Im trying to combine date times and string in the same column of a list

Question

I have a list of names like this:

['Albert Einstein', 'Benjamin Franklin', 'J. Edgar Hoover',....]

And a list of date-times:

[datetime.date(1642, 12, 25), datetime.date(1879, 3, 14), datetime.date(1706, 1, 17),.....]

now I'm trying to add them together in between of each other like this in a new list:

[('Albert Einstein', datetime.date(1879, 3, 14)),...

Nothing I tried seem to work. It also doesn't seem possible to me with append or extend, hope someone can help me.

You can see my answer where I provide an example with the values you give and the output — Celius Stingher, Mar 10 '20 at 17:39

lorg · Answer 1 · 2020-03-10T17:43:09.370

1

Use zip(a, b) for the two lists, e.g.

a = [1, 2, 3]
b = ["a", "b", "c"]
print(list(zip(a, b)))

[(1, "a"), (2, "b"), (3, "c")]

edited Mar 10 '20 at 17:43

answered Mar 10 '20 at 17:37

lorg

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I believe this would print a zip object, not a list with the tuple. – Celius Stingher Mar 10 '20 at 17:40
Thanks, fixed the mistake – lorg Mar 10 '20 at 17:43

Celius Stingher · Answer 2 · 2020-03-10T17:51:54.243

1

As mentioned in the comments you can simply use zip which can take lists as parameters and returns an iterator, with tuples of i-th position of the lists passed as arguments, therefore if we try to print it, we'll get a zip object at ... that's why we need to use list() so we can access the values in a list format:

import datetime
people = ['Albert Einstein', 'Benjamin Franklin', 'J. Edgar Hoover']
dates = [datetime.date(1642, 12, 25), datetime.date(1879, 3, 14), datetime.date(1706, 1, 17)]
output = list(zip(people,dates))

For example:

[('Albert Einstein', datetime.date(1642, 12, 25)),
 ('Benjamin Franklin', datetime.date(1879, 3, 14)),
 ('J. Edgar Hoover', datetime.date(1706, 1, 17))]

edited Mar 10 '20 at 17:51

answered Mar 10 '20 at 17:39

Celius Stingher

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Thanks, this worked. So what if I want the zip to be a list or doesn't that matter? – HerooCoder Mar 10 '20 at 17:49
Because `zip` returns an iterator, if you wish to use it at list, then you must use `list()` with the `zip object`. Of course you can choose not to. – Celius Stingher Mar 10 '20 at 17:52

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 10 '20 at 17:39

Try this:

names = ['Albert Einstein', 'Benjamin Franklin', 'J. Edgar Hoover']
dates = [datetime.date(1642, 12, 25), datetime.date(1879, 3, 14), datetime.date(1706, 1, 17)]

print(list(zip(names, dates)))

Output:

[('Albert Einstein', datetime.date(1642, 12, 25)), ('Benjamin Franklin', datetime.date(1879, 3, 14)), ('J. Edgar Hoover', datetime.date(1706, 1, 17))]

Im trying to combine date times and string in the same column of a list

3 Answers3