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''subscription'' ⚬｜Definition｜1st｜20260105122514-00-⌔

6. Expressions — Python 3.14.2 documentation#subscriptions

6.3.2. Subscriptions and slicings

The subscription syntax is usually used for selecting an element from a container – for example, to get a value from a dict:

>>> digits_by_name = {'one': 1, 'two': 2}
>>> digits_by_name['two']  # Subscripting a dictionary using the key 'two'
2

In the subscription syntax, the object being subscribed – a primary – is followed by a subscript in square brackets. In the simplest case, the subscript is a single expression.

Depending on the type of the object being subscribed, the subscript is sometimes called a key (for mappings), index (for sequences), or type argument (for generic types). Syntactically, these are all equivalent:

>>> colors = ['red', 'blue', 'green', 'black']
>>> colors[3]  # Subscripting a list using the index 3
'black'
 
>>> list[str]  # Parameterizing the list type using the type argument str
list[str]

At runtime, the interpreter will evaluate the primary and the subscript, and call the primary’s __getitem__() or __class_getitem__() special method with the subscript as argument. For more details on which of these methods is called, see class_getitem versus getitem.

To show how subscription works, we can define a custom object that implements __getitem__() and prints out the value of the subscript:

>>> class SubscriptionDemo:
...     def __getitem__(self, key):
...         print(f'subscripted with: {key!r}')
...
>>> demo = SubscriptionDemo()
>>> demo[1]
subscripted with: 1
>>> demo['a' ﹡ 3]
subscripted with: 'aaa'

See __getitem__() documentation for how built-in types handle subscription.

Subscriptions may also be used as targets in assignment or deletion statements. In these cases, the interpreter will call the subscripted object’s __setitem__() or __delitem__() special method, respectively, instead of __getitem__().

>>> colors = ['red', 'blue', 'green', 'black']
>>> colors[3] = 'white'  # Setting item at index
>>> colors
['red', 'blue', 'green', 'white']
>>> del colors[3]  # Deleting item at index 3
>>> colors
['red', 'blue', 'green']

All advanced forms of subscript documented in the following sections are also usable for assignment and deletion.

Printed 2026-06-28.

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