Introduction to Lists

A container is an entity that contains multiple data items. It is also known as a collection or a compound data type.

Python has the following container data types:

• Lists
• Tuples
• Sets
• Dictionaries

What are lists?

A list can grow or shrink during the execution of the program. Therefore, it is also known as a dynamic array. For this reason, they are commonly used for handling variable-length data.

A list is defined by writing comma-separated elements within [].

num = [10, 25, 30, 40, 100]
names = ['Noah', 'Emma', 'Amelia', 'Oliver']

A list can contain dissimilar types, though usually, they are a collection of similar types, for example:

animal = ['Zebra', 155.55, 110]

Items in a list can be repeated, i.e., a list may contain duplicate items. Like printing, * can be used to repeat an element multiple times. An empty list is also feasible.