6.1 An Example of enumerate

Going back to the fruits example I coded out earlier, enumerate combines both approaches into one. If you read up on the documentation, it mentions that enumerate() returns an enumerable object: an object that can be counted.

But, to be more specific, enumerate() returns a tuple of the index of the list’s item and the list item itself - here’s what enumerate() would yield when I apply it to fruits:

fruits = ['apple', 'cherry', 'banana', 'mango', 'watermelon', 'tomato']

for index, fruit in enumerate(fruits):
  print(f"Index {index} has {fruit}!")

## Index 0 has apple!
## Index 1 has cherry!
## Index 2 has banana!
## Index 3 has mango!
## Index 4 has watermelon!
## Index 5 has tomato!

The variable index is used to capture the index of each item in fruits - the variable fruit is used to capture each item in fruits. Of course, you can use any two variable names you want to iterate over an enumerable using enumerate(), but I would encourage you to make your variable names as intuitive as possible!

6.1.1 Similarities to other programming languages

If you are a gopher like myself (i.e., a Go developer), then you would likely be aware of the range keyword. I will transcribe the fruits example shown earlier from Python to Go:

package main 

import "fmt"

func main() {
  fruits := [6]string{"apple", "cherry", "banana", "mango", "watermelon", "tomato"}
  
  for index, fruit := range fruits {
    fmt.Printf("Index %d has %s!\n", index, fruits)
  }
}

In the above code block, I create a string array with the same fruits in fruits. I then use the keyword range that functions similarly to Python’s enumerate().