Unpacking a list / tuple of pairs into two lists / tuples

PythonListTuples

Python Problem Overview


> Possible Duplicate:
> A Transpose/Unzip Function in Python

I have a list that looks like this:

list = (('1','a'),('2','b'),('3','c'),('4','d'))

I want to separate the list in 2 lists.

list1 = ('1','2','3','4')
list2 = ('a','b','c','d')

I can do it for example with:

list1 = []
list2 = []
for i in list:
   list1.append(i[0])
   list2.append(i[1])

But I want to know if there is a more elegant solution.

Python Solutions


Solution 1 - Python

>>> source_list = [('1','a'),('2','b'),('3','c'),('4','d')]
>>> list1, list2 = zip(*source_list)
>>> list1
('1', '2', '3', '4')
>>> list2
('a', 'b', 'c', 'd')

Edit: Note that zip(*iterable) is its own inverse:

>>> list(source_list) == zip(*zip(*source_list))
True

When unpacking into two lists, this becomes:

>>> list1, list2 = zip(*source_list)
>>> list(source_list) == zip(list1, list2)
True

Addition suggested by rocksportrocker.

Solution 2 - Python

list1 = (x[0] for x in source_list)
list2 = (x[1] for x in source_list)

Attributions

All content for this solution is sourced from the original question on Stackoverflow.

The content on this page is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
QuestionBreixoView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - PythonagfView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - PythonS.LottView Answer on Stackoverflow