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Nesting

One nice feature of Python’s core data types is that they support arbitrary nesting—we can nest them in any combination, and as deeply as we like (for example, we can have a list that contains a dictionary, which contains another list, and so on). One immediate application of this feature is to represent matrixes, or “multidimensional arrays” in Python. A list with nested lists will do the job for basic applications:

>>> M = [[1, 2, 3],               # A 3 × 3 matrix, as nested lists
         [4, 5, 6],               # Code can span lines if bracketed
         [7, 8, 9]]
>>> M
[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]

Here, we’ve coded a list that contains three other lists. The effect is to represent a 3 × 3 matrix of numbers. Such a structure can be accessed in a variety of ways:

>>> M[1]                          # Get row 2
[4, 5, 6]

>>> M[1][2]                       # Get row 2, then get item 3 within the row
6

The first operation here fetches the entire second row, and the second grabs the third item within that row. Stringing together index operations takes us deeper and deeper into our nested-object structure.[13]