How to zip two lists of lists in Python?

I have two lists of lists that have equivalent numbers of items. The two lists look like this:

L1 = [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]

L2 =[[a, b], [c, d], [e, f]]

I am looking to create one list that looks like this:

Lmerge = [[1, 2, a, b], [3, 4, c, d], [5, 6, e, f]]

I was attempting to use zip() something like this:

for list1, list2 in zip(*L1, *L2):
    Lmerge = [list1, list2]

What is the best way to combine two lists of lists? Thanks in advance.

回答1:

>>> map(list.__add__, L1, L2)
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

回答2:

>>> L1 = [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]
>>> L2 =[["a", "b"], ["c", "d"], ["e", "f"]]
>>> [x + y for x,y in zip(L1,L2)]
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

Or,

>>> [sum(x,[]) for x in zip(L1,L2)]
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

or,

>>> import itertools
>>> [list(itertools.chain(*x)) for x in zip(L1,L2)]
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

We can also do it without zip():

>>> [L1[i] + L2[i] for i in xrange(min(len(L1), len(L2)))]  
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

>>> [x + L2[i] for i, x in enumerate(L1)]  # assuming len(L1) == len(l2)
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

>>> # same as above, but deals with different lengths
>>> Lx, Ly = ((L2,L1), (L1,L2))[len(L1)<=len(L2)] # shortcut for if/else
>>> [x + Ly[i] for i, x in enumerate(Lx)]

Some benchmarks

Here are some benchmarks for the answers provided so far.

It looks like the most popular answer ([x + y for x,y in zip(L1,L2)]) is pretty much on par with @hammar's map solution. ~~On the other hand, the alternative solutions I've given have proven to be rubbish!~~

However, the fastest solutions (for now) seems to be the ones that uses list comprehension without zip().

[me@home]$ SETUP="L1=[[x,x+1] for x in xrange(10000)];L2=[[x+2,x+3] for x in xrange(10000)]"

[me@home]$ # this raises IndexError if len(L1) > len(L2)
[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "[x + L2[i] for i, x in enumerate(L1)]"
100 loops, best of 3: 10.6 msec per loop

[me@home]$ # same as above, but deals with length inconsistencies
[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "Lx,Ly=((L2,L1),(L1,L2))[len(L1)<=len(L2)];[x + Ly[i] for i, x in enumerate(Lx)]"
100 loops, best of 3: 10.6 msec per loop

[me@home]$ # almost as fast as above, but easier to read
[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "[L1[i] + L2[i] for i in xrange(min(len(L1),len(L2)))]"
100 loops, best of 3: 10.8 msec per loop

[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "L3=[x + y for x,y in zip(L1,L2)]"
100 loops, best of 3: 13.4 msec per loop

[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "L3=map(list.__add__, L1, L2)" 
100 loops, best of 3: 13.5 msec per loop

[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "L3=[sum(x,[]) for x in zip(L1,L2)]"
100 loops, best of 3: 18.1 msec per loop

[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP;import itertools" "L3=[list(itertools.chain(*x)) for x in zip(L1,L2)]"
10 loops, best of 3: 32.9 msec per loop

@Zac's suggestion is really quick, but then we're comparing apples and oranges here since it does a list extension in-place on L1 instead of creating a third list. So, if L1 is not longer needed, this is a great solution.

[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP" "for index, x in enumerate(L1): x.extend(L2[index])"
100 loops, best of 3: 9.46 msec per loop

However, if L1 has to be kept intact, then performance would be sub par once you include the deepcopy.

[me@home]$ python -m timeit "$SETUP;from copy import deepcopy" "L3=deepcopy(L1)
> for index, x in enumerate(L1): x.extend(L2[index])"
10 loops, best of 3: 116 msec per loop

回答3:

You want to combine the sublists with the plus operator, and iterate over them in a list comprehension:

Lmerge = [i1 + i2 for i1, i2 in zip(L1, L2)]

回答4:

L1 = [[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6]]
L2 =[[a, b], [c, d], [e, f]]

Lmerge = [x + y for x, y in zip(L1, L2)]
[[1, 2, 'a', 'b'], [3, 4, 'c', 'd'], [5, 6, 'e', 'f']]

回答5:

for index, x in enumerate(L1):
    x.extend(L2[index])