Understand Python enumerate() with Examples

Python enumerate() will receive a sequence to return an enumerate object. In this tutorial, we will use some examples to help you understand it.

Python enumerate()

It is defined as:

enumerate(iterable, start=0)

Here iterable will be a sequence.

For example:

seasons = ['Spring', 'Summer', 'Fall', 'Winter']
s = enumerate(seasons)

print(s)

Here s is <enumerate object at 0x00000210075D27E0>.

An enumerate object will contains some values that are (index, value).

For example:

for i, ele in s:
    print(i, ele)

Run this code, we will get:

0 Spring
1 Summer
2 Fall
3 Winter

Here we see the index starts with 0, we also can change it.

For example:

seasons = ['Spring', 'Summer', 'Fall', 'Winter']
s = enumerate(seasons, 4)
for i, ele in s:
    print(i, ele)

Then, we can see:

4 Spring
5 Summer
6 Fall
7 Winter

Here the index starts with 4.

We can use enumerate.__next__() to get value in an enumerate one by one.

For example:

seasons = ['Spring', 'Summer', 'Fall', 'Winter']
s = enumerate(seasons, 4)

t = s.__next__()
print(t)
t = s.__next__()
print(t)

Run this code, we will see:

(4, 'Spring')
(5, 'Summer')