Python Language Tutorial => Iterating over lists

Example

To iterate through a list you can use for:

for x in ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']:
    print(x)

This will print out the elements of the list:

one
two
three
four

The range function generates numbers which are also often used in a for loop.

for x in range(1, 6):
    print(x)

The result will be a special range sequence type in python >=3 and a list in python <=2. Both can be looped through using the for loop.

If you want to loop though both the elements of a list and have an index for the elements as well, you can use Python's enumerate function:

for index, item in enumerate(['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']):
    print(index, '::', item)

enumerate will generate tuples, which are unpacked into index (an integer) and item (the actual value from the list). The above loop will print

(0, '::', 'one')
(1, '::', 'two')
(2, '::', 'three')
(3, '::', 'four')

Iterate over a list with value manipulation using map and lambda, i.e. apply lambda function on each element in the list:

x = map(lambda e :  e.upper(), ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four'])
print(x)

Output:

['ONE', 'TWO', 'THREE', 'FOUR'] # Python 2.x

NB: in Python 3.x map returns an iterator instead of a list so you in case you need a list you have to cast the result print(list(x)) (see http://www.riptutorial.com/python/example/8186/map-- in http://www.riptutorial.com/python/topic/809/incompatibilities-moving-from-python-2-to-python-3 ).

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