Is there an elegant zip to interleave two lists in Perl 5?

Question

I recently \"needed\" a zip function in Perl 5 (while I was thinking about How do I calculate relative time?), i.e. a function that takes two lists and \"zips\" them togethe

Answer 1

The List::MoreUtils module has a zip/mesh function that should do the trick:

use List::MoreUtils qw(zip);

my @numbers = (1, 2, 3);
my @fruit = ('apple', 'orange', 'grape');

my @zipped = zip @numbers, @fruit;

Here is the source of the mesh function:

sub mesh (\@\@;\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@\@) {
    my $max = -1;
    $max < $#$_  &&  ($max = $#$_)  for @_;

    map { my $ix = $_; map $_->[$ix], @_; } 0..$max; 
}