What is the pythonic way to detect the last element in a 'for' loop?

Most of the times it is easier (and cheaper) to make the first iteration the special case instead of the last one:

first = True
for data in data_list:
    if first:
        first = False
    else:
        between_items()

    item()

This will work for any iterable, even for those that have no len():

file = open('/path/to/file')
for line in file:
    process_line(line)
    
    # No way of telling if this is the last line!

Apart from that, I don't think there is a generally superior solution as it depends on what you are trying to do. For example, if you are building a string from a list, it's naturally better to use str.join() than using a for loop “with special case”.

Using the same principle but more compact:

for i, line in enumerate(data_list):
    if i > 0:
        between_items()
    item()

Looks familiar, doesn't it? :)

For @ofko, and others who really need to find out if the current value of an iterable without len() is the last one, you will need to look ahead:

def lookahead(iterable):
    """Pass through all values from the given iterable, augmented by the
    information if there are more values to come after the current one
    (True), or if it is the last value (False).
    """
    # Get an iterator and pull the first value.
    it = iter(iterable)
    try:
        last = next(it)
    except StopIteration:
        return
    # Run the iterator to exhaustion (starting from the second value).
    for val in it:
        # Report the *previous* value (more to come).
        yield last, True
        last = val
    # Report the last value.
    yield last, False

Then you can use it like this:

>>> for i, has_more in lookahead(range(3)):
...     print(i, has_more)
0 True
1 True
2 False

Although that question is pretty old, I came here via google and I found a quite simple way: List slicing. Let's say you want to put an '&' between all list entries.

s = ""
l = [1, 2, 3]
for i in l[:-1]:
    s = s + str(i) + ' & '
s = s + str(l[-1])

This returns '1 & 2 & 3'.

The 'code between' is an example of the Head-Tail pattern.

You have an item, which is followed by a sequence of ( between, item ) pairs. You can also view this as a sequence of (item, between) pairs followed by an item. It's generally simpler to take the first element as special and all the others as the "standard" case.

Further, to avoid repeating code, you have to provide a function or other object to contain the code you don't want to repeat. Embedding an if statement in a loop which is always false except one time is kind of silly.

def item_processing( item ):
    # *the common processing*

head_tail_iter = iter( someSequence )
head = next(head_tail_iter)
item_processing( head )
for item in head_tail_iter:
    # *the between processing*
    item_processing( item )

This is more reliable because it's slightly easier to prove, It doesn't create an extra data structure (i.e., a copy of a list) and doesn't require a lot of wasted execution of an if condition which is always false except once.

If you're simply looking to modify the last element in data_list then you can simply use the notation:

L[-1]

However, it looks like you're doing more than that. There is nothing really wrong with your way. I even took a quick glance at some Django code for their template tags and they do basically what you're doing.