How to Understand List and Arrays in Python

Lists and Arrays in Python and their differences.

Table of contents

Differences between List and Array

S.No.	Python Lists	Python arrays
1	List is mutable. You can change data.	Array is mutable. You can change data
2	List can have different types of data (it can have Heterogeneous data)	Array can have only one type of data
3	List can have different types of data (it can have Heterogeneous data)	Array is an ordered collection of data
4	List can have different types of data (it can have Heterogeneous data)	Array is fixed. It can’t grow and shrink.

Python list vs arrays

Working with Lists

Creating List

Here’s is logic how to create a List.

mylist = [] # empty list is created
mylist.append(1) # append() function is used to add elements into list
mylist.append(2)
mylist.append(3)
print(mylist[0]) # prints 1
print(mylist[1]) # prints 2
print(mylist[2]) # prints 3
# prints out 1,2,3
for x in mylist: # for loop is used
  print(x)

Appending List

Various operation that you can do on Lists.

Python Code to Create List — List operations

Output

List with Heterogeneous data

List supports heterogeneous data.

list1 = ['physics', 'chemistry', 2018, 2019]; # It has both numeric and strings
list2 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]; # It has only numeric values
print ("list1[0]: ", list1[0])
print ("list2[1:3]: ", list2[1:3])

Example:

In the below example you can find both numeric and Strings.