Python zip

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Python zip() function to perform parallel iterations on multiple iterables.

Introduction to the Python zip() function #

Suppose you have two tuples: names and ages.

• The names tuple stores a list of names.
• The ages tuple stores a list of ages.

To map names and ages from these tuples one-by-one in sequence, you may use the enumerate() function. For example:

names = ('John', 'Jane', 'Alice')
ages = (20, 22, 25)

for index, name in enumerate(names):
    print((name, ages[index]))Code language: Python (python)

Output:

('John', 20)
('Jane', 22)
('Alice', 25)Code language: Python (python)

So John is 20, Jane is 22, and Alice is 25

However, It’s getting more complicated if the sizes of the names and ages tuples are different. That’s why the zip() function comes to play.

The following shows the syntax of the zip() function:

zip(*iterables, strict=False)Code language: Python (python)

The zip() function iterates multiple iterables in parallel and returns the tuples that contain elements from each iterable.

In other words, the zip() function returns an iterator of tuples where i-th tuple contains the i-th element from each input iterable.

The following example shows how to use the zip() function to iterate over the names and ages tuples:

names = ('John', 'Jane', 'Alice')
ages = (20, 22, 25)

for employee in zip(names, ages):
    print(employee)Code language: Python (python)

Output:

('John', 20)
('Jane', 22)
('Alice', 25)Code language: Python (python)

In this example, the zip() returns a tuple in each iteration and assigns it to the employee variable. The tuple contains the i-th elements the names and ages tuples.