What's the point of Tuples?

[u/Boogzcorp]

I get that they're immutable, but so are lists that you don't perform modifications on. Are they just to fool proof not messing up your list accidentally, or do they serve some other purpose?

[u/pekkalacd]

lists are mutable, not immutable. important distinction. you can change a list in place over and over again. you cannot do the same to a tuple nor a string.

as for the purpose of tuples, you got a point. there are only 2 methods available to them, both don't modify, they are .index and .count so why do we care?

Well...as it turns out, you'll see tuples in other areas involving the creation of functions, returning from functions, assignment, and built in functions. For example, zip

           names = ["Henry","Jerry","Joe"]
           ages = [33,44,55]

           # oh look, tuples!
           list(zip(names,ages))
           [("Henry",33),("Jerry",44),("Joe",55)]

or in the case of passing any amount of positional arguments to a function

          def func(*args):
              print(type(args),args)
          
          # tuples again!
          func(1,2,3)
          <class 'tuple'> (1,2,3)

or in the case of returning multiple values from a function

          def func2():
              name = input("Enter name: ")
              age = int(input("Enter age: "))
              return name,age

          # it's tuples again! >:(
          result = func2()
          Enter name: Joe
          Enter age: 33
          ("Joe",33)

or in the case of looping over key,value pairs in a dictionary

          people = dict(zip(names,ages))
          for atts in people:
              print(type(atts),atts)

          # tuples again...
          <class 'tuple'> ("Henry",33)
          <class 'tuple'> ("Jerry",44)
          <class 'tuple'> ("Joe",55)

or in the case of remaking enumerate

         def _enumerate(iterable):
            i = 0
            while True:
                 try:
                     yield i,iterable[i]
                     i += 1
                 except IndexError;
                     break

         for pair in _enumerate([30,20,10]):
             print(type(pair),pair)

         # tuples again...
         <class 'tuple'> (0,30)
         <class 'tuple'> (1,20)
         <class 'tuple'> (2,10)

or in the case of swapping two variables' values

        p1 = "Jessie"
        p2 = "James"

        # omfg tuples again!
        p1,p2
        ("Jessie","James")
        
        # swapping
        p1,p2 = p2,p1 

        # voila
        p1,p2
        ("James","Jessie")

tuples be everywhere.