem when working with pandas Series objects. In many cases, pandas Series have custom/unique indices (for example, unique identifier strings) that can't be accessed with the enumerate()
function.
xs = pd.Series([8, 23, 45]) xs.index = ['G923002', 'G923004', 'G923005'] print(xs)
Output:
# G923002 8 # G923004 23 # G923005 45 # dtype: int64
We can see below that enumerate()
doesn't give us the desired result:
for id, x in enumerate(xs): print("id #{} = {}".format(id, x))
Output:
# id #0 = 8 # id #1 = 23 # id #2 = 45
We can access the indices of a pandas Series in a for loop using .items()
:
for id, x in xs.items(): print("id #{} = {}".format(id, x))
Output:
# id #G923002 = 8 # id #G923004 = 23 # id #G923005 = 45
One-liner lovers:
[index for index, datum in enumerate(data) if 'a' in datum]
Explaination:
>>> data = ['a','ab','bb','ba','alskdhkjl','hkjferht','lal']
>>> data
['a', 'ab', 'bb', 'ba', 'alskdhkjl', 'hkjferht', 'lal']
>>> [index for index, datum in enumerate(data) if 'a' in datum]
[0, 1, 3, 4, 6]
>>> [index for index, datum in enumerate(data) if 'b' in datum]
[1, 2, 3]
>>>
Points to take:
list
doesn't provide an index; if you are using for
enumerate
a list
it will return you ANOTHER list
tuple
,
)Thanks. Keep me in your prayers.
You can use range(len(some_list))
and then lookup the index like this
xs = [8, 23, 45]
for i in range(len(xs)):
print("item #{} = {}".format(i + 1, xs[i]))
Or use the Python’s built-in enumerate
function which allows you to loop over a list and retrieve the index and the value of each item in the list
xs = [8, 23, 45]
for idx, val in enumerate(xs, start=1):
print("item #{} = {}".format(idx, val))
1.) Using enumerate()
for index, item in enumerate(items):
print(index, item)
2.) Using while loop
a = [1,2,3,4,5]
i = 0
while i < len(a):
print(i + 1,a[i])
i += 1
It can be achieved with the following code:
xs = [8, 23, 45]
for x, n in zip(xs, range(1, len(xs)+1)):
print("item #{} = {}".format(n, x))
Here, range(1, len(xs)+1); If you expect the output to start from 1 instead of 0, you need to start the range from 1 and add 1 to the total length estimated since python starts indexing the number from 0 by default.
Final Output:
item #1 = 8
item #2 = 23
item #3 = 45
A loop with a "counter" variable set as an initialiser that will be a parameter, in formatting the string, as the item number.
The for loop accesses the "listos" variable which is the list. As we access the list by "i", "i" is formatted as the item price (or whatever it is).
listos = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
counter = 1
for i in listos:
print('Item #{} = {}'.format(counter, i))
counter += 1
Output:
Item #1 = 8
Item #2 = 23
Item #3 = 45
Item #4 = 12
Item #5 = 78
counter += 1
was indented at the same level as the for
loop. In that case, it would have updated per iteration of the for
loop. Here, it updates per iteration of the while
loop. My question on the while
loop remains: Why is it necessary to use a while loop when counter can be updated in the for
loop? This is plainly visible in Rahul's answer. –
Garcia This serves the purpose well enough:
list1 = [10, 'sumit', 43.21, 'kumar', '43', 'test', 3]
for x in list1:
print('index:', list1.index(x), 'value:', x)
index()
will search for the first occurrence of x
, not mentioning the O( n^2 ) time required to look up each element. –
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