Python - Iterate over a list with indexes

TL;DR

for (index, value) in enumerate(values):  
	print "The value at index {0} = {1}".format(index, value)

In Python the typical way to iterate over a loop is to use the conventional foreach loop, as lists expose iterators:

values = ["Foo", "Bar", "Baz", "Qux"]

for value in values:  
	print value

Output:  
Foo  
Bar  
Baz  
Qux  

In a lot of cases this is all that’s needed, however in other circumstances we may need access to the index that each element is at inside the list - most of the time in order to perform some kind of check on the next or previous values in the list. The conventional for loop above of course simply gives us the values inside the list, not the indexes. We could set up a counter variable which increments each time around the loop, yet this seems clumsy. We are increasing the scope of a variable that should ideally be kept local to the loop.

Another popular solution is to use the range function, which returns an iterator of values from zero to the number we specify as a parameter. By creating a list of numbers from zero to the size of the list, we can then use each element as an index in order to extract each value:

 
for i in range(len(values)):  
	print "The value at index {0} = {1}".format(i, values[i])

Output:  
The value at index 0 = Foo  
The value at index 1 = Bar  
The value at index 2 = Baz  
The value at index 3 = Qux  

Although this gets us our desired output (in this simple example anyway), it again seems quite a clunky way to perform such as simple task in Python. We have to refer to each value as values[i], or otherwise set up a new local variable. Luckily however, as ever, this is a much neater way of doing this in Python.

One of the built-in functions that Python provides is the enumerate function. This handy function gives us an iterator that returns a tuple containing a count (which by default starts from zero) and the values obtained from iterating over the sequence. By simply running through the tuples returned from the iterator provided by this function, we get access to both the indexes and the corresponding values:

 
for (index, value) in enumerate(values):  
	print "The value at index {0} = {1}".format(index, value)

Output:  
The value at index 0 = Foo  
The value at index 1 = Bar  
The value at index 2 = Baz  
The value at index 3 = Qux  

As you can see this is much neater and more efficient than the other solutions. There is no need for extra variables - everything is provided to us in the loop declaration.