Data Structure Conversions
Explore how to convert between key Python data structures including lists, tuples, sets, and dictionaries. Learn explicit conversion methods using constructors and understand how dictionary keys and items transform. This lesson helps you manage and manipulate data efficiently by mastering structure conversions.
We'll cover the following...
Before diving into the in-built methods used to convert between data types, let's recap the differences between these data types. The following table summarizes the differences nicely.
Feature | Tuple | List | Dictionary | Set |
Bracket type |
|
|
|
|
Creation |
|
|
|
|
Mutability | Immutable | Mutable | Mutable | Mutable (elements are immutable) |
Order | Maintains order | Maintains order | No inherent order | No specific order elements are unique |
Duplicates | Allows duplicates | Allows duplicates | Keys must be unique; values may repeat | No duplicates |
Access | Indexing (my_tuple[0]) | Indexing (my_list[0]) | Key-based (my_dict['key1']) | No indexing; use iteration or in operator |
Operations | Limited concatenation, slicing | Extensive concatenation, slicing | Key-based operations | Set operations |
Use Cases | Fixed collection of items | A dynamic collection of items | Associative arrays, key-value pairs | Unique collection, membership testing |
Explicit conversion
The template for explicitly converting from one data structure to another is as follows:
destination_structure_name(source_structure_object)