A Guide to the Python len function - len(x) examples

len() is a built-in function in Python 3. This method returns the length (the number of items) of an object. It takes one argument x .

Arguments

It takes one argument, x . This argument may be a sequence (such as a string, bytes, tuple, list, or range) or a collection (such as a dictionary, set, or frozen set).

Return Value

This function returns the number of elements in the argument which is passed to the len() function.

Code Sample

    >>> list1 = [123, 'xyz', 'zara'] # list
    >>> print(len(list1)) # prints 3 as there are 3 elements in the list1
    3
    >>> str1 = 'basketball' # string
    >>> print(len(str1)) # prints 10 as the str1 is made of 10 characters
    10
    >>> tuple1 = (2, 3, 4, 5) # tuple 
    >>> print(len(tuple1)) # prints 4 as there are 4 elements in the tuple1
    4
    >>> dict1 = {'name': 'John', 'age': 4, 'score': 45} # dictionary
    >>> print(len(dict1)) # prints 3 as there are 3 key and value pairs in the dict1
    3
    >>> d2=[[1,2,3],[3,4,5],[5,6,7,2]] # 2 dimensional list or a list of lists
    >>> print(len(d2)) #prints 3 because there are 3 different lists in the outer list.
    3

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