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

You can partition the list into two parts about the middle, reverse the second half and zip the two partitions, like so:

a = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
mid = len(a)//2
l = []
for x, y in zip(a[:mid], a[:mid-1:-1]):
    l.append(x)
    l.append(y)
# if the length is odd
if len(a) % 2 == 1:
    l.append(a[mid])
print(l)

Output:

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