Zip with list output instead of tuple

python list zip
Jan Vorcak picture Jan Vorcak · Dec 4, 2011 · Viewed 78.2k times · Source

What is the fastest and most elegant way of doing list of lists from two lists?

I have

In [1]: a=[1,2,3,4,5,6]

In [2]: b=[7,8,9,10,11,12]

In [3]: zip(a,b)
Out[3]: [(1, 7), (2, 8), (3, 9), (4, 10), (5, 11), (6, 12)]

And I'd like to have

In [3]: some_method(a,b)
Out[3]: [[1, 7], [2, 8], [3, 9], [4, 10], [5, 11], [6, 12]]

I was thinking about using map instead of zip, but I don't know if there is some standard library method to put as a first argument.

I can def my own function for this, and use map, my question is if there is already implemented something. No is also an answer.

Answer

D K picture D K · Dec 4, 2011

If you are zipping more than 2 lists (or even only 2, for that matter), a readable way would be:

[list(a) for a in zip([1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9])]

This uses list comprehensions and converts each element in the list (tuples) into lists.

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