Simple Review of List Comprehension

The list comprehension feature is one of the most effective methods among several list creating methods provided by python. List Comprehensions are one-liners code, allowing to create lists from Iterables. It really minimizes the line of code; let us understand from the below code:

Using traditional for loop for updating the content of list

nums =[1,2,3,4,5]
squared_nums = []
for num in nums:
    squared_nums.append(num ** 2)
    
squared_nums    

Generated Output: [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

Now, lets see a one-liner code implementation: List Comprehensions.

Using one-liners code technique: List Comprehensions

squared_nums = [num ** 2 for num in nums]
squared_nums 

Generated Output: [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

From the both techniques, we can be insightful, how efficient and powerful is list comprehension technique than the primitive for loop method, for updating the elements of list.

It was a quick preview of, why or how should we use list comprehensions. Now let's briefly talk about the syntax of it, using about example:

[output expression for iterator variable in iterable if predicate expression]

• output expression: It determines the output expression that we are going to obtain from the operation.

• for iterator variable in iterable: It is the for loop expression that is similar to primitive foor loop expression.

• if predicate expression: It is a conditional statement for producing desired output.

Now let's discuss some advanced concept of the List Comprehension.

List comprehension with a condition:

# List Comprehension with a Condition
nums_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
squared_nums = [num ** 2 for num in nums_list if num % 2 == 0]
squared_nums

Genearated Output: [4, 16]

Here in this example, we have added a condition after the for loop expression. The condition states that, only square of those numbers will be calculated which are even. Furthermore, we can use more than a single condition to match with out expectation.

List comprehension with multiple condition:

nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
squared_nums = [num * 2 for num in nums if num % 2 == 0 and num > 3]
squared_nums

Genearated Output: [8]

In this example we have added two conditions that, only squares of those numbers will be calculated which are greater than 3 and are even numbers.

List Comprehensions can also be used with strings and manipulated accordingly:

List comprehension with strings:

given_string = 'list-comprehension'
single_letter = [letter for letter in string]
single_letter

Generated Output:

['l', 'i', 's', 't', '-', 'c', 'o', 'm', 'p', 'r', 'e', 'h', 'e', 'n', 's', 'i', 'o', 'n']

List comprehension with dictionaries:

numbers_dictionary = {1: 'one', 2: 'two', 3: 'three', 4: 'four', 5: 'five'}
squared_keys = [k ** 2 for (k,v) in numbers_dictionary.items()]
squared_keys

Generated Output: [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]

List Comprehension can also be use with dictionaries like with strings. Here in the code we have our numbrs_dictionary which stores from number 1 to 5, with key value pair, key as a number and value as a string of those numbers in words. Finally The code above creates a list that consists of all dictionary keys, as a square.

In as nutshell, List Comprehension can be used in many more concepts. Here in this blog, we have discussed about some simple concepts as well as advanced use of List Comprehension.