FAQ: Introduction to Lists in Python - Accessing List Elements: Negative Index

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This community-built FAQ covers the “Accessing List Elements: Negative Index” exercise from the lesson “Introduction to Lists in Python”.

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This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

Visualize Data with Python
Data Scientist
Analyze Data with Python
Computer Science
Analyze Financial Data with Python
Build Chatbots with Python
Build Python Web Apps with Flask
Data Analyst

Learn Python 3
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FAQs on the exercise Accessing List Elements: Negative Index

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2

Hello, I don’t understand this exercise. Here is my code:
shopping_list = [“eggs”, “butter”, “milk”, “cucumbers”, “juice”, “cereal”]

last_element = “cereal”

index5_element = -5

What doesn’t make sense to me is why the index5_element = -5 is incorrect. If the number count starts from -1 at “cereal” -5 should be “butter”.

1 Like
3

Step 1 specifies:

Create a variable called last_element.

Assign the last element in shopping_list to the variable last_element using a negative index.

You wrote:

last_element = "cereal"

You have assigned a string directly to the last_element variable. The instructions want you to use a negative index. See the example in the exercise where negative index has been used on the pancake_recipe list i.e. pancake_recipe[-1] to access the last element "love"

Step 2 specifies:

Now select the element with index 5 and save it to the variable index5_element.

You wrote:

index5_element = -5

You are assigning a negative integer to the variable index5_element. The instructions want you to select the element with index 5. If still unsure, look at the pancake_recipe example in text.

3 Likes
4

Hello, thank you for your reply. I’ve got thinking, somehow I need to connect the variable last_element with the element cereal. Without using the word cereal, instead with the negative index [-1]. The variable last_element is not yet defined and needs to be in order to be called later on. Therefore I need to call the element [-1] with the variable shopping_list. I think I’m on the right track?

Edit: I got it! Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

1 Like
6

how do you select the element with index 5, it wasn’t an example before the question was given.

7

Have you looked at the pancake_recipe example?

What are some of the attempts/solutions you have tried?

1 Like
8

Funnily enough if you ask me:
Now select the element with index 5 and save it to the variable index5_element.
I’ll just want to do shopping_list[4] :slight_smile: