Using Python's list index() method on a list of tuples or objects?

Question:

Python’s list type has an index() method that takes one parameter and returns the index of the first item in the list matching the parameter. For instance:

>>> some_list = ["apple", "pear", "banana", "grape"]
>>> some_list.index("pear")
1
>>> some_list.index("grape")
3

Is there a graceful (idiomatic) way to extend this to lists of complex objects, like tuples? Ideally, I’d like to be able to do something like this:

>>> tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]
>>> some_list.getIndexOfTuple(1, 7)
1
>>> some_list.getIndexOfTuple(0, "kumquat")
2

getIndexOfTuple() is just a hypothetical method that accepts a sub-index and a value, and then returns the index of the list item with the given value at that sub-index. I hope

Is there some way to achieve that general result, using list comprehensions or lambas or something “in-line” like that? I think I could write my own class and method, but I don’t want to reinvent the wheel if Python already has a way to do it.

Asked By: Ryan B. Lynch

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Answers:

How about this?

>>> tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]
>>> [x for x, y in enumerate(tuple_list) if y[1] == 7]
[1]
>>> [x for x, y in enumerate(tuple_list) if y[0] == 'kumquat']
[2]

As pointed out in the comments, this would get all matches. To just get the first one, you can do:

>>> [y[0] for y in tuple_list].index('kumquat')
2

There is a good discussion in the comments as to the speed difference between all the solutions posted. I may be a little biased but I would personally stick to a one-liner as the speed we’re talking about is pretty insignificant versus creating functions and importing modules for this problem, but if you are planning on doing this to a very large amount of elements you might want to look at the other answers provided, as they are faster than what I provided.

Answered By: Paolo Bergantino

One possibility is to use the itemgetter function from the operator module:

import operator

f = operator.itemgetter(0)
print map(f, tuple_list).index("cherry") # yields 1

The call to itemgetter returns a function that will do the equivalent of foo[0] for anything passed to it. Using map, you then apply that function to each tuple, extracting the info into a new list, on which you then call index as normal.

map(f, tuple_list)

is equivalent to:

[f(tuple_list[0]), f(tuple_list[1]), ...etc]

which in turn is equivalent to:

[tuple_list[0][0], tuple_list[1][0], tuple_list[2][0]]

which gives:

["pineapple", "cherry", ...etc]
Answered By: Jarret Hardie

You can do this with a list comprehension and index()

tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]
[x[0] for x in tuple_list].index("kumquat")
2
[x[1] for x in tuple_list].index(7)
1
Answered By: Alasdair

Those list comprehensions are messy after a while.

I like this Pythonic approach:

from operator import itemgetter

tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]

def collect(l, index):
   return map(itemgetter(index), l)

# And now you can write this:
collect(tuple_list,0).index("cherry")   # = 1
collect(tuple_list,1).index("3")        # = 2

If you need your code to be all super performant:

# Stops iterating through the list as soon as it finds the value
def getIndexOfTuple(l, index, value):
    for pos,t in enumerate(l):
        if t[index] == value:
            return pos

    # Matches behavior of list.index
    raise ValueError("list.index(x): x not in list")

getIndexOfTuple(tuple_list, 0, "cherry")   # = 1
Answered By: Kenan Banks

I would place this as a comment to Triptych, but I can’t comment yet due to lack of rating:

Using the enumerator method to match on sub-indices in a list of tuples.
e.g.

li = [(1,2,3,4), (11,22,33,44), (111,222,333,444), ('a','b','c','d'),
        ('aa','bb','cc','dd'), ('aaa','bbb','ccc','ddd')]

# want pos of item having [22,44] in positions 1 and 3:

def getIndexOfTupleWithIndices(li, indices, vals):

    # if index is a tuple of subindices to match against:
    for pos,k in enumerate(li):
        match = True
        for i in indices:
            if k[i] != vals[i]:
                match = False
                break;
        if (match):
            return pos

