Table of Contents

Welcome! This post will teach you about the tuples in the Python Programming Language. By the end of this post, you’ll know the basics tuple operations in Python, including indexing, slicing and sorting.

About the Dataset

Imagine you received album recommendations from your friends and compiled all of the recommendations into a table, with specific information about each album.

The table has one row for each movie and several columns:

artist – Name of the artist
album – Name of the album
released_year – Year the album was released
length_min_sec – Length of the album (hours,minutes,seconds)
genre – Genre of the album
music_recording_sales_millions – Music recording sales (millions in USD) on SONG://DATABASE
claimed_sales_millions – Album’s claimed sales (millions in USD) on SONG://DATABASE
date_released – Date on which the album was released
soundtrack – Indicates if the album is the movie soundtrack (Y) or (N)
rating_of_friends – Indicates the rating from your friends from 1 to 10

The dataset can be seen below:

Artist	Album	Released	Length	Genre	Music recording sales (millions)	Claimed sales (millions)	Released	Soundtrack	Rating (friends)
Michael Jackson	Thriller	1982	00:42:19	Pop, rock, R&B	46	65	30-Nov-82		10.0
AC/DC	Back in Black	1980	00:42:11	Hard rock	26.1	50	25-Jul-80		8.5
Pink Floyd	The Dark Side of the Moon	1973	00:42:49	Progressive rock	24.2	45	01-Mar-73		9.5
Whitney Houston	The Bodyguard	1992	00:57:44	Soundtrack/R&B, soul, pop	26.1	50	25-Jul-80	Y	7.0
Meat Loaf	Bat Out of Hell	1977	00:46:33	Hard rock, progressive rock	20.6	43	21-Oct-77		7.0
Eagles	Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)	1976	00:43:08	Rock, soft rock, folk rock	32.2	42	17-Feb-76		9.5
Bee Gees	Saturday Night Fever	1977	1:15:54	Disco	20.6	40	15-Nov-77	Y	9.0
Fleetwood Mac	Rumours	1977	00:40:01	Soft rock	27.9	40	04-Feb-77		9.5

Tuples

In Python, there are different data types: string, integer and float. These data types can all be contained in a tuple as follows:

Now, let us create your first tuple with string, integer and float.

In [1]:

# Create your first tuple

tuple1 = ("disco",10,1.2 )
tuple1

Out[1]:

('disco', 10, 1.2)

The type of variable is a tuple.

In [2]:

# Print the type of the tuple you created

type(tuple1)

Out[2]:

tuple

Indexing

Each element of a tuple can be accessed via an index. The following table represents the relationship between the index and the items in the tuple. Each element can be obtained by the name of the tuple followed by a square bracket with the index number:

Type of value in tuple

We can print out each value in the tuple:

In [3]:

# Print the variable on each index

print(tuple1[0])
print(tuple1[1])
print(tuple1[2])

disco
10
1.2

We can print out the type of each value in the tuple:

In [4]:

# Print the type of value on each index

print(type(tuple1[0]))
print(type(tuple1[1]))
print(type(tuple1[2]))

<class 'str'>
<class 'int'>
<class 'float'>

Negative Indexing

We can also use negative indexing. We use the same table above with corresponding negative values:

We can obtain the last element as follows (this time we will not use the print statement to display the values):

In [5]:

# Use negative index to get the value of the last element

tuple1[-1]

Out[5]:

1.2

We can display the next two elements as follows:

In [6]:

# Use negative index to get the value of the second last element

tuple1[-2]

Out[6]:

In [7]:

# Use negative index to get the value of the third last element

tuple1[-3]

Out[7]:

'disco'

Concatenate Tuples

We can concatenate or combine tuples by using the + sign:

In [8]:

# Concatenate two tuples

tuple2 = tuple1 + ("hard rock", 10)
tuple2

Out[8]:

('disco', 10, 1.2, 'hard rock', 10)

We can slice tuples obtaining multiple values as demonstrated by the figure below:

Slicing

We can slice tuples, obtaining new tuples with the corresponding elements:

In [9]:

# Slice from index 0 to index 2

tuple2[0:3]

Out[9]:

('disco', 10, 1.2)

We can obtain the last two elements of the tuple:

In [10]:

# Slice from index 3 to index 4

tuple2[3:5]

Out[10]:

('hard rock', 10)

