Get last item or value from a List in python

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Python is a versatile language that you can use to perform many different operations. One operation that you may need to perform is to get the last item or value from a list. There are a few different ways to do this, and the method you choose will depend on your specific needs.

subjects = ["Math", "Physics", "Chemistry", "English"]

last_item = subjects[-1]

print(last_item)

# prints - English

Output

English

Get the last item of a list using negative indexing

To get the last item from a list, we can use the negative indexing feature in python. Negative indexing starts from the end of the list, with -1 being the index of the last item. So, to get the last item from a list, we can use the index -1. This is a pythonic way to get the last item from the list.

Syntax

list[-1]

Code example

names = ["John", "Mohan", "Tina", "Sam", "Sonia"]

last_name = names[-1]

print(last_name)

Output

Sonia

The above code example:

Creates a list of five items, stored in the variable "names".
Stores the last item in the list (in this case, "Sonia") in the variable "last_name".
The code prints the value stored in the variable "last_name".

Get last item from a list using for loop

If you need to get the last item in a list, one option is to use a For loop. This approach can be helpful if you need to iterate over the items in the list or if you need to access the index of the last item.

Code Example

nums = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60]
total = len(nums)

for index in range(0, total):
  if index == (total - 1):
    print("Last item is: ", end="")
    print(nums[index])

Output

Last item is: 60

The above code is iterating through the list called nums, and for each item in the list, it is checking to see if the item is the last item in the list. If it is, it prints out the item.

Get last item from the list using list.reverse() function

In Python, the list.reverse() function is used to reverse the order of the items in a list. This function can be used to get the last item in a list. To do this, the list is first reversed, and then we will get its first item using index 0.

# create a list
nums = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60]

# reverse the list using list.reverse() method
nums.reverse()

# using o index get the last item
last_item = nums[0]

print(last_item)

Output

Explanation

nums = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60] # this creates a list called nums with 6 values.

nums.reverse() # this method reverses the order of the list

last_item = nums[0] # this assigns the first item in the list to the variable last_item

print(last_item) # this prints the value of last_item

Get last item from the list using list.pop() function

In Python, the list.pop() function is used to remove and return the last item from a list. So we can also use this function to get the last item from the list. Let's understand with with code example.

Syntax

last_item = list.pop()

Code example

# create a list
my_list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

#use lsit.pop() to get the last item
last_item = my_list.pop()

# print the last item
print("Last item is: " + last_item)

Output