Как найти последний элемент списка питон

In Python, how do you get the last element of a list?

To just get the last element,

• without modifying the list, and
• assuming you know the list has a last element (i.e. it is nonempty)

pass -1 to the subscript notation:

>>> a_list = ['zero', 'one', 'two', 'three']
>>> a_list[-1]
'three'

Explanation

Indexes and slices can take negative integers as arguments.

I have modified an example from the documentation to indicate which item in a sequence each index references, in this case, in the string "Python", -1 references the last element, the character, 'n':

 +---+---+---+---+---+---+
 | P | y | t | h | o | n |
 +---+---+---+---+---+---+
   0   1   2   3   4   5 
  -6  -5  -4  -3  -2  -1

>>> p = 'Python'
>>> p[-1]
'n'

Assignment via iterable unpacking

This method may unnecessarily materialize a second list for the purposes of just getting the last element, but for the sake of completeness (and since it supports any iterable — not just lists):

>>> *head, last = a_list
>>> last
'three'

The variable name, head is bound to the unnecessary newly created list:

>>> head
['zero', 'one', 'two']

If you intend to do nothing with that list, this would be more apropos:

*_, last = a_list

Or, really, if you know it’s a list (or at least accepts subscript notation):

last = a_list[-1]

In a function

A commenter said:

I wish Python had a function for first() and last() like Lisp does… it would get rid of a lot of unnecessary lambda functions.

These would be quite simple to define:

def last(a_list):
    return a_list[-1]

def first(a_list):
    return a_list[0]

Or use operator.itemgetter:

>>> import operator
>>> last = operator.itemgetter(-1)
>>> first = operator.itemgetter(0)

In either case:

>>> last(a_list)
'three'
>>> first(a_list)
'zero'

Special cases

If you’re doing something more complicated, you may find it more performant to get the last element in slightly different ways.

If you’re new to programming, you should avoid this section, because it couples otherwise semantically different parts of algorithms together. If you change your algorithm in one place, it may have an unintended impact on another line of code.

I try to provide caveats and conditions as completely as I can, but I may have missed something. Please comment if you think I’m leaving a caveat out.

Slicing

A slice of a list returns a new list — so we can slice from -1 to the end if we are going to want the element in a new list:

>>> a_slice = a_list[-1:]
>>> a_slice
['three']

This has the upside of not failing if the list is empty:

>>> empty_list = []
>>> tail = empty_list[-1:]
>>> if tail:
...     do_something(tail)

Whereas attempting to access by index raises an IndexError which would need to be handled:

>>> empty_list[-1]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: list index out of range

But again, slicing for this purpose should only be done if you need:

• a new list created
• and the new list to be empty if the prior list was empty.

for loops

As a feature of Python, there is no inner scoping in a for loop.

If you’re performing a complete iteration over the list already, the last element will still be referenced by the variable name assigned in the loop:

>>> def do_something(arg): pass
>>> for item in a_list:
...     do_something(item)
...     
>>> item
'three'

This is not semantically the last thing in the list. This is semantically the last thing that the name, item, was bound to.

>>> def do_something(arg): raise Exception
>>> for item in a_list:
...     do_something(item)
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in do_something
Exception
>>> item
'zero'

Thus this should only be used to get the last element if you

• are already looping, and
• you know the loop will finish (not break or exit due to errors), otherwise it will point to the last element referenced by the loop.

Getting and removing it

We can also mutate our original list by removing and returning the last element:

>>> a_list.pop(-1)
'three'
>>> a_list
['zero', 'one', 'two']

But now the original list is modified.

(-1 is actually the default argument, so list.pop can be used without an index argument):

>>> a_list.pop()
'two'

Only do this if

• you know the list has elements in it, or are prepared to handle the exception if it is empty, and
• you do intend to remove the last element from the list, treating it like a stack.

These are valid use-cases, but not very common.

Saving the rest of the reverse for later:

I don’t know why you’d do it, but for completeness, since reversed returns an iterator (which supports the iterator protocol) you can pass its result to next:

>>> next(reversed([1,2,3]))
3

So it’s like doing the reverse of this:

>>> next(iter([1,2,3]))
1

But I can’t think of a good reason to do this, unless you’ll need the rest of the reverse iterator later, which would probably look more like this:

reverse_iterator = reversed([1,2,3])
last_element = next(reverse_iterator)

use_later = list(reverse_iterator)

and now:

>>> use_later
[2, 1]
>>> last_element
3

Getting the last element of the list is tricky while tracking each element, here we will discuss multiple methods to get the last element of the list. So we have given a list n, Our task is to get the last element of the list.

