Data structures and containers

In the last section, we talked about variable types that store single values. Now we will move on to data structures that can hold multiple values. These data structures are lists, tuples, dictionaries, and sets. Lists and tuples are commonly referred to as sequences in Python. In this book, we will use the terms data structures and data containers interchangeably.

Lists

Lists are a widely used data structure that can hold multiple values. Let's look at some features of lists:

• To make a list, we use square brackets, []. Example: my_list = [1, 2, 3].
• Lists can hold any combination of numeric types, strings, Boolean types, tuples, dictionaries, or even other lists. Example: my_diverse_list = [51, 'Health', True, [1, 2, 3]].
• Lists, like strings, are sequences and support indexing and slicing. For example, in the preceding example, my_diverse_list[0] would equal 51. my_diverse_list[0:2] would equal [51, 'Health']. To access the 3 of the nested list, we can use my_diverse_list...