python - Accessing the index in 'for' loops?

Question

How do I access the index in a for loop like the following?

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for i in ints:
    print('item #{} = {}'.format(???, i))

I want to get this output:

item #1 = 8
item #2 = 23
item #3 = 45
item #4 = 12
item #5 = 78

When I loop through it using a for loop, how do I access the loop index, from 1 to 5 in this case?

Answer 1

Using an additional state variable, such as an index variable (which you would normally use in languages such as C or PHP), is considered non-pythonic.

The better option is to use the built-in function enumerate(), available in both Python 2 and 3:

for idx, val in enumerate(ints):
    print(idx, val)

Check out PEP 279 for more.

Answer 2

Using a for loop, how do I access the loop index, from 1 to 5 in this case?

Use enumerate to get the index with the element as you iterate:

for index, item in enumerate(items):
    print(index, item)

And note that Python's indexes start at zero, so you would get 0 to 4 with the above. If you want the count, 1 to 5, do this:

for count, item in enumerate(items, start=1):
    print(count, item)

Unidiomatic control flow

What you are asking for is the Pythonic equivalent of the following, which is the algorithm most programmers of lower-level languages would use:

index = 0            # Python's indexing starts at zero
for item in items:   # Python's for loops are a "for each" loop 
    print(index, item)
    index += 1

Or in languages that do not have a for-each loop:

index = 0
while index < len(items):
    print(index, items[index])
    index += 1

or sometimes more commonly (but unidiomatically) found in Python:

for index in range(len(items)):
    print(index, items[index])

Use the Enumerate Function

Python's enumerate function reduces the visual clutter by hiding the accounting for the indexes, and encapsulating the iterable into another iterable (an enumerate object) that yields a two-item tuple of the index and the item that the original iterable would provide. That looks like this:

for index, item in enumerate(items, start=0):   # default is zero
    print(index, item)

This code sample is fairly well the canonical example of the difference between code that is idiomatic of Python and code that is not. Idiomatic code is sophisticated (but not complicated) Python, written in the way that it was intended to be used. Idiomatic code is expected by the designers of the language, which means that usually this code is not just more readable, but also more efficient.

Getting a count

Even if you don't need indexes as you go, but you need a count of the iterations (sometimes desirable) you can start with 1 and the final number will be your count.

for count, item in enumerate(items, start=1):   # default is zero
    print(item)

print('there were {0} items printed'.format(count))

The count seems to be more what you intend to ask for (as opposed to index) when you said you wanted from 1 to 5.

---

Breaking it down - a step by step explanation

To break these examples down, say we have a list of items that we want to iterate over with an index:

items = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

Now we pass this iterable to enumerate, creating an enumerate object:

enumerate_object = enumerate(items) # the enumerate object

We can pull the first item out of this iterable that we would get in a loop with the next function:

iteration = next(enumerate_object) # first iteration from enumerate
print(iteration)

And we see we get a tuple of 0, the first index, and 'a', the first item:

(0, 'a')

we can use what is referred to as "sequence unpacking" to extract the elements from this two-tuple:

index, item = iteration
#   0,  'a' = (0, 'a') # essentially this.

and when we inspect index, we find it refers to the first index, 0, and item refers to the first item, 'a'.

>>> print(index)
0
>>> print(item)
a

Conclusion

• Python indexes start at zero
• To get these indexes from an iterable as you iterate over it, use the enumerate function
• Using enumerate in the idiomatic way (along with tuple unpacking) creates code that is more readable and maintainable:

So do this:

for index, item in enumerate(items, start=0):   # Python indexes start at zero
    print(index, item)

Answer 3

It's pretty simple to start it from 1 other than 0:

for index, item in enumerate(iterable, start=1):
   print index, item  # Used to print in python<3.x
   print(index, item) # Mirate print() after 3.x+
   

Answer 4

for i in range(len(ints)):
   print(i, ints[i]) # print updated to print() in Python 3.x+ 

Answer 5

As is the norm in Python there are several ways to do this. In all examples assume: lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

1. Using enumerate (considered most idiomatic)

for index, element in enumerate(lst):
    # do the things that need doing here

This is also the safest option in my opinion because the chance of going into infinite recursion has been eliminated. Both the item and its index are held in variables and there is no need to write any further code to access the item.

