Lists and for loops

Learning aims

To be able to use lists in a program.

Introduction

Lists  are a sequence type https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-types-str-unicode-list-tuple-bytearray-buffer-xrange, and they are mutable https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#mutable-sequence-types.  Mutable means they can be changed.

lists are declared using square brackets '[]' and assigned to a variable.

A 'for loop' iterates over a sequence.  A sequence can be a list, range or string. iterating means it works through each member of the list and does the same thing to it.

Task 1

code 1

Type in the above code.  Save and run after each print command - Explain what is happening after each print command.

Questions

1. What is the command to add something to a list?

Look at https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-types-list-tuple-range. Read down to, but not including section 4.6.2. 

2. Write the line that would return True if 'm' was in 'yourlist'
3. Write the line that would return True is m was not in 'yourlist'
4. What would [2] + [2] be?
5. What is the index of the a in alphabetlist? (alphabetlist.index('a'))
6. What does index mean in a list? 

Task 2

The for command also works over a range.

Write and run the above program, save and run after each print command - Explain what is happening after each print command.

Questions

1. When there is a single number given as the argument in a range function - what does it mean?
2. When two numbers are given as the arguments to the range function what does each do?
3. When 3 numbers are given as arguments to the range functioon what does each do?
4. Write the Range command that would give the output [3,6,9,12,15,18]
5. Write the Range command that would give the output [5,4,3,2,1]
6. In the program above i stands for 'iterator'  as the loop 'iterates' accross the range.  What does iterate mean?
7. Replace all instances of 'i' in lines 5,6,7 with 'randomWord'  What happens?  What is i?