I have two lists, the first of which is guaranteed to contain exactly one more item than the second. I would like to know the most Pythonic way to create a new list whose even-index values come from the first list and whose odd-index values come from the second list.
# example inputs list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o'] list2 = ['hello', 'world'] # desired output ['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
This works, but isn’t pretty:
list3 = []
while True:
try:
list3.append(list1.pop(0))
list3.append(list2.pop(0))
except IndexError:
break
How else can this be achieved? What’s the most Pythonic approach?
Answers:
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Method 1
Here’s one way to do it by slicing:
>>> list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o'] >>> list2 = ['hello', 'world'] >>> result = [None]*(len(list1)+len(list2)) >>> result[::2] = list1 >>> result[1::2] = list2 >>> result ['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
Method 2
There’s a recipe for this in the itertools documentation (note: for Python 3):
from itertools import cycle, islice
def roundrobin(*iterables):
"roundrobin('ABC', 'D', 'EF') --> A D E B F C"
# Recipe credited to George Sakkis
num_active = len(iterables)
nexts = cycle(iter(it).__next__ for it in iterables)
while num_active:
try:
for next in nexts:
yield next()
except StopIteration:
# Remove the iterator we just exhausted from the cycle.
num_active -= 1
nexts = cycle(islice(nexts, num_active))
Method 3
import itertools print [x for x in itertools.chain.from_iterable(itertools.izip_longest(list1,list2)) if x]
I think this is the most pythonic way of doing it.
Method 4
In Python 2, this should do what you want:
>>> iters = [iter(list1), iter(list2)] >>> print list(it.next() for it in itertools.cycle(iters)) ['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
Method 5
Without itertools and assuming l1 is 1 item longer than l2:
>>> sum(zip(l1, l2+[0]), ())[:-1]
('f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o')
In python 2, using itertools and assuming that lists don’t contain None:
>>> filter(None, sum(itertools.izip_longest(l1, l2), ()))
('f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o')
Method 6
I know the questions asks about two lists with one having one item more than the other, but I figured I would put this for others who may find this question.
Here is Duncan’s solution adapted to work with two lists of different sizes.
list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r'] list2 = ['hello', 'world'] num = min(len(list1), len(list2)) result = [None]*(num*2) result[::2] = list1[:num] result[1::2] = list2[:num] result.extend(list1[num:]) result.extend(list2[num:]) result
This outputs:
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r']
Method 7
If both lists have equal length, you can do:
[x for y in zip(list1, list2) for x in y]
As the first list has one more element, you can add it post hoc:
[x for y in zip(list1, list2) for x in y] + [list1[-1]]
Method 8
Here’s a one liner that does it:
list3 = [ item for pair in zip(list1, list2 + [0]) for item in pair][:-1]
Method 9
Here’s a one liner using list comprehensions, w/o other libraries:
list3 = [sub[i] for i in range(len(list2)) for sub in [list1, list2]] + [list1[-1]]
Here is another approach, if you allow alteration of your initial list1 by side effect:
[list1.insert((i+1)*2-1, list2[i]) for i in range(len(list2))]
Method 10
This one is based on Carlos Valiente’s contribution above
with an option to alternate groups of multiple items and make sure that all items are present in the output :
A=["a","b","c","d"]
B=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
def cyclemix(xs, ys, n=1):
for p in range(0,int((len(ys)+len(xs))/n)):
for g in range(0,min(len(ys),n)):
yield ys[0]
ys.append(ys.pop(0))
for g in range(0,min(len(xs),n)):
yield xs[0]
xs.append(xs.pop(0))
print [x for x in cyclemix(A, B, 3)]
This will interlace lists A and B by groups of 3 values each:
['a', 'b', 'c', 1, 2, 3, 'd', 'a', 'b', 4, 5, 6, 'c', 'd', 'a', 7, 8, 9, 'b', 'c', 'd', 10, 11, 12, 'a', 'b', 'c', 13, 14, 15]
Method 11
Might be a bit late buy yet another python one-liner. This works when the two lists have equal or unequal size. One thing worth nothing is it will modify a and b. If it’s an issue, you need to use other solutions.
a = ['f', 'o', 'o'] b = ['hello', 'world'] sum([[a.pop(0), b.pop(0)] for i in range(min(len(a), len(b)))],[])+a+b ['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
Method 12
from itertools import chain
list(chain(*zip('abc', 'def'))) # Note: this only works for lists of equal length
['a', 'd', 'b', 'e', 'c', 'f']
Method 13
itertools.zip_longest returns an iterator of tuple pairs with any missing elements in one list replaced with fillvalue=None (passing fillvalue=object lets you use None as a value). If you flatten these pairs, then filter fillvalue in a list comprehension, this gives:
>>> from itertools import zip_longest
>>> def merge(a, b):
... return [
... x for y in zip_longest(a, b, fillvalue=object)
... for x in y if x is not object
... ]
...
