Finding the index of an item in a list

Question

Given a list [\"foo\", \"bar\", \"baz\"] and an item in the list \"bar\", how do I get its index (1) in Python?

Answer 1

using dictionary , where process the list first and then add the index to it

from collections import defaultdict

index_dict = defaultdict(list)    
word_list =  ['foo','bar','baz','bar','any', 'foo', 'much']

for word_index in range(len(word_list)) :
    index_dict[word_list[word_index]].append(word_index)

word_index_to_find = 'foo'       
print(index_dict[word_index_to_find])

# output :  [0, 5]

Answer 2

Simply you can go with

a = [['hand', 'head'], ['phone', 'wallet'], ['lost', 'stock']]
b = ['phone', 'lost']

res = [[x[0] for x in a].index(y) for y in b]

Answer 3

Since Python lists are zero-based, we can use the zip built-in function as follows:

>>> [i for i,j in zip(range(len(haystack)), haystack) if j == 'needle' ]

where "haystack" is the list in question and "needle" is the item to look for.

(Note: Here we are iterating using i to get the indexes, but if we need rather to focus on the items we can switch to j.)

Answer 4

If you want all indexes, then you can use NumPy:

import numpy as np

array = [1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 1]
item = 1
np_array = np.array(array)
item_index = np.where(np_array==item)
print item_index
# Out: (array([0, 2, 6], dtype=int64),)

It is clear, readable solution.

Answer 5

There is a chance that that value may not be present so to avoid this ValueError, we can check if that actually exists in the list .

list =  ["foo", "bar", "baz"]

item_to_find = "foo"

if item_to_find in list:
      index = list.index(item_to_find)
      print("Index of the item is " + str(index))
else:
    print("That word does not exist") 

Answer 6

Finding index of item x in list L:

idx = L.index(x) if (x in L) else -1