Fundamentals of Computer Programming

( ITEd1322
(ITEd1322) )

UNIT 3: PYTHON DATA STRUCTURES

Prepared by Course Instructor
Competency-Based Objectives & Learning Outcomes
• The student is able to describe, organize, manipulate, and retrieve data

efficiently using Python’s built-in data structures for different computational

purposes.
» Upon successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

» Describe Python’s basic data structures (lists, strings, dictionaries, tuples, sets).

» Create and manipulate lists, strings, and dictionaries.

» Differentiate between mutable and immutable data structures.

» Apply operations on data structures to solve simple problems.

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Introduction

• Data structures as systematic ways of organizing and storing data to enable

efficient access, processing, and use within a program.

• They explore Python’s built-in data structures, such as lists, strings,

dictionaries, tuples, and sets, and understand how these structures extend

beyond basic numeric data types like integers and floating-point numbers.

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Lists

• It is an ordered collection of items.

• It is created by placing all of the items (its elements) inside a square bracket [ ],

separated by commas.

• It is a mutable (elements can be added, changed, or removed).

• It can have any number of items, and they may be of different types (integer,

float, string, etc.), even another list as a nested list.

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Lists … (2) … Creating Different Lists
• Created lists of various types.

• When lists are created, a series of memory locations will be allocated for the elements of the list,
as shown below with the mixedLst list whose elements can be accessed using index position.

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Lists … (3) … Accessing List Elements

• List elements are basically accessed using indexes, first element is at index 0.

• Negative index starts at -1 (last element).

• We can also use slicing of range of values and iteration (loops) to access list

elements.

• Some common methods of accessing list elements.

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 Lists … (4) … Accessing List Elements
• …

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Lists … (5) … Updating List Elements

• Since lists are mutable, we can change their elements by assigning new values

to specific indices.

• New elements can also be added at the end of the list from other lists as well.

• We can also delete a particular element or the whole list.

• Example:

» The demonstration of these operations are shown in NEXT SLIDE.

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 Lists … (6) … Updating List Elements
• …

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 Lists … (7) … Updating List Elements
• …

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Lists … (8) … Updating List Elements
• A methods and functions like insert, append, pop, del, and clear are called

built-in or pre-defined which designed for a particular task.

• Common List Functions

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Lists … (9) … Updating List Elements
• Activity

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Tuples
• It is an ordered, immutable collection of elements.

• It is defined using parentheses ( ).

• It can store mixed data types (integers, strings, floats, etc.) and duplicated elements.

• However, tuples’ elements cannot be changed (immutable) once created and hence are

faster than lists.

• Tuples are more preferable when we want read-only data (like coordinates, days of the

week) and when we want to use them as dictionary keys or set elements (lists cannot
be keys).

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Tuples … (2) … Creating Tuples
• Created tuples of various types.

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Tuples … (3) … Accessing Tuple Elements and Tuple Operations
• Tuple elements can basically be accessed through indexing, slicing, and iteration.

• Furthermore, tuples support operations like concatenation, repetition, packing, and

unpacking of elements.

• Concatenation of two tuples using the plus + operator creates a new combined tuple.

• The elements of a tuple can be easily duplicated using the * operator.

• Packing allows us to put multiple values into a single tuple variable, while the
unpacking operation extracts tuple elements into separate variables.

• The NEXT SLIDE program shows accessing a tuple’s elements and apply some tuple
operations.
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 Tuples … (4) … Accessing Tuple Elements and Tuple Operations
• …

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Tuples … (5) … List of Nested Tuples
• Also, list of nested tuples that can be unpacked inside a loop.

• Example:

» Write a Python program with three courses tuple records are defined, course itself

being a list. The loop unpacks those tuples values using separate variables.

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Strings

• It is an ordered sequence of characters enclosed in single quotes ' ', double

quotes " ", or triple quotes ' ' ' ' ' ' / """ """.

• It is an immutable (cannot be changed once created).

• Concatenation, repetition and formatting are used to build strings.

• It also supports indexing, slicing, iteration, and many other built-in methods.

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Strings … (2)
• Example 1: Creating String

• Example 2: Accessing String Characters

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 Strings … (3) … String Operations and Methods
• …

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 Strings … (4) … Summary of Common Python String Methods
• …

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 Strings … (5) … Summary of Common Python String Methods
• …

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Strings … (6)
• Activity

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Sets
• It is an unordered, mutable collection of unique elements.

• It is defined or created using curly braces { } or the set( ) constructor.

• A constructor is a special method (block of code) for initializing the state of

program objects.

• Since sets are unordered, we cannot use indexing like set [0] to access

elements. We would rather access the elements using loops.

• Set elements can be added and removed from the list easily using different

methods.
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 Sets … (2) … Create, Access, Modify and Remove
• …

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Sets … (3) … Set Operations
• A set support common set operations such as intersection, union and symmetry.

• Example:

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Dictionary
• In python , it is a built-in data structure that stores data in key–value pairs.

• The key and value pairs are separated by a colon:.

• It is mutable, unordered, and allows for fast lookups based on keys.

• Its values are accessed using keys.

• Example:

» The NEXT SLIDE program create, access the values through the keys, add new

pairs, modify and remove values from the dictionary.

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 Dictionary … (2)
• …

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Dictionary … (3)

• One of the powerful things about Python dictionaries is that they can be

combined with other data structures like lists, tuples, sets, and even other

dictionaries.

• This allows you to create flexible and complex data models.

• Example:

» The NEXT SLIDE program contains a combined List of dictionaries and

Dictionary of dictionaries.
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 Dictionary … (4) … List of Dictionary
• …

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 Dictionary … (5) … Nested Dictionary
• …

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Dictionary … (6)
• Activity

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 Unit Summary
• …

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 Unit Review Questions
• …

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