Iterate over multiple lists in python

Python – Iterate over multiple lists in parallel using zip()

In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to iterate over multiple lists in parallel using the zip() function in python.

The zip() function in python is used to aggregate elements from multiple iterable objects element-wise into an iterable of tuples. For example, if you combine the lists [1, 2, 3] and ['a', 'b', 'c'] using the zip() function, it will return an iterable zip object which can be converted to a list of tuples – [(1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, 'c')]. The following is the syntax to merge two lists:

ls1 = [1, 2, 3]
ls2 = ['a', 'b', 'c']
combined_ls = list(zip(ls1, ls2))
print(combined_ls)

Output:

[(1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, 'c')]

To combine the lists, we pass each list as argument to the zip() function.

We can use the zip() function to iterate over multiple lists in parallel. For this, pass the lists as arguments to the function. The following example demonstrates this better.

Suppose we have two lists, one containing the names of students and the other containing their Math scores. You are given the task to print the names of students and marks next to each other.

One way of doing this is to iterate through the two lists in parallel using zip() and print the ith element in the first list and the ith element in the second list on each iteration.

names = ['Sam', 'Meena', 'Jim', 'Emma', 'Steve']
scores = [57, 63, 61, 86, 72]
# iterate over both lists
for name, score in zip(names, scores):
    print("{} : {}".format(name, score))

Output:

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Sam : 57
Meena : 63
Jim : 61
Emma : 86
Steve : 72

You can see that names and scores of students are displayed together. The code above iterates over each element of both the lists and prints them together.

What would happen if you apply the zip() function on lists with different lengths?
Well, let’s find out.

ls1 = [1, 2, 3]
ls2 = ['a', 'b']
combined_ls = list(zip(ls1, ls2))
print(combined_ls)

Output:

[(1, 'a'), (2, 'b')]

When applied on lists with different lengths, the zip() stops at the end of the shortest list. Since the shortest list ls2, has length 2, the resulting list of tuples also has length 2.

Alternatively, you can use the zip_longest() function from the itertools module that stops at the end of the longest list and can fill the missing values with some custom value. The following example demonstrates its usage.

from itertools import zip_longest
ls1 = [1, 2, 3]
ls2 = ['a', 'b']
# default
combined_ls = list(zip_longest(ls1, ls2))
print(combined_ls)
# pass the fill value
combined_ls = list(zip_longest(ls1, ls2, fillvalue='#'))
print(combined_ls)

Output:

[(1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, None)]
[(1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, '#')]

First, we simply pass the two lists of lengths 2 and 3 to the zip_longest() function without specifying the fill value. Then, we passed the same two lists but specify the fill value to be '#'. Note that both the resulting lists are of length 3, that is, the length of the longest list.

For more on the python zip() function, refer to its documentation.

With this, we come to the end of this tutorial. The code examples and results presented in this tutorial have been implemented in a Jupyter Notebook with a python (version 3.8.3) kernel.


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Author

  • Piyush Raj

    Piyush is a data professional passionate about using data to understand things better and make informed decisions. He has experience working as a Data Scientist in the consulting domain and holds an engineering degree from IIT Roorkee. His hobbies include watching cricket, reading, and working on side projects.

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