Length of tuple

We can obtain the length of a tuple using the length command:

In [11]:

# Get the length of tuple

len(tuple2)

Out[11]:

This figure shows the number of elements:

Sorting

Consider the following tuple:

In [12]:

# A sample tuple

Ratings = (0, 9, 6, 5, 10, 8, 9, 6, 2)

We can sort the values in a tuple and save it to a new tuple:

In [13]:

# Sort the tuple

RatingsSorted = sorted(Ratings)
RatingsSorted

Out[13]:

[0, 2, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10]

Nested Tuple

A tuple can contain another tuple as well as other more complex data types. This process is called ‘nesting’. Consider the following tuple with several elements:

In [14]:

# Create a nest tuple

NestedT =(1, 2, ("pop", "rock") ,(3,4),("disco",(1,2)))

Each element in the tuple including other tuples can be obtained via an index as shown in the figure:

In [15]:

# Print element on each index

print("Element 0 of Tuple: ", NestedT[0])
print("Element 1 of Tuple: ", NestedT[1])
print("Element 2 of Tuple: ", NestedT[2])
print("Element 3 of Tuple: ", NestedT[3])
print("Element 4 of Tuple: ", NestedT[4])

Element 0 of Tuple:  1
Element 1 of Tuple:  2
Element 2 of Tuple:  ('pop', 'rock')
Element 3 of Tuple:  (3, 4)
Element 4 of Tuple:  ('disco', (1, 2))

We can use the second index to access other tuples as demonstrated in the figure:

We can access the nested tuples :

In [16]:

# Print element on each index, including nest indexes

print("Element 2, 0 of Tuple: ",   NestedT[2][0])
print("Element 2, 1 of Tuple: ",   NestedT[2][1])
print("Element 3, 0 of Tuple: ",   NestedT[3][0])
print("Element 3, 1 of Tuple: ",   NestedT[3][1])
print("Element 4, 0 of Tuple: ",   NestedT[4][0])
print("Element 4, 1 of Tuple: ",   NestedT[4][1])

Element 2, 0 of Tuple:  pop
Element 2, 1 of Tuple:  rock
Element 3, 0 of Tuple:  3
Element 3, 1 of Tuple:  4
Element 4, 0 of Tuple:  disco
Element 4, 1 of Tuple:  (1, 2)

We can access strings in the second nested tuples using a third index:

In [17]:

# Print the first element in the second nested tuples

NestedT[2][1][0]

Out[17]:

'r'

In [18]:

# Print the second element in the second nested tuples

NestedT[2][1][1]

Out[18]:

'o'

We can use a tree to visualize the process. Each new index corresponds to a deeper level in the tree:

Similarly, we can access elements nested deeper in the tree with a fourth index:

In [19]:

# Print the first element in the second nested tuples

NestedT[4][1][0]

Out[19]:

In [20]:

# Print the second element in the second nested tuples

NestedT[4][1][1]

Out[20]:

The following figure shows the relationship of the tree and the element NestedT[4][1][1]:

Quiz on Tuples

Consider the following tuple:

In [21]:

# sample tuple

genres_tuple = ("pop", "rock", "soul", "hard rock", "soft rock", \
                "R&B", "progressive rock", "disco") 
genres_tuple

Out[21]:

('pop',
 'rock',
 'soul',
 'hard rock',
 'soft rock',
 'R&B',
 'progressive rock',
 'disco')

Find the length of the tuple, genres_tuple:

In [ ]:

Your answer is below:
len(genres_tuple)

Access the element, with respect to index 3:

In [ ]:

Your answer is below:
genres_tuple[3]

Use slicing to obtain indexes 3, 4 and 5:

In [ ]:

Your answer is below:
genres_tuple[3:6]

Find the first two elements of the tuple genres_tuple:

In [ ]:

Your answer is below:
genres_tuple[0:2]

Find the first index of "disco":

In [ ]:

Your answer is below:
genres_tuple.index(“disco”)

Generate a sorted List from the Tuple C_tuple=(-5, 1, -3):

In [ ]:

Your answer is below:
C_tuple = (-5, 1, -3)
C_list = sorted(C_tuple)
C_list

Tuples in Python

About the Dataset

Tuples

Indexing

Type of value in tuple

Negative Indexing

Concatenate Tuples

Slicing

Length of tuple

Sorting

Nested Tuple

Quiz on Tuples

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