Question

I’m trying to add items to an array in Python.

I run

array = {}

Then, I try to add something to this array by doing:

array.append(valueToBeInserted)

There doesn’t seem to be an .append method for this. How do I add items to an array?

Answer 1

{} represents an empty dictionary, not an array/list. For lists or arrays, you need [].

To initialize an empty list do this:

my_list = []

or

my_list = list()

To add elements to the list, use append

my_list.append(12)

To extend the list to include the elements from another list use extend

my_list.extend([1,2,3,4])
my_list
--> [12,1,2,3,4]

To remove an element from a list use remove

my_list.remove(2)

Dictionaries represent a collection of key/value pairs also known as an associative array or a map.

To initialize an empty dictionary use {} or dict()

Dictionaries have keys and values

my_dict = {'key':'value', 'another_key' : 0}

To extend a dictionary with the contents of another dictionary you may use the update method

my_dict.update({'third_key' : 1})

To remove a value from a dictionary

del my_dict['key']