Python Data Persistence - List Comprehension

Python Data Persistence – List Comprehension

Python supports many functional programming features. List comprehension is one of them. This technique follows mathematical set builder notation. It is a very concise and efficient way of creating a new list by performing a certain process on each item of the existing list. List comprehension is considerably efficient than processing a list by for loop.
Suppose we want to compute the square of each number in a list and store squares in another list object. We can do it by a for loop as shown below:

Example

#new list with loop
list1= [4,7,2,5,8]
list2= [ ]
for num in listl:
sqr=num*num
list2.append(sqr)
print ('new list:', list2)

The new list will store squares of the existing list.
The list comprehension method achieves the same result more efficiently. List comprehension statement uses the following syntax:

new list = [x for x in sequence]

We use the above format to construct a list of squares by using list comprehension.

Example

>>> list1=[ 4 , 7 , 2 , 5 , 8 ]
>>> list2=[num*num for num in list1]
>>> list2
[ 16 , 49 , 4 , 25 , 64 ]
> > >

We can even generate a dictionary or tuple object as a result of list comprehension.

Example

>>> list1= [ 4 , 7 , 2 , 5 , 8 ]
>>> dict1=[{num:num*num} for num in list1]
>>> dict1
[{4 16}, {7: 49}, {2:4}, {5 : 25},{8 : 64 } ]
>>>

List comprehension works with any iterable. Nested loops can also be used in a list comprehension expression. To obtain list of all combinations of characters from two strings:

Example

>>> list1= [x+y for x in 'ABC' for y in ' 123 ' ]
>>> list1
[ 'A1' , 'A2', 'A3', 'B11,' B2 ', 'B3', 'Cl', 'C2', ' C3 ']
>>>

The resulting list stores all combinations of one character from each string.

We can even have if condition in a list comprehension. The following statement will result in a list of all non-vowel alphabets in a string.

Example

>>> consonents=[char for char in "Simple is better
than complex" if char not in [ 'a', 'e' , 'i' , 'o' , 'U' ] ]
>>> consonents
[ 'S' , 'm' , 'p' , '1' , ' ' , 'b' , 't' , 'r' , ' ' , 't' , 'h' , 'n' , ' ' , 'c' , 'm' , 'p' , 'l' , 'x' ]

Conditionals and looping constructs are the two most important tools in a programmer’s armory. Along with them, we also learned about controlling repetition with break and continue statements.
The next chapter introduces the concept of structured programming through the use of functions and modules.

Python Data Persistence – List Comprehension

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