How to create new list by adding existing lists using for loop

Question

I would like to join word from one nested list together with the word "and" in between. For example:

l1 = [Patrick, Peter, Jerome], [Lisa, Karen, Alice]

l2 should be: [Patrick and Lisa, Peter and Karen, Jerome and Alice]

The code should not make a difference whether there are 2,3 or whatever amount of lists in the nested list.

I have tried iterating over the range of lists in the variable and then append the result to a new variable. However, the outcome is just the first combination or the results end after the second combination.

def names(one):
    newlist = []
    x = 0
    for y in range(len(one)):
        newlist.append(one[x][y] + " and " + one[x+1][y])
        x += 1
        return newlist

['Patrick and Lisa']

is what i got untill now. I know it has something to do with the iteration but since i am pretty new to python i got stuck.

Answer 1

It seems that l1 is a tuple of two elements. Use the following:

l2 = []

for name_a, name_b in zip(l1[0], l1[1]):
    l2.append(name_a + ' and ' + name_b)

If you are using Python 3.6+ you can use an f-string:

l2 = []

for name_a, name_b in zip(l1[0], l1[1]):
    l2.append(f'{name_a} and {name_b}')

Also keep in mind that you can also use a list-comprehension.

Python 3.6+

l2 = [f'{name_a} and {name_b}' for name_a, name_b in zip(l1[0], l1[1])]

l2 = [name_a + ' and ' + name_b for name_a, name_b in zip(l1[0], l1[1])]

Note: If you are not allowed to use zip use range and use index notation as follows:

l2 = []

for i in range(len(l1[0])):
    name_a = l1[0][i]
    name_b = l1[1][i]
    l2.append(name_a + ' and ' + name_b)

Update: based on the previous comments, you should use the following:

l2 = []

for i in range(len(l1[0])):
    l2.append(' and '.join(e[i] for e in l1))

Answer 2

You can use zip to get a combination of names from sub lists and the list having "and" repeated the number of times elements are present in the first list one[0] :

one = [['Patrick', 'Peter', 'Jerome'], ['Lisa', 'Karen', 'Alice']]
name_tup = zip(one[0], ["and"] * len(one[0]), one[1])

Then use a list comprehension to generate the out list from the tuple returned by zip . Using unpacking the three elements are joined by a whitespace in between using the join function:

list = [ " ".join([x, y, z]) for x, y, z in name_tup]

>>> list
['Patrick and Lisa', 'Peter and Karen', 'Jerome and Alice']