Lists

Information regarding operators such as list concatenation (+), element existence checking (IN) and access ([]) can be found here. The behavior of the IN and [] operators with respect to null is detailed here.

Lists in general

A literal list is created by using brackets and separating the elements in the list with commas.

Query
RETURN [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] AS list
Table 1. Result
list

[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]

1 row

In our examples, we’ll use the range function. It gives you a list containing all numbers between given start and end numbers. Range is inclusive in both ends.

To access individual elements in the list, we use the square brackets again. This will extract from the start index and up to but not including the end index.

Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[3]
Table 2. Result
range(0, 10)[3]

3

1 row

You can also use negative numbers, to start from the end of the list instead.

Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[-3]
Table 3. Result
range(0, 10)[-3]

8

1 row

Finally, you can use ranges inside the brackets to return ranges of the list.

Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[0..3]
Table 4. Result
range(0, 10)[0..3]

[0,1,2]

1 row
Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[0..-5]
Table 5. Result
range(0, 10)[0..-5]

[0,1,2,3,4,5]

1 row
Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[-5..]
Table 6. Result
range(0, 10)[-5..]

[6,7,8,9,10]

1 row
Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[..4]
Table 7. Result
range(0, 10)[..4]

[0,1,2,3]

1 row

Out-of-bound slices are simply truncated, but out-of-bound single elements return null.
Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[15]
Table 8. Result
range(0, 10)[15]

<null>

1 row
Query
RETURN range(0, 10)[5..15]
Table 9. Result
range(0, 10)[5..15]

[5,6,7,8,9,10]

1 row

You can get the size of a list as follows:

Query
RETURN size(range(0, 10)[0..3])
Table 10. Result
size(range(0, 10)[0..3])

3

1 row

List comprehension

List comprehension is a syntactic construct available in Cypher® for creating a list based on existing lists. It follows the form of the mathematical set-builder notation (set comprehension) instead of the use of map and filter functions.

Query
RETURN [x IN range(0,10) WHERE x % 2 = 0 | x^3] AS result
Table 11. Result
result

[0.0,8.0,64.0,216.0,512.0,1000.0]

1 row

Either the WHERE part, or the expression, can be omitted, if you only want to filter or map respectively.

Query
RETURN [x IN range(0,10) WHERE x % 2 = 0] AS result
Table 12. Result
result

[0,2,4,6,8,10]

1 row
Query
RETURN [x IN range(0,10)| x^3] AS result
Table 13. Result
result

[0.0,1.0,8.0,27.0,64.0,125.0,216.0,343.0,512.0,729.0,1000.0]

1 row

Pattern comprehension

Pattern comprehension is a syntactic construct available in Cypher for creating a list based on matchings of a pattern. A pattern comprehension will match the specified pattern just like a normal MATCH clause, with predicates just like a normal WHERE clause, but will yield a custom projection as specified.

The following graph is used for the example below:

Graph
  N0 [
    label = "{Person|name = \'Keanu Reeves\'\l}"
  ]
  N0 -> N7 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N0 -> N6 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N0 -> N5 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N0 -> N4 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N0 -> N3 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N0 -> N2 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N0 -> N1 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "ACTED_IN\n"
  ]
  N1 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'Johnny Mnemonic\'\lreleased = 1995\l}"
  ]
  N2 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'Somethings Gotta Give\'\lreleased = 2003\l}"
  ]
  N3 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'The Matrix Revolutions\'\lreleased = 2003\l}"
  ]
  N4 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'The Matrix Reloaded\'\lreleased = 2003\l}"
  ]
  N5 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'The Replacements\'\lreleased = 2000\l}"
  ]
  N6 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'The Matrix\'\lreleased = 1999\l}"
  ]
  N7 [
    label = "{Movie|title = \'The Devils Advocate\'\lreleased = 1997\l}"
  ]
Query
MATCH (a:Person { name: 'Keanu Reeves' })
RETURN [(a)-->(b) WHERE b:Movie | b.released] AS years
Table 14. Result
years

[1997,1999,2000,2003,2003,2003,1995]

1 row

The whole predicate, including the WHERE keyword, is optional and may be omitted.