A list is a collection of elements.

The elements of a list are ordered. Because they are ordered, you can access each of the elements of a list using an index, just like you can access the characters of a string, and just like you can access the elements of a tuple. Indices start at zero, just as with strings.

In Python, lists are recognizable from the fact that they enclose their elements in square brackets ([]). You can get the number of elements in a list by using the len() function. You can use a for loop to traverse the elements of a list. You can mix data types in a list. You can apply the max(), min() and sum() functions to a list. You can test for the existence of an element in a list using the in operator (or for the non-existence by using not in).

fruitlist = ["apple", "banana", "cherry", 27, 3.14]
print( len( fruitlist ) )
for element in fruitlist:
    print( element )
print( fruitlist[2] )

numlist = [314, 315, 642, 246, 129, 999]
print( max( numlist ) )
print( min( numlist ) )
print( sum( numlist ) )
print( 100 in numlist )
print( 999 in numlist )

Write a while loop to print the elements of a list.

Apart from the square brackets, lists seem to be a lot like tuples. Yet there is a big difference…