Python Statements and Functions

List comprehensions

A common use of a for loop is to inspect each item in an iterable and build a new list by appending the results of an expression computed on some or all of the items. The expression form known as a list comprehension lets you code this common idiom concisely and directly. Since a list comprehension is an expression (rather than a block of statements), you can use it wherever you need an expression (e.g., as an argument in a function call, in a return statement, or as a subexpression for some other expression).

A list comprehension has the following syntax:

  [ expression for target in iterable lc-clauses ]

target and iterable  are the same as in a regular for statement. You must enclose the expression  in parentheses if it indicates a tuple.

lc-clauses  is a series of zero or more clauses, each with one of the following forms:

  for target in iterable
  if expression

target and iterable  in each for clause of a list comprehension have the same syntax and meaning as those in a regular for statement, and the expression  in each if clause of a list comprehension has the same syntax and meaning as the expression  in a regular if statement.

A list comprehension is equivalent to a for loop that builds the same list by repeated calls to the resulting list's append method. For example (assigning the list comprehension result to a variable for clarity):

  result1 = [x+1 for x in some_sequence]

is the same as the for loop:

  result2 = []
  for x in some_sequence:
      result2.append(x+1)

Here's a list comprehension that uses an if clause:

  result3 = [x+1 for x in some_sequence if x>23]

This list comprehension is the same as a for loop that contains an if statement:

  result4 = []
  for x in some_sequence:
      if x>23:
          result4.append(x+1)

And here's a list comprehension that uses a for clause:

  result5 = [x+y for x in alist for y in another]

This is the same as a for loop with another for loop nested inside:

  result6 = []
  for x in alist:
      for y in another:
          result6.append(x+y)

As these examples show, the order of for and if in a list comprehension is the same as in the equivalent loop, but in the list comprehension, the nesting remains implicit.