    # Matches behavior of list.index
    raise ValueError("list.index(x): x not in list")

idx = [1,3]
vals = [22,44]
print getIndexOfTupleWithIndices(li,idx,vals)    # = 1
idx = [0,1]
vals = ['a','b']
print getIndexOfTupleWithIndices(li,idx,vals)    # = 3
idx = [2,1]
vals = ['cc','bb']
print getIndexOfTupleWithIndices(li,idx,vals)    # = 4
Answered By: Nisan.H

ok, it might be a mistake in vals(j), the correction is:

def getIndex(li,indices,vals):
for pos,k in enumerate(lista):
    match = True
    for i in indices:
        if k[i] != vals[indices.index(i)]:
            match = False
            break
    if(match):
        return pos
Answered By: dulce ambrocio
tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]

def eachtuple(tupple, pos1, val):
    for e in tupple:
        if e == val:
            return True

for e in tuple_list:
    if eachtuple(e, 1, 7) is True:
        print tuple_list.index(e)

for e in tuple_list:
    if eachtuple(e, 0, "kumquat") is True:
        print tuple_list.index(e)
Answered By: Ricardo Trujillo
z = list(zip(*tuple_list))
z[1][z[0].index('persimon')]
Answered By: o17t H1H' S'k

Inspired by this question, I found this quite elegant:

>>> tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]
>>> next(i for i, t in enumerate(tuple_list) if t[1] == 7)
1
>>> next(i for i, t in enumerate(tuple_list) if t[0] == "kumquat")
2
Answered By: Claudiu

This is also possible using Lambda expressions:

l = [('rana', 1, 1), ('pato', 1, 1), ('perro', 1, 1)]
map(lambda x:x[0], l).index("pato") # returns 1 
Edit to add examples:
l=[['rana', 1, 1], ['pato', 2, 1], ['perro', 1, 1], ['pato', 2, 2], ['pato', 2, 2]]

extract all items by condition:

filter(lambda x:x[0]=="pato", l) #[['pato', 2, 1], ['pato', 2, 2], ['pato', 2, 2]]

extract all items by condition with index:

>>> filter(lambda x:x[1][0]=="pato", enumerate(l))
[(1, ['pato', 2, 1]), (3, ['pato', 2, 2]), (4, ['pato', 2, 2])]
>>> map(lambda x:x[1],_)
[['pato', 2, 1], ['pato', 2, 2], ['pato', 2, 2]]

Note: The _ variable only works in the interactive interpreter. More generally, one must explicitly assign _, i.e. _=filter(lambda x:x[1][0]=="pato", enumerate(l)).

Answered By: Wallebot

Python’s list.index(x) returns index of the first occurrence of x in the list. So we can pass objects returned by list compression to get their index.

>>> tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]
>>> [tuple_list.index(t) for t in tuple_list if t[1] == 7]
[1]
>>> [tuple_list.index(t) for t in tuple_list if t[0] == 'kumquat']
[2]

With the same line, we can also get the list of index in case there are multiple matched elements.

>>> tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11), ("banana", 7)]
>>> [tuple_list.index(t) for t in tuple_list if t[1] == 7]
[1, 4]
Answered By: dspmeng

I guess the following is not the best way to do it (speed and elegance concerns) but well, it could help :

from collections import OrderedDict as od
t = [('pineapple', 5), ('cherry', 7), ('kumquat', 3), ('plum', 11)]
list(od(t).keys()).index('kumquat')
2
list(od(t).values()).index(7)
7
# bonus :
od(t)['kumquat']
3

list of tuples with 2 members can be converted to ordered dict directly, data structures are actually the same, so we can use dict method on the fly.

Answered By: jerome

I came up with a quick and dirty approach using max and lambda.

>>> tuple_list = [("pineapple", 5), ("cherry", 7), ("kumquat", 3), ("plum", 11)]
>>> target = 7
>>> max(range(len(tuple_list)), key=lambda i: tuple_list[i][1] == target)
1

There is a caveat though that if the list does not contain the target, the returned index will be 0, which could be misleading.

>>> target = -1
>>> max(range(len(tuple_list)), key=lambda i: tuple_list[i][1] == target)
0
Answered By: nightwuffle
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