On Jul 20, 12:27 pm, Phillip B Oldham <phillip.old...@gmail.com> wrote: > ... > Specifically the "differences" between lists and tuples have us > confused and have caused many "discussions" in the office. We > understand that lists are mutable and tuples are not, but we're a > little lost as to why the two were kept separate from the start. They > both perform a very similar job as far as we can tell. > ...
There's no hard-set rules, but tuples are typically used to hold collections of heterogeneous data, e.g. (10, "spam", 3.21). As has been mentioned, such a tuple can be used as a dictionary key, whereas a list cannot be used as a dictionary key, because it is mutable. Lists, on the other hand, typically hold collections of homogeneous data, e.g. [1, 2, 5] or ["spam", "eggs", "sausage"]. Of course, you'll also see plenty of examples of tuples containing homogeneous data and lists containing heterogeneous data :) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
