List: A list in Python is a collection of items which can contain elements of multiple data types, which may be either numeric, character logical values, etc. It is an ordered collection supporting negative indexing. A list can be created using [] containing data values.
Contents of lists can be easily merged and copied using python’s inbuilt functions.
# creating a list containing elements # belonging to different data types sample_list = [1,"Yash",['a','e']] print(sample_list) |
Output :
[1, 'Yash', ['a', 'e']]
The first element is an integer, the second a string and the third is an list of characters.
Array: An array is a vector containing homogeneous elements i.e. belonging to the same data type. Elements are allocated with contiguous memory locations allowing easy modification, that is, addition, deletion, accessing of elements. In Python, we have to use the array module to declare arrays. If the elements of an array belong to different data types, an exception “Incompatible data types” is thrown.
# creating an array containing same # data type elements import array sample_array = array.array('i', [1, 2, 3]) # accessing elements of array for i in sample_array: print(i) |
Output :
1 2 3
Here are the differences between List and Array in Python :
| List | Array |
|---|---|
| Can consist of elements belonging to different data types | Only consists of elements belonging to the same data type |
| No need to explicitly import a module for declaration | Need to explicitly import a module for declaration |
| Cannot directly handle arithmetic operations | Can directly handle arithmetic operations |
| Can be nested to contain different type of elements | Must contain either all nested elements of same size |
| Preferred for shorter sequence of data items | Preferred for longer sequence of data items |
| Greater flexibility allows easy modification (addition, deletion) of data | Less flexibility since addition, deletion has to be done element wise |
| The entire list can be printed without any explicit looping | A loop has to be formed to print or access the components of array |
| Consume larger memory for easy addition of elements | Comparatively more compact in memory size |
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