Example:

Input: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5]
Output: 5

Input: ["Hello", "World"]
Output: World

Approaches to get the last element of list:

• Using Reverse Iterator
• Using negative indexing
• Using list.pop()
• Using reversed() + next() 
• Using slicing
• Using itemgetter

Using Reverse Iterator to get the last item of a list

To get the last element of the list using the naive method in Python. There can be 2-naive methods to get the last element of the list. 

• Iterating the whole list and getting, the second last element.
• Reversing the list and printing the first element.

Output :

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element of list using loop : 5
The last element of list using reverse : 5

Using Negative Indexing to get the last element of list

To get last element of the list using the [] operator, the last element can be assessed easily if no. of elements in the list are already known. There is 2 indexing in Python that points to the last element in the list.

• list[ len – 1 ] : This statement returns the last index if the list.
• list[-1] : Negative indexing starts from the end.

Output :

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element using [ len -1 ] is : 5
The last element using [ -1 ] is : 5

Get the last item of a list using list.pop()

To get the last element of the list using list.pop(), the list.pop() method is used to access the last element of the list. The drawback of this approach is that it also deletes the list’s last element, hence is only encouraged to use when the list is not to be reused. 

Output :

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element using pop() is : 5

Get the last item of a list using reversed() + next() 

To get the last element of the list using reversed() + next(), the reversed() coupled with next() can easily be used to get the last element, as, like one of the naive methods, the reversed method returns the reversed ordering of list as an iterator, and next() method prints the next element, in this case, last element. 

Output :

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element using reversed() + next() is : 5

Get the last item of a list by slicing

In this example, we will use list slicing to get the last element from the list.

Output:

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element using slicing is :  5

Get the last item of a list using itemgetter

The itemgetter can be used instead of lambda functions.  In terms of performance over time, itemgetter is better than lambda functions. When accessing many values, it appears more concise than lambda functions. Here, we will use itemgetter to get out the last element in the list.

Output:

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element using itemgetter is :  5

Using deque from the collections module:

Algorithm:

1. Convert the given list to a deque object.
2. Use the pop() method to remove and return the last element of the deque object.
3. Return the popped element as the result.

The original list is : [1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 5]
The last element using deque is : 5

Complexity Analysis: The above code returns the last element of the given list using the deque.pop() method from the collections module. The time complexity of this approach is O(1) since the pop() operation on deque takes constant time, and the space complexity is O(n) since the deque object is created to store the list elements.

Last Updated :
22 Apr, 2023

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Introduction

In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at some of the most common ways to find the last element in a list in Python. First, we will cover the simplest and most Pythonic way and then show some other alternative solutions afterward.

Let’s take a look at the list that we will be using:

exampleList = [1, 2, "Three", ["Four", 5], 6]

How to Get the Last Element in a Python List

There’s several ways we can go about getting the last element of a list in Python — some of which are more intuitive and practical than others, and some of which actually change the original list in-place.

Winner Solution — Using Negative Indexing

Python supports the notion of negative indexing as the method of accessing list elements. This means that we can access elements in the reversed order by using the [] operator.

It’s well known how indexing in lists works:

firstElement = exampleList[0]
nthElement = exampleList[n-1]
...

The first element has the index of 0, the second has the index of 1, and the nth element has an index of n-1.

The negative indexing follows the same logic, but in reversed order. The last element has the index of -1, the second to last element has the index of -2, and so on:

lastElement = exampleList[-1]
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

secondToLast = exampleList[-2]
print("Second to last element: ", secondToLast)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5], 6]
Second to last element:  ['Four', 5]

Negative indexing does not change the original list. It is only a way of accessing elements without any changes to the original list.

This is by far the simplest and most Pythonic solution, favored by most.

Using Indexing

Simple indexing is usually used to access elements in a list in the original order using the [] operator. As described above, the first element has an index of 0, the second element has an index of 1, and so on. Knowing that, we can conclude that the last element has the index of len(exampleList)-1:

lastElement = exampleList[len(exampleList)-1]
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

secondToLast = exampleList[len(exampleList)-2]
print("Second to last element: ", secondToLast)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5], 6]
Second to last element:  ['Four', 5]

As well as negative indexing, the indexing method is only used to access elements of the list without performing any changes to the original list.

Using the pop() Method

In Python, the pop() method is used to remove the last element of the given list and return the removed item.

