Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A generalization of ordered pairs, such as (-3, 4), and ordered triples, such as (0, -3, 5), in any dimension. An n-tuple is an ordered list of n numbers and can represent a point in n-dimensional space.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun set theory A finite sequence of terms.
  • noun computing A single row in a relational database.
  • noun computing A set of comma-separated values passed to a program or operating system as a parameter to a function call.
  • noun computing In some programming languages, a data type which is similar but distinct from the list data type, whose instances are characterized by having a rather fixed arity, and the elements of which instances can differ from each other by data type. (Note: this definition may overlap with the previous one.)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From -tuple, as in quintuple or sextuple.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the ending of the words quintuple, sextuple; from Latin -plus.

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Examples

  • This also indicates that a tuple is a sequence as well.

    A Byte of Python Swaroop, C. H. 2003

  • Each cell member is identified as a tuple for each dimension in the cube.

    BeyeNETWORK Content 2010

  • I'm not sure how New York could have 7180000 and half of inhabitants, but if this were the case then the type of the tuple string * int anymore and would instead be float, as the type inference would correctly deduce that the second element of the tuple is a floating-point number.

    The Code Project Latest Articles 2009

  • Pattern matching can be used only for determining run-time properties of values; the number of elements in a tuple is specified by the type of the tuple, which is checked at compile time.

    The Code Project Latest Articles 2009

  • Unless we need an empty tuple, that is, in which case the parentheses are required.

    Planet Python 2009

  • In this case a tuple is the only alternative as no pid is known.

    Hiveminds Magazine 2009

  • A tuple is a combination of members from different dimensions

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows edarsoft 2009

  • A tuple is a simple generic data structure that holds an ordered set of items of heterogeneous types.

    ASP.NET Weblogs 2008

  • In F#, the tuple is a fully supported data type and perhaps one of the most useful.

    ASP.NET Weblogs 2008

  • In this article, we'll look at the simplest functional data structure, a 'tuple' and we'll use it to demonstrate how we can work with immutable data types.

    The Code Project Latest Articles 2009

Comments

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  • definition:

    an ordered list of variables, for example a row in a database

    March 17, 2010

  • A simple generic data structure that holds an ordered set of items of heterogeneous types. Morgan's Law of Attribution: One tuple is sufficient.

    December 9, 2015