Consider a list with 5 integer elements:
>>> thelist = [0,5,10,15,20]Now suppose we wish to change the central three elements (5, 10 and 15, at positions 1, 2 and 3 in the list) to the values 6, 7, and 8. As with a string, we could extract the three elements with a statement like:
>>> thelist[1:4] [5, 10, 15]But with a list, we can also assign values to that slice:
>>> thelist[1:4] = [6,7,8] >>> thelist [0, 6, 7, 8, 20]
If the number of elements in the list on the right hand side of the equal sign is not equal to the number of elements implied by the subscript of the slice, the list will expand or shrink to accomodate the assignment. (Recall that the number of elements in a slice is the higher valued subscript minus the lower valued subscript.) The following examples illustrate this point:
>>> words = ['We','belong','to','the','knights','who','say','"Ni"'] >>> words[1:4] = ['are'] >>> words ['We', 'are', 'knights', 'who', 'say', '"Ni"'] >>> words[1:2] = ['are','a','band','of'] ['We', 'are', 'a', 'band', 'of', 'knights', 'who', 'say', '"Ni"']Note that when we are replacing a slice with a single element, it must be surrounded by square brackets, effectively making it into a list with one element, to avoid a TypeError exception.
Assignments through slicing differ from those done with simple subscripting in that a slice can change the length of a list, while assignments done through a single subscript will always preserve the length of the list. This is true for slices where both of the subscripts are the same. Notice the difference between the two expressions shown below:
>>> # using a single subscript >>> x = ['one','two','three','four','five'] >>> x[1] = ['dos','tres','cuatro'] >>> x ['one', ['dos', 'tres', 'cuatro'], 'three', 'four', 'five'] >>> # using a slice >>> x = ['one','two','three','four','five'] >>> x[1:1] = ['dos','tres','cuatro'] >>> x >>> ['one', 'dos', 'tres', 'cuatro', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five']In the final example, we were able to insert three elements into an list without replacing any elements in the list by assigning to a slice where both subscripts were the same.
Another use of slices is to make a separate modifiable copy of a list. (See Section 6.1 to understand why this is important.) In this case, you create a slice without either a starting or ending index. Python will then make a complete copy of the list
>>> x = ['one','two','three'] >>> y = x[:] >>> y ['one', 'two', 'three']
One final use of slices is to remove elements from an array. If we try to replace a single element or slice of an array with an empty list, that empty list will literally replace the locations to which it's assigned. But if we replace a slice of an array with an empty list, that slice of the array is effectively removed:
>>> a = [1,3,5,7,9] >>> a[2] = [] >>> a [1, 3, [], 7, 9] >>> b = [2,4,6,8] >>> b[2:3] = [] >>> b [2, 4, 8]
Another way to remove items from a list is to use the del statement. You provide the del statement with the element or slice of a list which you want removed, and that element or slice is removed without a trace. So to remove the second element from the list a in the previous example, we would use the del statement as follows:
>>> del a[2] >>> a [1, 3, 7, 9]The del statement is just as effective with slices:
>>> nums = ['one','two','three','four','five'] >>> del nums[0:3] >>> nums ['four', 'five']In the previous example, the same result could be obtained by assigning an empty list to nums[0:3].