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Lists and tuples

Why should we use lists?​

Sometimes we may end up doing something like this.

name1 = 'wub_wub'
name2 = 'theelous3'
name3 = 'RubyPinch'
name4 = 'go|dfish'
name5 = 'Nitori'

name = input("Enter your name: ")
if name == name1 or name == name2 or name == name3 or name == name4 or name == name5:
    print("I know you!")
else:
    print("Sorry, I don't know who you are :(")

This code works just fine, but there's a problem. The name check is repetitive, and adding a new name requires adding even more repetitive, boring checks.

Our first list​

Instead of adding a new variable for each name it might be better to store all names in one variable. This means that our one variable needs to point to multiple values. An easy way to do this is using a list:

names = ['wub_wub', 'theelous3', 'Nitori', 'RubyPinch', 'go|dfish']

Here the names variable points to a list, which then points to strings, like this:

List of names.