num1 = [1,2,3,4,5]
num2 = [1,2,3,4,5]
arr1 = [[0]*(len(num2)+1)]*(len(num1)+1)
arr2 = [[0 for _ in range(len(num2)+1)] for _ in range(len(num1)+1)]
I get a different answer when I define arr1 and arr2. Aren't arr1 and arr2 create the same 2D array?
They are not the same. arr1 is a list with (len(nums1)+1) references to the same list [0]*(len(nums2)+1). So when you modify an element in one of them, all references will see this change as well.
For example,
>>> arr1[0][0] += 1
>>> print(arr1)
[[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]
arr2 doesn't suffer from this problem because it has len(nums1)+1 distinct lists:
>>> arr2[0][0] += 1
>>> print(arr2)
[[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]
A better way to see the difference is to use a random number to fill the entries.
from random import randrange
num1 = [1,2,3,4,5]
num2 = [1,2,3,4,5]
arr1 = [[randrange(10)]*(len(nums2)+1)]*(len(nums1)+1)
arr2 = [[randrange(10) for _ in range(len(nums2)+1)] for _ in range(len(nums1)+1)]
print(arr1)
print(arr2)
The output is:
[[5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5], [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5], [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5], [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5], [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5], [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5]]
[[7, 4, 2, 4, 0, 3], [7, 5, 1, 0, 1, 7], [4, 4, 1, 0, 2, 1], [2, 3, 6, 2, 6, 7], [6, 6, 6, 0, 3, 3], [0, 4, 5, 0, 6, 6]]
You can see that for the arr1, it populates every entry with the same number; while for arr2, the entries are all truly random. This is because arr1 is constructed by expanding a list of just one number, which is [5] here.
numstonum) I got the same answer for both, a 6 times 6 2d list filled with zeros. The internal function is different because inarr1all sub lists point to the same ID in memory whilearr2all sublists are unique. (for examplearr1[0][0] = 1will result that each first element of all sublists will be 1.num1andnum2, but then usenums1andnums2, which are probably arrays you defined elsewhere.