How to Use Python’s Enumerate Function to Elegantly Access Index Variable in Python

• E.g. javascript's

for(let i=0, i<list.length, i++) {<CODE>}

The enumerate constructor iterates over a collection and returns a series of pairs (tuple of 2)

• the first position being is the index
• the second position being is the value

The simplest example visualizes the tuple structure returned by enumerate()

>>> r = range(0, 18, 3)
>>> enumerate(r)
<enumerate object at 0x0354E948>
>>> r
range(0, 18, 3)

>>> for range_item in enumerate(r): print(range_item)
...
(0, 0)
(1, 3)
(2, 6)
(3, 9)
(4, 12)
(5, 15)

3. Of course, it is more pythonic to use tuple unpacking to avoid directly dealing with the tuple indexing, etc.

• cool for having the index variable at hand without the need for its separate declaration

LINKS

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#enumerate