Cycle a list from alternating sides

Question

Given a list

a = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]

how can I get

b = [0,9,1,8,2,7,3,6,4,5]

That is, produce a new lis

Answer 1

cycle between getting items from the forward iter and the reversed one. Just make sure you stop at len(a) with islice.

from itertools import islice, cycle

iters = cycle((iter(a), reversed(a)))
b = [next(it) for it in islice(iters, len(a))]

>>> b
[0, 9, 1, 8, 2, 7, 3, 6, 4, 5]

This can easily be put into a single line but then it becomes much more difficult to read:

[next(it) for it in islice(cycle((iter(a),reversed(a))),len(a))]

Putting it in one line would also prevent you from using the other half of the iterators if you wanted to:

>>> iters = cycle((iter(a), reversed(a)))
>>> [next(it) for it in islice(iters, len(a))]
[0, 9, 1, 8, 2, 7, 3, 6, 4, 5]
>>> [next(it) for it in islice(iters, len(a))]
[5, 4, 6, 3, 7, 2, 8, 1, 9, 0]