Merge 2 lists by alternating elements

Question

I have 2 lists:

item1
item2
item3
.
.
itemX

and

item11
item22
item33
.
.
itemXX

I would like to merge those 2 lists into one by alternating the list elements so the resulting list will be like this:

item1
item11
item2
item22
.
.
itemX
itemXX

What is the best approach to do this in python?

What I am really trying to accomplish is to build a html table with X-rows and 2 columns so I need alternating lines with elements from both lists so that elements from list1 will go to column 1 and same for list2.

Best thing to do: code it. Come back if you have a specific question related to [mcve] that is a problem - currently you are just asking _us_ to code for you . — Patrick Artner, Feb 20 '19 at 09:56
Dupe: [pythonic-way-to-combine-two-lists-in-an-alternating-fashion](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3678869/pythonic-way-to-combine-two-lists-in-an-alternating-fashion) — Patrick Artner, Feb 20 '19 at 09:57
and here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7946798/interleave-multiple-lists-of-the-same-length-in-python — Arran Duff, Feb 20 '19 at 10:00
and here [using-linq-and-c-is-it-possible-to-join-two-lists-but-with-interleaving-at-each-line](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1758404/using-linq-and-c-is-it-possible-to-join-two-lists-but-with-interleaving-at-each-line) — Patrick Artner, Feb 20 '19 at 10:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 20 '19 at 10:04

1

import itertools
foo=[1,3,5,7,9]
bar=[2,4,6,8,10,12,14]
new_list=[]
for f,b in itertools.zip_longest(foo,bar):
    if f:
        new_list.append(f)
    if b:
        new_list.append(b)
print(new_list)

answered Feb 20 '19 at 10:04

sujeet14108

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Merge 2 lists by alternating elements

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