How to make matrices in Python?

Question

I\'ve googled it and searched StackOverflow and YouTube.. I just can\'t get matrices in Python to click in my head. Can someone please help me? I\'m just trying to create a

Answer 1

The answer to your question depends on what your learning goals are. If you are trying to get matrices to "click" so you can use them later, I would suggest looking at a Numpy array instead of a list of lists. This will let you slice out rows and columns and subsets easily. Just try to get a column from a list of lists and you will be frustrated.

Using a list of lists as a matrix...

Let's take your list of lists for example:

L = [list("ABCDE") for i in range(5)]

It is easy to get sub-elements for any row:

>>> L[1][0:3]
['A', 'B', 'C']

Or an entire row:

>>> L[1][:]
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']

But try to flip that around to get the same elements in column format, and it won't work...

>>> L[0:3][1]
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']

>>> L[:][1]
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']

You would have to use something like list comprehension to get all the 1th elements....

>>> [x[1] for x in L]
['B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B']

Enter matrices

If you use an array instead, you will get the slicing and indexing that you expect from MATLAB or R, (or most other languages, for that matter):

>>> import numpy as np
>>> Y = np.array(list("ABCDE"*5)).reshape(5,5)
>>> print Y
[['A' 'B' 'C' 'D' 'E']
 ['A' 'B' 'C' 'D' 'E']
 ['A' 'B' 'C' 'D' 'E']
 ['A' 'B' 'C' 'D' 'E']
 ['A' 'B' 'C' 'D' 'E']]
>>> print Y.transpose()
[['A' 'A' 'A' 'A' 'A']
 ['B' 'B' 'B' 'B' 'B']
 ['C' 'C' 'C' 'C' 'C']
 ['D' 'D' 'D' 'D' 'D']
 ['E' 'E' 'E' 'E' 'E']]

Grab row 1 (as with lists):

>>> Y[1,:]
array(['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'], 
      dtype='|S1')

Grab column 1 (new!):

>>> Y[:,1]
array(['B', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'B'], 
      dtype='|S1')

So now to generate your printed matrix:

for mycol in Y.transpose():
    print " ".join(mycol)


A A A A A
B B B B B
C C C C C
D D D D D
E E E E E

Answer 2

I got a simple fix to this by casting the lists into strings and performing string operations to get the proper print out of the matrix.

Creating the function

By creating a function, it saves you the trouble of writing the for loop every time you want to print out a matrix.

def print_matrix(matrix):
    for row in matrix:
        new_row = str(row)
        new_row = new_row.replace(',','')
        new_row = new_row.replace('[','')
        new_row = new_row.replace(']','')
        print(new_row)

Examples

Example of a 5x5 matrix with 0 as every entry:

>>> test_matrix = [[0] * 5 for i in range(5)]
>>> print_matrix(test_matrix)
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 

Example of a 2x3 matrix with 0 as every entry:

>>> test_matrix = [[0] * 3 for i in range(2)]
>>> print_matrix(test_matrix)
0 0 0
0 0 0

---

EDIT

If you want to make it print:

A A A A A
B B B B B
C C C C C
D D D D D 
E E E E E

I suggest you just change the way you enter your data into your lists within lists. In my method, each list within the larger list represents a line in the matrix, not columns.

Answer 3

you can also use append function

b = [ ]

for x in range(0, 5):
    b.append(["O"] * 5)

def print_b(b):
    for row in b:
        print " ".join(row)

Answer 4

you can do it short like this:

matrix = [["A, B, C, D, E"]*5]
print(matrix)


[['A, B, C, D, E', 'A, B, C, D, E', 'A, B, C, D, E', 'A, B, C, D, E', 'A, B, C, D, E']]

Answer 5

Looping helps:

for row in matrix:
    print ' '.join(row)

or use nested str.join() calls:

print '\n'.join([' '.join(row) for row in matrix])

Demo:

>>> matrix = [['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'], ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'], ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'], ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'], ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']]
>>> for row in matrix:
...     print ' '.join(row)
... 
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
>>> print '\n'.join([' '.join(row) for row in matrix])
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E

If you wanted to show the rows and columns transposed, transpose the matrix by using the zip() function; if you pass each row as a separate argument to the function, zip() recombines these value by value as tuples of columns instead. The *args syntax lets you apply a whole sequence of rows as separate arguments:

>>> for cols in zip(*matrix):  # transposed
...     print ' '.join(cols)
... 
A A A A A
B B B B B
C C C C C
D D D D D
E E E E E

Answer 6

If you don't want to use numpy, you could use the list of lists concept. To create any 2D array, just use the following syntax:

  mat = [[input() for i in range (col)] for j in range (row)]

and then enter the values you want.