Zip items from two lists that have the same file name?

Question

I have two list: this:

list1(has way more items)

['C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp',
 'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\ASTI\\ASTI.shp',
 'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\ASTO\\ASTO.shp']

and this:

list2(has way more items)

['C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp',
 'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\ASTI\\ASTI.shp',
 'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\AWE\\AWE.shp',  #THIS IS EXTRA
 'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\ASTO\\ASTO.shp']

How to ensure that the pairs will match with the corresponding same name on the other list after the zip?

Maybe we match with their previous folder? Like:

if list1[0].split('\\')[-2] == list2[0].split('\\')[-2]:
      final = [(f,s) for f,s in zip(list1,list2)]
      final

wanted final output :

[('C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp',
  'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp'),etc..]

Answer 1

I would just group the files with a collections.defaultdict() , then output the pairs of length 2 in a separate list.

Demo:

from os.path import basename
from collections import defaultdict
from pprint import pprint

f1 = [
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp",
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\ASTI\\ASTI.shp",
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\ASTO\\ASTO.shp",
]

f2 = [
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp",
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\ASTI\\ASTI.shp",
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\AWE\\AWE.shp",  # THIS IS EXTRA
    "C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\ASTO\\ASTO.shp",
]

files = defaultdict(list)
for path in f1 + f2:
    filename = path.split('\\')[-1]
    files[filename].append(path)

pairs = [tuple(v) for k, v in files.items() if len(v) == 2]
pprint(pairs)

Output:

[('C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp',
  'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\AST\\AST.shp'),
 ('C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\ASTI\\ASTI.shp',
  'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\ASTI\\ASTI.shp'),
 ('C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\prog1\\merge\\ASTO\\ASTO.shp',
  'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\programs\\merge\\ASTO\\ASTO.shp')]

Note: Usingos.path.basename() to extract the filename from Windows paths will only work on Windows. It will simply do nothing on Unix enviorments.

Answer 2

This does not address the question directly using zip(), but in case if someone landed here looking for a way to grab files from two lists that have the same file name. This is what I tried in Python:

• given list1, list2

• we want to grab files from list1 that match the name as those in list2

  output_list = [list1 for list1 in list2]

And you can continue and zip(list1, list2) to ensure filenames in two lists are the same.