Comprehension Lists

Python
1

Hi. Need help with understanding the following code

t = [ [ 3 - i for i in range(3) ]  for j in range(3) ]

s= 0

for i in range (3):
      
        s = s + t [ i ] [  i ]               # please explain this line

print(s)

The answer is 6 but I don’t understand how?

2

So you have two for list comprehensions in one line giving you a list of lists. The outer list is just giving you three copies of the exact same inner list. If we replace the inner comprehension with a static value this is easier to see:

x = [1 for j in range(3)]
# x = [1, 1, 1]

So now we can look at what the inner comprehension is doing. It is iterating through the range(3) which is the values 0, 1, and 2. At each value i it is setting the value to 3 - i. So we end up with a list like this:

y = [3 - i for i in range(3)]
# y = [3-0, 3-1, 3-2]
# y = [3, 2, 1]

So that means we end up with three copies of that list in our variable t:

t = [y, y, y]
# t = [[3, 2, 1], [3, 2, 1], [3, 2, 1]]

With that, do you now understand the final part that does the calculation?

PS: this is really bad programming because it is doing needless work and making things very opaque. I think it is written this way just to test your knowledge of list comprehensions.

3

Thank you so much. Can you also please explain the following line of code as well

for i in range (3):
      
        s = s + t [ i ] [  i ]               

print(s)

This code is from the previous programme and gives 6 .I don’t understand what t[ i ] [ i ]
means?

4

Since t is a list of lists, that is just indexing into the outer list and then into the inner list. Consider a list of lists like this: z = [[11, 12, 13], [21, 22, 23], [31, 32, 33]]. If I just index into the outer list I could get the first inner list like this:

first = z[0]
# first = [11, 12, 13]

Indexing into that list allows us to access the elements:

result = z[0][1]
# result = first[1] = 12

So you have a for loop iterating from 0 to 2 through your list of lists selecting the diagonal elements (the i element of the i outer list). If that for loop were applied to my example, we would get:

s = 0 + z[0][0] + z[1][1] + z[2][2]
# s = 11 + 22 + 33 = 66

Hope that helps!

5

Thank you so much .It’s a great help.

1 Like