python - Getting the last element of a list

itemprop="text">

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

itemprop="text">

class="normal">Answer

some_list[-1] is the
shortest and most Pythonic.

In fact, you can do
much more with this syntax. The some_list[-n] syntax gets the
nth-to-last element. So some_list[-1] gets the last element,
some_list[-2] gets the second to last, etc, all the way down to
some_list[-len(some_list)], which gives you the first
element.

You can also set list elements in this
way. For
instance:

>>>
            some_list = [1, 2, 3]
>>> some_list[-1] = 5 # Set the last
            element
>>> some_list[-2] = 3 # Set the second to last
            element
>>> some_list
[1, 3,
            5]

Note that getting a
list item by index will raise an href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/exceptions.html#IndexError"
rel="noreferrer">IndexError if the expected item
doesn't exist. This means that some_list[-1] will raise an
exception if some_list is empty, because an empty list can't
have a last element.