6.13. List Type Built-in Methods

Lists in Python have methods. We will go over methods more formally in an introduction to object-oriented programming in Chapter 13, but for now, think of methods as functions or procedures that apply only to specific objects. So the methods described in this section behave just like built-in functions except that they operate only on lists. Since these functions involve the mutability (or updating) of lists, none of them is applicable for tuples.

You may recall our earlier discussion of accessing object attributes using the dotted attribute notation: object.attribute. List methods are no different, using list.method([arguments]). We use the dotted notation to access the attribute (here it is a function), then use the function operators ( ( ) ) in a functional notation to invoke the methods.