How to Access List Elements in Python?
Last updated on December 29, 2022
In Python you can access an element from the list through the index number. To access an element you need to attach a square bracket and add the index number that needed to access.
In this article we will learn it by an example, so to begin with let’s create a cities name list.
citiesList = ["Paris", "Dubai", "Amsterdam", "Madrid", "Rome", "London", "Munich", "Berlin"]In this list we have eight cities, each city has its own index number. The index number starts from zero (0). In this list, Paris’s index position is 0 and last item Berlin’s position is 7.
Access Element Through Index Number
In this list the first element is Paris, let’s access by index number.
print(citiesList[0])
# Output: Paris
In this example, we attached square brackets to citiesList along with 0 index that takes the first element from the cities list.
Similarly, if we replace zero index with 1 then output will be changed. Look at below example,
print(citiesList[1])
# Output: Dubai
In the output of above example we got Dubai, it is because Dubai’s index position is 1 in the cities list.
Negative Index Number
Python allows access to an element from a list through a negative index number. In this case, python starts from the last element, for example in cities list Berlin’s position is -1. Below is an example.
print(citiesList[-1])
# Output: Berlin
In the above example, we got Berlin in the output for the -1 index number. Similarly, -2 will be returning the second last element and it will return onwards.
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