Traverse a list in reverse order in Python

Use the built-in reversed() function:

>>> a = ["foo", "bar", "baz"]
>>> for i in reversed(a):
...     print(i)
... 
baz
bar
foo

To also access the original index, use enumerate() on your list before passing it to reversed():

>>> for i, e in reversed(list(enumerate(a))):
...     print(i, e)
... 
2 baz
1 bar
0 foo

Since enumerate() returns a generator and generators can't be reversed, you need to convert it to a list first.

You can do:

for item in my_list[::-1]:
    print item

(Or whatever you want to do in the for loop.)

The [::-1] slice reverses the list in the for loop (but won't actually modify your list "permanently").

It can be done like this:

for i in range(len(collection)-1, -1, -1):
    print collection[i]

    # print(collection[i]) for python 3. +

So your guess was pretty close :) A little awkward but it's basically saying: start with 1 less than len(collection), keep going until you get to just before -1, by steps of -1.

Fyi, the help function is very useful as it lets you view the docs for something from the Python console, eg:

help(range)

If you need the loop index, and don't want to traverse the entire list twice, or use extra memory, I'd write a generator.

def reverse_enum(L):
   for index in reversed(xrange(len(L))):
      yield index, L[index]

L = ['foo', 'bar', 'bas']
for index, item in reverse_enum(L):
   print index, item

In python 3, list creates a copy, so reversed(list(enumerate(collection)) could be inefficient, generating yet an other list is not optimized away.

If collection is a list for sure, then it may be best to hide the complexity behind an iterator

def reversed_enumerate(collection: list):
    for i in range(len(collection)-1, -1, -1):
        yield i, collection[i]

so, the cleanest is:

for i, elem in reversed_enumerate(['foo', 'bar', 'baz']):
    print(i, elem)

Use list.reverse() and then iterate as you normally would.

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html

If you need the index and your list is small, the most readable way is to do reversed(list(enumerate(your_list))) like the accepted answer says. But this creates a copy of your list, so if your list is taking up a large portion of your memory you'll have to subtract the index returned by enumerate(reversed()) from len()-1.

If you just need to do it once:

a = ['b', 'd', 'c', 'a']

for index, value in enumerate(reversed(a)):
    index = len(a)-1 - index

    do_something(index, value)

or if you need to do this multiple times you should use a generator:

def enumerate_reversed(lyst):
    for index, value in enumerate(reversed(lyst)):
        index = len(lyst)-1 - index
        yield index, value

for index, value in enumerate_reversed(a):
    do_something(index, value)

Assuming task is to find last element that satisfies some condition in a list (i.e. first when looking backwards), I'm getting following numbers.

Python 2:

>>> min(timeit.repeat('for i in xrange(len(xs)-1,-1,-1):\n    if 128 == xs[i]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', repeat=8))
4.6937971115112305
>>> min(timeit.repeat('for i in reversed(xrange(0, len(xs))):\n    if 128 == xs[i]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', repeat=8))
4.809093952178955
>>> min(timeit.repeat('for i, x in enumerate(reversed(xs), 1):\n    if 128 == x: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', repeat=8))
4.931743860244751
>>> min(timeit.repeat('for i, x in enumerate(xs[::-1]):\n    if 128 == x: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', repeat=8))
5.548468112945557
>>> min(timeit.repeat('for i in xrange(len(xs), 0, -1):\n    if 128 == xs[i - 1]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', repeat=8))
6.286104917526245
>>> min(timeit.repeat('i = len(xs)\nwhile 0 < i:\n    i -= 1\n    if 128 == xs[i]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', repeat=8))
8.384078979492188

So, the ugliest option xrange(len(xs)-1,-1,-1) is the fastest.

Python 3 (different machine):

>>> timeit.timeit('for i in range(len(xs)-1,-1,-1):\n    if 128 == xs[i]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', number=400000)
4.48873088900001
>>> timeit.timeit('for i in reversed(range(0, len(xs))):\n    if 128 == xs[i]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', number=400000)
4.540959084000008
>>> timeit.timeit('for i, x in enumerate(reversed(xs), 1):\n    if 128 == x: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', number=400000)
1.9069805409999958
>>> timeit.timeit('for i, x in enumerate(xs[::-1]):\n    if 128 == x: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', number=400000)
2.960720073999994
>>> timeit.timeit('for i in range(len(xs), 0, -1):\n    if 128 == xs[i - 1]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', number=400000)
5.316207007999992
>>> timeit.timeit('i = len(xs)\nwhile 0 < i:\n    i -= 1\n    if 128 == xs[i]: break', setup='xs, n = range(256), 0', number=400000)
5.802550058999998

Here, enumerate(reversed(xs), 1) is the fastest.

I think the most elegant way is to transform enumerate and reversed using the following generator

(-(ri+1), val) for ri, val in enumerate(reversed(foo))

which generates a the reverse of the enumerate iterator

Example:

foo = [1,2,3]
bar = [3,6,9]
[
    bar[i] - val
    for i, val in ((-(ri+1), val) for ri, val in enumerate(reversed(foo)))
]

Result:

[6, 4, 2]

the reverse function comes in handy here:

myArray = [1,2,3,4]
myArray.reverse()
for x in myArray:
    print x

If you don't mind the index being negative, you can do:

>>> a = ["foo", "bar", "baz"]
>>> for i in range(len(a)):
...     print(~i, a[~i]))
-1 baz
-2 bar
-3 foo

You can use a negative index in an ordinary for loop:

>>> collection = ["ham", "spam", "eggs", "baked beans"]
>>> for i in range(1, len(collection) + 1):
...     print(collection[-i])
... 
baked beans
eggs
spam
ham

To access the index as though you were iterating forward over a reversed copy of the collection, use i - 1:

>>> for i in range(1, len(collection) + 1):
...     print(i-1, collection[-i])
... 
0 baked beans
1 eggs
2 spam
3 ham

To access the original, un-reversed index, use len(collection) - i:

>>> for i in range(1, len(collection) + 1):
...     print(len(collection)-i, collection[-i])
... 
3 baked beans
2 eggs
1 spam
0 ham

I'm confused why the obvious choice did not pop up so far:

If reversed() is not working because you have a generator (as the case with enumerate()), just use sorted():

>>> l = list( 'abcdef' )
>>> sorted( enumerate(l), reverse=True )
[(5, 'f'), (4, 'e'), (3, 'd'), (2, 'c'), (1, 'b'), (0, 'a')]

As a beginner in python, I found this way more easy to understand and reverses a list.

say numlst = [1, 2, 3, 4]

for i in range(len(numlst)-1,-1,-1):

ie., for i in range(3,-1,-1), where 3 is length of list minus 1,
second -1 means list starts from last element and 
third -1 signifies it will traverse in reverse order.

print( numlst[ i ] )

o/p = 4, 3, 2, 1

input_list = ['foo','bar','baz']
for i in range(-1,-len(input_list)-1,-1)
    print(input_list[i])

i think this one is also simple way to do it... read from end and keep decrementing till the length of list, since we never execute the "end" index hence added -1 also

you can use a generator:

li = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
len_li = len(li)
gen = (len_li-1-i for i in range(len_li))

finally:

for i in gen:
    print(li[i])

hope this help you.