2. Creating a variable to hold the index (using for)

for index in range(len(lst)):   # or xrange
    # you will have to write extra code to get the element

3. Creating a variable to hold the index (using while)

index = 0
while index < len(lst):
    # you will have to write extra code to get the element
    index += 1  # escape infinite recursion

4. There is always another way

As explained before, there are other ways to do this that have not been explained here and they may even apply more in other situations. e.g using itertools.chain with for. It handles nested loops better than the other examples.

Answer 6

Old fashioned way:

for ix in range(len(ints)):
    print(ints[ix])

List comprehension:

[ (ix, ints[ix]) for ix in range(len(ints))]

>>> ints
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> for ix in range(len(ints)): print ints[ix]
... 
1
2
3
4
5
>>> [ (ix, ints[ix]) for ix in range(len(ints))]
[(0, 1), (1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 4), (4, 5)]
>>> lc = [ (ix, ints[ix]) for ix in range(len(ints))]
>>> for tup in lc:
...     print(tup)
... 
(0, 1)
(1, 2)
(2, 3)
(3, 4)
(4, 5)
>>> 

Answer 7

Accessing indexes & Performance Benchmarking of approaches

The fastest way to access indexes of list within loop in Python 3.7 is to use the enumerate method for small, medium and huge lists.

Please see different approaches which can be used to iterate over list and access index value and their performance metrics (which I suppose would be useful for you) in code samples below:

# Using range
def range_loop(iterable):
    for i in range(len(iterable)):
        1 + iterable[i]

# Using enumerate
def enumerate_loop(iterable):
    for i, val in enumerate(iterable):
        1 + val

# Manual indexing
def manual_indexing_loop(iterable):
    index = 0
    for item in iterable:
        1 + item
        index += 1

See performance metrics for each method below:

from timeit import timeit

def measure(l, number=10000):
    print("Measure speed for list with %d items" % len(l))
    print("range: ", timeit(lambda :range_loop(l), number=number))
    print("enumerate: ", timeit(lambda :enumerate_loop(l), number=number))
    print("manual_indexing: ", timeit(lambda :manual_indexing_loop(l), number=number))

# Measure speed for list with 1000 items
measure(range(1000))
# range:  1.161622366
# enumerate:  0.5661940879999996
# manual_indexing:  0.610455682

# Measure speed for list with 100000 items
measure(range(10000))
# range:  11.794482958
# enumerate:  6.197628574000001
# manual_indexing:  6.935181098000001

# Measure speed for list with 10000000 items
measure(range(10000000), number=100)
# range:  121.416859069
# enumerate:  62.718909123
# manual_indexing:  69.59575057400002

As the result, using enumerate method is the fastest method for iteration when the index needed.

Adding some useful links below:

• What is the difference between range and xrange functions in Python 2.X?

• What is faster for loop using enumerate or for loop using xrange in Python?

• range(len(list)) or enumerate(list)?

Answer 8

Here's what you get when you're accessing index in for loops:

for i in enumerate(items): print(i)

items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]

for i in enumerate(items):
    print("index/value", i)

Result:

# index/value (0, 8)
# index/value (1, 23)
# index/value (2, 45)
# index/value (3, 12)
# index/value (4, 78)

for i, val in enumerate(items): print(i, val)

items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]

for i, val in enumerate(items):
    print("index", i, "for value", val)

Result:

# index 0 for value 8
# index 1 for value 23
# index 2 for value 45
# index 3 for value 12
# index 4 for value 78

for i, val in enumerate(items): print(i)

items = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]

for i, val in enumerate(items):
    print("index", i)

Result:

# index 0
# index 1
# index 2
# index 3
# index 4

Answer 9

First of all, the indexes will be from 0 to 4. Programming languages start counting from 0; don't forget that or you will come across an index out of bounds exception. All you need in the for loop is a variable counting from 0 to 4 like so:

for x in range(0, 5):

Keep in mind that I wrote 0 to 5 because the loop stops one number before the max. :)

To get the value of an index use

list[index]

Answer 10

According to this discussion: http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/464012-objects-list-index

Loop counter iteration

The current idiom for looping over the indices makes use of the built-in range function:

for i in range(len(sequence)):
    # work with index i

Looping over both elements and indices can be achieved either by the old idiom or by using the new zip built-in function:

for i in range(len(sequence)):
    e = sequence[i]
    # work with index i and element e

or

for i, e in zip(range(len(sequence)), sequence):
    # work with index i and element e

via http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0212/

Answer 11

You can do it with this code:

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
index = 0

for value in (ints):
    index +=1
    print index, value

Use this code if you need to reset the index value at the end of the loop:

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
index = 0

for value in (ints):
    index +=1
    print index, value
    if index >= len(ints)-1:
        index = 0

Answer 12

If I were to iterate nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] I would do

for i, num in enumerate(nums, start=1):
    print(i, num)

Or get the length as l = len(nums)

for i in range(l):
    print(i+1, nums[i])

Answer 13

The best solution for this problem is to use the enumerate builtin function.

enumerate returns a tuple, where the first value is the index and the second value is the element of the list at that index.

