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I have experienced some problem by using a nested list in Python in the code shown bleow.
Basically, I have a 2D list contains all 0 values, I want to update the list value in a loop.
However, Python does not produce the result I want. Is there something that I misunderstand about range() and Python list indices?
some_list = 4 * [(4 * [0])]
for i in range(3):
for j in range(3):
some_list[i+1][j+1] = 1
for i in range(4):
print(some_list[i])
The results I expected are:
[0, 0, 0, 0]
[0, 1, 1, 1]
[0, 1, 1, 1]
[0, 1, 1, 1]
But the actual results from Python are:
[0, 1, 1, 1]
[0, 1, 1, 1]
[0, 1, 1, 1]
[0, 1, 1, 1]
What's going on here?
845
Method #1 : Using loop + set() In this, we just insert all the elements in set and then compare each element's existence in actual list. If it's the second occurrence or more, then index is added in result list.
Method #1 : Using sorted() + set() The idea here is to sort the sublist and then remove the like elements using the set operations which removes duplicates.
Our first approach is to use set comprehension with sorted tuple. In every iteration in the list, we convert the current sublist to a sorted tuple, and return a set of all these tuples, which in turn eliminates all repeated occurrences of the sublists and thus, remove all repeated rearranged sublists.
Remove items from a Nested List. If you know the index of the item you want, you can use pop() method. It modifies the list and returns the removed item. If you don't need the removed value, use the del statement.
The problem is caused by the fact that python chooses to pass lists around by reference.
Normally variables are passed "by value", so they operate independently:
>>> a = 1
>>> b = a
>>> a = 2
>>> print b
1
But since lists might get pretty large, rather than shifting the whole list around memory, Python chooses to just use a reference ('pointer' in C terms). If you assign one to another variable, you assign just the reference to it. This means that you can have two variables pointing to the same list in memory:
>>> a = [1]
>>> b = a
>>> a[0] = 2
>>> print b
[2]
So, in your first line of code you have 4 * [0]. Now [0] is a pointer to the value 0 in memory, and when you multiply it, you get four pointers to the same place in memory. BUT when you change one of the values then Python knows that the pointer needs to change to point to the new value:
>>> a = 4 * [0]
>>> a
[0, 0, 0, 0]
>>> [id(v) for v in a]
[33302480, 33302480, 33302480, 33302480]
>>> a[0] = 1
>>> a
[1, 0, 0, 0]
The problem comes when you multiply this list - you get four copies of the list pointer. Now when you change one of the values in one list, all four change together:
>>> a[0][0] = 1
>>> a
[[1, 0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0, 0]]
The solution is to avoid the second multiplication. A loop does the job:
>>> some_list = [(4 * [0]) for _ in range(4)]
Actually all the objects in your list are same, so changing one changes others too:
In [151]: some_list = 4 * [(4 * [0])]
In [152]: [id(x) for x in some_list]
Out[152]: [148641452, 148641452, 148641452, 148641452]
In [160]: some_list[0][1]=5 #you think you changed the list at index 0 here
In [161]: some_list
Out[161]: [[0, 5, 0, 0], [0, 5, 0, 0], [0, 5, 0, 0], [0, 5, 0, 0]] #but all lists are changed
Create your list this way:
In [156]: some_list=[[0]*4 for _ in range(4)]
In [157]: some_list
Out[157]: [[0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0]]
In [158]: [id(x) for x in some_list]
Out[158]: [148255436, 148695180, 148258380, 148255852]
In [163]: some_list[0][1]=5
In [164]: some_list
Out[164]: [[0, 5, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0]] #works fine in this case
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