How to get last element of a list in Python

In this tutorial, we are going to learn about how to get the last element or item of a list in Python.

Consider, we have the following list:

numList = [12, 13, 14, 15, 16]

To access the last element (16) of a list, we can use the subscript syntax [ ] by passing an index -1.

In Python lists are zero-indexed. so the first element is available at index 0 and negative indices counting back from the end of a list, so the index of -1 is used to access the last element of a list.

Here is an example:

numList = [12, 13, 14, 15, 16]

lastElement = numList[-1]

print(lastElement)  # 16

Similarly, we can also use the slicing syntax [:-1] to get the last element of a list in Python.

numList = [12, 13, 14, 15, 16]

lastElement = numList[:-1][0]

print(lastElement)  # 16

or we can use the list.reverse() method in Python to get the last element of a list like this:

numList = [12, 13, 14, 15, 16]

numList.reverse() # it reverses the list

firstElement = numList[0]

print(firstElement)  # 16