Explicitly select items from a list or tuple

list( myBigList[i] for i in [87, 342, 217, 998, 500] )

I compared the answers with python 2.5.2:

  • 19.7 usec: [ myBigList[i] for i in [87, 342, 217, 998, 500] ]

  • 20.6 usec: map(myBigList.__getitem__, (87, 342, 217, 998, 500))

  • 22.7 usec: itemgetter(87, 342, 217, 998, 500)(myBigList)

  • 24.6 usec: list( myBigList[i] for i in [87, 342, 217, 998, 500] )

Note that in Python 3, the 1st was changed to be the same as the 4th.

Another option would be to start out with a numpy.array which allows indexing via a list or a numpy.array:

>>> import numpy
>>> myBigList = numpy.array(range(1000))
>>> myBigList[(87, 342, 217, 998, 500)]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: invalid index
>>> myBigList[[87, 342, 217, 998, 500]]
array([ 87, 342, 217, 998, 500])
>>> myBigList[numpy.array([87, 342, 217, 998, 500])]
array([ 87, 342, 217, 998, 500])

The tuple doesn't work the same way as those are slices.


What about this:

from operator import itemgetter
itemgetter(0,2,3)(myList)
('foo', 'baz', 'quux')

Tags:

Python

Indexing

List

Tuples

Select

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