Python Tuple Unpacking

Question

If I have

 nums_and_words = [(1, \'one\'), (2, \'two\'), (3, \'three\')]

and would like

nums = [1, 2, 3]
words= [\'one\', \         


        

Answer 1

Use zip, then unpack:

nums_and_words = [(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three')]
nums, words = zip(*nums_and_words)

Actually, this "unpacks" twice: First, when you pass the list of lists to zip with *, then when you distribute the result to the two variables.

You can think of zip(*list_of_lists) as 'transposing' the argument:

   zip(*[(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three')])
== zip(  (1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three') )
== [(1, 2, 3), ('one', 'two', 'three')]

Note that this will give you tuples; if you really need lists, you'd have to map the result:

nums, words = map(list, zip(*nums_and_words))

Answer 2

Using List comprehension ..

nums = [nums_and_words[x][0] for x in xrange(len(nums_and_words)) ]
words = [nums_and_words[x][1] for x in xrange(len(nums_and_words)) ]

Testing if this works

print nums ,'&', words 

Answer 3

Just unzip and create lists:

nums = list(zip(*nums_and_words)[0])
word = list(zip(*nums_and_words)[1])

See the zip documentation.