Python Trick: Merging Two Lists with the zip Function

As a data scientist or machine learning engineer, you’ll often need to combine or merge two lists of data. While there are several ways to achieve this in Python, using the zip function is an efficient and concise method that you should have in your code.

The zip function takes two or more iterable objects as arguments and returns a new iterator that aggregates elements from each iterable. This makes it an ideal candidate for merging two lists.

Here’s an example:

In this example, the zip function merges the two lists into a list of tuples, where each tuple contains an element from both lists.

You can also use the zip function to merge more than two lists:

Note that the zip function returns an iterator, so you need to convert it to a list if you want to access the merged data multiple times.

You can also use the zip function with other iterable objects, such as sets and strings:

Using the zip function to merge two or more lists is a Python trick that can save you time and make your code more efficient. Keep it in mind the next time you need to combine data from different sources.