Tuples

A tuple is an ordered, immutable collection of elements. This means once a tuple is created, you cannot add, remove, or change its elements. Tuples are defined using parentheses () and can store a variety of data types.

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Creating Tuples

You create a tuple by enclosing its elements in parentheses and separating them with commas.

my_tuple = (1, 2, 3, 'hello')
print(my_tuple)  # Output: (1, 2, 3, 'hello')

Empty Tuples To create an empty tuple, simply use an empty pair of parentheses.

empty_tuple = ()
print(empty_tuple, type(empty_tuple))  # Output: () <class 'tuple'>

Single-Value Tuples A tuple with only one element must include a trailing comma after the value. Without the comma, Python treats it as a regular value inside parentheses, not a tuple.

single_tuple = (5,)
print(single_tuple)  # Output: (5,)

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Accessing Tuple Elements

Like lists, tuples are indexed, with the first element at index 0. You can use square brackets [] to access individual elements. Tuples support both positive and negative indexing.

Positive Indexing Positive indexing starts from 0 and goes up.

my_tuple = ('apple', 'banana', 'cherry')
print(my_tuple[1])  # Output: banana

Negative Indexing Negative indexing starts from -1 and works backward from the end of the tuple.

my_tuple = ('apple', 'banana', 'cherry')
print(my_tuple[-1])  # Output: cherry

Slicing Slicing allows you to extract a range of elements from a tuple, which creates a new tuple. The syntax is [start:end], where the end index is exclusive.

my_tuple = (10, 20, 30, 40, 50)
print(my_tuple[1:4])  # Output: (20, 30, 40)

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Tuple Methods

While tuples are immutable, Python provides a few built-in methods for working with them.

1. count() The count() method returns the number of times a specific value appears in a tuple.

   my_tuple = (10, 20, 30, 20, 40, 20)
   occurrences = my_tuple.count(20)
   print(occurrences)  # Output: 3

2. index() The index() method finds the first occurrence of a specified value and returns its index. It raises a ValueError if the value is not found.

   my_tuple = (10, 20, 30, 40, 50)
   position = my_tuple.index(30)
   print(position)  # Output: 2

   You can also provide optional start and end arguments to search within a specific slice of the tuple.

   my_tuple = (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 30)
   position = my_tuple.index(30, 3)
   print(position)  # Output: 5