22 Handy Python Code Snippets Every Developer Should Know

Python is a practical programming language that helps solve everyday problems. This article introduces 22 useful Python code snippets that let you handle common tasks such as extracting vowels, capitalizing words, printing a string multiple times, merging dictionaries, measuring execution time, swapping variables, checking duplicates, filtering false values, getting byte size, checking memory usage, detecting anagrams, sorting lists and dictionaries, retrieving the last list element, joining lists into a string, checking palindromes, shuffling lists, converting case, formatting strings, searching substrings, printing on the same line, and chunking lists.

1. Get Vowels

def get_vowels(string):
    return [ch for ch in string if ch in "aeiou"]

print(get_vowels("animal"))   # ['a', 'i', 'a']
print(get_vowels("sky"))      # []
print(get_vowels("football")) # ['o', 'o', 'a']

2. Capitalize First Letter

def capitalize(string):
    return string.title()

print(capitalize("shop"))                # Shop
print(capitalize("python programming")) # Python Programming
print(capitalize("how are you!"))       # How Are You!

3. Print String N Times

n = 5
string = "Hello World "
print(string * n)  # Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World

4. Merge Two Dictionaries

def merge(dic1, dic2):
    dic3 = dic1.copy()
    dic3.update(dic2)
    return dic3

dic1 = {1: "hello", 2: "world"}
 dic2 = {3: "Python", 4: "Programming"}
print(merge(dic1, dic2))
# {1: 'hello', 2: 'world', 3: 'Python', 4: 'Programming'}

5. Measure Execution Time

import time
start_time = time.time()

def fun():
    a = 2
    b = 3
    c = a + b

fun()
end_time = time.time()
print("Your program takes:", end_time - start_time)

6. Swap Variable Values

a = 3
b = 4
a, b = b, a
print(a, b)  # 4 3

7. Check for Duplicates

def check_duplicate(lst):
    return len(lst) != len(set(lst))

print(check_duplicate([1,2,3,4,5,4,6]))  # True
print(check_duplicate([1,2,3]))          # False

8. Filter False Values

def filtering(lst):
    return list(filter(None, lst))

lst = [None, 1, 3, 0, "", 5, 7]
print(filtering(lst))  # [1, 3, 5, 7]

9. Byte Size of a String

def byte_size(string):
    return len(string.encode("utf8"))

print(byte_size("Python"))  # 6
print(byte_size("Data"))    # 4

10. Memory Usage of Variables

import sys
var1 = "Python"
var2 = 100
var3 = True
print(sys.getsizeof(var1))  # 55
print(sys.getsizeof(var2))  # 28
print(sys.getsizeof(var3))  # 28

11. Anagram Check

from collections import Counter

def anagrams(str1, str2):
    return Counter(str1) == Counter(str2)

print(anagrams("abc1", "1bac"))  # True

12. Sort Lists

my_list = ["leaf", "cherry", "fish"]
my_list1 = ["D", "C", "B", "A"]
my_list2 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

my_list.sort()          # ['cherry', 'fish', 'leaf']
my_list1.sort()         # ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']
print(sorted(my_list2, reverse=True))  # [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

13. Sort Dictionary

orders = {"pizza": 200, "burger": 56, "pepsi": 25, "Coffee": 14}
sorted_dic = sorted(orders.items(), key=lambda x: x[1])
print(sorted_dic)
# [('Coffee', 14), ('pepsi', 25), ('burger', 56), ('pizza', 200)]

14. Retrieve Last List Element

my_list = ["Python", "JavaScript", "C++", "Java", "C#", "Dart"]
print(my_list[-1])   # Dart
print(my_list.pop()) # Dart

15. Join List with Commas

my_list1 = ["Python", "JavaScript", "C++"]
my_list2 = ["Java", "Flutter", "Swift"]
print("My favourite Programming Languages are " + ", ".join(my_list1))
# My favourite Programming Languages are Python, JavaScript, C++
print(", ".join(my_list2))
# Java, Flutter, Swift

16. Palindrome Check

def palindrome(data):
    return data == data[::-1]

print(palindrome("level"))  # True
print(palindrome("madaa"))  # False

17. Shuffle List Randomly

from random import shuffle
my_list1 = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
my_list2 = ["A","B","C","D"]
shuffle(my_list1)
shuffle(my_list2)
print(my_list1)  # e.g., [4, 6, 1, 3, 2, 5]
print(my_list2)  # e.g., ['A', 'D', 'B', 'C']

18. String Case Conversion

str1 = "Python Programming"
str2 = "IM A PROGRAMMER"
print(str1.upper())  # PYTHON PROGRAMMING
print(str2.lower())  # im a programmer

19. String Formatting

str1 = "Python Programming"
str2 = "I'm a {}".format(str1)
print(str2)  # I'm a Python Programming

str2 = f"I'm a {str1}"
print(str2)  # I'm a Python Programming

20. Find Substring

programmers = [
    "I'm an expert Python Programmer",
    "I'm an expert Javascript Programmer",
    "I'm a professional Python Programmer",
    "I'm a beginner C++ Programmer"
]
# method 1
for p in programmers:
    if p.find("Python") != -1:
        print(p)
# method 2
for p in programmers:
    if "Python" in p:
        print(p)

21. Print on the Same Line

import sys
sys.stdout.write("Call of duty ")
sys.stdout.write("and Black Ops")
# Output: Call of duty and Black Ops

print("Python ", end="")
print("Programming")
# Output: Python Programming

22. Chunk a List

def chunk(my_list, size):
    return [my_list[i:i+size] for i in range(0, len(my_list), size)]

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
print(chunk(my_list, 2))  # [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]

These 22 snippets aim to boost your productivity and help you write cleaner Python code.