>>> merge("abc", "defgh")
['a', 'd', 'b', 'e', 'c', 'f', 'g', 'h']
>>> merge([0, 1, 2], [4])
[0, 4, 1, 2]
>>> merge([0, 1, 2], [4, 5, 6, 7, 8])
[0, 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 7, 8]
Generalized to arbitrary iterables:
>>> def merge(*its):
... return [
... x for y in zip_longest(*its, fillvalue=object)
... for x in y if x is not object
... ]
...
>>> merge("abc", "lmn1234", "xyz9", [None])
['a', 'l', 'x', None, 'b', 'm', 'y', 'c', 'n', 'z', '1', '9', '2', '3', '4']
>>> merge(*["abc", "x"]) # unpack an iterable
['a', 'x', 'b', 'c']
Finally, you may want to return a generator rather than a list comprehension:
>>> def merge(*its):
... return (
... x for y in zip_longest(*its, fillvalue=object)
... for x in y if x is not object
... )
...
>>> merge([1], [], [2, 3, 4])
<generator object merge.<locals>.<genexpr> at 0x000001996B466740>
>>> next(merge([1], [], [2, 3, 4]))
1
>>> list(merge([1], [], [2, 3, 4]))
[1, 2, 3, 4]
If you’re OK with other packages, you can try more_itertools.roundrobin:
>>> list(roundrobin('ABC', 'D', 'EF'))
['A', 'D', 'E', 'B', 'F', 'C']
Method 14
My take:
a = "hlowrd"
b = "el ol"
def func(xs, ys):
ys = iter(ys)
for x in xs:
yield x
yield ys.next()
print [x for x in func(a, b)]
Method 15
def combine(list1, list2):
lst = []
len1 = len(list1)
len2 = len(list2)
for index in range( max(len1, len2) ):
if index+1 <= len1:
lst += [list1[index]]
if index+1 <= len2:
lst += [list2[index]]
return lst
Method 16
How about numpy? It works with strings as well:
import numpy as np np.array([[a,b] for a,b in zip([1,2,3],[2,3,4,5,6])]).ravel()
Result:
array([1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4])
Method 17
Stops on the shortest:
def interlace(*iters, next = next) -> collections.Iterable:
"""
interlace(i1, i2, ..., in) -> (
i1-0, i2-0, ..., in-0,
i1-1, i2-1, ..., in-1,
.
.
.
i1-n, i2-n, ..., in-n,
)
"""
return map(next, cycle([iter(x) for x in iters]))
Sure, resolving the next/__next__ method may be faster.
Method 18
Multiple one-liners inspired by answers to another question:
import itertools list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(itertools.izip_longest(list1, list2, fillvalue=object)))[:-1] [i for l in itertools.izip_longest(list1, list2, fillvalue=object) for i in l if i is not object] [item for sublist in map(None, list1, list2) for item in sublist][:-1]
Method 19
An alternative in a functional & immutable way (Python 3):
from itertools import zip_longest from functools import reduce reduce(lambda lst, zipped: [*lst, *zipped] if zipped[1] != None else [*lst, zipped[0]], zip_longest(list1, list2),[])
Method 20
using for loop also we can achive this easily:
list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o']
list2 = ['hello', 'world']
list3 = []
for i in range(len(list1)):
#print(list3)
list3.append(list1[i])
if i < len(list2):
list3.append(list2[i])
print(list3)
output :
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
Further by using list comprehension this can be reduced. But for understanding this loop can be used.
Method 21
Obviously late to the party, but here’s a concise one for equal-length lists:
output = [e for sub in zip(list1,list2) for e in sub]
It generalizes for an arbitrary number of equal-length lists, too:
output = [e for sub in zip(list1,list2,list3) for e in sub]
etc.
Method 22
I’d do the simple:
chain.from_iterable( izip( list1, list2 ) )
It’ll come up with an iterator without creating any additional storage needs.
Method 23
This is nasty but works no matter the size of the lists:
list3 = [
element for element in
list(itertools.chain.from_iterable([
val for val in itertools.izip_longest(list1, list2)
]))
if element != None
]
Method 24
I’m too old to be down with list comprehensions, so:
import operator list3 = reduce(operator.add, zip(list1, list2))
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0