Find Index of an Element in a Tuple in Python

In this tutorial, we will look at how to find the index of an element in a tuple in Python with the help of some examples.

How to get the index of an element inside a tuple?

You can use the Python tuple index() function to find the index of an element in a tuple. The following is the syntax.

# find index of element e in tuple t
t.index(e)

It returns the index of the first occurrence of the value inside the tuple. If the value is not present in the tuple, it gives an error.

Let’s look at some examples.

Index of an element in a tuple

Let’s find the index of the element 3 inside the tuple (1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7).

# create a tuple
t = (1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7)
# find index of 3
print(t.index(3))

Output:

1

We get the index of 3 as 1. Note that the element 3 is present twice inside the tuple, at indexes 1 and 4 respectively but the index function only returned the index of its first occurrence, that is, 1.

All indexes of an element in a tuple

If you want all the indexes of occurrences of a value, you can iterate over the values in a loop. For example, let’s find all the indexes of 3 in the above tuple.

# create a tuple
t = (1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7)
# find all indexes of 3
result = []
for i in range(len(t)):
    if t[i] == 3:
        result.append(i)
print(result)

Output:

[1, 4]

We get both its indexes. Here we iterate over each value in the tuple and compare it with 3, if it’s equal, we add its index to our result list.

You can use a list comprehension to reduce the above code to a single line.

# create a tuple
t = (1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7)
# find all indexes of 3
result = [i for i in range(len(t)) if t[i]==3]
print(result)

Output:

[1, 4]

We get the same result as above.

What if the element is not present?

If the element is not present inside the tuple, the index() function will give an error. For example, let’s try to find the index of 4, an element that is not present in the above tuple.

# create a tuple
t = (1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7)
# find index of 4
print(t.index(4))

Output:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
Input In [4], in <module>
      2 t = (1, 3, 2, 5, 3, 7)
      3 # find index of 4
----> 4 print(t.index(4))

ValueError: tuple.index(x): x not in tuple

We get a ValueError indicating that the element for which we are trying to find the index is not present in the tuple.

You might also be interested in –

• Get Max Value and its Index in a Tuple in Python
• Get Min Value and its Index in a Tuple in Python