Kodeclik Blog

Print a Python List (5 ways)

Let us assume I have a list comprising the 12 months as follows:

months = ['Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun',
          'Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec']

Assume our goal is to print this list. How do we do it? Learn about 5 different ways!

Method 1: Use a vanilla print

You can simply do

print(months)

which will produce the output

['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 
 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec']

Now, notice that by default printing a list will yield the square brackets. If you do not desire the square brackets you should explore one of the methods below.

Method 2: Use a for loop

We can create a for loop to run through the indices of the list. We can setup the extent of the for loop using the range operator applied on the list length, as follows:

for x in range(len(months)):
  print(months[x])

This will produce the output:

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Method 3: Use an iterator

Of course, because Python has first class iterators you can write much cleaner code as follows:

for x in months:
  print(x)

Note that in the above code, x refers to the actual elements of the list, like ‘Jan’, ‘Feb’, and so on. In the previous program, x referred to indices such as 0, 1, and so on.

The output is still the same:

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Method 4: Use a join function

The join function takes the elements of a list and concatenates them using a specified separator.

If we do:

print (','.join(months))

We are using the comma symbol as a separator. So this line will print:

Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr,May,Jun,Jul,Aug,Sep,Oct,Nov,Dec

To obtain the same output as before, you can do:

print ('\\n'.join(months))

This will yield:

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Of course, you can do both:

print (',\\n'.join(months))

This will produce:

Jan,
Feb,
Mar,
Apr,
May,
Jun,
Jul,
Aug,
Sep,
Oct,
Nov,
Dec

Method 5: Use the * symbol

Prefixing the list with an asterisk and printing it is another way. Let us see what that does and how it differs from vanilla printing (our Method 1 presented earlier). Consider the following code:

print(months)
print(*months)

The output is:

['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 
  'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec']
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Note that in the vanilla printing approach, you get the square brackets and commas separating the values. Using the * symbol we do not have these decorations.

You can also give separators, like so:

print(*months, sep='-')

The output is:

Jan-Feb-Mar-Apr-May-Jun-Jul-Aug-Sep-Oct-Nov-Dec

There you have it - 5 different ways to print a Python list! Which one is your favorite?

If you liked learning about printing lists, checkout our blog post on Python print() and also four different ways to
prepend items to a list.

Interested in more things Python? See our blogpost on Python's enumerate() capability. Also if you like Python+math content, see our blogpost on Magic Squares. Finally, master the Python print function!

Want to learn Python with us? Sign up for 1:1 or small group classes.