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Transcript
Often we have to loop over two iterables at the same time. An iterable is anything you're able to loop over with a for
loop.
Lists are one type of iterable in Python that we are using here.
Looping over multiple iterables
We have two list here fruits
and colors
, we want to loop over them at the same time to get color for each fruit:
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
We are looping over the fruits
here:
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
>>>
>>> for fruit in favorite_fruits:
... print(fruit)
...
loquat
jujube
pear
watermelon
apple
Using nested for
loop
If we will to put another for
loop inside it, this wouldn't actually do what we want here:
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
>>>
>>> for fruit in fruits:
... for color in colors:
... print(color, fruit)
...
brown loquat
orange loquat
green loquat
pink loquat
purple loquat
brown jujube
orange jujube
green jujube
pink jujube
purple jujube
brown pear
orange pear
green pear
pink pear
purple pear
brown watermelon
orange watermelon
green watermelon
pink watermelon
purple watermelon
brown apple
orange apple
green apple
pink apple
purple apple
We instead want brown loquat
because these two correspond to each other up here, they're in the same position. We also want orange jujube
, green pear
and so on. We don't want green loquat
, for example.
We want only the things that correspond to each other so we can't use a nested loop.
We somehow need to loop over fruits
at the same time as colors
.
Using index technique
We could grab and use an index to get the result here. We can use a number n
counting upward as we loop and use enumerate
to count upward as we loop over our fruits iterable:
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
>>>
>>> for n, fruit in enumerate(fruits):
... print(n, fruit)
...
0 loquat
1 jujube
2 pear
3 watermelon
4 apple
We can then use that number n
as an index inside of colors. This will give us the corresponding values.
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
>>>
>>> for n, fruit in enumerate(fruits):
... print(colors[n], fruit)
...
brown loquat
orange jujube
green pear
pink watermelon
purple apple
This works only for sequences because it can be indexed starting from 0. For non-sequences, like a generator, a file, a set, a dictionary, lots of iterables in Python that are not sequences, this is not going to work. We can't index non-sequences.
The zip
object
There's another built-in function that is called zip
, you can give it any number of iterables:
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>>
>>> for item in zip(fruits, colors):
... print(item)
...
('loquat', 'brown')
('jujube', 'orange')
('pear', 'green')
('watermelon', 'pink')
('apple', 'purple')
The return value of zip
is a tuple of each of the items in colors
and fruits
, that are in corresponding positions. The first one from each (loquat, brown)
, the second one from each (jujube, orange)
, and so on, and it will stop at the shortest one.
We can use tuple unpacking here and do whatever we'd like with these variables, fruits
and colours
here:
>>> fruits = ["loquat", "jujube", "pear", "watermelon", "apple"]
>>> colors = ["brown", "orange", "green", "pink", "purple"]
>>>
>>> for fruit, color in zip(fruits, colors):
... print(color, fruit)
...
brown loquat
orange jujube
green pear
pink watermelon
purple apple
Summary
If you need to loop over multiple iterables at the same time, the best way to do that in Python is with the built-in zip
function.
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