Iterating through two lists in parallel is a common task in Python programming.
This is when you want to iterate through two lists at the same time and perform some operation on each element of both lists.
In this tutorial, we will discuss how to iterate through two lists in parallel using Python.
Let’s consider the following example of two lists:
list1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] list2 = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
We can iterate through these two lists in parallel using the built-in zip() function in Python.
The zip() function returns an iterator of tuples, where the i-th tuple contains the i-th element from each of the argument sequences or iterables.
for x, y in zip(list1, list2):
print(x, y)
Output:
1 a 2 b 3 c 4 d 5 e
In the above example, we have used a for loop to iterate through the two lists in parallel using the zip() function.
Inside the loop, we have unpacked each tuple into two variables, x and y, which represent the i-th element of list1 and list2 respectively.
Then, we have printed the values of x and y on each iteration.
If the two lists are of unequal length, the zip() function will only iterate up to the length of the shortest list.
For example:
list1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
list2 = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
for x, y in zip(list1, list2):
print(x, y)
Output:
1 a 2 b 3 c 4 d
In the above example, since list1 is shorter than list2, the zip() function only iterates up to the length of list1.
In conclusion, iterating through two lists in parallel is a common task in Python programming, and it can be easily accomplished using the zip() function.
By using this technique, you can perform operations on corresponding elements of two lists at the same time.
