Python - Tuples

Tuples in Python

The tuple is a data type in Python. It is an immutable, ordered collection of items. Once it is created, it can not be modified or changed. Tuples do not stick to a single data type, which means tuples can contain items of different data types.

Lists and tuples are comparable in that they both contain an ordered collection of elements. Nevertheless, tuples are immutable. Let’s see how data are stored in tuples:

tup1 = ("letsupdateskills", "Python", 'a', 'b')
tup2 = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
tup3 = ("a", "b", 1, 2)

Use Cases

Tuples are useful when you wish to store a group of values, such as coordinates or dates, that shouldn't change while the application is running.

Characteristic of Tuple

The following are the characteristics of tuples:

• Ordered: The elements in a tuple have a defined order.
• Immutable: Once a tuple is created you can not change, add, and remove items from it.
• Heterogeneous: Tuples can store items of different data types (e.g. integer, strings, float)
• Indexed: You can access an individual element using an index starting from 0.

Create a Tuple

Items are entered into parenthesis() and separated with commas to construct tuples.

# An empty tuple
empty_tuple = ()

# A tuple with multiple data types
your_tuple = (1, "Hello", 3.14)

# A tuple with one element (note the trailing comma)
single_element_tuple = (5,)

Access elements of a Tuple

To access an element of a tuple, you use square brackets with an index. You can also access a range of elements (a slice) by separating the starting index and ending index with a colon (:).

# creattion of a tuple
my_tuple = (1, 2, 3, "hii", "hello", 'a')

# Accessing element from a tuple
print(my_tuple[1]) # output: 2

# accessing elements in a range
print(my_tuple[0:3]) # output (1, 2, 3)

Update a Tuple

You can't update a tuple because it is immutable. However, you can merge two tuples, or we can create a new tuple by taking some portions of the existing tuple. This can be seen in the following demonstrations.

tup1 = (1, 2, 2.5);
tup2 = ('a', 'b', 'c', 'abc');

# So let's create a new tuple as follows
tup3 = tup1 + tup2;
print (tup3); # Output: (1, 2, 2.5, 'a', 'b', 'c', 'abc')

Delete elements of a Tuple

Deleting individual elements of tuples is not possible because tuples are immutable. However, you can delete the entire tuple itself using the del statement. This can be seen in the following demonstrations.

tup = ('hello', 'world', "letsupdateskill");
print (tup); # output: ('hello', 'world', 'letsupdateskill')
del tup;
print ("After deleting tup : ");
print (tup); # output: name 'tup' is not defined

Tuple Operations

Following are the operations on a tuple:

Length

To get the length of the tuple use the len function. Here, is an example:

my_tuple = (1, 2, 3)
length = len(my_tuple)
print(length) # output: 3

Concatenation

To concatenate one tuple with another use the + operator. Here, is an example:

my_tuple1 = (1, 2, 3)
my_tuple2 = ("Hello", "World")
print(my_tuple1+my_tuple2) # output: (1, 2, 3, 'Hello', 'World')

Repetition

In Python, you can repeat the element of the tuple using the * operator. Here, is an example:

my_tuple = (1, 2, 3)
# repetition of elements
print(my_tuple * 2) # output: (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3)

Membership

In Python, you can check membership in a tuple using the in operator. Here is an example:

num_tuple = (10, 20, 30, 40, 50)
print(20 in num_tuple) # Output: True
print(60 in num_tuple) # Output: False