Python Array Types

Till now, we got good idea on arrays in Python. When talking about arrays, any programming language like C or Java offers two types of arrays. They are:

Array Types

Single dimensional arrays: These arrays represent only one row or one column of elements. For example, marks obtained by a student in 5 subjects can be written as 'marks' array, as:

marks = array('i', [50, 60, 70, 66, 72]) 
							

The above array contains only one row of elements. Hence it is called single dimensional array or one dimensional array .

Multi-dimensional arrays : These arrays represent more than one row and more than one column of elements. For example, marks obtained by 3 students each one in 5 subjects can be written as 'marks' array as:

marks = [[50, 60, 70, 66, 72], [60, 62, 71, 56, 70], [55, 59, 80, 68, 65]] 
							

The first student's marks are written in first row. The second student's marks are in second row and the third student's marks are in third row. In each row, the marks in 5 subjects are mentioned. Thus this array contains 3 rows and 5 columns and hence it is called multi-dimensional array .

marks =[[50, 60, 70, 66, 72], 
 [60, 62, 71, 56, 70], 
 [55, 59, 80, 68, 65]]

							

Each row of the above array can be again represented as a single dimensional array. Thus the above array contains 3 single dimensional arrays. Hence, it is called a two dimensional array. A two dimensional array is a combination of several single dimensional arrays. Similarly, a three dimensional array is a combination of several two dimensional arrays.

In Python, we can create and work with single dimensional arrays only. So far, the examples and methods discussed by us are applicable to single dimensional arrays.

Python does not support multi-dimensional arrays. We can construct multidimensional arrays using third party packages like numpy (numerical python) .