enumerate

Iterating with for in

In a variety of languages, especially c-based languages, iterating over lists, or arrays involves incrementing a variable until it reaches a certain size. Python for-loops actually lack this syntax, so for in tend to get used a lot.

1 from string import ascii_lowercase as ascii
2 
3 for c in ascii:
4   print(c)

Output:

1 a
2 b
3 c
4 d
5 ...

Iterating with indices

Thus what you end up doing to access a list via indices, is:

1 from string import ascii_lowercase as ascii
2 
3 for i in range(len(ascii)):
4   print(i, ascii[i])

Output:

1 0 a
2 1 b
3 2 c
4 3 d
5 ...

Using enumerate

The pythontic way, when you want to access both the index and value directly, without the extra lookup, is to use enumerate.

1 for i, c in enumerate(ascii):
2   print(i, c)

Output:

1 0 a
2 1 b
3 2 c
4 3 d
5 ...

Indexing from an arbirary number

If a second argument is passed into enumerate, it will begin indexing from that number. For example, to start indexing from 1:

1 for i, c in enumerate(ascii, 1):
2   print(i, c)

Output:

1 1 a
2 2 b
3 3 c
4 4 d
5 ...