Tuple
Introduction
A tuple in Python is much like a list except that it is immutable
(unchangeable) once [Link] the values that you give it first,
are the values that you are stuck with for the rest of the program
and tuples use parentheses and lists use square brackets.
Example:
List1 = [1, 'a', [6, 3.14]] is a list.
Tuple1 = (1, 'a', [6, 3.14]) is a tuple.
Creating Tuples
Creating a tuple is as simple as putting different comma-
separated values and optionally you can put these comma-
separated values between parentheses also.
For example:
tup1 = ('physics', 'chemistry', 1997, 2000);
tup2 = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
tup3 = "a", "b", "c", "d";
The empty tuple is written as two parentheses containing nothing:
tup1 = ();
To write a tuple containing a single value you have to include a
comma, even though there is only one value:
tup1 = (50,);
Accessing values in Tuple
To access values in tuple, use the square brackets for slicing
along with the index or indices to obtain value available at that
index:
Example:1
#!/usr/bin/python
tup1 = ('physics', 'chemistry', 1997, 2000);
tup2 = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 );
print "tup1[0]: ", tup1[0] # prints first value of tuple
print "tup2[1:5]: ", tup2[1:5] # prints (end-start) values
including end value
This will produce following result:
tup1[0]: physics
tup2[1:5]: [2, 3, 4, 5]
Example:2
#!/usr/bin/python
months = ('January','February','March','April','May','June',
'July','August','September','October','November','December')
Technically you don't have to put those parentheses ( ) but it
stops python from getting things confused.
You may have spaces after the commas if you feel it necessary
- it doesn't really matter.
Python then organizes those values in a handy, numbered index -
starting from zero (from left) or from -1 (from right), in the order
that you entered them in. It would be organized like this:
months[] Index Value
0 or -12 January
1 or -11 February
2 or -10 March
3 or -9 April
4 or -8 May
5 or -7 June
6 or -6 July
7 or -5 August
8 or -4 September
9 or -3 October
10 or -2 November
11 or -1 December
Updating Tuples
Tuples are immutable which means you cannot update them or
change values of tuple elements. But we able able to take
portions of an existing tuples to create a new tuples as follows:
Example:
#!/usr/bin/python
tup1 = (12, 34.56);
tup2 = ('abc', 'xyz');
#we can add elements to tuple
tup1 = tup1 + (10,)
# It is a way to create tuples
tup3 = tup1 + tup2;
print tup3;
# Another way to create a new tuple as follows
tup1 += tup2;
print tup1
This will produce following result:
(12, 34.56, 'abc', 'xyz')
(12, 34.56, 'abc', 'xyz')
Deleting Tuple Elements
Removing individual tuple elements is not possible. There is, of
course, nothing wrong with putting together another tuple with
the undesired elements discarded.
To explicitly remove an entire tuple, we use the del statement:
Example:
#!/usr/bin/python
tup = ('physics', 'chemistry', 1997, 2000);
print tup;
del tup;
print "After deleting tup : "
print tup;
This will produce the following result
Before deleting tup :
('physics', 'chemistry', 1997, 2000)
After deleting tup :
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "[Link]", line 9, in <module>
print tup;
NameError: name 'tup' is not defined
An exception raised, this is because after del tup tuple does not
exist anymore:
Tuples have no methods
You can't add elements to a tuple. Tuples have no append or
extend method.
>>> t
('a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example')
>>> [Link]("new")
Traceback (innermost last):
File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'append'
You can't remove elements from a tuple. Tuples have no
remove or pop method.
>>> t
('a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example')
>>> [Link]("z")
Traceback (innermost last):
File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'remove'
You can't find elements in a tuple. Tuples have no index
method.
>>> t
('a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example')
>>> [Link]("example")
Traceback (innermost last):
File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'index'
You can, however, use in to see if an element exists in the
tuple.
>>> t
('a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example')
>>> "z" in t
1
Conversions
Convert list to tuples using the built in tuple() method.
>>> l = [4, 5, 6]
>>> tuple(l)
(4, 5, 6)
Converting a tuple into a list using the built in list() method to
cast as a list:
>>> t = (4, 5, 6)
>>> list(t)
[4, 5, 6]
Basic Tuples Operations:
Tuples respond to the + and * operators much like strings; they
mean concatenation and repetition here too, except that the
result is a new tuple, not a string.
Python Expression Result Description
Len((1, 2, 3)) 3 Tuple length
(1, 2, 3)+(4, 5, 6) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) Concatenation
[‘Hi’]*4 ['Hi!' ,'Hi!' ,'Hi!' ,'Hi!'] Repetition
3 in (1, 2, 3) True Membership
For x in (1, 2, 3):print x, 1 2 3 Iteration
Sorting Tuple
The following program shows you how to sort a tuple.
tuple1=() # Create an empty tuple
n = int (raw_input("Enter an Integer for the length of Tuple:
")); # assign the length of the tuple given by user to n
# asks user for elements of tuple
for i in range(n):
print "\nIf you want to enter a string, type the string in
Single Quotes(Ex: 'bbc')"
x = input("Enter Values of tuple : ");
tupElement = x
tuple1 = tuple1 + (tupElement,)
print "\nTuple you have entered is: ", tuple1 # Tuple entered
by the user
ls = list(tuple1) # convert tuple to list
def sortTuple(lst): # function to sort a list
for i in range(len(lst)-1):
for j in range(len(lst)-1):
if lst[j]>lst[j+1]:
t = lst[j]
lst[j]=lst[j+1]
lst[j+1]=t
return lst
sortTuple(ls) # call sort function
tup1 = tuple(ls) # convert list back to tuple
print tuple1 # prints sorted tuple
As we cannot change the tuple values, we use list(tuple),
tuple(list) to convert tuple to list and list to tuple respectively.
After converting the tuple to list we sort it and again convert the
list back to tuple.
Exercise Problems:
1. Define ‘tuple’ and differentiate ‘tuple’ and ‘list’ with
examples.
2. Find the length of a tuple without using in-built function
“len(tuple)”.
3. Create a tuple of strings and then sort the tuple in
alphabetical order.
