Lists and List Methods

A list holds many values in order, in a single variable. Lists are the most used data structure in Python: to-do items, scores, names, rows of data. In this lesson you will create lists, read from them, and change them with built-in methods.

What You'll Learn

• Creating lists and accessing items by index
• Slicing to grab parts of a list
• Adding and removing items
• Sorting and useful built-in functions

Creating and Accessing

Like strings, lists index from 0, and -1 is the last item.

Slicing

Changing a List

Unlike strings, lists are mutable: you can change them in place.

Sorting

sort() reorders the list in place; add reverse=True for descending:

Built-in Helpers

Key Takeaways

• Lists use square brackets: [1, 2, 3]
• Index from 0, -1 from the end; slice with [start:end]
• Lists are mutable: append(), insert(), remove(), pop()
• sort() reorders in place, reverse=True for descending
• len(), max(), min(), sum() summarize a list