Write Clean and Shorter Code with List Comprehension in Python: A Must Read!

Hey, what's up :). I just started learning Python for backend web development few weeks ago and it has been a wonderful and mind-blowing experience so far.

I will love to share one of the amazing things, I've learnt so far, trust me it worth your time.

Let's Go!!!!

1. What is List Comprehension

List comprehension is a way of making new lists. It allows you to create a list from any iterable object in a concise and efficient manner.

See the basic syntax below:

# list comprehension syntax
new_list = [x for x in some_iterable]

Here you can see that list comprehension is specified by square brackets (just like the list itself) inside which you have a for loop over some iterable object.

In this example, new_list will simply consist of all elements from some_iterable object.

The code above is completely equivalent to this one below, however, it takes less space and works a little bit faster!

# the equivalent code
new_list = []
for x in some_iterable:
    new_list.append(x)

You may wonder why there is a need for list comprehensions at all since we have a list() function.

Obviously, list comprehensions are used not just for copying elements from some iterable into a list, but mainly for modifying them in some way to create a specific new list.

In this case, in the first place of the list comprehension, we write some function of our variable. For example, the code below shows how to create a list of squared numbers.

# squared numbers
numbers = [1, 2, 3]
square_list = [x * x for x in numbers]  # [1, 4, 9]

Also, we can use list comprehensions to convert elements of a list from one data type to another:

# from string to float
strings = ["8.9", "6.0", "8.1", "7.5"]
floats = [float(num) for num in strings]  # [8.9, 6.0, 8.1, 7.5]

THAT'S NOT ALL, LET'S SEE MORE!

2. List comprehension with conditional statements

Another way to modify the original iterable object is by introducing the if statement into the list comprehension. The basic syntax is this:

# list comprehension with condition
new_list = [x for x in some_iterable if condition]

The conditional statement allows you to filter the elements of the original collection and work only with the elements you need. The if statement works here as a part of a comprehension syntax.

The filtering condition is not an obligatory part, but it can be very useful. For instance, here it is used to create a list of odd numbers from another list:

# odd numbers
numbers = [4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42, 108]
odd_list = [x for x in numbers if x % 2 == 1]  # [15, 23]

You can also modify the condition by using standard methods. For instance, if you want to create a list of words that end in "-tion", you can do it like this:

# conditions with functions
text = ["function", "is", "a", "synonym", "of", "occupation"]
words_tion = [word for word in text if word.endswith("tion")]  
print(words_tion)  # ["function", "occupation"]

Finally,

We can introduce the "else" statement in list comprehension.

The syntax here differs a bit:

[x if condition else y for x in some_iterable]. 

Using this, we can, for example, get 0 in a new list for each negative number in the old list:

old_list = [8, 13, -7, 4, -9, 2, 10]
new_list = [num if num >= 0 else 0 for num in old_list]
print(new_list)  # [8, 13, 0, 4, 0, 2, 10]

List Comprehension is a very useful tool and I hope you'll use it in your programs!

For more on List Comprehension, visit here

Thanks for reading!