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Cambridge ooks Online

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/

Programming with Mathematica

An Introduction

Paul Wellin

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511972942

Online ISBN: 9780511972942

Hardback ISBN: 9781107009462

Chapter

3 - Lists pp. 57-82

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511972942.004

Cambridge University Press

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3

ListsStructure and syntax of lists Creating lists Displaying lists Arrays Analyzing lists Testing

lists Measuring lists Extracting elements of lists Rearranging lists List component

assignment Working with multiple lists

Lists are the fundamental data structure used in Mathematica to group objects together. They are

quite general and they can be used to represent a vast array of objects: vectors, matrices, tensors,

iterator and parameter specifications, and much more. An extensive set of built-in functions is

available to manipulate lists in a variety of ways, ranging from simple operations, such as rearrang-

ing the order of list elements to more sophisticated operations such as partitioning, sorting, or

applying a function to a list. For example, this sorts a list numerically.

In[1]:= Sort@84, 16, 1, 77, 23

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Lists are also used to delineate a range of values for some variable or iterator. For example, the

second argument to the Table function is a list that specifies the iterator variable and the values

that it should range over.

In[5]:= TableAi2,8i, 1, 5

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The arguments of the List function (the list elements) can be any type of expression, including

numbers, symbols, functions, strings, images, and even other lists.

In[2]:=

:2.4, Sin, "ossifrage", ,

85, 3