Should you use a list or a tuple ... or perhaps a dictionary to store a collection of objects in your Python program? To help you make the decision, think whether you need to be able to modify the collection after you've created it (mutable) or not (immutable), and whether you want it to be indexed in order, or not.
Those two answers should lead to your collection type:

	Unordered	Ordered
Mutable	Dictionary { and }	List [ and ]
Immutable	n/a	Tuple ( and )

If you want an immutable unordered collection (the empty box in my table), use a dictionary. And when you're initially creating the collection, use ( ), [ ] or { } as shown in the table. Always use [ and ] to reference member elements after the initial creation - Python does it like that to render any code you write polymorphic ... i.e. to be common code that will work whatever the collection type.
(written 2006-11-29, updated 2006-12-01)

 Y104 - Python - Lists and Tuples
  [3348] List slices in Python - 2 and 3 values forms, with an uplifting example - (2011-07-06)
  [3257] All possible combinations from a list (Python) or array (Ruby) - (2011-04-23)
  [3181] Beware - a=a+b and a+=b are different - Python - (2011-02-23)
  [3118] Arrays of arrays - or 2D arrays. How to program tables. - (2011-01-02)
  [2996] Copying - duplicating data, or just adding a name? Perl and Python compared - (2010-10-12)
  [2719] Traffic lights in Python - (2010-04-13)
  [2368] Python - fresh examples of all the fundamentals - (2009-08-20)
  [2284] Strings as collections in Python - (2009-07-12)
  [2280] Creating and iterating through Python lists - (2009-07-12)
  [1789] Looking for a value in a list - Python - (2008-09-08)
  [1641] Tektronix 4010 series / Python Tuples - (2008-05-13)
  [1220] for loop - how it works (Perl, PHP, Java, C, etc) - (2007-06-06)
  [899] Python - extend v append on a list - (2006-10-20)
  [657] The ternary operator in Python - (2006-03-25)
  [383] Overloading of operators on standard objects in Python - (2005-07-19)

Y107 - Python - Dictionaries
  [3555] Football league tables - under old and new point system. Python program. - (2011-12-18)
  [3554] Learning more about our web site - and learning how to learn about yours - (2011-12-17)
  [3488] Python sets and frozensets - what are they? - (2011-10-20)
  [3464] Passing optional and named parameters to python methods - (2011-10-04)
  [2994] Python - some common questions answered in code examples - (2010-10-10)
  [2986] Python dictionaries - reaching to new uses - (2010-10-05)
  [2915] Looking up a value by key - associative arrays / Hashes / Dictionaries - (2010-08-11)
  [1145] Using a list of keys and a list of values to make a dictionary in Python - zip - (2007-04-13)
  [1144] Python dictionary for quick look ups - (2007-04-12)
  [103] Can't resist writing about Python - (2004-10-29)

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It's the 1st, not the 1nd 1rd or 1th.
Plain Ole nice pictures
Improving the historic town of Melksham
Python security - trouble with input
Python collections - mutable and imutable
Splitting Pythons in Bradford
Christmas in November
Coming from London to Melksham by train for a course
What happened at Geekmas
Python and the Magic Roundabout