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

Not at all elegant, but it is a clumsy one-liner:

a = range(10)
[val for pair in zip(a[:len(a)//2],a[-1:(len(a)//2-1):-1]) for val in pair]

Note that it assumes you are doing this for a list of even length. If that breaks, then this breaks (it drops the middle term). Note that I got some of the idea from here.