The pop() method can optionally accept an integer argument. It is the index of the element that we want to remove, so if we call exampleList.pop(0), the first element will be removed and returned.

If the argument is the negative number, the logic of the negative indexing will be performed to determine which element to remove. Calling exampleList.pop(-1) will result in removing the last element of the examleList.

Though, since the pop() method by default already pops the last element, there’s no real need to use indexing at all:

lastElement = exampleList.pop()
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5]]

Note that the pop() method, by definition, does change the original list by removing the popped element.

Using Slicing

In Python, the slicing notation is used to get a sublist of a list. The notation itself is pretty simple:

exampleList[startIndex:[endIndex[:indexStep]]]

This means that we can get the sublist of the exampleList with indices starting from startIndex, all the way to the endIndex with the step of indexStep.

The endIndex and indexStep are optional arguments. If we leave the endIndex blank, its default value is the end of the original list. The default value for indexStep is 1.

If we have a list letters=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'] and slice it using letters[1:3] the resulting sublist will be ['b', 'c', 'd']. This means that we are choosing elements of the list letters with indices 1, 2, and 3.

letters[0:4:2] will return a sublist containing only elements on the even indices — 0, 2, 4.

The key feature of the slicing notation that we will be using is that it supports negative indexing.

This means that letters[-1:] can be interpreted as: get all elements in list letters, from the last element to the end of list letters. The resulting sublist will contain only the last element of the original list:

lastElement = exampleList[-1:][0]
# exampleList[-1:] alone will return the sublist - [6]
# exampleList[-1:][0] will return the last element - 6
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5], 6]

The slicing method is only used to access elements of the list and to create a new list using them — without performing any changes to the original list.

Using the Reverse Iterator

Python has two built-in functions that we will use in this method — reversed() and next().

reversed() accepts a list as an argument and returns the reverse iterator for that list, meaning that the iteration is reversed, starting from the last element all the way to the first element. next() accepts an iterator and returns the next element from the iterator:

reversedIterator = reversed(exampleList)

lastElement = next(reversedIterator)
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5], 6]

The reversed iterator method is only used to access elements of the list in reverse order — without performing any changes to the original list.

Using the reverse() Method

The reverse() method is used to reverse the elements of the list. It does not take any arguments and does not return any value, instead, it reverses the original list in-place. This means that we can reverse the list and access the new first element:

# Update the original list by reversing its' elements
exampleList.reverse()

# Access the first element of the updated list
lastElement = exampleList[0]
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [6, ['Four', 5], 'Three', 2, 1]

The reverse() method, by definition, does change the original list by reversing the order of its elements. Please keep in mind that this approach may be a really inefficient overkill — since it takes time to reverse a list.

Using itemgetter()

The operator module provides a lot of efficient methods performing all of the fundamental operations in Python, such as the mathematical and logical operations, as well as other object comparison and sequence operations.

The itemgetter() method is one of the many methods in the operator module. It accepts one or more integers as the argument and returns a callable object which can be seen as a type of special function.

When we call operator.itemgetter(0), the resulting object will be a function that will get the first element in a collection. We can also assign a name to that object:

getFirstElement = operator.itemgetter(0)

Now, we can pass in a list to getFirstElement(people), which returns the first element from the list people.

The itemgetter() operator supports negative indexing so retrieving the last element boils down to:

import operator

getLastElement = operator.itemgetter(-1)
lastElement = getLastElement(exampleList)
print("Last element: ", lastElement)

print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5], 6]

This approach doesn’t modify the original list — it generates a callable object that accesses it using indices.

Using Loops

Now, a much more manual and rudimentary approach would be using loops. We can iterate through the list, using the length of the list as the final step. Then, when on the len(list)-1 step — we can simply return that item:

for i in range(0, len(exampleList)):
    if i == (len(exampleList)-1) : lastElement = exampleList[i]
        
print("Last element: ", lastElement)
print("exampleList: ", exampleList)

Which outputs:

Last element:  6
exampleList:  [1, 2, 'Three', ['Four', 5], 6]

This also doesn’t change the list at all and simply accesses an element.

Conclusion

There are a lot of ways to get the last element in a list in Python. The main concern when choosing the right way for you is whether or not you want the last element to be removed.

If you need to get the last element without performing any changes to the original list, then the negative indexing method is the clear winner. It is the simplest and most Pythonic way to solve this problem.

On the other hand, if you need to remove the last element, as well as access it, then you should probably go with the pop() method, which is the built-in method for performing exactly this behavior.