Tuples

Tuples are collections of data that are ordered and unchangeable. You can think of a tuple as a List with a fixed size. Tuples are created with round brackets:

my_tuple = ("this is a tuple", 45, True)
print(my_tuple[0])
# this is a tuple
print(my_tuple[1])
# 45
print(my_tuple[2])
# True

While it's typically considered bad practice to store items of different types in a List, it's not a problem with Tuples. Because they have a fixed size, it's easy to keep track of which indexes store which types of data.

Tuples are often used to store very small groups (like 2 or 3 items) of data. For example, you might use a tuple to store a dog's name and age.

dog = ("Fido", 4)

There is a special case for creating single-item tuples. You must include a comma so Python knows it's a tuple and not regular parentheses:

dog = ("Fido",)

Because Tuples hold their data, multiple tuples can be stored within a list. Similar to storing other data in lists, each tuple within the list is separated by a comma. When accessing a list of tuples, the first index selects which tuple you want to access, the second selects a value within that tuple.

my_tuples = [
    ("this is the first tuple in the list", 45, True),
    ("this is the second tuple in the list", 21, False),
]
print(my_tuples[0][0])  # this is the first tuple in the list
print(my_tuples[0][1])  # 45
print(my_tuples[1][0])  # this is the second tuple in the list
print(my_tuples[1][2])  # False

dog = ("Fido", 4)
dog_name, dog_age = dog
print(dog_name)
# Fido
print(dog_age)
# 4