In [1]: ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]

In [2]: for idx, val in enumerate(ints):
   ...:         print(idx, val)
   ...:     
(0, 8)
(1, 23)
(2, 45)
(3, 12)
(4, 78)

Answer 14

In your question, you write "how do I access the loop index, from 1 to 5 in this case?"

However, the index for a list runs from zero. So, then we need to know if what you actually want is the index and item for each item in a list, or whether you really want numbers starting from 1. Fortunately, in Python, it is easy to do either or both.

First, to clarify, the enumerate function iteratively returns the index and corresponding item for each item in a list.

alist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

for n, a in enumerate(alist):
    print("%d %d" % (n, a))

The output for the above is then,

0 1
1 2
2 3
3 4
4 5

Notice that the index runs from 0. This kind of indexing is common among modern programming languages including Python and C.

If you want your loop to span a part of the list, you can use the standard Python syntax for a part of the list. For example, to loop from the second item in a list up to but not including the last item, you could use

for n, a in enumerate(alist[1:-1]):
    print("%d %d" % (n, a))

Note that once again, the output index runs from 0,

0 2
1 3
2 4

That brings us to the start=n switch for enumerate(). This simply offsets the index, you can equivalently simply add a number to the index inside the loop.

for n, a in enumerate(alist, start=1):
    print("%d %d" % (n, a))

for which the output is

1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5

Answer 15

You can also try this:

data = ['itemA.ABC', 'itemB.defg', 'itemC.drug', 'itemD.ashok']
x = []
for (i, item) in enumerate(data):
      a = (i, str(item).split('.'))
      x.append(a)
for index, value in x:
     print(index, value)

The output is

0 ['itemA', 'ABC']
1 ['itemB', 'defg']
2 ['itemC', 'drug']
3 ['itemD', 'ashok']

Answer 16

If there is no duplicate value in the list:

for i in ints:
    indx = ints.index(i)
    print(i, indx)

Answer 17

You can use the index method

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
inds = [ints.index(i) for i in ints]

EDIT Highlighted in the comment that this method doesn’t work if there are duplicates in ints, the method below should work for any values in ints:

ints = [8, 8, 8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
inds = [tup[0] for tup in enumerate(ints)]

Or alternatively

ints = [8, 8, 8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
inds = [tup for tup in enumerate(ints)]

if you want to get both the index and the value in ints as a list of tuples.

It uses the method of enumerate in the selected answer to this question, but with list comprehension, making it faster with less code.

Answer 18

Simple answer using While Loop:

arr = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
i = 0
while i < len(arr):
    print("Item ", i + 1, " = ", arr[i])
    i += 1

Output:

Answer 19

To print tuple of (index, value) in list comprehension using a for loop:

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
print [(i,ints[i]) for i in range(len(ints))]

Output:

[(0, 8), (1, 23), (2, 45), (3, 12), (4, 78)]

Answer 20

You can simply use count variable to count the number of elements in the list

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
count = 0
for i in ints:
    count = count + 1
    print('item #{} = {}'.format(count, i))

Answer 21

This serves the purpose well enough:

list1 = [10, 'sumit', 43.21, 'kumar', '43', 'test', 3]
for x in list1:
    print('index:', list1.index(x), 'value:', x)

Answer 22

Use enumerate to iterate over the list

ints = [8, 23, 45, 12, 78]
for idx,val in enumerate(ints):
    print('item #{} = {}'.format(idx+1, val))

Output:

item #1 = 8
item #2 = 23
item #3 = 45
item #4 = 12
item #5 = 78

Answer 23

You can use enumerate to iterate over list and start with index start=1 by default it will start with 0

for index,val in enumerate(ints,start=1):
     print(f"item #{index} = {val}")

Also, use of f" " string is fast way to get your requested output and more readable as you can pass index and val into {}-placeholder directly.

Output:

item #1 = 8
item #2 = 23
item #3 = 45
item #4 = 12
item #5 = 78