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

One way to do this for even-sized lists (inspired by this post):

a = range(10)

b = [val for pair in zip(a[:5], a[5:][::-1]) for val in pair]