In Python, tuples are immutable data sequences. They are typically used to group related but heterogeneous values.
Say we have several pieces of information—in a variety of data types—that together describe a single work of art:
artist = "Louise Nevelson"
title = "Sky Gate, New York"
media = ["wood", "oil paint"]
completed = 1978
It may be convenient to group these values together. Since the description of an artwork should never change during our program, an immutable tuple suits our needs perfectly:
artwork = (artist, title, media, completed)
Elements in a tuple can be accessed by index:
>>> artwork[0]
'Louise Nevelson'
But, since tuples are immutable, we cannot change elements by index:
>>> art_work[0] = "Ruth Asawa"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'tuple' object does not support item assignment
For more information on tuples, see the Python docs.
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Top comments (2)
Also, One more interesting usage of tuples is that you can use them as a key for dictionaries. (Dictionaries only accept immutable data types as key)
I highly recommend using named tuples when grouping.